Description
Book SynopsisVisualizing Sufism approaches the question of the presence of graphic materials in Islamic mystical literature from a broad and comprehensive perspective. To this goal, an international group of specialists in the field worked on largely manuscript and unpublished sources with the aim of analyzing the use of visual elements in the works of some key figures of Islamic mysticism—Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥmad al-Būnī, Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūyeh, al-Shaʿrānī—, and in intellectual networks—Ḥurūfiyya and Bektashiyya, Shīrīn Maghribī and his connections. The result is the most extensive collection of specimens of Sufi graphic materials ever brought together and discussed in a single volume. By virtue of the object of study investigated in the chapters of this book, in addition to the history of Sufism, questions are raised that touch upon numerous areas in the field of Islamic Studies, including intellectual history, codicology, and art history. Contributors Elizabeth R. Alexandrin, Noah Gardiner, Ali Karjoo-Ravary, Evyn Kropf, Giovanni Maria Martini, Orkhan Mir-Kasimov, and Sophie Tyser.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Plates Notes on Contributors Introduction Giovanni Maria Martini 1 Diagrams and Visionary Experience in al-Būnī’s (d. 622/1225) Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt fī al-ḥurūf al-ʿulwīyat Noah Gardiner 2 Illustrating the Forms: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Images in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya Ali Karjoo-Ravary 3 Visualizing the Architecture of the Universe: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s (d. 638/1240) Diagrams in Chapter 371 of the Meccan Openings Sophie Tyser 4 Reading and Reciting the Qurʾan: Calligraphic Spaces in Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūyeh’s (d. 649/1252) Kitāb al-Maḥbūb Elizabeth Alexandrin 5 Use of Diagrams in the Ḥurūfī and Nuqṭavī Manuscripts, and Possible Links between the Ḥurūfī ‘Verbal’ and the Bektashi Visual Iconographies Orkhan Mir-Kasimov 6 Shīrīn Maghribī’s (d. 810/1407) Visual Sufism: Diagrams, Intellectual Networks, and the Transmission of Spiritual Knowledge in 14th Century Tabriz and beyond Giovanni Maria Martini 7 “Sensible Images”: Pictograms in the Manuscript Transmission of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī’s (d. 973/1565) al-Mīzān al-kubrā Evyn Kropf Index
