Sunday 23 May 2010

Sufism at Hunter College, Spring 2009

Hello Professor Hunsberger and classmates!

I had a wonderful time in this class with all of you and learned so much; I almost hated to see the semester end!

Following are pictures from our last meeting.
They could use some editing and retouching, but they are what they are and I just don't have the time right now to pretty them up. If there are any you want cleaned up let me know which ones, and I will be glad to fix and re-post them.

You are all welcome to add comments on any of the pictures. And I will send an invitation to author this blog to everyone who was in the class and whose email address I have, allowing any of you to make changes and additions. Add your names to the titles of the posts. Add labels. Add links to websites related to Sufi studies. Add your own pictures or other posts to the blog. Add anything else you would like to that is relevant. I would love to hear other students' thoughts on the class, or on Sufism and Sufi poetry. Maybe we can continue and expand the discussion started in the class. Anyone who was in the class who finds this blog, but whose email I didn't have, please add a comment on this post and I will invite you to author the blog as well.

If you are interested, I posted a few pictures from the time I spent last summer in Turkey including some beautiful calligraphy shot in the Aya Sofia and elsewhere in Istanbul. Click here to see them.

I will be traveling in Turkey and elsewhere this summer and will post pictures in another blog. I will post a link to that here when I get that blog up and running.

I look forward to seeing your input here; enjoy!

Monday 25 May 2009

Attar's protagonist

























Here are a couple of pictures of our friend, the
hoopoe — one with his or her crown down and one with it on display. I found these on Google images; both were taken in Oman, but the hoopoe is common all across Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

As an aside, I just discovered that last year Israel chose the
hoopoe to be its national bird (according to the website http://jwest.wordpress.com/), although it is mentioned in the Pentateuch (Lev. 11:19; Deut. 14:18) as unclean and unfit for eating. I wonder whether this last fact is an element of Hafez's meaning when he refers to the bird—"do not try to seduce me from the Path with a hoopoe's crown"?

Sunday 24 May 2009