Ibn 'arabi Society

Cecilia Twinch is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Oxford. Besides working as a teacher, translator and editor, she has written numerous articles and has lectured on Ibn 'Arabi and mysticism worldwide. She has studied at Cambridge University and the Beshara School. Her publications include an English translation of Ibn 'Arabi's Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries and a new translation of Know yourself: An explanation of the oneness of being (Ibn 'Arabi/Balyani).

Robert Abdul Hayy Darr has been a student of the spiritual culture of Islam for 45 years. In the late 1960s, he studied North Indian classical music at the Ali Akbar Khan School of Music in California. By the early 1980s, Darr began studying Persian literature where he first encountered the teachings of Ibn 'Arabi in the works of Abdurrahman Jami of Herat. This began a life-long interest in the Shaykh's profound teachings. In 1987, Darr met Afghanistan's poet laureate in exile, Ustad Khalilullah Khalili and this friendship led to his English translation of the poet's quatrains in 1989. From 1988-2007, Darr was tutored in Persian miniature painting by Ustad Homayon Etemadi, Afghanistan's last court painter and royal librarian. Darr was the disciple of the Afghan Sufi poet Raz Mohammed Zaray from 1992 until the poet's death in 2010.

CYRUS ALI ZARGAR is an associate professor of religion at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. His book, Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of Ibn 'Arabi and 'Iraqi, was published in 2011 by the University of South Carolina Press.

MARIA DAKAKE, researches and publishes on Islamic intellectual history, Quranic studies, Shi'ite and Sufi traditions, and women's spirituality and religious experience. She has just completed work on a major colloaborative project to produce the first HarperCollins Study Quran, a verse-by-verse commentary on the Quranic text

MOHAMMED RUSTOM is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Carleton University. He is the author of the award-winning book The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mulla Sadra and Assistant Editor of The Study Quran: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary (Editor-in-Chief, Seyyed Hossein Nasr).

Zachary Markwith is a doctoral student and instructor at the Graduate Theological Union where he specializes in early Islamic spirituality and comparative religious studies. He is the author of One God, Many Prophets: the Universal Wisdom of Islam, and is writing his dissertation on sanctity in the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

Michael Sells is Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the University of Chicago. He teaches courses on the Qur'an, Islamic love poetry, comparative mystical literature, Arabic Sufi poetry, Arabic religious texts, and Ibn 'Arabi. His publications include: Approaching the Quran: the Early Revelations (2007) and Mystical Languages of Unsaying (1994). He is also well-known for his translations of Arabic poetry including Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (1989) and Stations of Desire - Love Elegies from Ibn 'Arabi And New Poems (2000). John Mercer is an actor and writer, and formerly the Secretary of the Ibn 'Arabi Society and a founding member

Michael Sells is Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the University of Chicago. He teaches courses on the Qur'an, Islamic love poetry, comparative mystical literature, Arabic Sufi poetry, Arabic religious texts, and Ibn 'Arabi. His publications include: Approaching the Quran: the Early Revelations (2007) and Mystical Languages of Unsaying (1994). He is also well-known for his translations of Arabic poetry including Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (1989) and Stations of Desire - Love Elegies from Ibn 'Arabi And New Poems (2000)

Jaume Flaquer is a Jesuit priest and Professor of Interreligious Dialogue in the Faculty of Theology of Catalonia in Barcelona. He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the Sorbonne; his thesis was on Jesus according to the Sufi mystic Ibn 'Arabi. Publications include Christianity and Fundamentalism (1997) and Travelling Lives (2007). He gave a paper at the Second International Symposium of the MIAS-Latina in 2013 on The Spiritual Qualities of Jesus according to Ibn 'Arabi.

Stephen Hirtenstein has been editor of the Society’s Journal for 30 years. He is co-founder and director of Anqa Publishing and author of The Unlimited Mercifier, a spiritual biography of Ibn 'Arabi. He has translated the Mishkat al-Anwar, Ibn 'Arabi’s collection of hadith qudsi, and three of Ibn 'Arabi's shorter treatises including The Four Pillars of Spiritual Transformation (2008). He has lectured around the world and leads courses at the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education. He was awarded the first Tarjuman Prize by MIAS-Latina in 2012 (along with Maurice Gloton)

Yafiah Katherine Randall is a doctoral student in the department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Winchester. Her thesis investigates Sufism among Israeli Jews and Muslims in Israel and explores its potential contribution to reconciliation and conflict transformation

Dr. Kazuyo Murata is a lecturer in Islamic Studies at King's College London. Her ongoing work includes a study of the so-called jamal-parasti ("adoration of beauty") in the history of Sufism, also an investigation of the Quran commentary by Ruzbihan Baqli Shirazi, with a particular attention to his understanding of prophets.

Omer Colakoglu teaches English at a school in Istanbul, and continues to work as a translator between Turkish and English. He has translated 14 books (two of them into English, the others into Turkish), and hundreds of articles. He is part-way through an MA program in Fatih University's School of Divinity

Dr Cyrus Ali Zargar is Assistant Professor in Religion at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, in the USA. He is interested in using the study of literature in Persian and Arabic, especially lyric poetry, to explore Sufism and Shi'i mysticism. He recently published Sufi Aesthetics, which explores the spiritual writings and poetry of Ibn al-'Arabi and Fakhr al-Din 'Iraqi (d. 1289)

Prof. Georg Bossong has been full professor of Romance philology (especially Ibero-Romance linguistics) at the University of Zurich since 1994, and visiting professor at many other universities. Some of his published articles can be downloaded from his web page at the University of Zurich. He is currently preparing a translation of the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq into German

Jane Clark is a teacher and independent scholar who has been studying Ibn 'Arabi for more than thirty years. She is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, working particularly on the Society's archiving project. Her recent publications include "Establishing Ibn 'Arabi’s Heritage" (JMIAS 2013) and "Towards a Biography of Sadr al-diin al-Qunawi" (JMIAS 2011)

Olga Louchakova-Schwartz is Professor of Psychology and Comparative Religion at Sofia University and spiritual teacher in the traditions of Advaita Vedanta, Kindalini, Yoga and Prayer of the Heart. Her numerous publications cover a broad range of topics including autoimmune diseases of the nervous system, psychosomatic mysticism and non-dual consciousness

Nargis Virani is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at The New School in New York City. She has a PhD from Harvard University. Her research explores intersections between The Qur'an and Literatures originating in Muslim milieu. She has just completed two books on Rumi's multilingual poetry: I am the Nightingale of the Merciful: Translation of Rumi's Multilingual Poems with an Introductory Essay, and Keeping God's Secrets: Multilinguality and Mystical Discourse

Todd Lawson is Associate Professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Toronto. He teaches courses on the Qur'an, Sufism, Shi'i Islam and related topics. His most recent book is Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam. He is now writing a book on the Qur'an as sacred epic.

Carl Ernst is a specialist in Islamic studies, with a focus on West and South Asia. He is the William P. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His most recent publications are How to Read the Qur'an: A New Guide, with Select Translations and Islamophobia in America.