A Comparative Reflection in the Suhrawardi’s Illumination and the Angelology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

A system based on hierarchies, which is the narrator of omnipotence the higher beings and poverty on the part of the low beings, based on a comparative approach, can be considered as the common thread of the views of Suhrawardī in the second part of his Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in De Coelesti Hierarchia. Suhrawardī, who considers all the substances of the world of possibility, both incorporeal and material, to be inside the two categories of light and darkness, relying on the illumination wisdom of Fahlvion, founded the system of hierarchy between lights. With the aim of explaining the quality of the transmission of divine revelation from the highest source of its issuance to the human worlds, Dionysius has also described the hierarchy of angels referring to their intellectual and illuminated essence. The results show that in establishing his Wisdom of Illumination, Suhrawardī has a completely philosophical view to the category of light, but the goal that Dionysius pursues is to interpret the Holy Bible in a completely Neoplatonic format with special attention to the thoughts of the late Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus and Proclus. Nevertheless, the discussion of hierarchy is common to both views. This research, the data of which was collected by relying on written sources and analyzed using the documentary (library) method, firstly studies the place of light in the Holy Quran and the New Testament, and then compares the hierarchical order of lights and angels in the thought of Suhrawardī and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.