Death-Thought in Mystical Prose of Sixth to Tenth Centuries

Subject Areas : Islamic Mysticism

Sara Shahsavar ¹ , Farhad Edrisi ² , Hossein Arian ³

1 - PHD Student, Persian Language and Literature, Khodabandeh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Khodabandeh, Iran
2 - Associate Professor, Department of Science of Quran and Hadith, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran
3 - Assistant Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran

Received: 2022-03-08 Accepted : 2022-03-08 Published : 2022-03-21

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Abstract :

Death is an unanswered question in human life that has occupied his mind for a long time. In the literature of different countries, each of the thinkers has given an appropriate and not a definite answer to this question. Mystical texts have also studied the issue of death in a way, considering that they rely on Quranic and religious lessons. In the present article, which is presented in a descriptive analytical way, the most important prose of mystical literature from the sixth to the tenth century are considered to examine the prose writers' views on death. What can be deduced from the study of the texts in question is that in mystical texts the issue of death, which is often depicted as a metaphor of the bird (release of the soul from the body), is one of the concerns of prose writers. In terms of frequency, the most attention to this issue can be seen in Suhrawardi's works. In Suhrawardi's works, this issue has been expressed in the form of various symbols and metaphors, and sometimes interpreting their details requires more intellectual effort. In other works, the discussion in this field is explicit and simple. In Rumi's works, the tradition of mystical thinking about death before him is manifested in another way. Sufism divides death mainly into physical (emergency) and voluntary (death before death), and this view has become a tradition in the field of death- thought in mystical prose works