Henry Corbin

Henry Corbin  (1903–1978) was a French philosopher and Iranologist most notable for introducing Mulla Sadra and Suhrawardi to the West. Both student and successor of Louis Massignon in Islamic studies at the Sorbonne, he also taught for over thirty years at the University of Tehran and was an essential member of the interdisciplinary discussion group Eranos, whose members included C. G. Jung and Mircea Eliade. He had a close relation with both Allameh Tabatabaei and Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr. His scholarship was concentrated in Islamic philosophy, Sufism, Shi’a beliefs, the Illuminationists, and the transformative role of imagination. Among his classics are A History of Islamic Philosophy and Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi. Corbin was the first to translate Heidegger into French, publishing a collection of texts under the title Qu’est ce que la Métaphysique? (1938). He also translated numerous ancient Arabic and Persian texts. His book The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism continues to be one of the greatest expositions of classical Persian Sufism available to a Western audience.