The Journeys of a Taymiyyan Sufi examines the life and doctrine of ʿImād al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Wāsiṭī (d. 711/1311), a little-known Ḥanbalī Sufi master from the circle of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328).
The Journeys of a Taymiyyan Sufi explores the life and teachings of ʿImād al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Wāsiṭī (d. 711/1311), a little-known Ḥanbalī Sufi master from the circle of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328). The ...first part of this book follows al-Wāsiṭī’s physical journey in search of spiritual guidance through a critical study of his autobiographical writings. This provides unique insights into the Rifāʿiyya, the Shādhiliyya, and the school of Ibn ʿArabī, several manifestations of Sufism that he encountered as he travelled from Wāsiṭ to Baghdad, Alexandria, and Cairo. Part I closes with his final destination, Damascus, where his membership of Ibn Taymiyya’s circle and his role as a Sufi teacher is closely examined. The second part focuses on al-Wāsiṭī’s spiritual journey through a study of his Sufi writings, which convey the distinct type of traditionalist Sufism that he taught in early eighth/fourteenth-century Damascus. Besides providing an overview of the spiritual path unto God from beginning to end as he formulated it, this reveals an exceptional interplay between Sufi theory and traditionalist theology.
Introduction Arjan Post
The Journeys of a Taymiyyan Sufi,
08/2020
Book Chapter
Odprti dostop
In the summer of 2014 I visited the Universitätsbibliothek Basel to view the Nachlass of Fritz Meier, a collection of personal unpublished papers and notes the late Swiss scholar of Sufism bequeathed ...to the university. At that time, I still aspired to devote my PhD project to the much-debated Ḥanbalī shaykh al-Islām Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) and his supposedly fraught relationship with taṣawwuf, commonly known in the West as Sufism. I was aware that Meier’s Nachlass contains some material that deals with this very topic and was hence curious to see what I would find. As I
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