Download or read book Ahmad al Ghazali Remembrance and the Metaphysics of Love written by Joseph E. B. Lumbard and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2016-10-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the work of a central, but poorly understood, figure in the development of Persian Sufism, A?mad al-Ghaz?l?. The teachings of A?mad al-Ghaz?l? changed the course of Persian Sufism forever, paving the way for luminaries such as R?m?, A???r, and ??fi?. Yet he remains a poorly understood thinker, with many treatises incorrectly attributed to him and conflicting accounts in the historiographical literature. This work provides the first examination of A?mad al-Ghaz?l? and his work in Western scholarly literature. Joseph E. B. Lumbard seeks to ascertain the authenticity of works attributed to this author, trace the development of the dominant trends in the biographical literature, and reconstruct the life and times of A?mad al-Ghaz?l? with particular attention to his relationship with his more famous brother, Ab? Hamid al-Ghaz?l?. Lumbards findings revolutionize our understanding of A?mad al-Ghaz?l?'s writings, allowing for focus on his central teachings regarding Divine Love and the remembrance of God.
Download or read book Religion of Love written by Cyrus Ali Zargar and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2024-07-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion of Love explores the life and work of the Persian Sufi poet and sage Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār. ʿAṭṭār changed the face of world literature, leaving his impact on all cultures that have valued Persian Sufi writings. Considered for the first time through the lens of religious studies, ʿAṭṭār's oeuvre offers much to contemporary readers. ʿAṭṭār's poems cast a light on the relationship between revelation and the intellect. They also encourage liberation from self-centeredness through the fiery path of love. Thus, Religion of Love considers one of Persian literature's greatest poets as more than just a poet, but as a thinker and a commentator on moral psychology, ethics, and the intellectual debates of his age, debates that shed light on today's religious complexities.
Download or read book The Repose of the Spirits written by Ahmad Sam'ani and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major new translation of a unique and important Persian treatise on divine names in the Islamic tradition. The Repose of the Spirits is a translation of one of the earliest and most comprehensive treatises on Sufism in the Persian language. Written by Aḥmad Sam‘ānī, an expert in Islamic law from a famous Central Asian scholarly family in about the year 1135, it is one of the handful of early Sufi texts available in English and is by far the most accessible. It also may well be the longest and the most accurately translated. Ostensibly a commentary on the divine names, it avoids the abstract discourse of theological nitpicking and explains the human significance of the names with a delightful mix of Quranic verses and sayings of the Prophet and various past teachers, interspersed with original interpretations of the received wisdom. Unlike the usual books on the divine names (such as that of al-Ghazali), The Repose of the Spirits reminds the reader of the later poetical tradition, especially the work of Rumi. The prose is richly embroidered with imagery and interspersed with a great variety of Arabic and Persian poetry. What is especially remarkable is the manner in which the author speaks to his readers about their own personal situations, explaining why they are driven by a love affair with God, a God who is full of compassion and good humor, whether they know it or not. William C. Chittick’s masterful new translation brings this work to an English-language audience for the first time. “This is a wonderful introduction to the particular style, imagery, terminology, and worldview of Sufism, as well as to the ways in which the Persian cultural milieu added important elements to the Arabic intellectual and spiritual tradition in Islam.” — Maria Massi Dakake, author of The Charismatic Community: Shi‘ite Identity in Early Islam
Download or read book The Muslim Reception of European Orientalism written by Susannah Heschel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edward Said’s Orientalism, now more than fifty years old, has to be one of the most frequently cited books among academics in a wide range of disciplines, and the most frequently assigned book to undergraduates at colleges. Among the common questions raised in response to Said’s book: Did scholars in Western Europe provide crucial support to the imperialist, colonialist activities of European regimes? Are their writings on Islam laden with denigrating, eroticized, distorting biases that have left an indelible impact on Western society? What is the "Orientalism" invented by Europe and what is its impact today? However, one question has been less raised (or less has been done about the question): How were the Orientalist writings of European scholars of Islam received among their Muslim contemporaries? An international team of contributors rectify this oversight in this volume.
Download or read book Art Allegory and the Rise of Shi ism in Iran 1487 1565 written by Kia Chad Kia and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-03 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transforming our understanding of Persian art, this impressive interdisciplinary book decodes some of the world's most exquisite medieval paintings. It reveals the hidden meaning behind enigmatic figures and scenes that have puzzled modern scholars, focusing on five 'miniature' paintings. Chad Kia shows how the cryptic elements in these works of art from Timurid Persia conveyed the mystical teachings of Sufi poets like Rumi, Attar and Jami, and heralded one of the most significant events in the history of Islam: the takeover by the Safavids in 1501 and the conversion of Iran to Shiism.
Download or read book Of Piety and Heresy written by Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-08-19 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Love as Common Ground written by Paul S. Fiddes and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the way in which the study and practice of love creates a common ground for different faiths and different traditions within the same faith. For the contributors, “common ground” in this context is not a minimal core of belief or a lowest common denominator of faith, but a space or area in which to live together, consider together the meaning of the love to which various faiths witness, and work together to enable human flourishing. Such a space, the contributors believe, is possible because it is the place of encounter with the divine. This book is the fruit of a Project for the Study of Love in Religion which aims to create this space in which different traditions of love converge, from Islam, Judaism, and the Christianity of both East and West. Tools employed by the contributors in exploring this space of love include exegesis of ancient texts, theology, accounts of mystical experience, philosophy, and evolutionary science of the human. Insights about human and divine love that emerge include its nature as a form of knowing, its sacrificial and erotic dimensions, its inclination towards beauty, its making of community and its importance for a just political and economic life.
Download or read book The Faith and Practice of Al Ghazali written by Montgomery. W. Watt and published by . This book was released on 1952 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Saw nih written by Ahmed Ghazzali and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1986. The present volume is a complete translation of the Sawanih, written by the Persian Sufi master Ahmad Ghazzali with a commentary by the translator. The title of this book, to Sufis, means the inspirations that a mystic experiences on his journey through the world of the Spirit (c?lam-i r?h) or, as it is sometimes called, the world of Pure Spirits (c?lam-i arwah).
Download or read book Journal of Ritual Studies written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Beauty in Sufism written by Kazuyo Murata and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2017-04-05 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Muhammad, "God is beautiful and He loves beauty." Yet, Islam is rarely associated with beauty, and today, a politicized Islam dominates many perceptions. This work tells a forgotten story of beauty in Islam through the writings of celebrated but little-studied Sufi scholar and saint Rūzbihān Baqlī (1128–1209). Rūzbihān argued that the pursuit of beauty in the world and in oneself was the goal of Muslim life. One should become beautiful in imitation of God and reclaim the innate human nature created in God's beautiful image. Rūzbihān's theory of beauty is little known, largely because of his convoluted style and eccentric terminology in both Persian and Arabic. In this book, Kazuyo Murata revives Rūzbihān's ideas for modern readers. She provides an overview of Muslim discourse on beauty before Rūzbihān's time; an analysis of key terms related to beauty in the Qur'ān, Ḥadīth, and in Rūzbihān's writings; a reconstruction of Rūzbihān's understanding of divine, cosmic, and human beauty; and a discussion of what he regards as the pinnacle of beauty in creation, the prophets, especially Adam, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and Muhammad.
Download or read book Speaking of God written by Carlo Huber and published by CRVP. This book was released on 2000 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Book of Sufi Healing written by Abu Abdullah Ghulam Moinuddin and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Toward Global Civilization Love Tolerance written by M. Fethullah Gülen and published by Tughra Books. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book touches on certain dynamics regarding the theoretical and cultural basis of the model Fethullah Gulen has developed based on dialogue, tolerance, concurrence among different groups that come from different religions, cultures, and civilizations. Gulen's model focuses on human beings, those who surround all their world with thought and action, and who are directed toward love for God and for creation.
Download or read book The Quran and the Secular Mind written by Shabbir Akhtar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-10-31 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with the rationality and plausibility of the Muslim faith and the Qur'an, and in particular how they can be interrogated and understood through Western analytical philosophy. It also explores how Islam can successfully engage with the challenges posed by secular thinking. The Quran and the Secular Mind will be of interest to students and scholars of Islamic philosophy, philosophy of religion, Middle East studies, and political Islam.
Download or read book The Topkapi Scroll written by Gülru Necipoğlu and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 1996-03-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is an exceedingly rich and valuable source of information. In the course of her in-depth analysis of this scroll dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gülru Necipoğlu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her text has particularly far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. She also compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art, making this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced entirely in color in this elegant, large-format volume. An extensive catalogue includes illustrations showing the underlying geometries (in the form of incised “dead” drawings) from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohammad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the muqarnas and demonstrates by means of CAD drawings how one of the scroll’s patterns could be used co design a three-dimensional vault.
Download or read book The Religion of the Peacock Angel written by Garnik S. Asatrian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-03 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based in Iraq, Syria and Turkey, the Yezidi people claim their religion - a unique combination of Christian, Islamic, and historical faiths - to be the oldest in the world. Yezidi identity centres on their religion, Sharfadin, which has evolved into a highly complex pantheon of one God with many incarnations, the chief of whom is Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel. The Yezidi faith can be traced to a range of pre-Islamic belief systems, such as Sufism, some extreme Shi'ite sects, Gnosticism and other traditions surviving from the ancient world. This particular formulation has served to unify Yezidi religious identity and ethnicity. Based on extensive fieldwork, 'The Religion of the Peacock Angel' presents the first detailed examination of the Yezidi pantheon. The idea of one God and his chief incarnations is first analysed, then the various 'deity figures,' saints, holy patrons and divinized personalities in the Yezidi belief system are considered in the context of related religious traditions. The study determines the place of all these characters in the system of the Yezidi faith, defining their main functions, features, and genealogies.
