1st Edition
Perspectives on Early Islamic Mysticism The World of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī and his Contemporaries
Introduction: Sweetness and Inner Struggle
Part I Asceticism and Mysticism (zuhd and ta¿awwuf)
1. ‘Sufism’: Reconsidering terms, definitions and processes.
2. Zuhd in Islamic Mysticism: Conduct and Attitude.
3. "Wa-rahbaniyyatan ibtada¿uha": Monasticism and Asceticism False and Sincere.
Part II Schools and Teachers
4. Al-¿akim al-Tirmidhi and the Malamatis of Nishapur.
5. Teachers and Disciples in Baghdad and Nishapur.
6. Facing Hostility in Transoxiana: Al-¿akim al-Tirmidhi and Mu¿ammad ibn al-Fa¿l.
Appendix: The Letters Letters of Abu ¿Abd Allah al-Tirmidhi to Mu¿ammad ibn al-Fa¿l
Part III Polarity
7. "Between Fear and Hope": Coincidence of Opposites in Islamic Mysticism Appendix
8. The Self (nafs) and Her Transformation.
9. Faces of al-¿aqq: The Name and the Named.
Part IV The Spiritual Hierarchy
10. Wilaya: Contemplating Friendship with God.
11. Myrtle and Holy Men: Echoes of Ancient Traditions in a Woman’s Dream.
Part V Language and Hermeneutics
12. The Power of Words: Mystical Linguistics in al-¿akim al-Tirmidhi.
13. "The Countless Faces of Understanding": Istinba¿, Listening and Exegesis.
Bibliography
Biography
Sara Sviri is Professor Emerita at the Department of Arabic and the Department of Comparative Religions of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She had also taught at the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London and at The Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Oxford. Her fields of study include Islamic mysticism, mystical philosophy, comparative aspects of Early Islam, the formative period of Islamic mysticism, Medieval Jewish mysticism and the mystical wisdom of Ibn al-ʿArabī. Her book The Taste of Hidden Things: Images on the Sufi Path was published in 1997. Her comprehensive Sufi Anthology was published in Hebrew in 2008. The Arabic version of the Anthology came out in Beirut by Manshūrāt al-jamal (2016).
