Sufi Wisdom

By Marietta T. Stepanyants

Subjects: Islam
Series: SUNY series in Islam
Paperback : 9780791417966, 132 pages, July 1994
Hardcover : 9780791417959, 132 pages, July 1994

Alternative formats available from:

Read Excerpt View Table of Contents

Request Desk or Examination Copy
Request a Media Review Copy

Table of contents

Introduction

1 Unity of Being

2 Anguish after the Hidden

3 The Path of Perfection

4 Sufism and Modernity

Appendix

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

Description

This book is the first work in English to present a view from Russia of Islamic mysticism. Ibn Arabi and Rumi are the main characters of the book. Their views reflect Sufi understanding of the Absolute being, of man, of the place and role of humans in the universe, of the way of knowledge, and of the fundamentals of morality.

Marietta Stepaniants is Director of the Center for Oriental Philosophies, Institute of Philosophy, at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Reviews

"It is delightful to see scholarship on Islam re-emerging in Russia in the aftermath of the Soviet period. Here we see what may be a distinctly Russian approach to intellectual history, with a systematic and comparative approach of a remarkably wide extent. A profound sympathy for the sources, which are presented in luxurious profusion, is tempered by a shrewd and realistic appreciation of political realities. "—Carl. W. Ernst, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill