Sufism and Theology.

• Author: Karamustafa, Ahmet T.
• Position: Book review

Edited by AYMAN SHIHADEH. Edinburgh: EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2007. Pp. 256. [pounds sterling] 50.

This volume is a significant contribution to the comparative study of Islamic intellectual traditions in the post-classical period. Fully eight of its ten essays focus on individual figures; of those eight, two were indubitably full-blown Sufis by anyone's definition (al-Maybudii and Abu l-Wafa' al-Taftazani), while the rest, including Ibn Taymiyya, are suitably characterized as "theologians" or "theologizing thinkers." Only one essay deals with the twentieth century (chapter ten on al-Taftazani); the others target the half millennium between the late twelfth and eighteenth centuries. The primary sources used by the contributors are almost exclusively in Arabic and Persian, though in the case of the one Ottoman figure reviewed (Ibn Kemal), appropriate primary sources in Ottoman Turkish in addition to those in Arabic and Persian, as well as secondary scholarship in modern Turkish, are utilized fully. The geographical spread is heavily skewed towards Iran (six essays), with some attention given also to Syria, Egypt, al-Andalus, and Anatolia (one essay each, if one marks Ibn Taymiyya for Syria rather than for Egypt). Clearly, this collection is exploratory in nature and partial in coverage, but one has to start somewhere.

In her essay on the Qur'an commentary of al-Maybudi (d. after 1126), Annabel Keeler examines this traditionalist Sufi's perspectives on scriptural hermeneutics and the doctrine of love. The overlap between traditionalism and Sufism, especially in the period between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, has been somewhat under-appreciated in scholarship, and Keeler's valuable contribution sheds light on some theological views of this eloquent representative of Shafi'i traditionalist Sufism who wrote in Persian, following the path already charted by the eminent Hanbali traditionalist Sufi 'Abd Allah al-Ansari (d. 1089). Traditionalist Sufis of this period and beyond certainly deserve concentrated attention of this kind.

Writing on a famous member of the next generation of Iranian cultural elites, the Ash'arl theologian Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d, 1210), the editor of the volume, Ayman Shihadeh, argues persuasively that towards the end of his life al-Razi came to acknowledge the superiority of the Sufi approach to knowledge over the epistemology of kalam. The Sufi method of unveiling and vision was, al-Razi apparently decided, immune...