Ghiyāth al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī Amīrān Iṣfahānī was a fifteenth-century Persian physician and scientist from Isfahan, Iran. He was, in the words of Daniel Beben, 'a polymath in the service of several of the Timurid governors of Badakhshān in the second half of the 15th century' CE. Little is known of him beyond the works attributed to him.

Works

Ṣaḥīfat al-nāẓirīn

According to one recension of Ṣaḥīfat al-nāẓirīn ('pages for the readers'), also known as Tuḥfat al-nāẓirīn ('gift for the readers') and Sī ū shish ṣaḥīfa ('thirty-six chapters'), Ghiyāth al-Dīn also composed that text; Daniel Beben has accepted this attribution, arguing that its explicit Ismailism, which would have been unacceptable to the Timurids, implies that this text was composed before their conquest of Badakhshān. In Beben's assessment, 'the Ṣaḥīfat al-nāẓirīn is an important yet understudied work covering a series of topics related to Ismaili theology and doctrine, and is noteworthy for being the first Ismaili text known to have been composed within Badakhshān after Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070)', who seems to have been the person who introduced Ismailism to that region. Most manuscripts of the Ṣaḥīfat al-nāẓirīn attribute the text to the legendary pīr Sayyid Suhrāb Walī, though Beben has suggested that the original person behind this figure might himself have been Ghiyāth al-Dīn. The date of composition of the work is usually stated to be 856/857 AH/1452–1453 CE. As of 2022, thirteen manuscripts of the text were known (two copied from the 1960 printed edition); the oldest manuscript was copied in dated 1137/1725.

Editions