Tag Archive for: metaphysics

The Well-Tempered Reader: The Legitimization of Adab in the Arabic Literary Tradition – Sarah R bin Tyeer

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 human, demonstrating its immanent structure in premodern Arabic culture and the formation of the subject as a legitimization of the existence of adab and its transformative power. The book argues for adab’s acceptation and function as praxis through its own legitimization by way of an examination of reading and literary practices to unearth adab’s critical grammar. Through advancing a critical grammar of adab, The Well-Tempered Reader posits adab as a generative literary, analytical, and cultural framework and a discursive force for analyzing literary acts owing to adab’s participatory role in knowledge systems.

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On the Science of the Soul: A Conversation with Seyyed Hossein Nasr – Samuel Bendeck Sotillos

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 turn of modern Western psychology away from its metaphysical roots has deformed the original “science of the soul” rendering it null and void. That spirituality and metaphysics have been marginalized and deemed irrelevant in modern science was assumed to be the logical course of progress. Ironically, however, their fundamental absence is the reason contemporary psychology is in disarray. Numerous individuals may see this as preposterous and think that to suggest this is to turn back the clock to the dark ages of knowledge. However, if psychology is returned to its origin in metaphysics, sacred science, and spiritual principles, it can again become worthy of being called a “science of the soul.” This interview with Islamic philosopher, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, on the discipline of psychology explores the original meaning of the “science of the soul” as it is understood across the diverse cultures of the world.

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Interpreting IbnʿArabī – Arjun A Nair

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 legacy of his thought across the Islamic intellectual tradition. Addressing the most debated aspects of IbnʿArabī’s teachings, this book surveys the major contests around the fixed entities, Divine Power, human freedom, and the nature of the Perfect Man. It delves into accusations of pantheism and theological transgression, and explores the strategies employed by the Shaykh al-Akbar’s followers to clarify, defend, or reinterpret his views. It also explores Ibn ʿArabī’s provocative Qurʾānic hermeneutics, which includes perspectives on mercy, the problem of idolatry, and the fate of unbelievers, situating the Shaykh’s teachings within broader Sufi, philosophical, and theological currents. Finally, it reveals how IbnʿArabī challenged dominant rationalist frameworks and expanded the boundaries of Islamic knowledge by restoring to imagination a central epistemological role. This book is an essential resource for scholars of Islamic philosophy, theology, Sufism, Qurʾānic studies, and the intellectual history of the Muslim world, shedding new light on the interpretive debates that have shaped IbnʿArabī’s enduring legacy.

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003648628

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Narrativity in the Poetry of Ḥāfiẓ By Cyrus A Zargar

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 or manner of mediating reality that exists entirely for the reader or listener, a sense of a powerful and vaguely remembered narrative, intimated through fragmented allusions, images, names, and places. This evoked narrative benefits from an interdependence of ambiguity and urgency, in other words, a lack of clarity as well as an emphasis on an epic or even sublime experience. It is perhaps this effect that is centrally responsible for the complementary disorientation and appeal Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry instills in its audience, particularly in an audience with inclinations to encountering supersensory phenomena in the sensory domain. The article considers Sufi interest in Ḥāfīẓ as it relates to his poems’ narrative qualities. Citation: Cyrus Ali Zargar. “Narrativity in the Poetry of Ḥāfiẓ,” A Luminous Intellect: Essays in Honor of Hamid Algar (Islamic History and Civilization, 225), edited by Amina Inloes and Alan Godlas. Leiden: Brill, 2025, pp. 180-208.

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Recognizing Recognition: Ma’rifa in Sufi Thought (Oxford Journal of Islamic Studies, 2026) – By Mohammed Rustom

This article delves into the Arabic noun Marifa as employed in a range of Arabic and Persian Sufi texts. After unpacking the semantics of the –r–f root in the Quran and hadith literature and juxtaposing Marifa with ilm, the piece seeks to demonstrate how Sufi authors specifically conceived of Marifa as a type of recognition of oneself and of God. This recognition is activated by the practice of dhikr or the remembrance of God, which in the end leads the recognizer to self-forgetting, perplexity, and bewilderment.

Marifa is a concept of central importance in Islamic thought. It appears variously in different intellectual disciplines such as hadıth, legal theory, theology, philosophy, and Sufism. In the secondary literature marifa features most prominently in scholarship on Sufism. However, scholars have always been at odds when it comes to rendering the term into English. This is why it is variously translated as ‘knowledge’, ‘gnosis’, ‘esoteric knowledge’, ‘experiential knowledge’, ‘mystical knowledge’, ‘cognition’, and even ‘unknowing’. 1 The same applies to its related Author’s note: I wish to thank Atif Khalil for his encouragement and insightful remarks on this article. 1 See, respectively, Reza Shah-Kazemi, ‘The notion and significance of Marifa in Sufism’, Journal of Islamic Studies, 13/2 (2002): 155–81; Mohammed Rustom, ‘Forms of gnosis in Sulamı¯’s Sufi exegesis of the Fatih : a’, Islam and Christian– Muslim Relations, 16/4 (2005): 327–44; Leonard Lewisohn (ed. and transl.), Esoteric Traditions in Islamic Thought: An Anthology of Texts on Esoteric

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Dissertation: The Symbolic Function of Angels in the Qurʾān and Sufi Literature By Louise Gallorini

By Louise Gallorini

This dissertation is a literary study tracing the roles and functions of angels as characters in the Quranic text and pre-Mongol Sufi literature (7th-12th century CE). The first chapter explores the mythopoeic process related to angels in the Quranic text, listing their roles and functions, and how they illustrate one of the main cosmological shifts between pre-islamic belief systems and the islamic belief system. The second chapter traces the evolution of these roles and functions in the tafsīr genre, more specifically the Sufi commentary subgenre, with the examples of commentaries by al-Tustarī (d. 283/896) al-Sulamī (d.412/1021), al-Qushayrī (d.465/1072), Ibn Barrajān (d. 536/1141) and Rūzbihān Baqlī (d.606/1209). Out of these arise two additional functions, not found in the Qurʾān, illustrating an evolution in time in the religious world-view. The third and fourth chapters explores these functions in two different examples of Sufi literature of the same period, and which could be considered as “Quranic commentaries” in a general sense. The third chapter thus explores the presence and functions of angels in Sufi miʿrāj narratives, or tales of celestial ascensions ascribed to Sufi masters, with the two main examples of Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī (d. 261/874-5 or 234/848-9) and Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (d. 645/1248). The fourth chapter focuses on angels as they appear in the “Meccan Openings” (al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya) by Ibn ʿArabī. Angels as characters appear thus to embody a specific multi-layered symbolic function in Sufi texts, whereby they become multivalent characters or signs, whether present or absent from the narrative, signifiers for the readers, both inside and outside the text

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The Tranquility of Remembrance (From Razi to Ibn al-Qayyim) in I of the Heart (Leiden: Brill, 2025), 183-198. Edited by Muhammad U. Faruque, Atif Khalil, Mohammed Rustom

At its heart, prayer is the soul’s effort to communicate with and build a relationship with its Divine origin. Viewed this way, Islam recognizes three primary modes of prayer.

The first is the canonical, ritual prayer known as ṣalāt. This is the familiar practice involving specific movements, postures, and recited verses performed by devout Muslims at prescribed times each day. When performed in congregation, it stands as one of the most visible and universal symbols of Islamic faith.

The second mode is supplicatory prayer, or duʿāʾ—the personal act of petitioning God. In duʿāʾ, a believer may ask for help, guidance, or blessing, whether for matters of this world or the hereafter. While permissible, spiritual authorities caution against focusing these requests solely on transient, self-centered desires. The poet Rūmī illustrated this by comparing worldly desires to eating in a dream: the sensation feels real, but upon waking, it provides no true nourishment. To spend one’s prayers on such fleeting ends is to seek a reward as temporary as life itself.

Yet, even a duʿāʾ for a worldly need holds spiritual value. It reinforces the soul’s fundamental recognition of its own need and dependence, affirming God as the ultimate source of all goodness and blessing.

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Inscriptions of Wisdom: The Sufism of Ibn al-ʿArabī in the Mirror of Jāmī By Mukhtar H Ali

Inscriptions of Wisdom brings together, for the first time in English, two pivotal Sufi texts that illuminate Ibn al-ʿArabī’s (d. 1240) celebrated work Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. The first, Naqsh al-Fuṣūṣ (The Inscription of the Fuṣūṣ), is Ibn al-ʿArabī’s own distillation of Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, presenting a concise yet profound articulation of its core teachings. The second, Naqd al-nuṣūṣ fī sharḥ Naqsh al-Fuṣūṣ (Selected Texts Commenting on Naqsh al-Fuṣūṣ), by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, is an anthology of carefully selected passages from the earliest and most authoritative interpreters of Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, enriched with Jāmī’s own insights. Together, these works explore the quintessential knowledge and divine principles embodied by each of the twenty-seven major prophetic figures of the Islamic tradition, from Adam to Muhammad. If Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam represents the culmination of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s thought, then Naqsh al-Fuṣūṣ distills its very essence and inner mystery. Mukhtar H. Ali’s meticulous presentation of the Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam commentarial tradition—featuring the first complete English translation of Jāmī’s Naqd al-nuṣūṣ, chapter-by-chapter analysis, and extensive notes on key Sufi terms and concepts—establishes this volume as a landmark study in Islamic metaphysics and Sufi thought.

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From one empire to the next: The reconfigurations of “Indian” literatures from Persian to English translations By Claire Gallien

This article focuses on the first translations of Sanskrit literature into English in the late eighteenth century and how they can be contrasted with pre-existing cultures of translation in India, and in particular with Mughal precedents. Following a brief survey of Sanskrit and Persian theories of translation, the article offers a study of British reconfigurations of Indian literatures in translation and highlights British orientalists’ tendencies to either disavow or reject their reliance on Indian literature in Persian. This move towards absenting Indo-Persian precedents and presenting English translations as new, essentially distinct, and superior created a symbolic space where English could challenge and replace a Persian culture of translation, projecting British colonial rule as the new dominant force dislodging the Mughals in India.

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The Extension of Reality: The Emergence of Mind-Independent Reality in Islamic Philosophy By Bilal Ibrahim

By Bilal Ibrahim

Avicenna’s distinction between external existence and mental existence is seminal to logic and philosophy in the Islamic tradition. This article examines philosophers who depart from Avicenna’s external-mental existence framework. They view the former as failing to support a general analysis of reality and truth, as mental existence is neither necessary nor sufficient for analyzing propositional truths, i. e., true propositions are true irrespective of “the very existence of minds” and “the perceptual acts of perceivers.” They propose that Avicenna’s semantics for categorical propositions needs revision, as there are true metathetic and hypothetical propositions, i. e., subject terms need not exist -in external reality or in a mind -for such propositions to be true. This counter-Avicennan current of thought articulates a third distinction in the analysis of reality, which focuses on the mind-independent nature of propositional contentparticularly propositions with empty, hypothetical, or impossible subject terms -as a way to think generally about reality, in contrast to the Avicennan emphasis on the existential status of terms and essences. Notably, the analysis of mind-independent reality is supported by a novel semantics of “real” (ḥaqīqī) categorical propositions, which avoids external and mental existence conditions. Résumé. La distinction d’Avicenne entre existence externe et existence mentale est fondamentale pour la logique et la philosophie de la tradition islamique. Cet article examine les philosophes qui s’écartent du cadre d’existence externe-mentale d’Avicenne. Ils considèrent que la première ne permet pas de soutenir une analyse générale de la réalité et de la vérité, car l’existence mentale n’est ni nécessaire ni suffisante pour analyser les vérités propositionnelles, c’est-à-dire que les propositions vraies sont vraies indépendamment de «l’existence même des esprits» et des «actes perceptifs des percepteurs». Ils soutiennent que les conditions de vérité d’Avicenne doivent être révisées, car il existe de vraies propositions métathétiques et hypothétiques, c’est-à-dire que les termes sujets n’ont pas besoin d’exister -dans la réalité externe ou dans un esprit -pour que de telles propositions soient vraies. Ce courant de pensée contraire à celui d’Avicenne articule une troisième distinction dans l’analyse de la réalité. Ils se concentrent sur la nature indépendante de l’esprit du contenu propositionnel -en particulier les propositions avec des termes sujets vides, hypothétiques ou impossibles -comme moyen de penser la réalité de manière générale, contrairement à l’accent mis par Avicenne sur le statut existentiel des termes et des essences. Notamment, l’analyse de la réalité indépendante de l’esprit est soutenue par une nouvelle sémantique des propositions catégoriques « réelles» (ḥaqīqī), qui évite les conditions d’existence externes et mentales d’Avicenne.

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In the End Will be Consciousness: Farghani on the Ontology of the Soul

By Rahim Acar and Hümeyra Karagözoğlu Özturan

If some historians have downplayed or sidestepped the identity of conscious- ness and being in Islamic philosophy, this may be because they have paid little attention to the literal meaning of the word wujūd, which is the standard Ara- bic term for being or existence. Dictionaries tell us that the verbal meaning of wujūd is to find, uncover, discover, and perceive, which are surely modes of con- sciousness. By settling on the word wujūd as the preferred term for being, the Muslim philosophers were recognizing that any existent thing must be found and perceived, which is to say that it must be the object of consci-ousness. In other words, they understood and often made explicit that wujūd in the sense of being cannot be separated from wujūd in the sense of consciousness.
s a graduate student in Tehran in the 1970s, I heard Seyyed Hossein Nasr say that the Vedantic triad sat-chit-ānanda can best be translated into Ara- bic and Persian as wujūd-wijdān-wajd—“being-consciousness-bliss.” This was many years before I came across Ibn ʿArabī’s statement at the beginning of Chapter 237 of the Futūḥāt, which is called “On wujūd”: “For the Tribe [qawm],” that is, the Sufi teachers, “Being is consciousness of the Real in bliss” (al-wujūd wijdān al-ḥaqq fī l-wajd). These three words—wujūd, wijdān, and wajd—are all derived from the root w-j-d. From early on in Arabic they were understood as variations on the meaning of finding, perceiving, and consciousness.

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Perceiving Nature: Rūmī on Human Purpose and Cosmic Prayer

How do we perceive the natural world? According to the famous Persian Sufi poet Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273) the answer to this question tells us not only something about nature but also something about our own humanity. A crucial component of his thought on this matter centers upon the tension between, on the one hand, the scriptural portrayal of
all of nature as worshipping God and, on the other hand, the human phenomenological experience of the inanimate parts
of the natural world as being lifeless. The Quran portrays creation as praising God, and the Prophetic biography includes episodes of non-human creatures—including stones—venerating the Prophet.3 Both imply the consciousness of non-hum-
an creatures. Most human beings, however, seem not to perceive stones as alive, let alone as conscious and as being in pi-
ous devotion. Rūmī offers a reconciliation of this tension in his treatment of human nature, informing us implicitly that the fact that most human beings do not see the inner life of the inanimate in nature is telling of the nature of humanity, of the world outside of humanity, and of spiritual matters.

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