Samāʿ literature reveals a tension in premodern Islamicate societies. While musical practices were ubiquitous and practiced in many contexts, Islamic legal tradition regarded them with suspicion. Musical instruments occupied a central place in these discussions, perhaps, because as physical objects associated with what is otherwise in the non-tangible domain of sound they were seen as […]
“Dans son Essai sur l’homme, le poète britannique Alexander Pope proposait au XVIIIèsiècle une formulation succincte d’une ancienne doctrine philosophique de la réalité. Cettedoctrine, à laquelle Arthur Lovejoy a donné le nom de “grande chaîne des êtres,” soutientque l’existence est une structure organique, entremêlée et hiérarchisée, reposant sur lesdegrés décroissants d’états de l’existence. La réalité […]
Abstract: “The hagiography of the Chinese branch of the Naqšbandīya order of Islamic mysticism called Ǧahrīya has been recorded, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries , in some Arabic and Persian language texts. These include stories about the founder of the Sufi order, Ma Mingxin (d. 1781), and his successors in the first few […]
“This article attempts to fill the gap in the very limited knowledge of the history of Islam and Muslim intellectual tradition in Mindanao in the 19th century. It particularly deals with a set of primary sources of Islamic manuscripts recently found in the Lanao area of Mindanao, southern Philippines, which formerly belonged to a Maranao […]
Abstract: “Our Lord is Light; our holy Prophet is Light; our unswerving Islamic faith is Light; our Holy Qurʾān is Light; and our prayer is Light. Why then do you wish to live in darkness? Why do you aloofly imagine, with your delimited and narrow mind, that the Light is merely an abstract concept that […]
Abstract: “This article presents the theory of sainthood found in the writings of Dāwūd al-Qayṣarī (d. 751/1350), a majorcommentator on the Sufi thought of Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240). Building on previous philosophical interpretations of IbnʿArabī’s thought to systematize the worldview now known as the “Oneness of Being” (waḥdat al-wujūd), Qayṣarī also developed a sophisticated theory […]
Abstract: In Plato’s Phaedo we encounter a dialogue between Socrates and Cebes around the nature of the soul and its relation to the body. The soul we learn is divine-like, deathless, intelligent, uniform, indissoluble and of course invisible, while the body in contrast is mortal, multiform, changing, soluble and visible. If the body gains mastery […]
Abstract: This narrowness is not by accident — it is by design. Big “E”Education has to limit who gets in and what it does in order tobe able to confer both valuable credentials on its graduates, andlegitimacy on the subjects under its gaze.Ask the Oppenheimerfamily how DeBeers made its fortune with diamonds: to makesomething valuable […]
Abstract: We live in an era in which the brain has come to signify the central component of human identity. It’s common to hear people blurt out statements like “our brains are wired to do XYZ,” or “the brain creates new ideas,” or “explain X to my brain” (instead of saying “explain X to me!”) […]
Abstract: “This short treatise contains the knowledge of the divine name of Majesty (al-jalāla), which is the all-inclusive name, Allah. Ibn al-ʿArabī explains the meaning of each component letter of the word ‘Allah’ and the significance of the implied wāw in Allāh(ū) as it relates to the Supreme Identity (huwiyya). After revealing some of the […]