Tag Archive for: Sufi Art

Islamic Intellectual Traditions


Editor-in-Chief
Mohammed Rustom, Carleton University / Tokat Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies, Canada /
USA
Editors
Muhammad U. Faruque, University of Cincinnati / Tokat Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies,
USA
Kazuyo Murata, King’s College, UK
Cyrus Ali Zargar, University of Central Florida / Tokat Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies, USA
Book Review Editor
John Zaleski, University of Virginia, USA
Board
Peter Adamson, LMU Munich, Germany
Syed Farid Alatas, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Rosabel Ansari, Stony Brook University, USA
Yousef Casewit, University of Chicago Divinity School, USA
Maria Dakake, George Mason University, USA
Claire Gallien, University Montpellier 3, France
Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Hina Khalid, Univeristy of Cambridge, UK
Atif Khalil, University of Lethbridge, Canada
Sayeh Meisami, University of Dayton, USA
Matthew Melvin-Koushki, University of South Carolina, USA
Oludamini Ogunnaike, University of Virginia, USA

We are pleased to announce the launch of Islamic Intellectual Traditions, a new Diamond Open Access journal published by Brill and supported by the Tokat Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies.

Our journal provides a dedicated platform for exploring the diverse articulations of the Islamic intellectual tradition. With scholarly precision and epistemic elasticity, we invite contributions that span continents, languages, and historical periods. We welcome analytical studies, critical editions, textual translations, and book reviews across fields such as philosophy, theology, mysticism, scriptural exegesis, legal theory, literature, anthropology, and sociology.

In much of the existing scholarship, these disciplines are often treated as self-sufficient, each ensconced within its own thought world. While such specialized focus has produced invaluable insights, it has also obscured a more integrated reality: all intellectual enterprises within the Islamic tradition—regardless of their distinct approaches to reason, language, meaning, and truth—interlock with one another in ways both profoundly subtle and subtly profound.

It is our hope that Islamic Intellectual Traditions will serve as a scholarly forum where readers can appreciate not only the distinctive features of these many disciplines but also the multilingual contexts in which they interpenetrate, reshape one another, and venture into uncharted conceptual spaces.

https://brill.com/view/journals/iit/1/1/iit.1.issue-1.xml

White Death: Ibn al-ʿArabī on the Trials and Virtues of Hunger and Fasting – Atif khalil

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 highlights the virtues and trap-pings of the spiritual exercise in the mystic’s thought. An attempt is also made to situate some of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ideas within the broader context of the earlier Sufi tradition to which he was heir.

Fasting stands as one of the most widespread religious practices in human history. Undertaken as a form of penance, a preparatory rite before initiation, a method to induce visions and veridical dreams, a means to avert natural catastrophes, an expression of either mourning or thanksgiving, or simply as a mechanism to control and tame the passions by curbing their sources of nourishment, it is found in virtually every culture and society. While the forms it has assumed have varied consi-derably across time and place, at the heart of the ritual lies a desire to approach the world of spirits, and beyond that, ulti-mate reality itself, through a conscious, voluntary, and self-imposed experience of hunger.

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God as Absolute Existence in Ibn ʿArabī: al-Taftāzānī’s Refutations of Akbarian Metaphysics [in Persian] – Taha Abdollahi-Sohi

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 post-classical Islamic thought. In his Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid, al-Taftāzānī formulates several arguments against Ibn ʿArabī’s conception of God, focusing on the philosophical notion of Existence. Al-Taftāzānī regards Absolute Existence as a maʿqūl thānī (secondary intelligible), a universal concept in the mind with no extra-mental reality, which is instantiated only through its particular instances in the external world. He contends that this notion of Absolute Existence cannot be identical with God (or Necessary Existence), since God is an actual entity (ḥaqīqat fī al-khārij) and not merely a mental concept. This article critically examines al-Taftāzānī’s objections, arguing that his reading is misleading and that his refutation is grounded in a conception of Absolute Existence that differs significantly from that held by Ibn ʿArabī and his followers. Having contextualized al-Taftāzānī’s objections, I have sought to reconsider and rearticulate Ibn ʿArabī’s conception of God.

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Between Mysticism and Philosophical Rationality: Al-Ghazālī on the Reasons of the Heart – Marilie Coetsee

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 his argument can also be extended to apply to Western scholarship on al-Ghazālī, whose sympathy for Sufism and apparent rejection of Greek philosophy has often earned him the reputation of being a champion of Islamic mysticism. I argue that al-Ghazālī transcends the dueling categories of ‘rationality’ and ‘mysticism’ that have been imposed on him by offering a conception of experiential knowledge that retains its roots in the ‘mystical’ Sufi tradition, even while also highlighting the rational merits of experientially-grounded modes of knowing. In particular, I argue that al-Ghazālī shows us how experiential knowledge is both important to providing motivation for rational action and also critical to underwriting persons’ genuine understanding of the evaluative properties of that which is known.

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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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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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Devotion and Metaphysics in a Litany Ascribed to ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī

This article examines the status of Sufi devotional literature, a corpus still rarely considered in its own right within the study of Islamic thought. Focusing on the Ḥizb al-naṣr (Litany of Support) attributed to ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 1166) and still recited today within the Qādiriyya order, it argues that such devotional texts possess a distinctly doctrinal dimension, articulating metaphysical principles akin to those developed in the school of Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators. A close reading of the Ḥizb al-naṣr reveals a sophisticated theological and metaphysical background that contrasts sharply with the anti-intellectual image often associated with al-Jīlānī and his Ḥanbalī milieu. While the litany makes little explicit use of ontological terminology, its underlying vision resonates with Akbarian metaphysical themes and may reflect early intersections between Qādirī heritage and emerging doctrines of the Akbari tradition. By reconsidering the Ḥizb al-naṣr as an instance of “Sufi philosophy” in its own right, this study invites a broader reflection on the intellectual and doctrinal scope of Sufi devotional writing.

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Mysticism and Ethics in Islam (open access) (Sheikh Zayed Series for Arabic and Islamic Texts and Studies; American University of Beirut Press, 2022)

Free publication

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World Literature Decentered: Beyond the ‘West’ Through Turkey, Mexico and Bengal By Ian Almond

Cosmologists say that if space-time is infinite, then somehow, somewhere, all possible things exist. As someone who has taught that nebulous entity “world literature” for over ten years, I’d like to begin by sketching out one such alternate world. Think of this alternative world as a kind of World Literature Fantasy. In this parallel world, there is no dominant Western canon: only lots of good Western writers, struggling like everyone else to make their voices heard above the growing crescendo of the planet’s collective murmur. Moreover, the people who live in Western countries actually realize they only form 10% of the planet. They understand that the non-Western is not some misrepresented ethnic minority, but Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East – the overwhelming majority of the world.

There are centers of influence, certainly, but they are multiple and constantly shifting. A decade of readers in Argentina might become obsessed with Middle Eastern fiction; a new generation in China might start to fixate on West African writers. The swirling network of influences – Swedes reading Turks reading Mexicans, Brazilians translating Urdu ghazals and Chinese tanka – forever shimmers, brightens and collapses, reconfiguring itself not in response to power and economy, but through a much more curious, seem- ingly chaotic algorithm. There are certainly books which are read more than others, but they do not subscribe to a common ideology – in the anthologies of this world, Buddhists, Islamists, Anarchists and the occasional Capitalist argue with one another endlessly on contentious editorial boards. Writers in this alternative world feel no compulsion to communicate some anthro- pological information about their community, although many choose to do so

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Rethinking the Unio Mystica: From McGinn to Ibn Arabī By Arjun A Nair

By Arjun A Nair

Research into the unio mystica has revealed what seems to be an area of “real discussion” between scholars of different traditions of mysticism, particularly those of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although this research serves as a promising start to the dialogue among scholars, it has also raised many questions about a “shared moment” that is nevertheless expressed in “irreducibly diverse” and distinct ways in each tradition. What purpose, for instance, can generic cross-cultural categories serve when they mean little or nothing to scholars in each tradition? By contrast, tradition-specific vocabularies are profuse and often difficult to represent in interlinguistic contexts without significant explanation. The challenge of translating mystical texts, imagery, and ideas across cultures and linguistic traditions raises obvious concerns about the misrepresentation and distortion of traditions in an environment of post-colonial critique. Nevertheless, the continued promise of dialogue calls for specialists of these traditions-particularly non-western and non-Christian traditions-to approach, assess, re-formulate, and even challenge the categories of mysticism from within the conceptual and theoretical horizons of the traditions that they research. The present study models such an approach to scholarship in mysticism. It offers a (re)formulation of the unio mystica from within the theoretical frame of the 12th/13thcentury Muslim/Sufi mystic, Ibn Arabī (d. 638/1240) and early members of his school of thought. By unpacking the primary terms involved in such an account-“God”, the “human being/self”, and “union”-from within the conceptual and theoretical horizons of that tradition, it problematizes the prevailing understanding of the unio mystica constructed from the writings of specialists in Christian mysticism. More importantly, it illustrates the payoff in terms of dialogue (incorporating the critique of existing theories) when each tradition operates confidently from its own milieu, developing its own theoretical resources for mysticism rather than prematurely embracing existing ideas or categories.

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God as Absolute Existence in Ibn ʿArabī: al-Taftāzānī’s Refutations of Akbarian Metaphysics [in Persian]

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 post-classical Islamic thought. In his Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid, al-Taftāzānī formulates several arguments against Ibn ʿArabī’s conception of God, focusing on the philosophical notion of Existence. Al-Taftāzānī regards Absolute Existence as a maʿqūl thānī (secondary intelligible), a universal concept in the mind with no extra-mental reality, which is instantiated only through its particular instances in the external world. He contends that this notion of Absolute Existence cannot be identical with God (or Necessary Existence), since God is an actual entity (ḥaqīqat fī al-khārij) and not merely a mental concept. This article critically examines al-Taftāzānī’s objections, arguing that his reading is misleading and that his refutation is grounded in a conception of Absolute Existence that differs significantly from that held by Ibn ʿArabī and his followers. Having contextualized al-Taftāzānī’s objections, I have sought to reconsider and rearticulate Ibn ʿArabī’s conception of God.

Introduction

Conceptions of God remain an understudied topic in the Persian-language academic literature on Islamic philosophy. Prevailing discussions typically focus on the existence of God, rather than on the more fundamental question of what, or who, the God is whose existence is being proven. In addition to the well-known conception of God as wholly distinct from the world, Islamic intellectual history presents alternative conceptions. Among these, the view advanced by Ibn ʿArabī has proven particularly problematic and controversial. This paper explores Ibn ʿArabī’s conception of God and critically engages with Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī’s well-known refutations. The analysis is based on a close study of the primary works of both Ibn ʿArabī and al-Taftāzānī, without recourse to later interpretations or receptions of their positions. Al- Taftāzānī’s critiques of Ibn ʿArabī have become classical, forming the metaphysical foundation for much of the subsequent criticism of Akbarian thought. Prominent followers of Ibn ʿArabī— including ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, Ḥamzah Fanārī, ʿAlī b. Aḥmad Mahāʾimī, Muḥammad b. Rasūl Barzanjī, Ibrāhīm Kūrānī, and others—considered these refutations serious enough to warrant extensive responses. This article offers a detailed study of al-Taftāzānī’s objections to Akbarian metaphysics in Persian scholarship.

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