William Chittick - Major new book

Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God

The very heart of the Islamic tradition is love; no other word adequately captures the quest for transformation that lies at this tradition’s center. So argues esteemed professor of medieval Islam William C. Chittick in this survey of the extensive Arabic and Persian literature on topics ranging from the Qur’an up through the twelfth century. Bringing to light extensive foundational Persian sources never before presented, Chittick draws on more than a thousand pages of newly translated material to depict the rich prose literature at the center of Islamic thought.

William C. Chittick, professor of religious studies at Stony Brook University, is a leading translator and interpreter of classical Islamic texts. His books include The Sufi Path of Love and In Search of the Lost Heart. He lives in Mount Sinai, NY.

The Ocean of Nonexistence

I am delighted to flag a really interesting and lovely paper by Dr. Mohammed Rustom appearing in

Mawlana Rumi Review 4 (2013)

The Ocean of Nonexistence

Mohammed Rustom

In this article, I would like to offer some remarks on what Rumi has to say about love. What, in other words, is it? From his perspective, inquiring into the nature of love can only give one partial answers, since the very inquiry into what love is entails a partial question. The easiest way for Rumi to explain what love is, is by saying that we will know what it is when we get there. Consider these lines: 

Someone asked, ‘What is Love?’ I said, ‘Do not ask about these meanings.
When you become like me, you will see. When you are invited by It, you will sing of It.’

Thankfully, Rumi himself left behind nearly 65,000 verses of poetry, most of which sing of the nature and reality of love. Yet, even after having attained to love, he acknowledges that some things are better left unsaid, precisely because love is too vast to be encompassed by human thought and language:  

Whatever I say about Love by way of commentary and exposition,

when I get to Love, I am ashamed at that

Although explanation with the tongue is clear,
that Love which is tongue-less is even clearer.

Since love is so difficult to pin down, Rumi finds an apt metaphor for what it is by referring to it as an ‘ocean’, which, incidentally, he does more so than any other poet in the Persian or Arabic language...