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This definitive study of an important Sufi work by the "Greatest Shayk" of Islamic mysticism presents a provocative new perspective on the fundamental question of the nature and authority of individual sainthood in organized, prophetic religion.
This volume presents the seminal treatise of the important Spanish Muslim mystic, Ibn al-‘Arabī, on Islamic sainthood The Book of the Fabulous Gryphon. In highly allusive, symbolic language, the Shaykh al-Akbar reveals his manifesto of the revolutionary significance of sainthood in the person of its timely epitome, the Seal of the saints. The first part of the book consists of a critical introduction dealing with the biographical, historical and bibliographical background to the Fabulous Gryphon, along with a thorough examination of its concepts, themes and structure. The complete, annotated translation of the Gryphon is followed by further original translations of related texts by Ibn al-‘Arabī. Apart from the Fusūs al-ḥikam, no comparable treatise by this leading figure of Islamic spirituality has ever been presented in its entirety in any western language.
This book is a study of the concept of wilāya and its developments among Shīʿī scholars from the eighteenth to twentieth century. Leila Chamankhah addresses a number of issues by delving into the conceptualizations of wilāya through the examination and interpretation of key texts. She focuses on the influence of ibn ʿArabī’s mysticism, with regard to the conception of wilāya, on his Shīʿa successors and expositors in later centuries. She also discusses the development and transformation of the conception of wilāya over two hundred years, from the esoteric school of Shaykhīsm to the politicization of wilāya in the theory of wilāyat al-faqīh.
Exploring how the medieval mystic Ibn 'Arabi has been read as an inclusive universalist through the interpretative field of Perennial Philosophy, this book shows how his metaphysics is inseparably intertwined with Islamic supersessionism. Ibn 'Arabi's universalist reception is thus traced to lineages of Eurocentrism, revealing how Perennialism is itself exclusionary.
This book offers a comparative study of emotion in Arabic Islamic and English Christian contemplative texts, c. 1110-1250, contributing to the emerging interest in ‘globalization’ in medieval studies. A.S.Lazikani argues for the necessity of placing medieval English devotional texts in a more global context and seeks to modify influential narratives on the ‘history of emotions’ to enable this more wide-ranging critical outlook. Across eight chapters, the book examines the dialogic encounters generated by comparative readings of Muhyddin Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240), ‘Umar Ibn al-Fārid (1181-1235), Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtarī (d. 1269), Ancrene Wisse (c. 1225), and the Wooing Group (c. 1225). Investigating the two-fold ‘paradigms of love’ in the figure of Jesus and in the image of the heart, the (dis)embodied language of affect, and the affective semiotics of absence and secrecy, Lazikani demonstrates an interconnection between the religious traditions of early Christianity and Islam.
This book is a comparative study of two major Shīʿī thinkers Ḥamīd al-Dīn Kirmānī from the Fatimid Egypt and Mullā Ṣadrā from the Safavid Iran, demonstrating the mutual empowerment of discourses on knowledge formation and religio-political authority in certain Ismaʿili and Twelver contexts. The book investigates concepts, narratives, and arguments that have contributed to the generation and development of the discourse on the absolute authority of the imam and his representatives. To demonstrate this, key passages from primary texts in Arabic and Persian are translated and closely analyzed to highlight the synthesis of philosophical, Sufi, theological, and scriptural discourses. The book also discusses the discursive influence of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī as a key to the transmission of Ismaʿili narratives of knowledge and authority to later Shīʿī philosophy and its continuation to modern and contemporary times particularly in the narrative of the guardianship of the jurist in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In this book, Agron Belica offers a fresh interpretation of the momentous events on a hillock beyond the walls of Jerusalem nearly two millennia ago: the Crucifixion. Belica asks disconcerting questions about the received version of gospel history and gives free rein to his inquisitive nature. Many of his ideas and speculations will strike the casual reader schooled in the ancient Biblical Traditions with which they conflict as unhistorical, impossible, and unbelievable. Yet, when questioning established premises, the impossible may often be shown to be possible, as Socrates was fond of doing. Mr. Belica does not claim to be proving anything, except that with some speculation and reinterpret...
This book explores how Ibn al-'Arabi (1165–1240) used the concept of barzakh (the Limit) to deal with the philosophical problem of the relationship between God and the world, a major concept disputed in ancient and medieval Islamic thought. The term "barzakh" indicates the activity or actor that differentiates between things and that, paradoxically, then provides the context of their unity. Author Salman H. Bashier looks at early thinkers and shows how the synthetic solutions they developed provided the groundwork for Ibn al-'Arabi's unique concept of barzakh. Bashier discusses Ibn al-'Arabi's development of the concept of barzakh ontologically through the notion of the Third Thing and epistemologically through the notion of the Perfect Man, and compares Ibn al-'Arabi's vision with Plato's.
The notion of esoteric knowledge is one of the pillars of Islamic intellectual tradition. Though most visible in Sufism, it also dominated the first three and a half centuries of Shi‘ite thought. In this rich anthology, Leonard Lewisohn explores Islamic esotericism through the works of eleven authors who flourished in Persia, Central Asia and Asia Minor from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries. He presents excerpts from each text in translation, accompanying these with introductions to the author’s life, works and thought. In the course of his erudite and enlightening commentary, he explores the common ground of esoteric thought and terminology, revealing a unity of perspective among Muslim thinkers.
Reference librarian and archivist Paula (Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education, Virginia) and Rebecca, a scholar of Arabic studies, present a critically annotated bibliography of central works on Islam that are available in English translation. They write for readers who are acquainted with the basic ideas, histo.