{"id":35657,"date":"2026-02-11T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/videos\/beyond-the-licitness-of-ecstasy-the-poetry-of-sama%ca%bf-as-an-aesthetic-and-cognitive-experience-in-al-ghazali\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T08:11:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:11:11","slug":"beyond-the-licitness-of-ecstasy-the-poetry-of-sama%ca%bf-as-an-aesthetic-and-cognitive-experience-in-al-ghazali","status":"publish","type":"videos","link":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/beyond-the-licitness-of-ecstasy-the-poetry-of-sama%ca%bf-as-an-aesthetic-and-cognitive-experience-in-al-ghazali\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the licitness of ecstasy: the poetry of sam\u0101\u02bf as an aesthetic and cognitive experience in al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel)<\/a>, held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. Yesmine Karray<\/strong> (\u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure of Lyon) spoke as part of Theme 1 \u2014 Ethics and aesthetics in Islamic heritage.<\/em><\/p>\n

Summary of the paper<\/h3>\n

In his Kit\u0101b \u0100d\u0101b al-sam\u0101\u02bf wa-l-wajd<\/em> (Book of the Etiquette of Mystical Listening and of Ecstasy<\/em>), the theologian al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b (1058\u20131111) tackles the thorny and polemical question of mystical ecstasy within the framework of sam\u0101\u02bf<\/em> ceremonies \u2014 Sufi rituals of listening to music and spiritual poetry. His treatment of this question falls within one of the principal aims of the I\u1e25y\u0101’ \u02bful\u016bm al-d\u012bn<\/em> \u2014 of which this book is a chapter \u2014 namely to integrate Sufism fully into Muslim orthodoxy by defining it as a “purification of hearts” and as an ethics indispensable to salvation. While condemning conceptions of ecstasy that appear theologically problematic to him (al-\u1e24all\u0101j’s \u1e25ul\u016bl<\/em>), he defines the religiously licit etiquette of sam\u0101\u02bf<\/em> according to various criteria (spiritual or profane context, music, poetry, place, company, permitted physical gesture, etc.). This text has aroused great interest, notably for its polemical stakes and its condemnation by Ibn Taymiyya (Michot, 1991) and for the question of the influence of the musical theory of falsafa<\/em> (Weinrich, 2019 and 2024).<\/p>\n

In this paper, we will focus, beyond music, on the role played by poetry within this aesthetic experience. Al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b treats it in a way that reduces it neither to a mere stimulus permitting the shift into trance, nor to a dimension of ritual to be regulated by the distinction between profane and sacred. He offers considerations on what we would qualify as a “hermeneutics of trance” and on a relation to significations (ma\u02bf\u0101n\u012b<\/em>) that is profoundly modified within the experience of sam\u0101\u02bf<\/em>: the field of possible interpretation widens, offering greater latitude to choose, in an instrumental relation to the text, the meaning most likely to favour the shift into trance. Conversely, the experience of sam\u0101\u02bf<\/em> also allows one to grasp the true hidden meaning of the text, and even to reach otherwise inaccessible senses.<\/p>\n

\nRead the panel synthesis by Chadia Gueddara<\/summary>\n
\n

This synthesis was written in the aftermath of the congress by Chadia Gueddara<\/strong> (EHESS), under the Pluriel student-fellowship programme. It covers all three papers of the panel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Aesthetics and Sufism: gazes, listenings and spiritual knowledge<\/h4>\n

Held on Wednesday 11 February 2026 in Hall 2 and chaired by Guy-Ramond Sarkis, this panel gathered three papers in French and Arabic that share a single central question: how does classical Sufi thought articulate sensible experience and spiritual elevation? Three axes structure the whole.<\/p>\n

The first is the hierarchisation of pleasures and modes of perception. Ridouane Bisdaoune (Ibn Zohr University, Morocco), through Fakhr al-D\u012bn al-R\u0101z\u012b’s Ris\u0101lat Dhamm Ladhdh\u0101t al-Duny\u0101<\/em>, proposes a taxonomy of enjoyments \u2014 sensible, imaginative, intellectual \u2014 whose ascending logic leads to a redefinition of beauty as inner reality, with wisdom constituting its summit. Yesmine Karray (ENS Lyon) identifies, in al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b, an analogous gradation of the experience of sam\u0101\u02bf<\/em> according to the degree of spiritual maturity of the listener, while Wael Tahhan (Paris 1) shows how gha\u1e0d\u1e0d al-ba\u1e63ar<\/em> \u2014 the lowering of the gaze \u2014 establishes a perceptual hierarchy between the ordinary look (na\u1e93ar<\/em>) and the higher forms of vision (ba\u1e63\u012bra<\/em>, mush\u0101hada<\/em>).<\/p>\n

The second axis is that of inner conversion as the condition of aesthetic experience. All three papers thematise the necessity of a transformation of the soul in order to reach an authentic perception of the beautiful: the polishing of the mirror of the heart in al-R\u0101z\u012b; understanding (fahm<\/em>) as a prerequisite to the shock of ecstasy (wajd<\/em>) in al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b; refinement of taste (tadhawwuq<\/em>, tazkiyya<\/em>) through the mastery of the gaze in Tahhan. The third axis concerns normativity and the legitimation of aesthetic practices. Al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b emerges as the central figure of legitimation: he integrates sam\u0101\u02bf<\/em> into orthodoxy by conditioning its licitness upon the nature of the poetry, the music and the spiritual state of the listener. Tahhan extends this reflection by proposing to read gha\u1e0d\u1e0d al-ba\u1e63ar<\/em> not as a mere moral injunction but as the foundation of an Islamic aesthetics whose adjective “Islamic” is rethought as an epistemological marker rather than a geo-historical category.<\/p>\n

The papers mobilise a conceptual network anchored in the classical Islamic sciences: ladhdh\u0101t<\/em> (enjoyments) and their hierarchisation in al-R\u0101z\u012b; sam\u0101\u02bf<\/em> and its operators \u2014 tanz\u012bl<\/em> (embodiment of the poetic image) and ta’w\u012bl<\/em> (return to the first meaning) \u2014 in al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b; gha\u1e0d\u1e0d al-ba\u1e63ar<\/em> in its double moral and aesthetic register, articulated with the notions of ba\u1e63\u012bra<\/em>, tazkiya<\/em>, tadhawwuq<\/em>, \u1e25al\u0101wa<\/em> and baraka<\/em> in Tahhan. On the theoretical plane, Bisdaoune articulates the “sciences of the Ancients” (falsafa<\/em>, medicine) and the “sciences of the Later ones” (kal\u0101m<\/em>, ta\u1e63awwuf<\/em>); Karray adopts a hermeneutics of the Kit\u0101b \u0100d\u0101b al-sam\u0101\u02bf wa-l-wajd<\/em>; Tahhan draws on the philosophers Taha \u02bfAbd al-Rahman and Seyyed Hossein Nasr.<\/p>\n

The centrality of al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b in all three papers raised the question of the risk of uniformisation: to what extent does this figure crush the diversity of Sufi positions on the licitness of sam\u0101\u02bf<\/em> or on the theory of the gaze? The main contribution of this panel is to lay the foundations of an Islamic aesthetics built from within the Islamic sciences themselves, articulating ethics, epistemology and sensible experience. It also enriches al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b studies by highlighting dimensions that are often relegated to the background: the poetics of sam\u0101\u02bf<\/em>, the medicine of the soul, the refinement of the gaze. Conversely, the focus on the great classical texts leaves late Sufi traditions and concrete practices in the shadow. Finally, a more explicit dialogue with contemporary comparative aesthetics would allow the epistemological singularity of the proposed approach to be better situated.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"date_tournage":"","lieu":"","nature_evenement":"","vt_type":"Conf\u00e9rence","vt_yt_views":41},"video_collection":[854],"class_list":["post-35657","videos","type-videos","status-publish","hentry","video_collection-congres-de-cordoue-2026"],"date_tournage":"","yoast_head":"\nBeyond the licitness of ecstasy: the poetry of sam\u0101\u02bf as an aesthetic and cognitive experience in al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b - Pluriel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/beyond-the-licitness-of-ecstasy-the-poetry-of-sama\u02bf-as-an-aesthetic-and-cognitive-experience-in-al-ghazali\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beyond the licitness of ecstasy: the poetry of sam\u0101\u02bf as an aesthetic and cognitive experience in al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b - Pluriel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. 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