See also
| Part of a series on Islam Sufism |
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 Tomb of Abdul Qadir Gilani, Baghdad, Iraq |
Sunni
Shi'a Non-denominational |
List of sufis |
Topics in Sufism |
 Islamportal |
William Clark Chittick | |
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| Born | 29 June 1943 Milford, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Tehran |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Islamic philosophy |
Main interests | Sufism, Islamic philosophy |
| Website | www.williamcchittick.com |
William Clark Chittick (born June 29, 1943) is an American philosopher, writer, translator, and interpreter of classical Islamic philosophical and mystical texts. He is best known for his work on Rumi and Ibn 'Arabi, and has written extensively on the school of Ibn 'Arabi, Islamic philosophy, and Islamic cosmology. He is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University.
Born in Milford, Connecticut on June 29, 1943, [1] [2] Chittick earned his B.A. in history in 1966 from the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. [3] As part of his undergraduate program, he undertook the study of Islamic history at the American University of Beirut during the 1964–1965 academic year. During this time, he became familiar with Sufism as he chose to focus on the subject for his junior year independent study. [2] Following a period of scholarly inquiry into the precepts of Sufism, he attended a public lecture by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who was then the Aga Khan Visiting professor of Islamic studies at the American University of Beirut. [2] This lecture deepened his interest in Sufism, and, upon his graduation from Wooster, led him to pursue graduate studies at the University of Tehran's Faculty of Letters, where he spent eight years (1966-1974) working towards his doctoral degree in Persian literature. [2] [4] He earned his PhD in 1974 under Nasr's supervision. [2] His PhD dissertation, which was published in 1977 and later reprinted in 1992, focused on Jami's Naqd al-nusus. This work is a critical commentary on Ibn 'Arabi's Naqsh al-fusus, which is a shortened version of his Fusus al-hikam. While pursuing his studies at the University of Tehran, Chittick also served as a research assistant at the Center for the Study of Islamic Science from 1971 to 1972. [4]
Chittick later taught comparative religion at Aryamehr Technical University and joined the faculty of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy in 1978. [2] While in Tehran, he met Sachiko Murata, who was also studying there, and they got married. [4] During his stay in Tehran, Chittick studied under and collaborated with distinguished scholars of Islamic thought such as Peter Lamborn Wilson, [5] Jalal al-Din Ashtiyani, Henry Corbin, Toshihiko Izutsu, Badi’ al-Zaman Furuzanfar, Jalal al-Din Humai, Mehdi Mohaghegh, and Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai. This extended contact with such scholars gave Chittick a unique appreciation and mastery of classical Arabic and Persian, as well as a broad understanding of medieval Islamic philosophical, theological, and mystical texts. [2]
Prior to the revolution in 1979, Chittick returned to the United States with his wife, and served as an associate editor for Encyclopædia Iranica in the early 1980s. [2] Chittick began working at Stony Brook University in 1983 as an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies. [4] He is currently Distinguished Professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University. [6]
Chittick has been the recipient of several academic honors throughout his career. These include the Kenan Rifai Distinguished Professorship at the Institute of Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University, as well as an Honorary Professorship at the School of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Minzu University. In addition, he has been awarded fellowships from a number of esteemed organizations, such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Harvard Centre for the Study of World Religions, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). [4] [7]
William Chittick is “renowned for his translations and interpretations of classical Islamic philosophy and mystical texts”. [8] He has been variously called “one of the most important contemporary translators and interpretors of Islamic mystical texts and poetry”, [9] “arguably the leading scholar of Ibn al—Arabi writing in English”, [10] "a well known scholar on Rumi and Sufism”, [11] “one of the leading American scholars of the Sufi mystical tradition”, [12] “a leading Western scholar of Islamic spirituality”, [13] “One of the most prominent scholars of Sufi Islam and of the concept and practice of Ihsan” [14] “a distinguished scholar on Sufism”, [15] “a leading and greatly respected scholar in the field of the classical Muslim intellectual tradition”, [16] and “one of the major scholars of Islamic thought” in the contemporary world. [17] According to Mohammed Rustom, Atif Khalil, and Kazuyo Murata, "Students of Islamic thought are, in one way or another, indebted to Chittick’s writings". [2] Taneli Kukkonen of New York University states that "Over the course of four decades, William Chittick has done more than anyone to elucidate for an Anglophone audience’s benefit the theosophical side of Sufi literature and later Islamic philosophy". [18]
Chittick has published 30 books and numerous articles on Islamic intellectual history, Sufism and Islamic philosophy.
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Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, or simply Rumi, was a 13th-century poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran.
Sufism, also known as Tasawwuf, is a mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic purification, spirituality, ritualism, asceticism, and esotericism. It has been variously defined as "Islamic mysticism", "the mystical expression of Islamic faith", "the inward dimension of Islam", "the phenomenon of mysticism within Islam", the "main manifestation and the most important and central crystallization" of mystical practice in Islam, and "the interiorization and intensification of Islamic faith and practice".
Seyyed Hossein Nasr is an Iranian philosopher, theologian and Islamic scholar. He is University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University.
Tawhid is the concept of monotheism in Islam. Tawhid is the religion's central and single most important concept, upon which a Muslim's entire religious adherence rests. It unequivocally holds that God is indivisibly one (ahad) and single (wahid).
Ibn ʿArabī was an Andalusi Arab scholar, mystic, poet, and philosopher, extremely influential within Islamic thought. Out of the 850 works attributed to him, some 700 are authentic while over 400 are still extant. His cosmological teachings became the dominant worldview in many parts of the Muslim world.
Fakhr al-Din Iraqi was a Persian Sufi poet of the 13th-century. He is principally known for his mixed prose and poetry work, the Lama'at, as well as his divan, most of which were written in the form of a ghazal.
"Shihāb ad-Dīn" Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardī (1154–1191) was a Persian philosopher and founder of the Iranian school of Illuminationism, an important school in Islamic philosophy. The "light" in his "Philosophy of Illumination" is the source of knowledge. He is referred to by the honorific title Shaikh al-ʿIshraq "Master of Illumination" and Shaikh al-Maqtul "the Murdered Master", in reference to his execution for heresy. Mulla Sadra, the Persian sage of the Safavid era described Suhrawardi as the "Reviver of the Traces of the Pahlavi (Iranian) Sages", and Suhrawardi, in his magnum opus "The Philosophy of Illumination", thought of himself as a reviver or resuscitator of the ancient tradition of Persian wisdom. Suhrawardi provided a new Platonic critique of the peripatetic school of Avicenna that was dominant at his times, and that critique involved the fields of Logic, Physics, Epistemology, Psychology, and Metaphysics.
Dhikr is a form of Islamic worship in which phrases or prayers are repeatedly recited for the purpose of remembering God. It plays a central role in Sufism, and each Sufi order typically adopts a specific dhikr, accompanied by specific posture, breathing, and movement. In Sufism, dhikr refers to both the act of this remembrance as well as the prayers used in these acts of remembrance. Dhikr usually includes the names of God or supplication from the Quran or hadith. It may be counted with either one's fingers or prayer beads, and may be performed alone or with a collective group. A person who recites dhikr is called a dhākir.
Henry Corbin was a French philosopher, theologian, and Iranologist, professor of Islamic studies at the École pratique des hautes études. He was influential in extending the modern study of traditional Islamic philosophy from early falsafa to later and "mystical" figures such as Suhrawardi, Ibn Arabi, and Mulla Sadra Shirazi. With works such as Histoire de la philosophie islamique (1964), he challenged the common European view that philosophy in the Islamic world declined after Averroes and Avicenna.
Iranian philosophy or Persian philosophy can be traced back as far as to Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts which originated in ancient Indo-Iranian roots and were considerably influenced by Zarathustra's teachings. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, the chronology of the subject and science of philosophy starts with the Indo-Iranians, dating this event to 1500 BC. The Oxford dictionary also states, "Zarathustra's philosophy entered to influence Western tradition through Judaism, and therefore on Middle Platonism."
Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam in which Muslims seek divine love and truth through direct personal experience of God. This mystic tradition within Islam developed in several stages of growth, emerging first in the form of early asceticism, based on the teachings of Hasan al-Basri, before entering the second stage of more classical mysticism of divine love, as promoted by al-Ghazali and Attar of Nishapur, and finally emerging in the institutionalized form of today's network of fraternal Sufi orders, based on Sufis such as Rumi and Yunus Emre. At its core, however, Sufism remains an individual mystic experience, and a Sufi can be characterized as one who seeks the annihilation of the ego in God.
In Islamic philosophy, Sufi metaphysics is centered on the concept of وحدة, waḥdah, 'unity' or توحيد, tawhid. Two main Sufi philosophies prevail on this topic. Waḥdat al-wujūd literally means "the Unity of Existence" or "the Unity of Being." Wujūd, meaning "existence" or "presence", here refers to God. On the other hand, waḥdat al-shuhūd, meaning "Apparentism" or "Monotheism of Witness", holds that God and his creation are entirely separate.
Sufi studies is a particular branch of comparative studies that uses the technical lexicon of the Islamic mystics, the Sufis, to exemplify the nature of its ideas; hence the frequent reference to Sufi Orders. It may be divided into two main branches, the orientalist/academic and the spiritual.
Sachiko Murata is Japanese scholar of comparative philosophy and mysticism and a professor of religion and Asian studies at Stony Brook University.
Fitra or fitrah is an Arabic word that means 'original disposition', 'natural constitution' or 'innate nature'. The concept somewhat resembles natural order in philosophy, although there are considerable differences as well. In Islam, fitra is the innate human nature that recognizes the oneness of God. It may entail either the state of purity and innocence in which Muslims believe all humans to be born, or the ability to choose or reject God's guidance. The Quran states that humans were created in the most perfect form (95:4), and were endowed with a primordial nature (30:30). Furthermore, God took a covenant from all children of Adam, even before they were sent to Earth's worldly realm, regarding his Lordship (7:172–173). This covenant is considered to have left an everlasting imprint on the human soul, with the Quran emphasizing that on the Day of Judgment no one will be able to plead ignorance of this event (7:172–173).
Hossein Ziai was a professor of Islamic Philosophy and Iranian Studies at UCLA where he held the inaugural Jahangir and Eleanor Amuzegar Chair in Iranian Studies until his passing. He received his B.S. in Intensive Physics and Mathematics from Yale University in 1967 and a Ph.D. in Islamic Philosophy from Harvard University in 1976. Prior to UCLA, Ziai taught at Tehran University, Sharif University, Harvard University, Brown University, and Oberlin College. As Director of Iranian Studies at UCLA, where he taught since 1988, Ziai established an undergraduate major in Iranian in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures—the first such degree in North America—and developed the strongest and most rigorous Iranian Studies program in the U.S.
Akbari Sufism or Akbarism is a branch of Sufi metaphysics based on the teachings of Ibn Arabi, an Andalusian Sufi who was a Sufi and philosopher. The word is derived from Ibn Arabi's nickname, "Shaykh al-Akbar," meaning "the greatest master." 'Akbariyya' or 'Akbaris' have never been used to indicate a specific Sufi group or society. It is now used to refer to all historical or contemporary Sufi metaphysicians and Sufis influenced by Ibn Arabi's doctrine of Wahdat al-Wujud.
The concept of the logos exists in Islam, where it was definitively articulated primarily in the writings of the classical Sunni mystics and Islamic philosophers, as well as by certain Shi'a thinkers, during the Islamic Golden Age. In Sunni Islam, the concept of the logos has been given many different names by the denomination's metaphysicians, mystics, and philosophers, including wasilah, ʿaql ("Intellect"), al-insān al-kāmil, kalimat Allāh, haqīqa muḥammadiyya, and nūr muḥammadī. Throughout Islamic history, there have existed several different metaphysical concepts that have been understood to correspond "in many respects" to the logos Christology of Christianity and to the use of the term logos in late Greek philosophy. The concept has been documented as early as the 8th-9th century.
Caner Dagli is a Circassian-American Islamic scholar and associate professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
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