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Feeling Like Lovers

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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Sufism, for many of its medi...
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  • 10 March 2026
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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Sufism, for many of its medieval followers, was the “religion of love.” God was the beloved and the Sufis, his lovers. To become a Sufi meant to become a lover. In this book, Matthew Thomas Miller pursues the radical analytical implication of this amatory metaphysics: If God and his divine secrets can only truly be known in their fullest through the experience of love, then we must analyze how it feels to be a Sufi on the Path of Love. Leveraging insights from the history of emotions and affect theory, this study examines key Sufi ritual practices and poetics to show the central role that affect plays in the process of constructing Sufi subjectivity and knowledge production. It explores the felt dimension of medieval Sufism and why feeling—especially, like a lover—was so important for coming to truly know God and his divine secrets.
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Price: $34.95
Pages: 242
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date: 10 March 2026
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520426344
Format: Paperback
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Matthew Thomas Miller is Assistant Professor of Persian Literature and Digital Humanities at Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland and affiliate faculty at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities and the Religious Studies and Comparative Literature programs.
Contents

Acknowledgments
Technical Notes

Introduction: "Begin a Love Affair!"
1. "Passionate Desire Conquered Him": The Felt Life of a Sufi Lover
2. "An Internal Turmoil Overtook the Shaykh": The Æffects of Music and Place in Samāʿ
3. Getting into the Habit(us) of Being a Lover: Æffective Hermeneutics and the Formation of Sufi Feeling Subjects in Samāʿ
4. "Expressing Meanings (Maʿānī) in the Clothing of Forms": Sufism’s Æffective Poetics
5. "When the Wine of Love Started Taking Its Æffect": Self-Annihilation (Fanāʾ) and the Force Dynamics of Sufi Poetry
Conclusion: Restoring the Sufi Mind-Body

Bibliography
Index