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Author ʻAyn al-Quḍāh al-Hamadhānī, ʻAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad, -1131, author.

Title The essence of reality : a defense of philosophical Sufism = Zubdat al-ḥaqā' iq / 'Ayn al-Quḍat ; edited and translated by Mohammed Rustom
Published New York : New York University Press, 2022
©2022

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Description 1 online resource (xxx, 241 pages)
Series Library of Arabic Literature ; 80
Library of Arabic literature.
Contents Intro -- Letter from the General Editor -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Note on the Text -- Notes to the Introduction -- The Essence of Reality -- Preamble -- Introduction: The Reason for Writing This Book -- Chapter 1: Who Will Benefit from This Book? -- Chapter 2: A Proof of the Eternal -- Chapter 3: God's Transcendence -- Chapter 4: Categories of Existence -- Chapter 5: Divine Names -- Chapter 6: Divine Attributes -- Chapter 7: The Divine Names Are Relations -- Chapter 8: Necessity, Contingency, Impossibility -- Chapter 9: Why Did God Effectuate Existence?
Chapter 10: The Face of God and Existents -- Chapter 11: God's Infinite Knowledge -- Chapter 12: Knowledge Is a Divine Attribute -- Chapter 13: God's Knowledge Is Changeless -- Chapter 14: A Glimpse at the Stage beyond the Intellect -- Chapter 15: The Inability to Comprehend God's Knowledge -- Chapter 16: True Faith -- Chapter 17: The Intellect's Proper Place -- Chapter 18: The Stage beyond the Intellect and Premises -- Chapter 19: The Inner Eye -- Chapter 20: Longing for God -- Chapter 21: Familiarity with the Spiritual World -- Chapter 22: The Stage of Prophecy
Chapter 23: Faith in the Unseen -- Chapter 24: The Path to Faith in Prophecy -- Chapter 25: The Stage beyond the Intellect and the Divine Attributes -- Chapter 26: The Intellect's Relationship to Love -- Chapter 27: The Lover's Attraction to the Beloved -- Chapter 28: The Last Stage of the Intellect -- Chapter 29: "The Incapacity to Perceive Is Perception" -- Chapter 30: A Transition -- Chapter 31: God's Essence and Attributes -- Chapter 32: The Divine Essence and Its Standpoints -- Chapter 33: The Way of the Righteous Predecessors -- Chapter 34: Scriptural Evidence
Chapter 35: The Divine Attributes Are Relations -- Chapter 36: Nonduality -- Chapter 37: A Note on the Eternity of the World -- Chapter 38: Divine Causation -- Chapter 39: The True Nature of Causation -- Chapter 40: An Example Using Natural Phenomena -- Chapter 41: The Oneness of Existence and Causation -- Chapter 42: An Example Using Mirrors -- Chapter 43: The Mirror of the Intellect -- Chapter 44: The Forms in Mirrors Are Relations -- Chapter 45: A Note on the Limits of the Intellect -- Chapter 46: Mirrors and the State of Dreaming -- Chapter 47: Divine Power and Human Power
Chapter 48: The Possible and the Impossible -- Chapter 49: Possibility Means Contingency -- Chapter 50: The Creation of the World and Time -- Chapter 51: Clarifications on the Term "World" -- Chapter 52: The Eternity of the World in the Eyes of the Recognizer -- Chapter 53: Do "Was" and "Is" Apply to God? -- Chapter 54: God's Beginninglessness and Time -- Chapter 55: A Hint at Perpetual Renewal -- Chapter 56: Perpetual Renewal -- Chapter 57: Divine Withness -- Chapter 58: A Note on Cosmic Order -- Chapter 59: Witnessing Perpetual Renewal --Chapter 60: God's Coextensiveness in the Eyes of the Recognizer
Summary A groundbreaking exposition of Islamic mysticismThe Essence of Reality was written over the course of just three days in 514/1120, by a scholar who was just twenty-four. The text, like its author ' Ayn al-Quḍat, is remarkable for many reasons, not least of which that it is in all likelihood the earliest philosophical exposition of mysticism in the Islamic intellectual tradition. This important work would go on to exert significant influence on both classical Islamic philosophy and philosophical mysticism.Written in a terse yet beautiful style, The Essence of Reality consists of one hundred brief chapters interspersed with Qur' anic verses, prophetic sayings, Sufi maxims, and poetry. In conversation with the work of the philosophers Avicenna and al-Ghazālī, the book takes readers on a philosophical journey, with lucid expositions of questions including the problem of the eternity of the world; the nature of God's essence and attributes; the concepts of "before" and "after"; and the soul's relationship to the body. All these discussions are seamlessly tied into ' Ayn al-Quḍat foundational argument--that mystical knowledge lies beyond the realm of the intellect
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English and Arabic; translated from Arabic
Print version record
Subject Sufism -- Early works to 1800
God (Islam) -- Early works to 1800
LITERARY COLLECTIONS -- Middle Eastern.
God (Islam)
Sufism
Genre/Form Early works
Form Electronic book
Author Rustom, Mohammed, editor, translator.
ʻAyn al-Quḍāh al-Hamadhānī, ʻAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad, -1131. Zubdat al-ḥaqāʼiq.
ISBN 1479816620
9781479816620
9781479816613
1479816612
Other Titles Zubdat al-ḥaqā' iq. English
Zubdat al-ḥaqā' iq