The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought.

• Author: Renard, John
• Position: Book review

The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought. By AARON W. HUGHES. Bloomington: INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2004. Pp. x + 273. $39.95 (cloth).

Among specialists in Islamic Studies, medievalists (mostly in the humanities) have enjoyed an increasingly satisfying output of solid research in the past few years. A number of recent studies stretch the boundaries of hermeneutics and methodology, particularly in religion, literature, and philosophy and often with a comparative perspective. Aaron Hughes' new volume is one such offering, one whose leading edge is a convincing argument for the inextricable functions of the rational, imaginative, and affective capabilities. His method is well focused, turning on three versions of the curious tale of "Alive, Son of Awake" (Hayy ibn Yaqzan).

Hughes expands on earlier Islamic studies approaches, which have typically acknowledged the Arabic versions by the Central-Asia-born Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037) and the Iberian Ibn Tufayl (c. 1116-85), by considering also the Hebrew version of an Andalusian Jew named Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1164), who also spoke and wrote in Arabic. The tale of Hayy's progress upward toward an experience of the divine presence links it, indirectly at least, with the larger category of "ascension" narratives, which in Islamicate literatures are almost universally beholden to traditions about Muhammad's mi'raj. (One important version of the tale is that of Ibn Sina.) In that story, the Prophet is said to have been borne aloft from what is now the Dome of the Rock through the seven heavens to God's throne, after Gabriel had guided Muhammad on his winged steed, Buraq, on the "Night Journey" (isra') from Mecca to "the farther/-est mosque" in Jerusalem.

Islamic religious-studies and literature specialists hankering for some intellectual humidity (yes, I mean aesthetic/affective moisture amid conceptual dryness) sufficient to lure them into the realm of Islamic philosophy, will find Hughes obliging. Like a pedagogically astute psychopomp, he leads even the wide-eyed wanderer comfortably along while leaving behind the bad rap that has often stigmatized imagination for "corrupting the individual and banishing him or her to the dreamy obfuscations of mysticism" (p. 3). He begins by situating his three target texts in the larger framework of the "initiatory tale." A chapter on background issues, which Hughes himself calls "not particularly original," is...