In Search of the Lost Heart: Explorations in Islamic Thought

Renowned scholar William C. Chittick explores the worldview of Islam in a series of essays written over thirty-six years.

In Search of the Lost Heart brings together twenty-six essays by William C. Chittick, renowned scholar of Sufism and Islamic philosophy. Written between 1975 and 2011, most of these essays are not readily available in Chittick's own books. Although this is a collection, its editors have crafted it to be a book "sufficient unto itself, which, when taken as a whole, can be said to explore the underlying worldview of Islam."

Chittick draws upon the writings of towering figures such as Ibn al-'Arabī, Rūmī, and Mullā Ṣadrā, as well as other important, but lesser-known thinkers, as he engages with a wide variety of topics, such as the nature of being and knowledge, the relationship between love and scriptural hermeneutics, the practical and theoretical dimensions of Islamic mysticism, the phenomenon of religious diversity, and the ecological crisis.

William C. Chittick is Professor of Religious Studies at Stony Brook University, State University of New York. He is the author and translator of numerous books and articles on Islamic thought, Sufism, Shi'ism, and Persian literature. His books include The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-'Arabī's Cosmology; Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-'Arabī and the Problem of Religious Diversity; Faith and Practice of Islam: Three Thirteenth-Century Sufi Texts; The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-'Arabī's Metaphysics of Imagination; The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rūmī; and A Shi'ite Anthology, all published by SUNY Press. Mohammed Rustom is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Carleton University. Atif Khalil is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge. Kazuyo Murata is a doctoral candidate in Islamic Studies at Yale University.