 The founder of the School of Isfahan, Mīr Dāmād (d. 1631 or 1632 CE), was a follower of Suhrawardī’s philosophy of illumination, even choosing the pen name ishrāq (illumination). He not only wrote extensively on the metaphysical foundation of mysticism in his major work Sparks of Fire (al-Qabasāt), and in his Ecstasies (Al-Jadhawāt), Heavenly Mystical States (Khalsat al-malakūt), and his Disassociations (al-Khl‘iyyāt), he also wrote mystical poetry. Even though Mīr Dāmād wrote extensively on peripatetic philosophy, and especially the concept of time, he is to be credited with a gnostic interpretation of Avicennan philosophy. His philosophico-mystical structure, based on the principality of essence, provides the intellectual frame work for the ascendance of the soul and its eventual unity with its source.