Scholars often assume that love is a concern alien to Islamic legal discourses. However, the composition of love poetry has been a core cultural competence of elite Muslims throughout the premodern history of Islamicate societies. In fact, love was a preoccupation across disciplines and genres. This article examines a work on love by an important […]
The human soul, whose initiation the recitals “image,” has itself the structure of a pair, formed of the practical intellect and the contemplative intellect. In its superior state, the state of intimacy with the Angel of Knowledge and Revelation, the second of these “terrestrial angels,” the contemplative in tellect, is qualified as intellectus sanctus and […]
Imperialism is not confined to the political or economic aspects of the historical process. Rather, it is to be considered as a cluster. A phenomenon such as imperialism is a cluster of different aspects of human undertakings. What is usually discussed is economic and political imperialism. In this paper, however, we turn to intellectual imperialism, […]
Analyzing the intersection between Sufism and philosophy, this volume is a sweeping examination of the mystical philosophy of Muḥyī-l-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 637/1240), one of the most influential and original thinkers of the Islamic world. This book systematically covers Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ontology, theology, epistemology, teleology, spiritual anthropology and eschatology. While philosophy uses deductive reasoning to […]
Abstract: The near-total neglect in modern Western scholarship of ʿAfīf al-Dīn Sulaymān b. ʿAlī al-Tilimsānī (d. 690/1291) is as baffling as it is regrettable. A prolific mystical author and giſted poet, he not only studied with both the leading luminary of later Sufism Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240)and his stepson Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī (d. […]
Abstract: Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm ash-Shīrāzī (1571–1640/980–1050), popularly known as Mullā Ṣadrā, is considered the culminating figure of Islamic philosophy in Persia. Born into an aristocratic family in Shīrāz, he was given the best education from an early age in the city of his birth. He then traveled to Isfahan to study under two […]
Abstract: Ibn al-‘Arabi begins his long chapter on love (mahabba) in the Futuhat al-Makkiyya – as he begins most of the book’s 560 chapters – by citing relevant Qur’anic verses and prophetic sayings (II 322.16). He points out first that love is a divine attribute, and he lists several of the Qur’anic verses in which […]
Abstract: Sažetak: Ovo je prijevod teksta koji tretira možda najpoznatiju simboličku pripovijest Shihāb al-Dīna Suhrawardīja (u. 587/1191), a to je njegovo djelo Āwāz-i par-i Jibrā’īl (Odjek Džibrilovog krila). Naime, među spisima Suhrawardīja, osnivača Škole prosvjetljenja i ključne ličnosti u postibnsīnāovskoj islamskoj filozofiji, nalazi se niz vizionarskih kazivanja, jer je korištenje
Abstract: I have been thinking about the necessity for a new approach to the language of religion for quite some time now. The term “language,” as it is used here, is not meant to refer to the spoken language that allows us to communicate and understand each other in our daily lives. Rather, it is […]
Over the past half-century, the study of Islam in the Muslim world has been preoccupied with three global projects: maqāṣid al-sharīᶜa (the higher objectives of revealed law), al-wasaṭiyya al-islāmiyya (Islamic moderation), and aslamat al-maᶜrifa (Islamization of knowledge). Of these three, the latter has been the most substantial enterprise due to its ambitious work plan, extensive […]