Cyrus A Zargar
I am interested in using the study of literature in Arabic and Persian to explore classical Sufi thought. Lyric poetry, especially in its connections to theoretical Sufism, interests me most. Other interests include ethics in literature, Shii mysticism, and religion and film. My graduate work was at UC Berkeley in Near Eastern Studies, and my undergraduate work was at UCLA in English literature and Latin.
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Books by Cyrus A Zargar
Islamic philosophy and Sufism evolved as distinct yet interweaving strands of Islamic thought and practice. Despite differences, they have shared a concern with the perfection of the soul through the development of character. In The Polished Mirror, Cyrus Ali Zargar studies the ways in which, through teaching and storytelling, pre-modern Muslims lived, negotiated, and cultivated virtues. Examining the writings of philosophers, ascetics, poets, and saints, he locates virtue ethics within a dynamic moral tradition.
In this study Zargar responds to a long-standing debate in the study of Sufi poetics over the use of erotic language to describe the divine. He argues that such language results from an altered perception of Muslim mystics in which divine beauty and human beauty are seen as one reality. The Sufi masters, Zargar asserts, shared an aesthetic vision quite different from those who have often studied them. Sufism's foremost theoretician, Ibn 'Arabi, is presented from a neglected perspective as a poet, aesthete, and lover of the human form. Ibn 'Arabi in fact proclaimed a view of human beauty markedly similar to that of many mystics from a Persian contemplative school of thought, the "School of Passionate Love," which would later find its epitome in 'Iraqi, one of Persian literature's most celebrated poet-saints. Many in this school advocated the controversial practice of gazing at beautiful human faces, a topic Zargar also discusses.
The examination of central Sufi texts in Persian and Arabic establishes that the profundity attributed to mystical encounters with the sensory and supersensory has far-reaching extensions in evaluations of that which is seen, that which is deemed beautiful, and that which is expressed as a result. Through this aesthetic approach, this comparative study overturns assumptions made not only about Sufism and classical Arabic and Persian poetry, but also other uses of erotic imagery in Muslim approaches to sexuality, the human body, and the paradise of the afterlife described in the Qur'an.""
Papers by Cyrus A Zargar
“Asad Allāh Qazwīnī’s Cosmology of the Ahl al-bayt: A Study and Critical Edition of Kitāb-i Walāyat-i muṭlaqa,” introduction by Cyrus Ali Zargar, edition by Alireza Asghari, *Islamic Thought and the Art of Translation: Texts and Studies in Honor of William C. Chittick and Sachiko Murata*, ed. Mohammed Rustom, Leiden: Brill, 2023, pp. 389-415.
Chapter 14 in *From the Divine to the Human: Contemporary Islamic Thinkers on Evil, Suffering, and the Global Pandemic,* ed. Muhammad Faruque and Mohammed Rustom (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2023), pp. 214-226.
“Transcending Character as a Quest for Union: The Place of al-Jamʿ in Sufi Ethical Commentaries on Khwāja ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī’s Waystations,” Mysticism and Ethics in Islam, edited by Bilal Orfali, Atif Khalil, and Mohammed Rustom. Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 2022. Pp. 163-186.
Issue 89:1 (March 2021), pp. 272-297.
Abstract: While Sufi writings have largely depicted futuwwa as the selfless virtue of upright young men, there has been, throughout Islam's intellectual history, an underlying current characterised by brave rebelliousness, a current tied to the virtue's complex relationship with urban fraternal societies. This paper investigates Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī's (d. 638/1240) deliberate response to futuwwa's implications of recalcitrance. Making a case for a law-abiding variety of the virtue, Ibn ʿArabī builds a theoretical frame in which this manly trait, one of consideration and altruism, mimics divine attributes , especially a divine calculating wisdom. In doing so, Ibn ʿArabī performs a role that Jeff Mitchell describes as the prerogative of noble elites, historically speaking, namely, the social construction of virtue. As is argued here, while Ibn ʿArabī makes a careful case for a law-abiding futuwwa, the lingering resonances of the virtue's gangster associations indicate that social influence is, to a degree, reciprocal. That is, while Ibn ʿArabī's framing of futuwwa makes a detailed and metaphysically-substantiated case for law-abidingness, his argument also suggests, however implicitly, that the virtue cannot completely escape its non-elite outlaw framework.
INFORMATION: Zargar, Cyrus A. (2020) "The Gaze and a Sufi Ethics of Vision in Majidi’s The Willow Tree: Form, Meaning, and the Real," Journal of Religion & Film: Vol. 24 : Iss. 1 , Article 55. AT:
https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol24/iss1/55/
The entire issue is open access. You can read and download all articles here: https://brill.com/view/journals/jie/4/1-2/jie.4.issue-1-2.xml?language=en
Please download from: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1943&context=jrf
The version uploaded here is a proof with minor errors.
Citation: Zargar, Cyrus Ali. “The Secret of the Morality Tale: Saʿdī on What It Means To Be Human.” Renovatio 2:1 (Spring 2018), pp. 81-88.
A description of the book: Islamic philosophy and Sufism evolved as distinct yet interpenetrating strands of Islamic thought and practice. Despite differences, they have shared a concern with the perfection of the soul through the development of character. In The Polished Mirror, Cyrus Ali Zargar studies the ways in which, through teaching and storytelling, pre-modern Muslims lived, negotiated, and cultivated virtues. Examining the writings of philosophers, ascetics, poets, and saints, he locates virtue ethics within a dynamic moral tradition.
Muslim philosophers inherited, from the ancient Greek tradition, the Aristotelian conception of a threefold soul (vegetable, animal, and rational) that emerges concomitant with the human body. The relationship between that body—one maintained by a balance of four humors—and virtuous human character traits occupied every major thinker in classical Islamic philosophical ethics, from the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ and Miskawayh to Abū Ḥamid al-Ghazālī. The possibility of a perfected constitution that would allow for the development of the perfect human intellect became the basis for Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, a text that expands upon and indeed alters Avicenna’s view on the relationship between climes, the human constitution, and the human soul. In the philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā, two factors allowed for even further contemplation upon the perfect constitution: First, Ṣadrā’s theory of substantial motion allowed him and his followers to view the soul-body relationship not as an accidental attachment, but rather as a completely integrated development: The soul begins as body, even if it becomes abstracted from the body in its substantive transformation. Second, Ṣadrā’s access to narrations from the Shii Hadith canon concerning the “root-clay” (ṭīna) provided a scriptural basis for the possibility of the ethically perfect body. In such narrations, the hearts of the believers, in contrast to the hearts of the disbelievers, are composed of superior clay that yields their tendency to good—clay ultimately derived from the clay of the imam. In his role as a Hadith specialist, Fayḍ Kāshānī, the most eminent student of Ṣadrā, greatly expands on the relationship between the imam’s ṭīna and ethical perfection. As evidenced in the writings of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī and especially ʿAllāmah Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabā’ī, contemplation on the perfections of the imam’s body has real implications not only for Shii psychology and eschatology, but also for the lived practice of Shii Islam.
Islamic philosophy and Sufism evolved as distinct yet interweaving strands of Islamic thought and practice. Despite differences, they have shared a concern with the perfection of the soul through the development of character. In The Polished Mirror, Cyrus Ali Zargar studies the ways in which, through teaching and storytelling, pre-modern Muslims lived, negotiated, and cultivated virtues. Examining the writings of philosophers, ascetics, poets, and saints, he locates virtue ethics within a dynamic moral tradition.
In this study Zargar responds to a long-standing debate in the study of Sufi poetics over the use of erotic language to describe the divine. He argues that such language results from an altered perception of Muslim mystics in which divine beauty and human beauty are seen as one reality. The Sufi masters, Zargar asserts, shared an aesthetic vision quite different from those who have often studied them. Sufism's foremost theoretician, Ibn 'Arabi, is presented from a neglected perspective as a poet, aesthete, and lover of the human form. Ibn 'Arabi in fact proclaimed a view of human beauty markedly similar to that of many mystics from a Persian contemplative school of thought, the "School of Passionate Love," which would later find its epitome in 'Iraqi, one of Persian literature's most celebrated poet-saints. Many in this school advocated the controversial practice of gazing at beautiful human faces, a topic Zargar also discusses.
The examination of central Sufi texts in Persian and Arabic establishes that the profundity attributed to mystical encounters with the sensory and supersensory has far-reaching extensions in evaluations of that which is seen, that which is deemed beautiful, and that which is expressed as a result. Through this aesthetic approach, this comparative study overturns assumptions made not only about Sufism and classical Arabic and Persian poetry, but also other uses of erotic imagery in Muslim approaches to sexuality, the human body, and the paradise of the afterlife described in the Qur'an.""
“Asad Allāh Qazwīnī’s Cosmology of the Ahl al-bayt: A Study and Critical Edition of Kitāb-i Walāyat-i muṭlaqa,” introduction by Cyrus Ali Zargar, edition by Alireza Asghari, *Islamic Thought and the Art of Translation: Texts and Studies in Honor of William C. Chittick and Sachiko Murata*, ed. Mohammed Rustom, Leiden: Brill, 2023, pp. 389-415.
Chapter 14 in *From the Divine to the Human: Contemporary Islamic Thinkers on Evil, Suffering, and the Global Pandemic,* ed. Muhammad Faruque and Mohammed Rustom (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2023), pp. 214-226.
“Transcending Character as a Quest for Union: The Place of al-Jamʿ in Sufi Ethical Commentaries on Khwāja ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī’s Waystations,” Mysticism and Ethics in Islam, edited by Bilal Orfali, Atif Khalil, and Mohammed Rustom. Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 2022. Pp. 163-186.
Issue 89:1 (March 2021), pp. 272-297.
Abstract: While Sufi writings have largely depicted futuwwa as the selfless virtue of upright young men, there has been, throughout Islam's intellectual history, an underlying current characterised by brave rebelliousness, a current tied to the virtue's complex relationship with urban fraternal societies. This paper investigates Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī's (d. 638/1240) deliberate response to futuwwa's implications of recalcitrance. Making a case for a law-abiding variety of the virtue, Ibn ʿArabī builds a theoretical frame in which this manly trait, one of consideration and altruism, mimics divine attributes , especially a divine calculating wisdom. In doing so, Ibn ʿArabī performs a role that Jeff Mitchell describes as the prerogative of noble elites, historically speaking, namely, the social construction of virtue. As is argued here, while Ibn ʿArabī makes a careful case for a law-abiding futuwwa, the lingering resonances of the virtue's gangster associations indicate that social influence is, to a degree, reciprocal. That is, while Ibn ʿArabī's framing of futuwwa makes a detailed and metaphysically-substantiated case for law-abidingness, his argument also suggests, however implicitly, that the virtue cannot completely escape its non-elite outlaw framework.
INFORMATION: Zargar, Cyrus A. (2020) "The Gaze and a Sufi Ethics of Vision in Majidi’s The Willow Tree: Form, Meaning, and the Real," Journal of Religion & Film: Vol. 24 : Iss. 1 , Article 55. AT:
https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol24/iss1/55/
The entire issue is open access. You can read and download all articles here: https://brill.com/view/journals/jie/4/1-2/jie.4.issue-1-2.xml?language=en
Please download from: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1943&context=jrf
The version uploaded here is a proof with minor errors.
Citation: Zargar, Cyrus Ali. “The Secret of the Morality Tale: Saʿdī on What It Means To Be Human.” Renovatio 2:1 (Spring 2018), pp. 81-88.
A description of the book: Islamic philosophy and Sufism evolved as distinct yet interpenetrating strands of Islamic thought and practice. Despite differences, they have shared a concern with the perfection of the soul through the development of character. In The Polished Mirror, Cyrus Ali Zargar studies the ways in which, through teaching and storytelling, pre-modern Muslims lived, negotiated, and cultivated virtues. Examining the writings of philosophers, ascetics, poets, and saints, he locates virtue ethics within a dynamic moral tradition.
Muslim philosophers inherited, from the ancient Greek tradition, the Aristotelian conception of a threefold soul (vegetable, animal, and rational) that emerges concomitant with the human body. The relationship between that body—one maintained by a balance of four humors—and virtuous human character traits occupied every major thinker in classical Islamic philosophical ethics, from the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ and Miskawayh to Abū Ḥamid al-Ghazālī. The possibility of a perfected constitution that would allow for the development of the perfect human intellect became the basis for Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, a text that expands upon and indeed alters Avicenna’s view on the relationship between climes, the human constitution, and the human soul. In the philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā, two factors allowed for even further contemplation upon the perfect constitution: First, Ṣadrā’s theory of substantial motion allowed him and his followers to view the soul-body relationship not as an accidental attachment, but rather as a completely integrated development: The soul begins as body, even if it becomes abstracted from the body in its substantive transformation. Second, Ṣadrā’s access to narrations from the Shii Hadith canon concerning the “root-clay” (ṭīna) provided a scriptural basis for the possibility of the ethically perfect body. In such narrations, the hearts of the believers, in contrast to the hearts of the disbelievers, are composed of superior clay that yields their tendency to good—clay ultimately derived from the clay of the imam. In his role as a Hadith specialist, Fayḍ Kāshānī, the most eminent student of Ṣadrā, greatly expands on the relationship between the imam’s ṭīna and ethical perfection. As evidenced in the writings of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī and especially ʿAllāmah Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabā’ī, contemplation on the perfections of the imam’s body has real implications not only for Shii psychology and eschatology, but also for the lived practice of Shii Islam.
In this week’s conversation, Dr Bilal Badat talks to Professor Cyrus Ali Zargar about some of the fascinating ideas that emerge in his book,' Sufi aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of Ibn 'Arabi and ‘Iraqi' (University of South Carolina Press, 2011). Professor Zargar describes the ways in which the writings of Muhyi al-Din ibn al-'Arabi and Fakhr al-Din ‘Iraqi contribute to an understanding of Islamic aesthetics, and explores the rich and diverse intersections between theology, cosmogony, and aesthetic thought.
Cyrus Ali Zargar is Al-Ghazali Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Central Florida. His first book, Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in Ibn ʿArabi and ʿIraqi, was published in 2011 by the University of South Carolina Press. His most recent book, The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism, was published in 2017 by Oneworld Press. His forthcoming book, Religion of Love: Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār and the Sufi Tradition, will be published by the Islamic Texts Society.
The interview series concludes the one-year AIWG project workshop "Beauty and Islamic Theology", a joint research program of the Centre for Islamic Theology at the Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen and the Chair of Islamic Religious Studies at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg.
https://themarginaliareview.com/philosophical-sufism-in-translation/