Lost in a Sea of Letters

Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya and the Plurality of Sufi Knowledge

Cyril Villarosa Uy II (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

324 Seiten

2025
Brill (Verlag)
978-90-04-72506-5 (ISBN)

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In Lost in a Sea of Letters, Cyril V. Uy II explores the life and work Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya (d. 1252), illuminating the Sufi master’s deconstructive ethos and radical openness to interpretation.

In Lost in a Sea of Letters, Cyril Uy explores the life and work of Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya (d. 1252), a Mongol-era Sufi whose arcane treatises inspired generations of mystics and messiahs. Reading Ḥamūya in dialogue with contemporaries across Central Asia, Iran, and the Eastern Mediterranean, Uy excavates a world in which knowledge was an embodied sensibility: a way of being that could improvise across all dimensions of human experience. Ḥamūya’s performative writing reworked the foundations of this knowledge, provoking readers to live reality through the cacophony of his Sufi free jazz. Foregrounding Ḥamūya’s deconstructive ethos and radical openness to interpretation, Uy reveals how embracing plurality could thrive as a mode of social, intellectual, and spiritual competition.

Cyril V. Uy II, Ph.D. (2021), Brown University, is Assistant Professor of Religion at James Madison University.

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Note on Transliteration and Usage

Introduction

1 Ecce homo

2 Theory and Method (or, How to Read Ḥamūya)

3 Progression of Themes (Lead Sheet)

1 Riffing on the Real: Letters and the Language of God

1 (In)coherence of the Philosophers

2 Ḥamūya and the Ḥurūf

3 The Science of Letters in Ibn ʿArabī’s Meccan Revelations

4 Dynamism and Difference

5 Conclusion

2 Sufi Free Jazz: Prayer, Deconstruction, and Boundless Play

1 Body and Soul: The Sufi Manuals of Najm al-Dīn Kubrā, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī, and Shihāb al-Dīn ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī

2 Both Directions at Once: The Levels of Joy as Sufi Free Jazz

3 Meditations: Prayer as Spiritual Technology?

4 Ascension: Ḥamūya’s Prayers as Free Jazz Improvisation?

5 Conclusion

3 Calculating Infinity: Diagram and/as Devotion

1 Repetition and Difference: The Mirror of Spirits as Sufi Devotional Text

2 Dada Talismans? Deconstructing Visual Language

3 Diagramming Devotion: The Mirror of Spirits as Abstract Machine

4 Conclusion

4 Genealogies of Knowledge: Shaykhs, Sufis, and Spiritual Inheritance

1 Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya and the All-Powerful Sufi Shaykh

2 Najm al-Dīn Kubrā and ʿAmmār al-Bidlīsī

3 Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī and Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī

4 Spiritual Inheritance and the Politics of Citation

5 The Ḥamūya Clan

6 The Ayyūbid Context: Ḥamūya and the Chief Sufis of Egypt and Syria

7 The Mongol Context: Ḥamūya and the “Golden Kin”

8 Conclusion

5 Real Talk: Language, Revelation, and Human Perfection

1 Prophecy and Sainthood: An Overview

2 Prophecy and Sainthood as Relational Principles

3 Endless Deferrals in The Book of the Beloved

4 Inimitability, Incomprehensibility, and Wonder

5 Conclusion

Coda

Appendix1: Biographical Essay

Appendix2: Literature Review

Appendix3: List of Ḥamūya’s Works

Appendix4: Mirror of Spirits Structure

Bibliography

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	26.04.2025
Reihe/Serie	Islamicate Intellectual History ; 14
Verlagsort	Leiden
Sprache	arabisch; englisch
Maße	155 x 235 mm
Gewicht	663 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Östliche Philosophie
ISBN-10	90-04-72506-7 / 9004725067
ISBN-13	978-90-04-72506-5 / 9789004725065
Zustand	Neuware