Hajj to the Heart - (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks) by Scott Kugle (Paperback)

About the Book

"Against the sweeping backdrop of South Asian history, this is a story of journeys taken by sixteenth-century reformist Muslim scholars and Sufi mystics from India to Arabia. At the center is the influential Sufi scholar Shaykh °Ali Muttaqi and his little-known network of disciples. Scott Kugle relates how °Ali Muttaqi, an expert in Arabic, scriptural hermeneutics, and hadith, left his native South Asia and traversed treacherous seas to make the Hajj to Mecca. Settling in Mecca, he continued to influence his homeland from overseas. Kugle draws on his original translations of Arabic and Persian manuscripts, never before available in English, to trace °Ali Muttaqi's devotional writings, revealing how the Hajj transformed his spiritual life and political loyalties. The story expands across three generations of peripatetic Sufi masters in the Mutaqqi lineage as they travel for purposes of pilgrimage, scholarship, and sometimes simply for survival along Indian Ocean maritime routes linking global Muslim communities. Exploring the political intrigue, scholarly debates, and diverse social milieus that shaped the colorful personalities of his Sufi subjects, Kugle argues for the importance of Indian Sufi thought in the study of hadith and of ethics in Islam"--

Book Synopsis

Against the sweeping backdrop of South Asian history, this is a story of journeys taken by sixteenth-century reformist Muslim scholars and Sufi mystics from India to Arabia. At the center is the influential Sufi scholar Shaykh ʿAli Muttaqi and his little-known network of disciples. Scott Kugle relates how ʿAli Muttaqi, an expert in Arabic, scriptural hermeneutics, and hadith, left his native South Asia and traversed treacherous seas to make the Hajj to Mecca. Settling in Mecca, he continued to influence his homeland from overseas. Kugle draws on his original translations of Arabic and Persian manuscripts, never before available in English, to trace ʿAli Muttaqi's devotional writings, revealing how the Hajj transformed his spiritual life and political loyalties.

The story expands across three generations of peripatetic Sufi masters in the Mutaqqi lineage as they travel for purposes of pilgrimage, scholarship, and sometimes simply for survival along Indian Ocean maritime routes linking global Muslim communities. Exploring the political intrigue, scholarly debates, and diverse social milieus that shaped the colorful personalities of his Sufi subjects, Kugle argues for the importance of Indian Sufi thought in the study of hadith and of ethics in Islam.

We are proud to announce that this book is freely available in an open-access enhanced edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)--a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries--and the generous support of Emory University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Learn more at the TOME website: openmonographs.org.

The open-access enhanced edition of Hajj to the Heart can be found here: https: //manifold.ecds.emory.edu/projects/hajj-to-the-heart

Review Quotes

"Hajj to the Heart is a narrative treasure. Kugle sets a new academic foray into the historiography of Sufism in which concepts such as reformism, authentic spirituality, Sufi authority, and scriptural knowledge serve as the basis for understanding the early modern South Asian Islamic history and interconnection of scholarly networks between South Asia and Muslim heartland of Mecca."--Middle Ground Journal