Mir Damad

Mir Damad, born Sayyid Muhammad Baqir Astarabadi (about 1561 to 1631 or 1632), was an Iranian Twelver Shia philosopher of the Safavid era who is regarded as the founder of the School of Isfahan, a revival of Islamic philosophy known as Hikmat-i Ilahi, or Divine Wisdom. Scholars styled him the Third Teacher, after Aristotle and al-Farabi. His central philosophical contribution was the theory of huduth-e dahri, atemporal origination, an attempt to resolve the long dispute over whether the world was created in time or is eternal by holding that everything but God participates in both an eternal and a temporal mode of being. His major works include Taqwim al-Iman, on creation and divine knowledge, and Qabasat al-Ilahiyah, which sets out the atemporal origination theory in full. His most celebrated student was Mulla Sadra.