Lost in a Sea of Letters: Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya (d. 1252) and the Plurality of Sufi Knowledge

Uy II, Cyril V.

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Year:: 2021
Contributor:: Uy II, Cyril V. (creator); Bashir, Shahzad (Advisor); Khalek, Nancy (Reader); Muhanna, Elias (Reader); Brown University. Department of Religious Studies (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Islam; Middle Ages; Knowledge, Theory of; Middle East; Iran; Islamic philosophy; Central Asia; Sufism; Philosophy, Medieval; Lettrism--Philosophy; Knowledge, Theory of (Islam); Knowledge, Theory of (Religion); Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya (d. 1252)
Extent:: x, 264 p.

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Abstract:: This dissertation explores the generative epistemological potential of medieval Sufism through the radical openness of Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya's (d. 1252) thought. The project reads the renowned Iranian-born Sufi in conversation with contemporaries like Najm al-Dīn Kubrā (d. 1221), ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 1234), Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240), and Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 1274) to uncover a mosaic of nuanced responses to fundamental epistemological questions: What does it mean to know? How do embodied practices, religious experiences, and social relationships mark certain individuals as knowing beings? How can knowledge be cultivated in writing? Through close readings of theoretical treatises, training manuals, teaching certificates, and personal correspondences written in Arabic and Persian, I examine how Ḥamūya and his colleagues developed performative modes of writing that became meaningful through the practical and experiential dimensions of Sufi training. The knowledge these Sufis produced in their texts was not a mastery of facts and figures, but an embodied sensibility that enabled knowing beings to negotiate diverse intellectual and experiential possibilities across a plurality of contexts. I argue that Ḥamūya carved out a distinct place within this shared field by deconstructing the performative strategies of his rivals and parochializing their universalizing claims. Each chapter focuses on a key Sufi theme—ontology, embodied practice, social bonds, and human perfection—to reveal how Ḥamūya destabilized conventional forms and forced readers to grapple with the fundamental mechanisms of Sufi knowledge itself. My analysis of Saʿd al-Dīn's deconstructive ethos and radical openness to interpretation underscores how a nuanced engagement with difference could thrive as a robust approach to social and intellectual competition. While other Sufis laid claim to perfect knowledge through demonstrations of their own totalizing sensibilities, Saʿd al-Dīn wrote Reality by leaving the meaning of his words open to the creative imagination of advanced readers. The project thus brings medieval Sufi theorists into conversation with contemporary academic approaches to knowledge, inviting us to reimagine the global efflorescence of medieval and early-modern Sufism as a function of its rich internal diversity, relational potential, and endlessly contested possibilities.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2021

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Uy II, Cyril V., "Lost in a Sea of Letters: Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya (d. 1252) and the Plurality of Sufi Knowledge" (2021). Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:9n8chr34/

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Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the Religious Studies department.
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