Suhrawardi's Esoteric Commentary on Reality of Affection in the Quran

The goal of this paper is to prove that there are some Quranic witnesses for Suhrawardi's idea of "affection" and "love". In this respect, after explaining the reality of affection in Suhrawardi's point of view, we will match this Idea to Quranic verses and esoteric commentary of these verses by referring to those verses related to affection and love. Suhrawardi himself believes in a kind of esoteric commentary in which understanding of the real meaning of the text depends on the reader’s level of comprehension and understanding. In this paper, Suhrawardi's idea has been investigated on the basis of the place of ontology, epistemology and cosmology of affection. With respect to ontology, Suhrawardi considers affection as an independent reality that has a pre-eternal source and homogeneousness is not condition in that. In illuminative epistemology, knowledge is known as the base and foundation of love and in its cosmology, cosmos order together with felicity and wretchedness of the soul are interpreted on the basis of love. And reaching to human perfection is only possible through love.