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Saintly Spheres and Islamic Landscapes explores the creation, expansion, and perpetuation of the material and imaginary spheres of spiritual domination and sanctity that surrounded Sufi saints and became central to religious authority, Islamic piety, and the belief in the miraculous. The cultural and social constructs of Islamic sainthood and the spatial inscription of saintly figures have fascinated and ignited scholars across a range of disciplines. By bringing together a broad scope of perspectives and case studies, this book offers the reader the first comprehensive, albeit variegated, exposition of the evolution of saintly spheres and the emplacements of spiritual power in the Muslim world across time and place. Contributors: Angela Andersen, Irit Back, Devin DeWeese, Daphna Ephrat, Jo-Ann Gross, Nathan Hofer, Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, Sara Kuehn, Bulle Tuil Leonetti, Silvia Montenegro, Alexandre Papas, Paulo G. Pinto, Fatima Quraishi, Eric Ross, Itzchak Weismann, Pnina Werber, and Ethel Sara Wolper.
This volume describes the social and practical aspects of Islamic mysticism (Sufism) across centuries and geographical regions. Its authors seek to transcend ethereal, essentialist and “spiritualizing” approaches to Sufism, on the one hand, and purely pragmatic and materialistic explanations of its origins and history, on the other. Covering five topics (Sufism’s economy, social role of Sufis, Sufi spaces, politics, and organization), the volume shows that mystics have been active socio-religious agents who could skillfully adjust to the conditions of their time and place, while also managing to forge an alternative way of living, worshiping and thinking. Basing themselves on the most ...
The present book intends to invite readers on a multi-dimensional and multifaceted journey meeting dervishes in different places and environments of the Muslim world; its peculiarity is to bring together a classical orientalist approach, based on texts and written documents, with the approach typical of Anthropology, Ethnography and Ethnomusicology, based on research in the field and oral sources: the ethnographic study of the present sheds new light on practices, methods and theories exposed in treatises of the Past while, at the same time, practices of the present may be clarified and illuminated by the study of ancient Sufi texts and authors. These different approaches want to draw attention to the multiple dimensions embraced by “tasawwuf” (Sufism) both in its historical and social context and in its nontemporal aspect, concerning spirituality and the ways the latter is conveyed and transmitted, both in the past and present.
Thus Spake the Dervish explores the unfamiliar history of marginal Sufis, known as dervishes, in early modern and modern Central Asia over a period of 500 years. It draws on various sources (Persian chronicles and treatises, Turkic literature, Russian and French ethnography, the author’s fieldwork) to examine five successive cases, each of which corresponds to a time period, a specific socially marginal space, and a particular use of mystical language. Including an extensive selection of writings by dervishes, this book demonstrates the diversity and tenacity of Central Asian Sufism over a long period. Here translated into a Western language for the first time, the extracts from primary texts by marginal Sufis allow a rare insight into their world. The original French edition of this book, Ainsi parlait le dervice, was published by Editions du Cerf (Paris, France). Translated by Caroline Kraabel.
The notion of adab is at the heart of Arab-Islamic culture. Born in the crucible of the Arabic and Persian civilization, nourished by Greek and Indian influences, this polysemic notion could cover a variegated range of meanings: good behavior, knowledge of manners, etiquette, rules and belles-lettres and finally, literature. This collection of articles tries to explore how the formulations and reformulations of adab during the first centuries of Islam engage with the crucial period of the first great spiritual masters, exploring the importance of normativity, but also of transgression, in order to define the rules themselves. Assuming that adab is ethics, the articles analyse the genres of S...
The volume's unifying theme, inspired by the scholarly legacy of Professor Devin DeWeese, and indeed the subject of all the contributions, is the history of religion among the Muslim peoples of Inner and Central Asia, grounded in ignored or hitherto unknown indigenous sources. Individually, and as a whole, the articles pay tribute to DeWeese’s pathbreaking contributions to the disciplines of history and religious studies by exploring new approaches and new sources to build on this legacy. The volume pays particular attention to DeWeese's point d'appui: the centrality of Sufism in the region's religious, social, and literary history. The volume’s focus is thus twofold: to bring a new set of rich, largely unused materials into the scholarly domain among specialists on Central Asia, and to challenge historians of Islam to recognize that understanding the religious history of Central Asia, and Sufism in particular, is crucial in evaluating the Islamic world as a whole. Contributors: Peter B. Golden, Jürgen Paul, Ron Sela, Nicholas Walmsley, Jo-Ann Gross, Daniel Beben, Jeff Eden, Jamal Elias, Michael Kemper, Paolo Sartori, Eren Tasar, Stéphane A. Dudoignon, Allen J. Frank
Islamic Thought and the Art of Translation presents a diverse selection of studies, translations, and textual editions in honor of two of the most beloved and productive scholars in the field of Islamic Studies, Professors William Chittick and Sachiko Murata.
This volume discusses origin, structure and levels of existence of the created world and the place of human beings in it, according to the major Sufi thinkers of all times.
This volume is dedicated to the academic achievements of Karl Kaser and to the 50th anniversary of Southeast European History and Anthropology (SEEHA) at the University of Graz. Its editors are collaborators of SEEHA and experts in various fields of Southeast European Studies: Siegfried Gruber, Dominik Gutmeyr, Sabine Jesner, Elife Krasniqi, Robert Pichler, and Christian Promitzer. The Festschrift covers diverse approaches toward the study of societies and cultures in Southeastern Europe, both with respect to history and current affairs, and brings together contributions from several of Kaser's former doctoral students, colleagues, collaborators and friends from across Europe.
In the late 1970s Islam regained its force by generating novel forms of piety and forging new paths in politics throughout the world, including China. The Islamic revival in China, which came to fruition in the 2000s and the 2010s, prompted increases in government suppression but also intriguing resonances with the broader Muslim world—from influential theoretical and political contestations over Muslim women’s status, the popularization of mass media and the appearance of new patterns of consumption, to increases in transnational Muslim migration. Although China does not belong to the “Islamic world” as it is conventionally understood, China’s Muslims have strengthened and expande...