Jami

Abstract

ʿAbd al-Rahman Jami (1414–1492) is a culminating figure in Perso-Islamic culture, whose reputation and influence have endured undiminished throughout the eastern Islamic world — the Ottoman Empire and Central Asia, Iran, India, China and the Malay world. Primarily celebrated as a poet, Jami was also an accomplished Islamic scholar and Arabist, a Sufi of great standing, and an acerbic polemicist and social critic. This book begins with a sketch of the geographical and historical landscape behind the events of Jami’s life in Herat and beyond. It explains the influences upon his character and work; what shaped his poetic output, its literary forms, and thematic concerns; the reasons for the precise configuration of his Sufism within the Naqshbandiyya; and his combative support for some of the doctrines of Ibn ʿArabi. The book also discusses Jami’s practice of ‘seclusion within society’, whereby the Sufi was attentive to the problems of the community while being detached from them. Finally, it surveys the transmission of Jami’s literary, intellectual, and spiritual legacy to the eastern Islamic world, and presents an overview of recent Jami scholarship in the Islamic world, the West, and China.