Introduction
Throughout history all over the world, there have usually been thinkers on humanities, and particularly on education, whose theories and writings have been based on the Original nature, and therefore these have received acceptance of most people in all times and places.Since the religion is based on nature a Then set your face upright for religion in the right state; the nature made by God in which He has made men" (Qur'an. Rum 30:30). Thus their natures have had the color of God, and since man's nature is unchangeable "There is no altering of God's creation)) (Qur'an, Rum 30:30), their sayings and writings have always been useable and good for citation. But the presence of such scholars in quite different parts of this great world and in different periods of history has caused many people of the world to he unaware of their opinions or to understand them incorrectly.
Undoubtedly, this will increase disagreements and discord among different people of the world, the very thing those thinkers wished to rectify. Therefore, it appears evident that under such conditions in the world, different factors intend to fun such disagreements and discord, and the bad results of such discord are evident all over the world; the duty and task of
researchers and writers will be greater. First, they should discover and identify such scholars, second, identification. analysis and interpretation of their theories, and third. comparative study of different scholars' theories in different religions. This not only will cause, on the one hand, familiarity of the inhabitants of the world with their views and so to use those viewpoints, but also it will, on the other hand, cause designing a systematic model based on religious education for all inhabitants of the world through clarification of the shared core of those views. Such a model can be appHed by all peoples and humans of the world in the direction of a worldwide unity and creating peace among, all human beings. There were in Iran, throughout history, some great Muslim scholars who represented educational and philosophical theories which had a worldwide influence. These opinions and theories that were written in hundreds of books and papers were mostly based on Islam, and included all branches of a philosophical- educational school: ontology (and anthropology as its subset), epistemology, axiology; and their educational effects which consisted of definition and description of education, goals, methods, principles, foundations, factors, kinds of education, teaching, curriculum and educational contents, etc. There have been many of such authorities and figures in Iran. However, in this research, the educational opinions and theories (the effect of the philosophy on education) of ten of the most important of them, i.e. Farabi, Avicenna, Ghazali, Khajeh Naseer Tusi, Jalal al-Din Rumi, Hafez, Sa'di, Ibn Khaldün, Tabatabaee and Motahhari. Investigation of educational theories of such scholars as
Avicenna. Ghazali and Khajeh Nasecr Tusi indicate that our great educators, even in the past, were aware of the principles of education and always tried to found their teachings on given and definite principles (Shariatmadari; cited in Attaran. 1992). These three scholars' writings and speeches are in many cases well-supported by the Qur'an and Islamic traditions or influenced by them and they were from outstanding personalities of Islamic thought, and were effective in a deep thinking transformation in their era (Attaran. 1992).
(1) A Brief Biography of Muslim Scholars
1-1. Farabi
Farabi (Al-Farabi) (259-339 AH) was born in the village "Vasij" near of Farab. Farabi is a great philosopher and founder of Islamic philosophy. He spent many years in Baghdad in which he wrote most of his books (Seyyed Arab. 2007). His works have been mentioned to be about 400 (Reshnou zadeh, 2007). He went to the court of Seyfoddowleh Hamdani by his invitation and spent some time in Halab (in Syria). He also traveled to Sham and Egypt. He passed away in Damascus (Seyyed Arab, 2007 & Hoseini Dashti, 1997). In addition to intellectual aspect and knowledge. Abu Nasr Farabi was morally higher than many other philosophers were. He was a contented person and was accustomed and attached to solitude. He was a man of charitable donation and almsgiving. He believed that the greatness and happiness of a philosopher was in forsaking the world (worldly matters) and the happiness of the soul was in forsaking worldly interests and in seclusion. Farabi considered morality as the result of knowledge and as the introduction of happiness. He considered no greatness, esteem or perfection for a scholar who had no morality. All happiness is obtained through morality and virtues, and one.whose knowledge has not been a cause of moral refinement, is not happy or lucky. Farabi was not much interested in fame. He preferred truth to all other things (Dehkhoda, 1998). Farabi first started to study and investigate Aristotle's books. He summarized and improved Aristotle's philosophy in such a manner that all people confessed his virtue, and so he made clear the errors of the translators of Aristotle's works. That was the reason why he was called "the Second Teacher" (Aristotle was called the First Teacher) (Hoseini Dashti, 1997). Islamic neo-Platonist, philosopher of language, culture, and society... "the Second Teacher," he was called so for his achievements in logic. Of Turkicorogin, al-Farabi studied under Christian thinkers. He settled in Baghdad, traveled in Byzantium, and died in Damascus. His Arabic commentary on Aristotle's Deinter-pretention argued that divine omniscience does not imply determinism, since the necessary implication of a fact by the corresponding knowledge is not transferred to the fact itself. This division of intrinsic from relational (hypothetical) necessity undergirds Avicenna's essence existence distinction and his central claim that nature is contingent in itself, though necessary in relation to its causes. Al-Farabi found the logic of Koranic promises and threats by seeing prophets in the role that Plato had assigned to poets: naturalizing higher truths imagery and legislation (Honderich, 2005).
Al-Farabi, also called Abu Nasr, in Latin, Alpharabius (870950). studied and taught in Baghdad when it was the cultural capital of the Islamic world, responsive to the philosophical and scientific legacy of late antiquity. AI-Farabi was highly instrumental in effecting a transition of Greek philosophy, last
publicly known in its entirety in sixth-century Alexandria, into Islamic culture. Despite ongoing opposition because of philosophy's identification with pagan and Christian authors, ™ succeeded in naturalizing the Western philosophy in the Islamic world, where it retained vitality for the next three hundred years. Al-Hirable because known as "the second teacher" after Aristotle, is the main source of philosophical information. His summaries and interpretations of the teachings of Aristotle and Plato were widely read, and his attempt as synthesizing their views was very influential. BeHeving in the universal nature of truth and holding Plato and Aristotle in the highest esteem, he minimized their differences and adapted Neo-platonic teachings that incorporated elements of both traditions. Unlike the first philosopher of the Islamic world, the ninth-century al-Kindi, al-Farabi was in possession of full Arabic translations of many of the most important texts of classical times and of some major Hellenistic commentaries on them. His own commentaries and digests of the works of Plato and Aristotle made them more accessible to later generations of scholars, even as his relatively independent treatises established a high standard of logical rigor and subtlety for later Muslim and Jewish philosophers. Avicenna found his Metaphysics commentary indispensable for understanding Aristotle's text, while Maimonides recommended all his writings, calling them "pure flour". Medieval Scholastic thought, however, was more interested in Averroes and Avicenna than in al-Farabi. Contemporary scholars such as Leo Strauss and Muhsin Mandi have emphasized the esoteric nature
of al-Farabi's writings., seen as critical for understanding much of medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy.
Al-Farabi's main interests lay in logic and political theory. He understood that the Organon was just a universal instrument for understanding and improving reasoning and logical discourse. Against the traditional grammarians of Islam, he argued for the value-free and neutral nature of Greek of logic, while against the theologians of Islam, (motakallimoon), he emphasized the difference between their dialectical type of discourse and the preferred demonstrative syllogism of the philosophers. Much of the responsibility for the separation between Islamic theology and philosophy may be attributed to al-Farabi, who avoided engaging religious dogmas and specifically Muslim beliefs as much as possible. He was able to accommodate belief in prophethood and revelation to a general theory of emanation, though he made no special claims for the prophet of Islam. His general view of Religion was that it was a popular and symbolic representation of philosophical ideas, often designed by philosophers. The influence of Plato's Republic in this and other areas of political philosophy is evident, though al-Farabi's Principles of the Views of the Citizens of the Best State manage to give an Islamic coloration to Platonic teachings. Al-Farabi's metaphysical beliefs are more problematical still, and he was reputed to have disowned his earHer belief in the immortality of the soul. (Audi, 2001)
He wrote extensively on logic, and expanded Aristotle's description of the intellect. He also exhibits the influence of Neo-Platonism: creation is an emanation and it is as the images
of the world soul or anima munch that become bodies in space. His work The Virtuous City is a version of Plato's Republic, a description of the ideal civic society in which all the virtues flourish. (Blackburn, 2005)
1-2. Avicenna
Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980-1037). Persian (Iranian) philosopher and Physician, regarded as the greatest of the medieval Islamic philosophers, served as court physician for the Sultan of Bukhara. He was deeply influenced by Aristotle and still maintained a Muslim faith. He is best known for his distinction between essence and existence, in which the essences of existing things must be explained by their existing cause (s), whose reality is higher than the sophical and theological perspective. (Pojman, 2003)Avicenna. as a Persian philosopher, scientist, and physician. widely called "The Supreme Master,- held an unsurpassed position in Islamic philosophy. His works, including the Canon of Medicine, are cited throughout most medieval Latin philosophical and medical texts. The subject of more commentaries, glosses, and super glosses than any other Islamic philosopher, they have inspired generations of thinkers, including Persian poets.
His philosophical works. especially Ile Directives and Remarks and Deliverance, define Islamic Peripatetic philosophy, one of the three dominant schools of Islamic
philosophy. His contributions to science and philosophy are extraordinary in scope. He is thought to be the first logician to clearly define temporal modalities in prepositions, to diagnose and identify many diseases, and to identify specific number of pulse beats in diagnosis. Honderich, 2005)
His autobiography describes him as an intuitive student of philosophy and other Greek Sciences who could not see the point of Aristotle's Metaphysics, until he read a tiny essay by al-Farabi (870-950), who showed him what it meant to seek the nature of being as such. - It was in metaphysics that Avicenna made his greatest contributions to philosophy, brilliantly synthesizing the rival approaches of the Aristotelian-NeoPlatonism tradition with the creationist monotheism of Islamic dialectical theology (kalam). Where Aristotle sought and found being in its fullest sense in what was changeless in its nature (above all, in the cosmos as a whole), kalam understood being as the immediately given, allowing no inference beyond a single contingent datum to any necessary properties, correlatives, continuators, or successor.
The result was a stringent atomist occasionalism resting ultimately on an early version of logical atomism. Avicenna preserved an Aristotelian naturalism alongside the Scriptural idea of the contingency of the world by arguing that any finite being is contingent in itself but necessary in relation to its causes. He adapted al-Farabi's Neo-platonic emanationism to this schematization and naturalized in philosophy his own distinctive version of the kalam argument from contingency: any being must be either Necessary Being, which is therefore
simple, the ultimate cause of all other things. Avicenna found refuge at the court of one 'Alaal-Dawla, who bravely resisted the military pressures of Mahmud against his lands around Isfahan and made the philosopher and savant be his vizier. Here Avicenna completed his famous philosophic work the Shifa' (known in Latin as the Sufficientia) and his Qanun fi Tibb, the Galenic Canon, which remained in use as a medical textbook until finally was brought down by the weight of criticisms during the Renaissance. Avicenna's philosophy was the central target of the polemical critique of the Muslim theologian al-Ghazali (1058-111) in his Incoherence of the philosophers, mainly on 'the ground that the philosopher's retention of the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of the world was inconsistent with his claim that God was the author of the world. Avicenna's related affirmations of the necessity of causation and universality of God's knowledge, al-Ghazali argued, made miracles impossible and divine governance too impersonal to deserve the name.
Yet Avicenna's philosophic works (numbering over a hundred in their Arabic and sometimes Persian originals) continued to exercise a major influence on Muslim and Jewish philosophers and (through Latin translations) on philosophers in the West. (Audi, 2001)
One of his arguments concerning the nature of the soul postulates a full-grown man suddenly coming into existence although suspended in empty space, with eyes covered and limbs separated. This 'flying man' would have no sensation. but nevertheless be aware of his being and his self. The
argument anticipates the cogito of Descartes. Avicenna believed that being was an accident of essence, and that contingent beings require necessary causes sustaining their existence. This version of the cosmological argument was the accepted by Aquinas. It is in the theological substances as kinds of intelligence that Neo-Platonism surfaces in his work. (Blackburn, 2005)
\ Avicenna was born in the year 980 of the Christian era, or in Mohammedan reckoning the year 370. On 13 October 1950, the Mohammedan year 1370 began: it will end on 1 October, 1951. Therefore, we are met together during the one thousandth anniversary of the birth of Avicenna, Mohammedan reckoning; and that is in fact the occasion for these lectures, which thus form part of the celebration taking place all over the world, to commemorate the greatness of one of the outstanding philosophers and scientists of all times (Wickens, 1952).
1-3. Ghazali
Persian Abu Hamid Muhammad Ghazali (Alghazal in Latin texts) (1058- 1111) was the most influential Ash'arite theologian of his time. His role as head of the state-endowed Nizamiyya Madrasa, his monumental work Revival of Religious Sciences, and his autobiographical account Deliverance from Error (often compared to Augustine's Confessions) furthered the triumph of revelation over reason. His specifically anti-philosophical works, Intentions of the philosophers and Incoherence of the philosophers, called ontheologians to use philosophical technique to oppose 'heretic' arguments. How-ever, the effects on philosophy proved positive. The study of logic gained widespread theological acceptance. The identification of twenty philosophical problems argued to be false (including eternity, immorality, and rational causality) yeas brilliantly rebutted by Averroes, thus leading to refinement of Aristotelian arguments. and Sohravardi's philosophy (Honderich, 2005).
Ghazali was an Islamic philosopher, theologian, jurist. and mystic. He was born in Khurasan and educated in Nishapur, then an intellectual center of eastern Islam.
He was appointed the head of a seminary, the newly founded Nizamiyyah School of Baghdad, in which he taught law and theology with great success. Yet, his exposure to logic and philosophy led him to seek a certainty in knowledge beyond that assumed by his profession. At first, he attempted to address his problem academically, but after live years in Baghdad, he resigned, left his family, and embarked on the mystic's solitary quest for al-Haqq (Arabic word for 'the True One'). As a Sufi, he wandered Oar ten years through many of Muslim major cities and centers of learning, finally returning to Nishapur and to teaching theology before his death. AlGhazali's literary and intellectual legacy is particularly of his work and the esteem hi which he is held within Islam. Ile may be compared to Aquinas and Maimonides in the Christian and Jewish traditions respectively. His Revivification of the Religious Sciences is considered to this day a major theological compendium. His mystical treatises also have retained their
popularity, the Deliverance from Error. This book chronicles his lifelong quest for truth and certainty, and his disappointment with the premises of dogmatic theology, both orthodox Sunni and heterodox Shiite thought, as well as with the teachings of the philosophers. The light of truth came to him, he believed, only through divine grace; he considered his senses and reasoning powers all susceptible to error. (Audi, 2001)
1-4. Tusi
Khajeh Naseeroddeen Tusi was from the great scholars of mathematics, astrology and wisdom in Iran in the seventh century of hejira. He was also of the ministers of that time and he was also one of the great jurisprudents of Shiite Islam. Khajeh has written numerous books regarding different sciences (Moin, 1992). Khajch Naseer Tusi has also very valuable works in ethics and education (Beheshti, Abuja'afari & Faqihi, 2000, P. 113). He was born in 597 All [in Tus. or in Jahrud of Qom] and died in 672 All [in Baghdad] (Modarresi, 2000). Khajeh Naseer spent his childhood with those ones, according to him, who were pious and religious, and who were aware of some sciences, occupations and crafts. His father was an experienced person, and always encouraged him to learn different techniques and sciences, and to listen to the speech of the aware persons in religiosity. Naseeroddin emigrated from Tus to Neishabur and some other cities to complete his education. Two of his important activities were the establishingof the very great observatory of Maragheh, and a very great library in Maragheh too which had 400 thousands books. He planned that the thinkers could continue and extend their researches, and keep the great heritage of Islam. Tusi wrote about 274 books. Most of his writings concern philosophy, theosophy, mathematics, astrology, and ethics. His writings can be classified under the following ten titles: mathematics, ethics, interpretation, religious jurisprudence, history, geography, medicine, logics, theosophy, and philosophy (Beheshti, Abuja'afari Faqihi, 2000, PP. 113-121). In spite of this fact that Khajeh Naseer Tusi was making much effort to promote his own religion and belief ( Shiite, Islam), was very kind to other religious groups of Islam, and respected scholars of each class or religion and refrained from rigid religious intolerance and dogmatism. That is the reason why some Christian orientalists and some of the Sunni scholars and all of Shiite scientists have highly considered his spiritual greatness, religiosity, humbleness and good manners (Modarresi, 2000)
1-5. Rumi
Jalal al-Din Rumi (Rumi, or Moulavi or Moulana), author of a vast collection of Persian odes and lyrics, of which a selection is here offered in translation, was born in A.D. 1207 at Balkh, which now Hes within the frontiers of Afghanistan, and died in 1273 at Konya, in Asiatic Turkey. For an account of his Rumi's Fihi ma fihi, published by John Murray in 1961 under the title Discourses of Rumi; there is nothing I wish to add to what is written there, except by way of stressing thecurios circumstances, which attended Rami's transformation from sober theologian and preacher into ecstatic dancer and enraptured poet. Rumi's father Bah-a' al-Din Valad, had attained eminence in religious circles in Khorasan before his headlong flight to Sal* Turkey on the eve of the Mongol invasions; in Konya where he died in 1230, he enjoyed royal patronage and popular esteem as preacher and teacher. From 1240 to 1244, having completed his long formal education in 1244, when Rumi was ahead), thirty-seven years of age and seemingly set in his ways as a conventional mullah, a wandering dervish named Shams al-Din, a native of Tabriz apparently of artisan origin, suddenly arrived in the Saljuq capital and attracted attention by the wildness of his demeanor. (Arberry, 2002)
1-6. Sa'di
Sa'di's full name is Mosharraf-edin bin Moslehedin-Abdullah and he was born in Shiraz, a city in Iran. in 1184 and died there in 1291. He adopted the pen name of Sa'di in honor of his patron, Abu-Baler Sa'di, a contemporary king of the Atabakan dynasty in Fars, a province of Iran. He lost his father at an early age and came under the protection of this Atabak at his accession in 1 195.Sa'di's life may be divided into three periods :
The period of study, lasting until 1226 when he was sent to the famous Nezamieh College of Baghdad to study. There he
was deeply influenced by the eminent Sufi, Suhravardi, as well as Ibn-e-Jowzi, another great teacher, whose name appears in some of his poems.
The period of travel beginning in 1226 and lasting till 1256, during which he traveled widely to many parts of India, Yemen, Hejaz, Arabia, Syria, Abyssinia, North Africa and Asia Minor, and had many opportunities of mingling with peoples of those countries and gaining rich experiences which are reflected in all his works; (Pazargadi, 2000)
Sa'di of Shiraz, or Sheikh Moslehedin Abdullah Sa'di Shirazi, poet, writer and distinguished thinker of the 13th century A.D. (7th century All.) is one of the few men of letters of Iran who has acquired fame not only in Persian-speaking regions, but whose renown has spread well beyond Iran, and has become known in the wider literary circles of the world, as a well known and recognized literary figure. Sa'di was born in Shiraz, according to himself "in a household, all the members of which were theologians stepped in religious learning." The first years of his childhood and early youth were spent in his own hometown where he got a grounding in the sciences and learning of his own times. He then moved on to Baghdad to continue his studies at the "Nizamieh" which was the University of his day. Over a period of twenty years, Sa'di pursued and completed his studies in theology and literature, and then left on a long journey covering Iraq, Hejaz and North Africa and, according to some sources, India, Asia Minor and Azerbaijan as well. It was during the course of these travels that. while adding to his valuable experiences, he came across
personalities such as Mowlana Jalaludin Mohammad Moulavi, the great poet of Balkh, Sheikh Safiyudin of Ardabil, Hamam Tabriz and Amir Khosro of Delhi. (Hakimi, 2005)
