Author: Reza Tabandeh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789087283674
Category : Mysticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Sufi mysticism's surprising revival in nineteenth-century Shi'ite Persia. Islamic mysticism experienced a remarkable revival in nineteenth-century fundamentalist Persia. Sparked by the return of the Sufi master Ma'um Ali Shah from India, the Ni'matullāhī Order rapidly spread throughout the region amid fierce opposition from Shi'te clerics. Rise of the Ni'matullāhī Order charts the movement's unlikely rise across three generations of Sufi masters. Reza Tabandeh demonstrates how Ma'um Ali Shah, Majdhub Ali Shah, and Mast Ali Shah sustained the revival by reinterpreting classical Sufi teachings for a Shi'ite context.

Author: Kia Chad Kia
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474450407
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Transforming our understanding of Persian art, this impressive interdisciplinary book decodes some of the world's most exquisite medieval paintings. It reveals the hidden meaning behind enigmatic figures and scenes that have puzzled modern scholars, focusing on five 'miniature' paintings. Chad Kia shows how the cryptic elements in these works of art from Timurid Persia conveyed the mystical teachings of Sufi poets like Rumi, Attar and Jami, and heralded one of the most significant events in the history of Islam: the takeover by the Safavids in 1501 and the conversion of Iran to Shiism.

Author: Seema Golestaneh
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478024178
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
In Unknowing and the Everyday Seema Golestaneh examines how Sufi mystical experience in Iran shapes contemporary life. Central to this process is ma’rifat, or “unknowing”—the idea that, as it is ultimately impossible to fully understand the divine, humanity must operate from an engaged awareness that it knows nothing. Golestaneh shows that rather than considering ma’rifat an obstacle to intellectual engagement, Sufis embrace that there will always be that which they do not know. From this position, they affirm both the limits of human knowledge and the mysteries of the profane world. Through ethnographic case studies, Golestaneh traces the affective and sensory dimensions of ma’rifat in contexts such as the creation of collective Sufi spaces, the interpretation of Persian poetry, formulations of selfhood and non-selfhood, and the navigation of the socio-material realm. By outlining the relationship between ma’rifat and religious, aesthetic, and social life in Iran, Golestaneh demonstrates that for Sufis the outer bounds of human thought are the beginning rather than the limit.

Author: Kathryn Spellman
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782389407
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
An estimated 75,000 Iranians emigrated to Britain after the 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. They are politically, religiously, socio-economically and ethnically heterogeneous, and have found themselves in the ongoing process of settlement. The aim of this book is to explore facets of this process by examining the ways in which religious traditions and practices have been maintained, negotiated and rejected by Iranians from Muslim backgrounds and how they have served as identity-building vehicles during the course of migration, in relation to the political, economic, and social situation in Iran and Britain. While the ethnographic focus is on Iranians, this book touches on more general questions associated with the process of migration, transnational societies, Diasporas, and religious as well as ethnic minorities.

Author: Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Publisher: Herder & Herder
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
A broad-ranging, illustrated, scholarly treatment of the different ways that Sufism is lived out around the world, with attention to the various sects and their writings of core topics in Islamic spirituality.

Author: Ata Anzali
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611178088
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
An original study of the transformation of Safavid Persia from a majority Sunni country to a Twelver Shi'i realm "Mysticism" in Iran is an in-depth analysis of significant transformations in the religious landscape of Safavid Iran that led to the marginalization of Sufism and the eventual emergence of 'irfan as an alternative Shi'i model of spirituality. Ata Anzali draws on a treasure-trove of manuscripts from Iranian archives to offer an original study of the transformation of Safavid Persia from a majority Sunni country to a Twelver Shi'i realm. The work straddles social and intellectual history, beginning with an examination of late Safavid social and religious contexts in which Twelver religious scholars launched a successful campaign against Sufism with the tacit approval of the court. This led to the social, political, and economic marginalization of Sufism, which was stigmatized as an illegitimate mode of piety rooted in a Sunni past. Anzali directs the reader's attention to creative and successful attempts by other members of the ulama to incorporate the Sufi tradition into the new Twelver milieu. He argues that the category of 'irfan, or "mysticism," was invented at the end of the Safavid period by mystically minded scholars such as Shah Muhammad Darabi and Qutb al-Din Nayrizi in reference to this domesticated form of Sufism. Key aspects of Sufi thought and practice were revisited in the new environment, which Anzali demonstrates by examining the evolving role of the spiritual master. This traditional Sufi function was reimagined by Shi'i intellectuals to incorporate the guidance of the infallible imams and their deputies, the ulama. Anzali goes on to address the institutionalization of 'irfan in Shi'i madrasas and the role played by prominent religious scholars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in this regard. The book closes with a chapter devoted to fascinating changes in the thought and practice of 'irfan in the twentieth century during the transformative processes of modernity. Focusing on the little-studied figure of Kayvan Qazvini and his writings, Anzali explains how 'irfan was embraced as a rational, science-friendly, nonsectarian, and anticlerical concept by secular Iranian intellectuals.

Author: Oliver Scharbrodt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113597568X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book explores the development of Islam and the Baha'i faith in the nineteenth century via the examination of two key reformers.

Author: Liyakat Nathani Takim
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814782973
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Provides an overview of America's Shi'i community, tracing its history, describing its composition in the twenty-first century, and explaining how they have created an identity for themselves in the American context.

Author: Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Islam
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description

Author: J. Gordon Melton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 4653

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Book Description
This monumental, four-volume reference overviews significant events and developments in religious history over the course of more than five millennia. Written for high school students, undergraduates, and general readers interested in the history of world religions, this massive reference chronicles developments in religious history from 3500 BCE through the 21st century. The set comprises four volumes, treating the ancient world from 3500 BCE through 499 CE, 500 through 1399, 1400 through 1849, and 1850 through 2009. Each volume includes hundreds of brief entries, arranged chronologically and then further organized by region and religion. The entries provide fundamental information on topics ranging from the neolithic Ggantija temples near Malta through the election of Mary Douglas Glasspool as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in 2009. Global in scope and encyclopedic in breadth, this chronology of world religions is an essential purchase for all libraries concerned with the development of human civilization.