Emotion in Christian and Islamic Contemplative Texts, 1100–1250

A. S. Lazikani’s learned and lively monograph opens with the qumri, the turtledove, a feature in the thirteenth-century Tarjuman al-ashwaq, a collection of nasib poetry, mystical poems of longing or desire for a divine union by the Shaykh al-akhbar (the greatest master) of Sufi thought, Ibn ‘Arabi. The qumri’s painful cry catalyzes the speaker’s remembrance of the beloved; the qumri symbolizes the nafs, the soul, of an ‘arif, a gnostic, and the beloved, the Divine. With this inviting opening, Lazikani quickly establishes the unboundedness of avian flight in contemplative writing in the Islamic world and Latin Christendom; contemporary to the Andalusian Ibn ‘Arabi (who was born in Murcia), the dove-as-soul of a religious recluse takes hold in the words of a writer from England’s West Midlands in the Ancrene Wisse, the guide for Christian anchoresses. Lazikani shows that this is no empty comparison, rather that in both cases, “birds sing the languages of divine love—languages that transcend cultures whilst also being rooted in cultural codes” (6).The languages of divine love are the driving force of the monograph, which sets English and Arabic contemplative literature written ca. 1100–1250 side by side, using a framework that combines the history of emotions, devotional and contemplative literature, and the capaciousness of divine love to explore the “hermeneutical and semiotic affinities and interchanges across these texts” (217). Lazikani marshals through a new framework, that of “avian emotion,” drawing on critical work on “emotional communities” and “affective literacies” that allows for a rich dialogue to emerge between Arabic and English devotional material and challenges the Eurocentric and anglophone nature of the discipline of the history of emotions. This, along with Lazikani’s astute handling of the multilingual sources, are its key strengths. The book is divided into five parts and eight chapters and takes the reader from a very fulsome introduction through the constituent parts of devotional literature: love, the heart, flesh, blood and wine, absence, and secrecy, before concluding with an avian ascent.Bringing together two literary traditions that are often (unfairly) considered to be too far apart—linguistically, culturally, geographically—requires careful scaffolding for readers who are likely to be initiated in only one of these literary traditions. Lazikani is well aware of this and provides an introduction that sets out a firm foundation for the uninitiated, including a valuable summary of the key texts and their readers. A core collection is used throughout: Sufi poetry of Ibn ‘Arabi, Shushtari, Ibn al-Farid, ‘Attar, and Rumi; English material in Ancrene Wisse, and the collected Wooing Group. The cross-cultural valences of love (‘ishq, eros, agape, caritas, rahma), Sufism, the “contemplative,” and “language-lovers” are assiduously laid out and helpfully and convincingly navigated using Roland Barthes and Luce Irigaray. This carries through to part 2, “Paradigms of Love.” Chapter 2 focuses on Jesus/Isa as Beloved and Lover as the “adhesive” within the “emotional communities of Sufi and Christian contemplatives” (73). Islamic Christology is brought to light in close readings of Jesus as a model ascetic, lover, and source of wisdom in Sufi poetry with the “vivifying powers” of Jesus in Ibn ‘Arabi’s Bezels and the richness of crucifixion imagery in Shushtari’s “monastery poems” drawn out. This is mirrored in Jesus as Lover and his figure as the “paradigmatic anchorite” and “perfect suitor” in Ancrene Wisse and Wohunge with further reflective echoes on Mary (in Ibn ‘Arabi and Ancrene Wisse) and ascetic and anchoritic enclosures. Chapter 3 extends Fiona Somerset’s concept of “emotion-artists” to the heart considered to be the “essential raw material” in both devotional traditions. Lazikani shows the multivalent and changeable nature of the heart and the semantic richness, malleability, and overlaps in both the Arabic qalb and English heorte.Part 3 turns to “embodied affect,” divided into flesh (chapter 4) and blood and wine (chapter 5). Here, we move into the territory of the body. Chapter 4 focuses on the “affective-ascetic body,” demonstrating the valency of weeping, the dying body, debasement in love, and the living dead, and their mirrors and echoes in Sufi poetry’s treatment of fana and baqa (self-annihilation) and the death-life of the anchorite: The English Lofsong of ure Louerde reflects back onto Ibn al-Farid with celebrations of wretched bodies “infused with love” (154). Chapter 5 builds with a turn to blood and wine, positioned here as hermeneutic tools to read the Sufi khamriyya (wine poetry) and the Christian eucharist, where blood and sweetness are intricately tied to remembrance in the Arabic dhikr and English munegunge. The close readings of Ibn al-Farid and Shushtari are extraordinary—and while wine occupies a specificity in the Christian tradition that is not in Islam, the intoxicating poetics of Sufism enhance readings of the valences of remembrance and meditation in the Wooing Group.Part 4 is devoted to “affective semiotics.” Chapter 6 focuses on the semiotics of absences and its painful lack with readings of the Sufi desert landscapes set alongside the wilderness of the English texts. Absence-presence and veiling-unveiling are in dialogue with each other with the unveiling of knowledge as necessary for understanding absence and gaining presence and closeness to the Divine. The treatment of Ibn al-Farid’s Nazm is a highlight here. Chapter 7 turns to secrecy—the key to mysticism—and delves into codes and riddles, revelation and concealment, sealing and unsealing in the affective literacies of attaining divine love. Here, the focus on written letters, inscriptions, and translation (Arabic tarjama) of names (Allah, Esther) reverberate across the traditions in especially noteworthy ways. The conclusion returns us back to the birds themselves with ‘Attar’s Mantiq al-tayr and a rather fitting turn to the collared doves in the beast fables of Kalila and Dimna.Each chapter is a mosaic of rich close readings that begin with the Arabic-Islamic tradition before moving to the English contemplative texts. What is rather special here is the careful threads that are woven into each subsection that are brought together tightly in conclusions that demonstrates the—at times rather stunning—ways that the two literary traditions are in dialogue and how they enhance each other. For example, the concluding lines of chapter 6: “The explicit devout world of the Sufi poetry also enhances our reading of the spaces of love-longing in the English texts, which are configured as arid, thirst-inducing spaces echoing the dwelling of the Desert Mother and Father” (183). This is a mighty and necessary piece of scholarship that is deeply researched and beautifully written. Lazikani is in full command of both traditions in ways that unveil new worlds to readers and learners working in either one of these religious devotional traditions

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