Tag Archive for: Sufism

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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Tirmidhi’s Kitāb al-‘Ilal – annotated translation By Jonathan Brown

Abū ʿĪsā Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī is one of the most influential figures in the Sunni hadith tradition. Born in about 210/825 near the city of Tirmidh on the northern bank of the Oxus River in modern-day Uzbekistan, he traveled widely in northeastern Iran, Iraq, and the Hejaz to study with the most sought-af ter scholars and transmitters of hadiths in his day. These included scholars who had themselves travelled widely in the quest to hear hadiths, such as Qutayba b. Saʿīd of Balkh (d. 240/854), as well as scholars who would become famed for their mastery of both hadith and law, such as al-Dārimī of Samarqand (d. 255/869) and Abū Dāwūd (author of the famous Sunan, d. 275/889). They also comprised the most respected masters of hadith criticism, including Muslim b. Ḥajjāj of Nishapur (author of the Ṣaḥīḥ, d. 260/875) and Abū Zurʿa al-Rāzī of Rayy (d. 264/878). But his most famous and influential teacher was none other than al-Bukhārī (author of the Ṣaḥīḥ, d. 256/870). At some point al-Tirmidhī returned to his hometown, where he died in 279/892 at around seventy years of age. Today his grave can be visited just north of Tirmidh in Uzbekistan, enclosed in an idyllic brick mausoleum built in the old Samanid style and frequented by local pilgrims. Al-Tirmidhī’s legal and theological leanings are clear in his works. Though he predated the solidification of the four schools of law, he identified with the general legal and theological tradition that he refers to as the ‘People of hadith’ (ahl al-ḥadīth). Notably, he also refers to this group as the ‘People of the Sunna and the Community’ (ahl alsunna wa’l-jamāʿa)-perhaps the earliest recorded instance of a scholar identifying himself with this designation. 1 Al-Tirmidhī describes this group as looking to exemplars like Mālik (d. 179/796), Sufyān b. ʿUyayna (d. 196/811), ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak (d. 181/797), and Isḥāq b. Rāhawayh (d. 238/853). But the most influential figure in al-Tirmidhī’s theological universe was al-Bukhārī’s teacher and the pivot of the Ahl al-Sunna in Baghdad, Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241/855). Al-Tirmidhī’s legal views

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The Cruelty of the Way and the Afflictions of Dīn: a Study of ʿAttar’s The Speech of the Birds’ Climactic Moment

Farid al-Din ʿAttar’s Mantiq al-tayr (The Speech of the Birds) has arguably the most celebrated conclusion in Persian Sufi allegorical literature: Thirty birds (sī-murgh) discover that they are the sublime entity that they seek, the mythological Sīmurgh. This article provides an analysis that considers this conclusion in light of ʿAttar’s vision of dīn (religion, or devotional commitments), as well as his view of the “way” of Sufi saints (rāh), one that focuses on matters of meditative breathing techniques. Offering new and lucid translations of this pivotal moment in the tale, this article explores ʿAttar’s literary conclusion as a matter of imaginative orthopraxy. Citation: Zargar, Cyrus Ali. “The Cruelty of the Way and the Afflictions of Dīn: A Study of ʿAṭṭār’s The Speech of the Birds’ Climactic Moment,” Mystical Landscapes in Medieval Persian Literature, ed. Fatemeh Keshavarz and Ahmet T. Karamustafa. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2025, pp. 219-244.

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Chinese–Islamic Connections: An Historical and Contemporary Overview

Following overland and maritime trade routes, early Muslims reached China within a century after the Prophet Muhammad (570-632) lived, when the Chinese and Islamic empires were the superpowers of their day, engaging each other in instances of both competition and collaboration: military, economic and diplomatic. Exchanges between China and the Islamic world have produced significant technological and cultural developments, and set the stage for ongoing relations between the two civilizations that helped shape world history and continue to influence global affairs today. The arrival of Islam more than 1200 years ago also resulted in a sizeable Muslim minority population in China, who play an important role between the two civilizations: sometimes as cultural intermediaries, sometimes as political pawns. The following is an overview of the history of Chinese-Islamic relations, including historical and contemporary involvement by China’s internal Muslim populations, with a survey of connections between China and several Muslim countries. A simple confluence of facts-that China may soon be challenging the United States in its demand for foreign oil, that world oil production will peak and begin to decline within decades, and that China acts as a major supplier of arms and military technology to oil-rich, predominantly Muslim, Middle Eastern states whose region becomes less stable as oil supplies wane-all but guarantees the importance of Chinese-Islamic relations in the foreseeable future. Given this situation, the informed observer of international affairs would be well-served not only by an examination of current relations between China and global Islam, but also of historical encounters between the Chinese and Islamic civilizations, which provide valuable insight into the roots of many of today’s political and societal realities. In view of the long history of trade, not only in commodities, but also in ideas, along the geographical continuum that connects western and eastern Asia, recent relations between the Chinese and Islamic spheres of influence are grounded in an ancient tradition of economic, political, and cultural commerce. 1 I made these comments in order to lend contemporary relevance to my historical study. The facts, however, increase in significance with each passing year as we proceed ever

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The Prophet’s Day in China: A Study of the Inculturation of Islam in China, Based on Fieldwork in Xi’an, Najiaying, and Hezhou

Islam is widely spread throughout every corner of China, with the Hui people, the largest Muslim ethnic group in China, numbering over 10 million people, serving as its main carrier. Their culture types and local features exhibit great diversity across different provinces. The ceremony of Prophet’s Day or Mawlid al-Nabi in China, as one of the three fundamental festivals of the Hui people alongside Eid al-Fitur and Eid al-Qurban, appears to be more comprehensive, open, and localized. Drawing from fieldwork in three Hui communities—Xi’an in Shaanxi province, Najiaying in Yunnan province, and Hezhou in Gansu province—this paper approaches the topic from the perspective of inculturation and cultural innovation. It aims to describe the ritual processes observed in these three different Hui communities and discuss how the Hui people integrate Islam with traditional Chinese culture in their local contexts, with the intention of forming and preserving their own cultural characteristics.

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“Immortality through AI?: Transhumanism, Islamic Philosophy, and the Quest for Spiritual Machines.” In Transhumanism, Immortality, and Religion. Edited by Timothy Knepper. New York: Springer, in press [2026]

This chapter critically engages the transhumanist vision articulated by Ray Kurzweil in works such as The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999), The Singularity Is Near (2005), and The Singularity Is Nearer (2024), wherein he predicts an imminent convergence of human and machine intelligence culminating in the advent of artificial superintelligence (ASI). Central to this vision is the Singularity, a paradigmatic threshold after which technological enhancement purportedly enables the transcendence of biological constraints, including aging and mortality. Drawing on insights from Islamic philosophy, particularly its metaphysical and psychological reflections on consciousness, personhood, and the nature of the self, this chapter interrogates the ontological and ethical assumptions underlying transhumanist discourse. I argue that the viability and desirability of such a posthuman future ultimately rest upon contested conceptions of human nature, agency, and value.

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“Two Types of Inner-Qur’anic Interpretation”, in: Exegetical Crossroads: Understanding Scripture in Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the Pre-Modern Orient, edited by Georges Tamer et al., Berlin: De Gruyter 2018, pp. 253–288

The conference from which the present volume has emerged was entitled Exegetical Crossroads. Unlike other contributions to this book, mine will not examine intersections between post-Biblical and post-Qur’ānic scriptural interpretation in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity; rather, I shall focus on processes of interpretive engagement with Qur’ānic passages that are traceable within the Qur’ān it- self. Yet this, too, will afford us the opportunity to inspect a crossroads of sorts: for one of the respects in which the Qur’ān intersects with Biblical literature is precisely insofar as it contains intriguing cases of scrip-tural self-interpretation. Since that phenomenon is much better researched with regard to the Bible, my main objective here is to present some of the ways in which it manifests itself in the Islamic scripture.² In doing so, I shall draw attention to some salient similarities and differences between the Hebrew Bible and the Qur’ān. My interest is squarely in the Qur’ān, however; I do not pretend to even remotely offer anything resembling a full account of inner-Biblical interpretation

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Of love theory and love poetry in Arabic Sufi Literature : An exploration of al –Shushturi Sufi’s Ecstasy as a paradigm

Love, in Arabic term denotes hubb, iskiq, gariimah, wudd and hawaa. It semantically has more than thirty Arabic words denoting the same meaning.1 It has been a symbolic Interactive expression of feeling that has possessed quantum signi-ficance and values over the passage of time in both animate and inanimate beings. Extant research works on love poetry have been carried out by researchers on its quantum purposes and effects in the socio-cultural, anthropological physiolo-gical, psychological, religious and socio-linguistic and literary arena, in both Arabic and westem literary works. However, there has been sparse attention on the exploration of the love theory and love poetry in Arabic Sufi literature, which has created the gaps to befilled by this research. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the love theory in the love poetry of Ara- bic Sufi literature, using Al- Shushturi Sufi’s Ecstasy as a paradigm. Before delving into the main discussion, the contras-tive discourse between the concept oflove theory and love poetry would be examined. Likewise, the concept of Sufism and ecstasy shall be discussed. Al- Shushturi’s biographical account and scholarship including the review and literary analysis of his Sufi’s poetries would be treated.

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Pleasures—Sensual and Spiritual: A Chapter from Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s Pilgrims’ Provision By Shafique N . Virani

This article offers a translation and analysis of Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s seminal discourse on pleasure from his philosophical treatise The Pilgrims’ Provision (Zād al-musāfirīn), illuminating the intricate interplay between sensual and intellectual delights in Islamic thought. It situates Nāṣir-i Khusraw within the broader intellectual tradition, highlighting his critique of Muḥammad b. Zakariyyāʾ al-Rāzī’s Epicurean-influenced conception of pleasure as mere relief from pain. Through rigorous refutation, Nāṣir-i Khusraw advances a framework wherein pleasure is a metaphysical phenomenon rooted in the soul’s ascent toward perfection and its reunion with the Universal Intellect. The chapter explores the gradations of pleasure across the natural, vegetative, sentient, and rational realms, culminating in the infinite joy of intellectual realization. Drawing on symbolic interpretation of the Quran, Nāṣir-i Khusraw redefines paradise not as a realm of corporeal indulgence, but as consummate knowledge, and hell as consummate ignorance. The translation is enriched by historical context, philosophical commentary, and poetic excerpts, offering readers a profound meditation on the nature of human fulfillment and the enduring relevance of spiritual pleasure in an age of material excess.

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