Eric Ormsby

Last updated
Eric Ormsby
Born
Eric Linn Ormsby

Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Institutions Institute of Ismaili Studies
Main interests
Poetry, literature, Islamic philosophy
Website Homepage

Eric Linn Ormsby (born 1941 in Atlanta, Georgia) is deputy head of academic research and publications at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. He was formerly a professor at McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies, where he also served as director. He has published widely on Islamic thought, including Theodicy in Islamic Thought (1984). [1]

Contents

Ormsby has had six collections of poetry published, including Bavarian Shrine and Other Poems (1990), which won a Quebec prize for the best poetry of that year. His poems have been published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review , and have been anthologized in The Norton Anthology of Poetry. [1]

Notes

  1. 1 2 "Prof. Eric Ormsby". Institute of Ismaili Studies.

Selected works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abu Bakr bin Yahya al-Suli</span> Court companion of three Abbasid caliphs

Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn al-‘Abbās al-Ṣūlī was a Turkic scholar and a court companion of three Abbāsid caliphs: al-Muktafī, his successor al-Muqtadir, and later, al-Rāḍī, whom he also tutored. He was a bibliophile, wrote letters, editor-poet, chronicler, and a shatranj player. His contemporary biographer Isḥāq al-Nadīm tells us he was “of manly bearing.” He wrote many books, the most famous of which are Kitāb Al-Awrāq and Kitāb al-Shiṭranj.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al-Ghazali</span> Sunni Muslim polymath (c. 1058–1111)

Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsiyy al-Ghazali, known commonly as Al-Ghazali, known in Medieval Europe by the Latinized Algazelus or Algazel, was a Persian Sunni Muslim polymath. He is known as one of the most prominent and influential jurisconsults, legal theoreticians, muftis, philosophers, theologians, logicians and mystics in Islamic history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fakhr al-Din al-Razi</span> 12th-century Sunni Muslim theologian and philosopher

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī or Fakhruddin Razi, often known by the sobriquet Sultan of the Theologians, was an influential Iranian and Muslim polymath, scientist and one of the pioneers of inductive logic. He wrote various works in the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics, astronomy, cosmology, literature, theology, ontology, philosophy, history and jurisprudence. He was one of the earliest proponents and skeptics that came up with the concept of multiverse, and compared it with the astronomical teachings of Quran. A rejector of the geocentric model and the Aristotelian notions of a single universe revolving around a single world, al-Razi argued about the existence of the outer space beyond the known world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ibn Ishaq</span> Muslim hagiographer and historian (704–767)

Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasar al-Muttalibi, known simply as Ibn Ishaq, was an 8th-century Muslim historian and hagiographer. Ibn Ishaq, also known by the title ṣāḥib al-sīra, collected oral traditions that formed the basis of an important biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Majd ad-Dīn Usāma ibn Murshid ibn ʿAlī ibn Munqidh al-Kināni al-Kalbī or Ibn Munqidh was a medieval Arab Muslim poet, author, faris (knight), and diplomat from the Banu Munqidh dynasty of Shaizar in northern Syria. His life coincided with the rise of several medieval Muslim dynasties, the arrival of the First Crusade, and the establishment of the crusader states.

Arabic literature is the writing, both as prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is Adab, which comes from a meaning of etiquette, and which implies politeness, culture and enrichment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al-Uzza</span> Pre-Islamic Arabian goddess

Al-ʻUzzā was one of the three chief goddesses of Arabian religion in pre-Islamic times and she was worshipped by the pre-Islamic Arabs along with al-Lāt and Manāt. A stone cube at Nakhla was held sacred as part of her cult. She is mentioned in Qur'an 53:19 as being one of the goddesses who people worshipped.

Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud was a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad whom Islamic tradition regards the greatest interpreter of the Quran of his time and the second ever. He was also known by the kuniyaAbu Abd al-Rahman.

Jeffery William Donaldson is a Canadian poet and critic.

Esoteric interpretation of the Quran is the allegorical interpretation of the Quran or the quest for its hidden, inner meanings. The Arabic word taʾwīl was synonymous with conventional interpretation in its earliest use, but it came to mean a process of discerning its most fundamental understandings. "Esoteric" interpretations do not usually contradict the conventional interpretations; instead, they discuss the inner levels of meaning of the Quran.

Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi or, in full Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn al-ʿArabī al-Maʿāfirī al-Ishbīlī born in Sevilla in 1076 and died in Fez in 1148) was a Muslim judge and scholar of Maliki law from al-Andalus. Like Al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad, Ibn al-Arabi was forced to migrate to Morocco during the reign of the Almoravids. It is reported that he was a student of Al-Ghazali. He was a master of Maliki Jurisprudence. His father was a student of Ibn Hazm. He also contributed to the spread of Ash'ari theology in Spain. A detailed biography about him was written by his contemporary Qadi Ayyad, the Malikite scholar and judge from Ceuta.

Tāj al-Dīn Abū al-Fath Muhammad ibn `Abd al-Karīm ash-Shahrastānī, also known as Muhammad al-Shahrastānī, was an influential Persian historian of religions, a historiographer, Islamic scholar, philosopher and theologian. His book, Kitab al–Milal wa al-Nihal was one of the pioneers in developing an objective and philosophical approach to the study of religions.

Seal of the Prophets, is a title used in the Qur'an and by Muslims to designate the Islamic prophet Muhammad as the last of the prophets sent by God.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Outram</span> Canadian poet

Richard Daley Outram was a Canadian poet. Often regarded as a poet's poet, he wrote eleven commercially published books of poetry in addition to the many collections of his poetry and prose published under the imprint of the Gauntlet Press. In 1999 he won the City of Toronto Book Award for his sequence of poems Benedict Abroad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al-Qushayri</span> Islamic scholar and Sufi philosopher (986–1072)

'Abd al-Karīm ibn Hawazin Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī al-Naysābūrī was an Arab Muslim scholar, theologian, jurist, legal theoretician, commentator of the Qur’an, muhaddith, grammarian, spiritual master, orator, poet, and an eminent scholar who mastered a number of Islamic sciences. Al-Qushayri, combined the routine instruction of a Shafi'i law specialist and Hadith expert (muhaddith) with a solid slant to mysticism and ascetic lifestyle.

Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Dawud al-Zahiri, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Dāwūd al-Iṣbahānī, also known as Avendeath, was a medieval theologian and scholar of the Arabic language and Islamic law. He was one of the early propagators of his father Dawud al-Zahiri's method in jurisprudence, Zahirism.

Salih al-Ja'fari (1910–1979) was a Sufi and scholar, who lived and taught in Cairo, Egypt. He was officially appointed as a teacher at the al-Azhar Mosque in 1946 by the Grand Shaykh of the Azhar at the time, though he had been teaching there without an official appointment for more than a decade, and continued to teach there until his death in 1399 AH/1979 CE. He therefore taught there for more than forty years, thirty-three of those as an officially appointed teacher. During the last decade or two of his life, he became the Imam of the Azhar Mosque and one of its most celebrated teachers and orators. He was also a spiritual guide and the founder of the Ja'fariyya tariqa.

Umm Kulthūm bint Jarwal, also known as Mulayka, was a wife of Umar and a companion of Muhammad.

In Islam, "the promise and threat" of Judgement Day, is when "all bodies will be resurrected" from the dead, and "all people" are "called to account" for their deeds and their faith during their life on Earth. It has been called "the dominant message" of the holy book of Islam, the Quran, and resurrection and judgement the two themes "central to the understanding of Islamic eschatology." Judgement Day is considered a fundamental tenet of faith by all Muslims, and one of the six articles of Islamic faith.