Certitude (in Ṣūfism) - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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[Article]
First Statement of Responsibility
Khalil, Atif
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
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Leiden
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Brill
GENERAL NOTES
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(932 words)
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
In the technical lexicon of Ṣūfism , certitude (yaqīn) refers to a state of knowledge about the nature of reality-centred primarily on God, prophecy, death, and the postulates of religion-that is not susceptible to doubt, obfuscation, or disproof. In his famous autobiography, al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl ("The deliverance from error"), al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) argued that only the Ṣūfīs possessed true certainty (or a certainty worthy of its name) and that this was the fruit of direct, experiential knowledge or "tasting" (dhawq) . Their state, he felt, was