The Mystics of Al-Andalus: Ibn Barrajān and Islamic Thought in the Twelfth Century

The twelfth century CE was a watershed moment for mysticism in the Muslim West. In al-Andalus, the pioneers of this mystical tradition, the Mu'tabirun or 'Contemplators', championed a synthesis between Muslim scriptural sources and Neoplatonic cosmology. Ibn Barrajā
n of Seville was most responsible for shaping this new intellectual approach, and is the focus of Yousef Casewit's book. Ibn Barrajā
n's extensive commentaries on the divine names and the Qur'ā
n stress the significance of God's signs in nature, the Arabic bible as a means of interpreting the Qur'ā
n, and the mystical crossing from the visible to the unseen. With an examination of the understudied writings of both Ibn Barrajā
n and his contemporaries, Ibn al-'Arif and Ibn Qasi, as well as the wider socio-political and scholarly context in al-Andalus, this book will appeal to researchers of the medieval Islamic world and the history of mysticism and Sufism in the Muslim West.