The Nightfolk: Ibn ʿArabī Behind the Veil of Night

In the book under review, Dunja Rašić examines a little-studied dimension of Islamic mystical thought: the figure of the nocturnal spiritual elite, or “Nightfolk” (ahl al-layl), as articulated primarily in the writings of Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240). While situating Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī within a longer genealogy of Islamic ascetic and Sufi literature, the book shines a light on an oft-forgotten discourse of the night as a privileged space of divine encounter, secrecy and transformation. Rašić’s work represents a significant contribution to Akbarian studies, as well as to broader discussions of religious authority, sanctity and withdrawal in Muslim intellectual history.

The book’s central message is not merely about Nightfolks as a spiritual category, but the conceptual and moral tensions they embody. These figures are portrayed as deeply intimate with the Divine – recipients of nocturnal unveilings and divine conversations – while also being described as socially withdrawn, morally ambiguous and largely uninterested in communal leadership or ethical exemplarity. Rašić’s analysis does not seek to resolve these tensions; rather, it foregrounds them as intrinsic to Ibn ʿArabī’s nocturnal cosmology.