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Ṭūsī Reloaded: Ismāʿīlī Paths of Sufi Wayfaring and Sufi Paths of Ismāʿīlī Apophaticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Aydogan Kars
Aydogan Kars*
Affiliation:
The Centre for Religious Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
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Abstract

Much ink has been spilled on the tumultuous life and works of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī. This paper re-evaluates his connections with Sufism and Ismāʿīlism, and challenges the reduction of the former to a late interest, and the latter to an early affiliation abandoned in the wake of the Mongol invasion. The paper argues that Sufi and Ismāʿīlī themes, sources, and ideas are in an organic interpenetration in Ṭūsī’s works throughout his career. While his early Ismāʿīlī eschatology has a fundamentally Sufi nature, his late Sufi treatise adopts the key components of Ismāʿīlī negative theology of the divine nature. The case of Ṭūsī illustrates that the Ismāʿīlī double negation was preserved in Iran and Central Asia, and put into creative interactions with Sufism in the thirteenth century.

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Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , May 2017 , pp. 369 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2017

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Footnotes

Aydogan would like to express his gratitude to Ashkan Bahrani for his constructive comments, innate wisdom, and scholarly companionship.

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