The occult science of the letters plays a major role in global philosophical and mystical heritage. Medieval Muslim and Jewish engagements with this science have been extensive, shaping various strands of philosophy and mysticism, including Sufism and Kabbalah. The great mystic of Andalusia, Ibn Arabi (1165-1240), considered the science of letters the key to grasp the deep mathematical harmony of the cosmological, anthropological, physical, and metaphysical realms. His complex exposition of letters as building blocks of the universe presents a systematic parallel to the Galenic theory of medicine. The Zohar, on the other hand, embodies an enigmatic application of this science that digests a large body of Jewish mystical and occult writings. Do their approaches to letters have anything in common? In this panel, we will offer an interreligious perspective to letter mysticism by thinking Ibn Arabi and the Zohar in a comparative perspective. Ashkan Bahrani will introduce an ongoing collaborative research project that discovers an original work of Ibn Arabi on letter mysticism. Nejra Salihbegovic will present a theoretical and historical framework to study Ibn Arabi and the Zohar in a comparative lens. Aydogan Kars will apply this comparative framework to the study of particular Hebrew and Arabic letters. The panelists will collectively explore the possibilities of, and challenges for, framing letter mysticism as an interreligious phenomenon.
Chair: Milad Milani
Convenors: Ashkan Bahrani, Nejra Salihbegovic, Aydogan Kars