JAMI IN REGIONAL CONTEXTS: THE RECEPTION OF [ABD ALRAHMAN JAMI’S WORKS IN THE ISLAMICATE WORLD, CA. 9th/15th14th/20th CENTURY

Mulla Jami, as he has been known for centuries, was a towering figure in Islamic intellectual history. He was born in the province of Khurasan in the year 1414 during the first decades of the rule of Shah Rukh, Tamerlane’s son. The Timurid period was a spectacular one to be born into. This was an intellectual milieu that produced some of the inimitable and abiding thinkers of Sunni Islam. Sa[d al-Din al-Taftazani (d. 792/1390), for one, authored works on rhetoric, logic, law, and theology that were (and continue to be) studied in the Balkans-to-Bengal complex. His intellectual jostling partner, Sayyid Sharif al-Jurjani (d. 816/1413) penned Sharh al-Mawaqif, a masterful theological commentary. Abu Tahir Muhammad b. Ya[qub al-Firuzabadi (d. 817/1415) was the greatest philologist of his time. He is celebrated today for having composed one of the greatest works of Arabic lexicography, al-Qamus al-Muhit, but his philological breadth extended to the discipline of Sufism, where he discussed the writings and ideas of Ibn al-[Arabi (d. 638/1240). The Timurid century witnessed the flourishing of the Naqshbandi tariqah, represented by its most prolific authorial voice, Khwajah Muhammad Parsa (d. 822/1419), the disciple of Baha’ al-Din Naqshband (d. 791/1391). It was to this rich and complex world that Mulla Jami belonged.