Muhammad Amin Andrabi (1940 in

Srinagar Srinagar (; ) is a city in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in the disputed Kashmir region.The application of the term "administered" to the various regions of Kashmir and a mention of the Kashmir dispute is supported by the tertiary ...

Kashmir Kashmir ( or ) is the Northwestern Indian subcontinent, northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term ''Kashmir'' denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir P ...

– 30 December 2001) was a member of the prominent Andrabi Sayyed family. He was the son of the

Sufi Sufism ( or ) is a mysticism, mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic Tazkiyah, purification, spirituality, ritualism, and Asceticism#Islam, asceticism. Practitioners of Sufism are r ...

shaykh and a religious

scholar A scholar is a person who is a researcher or has expertise in an academic discipline. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researcher at a university. An academic usually holds an advanced degree or a termina ...

Mir Ahmad. He belonged to the

Traditionalist School Traditionalism, also known as the Traditionalist School, is a school of thought within perennial philosophy. Originating in the thought of René Guénon in the 20th century, it proposes that a single primordial, metaphysical truth forms the so ...

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...

, inspired by authors like

Ibn Arabi Ibn Arabi (July 1165–November 1240) was an Andalusian Sunni Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. It holds that Muhammad did not appoint any successor and that his closest com ...

Muhammad Iqbal Muhammad Iqbal (9 November 187721 April 1938) was a South Asian Islamic philosopher, poet and politician. Quote: "In Persian, ... he published six volumes of mainly long poems between 1915 and 1936, ... more or less complete works on philoso ...

Frithjof Schuon Frithjof Schuon ( ; ; 18 June 1907 – 5 May 1998) was a Swiss philosopher and spiritual leader, belonging to the Traditionalist School of Perennial philosophy, Perennialism. He was the author of more than twenty works in French on metaphys ...

Seyyed Hossein Nasr Seyyed Hossein Nasr (born April 7, 1933) is an Iranian Americans, Iranian-American academic, philosophy, philosopher, theology, theologian, and Ulama, Islamic scholar. He is University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. ...

and

Henry Corbin Henry Corbin (14 April 1903 – 7 October 1978) was a French philosopher, theologian, and Iranologist, professor of Islamic studies at the École pratique des hautes études. He was influential in extending the modern study of traditional Islami ...

. Andrabi was schooled at the Islamia High School, Kashmir's first modern school. He had an early proclivity for languages and learned English,

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

and

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

in school. He earned his doctorate in

from the University of Kashmir, studying under one of South Asia's most eminent 20th-century

scholars, Aal-e-Ahmad Suroor. He was also instructed in

Islamic Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

history, law and philosophy by his father. Andrabi began his career as a teacher in the Islamia College of Science and Commerce in

, where he taught

literature. In 1980 he joined the

University of Kashmir University of Kashmir (UoK), informally known as Kashmir University (KU), is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public State university (India), state university located in the Hazratbal neighbourhood, on the western side of ...

as a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

. From the mid-1980s until his death he headed the university's Iqbal Institute, a research center where scholars pursue doctoral studies. There, Andrabi supervised and guided doctoral research in literature, criticism, philosophy, linguistics, history and comparative religion. He was an authority on

literature and is remembered for his contributions to literary criticism, comparative religion and Islamic philosophy. He authored two books and has been published in several literary journals worldwide.

References

Kashmiri writers Traditionalist School 1940 births 2001 deaths Academic staff of the University of Kashmir University of Kashmir alumni {{India-academic-bio-stub