Carl W. Ernst

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Carl W. Ernst (born September 8, 1950, in Los Angeles, California) [1] is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Islamic studies at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [2] He was also the founding director (2003-2022) of the UNC Center for Islamic and Middle East Studies. [3]

Contents

Life

Ernst received his A.B. in comparative religion at Stanford University in 1973, and his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1981. [3] He taught at Pomona College from 1981 to 1992. [4] He was a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1992 to 2022.

It was his suggestion that set in motion the UNC-Qur'an Controversy in 2002, when UNC's Summer Reading Program required incoming students to read Michael Sells (1999). Approaching the Qurʼan. White Cloud Press. . [5]

Awards and honors

Ernst's book, Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World (UNC Press, 2003),

received several international awards, including the 2004 Bashrahil Prize for Outstanding Cultural Achievement. [3] His book Ruzbihan Baqli: Mysticism and the Rhetoric of Sainthood in Persian Sufism won the Farabi Award. His translation from the Arabic, Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Martyr, was supported by a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and it was the first recipient (2017) of the Global Humanities Translation Prize from the Buffett Institute at Northwestern University.

Ernst has received several Fulbright fellowships (India, 1978-9; Pakistan, 1986; Spain, 2001; Malaysia, 2005), plus grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has also been a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (1990, 2003, 2019, 2022).

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sufism</span> Body of mystical practice within Islam

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".

al-Hallaj Persian mystic, poet and Sufi teacher (c.858–922)

Mansour Al-Hallaj or Mansour Hallaj was a Persian mystic, poet, and teacher of Sufism. He is best known for his saying: "I am the Truth" (Ana'l-Ḥaqq), which many saw as a claim to divinity, while others interpreted it as an instance of annihilation of the ego, allowing God to speak through him. Al-Hallaj gained a wide following as a preacher before he became implicated in power struggles of the Abbasid court and was executed after a long period of confinement on religious and political charges. Although most of his Sufi contemporaries disapproved of his actions, Hallaj later became a major figure in the Sufi tradition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annemarie Schimmel</span> German scholar of Islam (1922–2003)

Annemarie Schimmel was an influential German Orientalist and scholar who wrote extensively on Islam, especially Sufism. She was a professor at Harvard University from 1967 to 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bayazid Bastami</span> 9th-century Persian Sufi mystic

Abū Yazīd Ṭayfūr bin ʿĪsā bin Surūshān al-Bisṭāmī (al-Basṭāmī), commonly known in the Iranian world as Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī, was a Persian Sufi from north-central Iran. Known to future Sufis as Sultān-ul-Ārifīn, Bisṭāmī is considered to be one of the expositors of the state of fanā, the notion of dying in mystical union with Allah. Bastami was famous for "the boldness of his expression of the mystic’s complete absorption into the mysticism." Many "ecstatic utterances" have been attributed to Bisṭāmī, which lead to him being known as the "drunken" or "ecstatic" school of Islamic mysticism. Such utterance may be argued as, Bisṭāmī died with mystical union and the deity is speaking through his tongue. Bisṭāmī also claimed to have ascended through the seven heavens in his dream. His journey, known as the Mi'raj of Bisṭāmī, is clearly patterned on the Mi'raj of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Bisṭāmī is characterized in three different ways: a free thinking radical, a pious Sufi who is deeply concerned with following the sha'ria and engaging in "devotions beyond the obligatory," and a pious individual who is presented as having a dream similar to the Mi'raj of Muhammed. The Mi'raj of Bisṭāmī seems as if Bisṭāmī is going through a self journey; as he ascends through each heaven, Bisṭāmī is gaining knowledge in how he communicates with the angels and the number of angels he encounters increases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Najm al-Din Kubra</span> 13th-century Sufi, founder of the Kubrawiya order

Najm ad-Din Kubra was a 13th-century Khwarezmian Sufi from Khwarezm and the founder of the Kubrawiya, influential in the Ilkhanate and Timurid dynasty. His method, exemplary of a "golden age" of Sufi metaphysics, was related to the Illuminationism of Shahab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi as well as to Rumi's Shams Tabrizi. Kubra was born in 540/1145 and died in 618/1221.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Sufism</span> Aspect of Islamic history

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruzbihan Baqli</span> Persian poet, mystic, and Sufi

Abu Muhammad Sheikh Ruzbehan Baqli (1128–1209) was a Persian poet, mystic, teacher and sufi master. He wrote about his own life as well as published commentaries on Sufi poets and ideas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sufi literature</span> Tradition of Islamic mystic writing

Sufi literature consists of works in various languages that express and advocate the ideas of Sufism.

Michael Anthony Sells is John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature in the Divinity School and in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. Michael Sells studies and teaches in the areas of Qur'anic studies, Sufism, Arabic and Islamic love poetry, mysticism, and religion and violence.

Omid Safi is a Shia, Iranian-American Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. He served as the Director of Duke Islamic Studies Center from July 2014 to June 2019 and was a columnist for On Being. Safi specializes in Islamic mysticism (Sufism), contemporary Islamic thought and medieval Islamic history. He has served on the board of the Pluralism project at Harvard University and served as the co-chair of the steering committee for the Study of Islam and the Islamic Mysticism Group at the American Academy of Religion. Before joining Duke University, Safi was a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Prior to joining the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he was on faculty at Colgate University as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion from 1999 - 2004.

Muhammad GhawthGwaliyari (1500–1562) was a 16th-century Sufi master of the Shattari order and Sufi saint, a musician, and the author of Jawahir-i Khams. The book mentioning the life and miracles of Gaus named " Heaven's witness" was written by Kugle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shattariyya</span> Sufi mystic order in Sunni Islam

The Shattari or Shattariyya are members of a Sufi mystical tariqah that originated in Persia in the fifteenth century C.E. and developed, completed and codified in India. Later secondary branches were taken to Hejaz and Indonesia. The word Shattar, which means "lightning-quick", "speed", "rapidity", or "fast-goer" shows a system of spiritual practices that lead to a state of "completion", but the name derives from its founder, Sheikh Sirajuddin Abdullah Shattar.

A shath, in the Islamic mystical tradition of Sufism, is an ecstatic utterance which may be outrageous in character. The word is derived from the root š-ṭ-ḥ, which carries the sense of overflowing or outpouring caused by agitation. Famous shathiyat include “Glory be to me, how great is my majesty” by Bayazid Bastami and “I am the Truth” by Mansur Al-Hallaj. Sufi authors sometimes claimed that such utterances were misquotations or attributed them to immaturity, madness, or intoxication. At other times they regarded them as authentic expressions of spiritual states, even profoundest experience of divine realities, which should not be manifested to the unworthy. Many Sufi authors, including al-Ghazali, showed ambivalence about apparently blasphemous nature of some shathiyat, while admiring the spiritual status of their authors.

Abu Muhammad Ruwaym bin Ahmad was an early Muslim jurist, ascetic, saint and reciter of the Qur'an. He was one of the second generation of practitioners of Sufism (tasawwuf).

Hagiography is the literary genre of biographies about holy people. In Islamic Persia, hagiography developed as a genre during the eleventh century CE, in Khurāsān, a region from which many eastern Ṣūfīs came. It tended to focus on Sūfī saints. The tradition declined around the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries CE, but was revived in the nineteenth and still exists today online.

<i>Bahr al-Hayat</i>

The Bahr al-Hayāt or Ocean of Life is an illustrated Persian book, published c. 1602 by Muhammad Ghawth, which covers topics including asanas used for meditation. It is probably the first illustrated textbook of yoga.

Ruzbihan Baqli: Mysticism and the Rhetoric of Sainthood in Persian Sufism is a book-length study of Ruzbihan Baqli by Carl W. Ernst. The book was awarded the Farabi Award.

<i>Tafsir Ibn Ajiba</i> Sunni Sufi tafsir work by Ahmad ibn Ajiba

Al-Bahr al-Madeed fi Tafsir al-Qur'an al-Majeed or shortly named al-Baḥr al-Madīd, better known as Tafsir Ibn 'Ajiba, is a Sunni Sufi tafsir work, authored by the Maliki-Ash'ari scholar Ahmad ibn 'Ajiba, who was following the Shadhili-Darqawi order.

Sa'diyya Shaikh is a South African scholar of Islam and feminist theory. She is a professor of religion at the University of Cape Town. Shaikh studies Sufism in relation to feminism and feminist theory. Shaikh is known for work on gender in Islam and 'Ibn Arabi.

Victor Danner was a Mexican-American author, researcher, and translator specializing in comparative religion and Islamic mysticism.

References

  1. Terrie M. Rooney (ed.), Contemporary Authors, Vol. 163 (Gale Research Co., 1998: ISBN   0-7876-1998-1), p. 132.
  2. CHIASMOS: Carl Ernst - "Muslim Interpreters of Yoga"
  3. 1 2 3 Carl Ernst's web page
  4. Contemporary Authors, Vol. 163, p. 132.
  5. Ernst, Carl W. (May 2003). "From the Heart of the Qur'an Belt". Religious Studies News. Retrieved July 2, 2013.