Tag Archive for: Sufism

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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Wisdom as the Sublime Measure: A New Epistemology of Hikma – By Mukhtar H Ali

This paper advances a new epistemology of ḥikma (wisdom) by reexamining its function as a foundational mode of knowing in the Islamic tradition. Drawing upon Qurʾānic usage, Prophetic sayings, classical philosophical definitions, and Sufi insights, the study argues that ḥikma is not merely eloquent or ethical speech, but a self-evident and sublime truth that transcends syllogistic reasoning and formal logic. As a self-authenticating criterion, ḥikma operates as a touchstone for discerning the truth of propositions across disciplines—ethics, law, theology, and metaphysics. It is shown to be the end of discursive knowledge, the beginning of inner realization, and the principle that reconciles reason and revelation. In proposing a metaphysical and existential framework of ḥikma, this study positions wisdom as both the spirit of the law and the luminous measure by which all knowledge is ultimately validated.

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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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Humility, Self-Naughting, and Self-Transcendence: A View from the Islamic Mystical Tradition, in Humility: A History, ed. J. Steinberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025), 93-106 By Atif Khalil

Muslims understand humility (Arabic: khushu’ /tawadu’) to be inseparable from the servitude to God (‘ubudiyya) that is demanded of them by their faith. The defining place of the virtue in Islamic ethics is underscored by the fact that the sin of the two archetypes of wrongdoing in the Quran–Pharoah and Iblis (Satan)–was pride. With that said, humility can be conceived in two complementary ways in the Muslim tradition. When viewed through the lens of a dualistic theology that separates God from the world, humility involves a shift on a spectrum away from the soul’s natural inclination toward feelings of conceit and self-importance. This movement, however, must halt somewhere near the center-point of humility, and not extend into the domain of self-loathing, since the latter is marked by a narcissism of self-hate and self-denigration, unlike pride, which is marked by a narcissism of self-aggrandizement. In Islamic mysticism, particularly from the vantage point of the doctrine of the unity of being, the movement of self-naughting must continue, but now it must do so vertically, upward, toward self transcendence, self-forgetting, and ultimately self-effacement in the divinity. Only then is humility obtained in its fullness as a state of nothingness before the all-consuming in unity of God. This is not a nothingness where the ego is abased as much a nothingness where the ego, like a mirage, is recognized to be unreal. There is a humorous story of an imam of a mosque who, for some reason or another, was overcome one day by a feeling of great humility. It became so intense that it caused him to fall into prostration. As he was on the ground, with his forehead on the prayer rug, he kept repeating, “Oh God, I am nothing. Oh Lord, I am nothing. ” The muezzin (the individual commissioned with the task of making the call to prayer five times a day)

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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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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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