Description
Book SynopsisWritten in Judeo-Arabic in eleventh-century Muslim Spain but quickly translated into Hebrew, Bahya Ibn Paquda''s Duties of the Heart is a profound guidebook of Jewish spirituality that has enjoyed tremendous popularity and influence to the present day. Readers who know the book primarily in its Hebrew version have likely lost sight of the work''s original Arabic context and its immersion in Islamic mystical literature. In A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue, Diana Lobel explores the full extent to which Duties of the Heart marks the flowering of the Jewish-Arab symbiosis, the interpenetration of Islamic and Jewish civilizations.
Lobel reveals Bahya as a maverick who integrates abstract negative theology, devotion to the inner life, and an intimate relationship with a personal God. Bahya emerges from her analysis as a figure so steeped in Islamic traditions that an Arabic reader could easily think he was a Muslim, yet the traditional Jewish seeker has always looked to hi
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"An ambitious attempt to fill a long-standing lacuna in the history of Jewish thought by presenting a synthesis and evaluation of Bahya in his intellectual context. It draws on over a century of scholarship, suggests some new sources for Bahya and new readings of old sources, and offers an interpretation of his thought." * Charles H. Manekin, University of Maryland *
"This manuscript contains a subtle, probing, and rich exposition of the key issue of devotional self-examination within Jewish and Islamic mysticism. The author has a superb sense of Arabic, Sufi mystical psychology, and the extraordinary dialogue (sometimes openly acknowledged, often left unacknowledged) among Jewish, Islamic, Christian, and Greek traditions at the time of Ibn Paquda." * Michael Sells, University of Chicago *
"Lobel illustrates the power of philology in the best sense. Her critical ear for the nuances and history of Arabo- Islamic terminology . . . enables her to probe the deep structural penetration of Sufi ideas in the work of Jewish thinkers and seekers. To put it another way, A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue traces the process by which Arabo-Islamic conceptual frames are imported into Judaism through shared use of the Arabic language. . . . Lobel is keenly attuned to the historical dimension of the work and its place in the cultural and intellectual history of the Jews of al-Andalus and all of Islam." * The Medieval Review *
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction:Bahya's Work in Its Judeo-Arabic Context
Chapter 1. Philosophical Mysticism in Eleventh-Century Spain: Bahya and Ibn Gabirol
Chapter 2. On the Lookout: The Exegesis of a Sufi Tale
Chapter 3. Creation
Chapter 4. The One
Chapter 5. Speaking about God: Divine Attributes, Biblical Language, and Biblical Exegesis
Chapter 6. The Contemplation of Creation (I'tibār)
Chapter 7. Wholehearted Devotion (Ikhlās): Purification of Unity (Ikhlās al-Tawhid), Purification of Intention in Action (Ikhlās al-'Amal)
Chapter 8. Reason, Law, and the Way of the Spirit
Chapter 9. The Spirituality of the Law Chapter 10. Awareness, Love, and Reverence (Murāqaba, Mahabba, Hayba/Yir'ah)
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
