The publication of The Divine Names: A Mystical Theology of the Names ofGod in the Qurʾan marks a noteworthy addition to the growing body ofliterature on Islamic metaphysics, Qurʾanic hermeneutics, and Sufi theology.Composed by the understudied yet intellectually formidable NorthAfrican Sufi ʿAfīf alDīn alTilimsānī, this work represents one of themost philosophically nuanced treatments of the...
In medieval Islamic civilization, poetry was widely acknowledged to be the most intimate vessel for conveying Sufism’s hidden truths. The spiritual states and stations traversed by adepts along an ascending path to the reality of God’s unity largely defies simple descriptions into ordinary prose or everyday language. The subtleties necessary to evocatively describe a spiritual journey that is,...