Professors Michael Sells and Hany Ibrahim explore the poetry of Muḥyī ad-Dīn Ibn al-‘Arabī (1165-1240), the Andalusian scholar, mystic, poet, and author known as the Shaykh al-Akbar, “The Greatest Master.” One of the most influential Islamic thinkers and spiritual figures of all time, Ibn al-‘Arabi is best known for his voluminous Futuḥāt al-Makkiya, The Meccan Openings, once called “the greatest spiritual encyclopedia ever written by a single author,” and his highly influential and shorter philosophical-mystical work, al-Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, The Ringstones of Wisdom; both works are filled with his unique style of spiritually didactic poetry. But Ibn al-‘Arabi was also a gifted lyrical poet with an distinctive, but highly influential style, and the most recent edition of his Diwān, or collection of poetry, fills five volumes and over 2,000 pages. His theories of poetry and his metaphysical frameworks and terminology came to be used to interpret Sufi and other Islamic poetry, as well as inspiring generations of poets in virtually every Islamic language from his time down to the present-day.

Links and Further Reading/Listening:

Michael Sells (trans.), The Translator of Desires (Princeton University Press, 2021)

Denis McAuley, Ibn `Arabi’s Mystical Poetics (Oxford University Press, 2012)

Claude Addas, “The Ship of Stone” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society

Cyrus Zargar, Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of Ibn’ Arabi and ‘Iraqi (Univ of South Carolina Press, 2013)

Hany Ibrahim, Love in the Teachings of Ibn al-‘Arabi (Equinox Press, 2023).

Muhyiddin Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Poetry: https://ibnarabisociety.org/poetry-poems

William Chittick, “Ibn ‘Arabî”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Claude Addas, The Voyage of No Return (Islamic Texts Society, 2000).

William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (SUNY Press, 1994)

Online Collection of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Poetry: https://www.aldiwan.net/cat-poet-Ibn-Arabi

Professors Prashant Keshavmurthy and Shankar Nair explore the brilliant and multilingual poetry of Amir Khusraw (651-725 /1253–1325), one of the most celebrated and influential South Asian poets, known as Tuti-i Hindi, “The Parrot of India”. A court poet and an devoted disciple of the great Sufi saint, Nizam al-din Awliya’ (next to whom he is buried in Delhi), Khusraw is known for his mastery of multiple genres, flowing style and īhām (double or more-entendres), his musical ability (he is sometimes called “the father of qawwali”), and remarkable creativity. His poetry is still popularly sung today in South Asia and South Asian communities around the world.

Links and Further Reading/Listening:

Amīr Khusraw, In the Bazaar of Love: The Selected Poetry of Amīr Khusrau. Translated by Paul Edward Losensky and Sunil Sharma. Penguin Books, 2011.

Sunil Sharma, Amir Khusraw: The Poet of Sultans and Sufis. Oneworld Publications, 2005

Alicia Gabbay, Islamic Tolerance: Amir Khusraw and Pluralism. Routledge, 2010)

Mohammad Habib, Hazrat Amir Khusrau of Delhi. Bombay: Taraporevala Sons and Co., 1927. (Reprint; Lahore, 1979).

Mohammad Wahid Mirza, Life and Works of Amir Khusrau. Lahore: Punjab University Press, 1962. (Reprint; Delhi, 1974).

Faruqi, Shamsur Rahman. A Stranger in the City: The Poetics of Sabk-e Hindi. Annual of Urdu Studies vol. 19 (2004).

Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context, and Meaning in Qawwali. University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Bruce Lawrence, Morals for the Heart: Conversations of Shaykh Nizam ad-din Awliya Recorded by Amir Hasan Sijzi. Paulist Press, 1992.

Carl Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Sunil Kumar, The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, 1192-1286. Permanent Black, 2010

Sunil Sharma, Five Centuries of Copying, Illustrating and Reading Amir Khusraw’s Poetry, <

Professors Nicholas Boylston and Cyrus Zargar explore the striking poetry of ‘Attar of Nishapur, an seminal Persian Sufi poet and master of the Persian Masnavi (epic in rhymed-couplets) genre. His Conference of the Birds is a masterpiece of Sufi literature, and it and ‘Attar’s other poetic works, including his ghazals, exerted a strong influence on later Sufi poets, especially Rumi.

Links and Further Reading/Listening:

“Attar’s “Conference of the Birds” – The Greatest Sufi Masterpiece?” Let’s Talk Religion

Dick Davis and Afkham Darbandi , The Conference of the Birds (London: Penguin Classics, 1984)

Zargar, Cyrus, Religion of Love: Sufism and Self-Transformation in the Poetic Imagination of ʿAṭṭār (Albany: SUNY Press, 2024).

Lewisohn, Leonard and Christopher Shackle, Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).

Austin O’Malley, The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction: Farid al-Din ʿAttar and Persian Sufi Didacticism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023,

Boylston, Nicholas, “Writing the Kaleidoscope of Reality: The Significance of Diversity in the 6 th/12 th Century Persian Metaphysical Literature of Sanā’ī,’Ayn Al-Qudāt and’Attār.” PhD diss..
Georgetown University, 2017.

Kenneth Avery and Ali Alizadeh, Fifty Poems of Attar, (Melbourne: re.press, 2007)

Host: Oludamini Ogunnaike

Guests: Nicholas Boylston and Cyrus Zargar

Edited By: Alana Bittner, WJTU

Online Collection of ‘Attar’s Poetry (in Persian): https://ganjoor.net/attar

Professors Fatemeh Keshavarz and Cyrus Zargar explore the poetry of Sa‘di, the traveling poet of 7th/13th-century Shiraz known for his fluid and natural style, wit, and wisdom. His Bustan and Gulistan are considered masterpieces of Persian composition and were widely-studied from the Balkans to Bengal, influencing later Persian as well as European authors.

Links and Further Reading/Listening:

Thackston, W.M. The Gulistan (Rose Garden) is Sa’di: A Bilingual English and Persian Edition (Bethesda, MD: Ibex Publishers, 2008).

Keshavarz, Fatemeh. Lyrics of Life: Sa’di on Love, Cosmopolitanism and Care of the Self (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014).

Zargar, Cyrus, The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017).

Ingenito, Domenico, Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry (Boston: Brill, 2020)

Online Collection of Sa‘di’s Poetry (in Persian): https://ganjoor.net/saadi

Host: Oludamini Ogunnaike

Guests: Fatemeh Keshavarz and Cyrus Zargar

Edited By: Alana Bittner, WJTU

Professors James Morris and Arjun Nair discuss the poetry of the “Sultan of Lovers,” ‘Umar ibn al-Farid, the 7th/13th-century Egyptian poet whose qasidas (odes) are widely considered to be among the best ever composed in the Arabic language.

Links and Further Reading/Listening:

Ibn al-Farid – The Sufi Poet of Love & Oneness, Let’s Talk Religion

T. Emil Homerin, ʻUmar Ibn Al-Fāriḍ: Sufi Verse, Saintly Life (New York: Paulist Press, 2001).

——, Passion Before me, My Fate Behind: Ibn al-Fāriḍ and the Poetry of Recollection, (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2011).

——, “ ‘On the Battleground’: Al-Nābulusī’s Encounters with a Poem by Ibn al-Fāriḍ.” Journal of Arabic Literature (2007): 352-410.

——, The Wine of Love and Life: Ibn Al-Farid’s Al-Khamriyah and Al-Qaysari’s Quest for Meaning (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2005)

Arberry, A.J., The Mystical Poems of Ibn al-Farid (Dublin: The Chester Beatty Monographs, 1956).

Nair, Arjun, “Compacts, Pacts, and Covenants in Saʿīd al-Dīn Farghānī’s Commentary on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Naẓm al-sulūk.” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society 73 (2023).

——, “Poetry and Sufi Commentary: A Case of/for Religious Reading in Premodern Sufism.” Journal of Islamic Studies (2023)..

Links to performances of Ibn al-Farid’s Poetry: https://sites.harvard.edu/sulaymanibnqiddees/tag/ibn-al-farid/

Online Collection of Poems Attributed to Ibn al-Farid (in Arabic): https://www.aldiwan.net/cat-poet-bin-alfard

Host: Oludamini Ogunnaike

Guests: James Morris and Arjun Nair

Edited By: Alana Bittner, WJTU

Professors Nicholas Boylston and Parisa Zahiremami discuss the poetry and legacy of Hakim Sana’i, the seminal Persian Sufi and court poet of the 11th-12th century. His magnum opus, Hadiqat al-Haqiqa (The Garden of Reality), had a tremendous influence on Persian poets and literature after him.

Further Reading:

Parisa Zahiremami, “Sanāʾi’s Hadiqat al-haqiqeh: Between Narrative and Non-narrative.” Iranian Studies 54, no. 3-4 (2021): 485-519.

——, “Cosmopolitanism, Poetry, and Kingship: The Ideal Ruler in Sanāʾī’s (d. 1131 or 1135 CE) Poetry.” PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2022.

Boylston, Nicholas, “Writing the Kaleidoscope of Reality: The Significance of Diversity in the 6 th/12 th Century Persian Metaphysical Literature of Sanā’ī,’Ayn Al-Qudāt and’Attār.” PhD diss..
Georgetown University, 2017.

Franklin Lewis, “Reading, Writing, and Recitation: Sana’i and the Origins of the Persian Ghazal” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1995.

JTP De Bruijn, Of Piety and Poetry: The Interaction of Religion and Literature in the Life and Works of Hakīm Sanā‘ī of Ghazna (Leiden: EJ Brill, 1983).

Online Collection of Sana’i’s Poetry (in Persian): https://ganjoor.net/sanaee

Host: Oludamini Ogunnaike

Guests: Nicholas Boylston and Parisa Zahiremami

Edited By Alana Bittner, WJTU

Professors Carl Ernst and Cyrus Zargar discuss the poetry and singular legacy of al-Hallaj, the famous early Sufi poet and teacher who became legendary for his shocking statement, Ana al-Ḥaqq, “I am the Real,” and his dramatic execution by the authorities in Baghdad in 309/ 922. al-Hallaj left behind a body of beautiful Sufi poetry in Arabic that is still popular today and became a legendary figure in Sufi literature.

Links and Further Reading/Listening:

“Life, Works, and Poetic Legacy of a Martyred Mystic” Abbasid History Podcast.

Carl Ernst, al-Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Martyr (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2018)

Louis Massignon, Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr-Abridged Edition. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021)

Kevin Blankinship, “The House of His Desires: The Life and Legacy of al-Hallaj,” Lapham’s Quarterly:

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/house-his-desires

Kitab al-Tawasin (Arabic, with Persian commentary by Ruzbihan Baqli and French translation by Louis Massignon): https://archive.org/details/kitbalawsn00usaiuoft/page/n13/mode/2up

Links to performances of Hallaj’s Poetry:

https://sites.harvard.edu/sulaymanibnqiddees/tag/hallaj/

Online Collection of Poems attributed to al-Hallaj (in Arabic):

https://www.aldiwan.net/cat-poet-Al-Hallaj

Host: Oludamini Ogunnaike

Guests: Carl Ernst and Cyrus Zargar

Edited By Alana Bittner, WJTU