Dashtaki on unified composition

Abstract

Sadr al-Din Dashtaki, the innovator of the theory of unified composition, believes that any true composition is unified. In this paper, based on his old and new commentaries on Quschchi’s commentary on Tajrid, we have outlined his view of the nature and characteristics of unified composition. In the next step his two arguments in favor of the unity of some compositions have been formulated, and then three objections to this theory and Dashtaki's responses have been demonstrated. Importantly he demonstrates that the whole and it’s parts can be predicated to each other, so they are unified. He also believes that form and matter are unified and form is the analytic cause of matter; and parts of a unified composition do not exist independently from the composition itself. In the final section we have examined some phrases of Bahmanyar’s Al-Tahsil, which Dashtaki has relied on in his theory and could be one of the backgrounds of this theory.