Sufis and Saints' Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power in Islam

by Scott Kugle

Overview

Islam is often described as abstract, ascetic, and uniquely disengaged from the human body. Scott Kugle refutes this assertion in the first full study of Islamic mysticism as it relates to the human body. Examining Sufi conceptions of the body in religious writings from the late fifteenth through the nineteenth century, Kugle demonstrates that literature from this era often treated saints' physical bodies as sites of sacred power.

Sufis and Saints' Bodies focuses on six important saints from Sufi communities in North Africa and South Asia. Kugle singles out a specific part of the body to which each saint is frequently associated in religious literature. The saints' bodies, Kugle argues, are treated as symbolic resources for generating religious meaning, communal solidarity, and the experience of sacred power. In each chapter, Kugle also features a particular theoretical problem, drawing methodologically from religious studies, anthropology, studies of gender and sexuality, theology, feminism, and philosophy. Bringing a new perspective to Islamic studies, Kugle shows how an important Islamic tradition integrated myriad understandings of the body in its nurturing role in the material, social, and spiritual realms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807872772
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	09/01/2011
Series:	Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Scott A. Kugle is author of Rebel between Spirit and Law: Ahmad Zarruq and Juridical Sainthood in North Africa. He lives in India.

Table of Contents

Foreword   Carl W. Ernst   Bruce B. Lawrence     ix
Preface     xi
Note on Transliteration     xv
Introduction     1
Body Enshrined: The Bones of Mawlay Idris     43
Body Politicized: The Belly of Sayyida Amina     81
Body Refined: The Eyes of Muhammad Ghawth     123
Body Enraptured: The Lips of Shah Hussayn     181
Body Revived: The Heart of Hajji Imdadullah     221
Conclusion: Corporeality and Sacred Power in Islam     265
Notes     295
Bibliography     317
Index     327

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A magnificent work manifesting all the features of a morally engaged scholarship: an intimate embrace of the human body within a kind of 'muted universalism'; a powerful focus on transgressive Sufi saints as countercultural actors; a radical queering of all those potentially violent and finally unbelievable binarisms (male/female, sexuality/spirituality, orthodox/heterodox); and a constant widening of the analysis into the comparative erotics of mystical literature in both the Christian West and Hindu South Asia. Many a reader will find real hope, and real heart, here. I certainly did.—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism



A magnificent work manifesting all the features of a morally engaged scholarship. Many a reader will find real hope, and real heart, here. I certainly did.—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism



This book addresses a significant lacuna in the study of Islam. Combining academic methodologies with an internal religious approach, Kugle argues for a new, body-centered phenomenology of Sufism that highlights its distinctive characteristics as an Islamic perspective. The book's in-depth discussions of individuals who lived as far afield as Morocco and India provide many new insights into Islam as a complex living tradition that is as concerned with the body as it is with the mind.—Shahzad Bashir, Carleton College



Sufis and Saints' Bodies is a pioneering endeavor that links the study of Islam to major research agendas in religious studies. Using a rich body of previously untapped sources in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu from late medieval and early modern Islamic history, Kugle explores the theoretically fertile concept of 'embodiment' with methodological rigor and analytical depth. He tackles questions of social identity, religious allegiance, and cultural modernity in exemplary fashion and succeeds in opening new vistas in the study of Sufism. A rare achievement.—Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Washington University in St. Louis

Editorial Reviews

A superb scholarly work which is animated by a passionate sympathy for the world it studies.—Muslim World Book Review



Groundbreaking and sets a high standard for any future work on the topic. . . . A milestone in the comparative study of Sufi traditions and a major contribution to the field of religion and the body.—Journal of the American Academy of Religion



[An] intriguing, well-researched book. . . . Highly recommended.—CHOICE



A brilliant and important book.—Elixir



Glistening with the author's immense learning and passion for the material and his clear linguistic and historical expertise in the Muslim literatures of the pre- and early modern Arab and Indo-Persian worlds. . . . This book is truly a joy to read. . . . Essential reading for scholars of premodern and contemporary Islam alike.—Journal of Religion

From the Publisher