Exploring Islamic Mysticism

What is meant by Sufism or Islamic mysticism? This course explores how mystically oriented Muslim lives, ranging from poets and pilgrims to rulers and warriors, have pursued spiritual connection through devotion, music, poetry, ritual, and everyday practice across different times, places, and communities. We will engage with key tensions in Sufi traditions such as ordinary versus extraordinary life, the everyday versus the sacred, diffusion and disappearance, and institutional versus charismatic. Through historical sources, films, poetry, and visual culture, the course covers saints, shrines, pilgrimage, sacred music, healing practices, and spiritual communities, examining how mysticism shapes art, architecture, and daily experience throughout the Islamic world. While it is impossible to encompass the diversity of Sufism in a single course, each unit of the course will have a central theme situated in a geographic and temporal location in order to introduce students to as wide a range of times, places, and communities as possible.