Sufism Studies – serie

This book examines and contextualizes Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad Ghazzālī’s (d. 505/1111) fierce response to antinomian and freethinking currents in twelfth-century Persia. Seyed-Gohrab offers a translation of Ghazzālī’s treatise on antinomians, and one of his religious rulings (fatwa) on the topic. Both were written after Ghazzālī’s intellectual crisis in 488/1095, when he voluntarily withdrew from his position as a Professor at the prestigious Niẓāmiyya College in Baghdad. He determined to live an ascetic life, devoting all his attention to God. In this period, Ghazzālī wrote his masterpieces in Arabic and Persian. Seyed-Gohrab shows that these two less-known works shed new light on the motivation for Ghazzālī's major works. The book depicts Ghazzālī’s Persian intellectual context, and the tumultuous political period in which a strong literary and Sufi antinomian trend emerged from the social periphery to become central to literary activities at the Saljuq court. The book also treats Ghazzālī’s Persian poetry, offering original insights into Ghazzālī’s contemporary, the celebrated polymath ʿUmar Khayyām (d. about 525/1131), whose transgressive quatrains are interpreted as a response to a suffocating religious context.

The book is an examination of the apocryphal text known as Book Seven of the Mathnawī, attributed to Rūmī, which has never before been studied. Why was this text was added to Rūmī’s Mathnawī? What were its implications in the Mevlevī centers in 17th-century Ottoman society or in Persian speaking societies in India and Iran? The author has located and analyzed different manuscript versions of the text, discusses possible authors and motives behind its composition: Was Book Seven added on the Indian subcontinent or in the Ottoman Empire? One important aspect of the text being interpreted as Book Seven was a great anxiety over whether Rūmī's Mathnawī had been incomplete, an assumption made by Rūmī's own son Sulṭān Valad as well as by Sufis in India and the Ottoman lands. In addition to a literary examination of Book Seven of Rūmī’s Mathnawī, the study also sheds light on religio-political conflicts between various social groups in Ottoman society in which this text played a major role. By examining İsmāʿīl Anqaravī’s (d.1631) introduction on his commentary, which presents a detailed account of his debate with Mevlevī and Khalvetī Sufis and shaykhs, I argue that Anqaravī claimed authority as the ultimate commentator and Mathnawī-reciter among the Mevlevī Sufis, a claim that was bolstered by his closeness to Sultan Murad IV (d. 1049/1640).

This book explores the Persian sage ʿUmar Khayyām and the globally renowned quatrains (rubāʿiyyāt) attributed to him from a new angle. These quatrains have unleashed responses from Sufis and Islamic theologians, fostering secular thought in the Persianate world. From the early 12th century to the present, ʿUmar Khayyām’s persona has been a source of inspiration for various literate communities. This monograph addresses an undesirable gap in Khayyām scholarship by re-examining the reception of his quatrains within a changing collective memory. It investigates a wide range of texts and objects, including Sufi texts, chronicles, mystical poetry anthologies, memorial monuments, Victorian illustrations, and modern periodicals. The focus is on how the remembrance of Khayyām has contributed to the formation of a secular intellectual tradition in modern Iran. The book argues for a re-conceptualisation of Khayyām as a nexus of Sufi literature, memory, and secularity. Additionally, it critically examines traditional scholarship on Khayyām’s biography and the debates regarding the authenticity of his quatrains. This work aims to connect scholars of Sufism Studies, memory studies, and Persian and Islamic Studies.

This book presents fresh insights into the life, teachings, and enduring legacy of the Persian mystic poet Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī. Across thirteen chapters, scholars introduce innovative perspectives on under-explored and emerging themes, from the hagiography written by Rūmī’s son, Sulṭān Valad, and his journey towards accepting spiritual leadership, to Rūmī’s passionate relationship with his beloved friend, Shams-i Tabrīzī. The volume also provides new approaches to reading Rūmī’s monumental didactic narrative, the Mathnavī. Topics range from shāhid-bāzī – worshipping a beautiful face to commune with the divine – to supplication (munājāt), immolation, sensory perception, and the transformative role of music in reaching ecstatic states. Chapters deal with Rūmī’s reception history, examining the works of figures such as Anqaravī (d. 1041/1631) and Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı (1900-1982), as well as the Dutch-Iranian novelist Kader Abdolah. The book further explores Rūmī’s visual reception history and his impact on contemporary artists. Finally, it examines Rūmī’s popularity in the United States, analysing how his poetry continues to offer people from diverse backgrounds a Lacanian "imaginary": an internalized representation of the spiritual.

The ghazal is a central genre of poetry in Persian literature and intellectual history. It is a medium of expression in which erotic language is merged with politics and mysticism.  Jahān-Malik Khātūn (d. after 784/1382) is the only Persian female poet of medieval times who has a substantial Dīvān (‘poetry collection’), most of which is written in the poetic form of ghazal. Yet, she has been marginalised and her work has remained understudied. This book investigates different aspects of Jahān-Malik Khātūn’s ghazals to find the reasons for the obscurity of work despite its high quality and substance. It offers a critical analysis of Jahān-Malik Khātūn’s medieval reception history in which she was slandered by sexually suggestive remarks and excluded from the literary and Sufi tradition. It engages with her contemporary reception history in which she remains an outsider to Persian Sufi poetry. With a new conceptual model to explore the Persian ghazal as a medium for intellectual discourse, this book sheds light on Jahān-Malik Khātūn’s agency despite her marginalisation as a woman. The author investigates the codification of Persian ghazal as Sufi poetry to explain Jahān-Malik Khātūn’s exclusion from the Persian Sufi tradition. The new perspectives offered in this book contribute to the study of Persian ghazal as a multi-functional literary genre for both Persian literature and Sufi tradition. It also brings forth the important but ignored role of a medieval female poet in shaping the Persian literary and Sufi tradition.

This unique book approaches Sufism (Islamic mysticism) through the lens that Sufi authors have provided, through instructive stories, through the poetry of ʿAṭṭār, Saʿdī, Rūmī, Ḥāfiẓ and many others, and through the manuals of Sufi instruction and commentary. It is thematically structured, around subjects ranging from asceticism to the ethics of love, the valuation of women and allegorical journeys such as the Conference of the Birds. Sufis perceive the universe as a living being, showing respect to animals, their living environment. For mystics, animals, oceans, planets, etc. all speak, teaching humankind how love hold the universe together, and how each creation has a function in the creation. Another favourite theme is the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension (mi’rāj) to the divine Presence, which is explained in connection with the doctrine of perfect human being. In addition, the book offers a fresh analytical overview of women, gender, and sexuality in Islamic mysticism, foregrounding women mystics’ contributions to spirituality. Topics such as music and dance, often exemplified by Whirling Dervishes, are analysed through poetic texts in their intellectual contexts. The complex relationship between Satan and God is discussed through seminal primary sources, explaining the position of Satan in God’s creation. Lastly, the book shows how mysticism has remained a living tradition, highlighting how mystical themes are applied in modern politics.

In the eighteenth century, numerous Sufi communities across the Indian subcontinent demonstrated a notable interest in producing Arabic literature. Apparently primarily intended for an audience in the subcontinent, this corpus remains an understudied field of Arabic literary history. Against this backdrop, this book  identifies the defining characteristics of this literature and assesses its significance for the Sufi centers of the Indian subcontinent, particularly at the historical juncture marking the decline of the Mughal Empire.To this end, the analysis focuses on one of the most prominent Arabic-language works of the period, Subḥat al-marǧān fī āṯār hindūstān (The Coral Rosary on the Vestiges of India), Āzād Bilgrāmī (1704–1786). Its importance lies in giving voice to an array of Sufi authors, whose narratives and poetry illuminate the motivations behind the use of Arabic and the purposes it served in that context. By exploring the linguistic strategies embodied in this Sufi-produced text, this study examines its positioning within both the cultural and linguistic milieu of the subcontinent, as well as its relationship to a broader Arab cosmopolitan sphere whose centers lay in the then-expansive Ottoman Empire.