While the tafsir (exegesis) tradition has long been a prominent and central venue for positing the meanings of the Qur'?n, other interpretive discourses also yield important, though sometimes less obvious, insights into the rich and varied ways in which the Qur'?n has stood in relationship with Islam's diverse practices as they grew and developed. These interpretive traditions are rich venues for exploration, as they are sites of the negotiation of dominant modes of thoughts and inclinations within Islam’s varied affiliations. As scholarship has shown, the debates manifested within tafsir have often been bound up with the historical, political, and social issues facing the umma at the time that exegesis was written. The same holds true both for the rise of ta?w?l (interpretations) as another mode of understanding the Qur’?n through allegorical interpretations and analysis of figurative language that are sometimes complementary to and sometimes divergent from mainstream tafs?r. Through such allegorical interpretations and other discursive traditions, the emergence of Sufism as a possible way of approaching the divine opens up the text to various realms of imaginable meaning. This panel will investigate various approaches to the Qur’?n and relate them to their historical specificities in the oeuvres of scholars such as Ibn ?Arab? (d. 638/1240), theologians like al-Rumm?n? (d. 384/994) and al-B?qill?n? (d. 403/1013), and Sufi poets such as al-?all?j (d. 309/922) and Ibn al-F?ri? (d. 632/1234). Some of the questions the panelists will address include: How did Abbasid-era literary critical debates shape and influence approaches to figurative language and other rhetorical features of the Qur’?n? How do Quranic verses on divine love inspire Ibn ‘Arab?’s approach to Sufism, particularly the dialectic between ??hir (manifest) and b??in (hidden), and what role does Sufi love poetry play in this dialectic? In what way does Sufi Qur’?nic interpretations of al-waqt in Sufi poetics, including al-Qushayr?’s Ris?lah and al-Hujwir?’s Kashf al-ma?j?b inform understandings of discontinuity, negativity, and the atomism of time theory? What long-ranging implications does Sufi claims to a super-rational divinely-revealed knowledge of God have on Sufi institutions and social-political activities in Muslim societies? This panel will explore such complex questions and connections in which the Qur’an stands as a principal text forming, informing, and inspiring mystical and aesthetic ways of reading the sacred thereby interrogating the eternally compelling and forcefully dynamic dialectic between the Word and the world.
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Dr. Rachel Friedman
I'jaz al-Qur'an discourse, which expounds on the miraculous aspects of the Qur'an, has roots in the theological, linguistic, exegetical, and apologetic discussions of early Islam. I'jaz writings also engage extensively with the literary and stylistic features of the Qur'an. How were the literary critical aspects of i?j?z discourse constructed? What historical developments in Arabic literary history shaped and influenced conceptions of Qur'anic inimitability during the formative period of thought on i'jaz al-Qur'an?
I'jaz al-Qur'an discourse underwent an important phase in its development during the Abbasid era as a central debate raged among critics of Arabic poetry. This debate was over a new style of poetry known as badi'. Badi' poetry was characterized by its ornate and manneristic style, and it was highly polarizing: its fans saw it as marvelous and clever, while its critics decried its farfetched metaphors and distracting wordplay. This controversy loomed large on the Abbasid literary scene, crystalizing around prominent poets such as Abu Tammam (d. 231/845) and al-Mutanabbi (d. 354/965), and continuing to occupy critics for generations afterward.
In what ways did the debate over bad?? style shape and influence thought on the Qur'an? This paper investigates the ways in which some early scholars of Qur’anic style—Muhammad ibn Qutayba, 'Ali ibn 'Isa al-Rummani, and Abu Bakr al-Baqillani—reacted to the badi' debate both directly and indirectly. In particular, it looks at the ways in which these theologians discussed the Qur'an’s features, taking the examples of clarity, conciseness, and rhyming verse endings (fawasil). It examines these discussions alongside these thinkers’ evaluative comments on badi' poetry and related literary styles. In doing so, it identifies and analyzes key ways in which Abbasid-era theologians were influenced by the debate over badi' as well as discourse on poetry and prose more generally. The results of this investigation demonstrate the inextricable tie between influential texts on Qur'anic style and the literary trends that were current in the era during which these texts were written. Understanding the role of Abbasid poetic production and literary debates in forming thought on i'jaz al-Qur'an makes possible a more historically contextualized understanding of this discourse, an important locus of Arabo-Islamic literary critical thought.
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In this paper I explore how a literary approach to the kinds and degrees of divine love in the Qur'?n may explicate notions of dhikr (remembrance/mentioning) and 'ishq [love excess] for God beyond the duality of al-maq?m?t wa al-a?w?l (statuses and conditions) known in circles of Sufism. Basic theological understanding of divine love in Islam ranges from simple considerations of ri?? (contentment), ma'iyya (togetherness/companionship) and janna (paradise), to complex questions of immateriality as well as phenomenality (e.g. manifestations of divine love in the physical world). To interrogate this complexity, I draw specifically on ?y?t al-?ubb al-il?h? (verses of divine love) in the Qur'?n and on representative poems of divine adoration by Sufi thinkers such ibn 'Arab? and poets such as al-?all?j and 'Umar bin al-F?ri? to investigate whether Sufi iterations of al-?ubb al-il?h? (divine love) would complicate current debates on God and love in literary and theological Islamic discourses. If allegorical Sufi readings of the Qur'?n position divine love as apriori, how do the poetics of Sufi love delineate this relationship with divinity? Where exactly do we situate love in connection to wa?da-t- al-wuj?d (unity of Being) and al-ins?n al-k?mil (the complete human), a formulation at the very heart of Ibn 'Arab?'s cosmological and metaphysical doctrine of Sufism? For instance, Ibn 'Arab?'s equation of pantheism with divinity begs the question of the relation between the text, the divine, and the phenomenological world. If he firmly articulates this relation in optimistic terms of divine agency, namely, ra?ma sh?mila (comprehensive mercy) sans evil, ignorance, or defects, what type of performative agency then does he ascribe to heart of the '?rif (the one who knows by God) and, more importantly, how can all religions and beliefs be folded into one, d?nu al-?ubbi "the religion of love," as Ibn'Arab? describes in one of his poems in Turjum?n al-Ashw?q (Interpreter of Desires)? Ultimately, I argue that what we call Sufi love signals an epistemological collapse and triggers the confusion, if not the discontent, of normalized theology, precisely because it points to an endpoint of knowledge, unreachable to thought, though not entirely unimaginable in the phenomenological world.
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Dr. Alexander Knysh
Since at least the second Islamic century, Muslim ascetics-mystics (Sufis) regarded the Qur’an as a repository of profound esoteric-allegorical senses that are available only to the select few, especially those who have cleansed their hearts and souls of mundane attachments and aspirations, thereby rising above the crowd of ordinary believers. This approach to the scripture would often result in a drastic transformation of the exegete’s self through the process of deep meditation on the Qur’anic matrix of ideas and bringing them in resonance with his or her personal experiences, inclinations, and convictions. As a result of such esoteric-allegorical encounters of Muslim mystics with the Qur’an there has emerged a rich and sophisticated universe of meaning that could be used to confirm the validity of certain practices and spiritual and intellectual orientations that render Sufism distinct from other streams of Islamic thought and practice. By availing themselves of the Sufi universe of meaning and the exegetical tradition that supports Sufi teachers (shaykhs/murshids/pirs) came to lay claim to a super-rational, divinely-revealed and, eventually, salvific knowledge of God, the universe, and the human race. Their epistemological claims, in turn, have had long-ranging implications for the formation of Sufi institutions and their socio-political and ideological roles in Muslim societies. The paper examines the major stages in the formation of the body of esoteric-allegorical literature in Sufism from the eighth century CE until today, paying special attention to the remarkable stability of the topoi and methods employed by Sufi teachers to create a distinctive exegetical stream within Islam. It shows affinities and continuities between Sufi exegeses and those of the other esoteric traditions in Islam, especially Shi‘i and Isma‘ili ta’wil. After addressing the legitimacy of placing these distinctive movements onto the same analytic category (Islamic esotericism), as done, e.g., by Henri Corbin and his followers, the paper seeks to determine what exactly the knowledge claimed by these three traditions is all about and how it is related to the esoteric exegeses of medieval Christians and Jews and similar truth-claims and salvific promises based thereon.
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Mr. Mohamed Ben Hammed
Since the 11th century, compilations of Sufi lexicon consolidated the semantic range of the language of Islamic mysticism and its distinctive nuances. Among its key technical terms, al-waqt (the mystic moment) advanced a new take within Islamic moral imagination on the relationship between temporal existence and moral redemption. From al-Risalah by Abu al-Qassim al-Qushayri (d. 465/1072) to Mi’raj al-tashawwuf by Ahmad Ibn Ajibah (d. 1223/1809), entries on al-waqt emphasized the transformative potential of the moment of the now and disputed the exclusivity of the referential authority of the past. Al-waqt shifts the understanding of Time within Islamic moral imaginary from an external power of negativity to an intimate structure of the self subsumed within its relationship with divinity. As it is developed within Sufi thought and poetics, al-waqt redefines the temporal instant as both a spiritual entity and a spatial frame of expansion. Fusing eternity and ephemerality in one temporal frame, it reinvigorates the present moment with a utopic dimension and advocates moral redemption as an unfolding potential rather than being fixedly tied to the modular past. This paper explores the concept of al-waqt in a number of foundational Sufi works including al-Qushayri’s Risalah, al-Hujwiri’s Kashf al-mahjub, Ibn Arabi’s Risalat al-anwar, and Abd al-Karim al-Jili’s commentary on Ibn Arabi’s aforementioned Risalah. It discusses the continuities and discontinuities between al-waqt and other Islamic temporal views such as the negativity of al-dahr and the occasionalist theory of the atomism of Time. Finally, it illustrates the moral and temporal nuances of Sufi waqt by offering a reading of the poem “Salamun ala Salma” (“Greetings to Salma”) from Ibn Arabi’s Turjuman al-ashwaq. The Sufi poem reformulates both the stylistic requirements of the Arabic qasida and its existential discourse. This paper explores how the traditional theme of nostalgic contemplation triggered by the sight of ruins and the absence of the beloved is counterbalanced by the idea of a renewable presence linked to the inward experience of al-waqt.
