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Lost in a Sea of Letters
Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya and the Plurality of Sufi Knowledge
Series: - Islamicate Intellectual History, Volume: 14
Author:
In Lost in a Sea of Letters, Cyril Uy explores the life and work of Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya (d. 1252), a Mongol-era Sufi whose arcane treatises inspired generations of mystics and messiahs. Reading Ḥamūya in dialogue with contemporaries across Central Asia, Iran, and the Eastern Mediterranean, Uy excavates a world in which knowledge was an embodied sensibility: a way of being that could improvise across all dimensions of human experience. Ḥamūya’s performative writing reworked the foundations of this knowledge, provoking readers to live reality through the cacophony of his Sufi free jazz. Foregrounding Ḥamūya’s deconstructive ethos and radical openness to interpretation, Uy reveals how embracing plurality could thrive as a mode of social, intellectual, and spiritual competition.
Cyril V. Uy II, Ph.D. (2021), Brown University, is Assistant Professor of Religion at James Madison University.
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Note on Transliteration and Usage
Introduction
1 Ecce homo
2 Theory and Method (or, How to Read Ḥamūya)
3 Progression of Themes (Lead Sheet)
1 Riffing on the Real: Letters and the Language of God
1 (In)coherence of the Philosophers
2 Ḥamūya and the Ḥurūf
3 The Science of Letters in Ibn ʿArabī’s Meccan Revelations
4 Dynamism and Difference
5 Conclusion
2 Sufi Free Jazz: Prayer, Deconstruction, and Boundless Play
1 Body and Soul: The Sufi Manuals of Najm al-Dīn Kubrā, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī, and Shihāb al-Dīn ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī
2 Both Directions at Once: The Levels of Joy as Sufi Free Jazz
3 Meditations: Prayer as Spiritual Technology?
4 Ascension: Ḥamūya’s Prayers as Free Jazz Improvisation?
5 Conclusion
3 Calculating Infinity: Diagram and/as Devotion
1 Repetition and Difference: The Mirror of Spirits as Sufi Devotional Text
2 Dada Talismans? Deconstructing Visual Language
3 Diagramming Devotion: The Mirror of Spirits as Abstract Machine
4 Conclusion
4 Genealogies of Knowledge: Shaykhs, Sufis, and Spiritual Inheritance
1 Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya and the All-Powerful Sufi Shaykh
2 Najm al-Dīn Kubrā and ʿAmmār al-Bidlīsī
3 Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī and Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī
4 Spiritual Inheritance and the Politics of Citation
5 The Ḥamūya Clan
6 The Ayyūbid Context: Ḥamūya and the Chief Sufis of Egypt and Syria
7 The Mongol Context: Ḥamūya and the “Golden Kin”
8 Conclusion
5 Real Talk: Language, Revelation, and Human Perfection
1 Prophecy and Sainthood: An Overview
2 Prophecy and Sainthood as Relational Principles
3 Endless Deferrals in The Book of the Beloved
4 Inimitability, Incomprehensibility, and Wonder
5 Conclusion
Coda
Appendix1: Biographical Essay
Appendix2: Literature Review
Appendix3: List of Ḥamūya’s Works
Appendix4: Mirror of Spirits Structure
Bibliography
Index
List of Figures
Note on Transliteration and Usage
Introduction
1 Ecce homo
2 Theory and Method (or, How to Read Ḥamūya)
3 Progression of Themes (Lead Sheet)
1 Riffing on the Real: Letters and the Language of God
1 (In)coherence of the Philosophers
2 Ḥamūya and the Ḥurūf
3 The Science of Letters in Ibn ʿArabī’s Meccan Revelations
4 Dynamism and Difference
5 Conclusion
2 Sufi Free Jazz: Prayer, Deconstruction, and Boundless Play
1 Body and Soul: The Sufi Manuals of Najm al-Dīn Kubrā, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī, and Shihāb al-Dīn ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī
2 Both Directions at Once: The Levels of Joy as Sufi Free Jazz
3 Meditations: Prayer as Spiritual Technology?
4 Ascension: Ḥamūya’s Prayers as Free Jazz Improvisation?
5 Conclusion
3 Calculating Infinity: Diagram and/as Devotion
1 Repetition and Difference: The Mirror of Spirits as Sufi Devotional Text
2 Dada Talismans? Deconstructing Visual Language
3 Diagramming Devotion: The Mirror of Spirits as Abstract Machine
4 Conclusion
4 Genealogies of Knowledge: Shaykhs, Sufis, and Spiritual Inheritance
1 Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya and the All-Powerful Sufi Shaykh
2 Najm al-Dīn Kubrā and ʿAmmār al-Bidlīsī
3 Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī and Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī
4 Spiritual Inheritance and the Politics of Citation
5 The Ḥamūya Clan
6 The Ayyūbid Context: Ḥamūya and the Chief Sufis of Egypt and Syria
7 The Mongol Context: Ḥamūya and the “Golden Kin”
8 Conclusion
5 Real Talk: Language, Revelation, and Human Perfection
1 Prophecy and Sainthood: An Overview
2 Prophecy and Sainthood as Relational Principles
3 Endless Deferrals in The Book of the Beloved
4 Inimitability, Incomprehensibility, and Wonder
5 Conclusion
Coda
Appendix1: Biographical Essay
Appendix2: Literature Review
Appendix3: List of Ḥamūya’s Works
Appendix4: Mirror of Spirits Structure
Bibliography
Index
All interested in medieval Sufism, Islamic philosophy, Islamic intellectual history, religious studies, hermeneutics, performativity, or the history of knowledge.