© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/22105956-12341247

Journal of Sufiji Studies 2 (2013) 1–6 brill.com/jss

Introduction: Al-Qushayrī and His Legacy

Martin NguyenFairfijield University

USA

Matthew IngallsUniversity of Puget Sound

USA

AbstractAbū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) is a pivotal fijigure in the development of the Sufiji tradition. The articles that comprise the present issue of the Journal of Sufiji Studies pro-pose to shed new light on understudied areas in Qushayrī’s thought, corpus, and posthumous reception.

RésuméAbū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī (m. 465/1072) représente une fijigure-clef du développe-ment de la tradition soufijie. Les articles inclus dans ce numéro du Journal of Sufiji Studies essayent d’apporter un nouvel éclairage sur des aspects de la pensée de Qushayrī auparavant non étudiées, ainsi que sur son corpus d’écrits et sur l’histoire posthume de sa réception.

KeywordsKubrawiyya, Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt, Nishapur, Qur’anic exegesis, al-Qushayrī, Risāla, Sufijism, tafsīr

Abū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) is a pivotal fijigure in the development of the Sufiji tradition. Nishapur, his city of residence, was home to a rich milieu of often competing, but sometimes complementary, forms of the-ology and Islamic spirituality; in this city a variety of mystics and ascetics lived alongside Shiite devotees and Karrāmi pietists. The city’s Ḥanafijis and Shāfijiʿis actively opposed one another in social and political spheres of influence and the nascent Ashʿari school of theology, which was closely aligned with Shāfijiʿism and Sufijism, was targeted for persecution during Qushayrī’s lifetime. In fact, Qushayrī was arrested and imprisoned for his adherence to the school. In this heated and contentious environment, scholarly and spiritual identities were continuously in states of negotiation and self-assertion.

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With this context in mind, the Sufijism that Qushayrī adopted and would later transmit to future generations represents a coalescing of the eastwardly migrating Baghdad Sufiji tradition as well as the local Khurasani tradition of mys-ticism and piety. Under the tutelage of his fijirst Sufiji master Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq (d. 405/1015), Qushayrī became the recipient of the former.1 After Daqqāq’s death, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) became his new spiritual teacher, and he continued Qushayrī’s immersion in the Baghdadi tradition, while also positively introducing him to the teachings of Khurasani spiritual masters like Abū ʿUthmān al-Ḥīrī (d. 298/910) of the Malāmatiyya.2 Qushayrī also studied with the Nishapuri Sufiji teacher, Abū Saʿd al-Khargūshī (d. 406–7/1015–16) as well.3 Like his teachers, Qushayrī would ultimately develop his vision of Sufijism through his numerous compositions, many of which have for-tunately survived into the present time.

Although nearly all of Qushayrī’s works address Sufijism in some way, his larger corpus comprises a truly diverse assortment of texts on a wide range of subjects and intellectual concerns. As a result, modern studies of Qushayrī have largely focused on important individual works from his corpus. The ear-liest European research done on Qushayrī dates back to 1835 and rightfully addresses his most famous text the Risāla, an early and influential handbook on the history and principles of Sufijism.4 The scholarly studies of Qushayrī that would follow continued to focus on the Risāla,5 and a number of translations of the text—to varying degrees of completion—have since appeared.6

1 Jacqueline Chabbi, “Abū ʿAlī Daqqāq,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, 16 vols. to date (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982–2012), 1:255–7.

2 See Sara Sviri, “The Early Mystical Schools of Baghdad and Nishapur: In Search of Ibn Munāzil,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 30 (2005): 450–82; idem, “Hakīm al-Tirmidhī and the Malāmatī Movement in Early Sufijism,” in The Heritage of Sufijism, Volume I: Classical Persian Sufijism from its Origins to Rumi (700–1300), ed. Leonard Lewisohn (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999), 583–613.

3 That Qushayrī also studied with the Sufiji writer Khargūshī is indicated by the fact that the former is the transmitter of the latter’s sīra work Kitāb Sharaf al-muṣṭafā. Khargūshī, Manāḥil al-shifā wa-manāhil al-ṣafā bi-taḥqīq Kitāb Sharaf al-muṣṭafā, ed. Abū ʿĀṣim Nabīl b. Hāshim b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghamrī, 6 vols. (Mecca: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islamiyya, 2003).

4 Joseph Franz von Allioli, “Über die Risalet des Koschairi,” Abhandlungen der Philosphisch-Philologischen Classe 1 (1835): 55–78.

5 Richard Hartmann, al-Kuschairîs Darstellung des Sûfîtums (Berlin: Mayer and Müller, 1914); Arthur J. Arberry, “Al-Qushairī as Traditionist,” in Studia Orientalia Ioanni Pedersen: Septuagenario A.D. VII Id. Nov. Anno MCMLIII A Collegis Discipulis Amicis Dicata, ed. Johannes Pedersen (Hauniae: Munksgaard, 1953), 12–20; Nejib Ayed, “Kalām & Taṣawwuf: Essai sur les rapports entre l’Ašarisme et le Ṣūfijisme à travers l’œuvre d’Abū l-Qāsim al-Qušayrī (376–465/986–1072)” (PhD diss., Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1983); Alan Godlas, “Stations of Wisdom and Battlefijields of Love: Introduction and Translation,” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 5 (1985): 87–98; Reuven Snir, “Bāb al-Maḥabba (The Chapter on Love) in al-Risāla al-Qušayriyya: Rhetorical and Thematic Structure,” Israel Oriental Studies 19 (1999): 131–59; Jawid A. Mojaddedi, “Legitimizing Sufijism

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Notwithstanding the scholarly rigor of these early studies into the Risāla, the past few decades have witnessed a broadening of scholarly attention to include more of Qushayrī’s textual legacy, and studies have appeared on his spiritual grammars,7 other mystical texts,8 theological tracts,9 and Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr).10 This stream of original scholarship has advanced our understanding

in al-Qushayri’s ‘Risala’,” Studia Islamica 90 (2000): 37–50; idem, The Biographical Tradition in Sufijism: The Ṭabaqāt Genre from al-Sulamī to Jāmī (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001), 99–124; Kenneth S. Avery, A Pyschology of Early Ṣūfī Samāʿ: Listening and Altered States (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004); Diana Lobel, “On the Lookout: A Sufiji Riddle in al-Sulamī, al-Qushayrī, and Baḥyā ibn Paqūda,” Studies in Arabic and Islamic Culture 2 (2006): 87–120; and Michel Chodkiewicz, “Miʿrāj al-kalima: From the Risāla Qushayriyya to the Futūḥāt Makkiyya,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society 45 (2009): 1–19.

6 Münteḥābāt-ı Nāfijiʿa-yı Risāle-yi Ḳuşeyriyye [Ottoman Turkish], tr. ʿAbd al-Nāfijiʿ (Istanbul: ʿAtīḳ Żapṭiye Soḳağında 63 Numaralı Maṭbaʿa, 1307); Traite sur le soufijisme de l’imam erudit Abou ‘L-Kasim Abd ‘Oul-Kerim ibn Hawazin el-Kochairi [French], tr. Lébédew Olga (Rome: Casa Editrice Italiana, 1911); Wilson McClaughry Hume, “A Translation with Introduction and Notes of ‘The Risālah of Al-Qushairi Concerning the Science of Ṣūfijism’,” [English] (PhD diss., Kennedy School of Missions [Hartford Seminary], 1935); Risâle [Turkish], tr. Tahsin Yazıcı, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Millî Eǧitim Basımevi, 1966); Risāla-yi qushayriyyah [Urdu], tr. Pīr Muḥammad Ḥasan (1970); Kuşeyrı ̂risalesi [Turkish], tr. Süleyman Uludağ (Istanbul: Dergâh Yayınları, 1978); Risale-i Kuşeyriye [Turkish], tr. Ali Arslan (n.p.: Özdemir Basımevi, 1978); Qushayrī, Tarjama-yi risāla-yi qushayriyyah [Persian], ed. Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, 2nd ed. (Tehran: Markaz-i Intishārāt-i ʿIlm va Farhangī, 1982); Das Sendschreiben al-Qušayrīs über das Sufijitum [German], tr. Richard Gramlich (Stuttgart: Frank Steiner Wiesbaden, 1989); Principles of Sufijism [English], tr. Barbara R. von Schlegell (Oneonta, NY: Mizan Press, 1990); Cinzia Favi, “Al-Risāla al-Qušayriyya: traduzione ed analisi dei tre capitol—al-tawḥīd, al-maʿrifa, al-maḥabba” [Italian] (MA thesis, Rome, Pontifijicio Istituto di Studi Arabi e d’Islamistica, 1990); Giuseppe Scattolin (tr.), Esperienze mistiche nell’Islam: II. Le tappe di un cammino—Secoli X e XI. [Italian] (Bologna: Editrice Missionaria Italiana, 1996); Sufiji Book of Spiritual Ascent (Al-Risala Al-Qushayriya) [English], tr. Rabia Harris (Chicago: ABC Group International, 1997); Ar-Risāla al-Qušayriyya czyli Traktat o sufijizmie imama Abū al-Qāsima al-Qušayrīego (986–1072) [Polish], tr. Jerzy Nosowski (Warsaw: Dialog, 1997); The Risalah: Principles of Sufijism [English], tr. Rabia Harris (Chicago: Great Books of the Islamic World, 2002); Kuşeyrî Risâlesi: Sûfîlerin İnanç ve Ahlâkı [Turkish], trans. Dilaver Selvi (Istanbul: Semerkand, 2005); and Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufijism: al-Risala al-Qushayriyya fiji ʿilm al-tasawwuf [English], tr. Alexander Knysh (Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2007).

7 Tamás Iványi, “Towards a Grammar of the Heart: Al-Qušayrī’s Nahw al-qulūb,” The Arabist 17 (1996): 41–54; Francesco Chiabotti, “Naḥw al-qulūb al-ṣaġīr: La « Grammaire des Cœurs » de ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qušayrī – Présentation et traduction annotée,” Bulletin d’études orientales 58 (Septembre 2009): 385–402; F. Dominic Longo, “Spiritual Grammar: A Comparative Theological Study of Jean Gerson’s Donatus moralizatus and ʿ Abd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī’s Naḥw al-qulūb” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2011).

8 Fritz Meier, “Qušayrī’s Tartīb as-sulūk,” Oriens 16 (1963): 1–39; Qāsim Samarrāʾī, The Theme of Ascension in Mystical Writings: A Studay [sic] of the Theme in Islamic and Non-Islamic Mystical Writings (Baghdad: National Print. and Pub. Co, 1968); Frederick S. Colby, Narrating Muḥammad’s Night Journey: Tracing the Development of the Ibn ʿAbbās Ascension Discourse (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), 118–123; al-Sulamī, The Subtleties of the Ascension: Early Mystical Sayings on Muḥammad’s Heavenly Journey, tr. Frederick S. Colby (Louisville, KY: Fons

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of Qushayrī considerably and fortunately shows no signs of abating. Moreover, the reception of the corpus of his works throughout the centuries of Islamic intellectual history represents a promising anchor in tracing the trajectory of Sufiji thought, and remains to be interrogated thoroughly. Indeed, with an eye towards such scholarly exigencies, the articles that comprise the present vol-ume of the Journal of Sufiji Studies propose to shed new light on understudied areas in Qushayrī’s thought, corpus, and posthumous reception.

Vitae, 2006), 18–22; Florian Sobieroj, “Funktionen von Dichtung in al-Qušairīs Kitāb ʿUyūn al-aǧwiba. Ein sufijischer Diskurs über die Liebe (maḥabba),” in Arabische Welt: Grammatik, Dichtung und Dialekte: Beiträge einer Tagung in Erlangen zu Ehren von Wolfdietrich Fischer, ed. Shabo Talay and Hartmut Bobzin (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010), 179–206; idem, Die Responsen-sammlung Abū l-Qāsim al-Qušairī’s über das Sufijitum: Kritische Edition der ʿUyūn al-aǧwiba fī funūn al-asʾila (Wiesbaden: Harrassowtiz Verlag, 2012); Eliyahu Stern, “On the Authenticity of the Mytical Treatise Tartīb al-Sulūk Ascribed to Al-Qushayrī,” Studia Islamica, nouvelle edition/new series 3 (2012): 83–118; and Mojtaba Shahsavari, “Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī and His Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa-l-amthāl,” Ishraq: Islamic Philosophy Yearbook 3 (2012): 279–300.

9 Richard M. Frank, “Two Short Dogmatic Works of Abū l-Qāsim Al-Qushayrī, First Part: Edition and Translation of ‘Lumaʿ fī l-iʿtiqād’,” Mélanges: Institut Dominicain d’Etudes Orientales du Caire 15 (1982): 53–74; idem, “Two Short Dogmatic Works of Abū l-Qāsim Al-Qushayrī, Second Part: Edition and Translation of ‘Al-Fuṣūl fī l-Uṣūl’,” Mélanges: Institut Dominicain d’Etudes Orientales du Caire 16 (1983): 59–75.

10 Rashid Ahmad, “Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushairī as a Theologian and Commentator,” Islamic Quarterly 13 (1969): 16–69; Muḥammad Saʿīd Muḥammad ʿAṭiyya ʿIrām, “Al-Imām al-Qushayrī wa-kitābuh Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt fī al-tafsīr” (PhD diss., Azhar University, 1981); Abdülbaki Turan, “Kuşeyri ve ‘Letâifu’l-işarât’ isimli tefsiri,” Selçuk Üniversitesi İlâhiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 4 (1991): 35–54; Roger Arnaldez, “Quelques remarques sur le commentaire mystique de Qushayrī: Laṭāʾif al-Ishārāt,” Annales du Département des Lettres Arabes 6-B (1991–2): 99–106; Muḥammad Maḥmūd Yūsuf Abū Zawr, “Manhaj al-Qushayrī fī kitābih Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt” (MA thesis, University of Jordan, 1993); Süleyman Ateş, İşârî tefsîr okulu (Üsküdar, Istanbul: Yeni Ufuklar Neşriyat, 1998), 98–105; Hugh Talat Halman, “ ‘Where Two Seas Meet’: The Quranic Story of Khidr and Moses in Sufiji Commentaries as a Model for Scriptural Guidance” (PhD diss., Duke University, 2000); Sufijia Uddin, “Mystical Journey or Misogynist Assault?: Al-Qushayri’s Interpretation of Zulaikha’s Attempted Seduction of Yusuf,” Journal for Islamic Studies 21 (2001): 113–35; Gerhard Böwering, “The Light Verse: Qur’anic Text and Sufiji Interpretation,” Oriens 36 (2001): 113–44; Rāniyā Muḥammad ʿAzīz Naẓmī, al-Manhaj al-ishārī fī tafsīr al-imām al-Qushayrī (Alexandria, Egypt: Munshaʾat al-Maʿārif, 2002); Madjid Yaddaden, “Exégèse coranique: Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt de Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (m. 465–1072)” (PhD diss., École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, 2005); Kristin Sands, Ṣūfī Commentaries on the Qur’ān in Classical Islam (London: Routledge, 2006); Annabel Keeler, “Ṣūfī tafsīr as a Mirror: al-Qushayrī the murshid in his Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 8.1 (2006): 1–21; ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī al-Maymūnī al-Muṭayrī, “al-Taysīr fī ʿilm al-tafsīr li-Imām ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Hawāzin al-Qushayrī, min awwal al-kitāb ilā nihāyat Sūrat al-baqara dirāsatan wa-taḥqīqan” (PhD diss., Umm al-Qurā University, 1427/[2006]); Martin Nguyen, Sufiji Master and Qur’an Scholar: Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī and the Laṭāʾif al-Ishārāt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); idem, “Letter by Letter: Tracing the Textual Genealogy of a Sufiji Tafsīr,” in Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qur’anic Exegesis (2nd/8th–9th/15th Centuries), ed. Karen Bauer (London: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

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The original impetus for this volume traces back to late 2009, when we saw the need for a scholarly panel dedicated to Qushayrī to be held at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. In preparing such a panel, we solicited paper proposals from a shortlist of scholars in Europe and North America who were actively engaged in new research into Qushayrī’s life and thought. The panel that would fijinally emerge, entitled “Revisiting al-Qushayrī and His Legacy” and held on the morning of Saturday, 30 October 2010 at the AAR’s annual meeting in Atlanta, provoked a stimulating discussion between our panel presenters, our panel respondent Annabel Keeler, and the audience in attendance which would continue throughout the weekend and beyond. The articles that follow represent the most tangible fruits of these papers and the thought-provoking discussions that ensued from them.

The fijirst article, by Kristin Sands, focuses on Qushayrī’s methodology and style in his most famous exegetical work the Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt. Here, Sands examines the text’s sophisticated methodology of blending the exoteric and esoteric themes of the Qur’an by way of a lucid language that reflects both practical human experience and the primary intellectual discourses of the author’s day. In a similar vein, Martin Nguyen continues with an assessment of Qushayrī’s exegetical work, though his article examines what potentially remains of a comparatively obscure text by the author that bears a markedly more exoteric tone and methodology than that of his Laṭāʾif.

The three remaining articles explore the posthumous reception of Qushayrī’s thought and corpus through a variety of lenses. Francesco Chiabotti’s article does so by considering the role of Qushayrī’s son Abū Naṣr (d. 514/1120) in shap-ing the immediate reception of his father’s thought in Nishapur, as demon-strated through two hitherto-unpublished texts by this latter fijigure. The next article by Alan Godlas returns to Qushayrī’s Laṭāʾif, though in this case, the analysis focuses on the text’s influence upon both an early twelfth-century Persian author and the Kubrawi Sufiji order that emerged later in the same century. The fijinal article by Matthew Ingalls examines a popular fijifteenth-century commentary on Qushayrī’s Risāla that was written by an Egyptian Sufiji and chief Shāfijiʿi qadi during the Mamlūk period and is still used today in traditional curricula around the Muslim world. For its part, the commentary employs a variety of devices and techniques to recast the original Risāla to meet the intellectual needs of a community and setting quite diffferent from those of Qushayrī.

As can be seen in the descriptions above, the present volume seeks to strike a balance between an author-centered approach to intellectual history and a reception-centered approach. In other words, while Qushayrī himself is cer-tainly the thematic glue that binds the following articles together, his influence

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upon the larger intellectual tradition is assessed in light of both his texts and their reception within various intellectual and institutional structures through-out the centuries. It is hoped that such a multi-sided examination will stimu-late the broadest range of analytical lenses in both the study of Qushayrī and the study of Sufijism writ large.