ʿAyn al-Quḍāt’s Journey of the Heart

Abstract

Before Rūmī wrote his sublime verses on love and all of what he had to say about the unfolding of the heart and the spiritual life, there were many masters in the Arabic and Persian Sufi traditions who preceded him. One of the greatest authors of Persian Sufism was ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī (d. 1131 CE), the famous disciple of Aḥmad al-Ghazālī (d. 1126). At the age of thirty-four, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt was imprisoned in Baghdad for a brief period and then executed in Hamadān on the order of the Seljuq Sulṭān Maḥmūd II.

Keywords

• 'ayn al-qudat
• sufism
• the heart
• inner journey