نشریه عرفان اسلامی
پیاپی 28 (تابستان 1390)

Masnavi Manavi, one of the progenitors of mystical anthologies, involves some topics about death, exclusively over voluntary death. One of the reasons that the writer intends to deal with this topic is to express Rumi's attitudes and concepts plus accounting for one of the most important mystical points presented in Masnavi. In fact, this type of death in mysticism is based on the relation, namely 'they die before they are dead', so that the mystic traveler can find his way into the heavens and get a rebirth. Knowing about the voluntary death, Rumi is of a believe that the most significant barrier to have a voluntary death is ill spirit, hence Id. In his view point, the means of achieving a voluntary death are as follows: ascetism, and dedicated love and attention to God. The greatest outcome for achieving a voluntary death as he believes is the unity of visibility and the source of visibility.

Sufi poetry is a combination of Platonic lyric and intoxicating poetry in an ironical and mysterious language, that while it looks like a lyric and intoxicating in form, it is filled with divine love in content which is a poetry full of expressions and specific sufi mysteries, expressions that depict the human moods and his relation with God in various stages of mystical journey. This type of poetry began from second AH in Arabic literature and came to its acme in seventh AH with Ibn Farez and Mohyeddin Ibn Arabi, and by means of Shoshtari, the great sufi in Andelos, it went into a remarkable evolution because he expressed his mystical beliefs in the form of vernacular language intelligible for the public so that the poetry was composed not only for sufis but also for every people. This paper first takes a glimpse at the evolution of sufi poetry in different eras and quotes from great sufis and then deals with the poetries of great sufis of the seventh AH, Abulhassan Shoshtari, and the innovation and his role in conveyance of mystical connotations in a new form and candid language and away from secret language and mystical language.

One of the key most mystical vocabularies in Rumi's thought is "nonexistence". Rumi makes use of its synonym word "absence". This mystical term whish is in fact one of the preliminary and central nucleuses of Rumi's mystical thoughts is employed in his mentality in different meanings and sometimes separate from one another so that it may look fallacious to the one who is not familiar with the language and thoughts of Rumi. Thus, Rumi's stream of consciousness has created different meanings out of the term out of which one can refer to its application in Ayan Thabetah, metaphysics, God's world of knowledge, creation of God, poverty and fatality position, reflection of human features, general fact, invisible and physical world, the world of imagination and whimsical world.

Abdulvahhab Sherani (898-973 AH) has been one of the greatest Sufis and jurisconsult of Egypt in the ninth and tenth AH. He had a lot of works out of which the most important ones are Lataefol Menan and Attabaghatal Kobra, and Alyovaghit, and Aljavaher. His book called Attabaghatal Kobra has got an aloof position among other biographical studies and is known as the most important Sufi's in the western Islam so that no one can find a book or research studies in which it is not referred to. It should be told that unfortunately it is left anonymous generally but for researchers and few other ones. That is why the writer intends to give a brief introduction and assessment of that at first and then make a comparison with other biographical studies such as Helyatel Owliya, Tabaghatol Soofiya Salmi, Resalatol Ghashiriyah, and Attar's Tazkaratol Owliya.

Asceticism means self denying way of life and in a definition by Imam Ali, the first religious Imam to Muslims; it means short wishing and appreciation upon a blessing and patience upon sins. Rahbaniah (monasticism) is an Arabic word used by Arab lexicographers as 'Rahab' meaning fear and fright. Christian monasticism was created when the Disciples of Christ were interested in a totally spiritual life separate from materialistic life. The Islamic asceticism and Christian monasticism are different from one another because in Islam there is no difference between this world and the next world and the works done here, that is, they are not separate from each other, whereas in Christian monasticism it is recommended to get separate from this world appealing for turning back to that. Upon the influence of Christians in Bani Omayya and Bani Abbas era and in governmental affairs and various Christian sects, there were a lot of Christian monks spread everywhere so that they could have influence on Muslims. Such an influence was so much that ascetics like monks refrained from having any animal related meals, put on woolen cloth, lived in temples and monasteries, and did some eunuch not to be committed to their spouses and children. Therefore, one can say that the widespread presence of Christians among Muslims and promotions of their catechesis over Islamic ones as well as asceticism of Muslims have been influential.

The ancient treasure of Persian literature just like other enriched and ancient ones is full of legends and narratives in terms of men and women in love with one another so that every reader follows the narrator of the story upon his or her assumption but has not been able to explore their inner hidden mysteries. Of course it goes back to the capacities of the story in accepting the various attitudes of their readers. One of the legends which has lend itself to the above idea is the well-known story of Sudabeh's love of the Iranian Siavash in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. This story is comprehensively about the colorful love of Sudabeh and her disgrace revealed for Siavash.This paper is intended to briefly explore not from an epical and heroic point of view (being the inner characteristics of Shahnameh) but from the cognitive and mystical point as well as other unique characteristics. Of course there have been some persons who have inspected the story from religious point of view and upon comparing it with the story of Yusef the prophet they have found some similarities.

Fatality and survival are the best stages of mystical journey which have been explained in the most works of poets and mystics in various forms. Attar and Mohyeddin Ibn Arabi are among those kinds of writers and poets that have expressed these points in a candid way. The outcome of the research is that for Ibn Arabi fatality is something relative. Fatality is nonexistence from an imperfect stage which needs survival in a perfect stage. Therefore, anything which gets fatal is not from God and what remains is the manifestation of Him. He assumes fatality and survival to be some attributes that are added to God and people, that is he takes fatality as something in a relationship between human and the universe and not divine, and survival is attributed to the relationship between human being and God, that are associated with Ayane Thabeteh and in the end by explaining on survival, he relates that to monism. On the other hand, Attar believes fatality to be something to do with disconnection from worldly and heavenly affairs, self sacrifice for the beloved and detachment from the public. Both terms above depend on this issue that fatality is of three stages. Just like Ibn Arabi, Attar relates fatality to monism.

Mystical literature is such a vast domain that becomes the manifestation of different opinions by mystics and Sufis in various fields of study. The area of demonology is one of those. In the Sufi Islamic history, demons are viewed at from two perspectives. The first one which is related to Senian Jebri, Satan is an expelled and cursed feature and deserves permanent hell, and on the other hand, it is viewed from oriental monotheism defending Satan in a way that he doesnt deserve torture though order of God to prostrate is assumed to be a divine trial. This paper first tries to analyze the demonological views of Mowlana Jalaleddin Balkhi and then the background views of great mystics such as Hallaj, Sanayee, and Ahmad Ghazali and Eynolghozat are dealt with.

Wisdom and rationalism have been interesting topics for Muslim scholars in various eras in history and there have been different positions against them. Mystics were member of those groups that being impressed by poets have looked at wisdom from various perspectives. Sanayee, as a powerful Persian poet, who blew the spirit of mysticism into Persian literature, has successfully reflected different and opposing positions against that. That is, sometimes respecting and evaluating wisdom and some other times contempt and impairing it. Some studies reveal that Sanayee and other mystics dont oppose the absolute or general wisdom, but their enmity and opposition is against reasonable rationality employed in religious cognition.

By a brief survey on the thinking process of Ishraq philosophy (illumination), this paper has come up with some spaces compatible with the practical and theoretical sources. Studying the proposed theoretical discussions, it was endeavored to extract the available attitudes and perspectives and put them aligned with the studies done so that the way of thinking could be found. The question that makes the roadmap here is whether one can design a bright horizon for the theoretical studies according to the world sketch. At this stage, it was tried to get help from a Sketch to go along with theoretical studies. Deploying that led to the skeleton separation of specific urban spaces which have been drawn in accordance with mental and theoretical basics. The organic urban spaces are not made up all of a sudden (a mixed up space but independent from one another) but their residents will shape up the place over time or make some changes in them.This study has been after reshaping them instead of finding an ultimate response for questions to be presented to others. Many a question has no answer. The result has been thinking about them again which is yet to come.

This paper encompasses a research upon the aestheticism of Sheikh Ahmad Qazalis, Mystic in 5th and 6th centuries AH, literary and mystical masterpiece called "Savanehol Oshaq. This paper endeavors to analyze the tone and conveyance of mystical and lovemaking concepts of his in his eloquent language and analyze his speech and his loveable poetic pictures. Therefore, after a short introduction, the Sheikh's perspective on beauty and aestheticism is succinctly studied. Parallel to that, the analysis is drawn up on mystical aestheticism and the difference between denotation and connotation is dealt with. Finally, to demonstrate the eloquence ability of Ahmad Qazali, there are some examples given on his use of simile, metaphor, irony, diagnosis, and paradox.