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Journalof the

Muhyiddin Ibn'Arabi SocietyVolume 512012

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Book Reviewsthese ancient and medieval thinkers intended when speakingon the importance of education. Instead, education was to bea process of inner transformation, which in its completion notonly brings about virtue and goodness in the individual, butalso brings about these same qualities within communities.Chittick gives diverse examples of how this understanding oflearning was applied historically; through these comparisons,he is able to indicate how these traditions of learning mightremain relevant when applied to our own, ever-changing, andchallenging context.The many studies offered here will be of exceptional benefitto students attempting to locate the unity that encompasses themany currents of Islamic discourse. Benefit will also be gainedby specialists seeking to increase their knowledge pertainingto some of the most complex thinkers in the history of Sufismand Islamic Philosophy. Without hesitation, we can suggestthat this edited volume of Chittick's most important articles isessential reading for all those interested in exploring the heartof Islamic thought.

Joel C . RichmondUniversity of Toronto

Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form inthe Writings of Ibn 'Arabi and 'Iraqi, by Cyrus Ali Zargar.Columbia, South Carolina: University of South CarolinaPress, 2011, xi + 235 pp.Sufi Aesthetics is, as its title suggests, a major in-depth study ofthe aesthetics of vision and the envisioning of the divine informs. In his introduction, Zargar stresses that although he isfocusing on a particular 'school' of witnessing and love withinSufism, he is particularly concerned to respond 'to questionsraised by those who have mishandled the Islamic tradition'(p.2), be they those who divorce the sacred from the profaneor those who view the Quranic paradise literally as a place ofmeaningless sensual pleasure. The task he sets himself is a nobleone: to study perception and beauty in the light of the writings

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138 Book Reviewsof two great visionary writers, Muhyi al-Din Ibn 'Arabi andFakhr al-Din 'Iraqi, who studied under Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi,and to explore the uniqueness of the medieval Islamic mysticaltradition, 'a tradition in which human beauty is sacred, trulysacred, in a manner not at all metaphorical and justified by themost foundational religious sources' (p. 10).

In addition to the introduction, the book has six chapters,comparing and contrasting the approaches of Ibn 'Arabi and'Iraqi. In all cases he has given his own elegant translations ofpassages and poems from both authors. The final quarter ofthe book comprises excellent notes, selected bibliography andindexes (Quranic verses, hadith and general names and terms).

The first two chapters deal with perception. In the first(which he calls a 'difficult chapter'!), Zargar has a detaileddiscussion in summary form of how the experience of divinebeauty is described by Ibn 'Arabi: in particular, how witnessing(mushahada) means to know what is seen, what role imagina-tion plays, and how for a true lover He 'has blessed him withthe capacity to contemplate God in the forms of things' (Fut.IV.260). In the second, Zargar considers the contribution of'Iraqi, who was steeped in the Persian tradition of love-poetry,showing how the poems in 'Iraqi's Lamarat ('Flashes') reflectthe same understanding as Ibn 'Arabi. As one poem puts it,'once 'Iraqi was drowned, a life of remainingness he found; /The secrets of the Unseen in the World of Seen he sees' (p.58).In the third chapter, entitled 'Beauty according to Ibn 'Arabiand 'Iraqi: that which causes love', Zargar delves more deeplyinto how forms, and more specifically the human form, arouseintense and profound love for the beauty they disclose. In thisand the following chapters, which deal with our two authors'attitudes to human beauty, he discusses at some length thequestion of the human beloved being a medium for love asopposed to an object of love, and of the much-criticised cultureof shahidbazi (admiring divine beauty in human forms, espe-cially young men).

In chapter 6, on 'The Amorous Lyric as Mystical Language',Zargar turns his attention to the two authors' poetic forms (theArabic nasib and the Persian ghazal), focusing in particular on

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