Il lessico sufi nel romanzo Mawt ṣaġīr di Muḥammad Ḥasan ʿAlwān
(The Sufi lexicon in the novel Mawt ṣaġīr by Muḥammad Ḥasan ʿAlwān)
in La rivista di Arablit, a. XI, n. 21-22, giugno-dicembre 2021, pp. 45-72.
The novel Mawt ṣaġīr (A Small Death) by the Saudi writer Muḥammad Ḥasan ʿAlwān, winner of the 2017 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, illustrates the double dimension, external (ẓāhir) and internal (bāṭin), of Ibn ʿArabī’s travels through a geographical and intimate space. Using at the same time a specialized Sufi lexicon and a language understandable to the general public, ʿAlwān manages to convey the cornerstones of Sufism that, ultimately, illustrate the very meaning of taṣawwuf. Similarly, while not delving into the complex universe of Ibn ʿArabī’s thought, the allusions to his doctrines in various passages give us an interesting, and in some respects very faithful, picture of the Sufi master. In this contribution, I will focus on these aspects, analysing the Sufi terminology in Mawt ṣaġīr and highlighting, for each word, its recurrence, context of use and purpose within the economy of the novel, in order to show which representation of Sufism, and in particular of Ibn Arabī’s Sufism, emerges from it.
