South Asian Studies Initiative hosts daytime lectures, (formerly part of CSAMES Brown Bag lectures), organized as South Asia Friday Talks @ 11. All Friday Talks are virtual, on Fridays from 11 AM to 12 PM.
Talk: Sufi Poetry: Readings in Mystical Verse
This lecture offers a curated selection of readings from the works of four major figures in the Sufi poetic tradition: Rūmī, Ḥallāj, Saʿdī, and Iqbāl. Each poem will be read in original Arabic, Persian, and Urdu and presented in translation, accompanied by commentary that situates the work within its historical, literary, and spiritual contexts.
Mukhtar Ali is an Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, specializing in mysticism (Sufism) philosophy and ethics. His areas of interest include Arabic and Persian literature, Qurʾānic studies, theology, Traditional Chinese Medicine and comparative religion. He is the author of Philosophical Sufism: An Introduction to the School of Ibn al-ʿArabī (Routledge, 2021) and The Horizons of Being: The Metaphysics of Ibn al-ʿArabī in the Muqaddimat al-Qayṣarī (Brill, 2020) and his forthcoming work, Inscriptions of Wisdom: The Sufism of Ibn al-ʿArabī in the Mirror of Jāmī, is a study on Ibn al-ʿArabī's masterpiece, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam through the lens of Jāmī’s Naqd al-nuṣūṣ fī sharḥ Naqsh al-Fuṣūṣ.