Entries by Tony Soprano
Sayyid Haydar Amuli’s Seal of Absolute walaya: A Shi’i Response to Ibn ‘Arabi – Mohammed Rustom
Abstract: “The work of one of the most important figures of philosophical Sufism, Sayyid Haydar Āmulī (d. ca. 787/1385), has largely been neglected in modern Western scholarship. In Iran, however, the situation is quite different as a steady stream of Persian monographs dedicated to Āmulī’s life and thought have been appearing over the past twenty years.In Arabic, we […]
Rule of the One: Avicenna,Bahmanyār, and al-Rāzī on the Argument from the Mubāḥathāt – Davlat Dadikhuda
Abstract: “Avicenna is a strong proponent of what some of the later ones call qāʻidat al-wāḥid or ‘rule of the one’(RO). The gist of RO states: from the one only one directly proceeds. In the secondary literature, discussion of this Avicennian rule is usually limited to a particular application of it i.e., the issue of […]
Islam and the Density of Man – Mohammed Rustom
Abstract: “I would like to begin with an autobiographical account which takes us back to the fall of 2000, when I was a second‑year undergraduate student at the University of Toronto. Like many of my classmates in philosophy, I had a fairly naïve understanding of what I was doing studying this discipline. I would eventually […]
Humility in Islamic Contemplative Ethics – Atif Khalil
Abstract: “From the origins of Islamic history, humility (khushūʿ /tawāḍuʿ ) has occupied a cen-tral place in Muslim piety. This has been in large part due to its defining role in the Qurʾān and Hadīths, and no less because it stands as the opposite of pride (kibr )—the cardinal sin of both Iblīs and Pharaoh in Scripture. By […]
ʿAyn al-Quḍāt on Chivalry – Mohammed Rustom
Abstract: “This article investigates the multi-dimensional presence of the important Persian Sufi concept of jawānmardī or chivalry in the writings of the famous 6th/12th century metaphysician, martyr, and mystic ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī (d. 525/1131). The article begins by situating jawānmardī vis-à-vis its Arabic Sufi equivalent of futuwwa. Both of them convey a wide range of […]
Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī’s Seal of Absolute walāya: A Shīʿī Response to Ibn ʿArabī – Mohammed Rustom
Abstarct: In Ibn ʿArabī’s (d. 638/1240) highly developed theory of walāya (‘sainthood’ or ‘friendship with God’), Jesus is conceived of as the ‘Seal of Absolute walāya’ whereas Ibn ʿArabī is the ‘Seal of Restricted walāya’. After explaining how Ibn ʿArabī understands these two designations, we shall move on to Sayyid H aydar Āmulī’s (d. ca. […]