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Sufism: A New History of Islamic Mysticism. By ALEXANDER KNYSH. Princeton: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2017. Pp. xiv + 389, illus. $29.95 (cloth); $21.95 (paper). Sufism: A New History of Islamic [...]

The article reviews the book "Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of Ibn Arabi and Iraqi," by Cyrus Ali Zargar.

Repentance and the Return to God: Tawba in Early Sufism. By ATIF KHALIL. Albany, NY: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, 2018. Pp. xi + 260. $95 (cloth); $32.95 (paper). [...]

The Translator of Desires: Poems by Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi. Translated by MK'H.AEL SELLS. Princeton: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2021. Pp. xxxviii +323. $24.95 (paper). Michael Sells's poetically inspired translation and critical [...]

God's 'down-sending' (inzāl/tanzīl) of words in the form of the Quran is arguably one of the most important problems in Islamic theology. Mu?yī al-Dīn ibn al-ʿArabī's views on this topic - as well as his theory concerning the reality of Quranic recitation - inform this consideration of revelation, which responds to positions both contemporary and classical. By investigating a theory attributed to the philosopher Abū Na?r al-Fārābī, one championed by later Muslim philosophers, this paper addresses an ongoing question: What does it mean for the Quran to be revealed to a human being? Ibn al-ʿArabī's distinctive hermeneutics and cosmology help navigate a response that acknowledges the complexities raised in the model attributed to al-Fārābī. In discovering Ibn al-ʿArabī's points of divergence from al-Fārābī, however, the centrality of language to Ibn al-ʿArabī's metaphysics comes to light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism. By CYRUS ALI ZARGAR. London: ONEWORLD, 2017. Pp. 341. $30, [pounds sterling]20 (paper). The Polished Mirror [...]

This paper explores the place of traditional metaphysics in Iranian cinema through an analysis of three films by Majid Majidi. Countering evaluations of Majidi's films as tritely patriarchal or heavy-handedly logocentric, this paper considers images and allegories in Majidi's films as responses to the pains of modernity. Majidi's films, specifically, Children of Heaven, Baran, and the Color of God, draw on Sufi and Shii theologies to locate meaning in a world changed by war, modernization, economic disparity, and nationalism. The result is a sense of ambiguity that aims at both realism and transcendence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the religious and ethical concept of volitional death in the philosophical treatise "al-Us&#016B;l al-'Ashara," by Najm al-D&#012B;n Kubre. The treatise consists of ethical guidelines to Muslims who are on their spiritual journey, which starts by seeking repentance and ends by satisfying the will of Allah. The ontological and eschatological implications of volitional death within the framework of the Koran are considered.

Copyright of Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies is the property of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In his comprehensive work Fayḍ al-wahhāb, ʿAbd Rabbihī ibn Sulaymān al-Qaliyūbī (d. 1968) extensively explores the Prophet Muhammad's role in theology and argues against interpretations influenced by Wahhābī thought. He emphasizes the prophetic realm, or prophecy and its traces, particularly the means by which believers can establish a connection with it. This article pays special attention to al-Qaliyūbī's understanding of mediation (tawassul); that is, how the Prophet—by virtue of his elevated status, ordained by God—can serve as a means; similar to how a ritual prayer or any good deed ultimately serves as a means to draw closer to God. For al-Qaliyūbī, following the Prophet means not only regarding him as the founder of the religion, but also incorporating his spirit and character into one's own life. This article proceeds in four steps: (1) It addresses the systematics of prophecy concerning practical ethics and how this realm can be entered; (2) It introduces the three-layered paradigm of later theology and al-Qaliyūbī's work; (3) It explores the topic of what constitutes a means (wasīla) and the theological implications of using a means in prayer (tawassul); (4) It zooms in on the aspect of what qualifies a means to be used in an individual prayer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of narrative holds a pivotal position in the Qurʾān, yet it has been subject to inadequate scrutiny and insufficient representation in pedagogical discourse concerning Islamic education. The present work endeavours to rectify this gap in knowledge by employing the technique of constructivist grounded theory to the Qurʾān and major exegeses, with a particular focus on the term qaṣaṣ, which pertains to the notion of narrative. This article delves into the profound tracts and maqāṣid (objectives) that qaṣaṣ hold in the Qurʾān and contemplates their exhortation for education on Islam and modern pedagogy. The analysis reveals that the qaṣaṣ present in the Qurʾān serves as a fundamental framework that directs the essence of the narrative pedagogy model of teaching and learning between the pedagogue and learner. Through typological figuration, the listener's contemplation leads to a re-evaluation of conventional notions surrounding the dynamics between teacher and student and the dissemination of narrative within a pedagogical setting. The triad of truth, beauty and explication are fundamental pillars within this Islamic framework for narrative pedagogy, representing the essence of the human condition concerning education. Because these domains emerge from the concept of qaṣaṣ, the integration of the framework into Islamic education is a matter of utmost importance, given its centrality in the Qurʾān to foster and perfect the principles of Muslims and their sense of self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the theology and politics of queer Muslims in South Africa. Through a queering of the analytical lens of "struggle and praxis" or jihad, this essay traces the deployment of the term jihad by a collective of queer Muslims in Cape Town. In this articulation, queer Muslims play with their inherited traditions of liberation, challenging its presuppositions, and expanding its contours. This essay argues that these queer Muslims read liberation traditions through their experience and praxis which guide their orientations toward theological meaning-making and community practice. By doing so, they challenge the regulatory nature of hegemonic forms of queerness, which emerged in the Global North, resonating in the local posturing of South Africa as a safe space for queer people, ignoring the disparity between the law and public practice, and erasing the experiences of the margins of the queer community. By embracing this marginality, queer Muslims "reimagine" tradition by presenting an inclusive alternative theology and praxis, suggesting a queer possibility within Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the centrality of smells, both fragrant and fetid, to food practices at the Mughal court. Mughal-era manuscripts and paintings frequently reference the smells of spices, fruits, and flowers in the context of food preparation as well as consumption. They describe, too, the widespread use of aromatics derived from animals, especially ambergris and musk. The article explores how incorporation of these odoriferous substances in food dishes and dining spaces was envisaged as an ethical endeavor for fashioning of the Mughal elite as civilized, healthy, and spiritually refined gentlemen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the concept of "ontological pluralism", developed by Heidegger scholar Iain Thomson, in relation to the waḥdat al-wujūd framework of Ibn ʻArabī's school. Heidegger's ontological difference between being and entities, and the definition of being in excess of any particular entitative determination, calls for an ethic of pluralism and acceptance of the myriad ways in which being is encountered and understood. In my paper, this pluralism—and its conceptual foundation on the meaning and reality of being—is developed further through Ibn ʻArabī's complex distinction and interpenetration between the Real's transcendence (tanzīh) and immanence (tashbīh). The pluralistic and polysemic possibilities of this Akbarian "transimmanence" is compared with Heideggerian ontological pluralism, using Milad Milani's recent Heideggerian approach to the study of Sufism. This comparison asks if elements of a robust pluralism cannot be found in an avowedly premodern metaphysical framework like that of Ibn ʻArabī, thereby attempting to trouble the uniqueness of the critical breaks in the history of modern Western thought. An attempt to develop a decolonial approach to the study of pluralism sees waḥdat al-wujūd and its later development not just as an object of historical analysis but as a theoretical framework that can positively inform our political and ethical concerns. This is why this paper brings together Heideggerian and Akbarian approaches to pluralism in their own terms. This combined conceptual framework is then used to bring to light the Akbarian pluralism in the life, death, and writings of subcontinental Sufis like Dārā Shikōh and Sarmad Kāshānī. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a matter to ponder that, among the three Abrahamic monotheisms, Islam places the greatest ontotheological distance between the human and the divine. While God is the ground of being Muslim, Islam excludes theophany and prohibits any tangible association between the divine and anything in the material world. God's mode of manifesting Himself to His creatures has consisted of the most fleeting and discorporate of all means of communication, namely, sound. His words gathered in the Qur'an thus form a non-solid verbal bridge crossing over that unfathomable distance. One could then think that the relationship between the unique Creator and His creatures relies only on the strength of a blind faith founded on a dry, discursive pact. Arguing his "idea of an anthropology of Islam", Talal Asad did posit that this religion and its culture form "a discursive tradition". Exclusively focused on the mental modes of knowledge acquisition, this cognitivist verbalist characterization has become a certitude in Islamic studies at large. Yet, it is only a half-truth, for it overlooks the emphatic involvement, in the definition of this tradition of Islam, of the non-linguistic phenomenality of experience that implicates the pre-logical non-cognitive double agency of affect and sensation in the pursuit of divine knowledge. This article expounds this phenomenology of the Qur'an in using an innovative combination of philosophical and literary conceptualities, and in addressing some hermeneutical problems posed by the established Quranic studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous Christian assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad generally fall within two categories. The first asks whether or how he may be considered a post-canonical prophet. In the second, both Christians and Muslims sidestep the inquiry and advocate for the 'two Words' analogy (comparing Muḥammad to Mary and the Qur'an to Jesus the incarnate Word). However, attending to Muslim lived religion in postcolonial and diasporic contexts reveals an alternative, emic account of the meaning of prophecy and revelation in Islam: the embodied, emplaced and enacted experience of Muḥammad through poetry in praise of the Prophet and Prophetic beauty. Theological aesthetics prepares us for decolonizing Christian assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad through Muslim popular piety and vernacular traditions. A decolonial understanding of the experience of the Prophet suggests that his place in the experience of Muslims is unlike the way Christians relate to prophets, generally, and more akin to how Christians relate to Jesus--in both lived religion and elite discourse. While the 'two Words' analogy still has an important role to play, Christians would do well to rethink and decolonize their assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad through the lived religion--and elite discourses--of poetry in praise of the Prophet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the work of seven contemporary artists whose aesthetics exemplify the "lived" experience of Islamic mysticism or Sufism (Arabic tasawwuf) within a European context. The work of artists born in Islamic majority countries and familiar with "traditional" Sufi idioms and discourses, but now immersed in Western culture, is often associated with "diasporic art". From this hybrid perspective some of their artistic narratives reconfigure or even subvert the "traditional" Sufi idioms, and do so in such a way as to provoke a more profound sensory experience in the viewer than traditional forms of art. Drawing upon recent methodological tendencies inspired by the "aesthetic turn", this study explores post- and decolonial ways of thinking about Sufi-inspired artworks, and the development of a transcultural Sufi-inspired aesthetic within the context of migration and displacement over the last half-century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos. Sección Árabe-Islam is the property of Miscelanea de Estudios Arabes y Hebraicos-Seccion Arabe e Islam and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The question of beauty continues to engage humans, especially intellectuals, who inquire into its quintessence and the sources from which it derives. Does beauty consist in attaining geometric harmony of structure and shape, or in achieving numerical proportion in audio and visual? Or, does beauty transcend all that, to crystalize into an absolute essence that conforms to high values as justice, truth, and goodness? How long does beauty last? Does it terminate at the terrestrial realm or transcend to the celestial? What kind of beauty is essential for the attainment of transcendence and eschatological happiness? Beauty is two-sided, one is transient, the other eternal. This essay examines the concept of beauty in Arabic poetical compositions of Muslim mystics, and explores how they construe beauty and identify its locus vis-à-vis transcendence between ephemerality and eternality as seen in the poems by Ibn al-Farîd and al-Tilimsânî. The former perceives God's name and attributes as embodiment of absolute beauty, and everything in the universe, as manifestations of the beauty, while the latter argues that every beauty in the universe derives from God's absolute beauty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Islamic Ethics is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Islamic Ethics is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Islamic Ethics is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article demonstrates how Rūmī has made use of the Iranian musical system and Persian classical prosody, two separate semiotic systems with overlapping forms and aesthetic principles, in order to create a hybrid semiotic system in his poetry. His poetic feat can be observed through a comparative analysis of the linguistic and musical components of his poems in the Divān-e Shams-e Tabrizi , used extensively in the sacred tradition of samāʿ as well as in Iranian musical performances. This essay shows how the systematic use of rhythm and music in versification reaches new heights in Rumi's ghazals, where the combination of language and music gives birth to a transcendental mode of expression devised with the aim of expressing the ineffable Ultimate Truth. Rumi employed this unique sign system to communicate a mystical message that cannot be conveyed using ordinary language. His unparalleled means of expression, in direct relation with the mystic experience of wajd , is used to incarnate what Sufis call maʿnā (the archetypal meaning). These archetypal ideas cannot be understood through dialectic means of the intellect but can only be taken in by the heart of the mystic in a state of ecstasy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German Shrovetide plays and the Arabic Shadow plays belong to the earliest scenic literature which has dramatic elements such as storyline, dialogues and monologues. The most famous representatives of this scenic literature are the German Shrovetide plays of Hans Sachs (1494-1576) as well as the Arabic shadow plays of Ibn Dāniyāl (1248-1311). The following study tries to cover a kind of entertaining literature that is not lacking in social critical allusions which has a moralizing purpose (prodesse) and reflects the reality of everyday life in an entertaining way (delectare). Therefore, this study tries to show, how both poets illuminate the problems in their societies in a humorous way. The image of women and the image of different types of people occupy centre stage in this study. The texts to be analyzed are ‚Die alt verschlagen Kuplerin mit dem Thumbherrn' (1553) and ‚Das Hoffgesindt Veneris' (1517) by the German poet Hans Sachs, and the shadow plays ‚Tayf al-Khayal' and ‚Adjib and Gharib' (the Wonderful and the Strange) by the Arabic poet Ibn Dāniyāl in the 13th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Love occupied the attention of numerous Muslim scholars from early times. Taking inspiration from the Qur'an, the Hadith, pre-Islamic poetry, and the Hellenistic legacy, they explained love's nature in order to bring out the existential import of Islam's fundamental teaching, the assertion of divine unity ( taw īd). The 5th-6th/11th-12th centuries witnessed an upsurge in the literature of love, especially in Persian. Theoreticians and poets explained it as the energizing power that brings all things into existence and drives everything to its final goal. They held that God created human beings precisely because of His beginningless love for them, and that people are innately endowed with love because they were created in His image. The varieties of human love were taken as metaphors ( majāz) for love's reality ( aqīqa), which is God's love for beauty. Authors of such works directed their efforts not at instructing people in right conduct, which is the role of the jurists, nor at clarifying right belief, which is the job of the Kalam experts, but at helping them recognize that all pain and suffering are signs of separation from the One Beloved, and that the only truly human goal is to surrender to love's demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bibliography is presented which includes the books "American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute," by Jeffrey Abt, "Islam: A Short Guide to the Faith," edited by Roger Allen and Shawkat M. Toorawa and "The Ahhiyawa Texts," by Gary Beckman, Trevor Bryce and Eric Cline.

The Safavid society's approach to sexuality and gender has made it a reference for the "pre-modern" discourse, in which gender and sexuality manifest—in contemporary terminology—queerness and fluidity. While it is important not to romanticize the image of the Orient as a queer heaven, it is possible to consider Safavid society as an important site of inquiry that offers valuable insights on pre-colonial gender and sexuality. A less discussed topic in Safavid literature on gender and sexuality is gendered and sexual slavery. This study conducts a review of primary and secondary literature on the Safavid period, including Western travelogues. The paper aims to outline the relations between existing forms of captivity and factors such as gender and ethnic background. The research explores the prevalence of slavery reported in Safavid literature and how slaves' positions were defined within social hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists the books reviewed in the journal "Reviews in Religion & Theology," which includes "Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine's Early Figurative Exegesis," by Michael Cameron, "The New Yoder," edited by Peter Dula and Chris K. Huebner, and "The Politics of Redemption: The Social Logic of Salvation," by Adam Kotsko.