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Editing Early Sufism: From Manuscript Discovery to Digital Corpus

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Academic Cultural Free Lecture Meeting Religious/Spiritual

Mon, Mar 9, 2026

5 PM – 7 PM EDT (GMT-4)

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This talk presents preliminary findings from the ongoing preparation of a new critical edition and annotated English translation of Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj’s (d. 378/988) Kitāb al-Lumaʿ (“The Book of Flashes”)—the earliest extant systematic exposition of Sufism as an Islamic science. Building on and revising the editions by Nicholson (1914), Maḥmūd and Surūr (1960), and Jādir (2016), the project reexamines the textual history and material transmission of the work in light of newly identified manuscripts. These findings provide a firmer basis for dating al-Lumaʿ and for understanding how early Sufi texts circulated within networks of ḥadīth transmitters and learned copyists.
Food Provided (Snacks)

Speakers

Riccardo Paredi's profile photo

Riccardo Paredi

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) & NYU Abu Dhabi

Riccardo Paredi is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Global Postdoctoral Fellow (2024–2027) at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) and NYU Abu Dhabi. His current research project, SEMENSUF, focuses on the earliest surviving “manual” of Islamic mysticism: the Kitāb al-Lumaʿ (The Book of Flashes) by Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj (d. 988). As part of this fellowship, he is producing a new critical edition of the text and its first-ever annotated English translation. A visiting lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome, he holds a Ph.D. in Arabic and Near Eastern Languages from the American University of Beirut. His research intersects philology, the history of emotions, and the study of knowledge transmission in premodern Arabic literature.


Sponsors

European Union. eu
Marie Curie Actions. mc
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. uc

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Georgetown Graduate Association for Islamic Studies | View More Events