Storytelling and Spirituality in Classical Islam

Catalog description

One of the greatest rock songs of all time, “Layla,” was written by Eric Clapton after he read the story of star- crossed lovers, Layla and Majnun. This tale of a Bedouin poet, who went mad after he was cut off from his beloved, circulated widely in Arabic sources for hundreds of years before being expanded into a long narrative poem in Persian, by Nizami, in the 12th century. By this point in time, telling compelling stories had become a means by which Sufi writers (the mystics of Islam) described their particular vision of being Muslim, which was that of the pitfalls, despairing moments, and ecstasies of the spiritual quest and search for closeness to the divine Beloved. Layla and Majnun were just one of several couples in allegorical stories that were understood as teaching vehicles for disciples on the path. On the opposite end of the plot spectrum, there is Ibn Tufayl’s famous story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a mystical-philosophical work in Arabic also written in the 12th century. It describes an abandoned baby growing up on a desert island, raised first by a deer and then by his own devices, as he slowly discovers the nature of the human-divine relationship. Other classical works dispensed with this format of the singular narrative, opting instead for nesting stories within stories and mixing animal stories with stories about humans. We will look at examples of these literary techniques in poetic translations of Farid ad-Din Attar’s “Conference of the Birds” and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī's “Mathnawi,” alongside “The Thousand and One Nights” folktale collection. Rooting storytelling in a deeper dimension that explores the human potential for more refined behavior and ethics, as well as higher spiritual states, will serve as the common thread to the works discussed in class. Religious Mavericks and Radicals