İsmail Hakkı Altuntaş

  Elizabeth Sirriyeh SUFI VISIONARY OF OTTOMAN DAMASCUS ¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi (1641-1731) was the mcs^r distinguished Sufi visionary and scholar of Ottoman Syria. Many contemporaries and later Sufis gained their knowledge of Sufism from his writings. Many studied the works of the Andalusian mystic Ibn ¿Arabi, the Egyptian poet Ibn al-Farid and other masters through his mystical interpretations. Yet, despite Nabulusi’s importance for understand­ing Arab Sufism in the Ottoman age, very little has been published on this significant Sufi author. This pioneering book seeks to intro­duce the reader to Nabulusi’s Sufi experience and work, set against the background of Islamic life and thought in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Syria and Palestine. The book opens with an exploration of Nabulusi’s early life as scholar and Sufi saint in the making, earning enemies by his support for Ibn ¿Arabi and more controversial medieval mystics. His debt to Ibn ¿Arabi is examined further i