Department of Arabic Language & Literature
University of Haifa
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Prof. Arin Salamah-Qudsi
Lecturer Details
- Position:
- Associate professor
- Address:
-
Eshkol Tower, Floor 15, room 1511
Reception Hours:By appointment only
- Email:
-
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - Phone:
- 04-8249788
- Internal:
- Internal No.: 3788
- https://haifa.academia.edu/arinSalamahQudsi
Research fields
Research fields:I am a senior, tenured lecturer of Sufi and Islamic Studies in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature, University of Haifa as well as being head of the department since October 2020.
Following the completion of my PhD, I obtained a postdoctoral fellowship from the Dangoor Program of Universal Monotheism at Bar Ilan University as well as a postdoctoral fellowship from the Planning & Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education, Israel. In 2011, I obtained a Ma’uf fellowship for Outstanding Arab Lecturers from the Council of Higher Education which funded my position of lecturer.
I teach courses on classical Arabic literature, the legacy of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), medieval Islamic texts, Islamic spirituality, zuhd literature, theories of profane and divine love in early medieval Islam, and the role and position of women in Islamic and mystical thought.
In my courses, I urge my students to appreciate the diversity and richness of the Islamic-Arabic heritage and to commit themselves to critical thinking in treating primary sources. These sources run the gamut of topics and perspectives and include general works of belle-letters (adab), biographies and hagiographies, religious textbooks and treatises, historiographies, and works on Qurʾānic exegesis.
Like my colleagues in the department, I teach in Standard Arabic. This gives our students a great opportunity to discuss and analyze at this language level both in spoken and written forms.
As a researcher, I focus on medieval Islam, religious and esoteric thought, Islamic theology and classical Arabic prose. My publications include articles on different aspects of early Islamic piety, religion and literature, as well as Sufi figures whose legacies on Islamic culture are extensive. The most outspoken of these are: Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 1234) (whose life, Sufi teachings, and heritage were the focus of my 2009 PhD dissertation), Sumnūn Ibn Ḥamza known as Sumnūn al-Muḥibb (Sumnūn the Lover, d. 910), and al-Junayd al-Baghdādī (d. 910). More recently, I obtained a research grant from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) to conduct a three-year project that seeks to create a corpus of early Sufi letters (rasāʿi) that are scattered throughout both published sources and unpublished manuscripts. This kind of corpus is expected to promote further study of Sufism in relatively new areas.
Besides my articles, I have published two books; the first concerns Abū Ḥafṣ al-Suharawardī, Bayna Sayr wa-Ṭayr (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2012) (in Arabic), and the more recent is Sufism and Early Islamic Piety: Personal and Communal Dynamics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
The following is a selected list of my most recent publications:
Books
1. Arin Salamah-Qudsi. Bayna sayr wa-ṭayr: al-tanẓīr, ḥayāt al-jamāʿa wa-bunā al-muʾassasa fī taṣawwuf Abī Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2012. 622 pp. (in Arabic).
2. Arin Salamah-Qudsi. Sufism and Early Islamic Piety: Personal and Communal Dynamics. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 315 pp. www.cambridge.org/9781108422710.
Articles
1. Arin Salamah-Qudsi. “The Spiritual Culture of Food: Eating Customs in Early Sufism”. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung. Vol. 72, 4 (2019): 419-436.
2. Arin Salamah-Qudsi. “Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī’s Waṣiyya to Sufi Novices: A Testimony to Fifth/Eleventh Century Sufism”. Le Muséon: Journal of Oriental Studies - Revue d'Études Orientales. Vol.132, 3-4 (2019): 509-534.
3. Arin Salamah-Qudsi. “Licked by Fire”: Sumnūn Ibn Ḥamza (d. 298/910-11) and Passionate Love during Third/Ninth Century Sufism”. al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean. Vol. 32 (2020): 225-242.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2019.1654767)
4. Arin Salamah-Qudsi. “Abū Jaʿfar Ibn Yazdāniyār’s Rawḍat al-Murīdīn: An Overview of Unknown Sufi Manual of the Fifth/Eleventh Century”. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Vol. 30, issue 3 (2020): 541-560.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186320000048
5. Arin Salamah-Qudsi. “The Exchange of Letters in Early Sufism: Preliminary Notes”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. Vol. 83, issue 3 (2020): 391-413.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X20002657