ISHRĀQĪYAH, from ishrāq ("illumination"), is the name of a school of esoteric philosophy in Islam. The two major currents of thought in the development of Islamic philosophy, one exoteric and the other esoteric, are known respectively as falsafah ("scholastic philosophy," derived from Aristotle and Plato) and ʿirfān (a special type of philosophy derived from a metaphysical experience of Being through spiritual realization). Introduced into the West from the twelfth century onward through numerous translations from Arabic to Latin, it was falsafah that almost exclusively came to constitute "Islamic philosophy" in the West, while the other important tradition, that of ʿirfān, was left in complete obscurity. But ʿirfān has always been a creative force in Islamic spirituality, and as such it has produced a type of philosophy that is quite different from, and...