This book expands upon my doctoral dissertation at McGill’s Institute of Islamic Studies. It is the first comprehensive premodern intellectual and social history of the Bā ʿAlawi Sada and their Sufi tradition in the English language. While the Bā ʿAlawī tarīqa and its premodern origins remains poorly understood, this history addresses that lacuna by closely […]
By Jonathan Brown In the 2010 film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express—star-studded and far outshining the novel—Poirot discovers that the train’s passengers had planned and carried out the execution of a man who had murdered a child, but whom the court had somehow failed to convict. Poirot’s esteem for the rule of law is passionate. […]
Reviewed by: Asl YILDIRIM * “The Earth is bleeding from wounds inflicted upon it by a humanity no longer in harmony with Heaven and therefore in constant strife with the terrestrial environment.” These are the introductory words of Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who is not only a distinguished member of the philosophical intelligentsia but also […]
Allow me to begin by professing my profound gratitude to my colleagues for their generous engagement with The Book of Clouds, both at the panel at the AAR in 2024 and in this written form. As a poet has said, “It’s ears’ and hearts’ buying that sets words’ price, not what the selling tongues and pens […]
This article examines the narratives that appear in the encyclopedic Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). Written in the tenth century, this multilayered Neoplatonic work contains over 40 narratives-parables, allegories, fables, animal tales, and dialogues. These narratives serve multiple purposes, including the elucidation and illustration of ethical, philosophical, religious, mathematical, and scientific […]
The tension between the rule of law and justice is this book’s point of departure. Like many people of faith in the modern and postmodern world, Muslims live with the mental pangs caused by moments of mismatch between their scripture’s dictates and the learned justice voiced by their conscience. They take a breath of deeper […]
Much to its peril, the contemporary field of Quranic studies seldom regards Sufis and philosophers as major theorists of the Quran. A case in point is the great Persian Sufi poet Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, whose poetry has always been seen in the pre-modern Islamic tradition as amounting to nothing short of a profoundly engaged and […]
Editor-in-ChiefMohammed Rustom, Carleton University / Tokat Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies, Canada /USAEditorsMuhammad U. Faruque, University of Cincinnati / Tokat Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies,USAKazuyo Murata, King’s College, UKCyrus Ali Zargar, University of Central Florida / Tokat Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies, USABook Review EditorJohn Zaleski, University of Virginia, USABoardPeter Adamson, LMU Munich, GermanySyed Farid […]
The article presents an analysis of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s (d. 1240) treatment of fasting and hunger as it appears in chapters 106 and 107 of al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya (Meccan Revelations). In the process of examining this very short section of the encyclopedic text, the essay both draws out the deeper theological significance of hunger and fasting and […]
This article offers an analysis of conceptions of fasting in early Islamic spirituality. By drawing on the literature of Sufism, with special attention to the writings of al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988), al-Makkī (d. 386/996), al-Khargūshī (d. 407/1016), al-Hujwīrī (d. ca. 465/1071), al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) and al-Sarrāj (d. 470/1077), it thematically outlines (1) the value placed on […]
Throughout Islamic intellectual history, a wide range of conceptions of God have been articulated, among which the problematic view of Ibn ʿArabī-identifying God with Absolute Existence (al-wujūd al-muṭlaq)-stands out. Numerous critiques have been leveled against this identification, but the objections of Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī are particularly notable for their originality, clarity, and lasting influence on […]
In his seminal Orientalism and Religion (1999), Richard King argues that Western scholars of religion have constructed a conceptual dichotomy between “mysticism” and “rationality” that has caused them to systematically distort the claims and arguments of Eastern thinkers. While King focuses primarily on Western scholarship on the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, this essay shows that […]