Human Onthology in the Early Modern Crimean Sufism: School of Ibrahim al-Qirimi

Abstract

The article covers main features of Early Modern Sufi Philosophy in Crimea. Based on the new discoveries of Arabic manuscripts in Turkey (libraries in Istanbul and Corum) and Germany (Berlin library), the study provides analysis of the Sufi approach towards human onthology, developed by Crimean thinkers Ibrahim al-Qirimi, Abu Bakr al-Kafawi and finally Hussam al-Din al-Qirimi. Apart from the classical Sufi rethinking of a human being as the body-soul entity making spiritual journey towards final Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamal) and approaching ultimate revival, Crimean thinkers also paid great attention to the issue of human freedom, naming it by special term (Arabic al-istiqlal, literary meaning “independence”). In contrast to rather conservative background of Islamic discursive theology (kalam) and other schools of Islamic philosophical thought of the Post-Classical period, special attention to this concept can be regarded as evidence of some humanistic tendencies among thinkers of the Crimean Khanate. The article also notes that this concept of was considered by Crimean thinkers as one of the important conditions for the manifestation of Divine Attributes in human existence; that is, the anthropologic measurement of the pantheistic idea of unity of being, widely poplular among Sufis of those times. Taking into account the fact that the modern notion of freedom in the Arabic philosophical thought is based predominantly on Western concepts, the new reading of Sufi Post-Classical manuscripts reveals autochthonous cultural potential of this tradition.