Religion of Love explores the life and work of the Persian Sufi poet and sage Farid al-Din ¿A¿¿ar. ¿A¿¿ar changed the face of world literature, leaving his impact on all cultures that have valued Persian Sufi writings. Considered for the first time through the lens of religious studies, ¿A¿¿ar's oeuvre offers much to contemporary readers. ¿A¿¿ar's poems cast a light on the relationship between revelation and the intellect. They also encourage liberation from self-centeredness through the fiery path of love. Thus, Religion of Love considers one of Persian literature's greatest poets as more than just a poet, but also as a thinker and a commentator on moral psychology, ethics, and the intellectual debates of his age, debates that shed light on today's religious complexities.

List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Religion of Love
1. Who Was ¿A¿¿ar?
2. ¿A¿¿ar's Writings
3. The City and the Saint
Part I: Religion
4. Religion, Then and Now
5. Din, Dunya, and the Pious Life
6. Sciences of Empty Reasoning
7. Beyond the Limits of Intelligence
8. The Religion of Old Women
Part II: Love and Infidelity
9. Love Beneath the Cloak of Infidelity
10. The School of Love in History
11. Metaphorical Spaces of Love and Infidelity
12. Finding the Real in Byzantium
Part III: Union
13. ¿A¿¿ar and Mystical Experience
14. Ascents to the Real
15. Celestial Journey Literature
16. Union in The Book of Affliction
17. The Source of Affliction
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Cyrus Ali Zargar is Al-Ghazali Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism and Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of Ibn ¿Arabi and ¿Iraqi.