A Sufi scholar鈥檚 philosophical interpretation of the names of God
The Divine Names is a philosophically sophisticated commentary on the names of God. Penned by the seventh-/thirteenth-century North African scholar and Sufi poet 士Af墨f al-D墨n al-Tilims膩n墨, The Divine Names expounds upon the one hundred and forty-six names of God that appear in the Qur示an, including The All-Merciful, The Powerful, The First, and The Last. In his treatment of each divine name, al-Tilims膩n墨 synthesizes and compares the views of three influential earlier authors, al-Bayhaq墨, al-Ghaz膩l墨, and Ibn Barraj膩n.
Al-Tilims膩n墨 famously described his two teachers Ibn al-士Arab墨 and al-Q奴naw墨 as a 鈥減hilosophizing mystic鈥� and a 鈥渕ysticizing philosopher,鈥� respectively. Picking up their mantle, al-Tilims膩n墨 merges mysticism and philosophy, combining the tenets of Akbar墨 Sufism with the technical language of Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and Avicennan philosophy as he explains his logic in a rigorous and concise way. Unlike Ibn al-士Arab墨, his overarching concern is not to examine the names as correspondences between God and creation, but to demonstrate how the names overlap at every level of cosmic existence. The Divine Names shows how a broad range of competing theological and philosophical interpretations can all contain elements of the truth.
An English-only edition.
