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Sufi Narratives of Intimacy pdf download

Sufi Narratives of Intimacy
Book Title Sufi Narratives Of Intimacy 2
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Sufism and the Perfect Human: From Ibn ‘Arabi to al-Jili by Fitzroy Morrissey

Sufism and the Perfect Human

The idea of the ‘Perfect Human’ (al-insān al-kāmil) is one of the most important ideas in the history of Sufism. Indeed, given the centrality of Sufism within Islamic thought and piety, particularly prior to modern times, it can be deemed a significant idea in the history of Islam as a whole.

General works on the history and culture of Islam and the Arabs often make at least passing reference to the idea. Most often, they connect the idea to the names of two medieval Sufi thinkers, namely, the extremely influential – and often controversial – Andalusian Sufi metaphysical thinker Ibn ‘Arabī (d. ce 1240), and his later interpreter, ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (d. 1408).

 Thus Albert Hourani informs the reader of his popular History of the Arab Peoples (1991), “The idea of the ‘Perfect Man’ (al-insan alkamil) put forward by Ibn ‘Arabi was carried further by one of his followers, al-Jili (d. c. 1428).”1 A more recent and also influential work, the late Shahab Ahmed’s What is Islam?

The Importance of Being Islamic (2016), similarly describes al-Jīlī as “the elaborator from Muḥyi al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī (1165–1240), possibly the most influential Sufi in history, of the transfiguring Sufi concept of the ‘Perfect Human’ (al-insān al-kāmil)”.2 These scholars are not wrong to draw attention to the idea of the Perfect Human as a significant one in the history of Sufi thought.

Nor are they mistaken to suggest that its origins, as a Sufi technical term and concept, lie in the works of Ibn ‘Arabī, or that Ibn ‘Arabī’s treatment of the idea was taken on and developed by al-Jīlī.

Nevertheless, while Ibn ‘Arabī’s idea of the Perfect Human has been treated in several modern studies, little attention has in fact been given to the precise nature and specific qualities of al-Jīlī’s treatment of the idea.

As such, we have little idea of the history of the idea of the Perfect Human in the two centuries between Ibn ‘Arabī and al-Jīlī, or of the exact nature of the latter’s ‘development’ of this Ibn ‘Arabian idea.

The distinctive elements of al-Jīlī’s idea of the Perfect Human, in other words, have largely been overlooked or forgotten, and his thought has instead been blurred into a common Ibn ‘Arabian or ‘Akbarian’ tradition.

 It is the goal of this book, then, to unravel the distinctive qualities of al-Jīlī’s treatment of the idea of the Perfect Human, and of his thought more generally, and in so doing to tell the history of the idea of the Perfect Human.

 ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Jīlī can justifiably be regarded as one of the most important Sufi theorists of the medieval Islamic intellectual tradition. His major work,

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