Islamic Mysticism and Ab T lib al-Makk : The Role of the Heart By SAEKO YAZAKI

Abstract

Ahmet T. Karamustafa’s Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) synthesized decades of research to grant Sufi studies its first rigorous, historically situated survey of classical Sufism. It highlighted how important a role Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī’s (d. 386/996) Qūt al-qulūb (‘Nourishment for the Heart’) played in ‘the emergence of a normative Sufi tradition, in the 4th/10th century[…]’, and it reflected the need to preserve, evaluate and analyse the complex legacy of the first masters’ (Sufism, p. 83). Compared to other pre-Ghazālīan manuals, the Qūt is by far the most voluminous, offering detailed insight into the praxis (muʿāmala) of one branch of early Sufism and constituting ‘an encyclopaedia of Islamic piety’ (Richard Gramlich, Die Nahrung der Haerzen [Franz Steiner, 1995], i. 17). Nonetheless, al-Makkī had received little scholarly attention; it is to Karamustafa’s credit that he managed to treat al-Makkī proportionally with other key figures. In this context, Saeko Yazaki’s work is a most welcome addition; it is the first published introduction to al-Makkī’s life and works and their reception by subsequent generations. It is based on her doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Edinburgh in 2010. Her thesis superseded those of Shukri (Edinburgh, 1976) and Amin (Edinburgh, 1991) and was joined by Bin Ramli’s excellent investigation of al-Makkī’s theology (Oxford, 2011), to which she refers.