Browsing by Subject "Sufism"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

In hearts and hands : sanctity, sacrilege, and the written Qur’ān in pre-modern Sunnī Muslim society
(2015-05) Silzell, Sharon Lyn; Spellberg, Denise A.; Frazier, Alison; Hardwick, Julie; Mulder, Stephennie; Azam, Hina
This dissertation explores the written Qur’ān and its role in the lives of Sunnī Muslims in the Middle East from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. Until now, medieval Qur’ān manuscripts have been largely the domain of art historians who emphasize the commissioning of luxury Qur’āns as demonstrations of piety and authority. This study relocates the Muslim scripture, taking it off the bookshelf and placing it in the hands of every-day Muslims, literate and illiterate, men and women. By combining the close examination of hundreds of Qur’ān manuscripts with an analysis of the book’s portrayal in a variety of medieval Arabic literary genres, a portrait of the Qur’ān emerges that is very much at odds with the prescriptions and proscriptions set forth in Islamic law regarding the treatment of the book and its designation as a sacred object. I argue that beginning with the rise of the book as a means of transmitting knowledge in the ninth century, attitudes toward the written Qur’ān changed at all levels of society. Recognizing the increased presence of books, elite religious scholars attempted to disassociate women from the transmission of the written Qur’ān. My gendered reading reveals the failure of these men to rewrite the life Ḥafṣa, a wife of the Prophet closely associated with the preservation of the first Qur’ān codex. With the rise of Sufism and its emphasis on a personal relationship with God, every-day Muslims forged a parallel personal relationship with their written scripture, and, ignoring Islamic law, designated some Qur’āns as hyper-sacred and used them as a means of intercession with God. At the same time, the Sunnī Muslim masses in Baghdad raised the Qur’ān during street riots, exposing it to pollution and potential destruction. This dissertation reveals for the first time that rather than the elite Islamic scholars defining orthopraxy concerning the written scripture, it was every-day Muslims who determined what the Qur’ān as a book meant to them and how it was to be treated.
Rethinking Qawwali: perspectives of Sufism, music, and devotion in north India
(2010-05) Holland, Christopher Paul; Hyder, Syed Akbar; Minault, Gail
Scholarship has tended to focus exclusively on connections of Qawwali, a north Indian devotional practice and musical genre, to religious practice. A focus on the religious degree of the occasion inadequately represents the participant’s active experience and has hindered the discussion of Qawwali in modern practice. Through the examples of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s music and an insightful BBC radio article on gender inequality this thesis explores the fluid musical exchanges of information with other styles of Qawwali performances, and the unchanging nature of an oral tradition that maintains sociopolitical hierarchies and gender relations in Sufi shrine culture. Perceptions of history within shrine culture blend together with social and theological developments, long-standing interactions with society outside of the shrine environment, and an exclusion of the female body in rituals. To better address Qawwali performances and their meanings, I foreground the perspectives of shrine social actors and how their thoughts reflect their community, its music, and gendered spaces.
Tahqiq, human perfection, and sovereignty : Ibn al-'Arabi and early-modern Islamic empire
(2023-05-01) Pye, Christian B.; Moin, A. Azfar; Spellberg, Denise A
Ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 1240), often called the “Greatest Shaykh,” is the most discussed and debated Sufi master of the late medieval Islamic world. Although many scholars have produced works on his life, ideas, and contemporary reception, few have undertaken the task of tracing the consequences of his work for sovereignty well after the shaykh’s death. This paper argues that Ibn al-‘Arabi’s concepts of the “Oneness of Being,” the “Perfect Man,” and his distinct use of tahqiq (verification, realization) worked in tandem as a subset of ideas beneficial to leaders for establishing absolutist sovereignty in the Mughal and Safavid Empires. This study compares the ideas found in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s works, primarily the Fusus al-Hikam and ‘Anqa’ Mughrib, to the aforementioned, early-modern Islamic governments in order to demonstrate where the shaykh’s philosophy aligns with the crafted personas of charismatic leaders. For secondary sources, this paper references themes found in Kathryn Babayan’s Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs and Azfar Moin’s Millennial Sovereign. Furthermore, the paper is indebted to scholars of Ibn al-‘Arabi such as Henry Corbin and William Chittick. As interest in global studies and the early-modern period continues to grow, the integration, wittingly or otherwise, of Akbarian philosophy into the ethos of sovereignty will continue to be a vibrant area of research. The thought of Ibn al-‘Arabi and his intellectual descendants strongly influenced the absolutist sovereignty of the Mughal and Safavid Empires, the legacy of which reverberates to this day in the cultural memory of the Middle East and South Asia.
The mutated Chechen identity : “Akhmat Sila!” the significance of a slogan and its proliferation in the digital and physical space
(2021-05-03) Laznovsky, Nicholas Scott; Sidorkina, Maria A.
Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has reshaped Chechen society to his ideal image. After two wars that made the city a living hell and an insurgency that was not cleared until the beginning of the last decade, Putin’s policy of Chechenisation that started in 2000 with the late Akmad-Hadji, has started to resemble a perceived peace. This peace provided the region’s inhabitants a sense of security and produces world-class sport fighters, catapulting young Chechen men and sometimes women up the social ladder. Despite the human-rights violations and accusations of funneling fighters to employment in the local armed forces, Kadyrov has been able to shape the image of the ideal Chechen man and simultaneously, reaffirm his power with a slogan, Akhmat-Sila. This slogan be heard in various mediums to the point of proliferation. This thesis will use a historical-digital ethnographic approach with a theoretical framework of nation branding to explain the shifts in Chechen identity and the slogan Akhmat-Sila, providing a background on how Chechen warrior culture and the patronage that gives the slogan agency now. The slogan will be examined on Instagram and supporting media sources. Chapter 1 dives into the Caucasus imaginary and history of Tsarist Russia, leading into the two Chechen Wars and years after. Chapter 2 will expand on the current research of Ramzan Kadyrov and his social media use, parsing out themes found in his Instagram account. Chapter 3 will focus on the theoretical framework that will support the qualitative approach for the phenomenon of the slogan. Chapter 4 will narrate the findings of the data, developing into a conclusion.
Trans-versing “Dama Dam Mast Qalandar”: how Abida Parveen’s recitation of the qawwali text structures an aural atmosphere of performance and listening
(2023-05-04) Hammad, Mumtaz; Hyder, Syed Akbar
A close reading of the popular spiritual Sufi qawwali “Dama Dam Mast Qalandar” reveals how the spatial, aural and trans-textual dimensions of the qawwali span Urdu poetics, performance studies, affect theory, among other fields of critical translation and theory. Celebrating antinomianism in a trans-ethos, “Dama Dam Mast Qalandar” blurs boundaries between text and sound, written word and body. It explores how perception of and participation in spiritually constructed mehfils involves ongoing interplay with the text of the qawwali, its performers, and its receiving audience. In its exploration, this qawwali allows for ambiguity within a typically gendered performance genre through sound and intervenes in hegemonic spiritual concerns of Sunni succession. Circulated as a ‘living text’ in the subcontinent, “Dama Dam Mast Qalandar'' takes on a transtextual element, especially in its 1990’s performance by acclaimed musician Abida Parveen, transcending rigid boundaries between written and embodied aspects of its own text. In doing so, it complicates distinctions between performer and audience, man and woman, and the inner self with the outer world. Navigating these complex blurrings, this qawwali divulges the aural atmosphere that it emerges from, encouraging participation and reidentification with devotionalism in through its text, as well as its performance. Both the close reading analysis of “Dama Dam Mast Qalandar” and its performance by Abida Parveen reveal broader notions of antinomian spirituality that dialogically undoes normative distinctions and weaves together multiple aspects of performance and texts through the construction of its aural atmosphere.
Transformations of the contemporary mystic discourse in Iran
(2017-05) Antson, Agaate; Aghaie, Kamran Scot
This thesis examines the transformations of Iranian mysticism ‘erfan in contemporary Iran. It observes how ‘erfan manifests in society and how religious intellectuals use it to argue for liberal secular values in Iran. This study challenges the common scholarly discourse of mysticism, which focuses solely on either Islamic theology or Sufism. Instead, this thesis suggests that Iranian mysticism ‘erfan is a dynamic concept that goes beyond the limits of the aforementioned discourses. It argues that the mid-20th century Islamic world experienced a rising trend of legalistic Islamism, of which the Iranian revolution was part. Towards the end of the century, esoteric Islam has become increasingly present in the ideologies of religious intellectuals and in the public discourse in the whole Islamic world. Analyzing the ideas of three Iranian thinkers, namely Soroush, Azmayesh and Taheri, this thesis discusses the way ‘erfan has been transformed in order to suit the needs of contemporary Iranian society