Beauty in Sufism by Murata Kazuyo;

Author:Murata, Kazuyo; [Murata, Kazuyo;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781438462790
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2017-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

5

The Prophetology of Beauty

Surely you have a beautiful example in God’s messenger.

—Qurʾān 33:21

Human beauty is superior to cosmic beauty, but not all human beauty is equal. At the zenith of human beauty stand the prophets, who represent the highest degree of human perfection. Rūzbihān calls the prophets the mirrors of God and argues, “Adam, Joseph, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad…are the quarries of the innate human nature of beauty that derives from the beauty of the beginningless, for God makes His beauty appear from them in the world. Hence, beauty (ḥusn) is inherited from them by the people of beauty (jamāl) in this world and the next, and they are at the center of God’s beauty (ḥusn) in the world.”1 While all prophets are beautiful, five figures stand out in Rūzbihān’s discussion: Adam, Joseph, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad.2 It is in the discussion of prophetic beauty that Rūzbihān’s theory of beauty culminates. The very fact that creation is a realm of relativity seems to necessitate the variety of “perfections” represented by the multiple prophets. In fact, Rūzbihān’s presentation of each instance of prophetic beauty has a different emphasis, as will be seen in the present chapter. Discussion of prophetic beauty is prominent in Rūzbihān’s writings, which led Henry Corbin to declare “prophetology of beauty” to be one of the six themes that characterize the stages of inner journey in Rūzbihān’s scheme.3

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