Sebastian Günther & Todd Lawson & Christian Mauder, Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam (2 vols) Volume 1: Foundations and the Formation of a Tradition. Reflections on the Hereafter in the Quran and Islamic Religious Thought. Volume 2: Continuity and Change. The Plurality of Eschatological Representations in the Islamicate World Thought (SET), Leiden, ("Reference Work"), Vol. 1: Approx. 760 pp., 11 illus., Vol. 2: Approx. 550 pp., 31 ills., ISBN 9789004333130.

Editors

Sebastian Günther, Ph.D. (1989) is Professor and Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Göttingen. Germany. He has published extensively on the intellectual history of Islam, including Representations and Visions of Homeland in Modern Arabic Literature (co-ed., Hildesheim 2016) and Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal: Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam (ed., Leiden 2005).

Todd Lawson, Ph.D. (1989) is Professor Emeritus of Islamic Thought at the University of Toronto. He has published widely on Quranic exegesis, mysticism, Shi‘ism, and Quranic literary problems. Recent publications include articles such as Friendship, Illumination and the Water of Life (2016), Joycean Modernism in a 19th century Qur’an commentary (2015), The Qur’an and Epic (2014) and the monograph Gnostic Apocalypse in Islam (London 2012).

Christian Mauder is a PhD student at the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies of the University of Göttingen, Germany. He has published several studies on the intellectual, cultural and religious history of Mamluk and Ottoman Egypt, including the monograph Gelehrte Krieger: Die Mamluken als Träger arabischsprachiger Bildung (Hildesheim 2012).

Presentation

Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam offers a multi-disciplinary study of Muslim thinking about paradise, death, apocalypse, and the hereafter. It focuses on eschatological concepts in the Quran and its exegesis, Sunni and Shi‘i traditions, Islamic theology, philosophy, mysticism, and other scholarly disciplines reflecting Islamicate pluralism and cosmopolitanism. Gathering material from all parts of the Muslim world, ranging from Islamic Spain to Indonesia, and the entirety of Islamic history, this publication in two volumes also integrates research from comparative religion, art history, sociology, anthropology and literary studies. Unparalleled and unprecedented in its scope and comprehensiveness, Roads to Paradise promises to become the definitive reference work on Islamic eschatology for the years to come.

Contents

VOLUME I
Foundations and the Formation of a Tradition:
Reflections on the Hereafter in the Quran and Islamic Religious Thought

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Editors

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND STYLE

ABBREVIATIONS

ZUM GELEIT
Josef van Ess

INTRODUCTION
Sebastian Günther and Todd Lawson

PREPARING FOR THE JOURNEY – CONFERENCE OPENING ADDRESSES
“The Paths to Reality are as Diverse as the Souls of Humanity”

Tilman Nagel: Paradise Lost

Mahmoud Zakzouk: The Path to Paradise from an Islamic Viewpoint

PART ONE
Paradise, Hell and Afterlife in the Quran and Quranic Exegesis

Muhammad Abdel Haleem: Quranic Paradise: How to Get to Paradise and What to Expect There

Angelika Neuwirth: Paradise as a Quranic Discourse: Late Antique Foundations and Early Quranic Developments

Todd Lawson: Paradise in the Quran and the Music of Apocalypse

Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila: Paradise and Nature in the Quran and Pre-Islamic Poetry

Asma Afsaruddin: Dying in the Path of God: Reading Martyrdom and Moral Excellence in the Quran

Sebastian Günther: The Poetics of Islamic Eschatology: Narrative, Personification, and Colors in Muslim Discourse

PART TWO
The Pleasures of Paradise

Andrew J. Lane: “Reclining upon Couches in the Shade” (Q 35:56): Quranic Imagery in Rationalist Exegesis

Ailin Qian: Delights in Paradise: A Comparative Survey of Heavenly Food and Drink in the Quran

Maher Jarrar: Strategies for Paradise: Paradise Virgins and Utopia

Nerina Rustomji: Beauty in the Garden: Aesthetics and the Wildān, Ghilmān, and Ḥūr

PART THREE
The Afterlife in Sunni Tradition and Theology

Aisha Geissinger: “Are Men the Majority in Paradise, or Women?” Constructing Gender and Communal Boundaries in Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj’s (d. 261/875) Kitāb al-Janna

Christian Lange: The ‘Eight Gates of Paradise’ Tradition in Islam: A Genealogical and Structural Study

Feras Hamza: Temporary Hellfire Punishment and the Making of Sunni Orthodoxy

Niall Christie: Paradise and Hell in the Kitāb al-Jihād of ʿAlī b. Ṭāhir al-Sulamī (d. 500/1106)

Wilferd Madelung: Al-Ghazālī on Resurrection and the Road to Paradise

Dorothee Pielow: Sleepless in Paradise: Lying in State between This World and the Next

PART FOUR
A Wise Man’s Paradise – Eschatology and Philosophy

Michael E. Marmura: Paradise in Islamic Philosophy

Thomas Würtz: The Orthodox Conception of the Hereafter: Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī’s (d. 793/1390) Examination of some Muʿtazilī and Philosophical Objections

Hermann Landolt: ‘Being-Towards-Resurrection:’ Mullā Ṣadrā’s Critique of Suhrawardī’s Eschatology

Mohammed Rustom: A Philosopher’s Itinerary for the Afterlife: Mullā Ṣadrā on Paths to Felicity

PART FIVE
The Path beyond this World – Vision and Spiritual Experience of the Hereafter

Simon O’Meara: Muslim Visuality and the Visibility of Paradise and the World

Maryam Moazzen: A Garden beyond the Garden: ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī’s Perspective on Paradise

Katja Föllmer: Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Path to God and the Concept of Martyrdom in ʿAṭṭār’s Conference of the Birds

PART SIX
Unity in Variety – Shi‘ism and Other Muslim Identities

Omid Ghaemmaghami: “And the Earth will Shine with the Light of its Lord” (Q 39:69): Qāʾim and qiyāma in Shi‘i Islam

Elizabeth Alexandrin: Paradise as the Abode of Pure Knowledge: Reconsidering al-Muʾayyad’s “Isma‘ili Neoplatonism”

S.J. Badakhchani: Notions of Paradise in the Isma‘ili Works of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī

Jamel A. Velji: Apocalyptic Rhetoric and the Construction of Authority in Medieval Isma‘ilism

Alexey A. Khismatulin: Just a Step Away From Paradise: Barzakh in the Ahl-i Ḥaqq Teachings

Orkhan Mir-Kasimov: “Paradise is at the Feet of Mothers:” The Ḥurūfī Road

Mohammad Hassan Khalil: Which Road to Paradise? The Controversy of Reincarnation in Islamic Thought

VOLUME 2

Continuity and Change. The Plurality of Eschatological Representations in the Islamicate World Thought

Mahmoud Hegazi: “Roads to Paradise” in Risālat al-Ghufrān of the Arab Thinker al-Maʿarrī

Roberto Tottoli: Muslim Eschatology and the Ascension of the Prophet Muḥammad: Describing Paradise in Miʿrāj Traditions and Literature

Samar Attar: An Islamic Paradiso in a Medieval Christian Poem? Dante’s Divine Comedy Revisited

Claudia Ott: Paradise, Alexander the Great and the Arabian Nights: Some New Insights Based on an Unpublished Manuscript

Walid A. Saleh: Paradise in an Islamic ʿAjāʾib Work: The Delight of Onlookers and the Signs for Investigators of Marʿī b. Yūsuf al-Karmī (d. 1033/1624)

Suha Kudsieh: Expulsion from Paradise: Granada in Raḍwā ʿĀshūr’s The Granada Trilogy (1994–8) and Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995)

PART NINE
Bringing Paradise down to Earth – Aesthetic Representations of the Hereafter

Maribel Fierro: Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ, Paradise and the Fatimids

Tehnyat Majeed: The Chār Muḥammad Inscription, Shafāʿa, and the Mamluk Qubba al-Manṣūriyya

Karin Rührdanz: Visualizing Encounters on the Road to Paradise

Ulrich Marzolph: Images of Paradise in Popular Shi‘ite Iconography

Silvia Naef: Where is Paradise on Earth? Visual Arts in the Arab World and the Construction of a Mythic Past

PART TEN
Heavens and the Hereafter in Scholarship and Natural Sciences

Ingrid Hehmeyer: The Configuration of the Heavens in Islamic Astronomy

Anver M. Emon: The Quadrants of Sharīʿa: The Here and Hereafter as Constitutive of Islamic Law

Ludmila Hanisch: Perceptions of Paradise in the Writings of Julius Wellhausen, Mark Lidzbarski, and Hans Heinrich Schaeder

PART ELEVEN
Paradise meets Modernity – The Dynamics of Paradise Discourse in the Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Ediwn P. Wieringa: Islam and Paradise are Sheltered under the Shade of Swords: Phallocentric Fantasies of Paradise in Nineteenth-Century Acehnese War Propaganda and their Lasting Legacy

Umar Ryad: Eschatology between Reason and Revelation: Death and Resurrection in Modern Islamic Theology

Martin Riexinger: Between Science Fiction and Sermon: Eschatological Writings Inspired by Said Nursi

Liza M. Franke: Notions of Paradise and Martyrdom in Contemporary Palestinian Thought

Ruth Mas: Crisis and the Secular Rhetoric of Islamic Paradise

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX

INDICES
1. PROPER NAMES
2. GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES AND TOPONYMS
3. TITLES OF BOOKS AND OTHER TEXTS
4. SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES
5. TOPICS AND KEYWORDS

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS