PhD Oral Exam - Sheridan Polinsky, Religion

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the Egyptian Sufi Ibn Mughayzil in four chapters. Chapter 1 investigates his life, activity, and teachers, in addition to his place within the Egyptian Shādhiliyya. I show that his discipleship of Muḥammad al-Maghribī, a prominent Shādhilī master, and his studies under such notable scholars as Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī and Shams al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī linked him to the Sufi and scholarly elite of Cairo and created the opportunity for him to pursue the eighth deputyship of one of the two main lines of the Egyptian Shādhiliyya. Although it does not appear that he was ever recognized as that deputy, his legacy was ensured by his two known writings: al-Kawākib al-zāhira fī ijtimāʿ al-awliyāʾ yaqẓatan bi-Sayyid al-Dunyā wa-l-Ākhira, a comprehensive treatment of Sufi topics; and al-Qawl al-ʿalī fī tarāduf al-muʿjiza bi-karāmat al-walī, a brief treatise mainly on the saints’ miracles. I examine these works in Chapter 2, illustrating their pertinence to late Mamlūk Sufism through their focus on such themes as the relationship between Law (sharīʿa) and Reality (ḥaqīqa), the saints’ miracles, and Sufi epistemology. I reveal Ibn Mughayzil to be a strong defender of the Sufis and a devout Shādhilī, while distinguishing his text from two contemporary Shādhilī manuals by al-Suyūṭī and Aḥmad Zarrūq. Chapter 3 offers a close study of the author’s treatment of select issues concerning God and His relation to the world, including His oneness and manifestations, the eternality and creation of the world, the Muḥammadan Spirit (al-rūḥ al-muḥammadiyya), the vision of God in this world and the next, and religious diversity. I introduce Ibn Mughayzil as a synthetic and creative thinker, engaging a rich body of literature to develop his positions. I suggest, nevertheless, that his determination to defend the orthodoxy of certain Sufi doctrines engenders his tolerance of diverse views and, in some cases, ambiguity in his own stances. Chapter 4 explores the key topic of the Kawākib, the waking vision of Prophet Muḥammad after his death. Beginning with a brief history of the phenomenon up unto Ibn Mughayzil’s time, I show that it had grown increasingly common—especially among the Shādhiliyya—and became the object of a heated debate in ninth/fifteenth-century Cairo. I argue that Ibn Mughayzil makes a crucial intervention by theorizing the waking vision in a way that honours traditional distinctions and views, thus appealing to scholars who had been skeptical about the possibility and orthodoxy of the vision. I also demonstrate that Ibn Mughayzil’s attention to the waking vision anticipates its increased significance in later centuries in ritual and as a source of spiritual authority. In concluding, I contend that study of a late Mamlūk Sufi text like the Kawākib can help us appreciate scholarship of the period and challenge the notion of a literary decline.