Transcending the feminine: Negotiating gender in the mysticism of Ibn Al-'Arabī and Francis of Assisi
[Thesis]
Norma J. DaCrema
Blankinship, Khalid
Temple University
2015
256
Committee members: Alpert, Rebecca; Bregman, Lucy; Goldblatt, Eli
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-74538-2
Ph.D.
Religion
Temple University
2015
Explorations of how 'the feminine' functions in the systematic mystical theology of Ibn al-'Arabī (1165-1240) begin, in English, with Reynold Nicholson's early 20th century analysis of Tarjumān al-Ashwāq and extend through the work of dozens of scholars since then, most notably Henry Corbin, Toshihiko Izutsu, William Chittick, Sachiko Murata and Sa'diyya Shaikh. (Of course, one could argue that such studies in Arabic reach back as far as his foremost disciple al-Qunawi, and his foremost critic, Ibn Tamiyya. St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) shares with the Shaykh a general historical context as well as a famously passionate devotion to mystical practice as a strategy for achieving proximity to God. He, too, has engendered scholarly interest in his attitude toward women and the feminine as intrinsic to making that ascent, and not just among his earliest hagiographers, but through hundreds of interpreters since, most recently André Vauchez and Jacques Dalarun. Yet, despite generations of scholarship on that point, a comparative study of these two mystics has yet to be published. 'Transcending the Feminine: Negotiations of Gender in the Mysticism of Ibn al-'Arabī and Francis of Assisi' endeavors to fill that gap, and in so doing to unpack the distinctive aspects of the saint's and the Shaykh's mystical approaches, demonstrating intersections as well as departure points.
Religious history
Philosophy, religion and theology;Christianity;Francis;Ibn al-arabi;Islam