From the Language of Fire to the Language of Light (The way of the Development of Mystical Prose)

Abstract

After the formation of asceticism under the influence of numerous factors and causes, the unduly fattened movement of Sufism tried to merge the elixir of love into the copper of asceticism. As a result, the mystical prose developed and grew out of the ascetic prose. This prose is a branch of religious (theological) prose which is regarded as one of the widely used prose styles of the 1st and 2nd Islamic era manifested in different forms of exegeses, rhetoric, tradition and letter writing. In this article, it’s tried to describe how mystical prose developed out of the ascetic prose along with the discussion of its causes, famous authors, and their works. Then it will be discussed how love found its way into mystical prose. After outlining the most important features of the mystical prose, we will see that both Sufism and Asceticism movements and their relevant prose style have been the result of dialectic dependence on tradition and escape from it.

Keywords

• keywords: sufism
• asceticism
• mysticism
• prose