Arts Entertainment 02/03 UMS FALL SEASON Andrea Marcon conductor and harpsichord Giuliano Carmignola •Sun 10/13 baroque violin 7:30 pm MYSTICAL ENTANGLEMENT from page 73 St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church • Ann Arbor VENICE BAROQUE RA Devoted to recapturing the dazzling brilliance and evocative moods of the Italian Baroque style that flourished in eighteenth-century Venice, the Venice Baroque Orchestra brings fresh energy to the rich legacy of Baroque music that endures in Venice. ALL-VIVALDI PROGRAM Sinfonia in C Major from II Giustino, RV 717 Concerto in g minor for Strings, RV 157 Concerto in &flat Major for Violin and Strings, RV 257 Concerto in F Major for Violin, String and Continuo, RV 286 Four Seasons Presented with the generous support of Beverley and Gerson Geltner and Michael Allemang. 'rr 1 urns ,exs 734.764.2538 www.ums.org .14,1 jo. ntr, ond .tharn d r outside the 734 area code, call 800.221.1229 S PEA RODY5 Ai „ " sq, we/ A Birmingham Tradition For 25 Years Entertainment Friday & Saturday Nights One Lunch Or One Dinner Entry + Two Hours Free Parking In The Structure Directly Behind Peabody's • t u ° OFF When You Buy A Lunch Or Dinner Of Equal Or Greater Value Valid Mon.-Thurs. • With Coupon • Expires 10131102 • 248.644.5222 34965 Woodward ♦ Just South Of Maple Reservations taken for 8 or more 631600 HOUSE R. Live - Entertainment Every Sat. & Begimring at -1 6:00 p.m Buy one entree get the second entree 50% off Monday - Wednesday only Of equal or lesser value. Expires 10/31/02 Dine in only 10/4 2002 74 Includes soup or salad, vegetable, potato and homemade rolls 20300 Farmin o,..*Road Betweeti 7 & 8 Mile on East Side 10% , F SENIOR CITIZEN DISCOUNT (248) 474-2420 ate. For Jews, much of the prayer book and Bible were dependent on these religious adepts, the men and women who moved beyond the banal to forge a direct connection with God. Islam is no different, and Sufism operates as the thrumming heart and soul behind the laws and prayer of the practicing Muslim. In the years of its infancy, howev- er, Sufism drew unabashedly from Jewish sources, and Jews themselves, threading a particularly Jewish sensi- bility into the burgeoning Muslim mystical force. Islamic mystics turned to Jews to answer a variety of mystical needs. In addition to the Prophet Muhammad's familiarity with the Jewish religion, early Jewish converts to Islam brought with them the sto- ries from their heritage, known as Israiliyat, which told of the Banu Israil, the pious men of ancient Israel. One of the most famous early Islamic mystics — and the man con- sidered to be the "patriarch of Muslim .mysticism" — Hasan al- Basri (d. 728) introduced numerous /srairiyat legends into the Muslim spiritual stream, stories that went on to become representative of Islamic mystical ideas of piety. Even an early biographer of the Prophet Muhammad included in his work many legends and stories of virtuous behavior that he attributed to the "People of the Torah." It was an inclusion for which his contem- poraries roundly criticized him — because he had explicitly pointed out the Jewish influences on the prophet. Another Muslim from this era, Malik ibn Dinar, head of the second generation of Islamic mystics and an important force in the formation of Sufism, quoted liberally from his well-thumbed Jewish religious tomes. In fact, he borrowed specific ideas from the "Talmudic Chasidim," Jewish mystics who became leg- endary for their devotion to God. As the early Sufis had much in common with the Chasidim of tal- mudic times, the Islamic spiritualists could well be seen as the Chasidim's spiritual progeny, through the administration of early Islamic mys- tics like al-Basri and ibn Dinar. Indeed, al-Basri even credited the Jewish king David as originating many of the practices that character- ized the Sufis, down to the specific woolen garb that identified them. This flirtation with Jewish sources did not fade with the passing of the first few generations of Sufis. An 11th-century Islamic practi- tioner in Toledo, Spain, named ibn Said, boldly stated that his Jewish contemporaries had a special under-. standing of the prophets and the story of Genesis — and that Muslim scholars looked to them for guidance in these areas. "This people (the Jews)," he stat- ed, "is the house of prophecy and the source of the prophetic message of mankind and the majority of the prophets — the blessings and peace of Allah be upon them." A couple of hundred years later, Sufis were still turning to Jewish vol- umes for inspiration. Ibn Arabi, a 13th-century Sufi who was consid- ered one of the greatest medieval Islamic mystical thinkers, turned to Jewish sources in lieu of those from his own religion. Specifically, he borrowed mystical ideas of humanity and its relation to God directly from Moses Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed, perhaps the most important Jewish theological tract created during medieval times. In fact, even before the death of the great Maimonides, Jewish teach- ers were explicating his Guide for the Perplexed in Islamic madrasas, or schools, to Muslim students. Perhaps the height of Jewish-Sufi symbiosis was achieved in the person of a 13th-century Sufi in Damascus, Abu ali ibn Hud. Ibn Hud spent his time teaching Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed to students of all reli- gions. Not only did he purportedly wear an ill-concealed yarmulke, or skull- cap, under his turban as a show of respect for the Jewish religion but when asked to teach a spiritual seek- er, he replied, "Upon which road: the Mosaic or the Muslim?" My friend David's sense of the oppressiveness of history in the Holy Land — a history that seems to demand the acting out of Hannibal's code (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth) — is certainly shared by many Jews and Muslims. However, if David and the other denizens of the Holy Land were to listen a little closer to those seemingly mute stones built into the walls around Jerusalem, they might hear the whis- pers of another story — one that bespeaks a time when Muslim- mys- tics turned to their Jewish cousins for help in creating the beauty of Islamic mysticism. ❑