Islamic Mystical Poetry – reading list

General Material

• Michael Sells (trans. and ed.): Early Islamic Mysticism (New York, 1996)

Subtitled Sufi, Qur'an, Mi'raj, Poetic and Theological Writings, this is the pre-eminent study of the early period of Islamic mysticism. It focuses particularly on key early fgures such as Ja'far al-Sadiq, Rabi'a, Bistami, Junayd, Hallaj and so on. It is a prime sourcebook of translated extracts on each figure, much of which is not in translation elsewhere.

• Bernard Lewis: Music of a Distant Drum (Princeton, 2001) An excellent anthology of classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew poems, with notes in an appendix on the various poets. Includes Hallaj, Attar and many others.

• Eric Geoffroy Introduction to Sufism (Indiana, 21010) A good general overview of the ideas and the history of the Sufi tradition. There is maybe just a little bit too much emphasis on its relationship to Islam, so please take those sections with a pinch of salt, but overall Geoffroy has a pretty balanced perspective.

• Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut, Perfume of the Desert (Varanasi, 2004) A romantic anthology of Sufi poetry and prose; a non-scholarly edition without

references but well chosen from across the whole range of Islamic mystical expression. Week 1. Introduction and Pre-Islamic Poetry • Marshall Hodgson: The Venture of Islam (Chicago & London, 1974)

Vol.1, The Classical Age of Islam gives a very thorough overview of classical Islamic civilization. The section on Adab (Literature) (pp. 444-473) is an excellent introduction to literary culture in the Islamic world.

• Ilsa Lichtenstadter: Introduction to Classical Arabic Literature (New York, 1974) A good general overview of the history of Arabic literature, with the second part of the book dedicated to selected poem and prose translations, including early Arab poets such as Imru al-Qays, Rabi’a, Hallaj and Ibn al-Farid.

• Jaroslav Stetkevych: The Zephyrs of Najd (Chicago & London, 1993)

Subtitled The poetics of nostalgia in the classical Arabic nasib, this detailed study focuses on classical Arabic poetry, especially the opening section (nasīb) of the ode (qasīda). It contains many translated extracts, and situates Arab lyric poetry within a broad Western tradition and comparative theory.

Week 2: Rabiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya • Margaret Smith: Rābiʿa the Mystic and her fellow saints (Cambridge, 1928)

Margaret Smith was the pioneer of Rabiʿa studies, and this book, still available through numerous reprints, is still worth reading, although some of the information has been updated by modern research.

• Jean Annestay, Une femme soufie en Islam (Paris, 2009) An up-to-date study which attempts to work from the earliest sources. I only had a chance to read it briefly whilst in France so cannot vouch for it in detail.

• al-Sulami, Early Sufi Women, trans. Rkia Cornell (Louisville, USA, 1999) A full translation of one of the earliest sources on Rabiʿa as well as accounts of a further 82 early female saints. The manuscript of this work, which is a supplement to al-Sulami's longer work on the male saints, was only discovered in 1991 and so this was a ground-breaking book which changed the perception of women in the early Islamic tradition.

• Farid al-Din al-Attar, Muslim Saints and Mystics, trans. A. J. Arberry (London, 1966) Excerpts from Tadhkirāt al-Awliyā’, which has traditionally been the main source of

information on Rabiʿa. This selection contains accounts of 75 early saints, including a long section on Rabiʿa and material on other poets studied on this course with the exception of ʿAttar himself. The translation by Arberry is very fine, although it is now a little old-fashioned. If you don’t like the ‘thees’ and ‘thous’, numerous other translations of the work are available.

• Charles Upton, Doorkeeper of the Heart (Versions of Rabiʿa) (New York, 1988) A rendering rather than a scholarly translation of the verses, this is the most readable of

the anthologies of Rabiʿs’a poetry and the most widely quoted. It has the virtue of retaining the sense of directness and simplicity which one feels were a characteristic of the originals.

Week 3: Hallaj • Herbert Mason, The Death of al-Hallaj (Notre Dame, 1991) an excellent introduction to Hallaj's life and thought, readable and recommended, by the English translator of Massignon

• Louis Massignon, Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr (abridged from 4-volume The Passion of al-Hallaj) (Princeton, 1994) the classic detailed study of Hallaj, which attempts to show him as Christ-like. Useful if you are interested in history, sociology, religion, but be prepared to work!

• The Tawasin of al-Hallaj, trans. J. van Cleef (Madison, NJ, 2008) a rather unsuccessful attempt at verse translation of Hallaj's major poems

• Jawid Mojaddedi, 'Ḥallāj' in Encyclopaedia Iranica (online)

Week 4: Abu Saʿid b. Abi'l-Khayr The Poems of Abu Saʿid, trans. Reza Ordoubadian (Bethesda US, 2010) A good selection of 314 poems, Persian text facing elegant English translation. Partly available at http://www.iranian.com/RezaOrdoubadian/2002/February/Abu/index.html

Nobody, son of Nobody, poems of Shaikh Abu Saeed Abi'l-Kheir, trans. Vraje Abramian (Prescott AZ, 2001) A selection of about 200 poems, rendered into clear fresh translation. There is a very brief introduction with some stories about the Shaykh.

Muhammad ibn Munawwar, The Secrets of God's Oneness, trans. John O'Kane (Los Angeles, 1992) A translation of the major hagiographic work on Abu Saʿid, written by one of his descendants. A remarkable read.

Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism (Cambridge, 1921) A classic study by one of the first Western scholars to translate mystical texts, of three early figures: Abu Saʿid, al-Jili (later follower of Ibn 'Arabi, author of al-Insan al-kamil) and Ibn al-Farid (contemporary of Ibn 'Arabi, probably the finest Arab mystical poet). The chapter on Abu Saʿid consists of three parts, charting his life and times. Available at http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/siim/siim04.htm

Week 5: Farīd al-dīn al-ʿAṭṭār Fifty Poems of ʿAṭṭār, trans. Kenneth Avery abnd Ali Alizādeh This is the translation we read in class, which are sensitively and intelligently done. The Persian text, based on the edition by Tafaḍḍulī (Tehran, 1983), is given alongside the poems and even if you cannot read Farsi it is interesting to see the form of the rhyme/mono-rhyme. It also has a good introduction to ʿAṭṭār and his use of the ghazal form. Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition, ed. Leonard Lewisohn and Christopher Shackle. A recent collection of scholarly papers on ʿAṭṭār, covering both his life and milieu and the major works. It includes papers by many intersting contemporary scholars such as Hermann Landolt, Shahram Pazoukhi, Fatemah Keshavarz and Carl Ernst. Hellmut Ritter Das Meer der Seele; Mensch, Welt und Gott in den Geschichten des Farīduddin ʿAṭṭār. (Leiden, 1955.) Translated by John O'Kane as The Ocean of the Soul: Men, the World and God in the Stories of Farīd al-dīn al-ʿAṭṭār. (Leiden, 2003)

This is the classic work on ʿAṭṭār, which is a monumental piece of research. The English version has a supplementary analyitical index put together by Berndt Radke. Hellmut Ritter 'Farīḍ al-dīn ʿAṭṭār' in The Encyclopaedia of Islam II, vol 1, pp. 752-755 This give a good overview of the works and discusses their attribution.