Understanding Ibn ‘Arabi Autumn online seminars November 2021
Presented by the Institute for Ibn ‘Arabi Studies (based at the Kerim Foundation) and the Institute for Sufi Studies at Üsküdar University, in collaboration with the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society.
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Mukhtar Ali: ‘Dawud al-Qaysari’s Muqaddima: The Essential Introduction to Ibn ‘Arabi’
27th November, 2021, 20.00 (İstanbul), 17.00 GMT (Londra)
A panel discussion between the speakers of themes arising during the seminars
Moderator: Hasan Kerim Güç
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij-s2_JLvo0
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Speakers and Presentations
Mukhtar H. Ali (Ph.D) (2007) University of California, Berkeley, is a Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He specializes in Sufism, Islamic philosophy and ethics, but his areas of interest also include Arabic and Persian literature, Qurʾanic studies and comparative religion. He is the author of Philosophical Sufism: An Introduction to the School of Ibn al-ʿArabi (Routledge, 2021) and The Horizons of Being: The Metaphysics of Ibn al-ʿArabi in the Muqaddimat al-Qayṣari (Brill, 2020).
He has translated some contemporary metaphysical texts, The New Creation (Sage Press, 2018) and The Law of Correspondence (Sage Press, 2021).
Mukhtar H. Ali writes: ‘This talk explores the writings of Dawud al-Qaysari (d. 751/1350), the preeminent commentator of Ibn ‘Arabi’s works. Qaysari’s introduction to his commentary on the Fusus al-Hikam – popularly known as the Muqaddimat al-Qaysari – is a masterpiece of Sufism that distills in clear and precise language Ibn ʿArabi’s entire metaphysical worldview. As such, it is a foundational, introductory text in the school of Ibn ʿArabi, elucidating the key doctrines of Philosophical Sufism: Being, the divine attributes, the universal worlds, the imaginal world, unveiling, creation and the microcosm, the perfect human, the origin and return of the spirit, prophethood and sainthood.’
Hasan Kerim Güç is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Sufi Studies, Üsküdar University, Istanbul. His studies include Sufism and the thought, history and Islamic literature of the Ottoman period. He worked in Virginia, USA, in software engineering between 1999-2010. He is currently the Managing Director of Nefes Publishing (Nefes specialises in books on Islamic texts and Sufi studies. It also includes the Tuti imprint, which specialises in popular science).
He is a founding and board member of the Kerim Foundation and is the author of Ken’an Rifai’nin Dervişlik Anlayışı (Kenan Rifai’s Understanding of Dervish) (Nefes, 2020) and The Birds of Attar (Nefes, 2021). He has also published translations of philosophical classics.
