The Divine Names

A Mystical Theology of the Names of God in the Qurʾan

ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī, Yousef Casewit

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9781479836031
• eBook ISBN:
  9781479836048
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Medieval Literary Collections

A Sufi scholar's philosophical interpretation of the names of God

The Divine Names is a philosophically sophisticated commentary on the names of God. Penned by the seventh-/thirteenth-century North African scholar and Sufi poet ?Af?f al-D?n al-Tilims?n?, The Divine Names expounds upon the one hundred and forty-six names of God that appear in the Qur?an, including The All-Merciful, The Powerful, The First, and The Last. In his treatment of each divine name, al-Tilims?n? synthesizes and compares the views of three influential earlier authors, al-Bayhaq?, al-Ghaz?l?, and Ibn Barraj?n.

Al-Tilims?n? famously described his two teachers Ibn al-?Arab? and al-Q?naw? as a "philosophizing mystic" and a "mysticizing philosopher," respectively. Picking up their mantle, al-Tilims?n? merges mysticism and philosophy, combining the tenets of Akbar? Sufism with the technical language of Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and Avicennan philosophy as he explains his logic in a rigorous and concise way. Unlike Ibn al-?Arab?, his overarching concern is not to examine the names as correspondences between God and creation, but to demonstrate how the names overlap at every level of cosmic existence. The Divine Names shows how a broad range of competing theological and philosophical interpretations can all contain elements of the truth.

An English-only edition.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Letter from the General Editor
• About this Paperback
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Note on the Translation
• Notes to the Introduction
• The Opening Surah
• The Surah of the Cow
• The Surah of the House of ʿImrān
• The Surah of Women
• The Surah of the Cattle
• The Surah of the Heights
• The Surah of the Spoils
• The Surah of Jonah
• The Surah of Hūd
• The Surah of Joseph
• The Surah of the Thunder
• The Surah of Abraham
• The Surah of the Bee
• The Surah of the Night Journey
• The Surah of the Cave
• The Surah of Mary
• The Surah of Ṭā Hā
• The Surah of the Prophets
• The Surah of the Pilgrimage
• The Surah of Light
• The Surah of the Criterion
• The Surah of the Poets
• The Surah of the Ants
• The Surah of the Story
• The Surah of the Byzantines
• The Surah of the Parties
• The Surah of Sheba
• The Surah of the Cleaver
• The Surah of the Concealer
• The Surah of the Private Chambers
• The Surah of the Scatterers
• The Surah of the Mount
• The Surah of the Star
• The Surah of the All-Merciful
• The Surah of Iron
• The Surah of the Gathering
• The Surah of the Congregational Prayer
• The Surah of the Kingdom
• The Surah of the Ascending Pathways
• The Surah of the Jinn
• The Surah of the Constellations
• The Surah of Sincerity
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Further Reading
• Index of Qurʾanic Verses
• Index of the Names
• Index
• About the NYU Abu Dhabi Research Institute
• About the Translator
• The Library of Arabic Literature