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 […]
Preface with the onset of colonial modernity to handle the perceived overabundance of new knowledge. The Well-Tempered Reader is therefore attentive to the study of this cultural grammar of the formation of the subject, to which adab as praxis and application is an attestation. It advances an analysis of the virtue-ethic murūʾa, or the ideal […]
By Samuel Bendeck Sotillos The monopolistic tendency of modern science in asserting itself as the exclusive interpreter of the human psyche or mind through its psychology does so while negating the most crucial dimension that makes it a complete psychology, the metaphysical order as is found across the world in all times and places. The reductionistic […]
Interpreting IbnʿArabī: Philosophy, Theology, and Exegesis in Later Islam offers a comprehensive and critical examination of one of Islam’s most enigmatic and influential thinkers. Through close engagement with major controversies surrounding Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas-from the doctrine of the Oneness of Being to his vision of sainthood and Qurʾānic interpretation-this volume traces the rich and contested […]
Using theories of narrative in lyric poetry, this article makes a case for an affective narrative quality that pervades the ghazals of Khwāja Muḥammad Shams al-Dīn “Ḥāfiẓ” of Shiraz (d. 792/1390). Such “hidden” narrative corresponds to the general sensation that a particular poem extends from an unknown and immeasurable story. Under consideration is a phenomenon […]