Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-369-46747-5
Ph.D.
Religious Studies
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2016
This dissertation investigates the role of the body in medieval Sufism through an analysis of the portrayals of human, animal and prophetic bodies in the first of Nizami Ganjavi's Masnavi poems, the Makhzan al-asrar. Though the nature of Nizami as poet, mystic, ethicist, and scientist has been a topic of debate for several decades, barely discussed in this ongoing conversation is the first poem in his Quintet, the Treasury of Mysteries. A mystico-ethical text, it was emulated in both meter and structure by a vast number of Persian poets after him. In spite of its immense popularity and importance, this poem, especially its long introductory sections, are often overlooked in contemporary scholarship. This is in part because they challenge long-held but problematic definitions of Sufism as an antinomian tendency within Islam that is primarily interested in human love as a metaphor for divine proximity. This dissertation argues that these texts can, as Scott Kugle and Shahzad Bashir have pointed out, become sources for learning about medieval Sufi habitus-as sedimented sources of religious mores, bodily comportments, social relations, history, science, and meaning. As such, this dissertation will challenge previous characterizations of medieval Sufism by investigating the importance of bodily practice in a significant medieval poem.
Language, literature and linguistics;Philosophy, religion and theology;Social sciences;Ganjavi, Nizami;Makhzan al-asrar;Medieval Sufi habitus;Sufism;Treasury of Mysteries