All materials copyrighted © by Carl W. Ernst
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Articles for academic journals and books

Charles Kurzman and Carl W. Ernst, “Islamic Studies in U.S. Universities.” Paper for Social Sciences Research Council workshop on "The Production of Knowledge on World Regions: The Middle East."

"It's Not Just Academic – Writing Public Scholarship in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies," Review of Middle East Studies (forthcoming).

"Wakened by the Dove’s Trill: Structure and Meaning in the Arabic Preface of Rumi’s Mathnawi, Book IV.” In The Philosophy of Ecstasy: Rumi and the Sufi Tradition, ed. Leonard Lewisohn (London: I. B. Tauris, forthcoming).

"'A Little Indicates Much': Structure and Meaning in the Prefaces of Rumi’s Mathnawi (Books I-III)." In Wondrous Words: The Poetic Mastery of Jalal al-Din Rumi, ed. Leili Anvar (London: I. B. Tauris, forthcoming).

“A Fourteenth-Century Persian Account of Breath Control and Meditation.” In Yoga in Practice, ed. David Gordon White, Princeton Readings in Religions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 133-39.

"The Limits of Universalism in Islamic Thought: The Case of Indian Religions.” Muslim World 101 (January 2011), pp. 1-19.

“‘The West and Islam?’ Rethinking Orientalism and Occidentalism.” Ishraq: Islamic Philosophy Yearbook 1 (Moscow/Tehran, 2010),  pp. 23-34.

"Fayzi's Illuminationist Interpretation of Vedanta: The Shariq al-Ma`rifa.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30/3 (2010), pp. 156-64.

"Sufism and the Art of Penmanship according to Siraj al-Shirazi's Tuhfat al-Muhibbin (1454)." Journal of the American Oriental Society 129.3 (2009), pp. 431-42.

"Davani's Interpretation of Hafiz." In Hafiz and the School of Love in Persian Poetry, ed. Leonard Lewisohn (London: I. B. Taurus, 2010), pp. 197-210.

"Rumi on the Sound of the Human Voice.” Keşkül: Sufi Gelenek ve Hayat (forthcoming).

Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin, ed., Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism (University of South Carolina Press, 2010), co-author of "Introduction: Toward a Post-Orientalist Approach to Islamic Religious Studies" (pp. 1-22), and author of "The Perils of Civilizational Islam in Malaysia" (pp. 266-80). 

“Muhammad as the Pole of Existence.” In The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad, ed. Jonathan Brockopp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 123-38.

"Reconfiguring South Asian Islam: The 18th and 19th centuries." Journal of Comparative Islamic Studies 5/2 (2009), pp. 247-272.

“Islam and Sufism in Contemporary South Asia.” In Sacred Spaces: A Journey with the Sufis of the Indus, by Samina Quraeshi (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Press, 2009), pp. 21-40.

“The Daily Life of a Saint, Ahmad Sirhindi, by Badr al-Din Sirhindi.” In Islam in South Asia in Practice, ed. Barbara D. Metcalf (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 158-65.

“Sufism, Islam, and Globalization in the Contemporary World: Methodological Reflections on a Changing Field of Study.” In Memoriam: The 4th Victor Danner Memorial Lecture. Bloomington, IN: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, 2009.

"Being Careful with the Goddess: Yoginis in Persian and Arabic Texts.” In Performing Ecstasy: The Poetics and Politics of Religion in India, ed. Pallabi Chakrovorty and Scott Kugle (Delhi: Manohar, 2009), pp. 189-203.

“Accounts of Yogis in Arabic and Persian Historical and Travel Texts.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, vol. 33 (2008), pp. 409-426.

"Reading Strategies for Introducing the Qur'an as Literature in an American Public University." Islamic Studies (Islamabad) 45:3 (2006), pp. 333-344; reprinted as Occasional Paper No. 77, Islamic Research Institute (Islamabad, 2007).

“Fragmentary Versions of the Apocryphal ‘Hymn of the Pearl’ in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Urdu.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, vol. 31 (2006), pp. 144-188. MS Word version requires the following Unicode fonts: Arabic Transparent (Windows XP), Nazanin, and Lateef.

"On Losing One's Head: Hallajian themes in works attributed to `Attar." In Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight, ed. Leonard Lewisohn and Christopher Shackle (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), pp. 330-343.

“Two Versions of a Persian Text on Yoga and Cosmology, Attributed to Shaykh Mu`in al-Din Chishti.” Elixir 2 (2006), pp. 69-76, 124-5.

"Situating Sufism and Yoga." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 15:1 (2005), pp. 15-43.

"Ideological and Technological Transformations of Contemporary Sufism." In Muslim Networks: From Hajj to Hip-hop, ed. miriam cooke and Bruce B. Lawrence. Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks Series, 2 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), pp. 198-207.

"The Islamization of Yoga in the Amrtakunda Translations." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 13:2 (2003), pp. 199-226.

"Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Persian and Arabic Translations from Sanskrit." Iranian Studies 36 (2003), pp. 173-95.

"Between Orientalism and Fundamentalism: Problematizing the Teaching of Sufism." In Teaching Islam, ed. Brannon Wheeler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 108-23.

"Abu Nasr Muhammad Khalidi (d. 1406/1985): A Brief Memoir."  The Annual of Urdu Studies 15 (2000), pp. 305-313.

"Admiring the Works of the Ancients: The Ellora Temples as viewed by Indo-Muslim Authors." In Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia, ed. David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence (University Press Florida, 2000), pp. 198-220.

"Persecution and Circumspection in the Shattari Sufi Order."  In Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies & Polemics, ed. Fred De Jong and Berndt Radtke, Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts, 29 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 416-35.

"Vertical Pilgrimage and Interior Landscape in the Visionary Diary of Ruzbihan Baqli." Muslim World 88/2 (1998), pp. 129-40.

"The Psychophysiology of Ecstasy in Sufism and Yoga." North Carolina Medical Journal 59/3 (May/June, 1998), pp. 182-4.

"Local Cultural Nationalism as Anti-Fundamentalist Strategy in Pakistan." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 16 (1996), pp. 68-76.

"Sufism and Yoga according to Muhammad Ghawth." Sufi 29 (Spring 1996), pp. 9-13.

Translations for Religions of India in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Princeton Readings in Religions, 1 (Princeton University Press, 1995): "Lives of Sufi Saints" (Persian; pp. 495-512), "Conversations of Sufi Saints" (Persian; pp. 513-17), and "India as a Sacred Islamic Land" (Arabic; pp. 556-64).

"The Interpretation of the Classical Sufi Tradition in India: The Shama'il al-atqiya' of Rukn al-Din Kashani." Sufi 22 (1994), pp. 5-10. Persian translation by Karim Zayyani as "Tafsiri bar sunnat-i tasavvuf-i klasik-i Hindustan: Shamayil al-atqiya', athar-i Rukn al-Din Kashani," in Sufi 24 (1373/1994), pp. 6-12.

"Ruzbihan Baqli on Love as 'Essential Desire.'" In Gott is schön und Er liebt die Schönheit/God is Beautiful and He Loves Beauty: Festschrift für Annemarie Schimmel, ed. Alma Giese and J. Christoph Bürgel (Bern: Peter Lang, 1994), pp. 181-89.

“Traditionalism, the Perennial Philosophy, and Islamic Studies (review article),” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, vol. 28, no. 2 (December 1994), pp. 176-81.

"The Man without Attributes: Ibn `Arabi's Interpretation of Abu Yazid al-Bistami." Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn `Arabi Society XIII (1993), pp. 1-18. 

"An Indo-Persian Guide to Sufi Shrine Pilgrimage," in Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam, ed. Grace Martin Smith and Carl W. Ernst (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 1993), pp. 43-67.

"Mystical Language and the Teaching Context in the Early Sufi Lexicons." In Mysticism and Language, ed. Steven T. Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 181-201.

"The Symbolism of Birds and Flight in the Writings of Ruzbihan Baqli." In The Heritage of Sufism, Volume 2, ed. Leonard Lewisohn (Oxford: One World, 1999), pp. 353-66.

"The Stages of Love in Persian Sufism, from Rabi`a to Ruzbihan." In The Heritage of Sufism, Volume 1, Classical Persian Sufism from its Origins to Rumi (700-1300), ed. Leonard Lewisohn (Oxford: One World, 1999), pp. 435-55. Spanish translation, Revista Sufi, Número VIII (Otoño / Invierno 2004).

"The Spirit of Islamic Calligraphy: Baba Shah Isfahani's Adab al-Mashq." Journal of the American Oriental Society 112 (1992), pp. 279-86.

"From Philosophy of Religion to History of Religion." In Problems in the Philosophy of Religion: Critical Studies of the Work of John Hick, ed. Harold Hewitt, Jr (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 46-50.

"Controversy over Ibn `Arabi's Fusus: The Faith of Pharaoh." Islamic Culture LIX (1985), pp. 259-66.

"From Hagiography to Martyrology: Conflicting Testimonies to a Sufi Martyr of the Delhi Sultanate." History of Religions XXIV (May, 1985), pp. 308-27.

Translations from Jalal al-Din Davani's Figures of Houris, A Commentary on Suhrawardi's Temples of Light (Book 5; Arabic), and The Jalalian Ethics (Book 4; Persian), for An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, ed. S. H. Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi, vol. 4 (London: Oneworld, forthcoming).

Articles for reference works

Encyclopedia Iranica (Costa Mesa CA: Mazda Publishers): "Deccan I. Political and Literary History" (VII:181-85, 1995); "Ebrahim Shirazi" (VIII:76, 1997); "Faruqi Dynasty of Khandesh" (IX:374-5, 1999); "Jawāher-e Khamsa" (2007); "Ruzbihan Baqli" (forthcoming).

Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill), 2nd ed.: "Ruzbihan Bakli" (VII:651-52, 1995); "Shath" (IX:361-2, 1997); "Shirazi, Rafi` al-Din" (IX:483, 1997); "Tasawwuf (iii): 19th and 20th-century Sufism, in Muslim India" (X:333-7, 1999); 3rd edition: "Bibi Jamal Khatun" (2009).

Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (Macmillan Reference U.S.A., 2003): “Tariqa,” "Tasawwuf.”

Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, ed. Robert Wuthnow (Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1998): "Iqbal, Muhammad," pp. 375-6; "Sufism," pp. 719-21.

Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade et al. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987): "Blasphemy (Islamic Concept)," vol. 2, pp. 242-45.

The Muslim Almanac: A Reference Work on the History, Faith, Cultures, and Peoples of Islam, ed. Azim A. Nanji (Gale Research, Inc., 1996): "Spiritual Life and Institutions in Muslim Society," pp. 253-59.

South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia, ed. Peter J. Claus and Margaret A. Mills (Garland Publishing, Inc., 2003): "Syncretism" (with Tony K. Stewart).

 Prefaces and Forewords

Preface. Kenan Rifai, Listen: Commentary on the Spiritual Couplets of Mevlana Rumi,  trans. Victoria Holbrook (Fons Vitae, 2012).

Foreword. Anna Suvorova, Lahore: Topophilia of Space and Place (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011).

Foreword. Michel Boivin, Artefacts of Devotion: A Sufi Repertoire of the Qalandariyya in Sehwan Sharif, Sindh, Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011).

Foreword. Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (35th anniversary ed., Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

Preface to the Second Edition. Carl W. Ernst, Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (London: Archetype, forthcoming).

Preface to the Second Edition. Carl W. Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Foreword. Shaykh `Ali al-Hujwiri, Revealing the Mystery (Kashf al-mahjub), trans. R. A. Nicholson, (reprint ed., N.Y.: Pir Press, 1999).