Feeling Like Lovers - Affect in Medieval Sufism

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Sufism, for many of its medieval followers, was the "religion of love." God was the beloved and the Sufis, his lovers. To become a Sufi meant to become a lover. In this book, Matthew Thomas Miller pursues the radical analytical implication of this amatory metaphysics: If God and his divine secrets can only truly be known in their fullest through the experience of love, then we must analyze how it feels to be a Sufi on the Path of Love. Leveraging insights from the history of emotions and affect theory, this study examines key Sufi ritual practices and poetics to show the central role that affect plays in the process of constructing Sufi subjectivity and knowledge production. It explores the felt dimension of medieval Sufism and why feeling--especially, like a lover--was so important for coming to truly know God and his divine secrets.

About the author

Matthew Thomas Miller is Assistant Professor of Persian Literature and Digital Humanities at Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland and affiliate faculty at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities and the Religious Studies and Comparative Literature programs.

Product details

• Authors: Matthew Thomas Miller
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 17.03.2026
• EAN: 9780520426344
• ISBN: 978-0-520-42634-4
• No. of pages: 238
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology; RELIGION / General, PHILOSOPHY / Religious, LITERARY CRITICISM / Middle Eastern, RELIGION / Islam / Sufi, Religion & beliefs, Social & political philosophy, social and political philosophy, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Religion and beliefs, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval, Sufism & Islamic Mysticism, Islamic groups: Sufis