 Vincent Cornell is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University
of California, Los Angeles in 1989. He has taught at Northwestern University
(2 years), the University of Georgia (1 year), and Duke University (9
years). Since July 1, 2000 he has been Professor of History and Director
of the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University
of Arkansas. His pre-modern interests cover the entire spectrum of Islamic
thought from Sufism to philosophy and Islamic law.
He has lived and worked in Morocco for nearly six years,
and has spent considerable time both teaching and doing research in Egypt,
Tunisia, Malaysia and Indonesia. He is presently working on three book
projects: a biography of the North African Sufi Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili,
a work on Hermetic philosophy in Islamic Spain, and a history of Islamic
moral philosophy. His most recent publications are on Islamic theology
and philosophy ("Religion and Philosophy" chapter for World
Eras Volume 2: The Rise and Spread of Islam 622-1500, Susan L. Douglass,
ed.), and the challenges of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to the Muslim
world ("A Muslim to Muslims: Reflections After September 11,"
The South Atlantic Quarterly, 101:2, Spring 2002).
|
1. Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1998), xliv + 398 pp.
This is the first study of Muslim sainthood utilizing the methodology of the sociology of sainthood. It is also the first detailed historical study of the Moroccan Sufi tradition. The work traces the development of sainthood as a socioreligious institution in Moroccan Sufism from its inception through the evolution of the "Muhammadan" paradigm in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries C. E. Reviewed as "the most significant study of the Sufi tradition in Islam to have appeared in the last two decades . . . It equals in scope and significance Peter Brown’s The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity."
2. The Way of Abu Madyan: Doctrinal and Poetic Works of Abu Madyan Shu'ayb ibn al-Husayn al-Ansari (ca. 509/1115-16— 594/1198) (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1996), x + 190 pp.
The first detailed study of a highly influential Sufi of the western Islamic mystical tradition. The work consists of a critical analysis of the importance of Abü Madyan to Maghribi Sufism as well as the first Arabic edition and English translation of texts from European and North African manuscript collections. Reviewed in Muslim World Book Review as "a lucid and rigorous scholarly work. Our hope is that new works of this kind will follow."
3. The Book of the Glory of the Black Race: al-Jahiz’s Kitab Fakhr as-Sudan 'ala al-Bidan (Waddington, New York: The Phyllis Preston Collection, 1981), 65 pp.
This is a translation of a short treatise on the virtues of the blacks over the whites by the premier Arabic literary figure of the ninth century C. E. The work is now in its third edition (1991).
|
1. "A Muslim to Muslims: Reflections After September 11," The South Atlantic Quarterly, 101:2, Spring 2002, pp. 325-336.
2. "Religion and Philosophy " chapter for textbook World Eras Volume 2: The Rise and Spread of Islam 622-1500, Susan L. Douglass, ed. (Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group/Manly Inc., 2002), pp. 324-399.
3. "Identité reliegieuse et ambiguité culturelle dans une société islamique: les Andalous et les 'uluj au Maroc, 1492-1600," in L’identité: choix ou combat? Jamil Chaker, ed. (Tunis: Faculté des Sciences huamaines et sociales, Université de Tunis, 2002), 93-109.
4. "Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge: The Relationship Between Faith and Practice in Islam," chapter in John L. Esposito, ed., The Oxford History of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 63-105.
5. "Faqih Versus Faqir in Marinid Morocco: Epistemological Dimensions of a Polemic," in Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke, eds., Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), 207-224.
6. "The Way of the Axial Intellect: The Islamic Hermetism of Ibn Sab'in," Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, vol. 23, 1997, 41-79.
|
