Notes on Contributors
Denis Gril
is Professor Emeritus of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Aix-Marseille. His main areas of research are the work of Ibn al-ʿArabī, the history of Sufism and the scriptural foundations of spirituality in Islam.
Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino
is Professor at the Center for Islamic Theology (ZITh), Tübingen University, and has held the Chair for Hadith Studies and Prophetic Tradition since 2016. He specialises in the transmission of ḥadīth, classical and modern Islamic prophetology and the history of Islamic spirituality. On these themes he has published Fès et sainteté (2014); “Transmission, Ethos and Authority in Hadith scholarship” (2019); “Secularisation and Conflicting Images of Muhammad in contemporary Islam” (2020).
Caterina Bori
is Associate Professor in the History of pre-modern Muslim societies in the Department of History, University of Bologna. Her research focuses mainly on the history of the Mamlūk period, with a particular interest in the intersections between society and religion/religiosities. Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, their circle of followers and their late medieval/early modern receptions, have been at the centre of Bori’s research in recent years. She is the author of a number of studies in this area.
Pierre Lory
is Director of Studies in the Religious Sciences Section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes/PSL Université, in Paris. He devotes his teaching and research to mystical currents in Islam (mystical commentaries on the Qurʾān, ancient Sufism) and esotericism (alchemy, dream interpretation, the mystical science of letters). Among his works are La dignité de l’homme face aux anges, aux animaux et aux djinns (2018) and Le rêve et ses interprétations en Islam, 2nd ed (2014).
Mathieu Terrier
is a Research Fellow at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, and a member of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants (UEAI). An historian of Islamic thought, his research is mainly concerned with Twelver Shīʿism, Islamic philosophy and Sufism in medieval and early modern Iran. Among his most recent publications are Histoire de la sagesse et philosophie shi’ite: ‘L’Aimé des cœurs’ de Quṭb al-Dīn Ashkevarī (2016), and Shi‘i Islam and Sufism: Classical Views and Modern Perspectives, co-edited with Denis Hermann (2020).
Daniel De Smet
is a Research Director at the CNRS in France and teaches Arabic philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium. His main fields of research are the philosophical doctrines of Shīʿism, in particular in its Ismāʿīlī branch, and the transmission of Neo-Platonism in the Islamic World. Among his publications are Les Épîtres sacrées des Druzes: Rasā’il al-Ḥikma (2007) and La philosophie ismaélienne: Un ésotérisme chiite entre néoplatonisme et gnose (2012).
Meryem Sebti
is a researcher at the CNRS. Her field of research is Arabic philosophy, particularly the philosophy of Avicenna. She has written numerous articles on the psychology and theory of knowledge of Avicenna. She is the author of “Avicenne. L’âme humaine” (2000) and has translated and edited (in collaboration) Avicenna’s commentary to Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda (2014). She is also the scientific editor of “Noétique et théorie de la connaissance dans la philosophie arabe des IXe au XIIe siècle” (2019).
Samuela Pagani
is a researcher and lecturer of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Salento (Lecce, Italy). Her main research field is the history of religious thought in Islam. She recently published “ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī’s Treatise in Defence of Niyâzî-i Mısrî”, in Early Modern Trends in Islamic Theology: ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī and His Network of Scholarship (Studies and Texts), ed. Lejla Demiri and Samuela Pagani, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019, pp. 317–362; and « “Roi ou serviteur?” La tentation du Prophète, ou le choix d’un modèle », Archives de sciences sociales des religions, n. 178, a. 62, Juillet-septembre 2017, pp. 43–67.
Jean-Jacques Thibon
(PhD 2002) is Professor of Islamic Studies at Inalco (Paris). He has published a monograph entitled L’œuvre d’Abū ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (2009) and translations and articles on Sufis and Sufism in medieval times. He recently published Les générations des Soufis : Traduction des Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya d’Abū ‘Abd al-Raḥmān, Muḥammad b. Ḥusayn al-Sulamī (325/937–412/1021) (2019).
Adrien de Jarmy
After graduating from the Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon and obtaining the agrégation d’histoire, he enrolled as a PhD candidate in medieval Islamic history at the University of Sorbonne, while finishing a bachelor’s degree in classical Arabic at INALCO. He is currently a fellow at the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies (IDEO) and the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology (IFAO) in Cairo and teaches at the Université de Strasbourg. His work focuses on the emergence of Muḥammad’s character in historiography and law in the first centuries of Islam.
Nelly Amri
is Professor of Medieval History at La Manouba University in Tunis. Her research focuses on the history of Sufism, hagiography, sainthood (with a special interest in feminine sanctity) and religious feeling in Ifrīqiya and the medieval Maghrib. Among her publications are: Croire au Maghreb médiéval. La sainteté en question (XIVe–XVe siècles) (2019); La sainte de Tunis. Présentation et traduction de l’hagiographie de ‘Âisha al-Mannûbiyya (2008); and with Denis Gril (ed.), Saint et sainteté dans le christianisme et l’islam : Le regard des sciences de l’homme, Maisonneuve et Larose, MMSH (2007).
Brigitte Foulon
is Professor of Medieval Arabic Literature at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, and is attached to the Centre des Études Arabes et Orientales (CEAO). Her research has a particular focus in on the literary production of al-Andalus, without neglecting ancient oriental poetry (pre-Islamic, Umayyad and Abbasid periods). Among her publications are Al-Andalus, anthologie (in collaboration with Emmanuelle Tixier Du Mesnil (2009); La poésie andalouse du XIe siècle, Voir et décrire le paysage (2011); Etudier le jardin en sciences humaines et sociales : méthodologie, problèmes et enjeux (with A. Caïozzo, ed.; 2018); and L’art de l’éloge chez les Arabes (with M. Bakhouch ed.), special issue of Quaderni di Studi Arabi (QSA), Istituto per l’Oriente, C. A. Nallino (2018).
Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen
is Professor of History at the University Paris-IV Sorbonne. She is a specialist in Egypt and popular Sufism during the Ottoman and contemporary periods, and is mainly interested in religious history, cultural history and social history, from the end of the Mamluk era to the present day. Her main publications include: with Alexandre Papas (ed.), Family Portraits with Saints: Hagiography, Sanctity and Family in the Muslim World (2014); with Rachida Chih and Rüdiger Seesemann (eds.), Sufism, Literary Production and Printing in the Nineteenth Century (2015); and, with Francesco Chiabotti, Eve Feuillebois-Pierunek and Luca Patrizi (eds.), Ethics and Spirituality in Islam: Sufi Adab (2017).
Marc Toutant
is a member of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. His research focuses on cultural interactions between Central Asia, Indo-Persian and Ottoman cultures. He is the author of Un empire de mots: Pouvoir, culture et soufisme à l’époque des derniers Timourides au miroir de la Khamsa de Mīr ʿAlī Shīr Nawā’ī (2016), and co-editor of Literature and Society in Central Asia: New Sources for the Study of Culture and Power from the 15th to the 21th Century (2015).
Alexandre Papas
is a Senior Research Scholar (Directeur de recherche) at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. He is a historian of Islamic mysticism in the early modern and modern periods. His main publications include: Soufisme et politique entre Chine, Tibet et Turkestan (2005); Mystiques et vagabonds en islam (2010); Jāmī in Regional Contexts (2018, co-ed. with Th. D’Hubert); Thus Spake the Dervish: Sufism, Language, and the Religious Margins in Central Asia, 1400–1900 (2019). He is co-editor of the Journal d’histoire du soufisme and Brill’s Handbook of Sufi Studies.
Christiane Gruber
is Professor of Islamic Art in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan. Her scholarly work explores figural representation, depictions of the Prophet Muḥammad, ascension texts and images, and devotional arts in Islamic traditions, about which she has written three books and edited a dozen volumes. Her most recent publications include her single authored book The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images and her edited volume The Image Debate: Figural Representation in Islam and Across the World, both published in 2019.
Tobias Heinzelmann
(PhD Heidelberg 2003) is an adjunct professor at the University of Zurich. Among his publications: Populäre Religiöse Literatur und Buchkultur im Osmanischen Reich: Die Werke der Brüder Yazıcıoğlı, (2015); Heiliger Kampf oder Landesverteidigung? Die Diskussion um die Einführung der allgemeinen Militärpflicht im Osmanischen Reich 1826–1856 (2004); Die Balkankrise in der Osmanischen Karikatur; Die Satirezeitschriften Karagöz, Kalem und Cem 1908–1914 (1999).
Hiba Abid
is a specialist in Islamic Art History and Codicology. She is post-doctoral fellow at Collège de France (ERC-SICLE Project (Saadian Intellectual and Cultural LifE)). Her PhD dissertation was devoted to The Dalā’il al-Khayrāt of al-Jazūlī (d. 1465). The Manuscript Tradition of a Sufi Prayer Book in the Islamic West from the 16th until the 19th centuries.
Francesco Chiabotti
obtained his PhD in Islamic Studies at the University of Aix-Marseille in 2014. He is associated Professor for Islamic Studies and Medieval History at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Inalco), Paris. His thesis is devoted to the life and work of the influential Sufi master and theologian ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī (d.465/1072). He has recently published, with Bilal Orfali (AUB) The Amālī of Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (2020).