August 23, 2018

An Interview with Dr Liana Saif on the Present and Future Study of Islamic Esotericism

In this, the first in what we hope will be a long and fruitful series of interviews exploring the contemporary academic study of western esotericism, we talk with Dr Liana Saif, currently of the Warburg Institute and the University of Oxford.

One of the most exciting aspects of the study of western esotericism at the moment is the incredible work which is being done on its neglected Islamic component. We begin by discussing the inaugural meeting of the ENSIE, the European Network for the Study of Islamic Esotericism (or ‘Islam and Esotericism’ – the name is still under discussion, as we discuss in the interview). The conversation then moves on (as we all hoped it would) to Islamic esotericism more generally, and to some of the historical circumstances which make the study of Islamic esotericism central to the study of western esotericism.

This interview traces current developments in scholarship, but also provides quite a good historical introduction to Islamic esotericism. Those who find themselves asking the question ‘What has Islam got to do with western esotericism?’ will find a good preliminary answer here.

Interview Bio:

Liana Saif works on Islamic esoteric thought and the occult sciences, in addition to the intercultural exchange of occult and esoteric ideas between the Islamicate world and Europe in the medieval and early modern periods. Liana’s approach to the occult sciences privileges the text as a source of our evaluation of their place in the intellectual and scientific activity in Islamicate societies. She focuses on how their practitioners and authors created theories that negotiated epistemological shifts which informed and were informed by political, religious, and scientific disciplinary frameworks and institutions.

In 2014, she received the British Academy postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, to undertake the project ‘On the Margins of Legitimacy: Magic in Medieval Islam’. She engaged in a comprehensive analysis of magical practices in medieval Islam (from pseudo-Aristotelian Hermetica to Aḥmad al-Būnī), their cosmological frameworks, and the epistemological shifts that transformed them. As part of the project, she is currently preparing a critical translation from Arabic into English of the Ghāyat al-ḥakīm by Maslama b. Qāsim al-Qurṭubī. In 2016, she joined the project ‘Speculum Arabicum: Objectifying the contribution of the Arab-Muslim world to the history of sciences and ideas: the sources and resources of medieval encyclopaedism’, based at the Université Catholique de Louvain. In this context she has undertaken collaborative research on Epistle 52b (the long version of the last epistle – ‘On Magic’) of the Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’. She continues to work with the UCL, in collaboration with the Warburg Institute, as a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC PhilAnd project. Her objective is to provide an in-depth analysis of the understudied Kitāb al-Baḥth attributed to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, and to gauge its influence in al-Andalus. She will produce a critical edition and translation into English of the text.

An Interview with Dr Liana Saif on the Present and Future Study of Islamic Esotericism

Interview Bio:

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