Dreams, Sufism and Sainthood

Dreams, Sufism and Sainthood
Author: Katz
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2018-08-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004378928

Based on Muhammad al-Zawâwî's extraordinary diary of 109 dream conversations with the Prophet Muhammad, this study provides a rare, intimate view of 15th-century North African Muslim life. The study reconstructs Zawâwî's lifestory over a critical ten-year period and examines his career as a sufi in the historical context of North Africa and Mamluk Cairo. Psychological aspects of Zawâwî's religious experience are thoroughly explored. The concluding chapter provides an introduction to the role of dreams and visions in medieval Islam. Particular attention is paid to the way Zawâwî and his successors used their visions to legitimate claims to being awliya', or living saints.

Dreams, Sufism, and Sainthood

Dreams, Sufism, and Sainthood
Author: Jonathan Glustrom Katz
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 302
Release: 1996
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9789004105997

Based on Muhammad al-Zawâwî's extraordinary diary of 109 dream conversations with the Prophet Muhammad, this study provides a rare, intimate view of 15th-century North African Muslim life.The study reconstructs Zawâwî's lifestory over a critical ten-year period and examines his career as a sufi in the historical context of North Africa and Mamluk Cairo. Psychological aspects of Zawâwî's religious experience are thoroughly explored.The concluding chapter provides an introduction to the role of dreams and visions in medieval Islam. Particular attention is paid to the way Zawâwî and his successors used their visions to legitimate claims to being awliya', or living saints.

The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic Mysticism

The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic Mysticism
Author: John O'Kane
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136793097

This book provides translations of the earliest Arabic autobiography and the earliest theoretical explanation of the psychic development and powers of an Islamic holy man (Saint, Friend of God).

Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies

Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies
Author: Özgen Felek
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1438439954

Dreams and visions have always been important in Islamic societies. Yet, their pervasive impact on Muslim communities and on the lives of individual Muslims remains largely unknown and rather surprising to Westerners. This book addresses this gap in understanding with a fascinating and diverse account, taking readers from premodern Islam to the present day. Dreams and visions are shown to have been, and to be, significant in a range of social, educational, and cultural roles. The book includes a wealth of examples detailing the Sufi experience. Contributors use Arabic, Persian, Indian, Central Asian, and Ottoman sources and employ approaches grounded in history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, religious studies, and literary analysis. This is an illuminating work, showing how ordinary Muslims, Muslim notables, Sufis, legal scholars, and rulers have perceived both themselves and the world around them through the prism of dreams and visions.

Dreams

Dreams
Author: K. Bulkeley
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2016-04-30
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1137085452

The recent centennial of the original publication of Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams has generated a new wave of critical reappraisals of this monumental work. Considered one of the most important books in Western history, scholars from an astonishing variety of academic fields continue to wrestle with Freud's intricate theories and insights. Dreams is a long overdue collection of writing on dreams from many of the top scholars in religious studies, anthropology, and psychology departments. The volume is organized into three thematic sections: traditions, individuals and methods. The twenty-three articles highlight the most important theories, the most contentious debates, and the most far-reaching implications of this growing field of study.

The Millennial Sovereign

The Millennial Sovereign
Author: A. Azfar Moin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2012-10-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231504713

At the end of the sixteenth century and the turn of the first Islamic millennium, the powerful Mughal emperor Akbar declared himself the most sacred being on earth. The holiest of all saints and above the distinctions of religion, he styled himself as the messiah reborn. Yet the Mughal emperor was not alone in doing so. In this field-changing study, A. Azfar Moin explores why Muslim sovereigns in this period began to imitate the exalted nature of Sufi saints. Uncovering a startling yet widespread phenomenon, he shows how the charismatic pull of sainthood (wilayat)—rather than the draw of religious law (sharia) or holy war (jihad)—inspired a new style of sovereignty in Islam. A work of history richly informed by the anthropology of religion and art, The Millennial Sovereign traces how royal dynastic cults and shrine-centered Sufism came together in the imperial cultures of Timurid Central Asia, Safavid Iran, and Mughal India. By juxtaposing imperial chronicles, paintings, and architecture with theories of sainthood, apocalyptic treatises, and manuals on astrology and magic, Moin uncovers a pattern of Islamic politics shaped by Sufi and millennial motifs. He shows how alchemical symbols and astrological rituals enveloped the body of the monarch, casting him as both spiritual guide and material lord. Ultimately, Moin offers a striking new perspective on the history of Islam and the religious and political developments linking South Asia and Iran in early-modern times.

Dreams and Visions in the World of Islam

Dreams and Visions in the World of Islam
Author: Elizabeth Sirriyeh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2015-01-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0857738208

People in Western societies have long been interested in their dreams and what they mean. However, few non-Muslims in the West are likely to seek interpretation of those dreams to help them make life-changing decisions. In the Islamic world the situation is quite different. Dreaming and the import of visions are here of enormous significance, to the degree that many Muslims believe that in their dreams they are receiving divine guidance: for example, on whether or not to accept a marriage proposal, or a new job opportunity. In her authoritative new book, Elizabeth Sirriyeh offers the first concerted history of the rise of dream interpretation in Islamic culture, from medieval times to the present. Central to the book is the figure of the Prophet Muhammad - seen to represent for Muslims the perfect dreamer, visionary and interpreter of dreams. Less benignly, dreams have been exploited in the propaganda of Islamic militants in Afghanistan, and in apocalyptic visions relating to the 9/11 attacks. This timely volume gives an important, fascinating and overlooked subject the exploration it has long deserved.

The Presence of the Prophet in Early Modern and Contemporary Islam

The Presence of the Prophet in Early Modern and Contemporary Islam
Author: Denis Gril
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 736
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004466738

The three-volume series titled The Presence of the Prophet in Early Modern and Contemporary Islam, is the first attempt to explore the dynamics of the representation of the Prophet Muhammad in the course of Muslim history until the present. This first collective volume outlines his figure in the early Islamic tradition, and its later transformations until recent times that were shaped by Prophet-centered piety and politics. A variety of case studies offers a unique overview of the interplay of Sunnī amd Shīʿī doctrines with literature and arts in the formation of his image. They trace the integrative and conflictual qualities of a “Prophetic culture”, in which the Prophet of Islam continues his presence among the Muslim believers. Contributors Hiba Abid, Nelly Amri, Caterina Bori, Francesco Chiabotti, Rachida Chih, Adrien de Jarmy, Daniel De Smet, Mohamed Thami El Harrak, Brigitte Foulon, Denis Gril, Christiane Gruber, Tobias Heinzelmann, David Jordan, Pierre Lory, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Samuela Pagani, Alexandre Papas, Michele Petrone, Stefan Reichmuth, Meryem Sebti, Dilek Sarmis, Matthieu Terrier, Jean-Jacques Thibon, Marc Toutant, Ruggiero Vimercati Sanseverino.

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography
Author: Mimi Hanaoka
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2016-09-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316785246

Intriguing dreams, improbable myths, fanciful genealogies, and suspect etymologies. These were all key elements of the historical texts composed by scholars and bureaucrats on the peripheries of Islamic empires between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. But how are historians to interpret such narratives? And what can these more literary histories tell us about the people who wrote them and the times in which they lived? In this book, Mimi Hanaoka offers an innovative, interdisciplinary method of approaching these sorts of local histories from the Persianate world. By paying attention to the purpose and intention behind a text's creation, her book highlights the preoccupation with authority to rule and legitimacy within disparate regional, provincial, ethnic, sectarian, ideological and professional communities. By reading these texts in such a way, Hanaoka transforms the literary patterns of these fantastic histories into rich sources of information about identity, rhetoric, authority, legitimacy, and centre-periphery relations.

Islam and the Devotional Object

Islam and the Devotional Object
Author: Richard J. A. McGregor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2020-05-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 110858506X

In this book, Richard J. A. McGregor offers a history of Islamic practice through the aesthetic reception of medieval religious objects. Elaborate parades in Cairo and Damascus included decorated objects of great value, destined for Mecca and Medina. Among these were the precious dress sewn yearly for the Ka'ba, and large colorful sedans mounted on camels, which mysteriously completed the Hajj without carrying a single passenger. Along with the brisk trade in Islamic relics, these objects and the variety of contested meanings attached to them, constituted material practices of religion that persisted into the colonial era, but were suppressed in the twentieth century. McGregor here recovers the biographies of religious objects, including relics, banners, public texts, and coverings for the Ka'ba. Reconstructing the premodern visual culture of Islamic Egypt and Syria, he follows the shifting meanings attached to objects of devotion, as well as the contingent nature of religious practice and experience.