Islamic Mysticism
Sufism and the mystical philosophy of Islam.
- IslamThe religion of submission to the one God, revealed in the Qurʾān to the Prophet Muḥammad.
- SufismThe mystical dimension of Islam, centred on the remembrance and love of God.
- Islamic philosophyThe philosophical tradition of the Islamic world, from al-Kindī and Ibn Sīnā to the illuminationists and Mullā Ṣadrā.
- Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyyaEarly Sufi woman of Basra, remembered for teaching the pure love of God.
- al-ḤallājPersian Sufi executed in Baghdad, famous for the saying “I am the Truth”.
- al-GhazālīPersian theologian who turned from academic eminence to the Sufi path.
- Ibn SīnāPersian philosopher and physician, the most influential of the Islamic philosophers.
- Ibn ʿArabīAndalusian Sufi metaphysician, known as “the Greatest Master”.
- SuhrawardīPersian philosopher, founder of the philosophy of illumination.
- Jalāl al-Dīn RūmīPersian poet and Sufi teacher, author of the Masnavi.
- Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭārPersian Sufi poet of Nishapur, author of The Conference of the Birds.
- ḤāfiẓPersian lyric poet of Shiraz, whose ghazals of wine and love are read as both worldly and mystical.
- Junayd of BaghdadMaster of the Baghdad school of Sufism, the teacher of “sober” mysticism and its doctrine of return.
- Bāyazīd BisṭāmīPersian Sufi of Bisṭām, famed for his ecstatic sayings, the model of “intoxicated” mysticism.
- Aḥmad SirhindīIndian Naqshbandī Sufi who taught the “unity of witnessing” against Ibn ʿArabī’s “unity of being”.
- Muhammad IqbalPoet and philosopher of the self (khudi), who sought to reconstruct Islamic thought in dialogue with modern philosophy.
- Waḥdat al-shuhūdThe “unity of witnessing”: Aḥmad Sirhindī’s teaching that the mystic’s experience of oneness is real as experience, not as a unity of being.
- Mullā ṢadrāPersian philosopher who joined philosophy, illumination and Sufi metaphysics.
- TawḥīdThe oneness of God, the first principle of Islam; for the Sufis, also the unification of the heart.
- FanāʾIn Sufism, the passing away of the self in God.
- Waḥdat al-wujūdThe “oneness of being”, the teaching associated with Ibn ʿArabī and his school.
- Masnavi i Ma’naviWhinfield’s abridged English translation of Rūmī’s Masnavī, the long poem of stories, parables and teaching in six books, beginning with the song of the reed. It gives a selection from each book, in prose, with notes.
- Ibn al’Arabi: The Bezels of WisdomAustin’s translation of Ibn ʿArabī’s most studied work: twenty-seven chapters, each on the wisdom revealed through a prophet, from Adam to Muḥammad, setting out the self-disclosure of God in the world and the perfect human being. Read with the introductions.