A Mughal Treatise on Essence and Existence

What is it about?

This article analyzes and translates a South Asian Sufi philosophical treatise on the nature of essence and existence, entitled "The Equivalence between Giving and Receiving" by Shaykh Muhibb Allah Allahabadi. "Essence" and "existence" were centrally and heavily debated concepts within the history of Islamic philosophy, with various philosophical schools taking various competing stances. This treatise, written from the perspective of the Sufi school of the "oneness of being" (wahdat al-wujud), nevertheless takes a unique approach to the topic not often encountered within that school. The treatise thus offers a revealing glimpse into the vibrant life of Islamic philosophy in early modern South Asia, a time-period and region which scholars have only just begun to study properly. Against a common view often encountered today that the seventeenth-century Islamic world was one characterized by "decline," "irrationality," and "intellectual stagnation," we witness in Shaykh Muhibb Allah's treatise a dynamic Islamic philosophical tradition thriving within the Indian subcontinent.

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