The Spiritual Turn: Modern Sufism and the Study of Islamic Art and Architecture

Abstract

This dissertation constructs a genealogy of modern Sufi discourse on art and architecture. It draws the history of a chain of writers and artists, connected through a spiritual and intellectual line of transmission, who developed a particular reading of their world- its values, its cultures and arts. Divided into five chapters, it follows the classic structure of a Sufi Silsila: a chain of master-disciple relationships. Each chapter is thus built around one Muslim master and one European disciple and analyzes the contribution each of them made to the Sufi aesthetic discourse. The Spiritual Turn argues that the work of this intellectual lineage finds its roots within a 19th century Sufi reformist movement led by Emir ‘Abd al-Qadir (1808-1883) who proposed to unveil the common esoteric origins of Christianity and Islam. The Algerian anti-colonial leader and Sufi master hoped that such an ecumenical project could spare his co-religionaries further military confrontations with Western powers. Organized chronologically, the dissertation then follows the slow, rhizomatic evolution of a 19th century political stance into a rather well-structured art theory a century later. The narrative focuses on the different intellectual collaborations between Arab Sufi mystics and a group of European converts to Islam. Together, they believed in a possible mystical alternative modernity and argued for an esoteric understanding of aesthetics that would replace materialist and positivist modern art and architectural theories. The 1976 London World of Islam Festival was the culmination of this intellectual lineage. This event, considered as the largest exhibition of Islamic art and cultures ever organized in Europe, was mainly curated by Western converts to Islam directly attached to Abd al-Qadir’s spiritual school. The meaning these curators ascribed to the exhibited artworks, the textual interpretations, and historical framing they provided were rooted in a purely esoteric understanding of art and architecture. This history is an opportunity to examine alternative aesthetic hermeneutics emanating from non-western, non-positivist or anti-modern perspectives. The dissertation thus uses the Sufi aesthetic discourse as one modern instance where the classical and inherently Western modes of interpretation were challenged in favor of a mystical reading of art and architecture.