Beauty in Sufism: The Teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli

A Talk by Dr Kazuyo Murata

Thursday 16 March 2023
6.00 P.M. – 8.00 P.M. (LONDON TIME)

Venue:
133 High Road, The Islamic College London

Speaker: Dr Kazuyo Murata

Title of the talk: Beauty in Sufism: The Teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli

Date: Thursday, 16 March 2023

Time: 6 pm – 8 pm

 DR Kazuyo Murata is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at King’s College London. She holds a PhD in Islamic Studies with a joint MPhil in Medieval Studies from Yale University, and a BA (summa cum laude) in both Philosophy and Religious Studies from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has broad academic training in the study of religion, philosophy, medieval intellectual history, and Arabic and Persian literature. Her publications include:

Beauty in Sufism: The Teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017).

In Search of the Lost Heart: Explorations in Islamic Thought (co-edited)  (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012).

Her monograph, Beauty in Sufism: The Teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017), is the first book-length study of the place of beauty in a common Sufi understanding of God, the world, and the human being, encompassing multiple fields of inquiry such as theology, metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, anthropology, and prophetology. This work takes as the case study the works of a major Sufi master from Shiraz, Persia, Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 1209), in whose vast and complex worldview the notion of “beauty” (husn, jamal, etc.) plays a significant role.