Tag Archive for: Sufi Art

 al-Nūr al-muḥammadi – the Light of the Prophet », Mohammed in History, Thought, and Culture

Al-nūr al-muḥammadī, the “Muḥammadan light”, is an Arabic expression which designates the inner and transcendent reality of the prophetic being, alluding thereby symbolically to the meta-historical significance of the Prophet Muḥammad, especially within Islamic soteriology, cosmology, spirituality and metaphysics. One of the foremost doctrinal implications of the Muḥammadan light is the Prophet’s primordial existence and his spiritual paternity over mankind. The Muḥammadan light is also understood as the universal principle of prophecy of which the pre-Islamic prophets were partial manifestations while the historic Muḥammad corresponded to its full manifestation. Above all, the concept of al-nūr al-muḥammadī plays a central role in Islamic spirituality. Being the light with which God illuminates the heart of his saints, it highlights the intrinsic relation between spiritual illumination, the Prophet and sainthood.

Content Overview:

Discusses the identity and selection of the Imam after Muhammad.

Explores the significance of praise poetry (madih) in Arabic culture, particularly in relation to Muhammad.

Highlights the , a famous praise poem by al-Busiri, detailing its themes and spiritual significance.

Examines early Byzantine literature’s references to Muhammad and Islam.

Describes the maghazi, military expeditions led by Muhammad during the Medinan period.

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ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī’s Laṭāʾif al-Minan and the Virtue of Sincere Immodesty

The essay below analyzes the substance and rhetoric of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī’s (d. 973/1565) book Laṭāʾif al-minan wa-l-akhlāq (Subtle Blessings and Morals). While giving particular attention to the text’s introduction and concluding sections, in my analysis here I use the Laṭāʾif as a case study to illustrate how Sufi authors like al-Shaʿrānī attempted to relieve the tension between the antipodal Sufi virtues of, on the one hand, concealing one’s spiritual state to preserve the purity of one’s intention and, on the other, speaking openly about God’s blessings upon one as a demonstration of gratitude to God and a means to guide others along the Sufi Path. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī was an Egyptian Sufi and legal thinker who lived in Cairo during the fnal years of the Mamlūk Sultanate and the first half-century of Ottoman rule in Egypt. He is best remembered today for his writings in comparative Islamic law (ikhtilāf al-madhāhib), Sufi ethics, and Sufi hagiography. Several of his texts would generate controversy during his lifetime owing to what he claimed

were libelous passages that jealous peers had falsely attributed to him. 1 During his early years, al-Shaʿrānī studied Islamic law and other scholarly disciplines under Egypt’s Chief Shāfʿī Justice Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1523); a charismatic and illiterate fgure named ʿAlī al-Khawwāṣ (d. 939/1532–3) served as his primary guide in the study and practice of Sufsm. 2 By the second half of his life, al-Shaʿrānī’s acumen and reputation had earned him the attention of Egypt’s Ottoman rulers, who gifted him with a Suf hospice (zāwiya) that made him independently wealthy through the revenues that it generated.

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Was That Layla’s Fire?: Metonymy, Metaphor, and Mannerism in the Poetry of Ibn al-Fāriḍ

Regarded as one of the greatest poets of the Arabic language, and the greatest and most influential Arabic Sufi poet, ‘Umar ibn ‘Alī ibn al-Fāriḍ, set the standard for Arabic Sufi poetry after him. Known as the “Sultan of the Lovers” (Sulṭān al-‘Āshiqīn), ibn al-Fāriḍ’s works inspired numerous commentaries, especially amongst the school of Ibn al-ʿArabī, many of which are considered masterpieces of Islamic metaphysics. Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poetry continues to be sung, taught, and commented upon down to the present day and is considered one of the greatest expositions of spiritual realization, Sufi metaphysics, and psychology. This article will consider the role of the figure of Layla in some of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poetry, exploring the relationship between the exquisite form of his poetic language and the meanings to which they allude in an attempt to understand an aspect of how the “licit magic” of his poetry works to express and inspire realization. That is, of all the various genres and modes of expression, why did so many Sufi figures find the genre of the romantic or even erotic Arabic ghazal, especially the exquisite verses of Ibn al-Fāriḍ, to be so felicitous for expressing the deepest truths they had realized.

Regarded as one of the greatest poets of the Arabic language, and the greatest and most influential Arabic Sufi poet, ʿUmar ibn ‘Alī ibn al-Fāriḍ, set the standard for Arabic Sufi poetry after him. His poetry was famous and commented upon even in his own lifetime, and several commentators even claimed that while non-poetic language was perfected in the inimitable Qur’an, six centuries later, Arabic poetry was perfected in the inimitable verse of Ibn al-Fāriḍ. 1 Known as the “Sultan of the Lovers” (Sulṭān al-‘Āshiqīn), Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s works inspired numerous commentaries, especially amongst the school of Ibn al-ʿArabī, many of which are consid- ered masterpieces of Islamic metaphysics. Saḍr al-dīn al-Qūnāwī (d. 673/1274), Ibn al-ʿArabī’s stepson and successor taught Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s magnum opus, the 760-verse qaṣīda, Naẓm al-Sulūk (“The Poem of the Sufi Way”) to his circle of students, two of whom, Sa‘īd al-dīn al-Farghānī (d. 699/1300) and ‘Afīf al-dīn al-Tilimsānī (d. 690/1291) published commentaries upon the work

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An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, Volume 5: From the School of Shiraz to the Twentieth Century edited by S. H. Nasr and M. Aminrazavi

The volume under consideration is presented as the final element of the monumental series An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, which started in 1999 with From Zoroaster to ʿUmar Khayyām (Vol. I, Oxford University Press; republished in 2007 by I. B. Tauris), and continued with Ismaili Thought in the Classical Age (Vol. 2, Oxford University Press, 2001; Suheyl Academy, 2005; I. B. Tauris and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2008), Philosophical Theology in the Middle Ages and Beyond (Vol. 3, I. B. Tauris and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2010), and From the School of Illumination to Philosophical Mysticism (Vol. 4, I. B. Tauris and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2013). With the almost 600 pages of the present volume, a quarter of century of groundbreaking research and painstaking organizational efforts by the general editor, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and his co-editor, Mehdi Aminrazavi, has come happily to an end. In bringing to completion this volume – and, with it, the colossal enterprise which it concludes – the two main editors have been assisted by a vast and qualified group of scholars, mainly but not exclusively Iranian, whose name are recorded in the List of Contributors (pp. xvii-xx) and who have mostly penned the English translations of the chosen texts.

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ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī’s Laṭāʾif al-Minan and the Virtue of Sincere Immodesty

The essay below analyzes the substance and rhetoric of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī’s (d. 973/1565) book Laṭāʾif al-minan wa-l-akhlāq (Subtle Blessings and Morals). While giving particular attention to the text’s introduction and concluding sections, in my analysis here I use the Laṭāʾif as a case study to illustrate how Suf authors like al-Shaʿrānī attempted to relieve the tension between the antipodal Suf virtues of, on the one hand, concealing one’s spiritual state to preserve the purity of one’s intention and, on the other, speaking openly about God’s blessings upon one as a demonstration of gratitude to God and a means to guide others along the Suf Path. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī was an Egyptian Suf and legal thinker who lived in Cairo during the fnal years of the Mamlūk Sultanate and the frst half-century of Ottoman rule in Egypt. He is best remembered today for his writings in comparative Islamic law (ikhtilāf al-madhāhib), Suf ethics, and Suf hagiography. Several of his texts would generate controversy during his lifetime owing to what he claimed

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A Critical Review of The Islamic Secular by Sherman A. Jackson (Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies)

Can the “secular” ever be “Islamic?” Sherman Jackson’s e Islamic Secular is a profound exploration of a deeply misunderstood concept: the relationship between Islam and the secular. In an intellectual landscape oſten dominated by binaries, such as secularism versus religion, and tradition versus modernity, Jackson masterfully demonstrates that these categories fail to account for Islam’s unique historical and intellectual heritage. Equally impressive is Jackson’s ability to contextualize his argument within broader debates on secularism and its relationship to religion and the state. He criticizes both Western triumphalist narratives that see secularism as the inevitable endpoint of human progress and Islamic apologetic responses that reject the secular as inherently anti-religious.

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Arabic Literature in America: Sufi Poems Quoted by Omar ibn Said / Amerika’daki Arapça Literatür: Ömer bin Seyyid’in Atıfta Bulunduğu Tasavvufi Şiirler

One of the most remarkable figures in the history of Islam in America was Omar ibn Said (ʿUmar b. Sayyid, 1770-1863), a Muslim scholar educated in West Africa, who was captured in warfare in his homeland and sold into slavery in America in 1807. For over half a century he lived in North Carolina, enslaved by the prominent Owen family of Fayetteville, and he left behind a small body of writings in Arabic that have for the most part been misread and misunderstood. In this article, I would like to present three short poems quoted by Omar in his writings, which provide a clear indication of the intellectual and theological range of materials that he was familiar with.

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Ibn ʿArabī in Contemporary Iran: Some Currents and Debates / Çağdaş İran’da İbn Arabî: Bazı Akım ve Tartışmalar – By Journal of the Institute for Sufi Studies

By Journal of the Institute for Sufi Studies

Iran’s historical and complicated social situation has led to diverse attitudes toward Sufism and interpretations of Ibn ʿArabī’s legacy. Many of Ibn ʿArabī’s prominent followers and commentators were originally from Iran; however, many of his notable opponents were also from Iran. These two historical currents of followers and opponents of Ibn ʿArabī are still quite alive. Other currents with unique attitudes toward Ibn ʿArabī also have been established recently in Iran. In this article, different attitudes towards Ibn ʿArabī in contemporary Iran are presented and contextualized. Attitudes represent not only the scholarly tendencies of Iranian academics and Islamic scholars but also their role in forming diverse collective identities.

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Review by Anthony F. Shaker of Repentance and the Return to God: Tawba in Early Sufism (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 32, no. 3 (2022): 707-709)

Baghdādī’s 1989 edion (al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya wa’l-wilāyāt al-dīniyya, ed. Aḥmad Mubārak al-Baghdādī [Kuwait: Dār Ibn Qutayba, 1409/1989]), which relied on the earlier printed edion by Maṭbaʿat al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, an eleventh-century manuscript from the Chester Beay Library (some folios evidently wrien by the author himself), another fiſteenth-century manuscript from the same library and, finally, an admittedly error-laden nineteenth-century manuscript

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Dreaming Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: Dreams and Knowledge in the Works of Shaykh Dan Tafa – Oludamini Ogunnaike

This article explores five remarkable works by ʿAbd al-Qādir b. Muṣṭafā (known as “Dan Tafa”) (1804–1864), a 19th-century West African Sufi scholar of the Sokoto Caliphate, to examine the ways in which dreams were (and are) theorized in the unique synthesis of Sufi, occult, philosophical/medical, theological, and exegetical disciplines that characterized discourse about dreams and dream interpretation in Muslim West Africa on the eve of colonial conquest. Concluding with a brief discussion of what these texts can tell us about Dan Tafa’s conceptions of cosmology, knowledge, and the human self, and the importance thereof for African and Islamic intellectual history, we will also consider the potential relevance of Dan Tafa’s work for the importance and onto-epistemological status of dreams in contemporary West African Sufi communities and attempt to understand why dreams have been and remain so important in these traditions.

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Dreaming Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: Dreams and Knowledge in the Works of Shaykh Dan Tafa – Oludamini Ogunnaike

This article explores five remarkable works (currently in unpublished manuscript form) by ʿAbd al-Qādir b. Muṣṭafā (known as “Dan Tafa”) (1804–1864), a 19th-century West African Sufi scholar of the Sokoto Caliphate, to examine the ways in which dreams were (and are) theorized in the unique synthesis of Sufi, occult, philosophi- cal/medical, theological, and exegetical disciplines that characterized discourse about dreams and dream interpretation in Muslim West Africa on the eve of colonial con- quest. Concluding with a brief discussion of what these texts can tell us about Dan Tafa’s conceptions of cosmology, knowledge, and the human self, and the importance thereof for African and Islamic intellectual history, we will also consider the potential relevance of Dan Tafa’s work for the importance and onto-epistemological status of dreams in contemporary West African Sufi communities and attempt to understand why dreams have been and remain so important in these traditions.

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