Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty

Genres of Tradition in Muslim South Asia

Ali Altaf Mian demonstrates how attention to genre and embodiment illuminates the concepts and practices of the Islamic traditionand how theologians, Sufi mystics, and ordinary Muslims respond to the incapacitating tribulations of creaturely existence in modernity.

Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty is grounded in the vast textual archive of one of modern South Asia’s foremost Muslim theologians and Sufis: Mauln Ashraf Al Thnav (18631943). Through a close examination of Mauln Thnav’s corpus of writings, Ali Altaf Mian offers new insights into tradition as a discursive and affective crucible of ethical transformation and spiritual sovereignty.

Philologically attuned and philosophically oriented, Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty elucidates connections between traditions’ forms of life and forms of language. Mian shows how intended and uncon