SOUL: ISLAMIC CONCEPTS

Islamic concepts of the soul vary, ranging from the traditional (and most
prevalent) to the mystical. They include doctrines formulated by individual
schools of Islamic dialectical theology (kalām ) and theories developed
within Islamic philosophy (falsafah ). It is possible to classify very broadly
the different types of such concepts under four categories: traditional,
theological, philosophical, and mystical (Ṣufī). Differences (as well as
overlappings) abound, not only between these categories, but also within
them. Nonetheless, the various Islamic concepts of the soul all seek or claim
a Qurʾanic base. Hence, the proper starting point of any discussion of such
concepts is the Qurʾān. Before turning to the Qurʾān, however, a few
preliminary remarks on the use of the Arabic terms rūḥ ("spirit")
and nafs ("soul") are in order.

As in other languages, these terms relate to the ideas of breath and wind. In
pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, rūḥ can mean "wind," "breath," or "that which
one blows" (as when kindling a fire). In post-Qurʾanic Arabic, the two terms
are often used interchangeably when referring to the human soul, but
distinctions between them are also maintained within certain conceptual
schemes. In the Qurʾān, in addition to the grammatical reflexive use
of nafs as "self," the term is used to refer to the human soul,
whereas rūḥ normally refers to the spirit that proceeds from God. In pre-
Islamic Arabic poetry, these two terms do not have a religious or
supernatural connotation. Thus rūḥ refers to the physical breath or wind,
while nafs (when not used reflexively) refers to the blood, sometimes to the
living body. This usage is consistent with the secular nature of this poetry,
whose themes revolve around the poet's mundane loves, sorrows, heroic
exploits, and concept of tribal honor. The poetry is also noted for its vivid
descriptions of nature—desert scenery and animal life, wild and domestic—
that convey a sense of the splendor, power (sometimes harshness), and
vitality of nature, but never anything that can be construed as either
teleological or mystical. There are also affirmations in this poetry that, with
death, everything ends, that there is nothing beyond the grave. A seeming
exception to this consists of references to the hāmah, a birdlike apparition

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resembling a small owl, which, according to pre-Islamic Arab belief, departs
from the head of a slaughtered man, perches by his grave, and continues to
shriek, "give me to drink," until the death is avenged. The association of this
belief with the tribal law of avenging the death of a kinsman is obvious.

RŪḤ and Nafs in the QurʾĀn

As indicated earlier, rūḥ ("spirit") in the Qurʾān refers normally to God's

spirit. The term appears in different contexts. It is the divine creative breath:
God creates man (Adam) from clay, animating him by blowing into the clay
of his spirit (15:29; 32:9; 38:72). Again, God blew of his spirit into Mary,
causing the conception of Jesus (21:91; 66:12). Spirit is sent by God as a
messenger: it is al-rūḥ al-amīn ("the faithful spirit") that comes to
Muḥammad's heart (26:193)—hence the Qurʾanic commentators'
identification of "the faithful spirit" with the angelic messenger Gabriel.
Mary conceives when God sends his spirit to her in the form of a perfect
man (19:17). Spirit is also rūḥ al-qudūs ("the holy spirit") which God sends
to help Jesus (2:87, 2:253). Jesus himself is referred to as a spirit from God,
but it is also made clear that this does not mean that he is the son of God
(4:171).

Spirit relates also to the amr of God (16:2; 17:85; 40:15; 42:52), a term that
can mean either "command" or "affair." Muslim scholars have disagreed on
the interpretation of this term as well as on the referent of rūḥ ("spirit") in
surah 17:85: "They ask thee [Muḥammad] about the spirit. Say: 'The spirit is
of my Lord's amr ; of knowledge ye have been given but little.'" Some have
understood amr here as "affair," not "command," and rūḥ as referring to the
human spirit. If this interpretation is correct, then the verse provides an
exception to the normal Qurʾanic use of the term rūḥ.

The term nafs, when not used in the grammatical reflexive sense of "self,"
refers to the human soul, not God's spirit. The human soul, however, relates
to the divine spirit, since, as indicated earlier, God brings life to man by

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breathing into him of his spirit. The equivalence of life and soul in the
Qurʾān, however, is not explicitly stated. Nor is there any explicit statement
as to whether the soul is immaterial or material. The Qurʾān is primarily
concerned with the moral and religious orientation of the human soul, with
its conduct, and with the consequences of such conduct in terms of reward
and punishment in the hereafter. This concern with the moral and religious
disposition of the soul is reflected in the Qurʾanic characterization of the
soul as either ammārah, lawwāmah, or muṭmaʾinnah. The ammārah (12:53)
is the soul that by nature incites or commands what is evil. Qurʾanic
commentators have identified this with the carnal self. The lawwāmah (75:2)
is the soul that constantly blames itself, interpreted by some commentators
as upbraiding itself in the quest of goodness. The muṭmaʾinnah (89:27) is the
tranquil soul of the virtuous believer that will return to its lord.

With death, the soul leaves the body, to rejoin it on the Day of Judgment.
Thereafter the righteous go to Paradise, the wicked dwell in Hell. Two
questions in particular that relate to the resurrection were to occupy Islamic
religious thinkers. The first is whether or not it is the remains of the same
body that is resurrected. To this the Qurʾān gives no detailed answer, only an
affirmation that God has the power to bring back to life what has been
decayed: "Who will revive these bones when they are decayed? Say: 'He
who created them the first time will revive them'" (36:78–79). The second is
the question of what happens to the soul between the time of death and the
day of resurrection. There are Qurʾanic statements (8:49; 9:101; 32:21;
47:27) that suggest that wicked souls will be punished even before the
resurrection and that the souls of martyrs will be in paradise: "Do not reckon
that those killed in battle are dead; they are living with their Lord, provided
for" (3:169). Such statements become a basis for traditional doctrines
regarding the soul's fate in the interim between death and the final day of
judgment.

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Traditional Concepts

In Islam, the most prevalent concepts of the soul can perhaps best be termed
"traditional." Their immediate inspiration is the Qurʾān, interpreted literally,
and the ḥadīth, or "tradition." A chief source for our knowledge of the
traditional concepts of the soul in Islam is Kitāb al-rūḥ (The Book of the
Spirit), by the Damascene Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīyah (d. 1350), a
celebrated Ḥanbalī theologian and jurisconsult.

The term rūḥ, Ibn Qayyim maintains, is applicable in Arabic usage to both

the spirit that comes from God and the human spirit. In the Qurʾān, however,
it is used to refer to the spirit that comes from God. This spirit proceeds from
the amr of God. The term amr in the Qurʾān, Ibn Qayyim insists, always
means "command." Since the spirit proceeds from the command of God, it is
a created being, although its creation antedates the creation of the human
soul. The human body is created before the human soul. The latter, though
created, is everlasting. Death means the separation of this soul from the
body, to rejoin it permanently when the resurrection takes place. When the
Qurʾān speaks of the soul that incites to evil, the soul that upbraids, and the
tranquil soul, this does not mean that a human has three souls. These, Ibn
Qayyim argues, are characteristics of one and the same human soul.

Ibn Qayyim gives a lengthy critique of the philosophical doctrine of an

immaterial soul, incorporating in his criticism the arguments the theologian
al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) had used in showing that Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna; d. 1037)
had failed to demonstrate the immateriality of the human soul. Ibn Qayyim
rejects the concept of an immaterial soul. An immaterial spirit or soul would
be totally unrelated to what is spatial. What is unrelated to the spatial and the
bodily cannot be spoken of as being in a body or outside it, or as traveling
away from the body or returning to it. But this is the scriptural language
expressing the activities of the soul. The human soul is hence material but
"differs in quiddity [al-māhiyyah ] from the sensible body, being a body that
is luminous, elevated, light, alive, and in motion. It penetrates the substance
of the body organs, flowing therein in the way water flows in roses, oil in
olives, and fire in charcoal" (Kitāb al-rūḥ, Hyderabad, 1963, p. 310). The
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body, in fact, is the mold (qālib ) of the soul. Body and soul interact, helping
to shape each other's individual characteristics. Thus, when death takes
place, souls leaving their bodies have their individuality and are hence
differentiated one from another.

During sleep, souls leave their bodies temporarily, sometimes

communicating with other souls, whether of the living or of the dead. With
death, the soul leaves the body but can very swiftly return to it. The souls of
the virtuous can communicate with each other, the wicked souls being too
preoccupied in their torments for this. For in the interim between death and
the resurrection, most souls rejoin their bodies in the grave to be questioned
by the two angels of death, Munkar and Nakir. The wicked, unbelieving
souls suffer punishment and torment in the grave, while the virtuous
believers enjoy a measure of bliss. Ibn Qayyim equates the period of the
grave with the barzakh, a Qurʾanic term (23:100; 25:53; 55:20) that
originally meant "hindrance" or "separation." The souls of prophets are in
paradise, as are those of martyrs, although there are disagreements among
traditional Muslims as to whether this applies to all martyrs. These
disagreements, Ibn Qayyim maintains, are reconcilable once the legal
conditions governing the fate of the soul are known. To cite but one of his
examples, a martyr who dies before paying a debt is excluded from entry
into paradise during this interim but does not suffer torment.

The prayers of the living over the souls of the dead are heard by the latter,
who are helped by them. Ibn Qayyim devotes a long section of his book to
this topic. The length of this chapter indicates the importance to Muslims of
the visiting of graves and the offering of prayers over the dead, for these
visits are very much part of traditional Muslim piety and a source of
consolation to the bereaved.

Theological (KalĀm) Concepts

Islam's dialectical theologians, the mutakallimūn, no less than the more

traditional Muslims, sought to uphold a Qurʾanic concept of the soul. They
sought to uphold it, however, within scripturally rooted perspectives of the
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world that they formulated and rationally defended. Their concepts of the
human soul were governed largely by two questions, one metaphysical, the
other eschatological. The metaphysical question pertained to the ultimate
constituents of the created world: Do these consist of indivisible atoms or of
what is potentially infinitely divisible? The eschatological question arose out
of their doctrine of bodily resurrection: if, in the ages between the world's
beginning and its end, dead human bodies decompose to become parts of
other physical entities (organic or inorganic), how can there be a real
resurrection, that is, a return to life of the actual individuals who once lived
and died, and not the mere creation anew of replicas of them?

Regarding the metaphysical question, most of the mutakallimūn were

atomists. Their concepts of the soul were for the most part materialist: they
regarded it either as a body, or identified it with life, which they maintained
is a transient quality, an accident, that occurs to a body. But there were
disagreements among them, particularly among members of the "rationalist"
Muʿtazilī school of kalām, which attained the height of its power and
influence in the first part of the ninth century. Thus, one of its leading
theologians, al-Naẓẓām (d. 845), rejected atomism. Moreover, he conceived
of the soul (which he identified with life) as a subtle body that is diffused in
all parts of the physical body. His concept of the soul is substantially the
same as that of the traditional concept defended by Ibn Qayyim. Another
exception of a different type was the view of the Muʿtazilī Muʿammar (d.
835). He was an atomist and espoused a concept of the soul as an immaterial
atom. Other theologians held the soul to be an atom, but not immaterial. But
if it is a material atom, is life identical with it? If life is not identical with it,
then could life be an accident that inheres in the single atom? The
Muʿtazilah disagreed as to whether the accidents could inhere in the single
atom or only in atoms that are interrelated, forming a body. They also
disagreed as to whether spirit, soul, and life are identical. But the prevalent
Muʿtazilī view was that the soul is material and that life, whether or not
identical with soul, is a transient accident.

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It is in terms of this prevalent view that the eschatological question
mentioned earlier must be understood. If life is a transient accident and the
dead body's atoms separate to combine differently forming other physical
entities, where is the continuity that would guarantee the identity of the
individual to be resurrected? Without this continuity, what appears to be the
resurrected individual is only a similar being, a mithl. To resolve this
difficulty, some of the Muʿtazilah resorted to the doctrine that nonexistence
(alʿadam ) is "a thing" (shayʾ ) or "an entity," "an essence" (dhāt ), to which
existence is a state that occurs. Thus a nonexistent entity A acquires
existence for a span of time, loses it during another span, and regains it
eternally at the resurrection, A remaining A throughout all these stages.

The doctrine that nonexistence is an entity, a thing, was rejected by the

Ashʿarī school of kalām. This school was founded by al-Ashʿarī (d. 935),
originally a Muʿtazilī who rebelled against his school. (Ashʿarism gradually
gained ascendancy to become the dominant school of kalām in Islam.) But
while the Ashʿarīyah opposed fundamental Muʿtazilī doctrines, they were
also atomists. Their atomism formed part of their occasionalist metaphysics
according to which all events are the direct creation of God. Accidents are
transient and do not endure for more than one moment of time and are hence
constantly recreated. Life, the Ashʿarīyah held, is a transient accident created
and recreated while the individual lives. It is hence not difficult to see that
the eschatological problem regarding the soul that the Muʿtazilah tried to
solve persisted.

For an Ashʿarī answer to this difficulty, I will turn to al-Ghazālī. His main

arguments for the possibility of bodily resurrection are found in two works.
The first is his criticism of the Islamic philosophers, particularly Ibn Sīnā,
the Tahāfut al-falāsifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers). In this work
he argues in great detail to show that Ibn Sīnā has failed to demonstrate his
theory that the human soul is an immaterial, immortal substance. At the
same time, he argues for the possibility of bodily resurrection in terms of a
theory of an immaterial, immortal soul, maintaining that God at the
resurrection creates for such a soul a new body. The second work, Al-iqtiṣād
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fī al-lʿtiqād (Moderation in Belief), written shortly after the Tahāfut, gives a
different explanation. Significantly, in this work al-Ghazālī repudiates the
theory he advocated in the Tahāfut, maintaining that he had advanced it only
for the sake of argument, to show that bodily resurrection is possible even if
one adopts a doctrine of an immaterial soul. The true doctrine, he then
continues, is the Ashʿarī, namely that life is a transient accident constantly
created and recreated in the living body. Resurrection is the return to life and
existence of what was originally a first creation by God. God is able to
recreate what he had previously created. A copy is simply a copy, never the
recreation of what was actually a new creation. Al-Ghazālī does not discuss
how one can differentiate between the resurrected, recreated original being,
and the copy, the mithl, but the implication of his argument is that this is
knowable to God, who is the creator of all things.

Al-Ghazālī follows substantially the line of reasoning of his predecessor and

teacher, the Ashʿarī al-Juwaynī (d. 1085). Unlike al-Juwaynī, however, al-
Ghazālī does not discuss whether spirit or soul is the same as life. Al-
Juwaynī is more explicit on this. Spirit is a body that pervades the physical
body, animating it. Life, however, is a transient accident that inheres in
spirit. With the exception of this distinction between life and spirit, al-
Juwaynī's concept of the soul is in harmony with the traditional concept
defended by Ibn Qayyim.

Philosophical Concepts

The theories of the soul formulated by Islam's philosophers,

the falāsifah (sg., faylasūf ), derive largely from Plato, Aristotle, and
Plotinus. But there are other influences—Greek medicine and Stoic thought,
for example. An influential short Arabic treatise on the difference between
spirit (rūḥ ; Gr., pneuma ), and soul (nafs ; Gr., psuchē ) by the Christian
translator, Qusṭā Ibn Lūqā (d. 912), is of interest, not only for its ideas, but
also for its listing of the sources of these ideas—Plato

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(his Phaedo and Timaeus ), Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Galen. Spirit,
according to this treatise, is a subtle body. Its less refined form spreads in the
body, from the heart through the veins, causing animation, breathing, and
pulsation. The more refined spirit spreads from the brain through
the nervous system to cause sensation and movement. Spirit, however, is
only the proximate intermediary cause of these activities; its efficacy is
caused by the soul, which is an immaterial, immortal substance. With death,
spirit ceases, but not soul.

It was, however, in its Neoplatonic form that the doctrine of the soul's
immateriality and immortality left its greatest impact on Islamic thought.
This impact was not confined to philosophy proper but is discernible in the
religious thought of various Islamic sectarian groups—the Ismāʿīlīyah, for
example. The other most important source for the falāsifah 's concepts of the
soul was Aristotle. The majority accepted Aristotle's definition of the soul as
the entelechy of the body, his idea of its division into vegetative, sensitive,
and rational and of the latter into theoretical and practical, and his
description of the states of its various parts as these change from potentiality
to actuality. Within the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic frameworks,
however, there were differences in the falāsifah 's conceptions of the soul.
An idea of these differences can be obtained by considering the conceptions
offered by some representative philosophers.

Al-Kindī (d. c. 870), the first Islamic philosopher, for example, subscribes to

the doctrine of the soul as an immaterial, immortal substance and at the same
time defends the Qurʾanic doctrine of bodily resurrection. His surviving
treatises, however, do not include anything that shows the manner in which
he synthesized these two doctrines. The physician-philosopher al-Rāzī (d.
926), on the other hand, offers a theory of the human soul inspired largely by
Plato's Timaeus. Soul is one of the five eternal principles; the others are
God, atomic (disorganized) matter, absolute space, and absolute time. At a
moment in time, God imposes order on matter, rendering it receptive of soul.
When soul unites with matter, it becomes individuated, forming the
particular living creatures. Man alone among these creatures is endowed
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with reason, an emanation from God. There is a lengthy but finite span of
time, in which soul remains conjoined with matter and individuated. During
this period there is transmigration of souls within animal and human life.
The finite period ends when reason in men prevails. The individual souls
then disengage from matter, returning to their original state of one soul. The
initial state of the four other eternal principles resumes, continuing into the
infinite future.

With al-Fārābī (d. 950) and Ibn Sīnā, we encounter two highly developed
psychological theories. Both presupposed a Neoplatonic emanative scheme.
The celestial world, for al-Fārābī, consists of a succession from God of
dyads, intelligences, and bodily spheres; for Ibn Sīnā, it consists of a
succession of triads, intelligences, souls, and bodily spheres. For both, the
last successive celestial intelligence is the Active Intellect, after which our
terrestrial world comes into existence. The entire process of successive
emanations from God exists eternally.

According to al-Fārābī, the human rational soul is at first a potentiality in the

material body. In some individuals, the objects of sensory perception, the
material images, are transformed by the illuminary action of the Active
Intellect into abstract concepts. These human souls that achieve abstract
conceptual thought attain an immaterial status. (There are higher levels of
conceptual thought, culminating with rare individuals, the philosopher-
prophets, in the human soul's periodic union with the Active Intellect.) Only
those souls that have attained an immaterial status are immortal. Good souls,
those that have continued to live according to the dictates of reason,
shunning the lower passions, live in eternal happiness, contemplating the
celestial intelligences and God. Those rational souls that have betrayed their
calling, surrendering to the lower passions, live in eternal misery, seeking
contemplation of the celestial intelligences but unable to achieve it. The
souls of the majority of mankind, however, never attain an immaterial status
and, with death, cease to exist.

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Ibn Sīnā, on the other hand, insists on the individual immortality of all souls.
The rational soul, an emanation from the Active Intellect, joins the human
body and becomes individuated by it. It is an immaterial, individual
substance that exists with the body but is not imprinted in it. Souls that have
lived the rational life, controlling the lower passions and remaining
untarnished by vice, are rewarded in the hereafter. They live in eternal bliss,
contemplating the celestial beings and God. This applies to nonphilosophical
virtuous souls that have lived in accordance with the divine law, for this law
is an expression of philosophical truth in the language of imagery and
symbol, which the nonphilosopher can understand. Souls that have not lived
the rational, virtuous life or have not adhered to the commands of the
religious law are punished in the hereafter. They live eternally in torment,
seeking contemplation of the celestial beings and God, but are unable to
achieve this. The Qurʾanic language describing the afterlife in physical terms
is symbolic. Ibn Sīnā's theory of the soul culminates in mysticism. But this is
intellectual mysticism. God, for Ibn Sīnā, is pure mind. The soul's journey to
God includes the inundation of the souls of exceptional individuals with all
of the intelligibles from the Active Intellect. This experience is intuitive,
occurring all at once.

Ibn Rushd (Averroës; d. 1198) was the most Aristotelian of the falāsifah. In

those writings addressed to the general Islamic reader, he affirms the
doctrine of reward and punishment in the hereafter, insisting, however, that
the scriptural language describing the hereafter should be understood on
different levels, depending on one's intellectual capacity. His more technical
psychological writings, notably his commentaries on Aristotle, leave no
room for a doctrine of individual immortality. These writings, however, left
a much greater impact on medieval and Renaissance Europe than they did on
Islam. In the Islamic world, it was Ibn Sīnā's theory of the soul that had the
greater influence on subsequent falsafah and religious thought.

ṢufĪ Concepts

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In considering this very vast subject, it is well to differentiate between three
of its aspects: (1) what Ṣufīs conceived the human soul to be, (2) the soul's
purification and the path of holiness it must follow as it seeks God, (3) the
relation of the soul to God, particularly in its intimate experiencing of the
divine. These aspects are related, but the third represents a central issue on
which Ṣufīs were divided and which caused controversy in the general
history of Islamic religious thought.

According to some, the Ṣufī (and Ashʿarī theologian) al-Qushayrī (d. 1074)

observes, the term "soul" refers to those of man's characteristics that are
afflicted with illness and to his blameworthy actions. It is possible, he
maintains, "that the soul is a subtle entity [laṭīfah ] placed in this [bodily]
mold [qālib ], being the receptacle of ill dispositions, just as spirit [al-rūḥ ]
is placed in this mold, being the receptacle of praiseworthy dispositions"
(Al-risālah al-Qushayrīyah, Cairo, 1966, vol. 1, p. 249). The earlier Ṣufī al-
Tirmidhī (fl. 894) also gives expression to the view that the soul is evil.
Both, moreover, reflect traditional and kalām concepts of the soul as
material.

Al-Ghazālī, on the other hand, often uses Avicennian language in his

discussions of the soul. (This fact need not necessarily commit him to
Avicennian ontology, since he frequently suggests that Ibn Sīnā's
philosophical language can be interpreted in occasionalist, Ashʿarī terms.)
At the beginning of his Mīzān al-ʿAmal (The Criterion for Action), al-
Ghazālī also indicates that Ṣufīs subscribe to the doctrine of the soul's
immateriality as they reject the concept of physical reward and punishment
in the hereafter. Thus, within Sufism there are differences in belief as to
whether the soul is material or immaterial. There is less difference (and
greater emphasis), however, on the subject of its purification and the ascetic
devotional course it must pursue. (Differences between Ṣufī orders here are
largely a matter of ritual, not substance.)

It is, however, the relation of the human soul—the self, the "I"—to God that
is at the heart of Sufism, and it was this issue that caused conflict. The
mystical experience itself is both overwhelming and ineffable. Utterances
attempting to convey it are symbolic, sometimes prone to overstatement, and
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hence prone to being misunderstood. Central to this issue is the
interpretation of the mystical experience of fanāʾ, the "passing away" or
"annihilation" of the self in the divine essence, the latter representing baqāʾ,
"permanence."

Ṣufīs like al-Ghazālī interpreted fanāʾ as "closeness" (qurb ) to God and thus

helped to reconcile Sufism with the generally accepted tenets of Islam. The
issue, however, remained a sensitive one, as reflected, for example, in the
philosophical tale, Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān, by the Andalusian philosopher
Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 1185). Ḥayy, the story's hero, who grows up on an
uninhabited tropical island, undergoes a process of self-education that
culminates in the mystical experience. At first he falls into the error of
thinking that his soul becomes one with the divine essence; he is delivered
from this mistake through God's mercy as he realizes that such concepts as
unity and plurality and union and disjunction are applicable only to bodies,
not to immaterial selves that have experiential knowledge of God.

The relation of the soul to God in Ṣufī thought takes on a highly

metaphysical turn in the complex theosophy of the great mystic Ibn al-
ʿArabī (d. 1240) and his followers, particularly ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (d.
1408?). Ibn al-ʿArabī is noted for his doctrine of the unity of being (waḥdat
al-wujūd ) wherein creation (al-khalq ) is a mirroring of the Truth (al-ḥaqq ),
the Creator. Perfect souls are reflections of the perfection of the divine
essence. The prophets are the archetypes of these perfect souls: each prophet
is a word (kalimah ) of God. The perfect soul is a microcosm of reality. The
idea of man as a microcosm did not originate with Ibn al-ʿArabī; it was
utilized by the falāsifah and by al-Ghazālī. But with Ibn al-ʿArabī and those
who followed him it acquires a spiritual and metaphysical dimension all its
own, representing a high point in the development of the concept of soul in
the history of Islamic religious thought.

Bibliography

For a comprehensive study, see D. B. Macdonald's "The Development of the

Idea of Spirit in Islam," Acta Orientalia (1931): 307–351, reprinted in The
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Moslem World 22 (January and April 1932): 25–42, 153–168. For Qurʾanic,
traditional, and kalām concepts, see Régis Blachère's "Note sur le substantif
'nafs' dans le Coran," Semitica 1 (1948): 69–77; F. T. Cooke's "Ibn al-
Quiyim's Kitab al-Rūḥ," The Moslem World 25 (April 1935): 129–144; and
Albert N. Nader's Le système philosophique des muʿtazila (Beirut, 1956);
see also the work by Majid Fakhry cited below. For philosophical concepts,
see Avicenna's "On the Proof of Prophecies," translated by me in Medieval
Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, edited by Ralph Lerner and Muhsin
Mahdi (New York, 1963), pp. 112–121; Majid Fakhry's A History of Islamic
Philosophy, 2d ed. (New York, 1983); Lenn E. Goodman's "Rasi's Myth
of the Fall of the Soul," in Essays on Islamic Philosophy and Science, edited
by George F. Hourani (Albany, N. Y., 1975), pp. 25–40; my article
"Avicenna and the Problem of the Infinite Number of Souls," Mediaeval
Studies 22 (1960); 232–239; and Avicenna's Psychology, edited and
translated by Fazlur Rahman (London, 1952). For Ṣufī concepts, see A. E.
Affifi's The Mystical Philosophy of Muḥyid Dīn Ibnul ʿArabī (Cambridge,
1939); A. J. Arberry's Sufism (1950; reprint, London, 1979); Ibn al-
ʿArabī's The Bezels of Wisdom, translated with an introduction and notes by
R. W. J. Austin (London, 1980); Reynold A. Nicholson's Studies in Islamic
Mysticism (1921; reprint, Cambridge, 1976); Annemarie
Schimmel's Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1975); and
Fadlou Shehadi's Ghazālī's Unique Unknowable God (Leiden, 1964).

Michael E. Marmura (1987)

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