Encyclopedia of Islam

soul and spirit

---

elements in the universe, along with God, matter, 

time, and space. God allowed the soul to fulfill its 

desire to become embodied in matter but gave it 

a degree of his own intelligence in order to help 

maintain order in the universe and eventually find 

its way back to its primordial state of existence. 

a

l

-F

arabi

  (d. ca. 950) and i

bn

  s

ina

  (d. 1037) 

adopted the Neoplatonist concept of cosmic 

cre

-

ation

 through a sequence of emanations beginning 

with God, the uncreated Being and First Cause, 

followed by intellects, and the material world—the 

lowest level of creation. The human soul, embed-

ded in material existence, had different faculties, 

some that linked it to the worlds of 

animals

 and 

plants, and others, especially the faculty of reason, 

that could incline it to engage in ethical actions 

and eventually lift it to the eternal light world of 

pure intellect. Only an elect few could ever hope 

to attain this level of existence, however, and souls 

unable to live virtuous lives were condemned to an 

eternity of suffering.

Similar currents of thought were pursued 

by Sufi thinkers and visionaries. Many held that 

humans were a compound of soul, spirit, and body 

and drew a particularly sharp distinction between 

the lower soul (nafs), which chained the seeker to 

the transient world of the baser passions, sin, and 

blameworthy actions, and the heavenly spirit that 

linked people to God. Sufis strove to discipline their 

“selfish” impulses and purify themselves of negative 

qualities and attachments in order to strengthen 

their higher spirit (ruh) and experience abidance 

in, or unity with, God, the Beloved. They also spoke 

of the heart as a soul-mirror that was capable of 

becoming a reflection of God through ascetic prac-

tices. Expressing patriarchal cultural bias, they often 

portrayed the lower soul and the material world as a 

woman. m

Uhyi

 

al

-d

in

 

ibn

 

al

-a

rabi

 (d. 1240), how-

ever, identified the nafs with God’s essence (

dhat

). 

A 13th-century masterwork of Sufi literature, Farid 

al-Din Attar’s Mantiq al-tayr (Conference of the 

birds), portrayed the process of overcoming worldly 

attachments and experiencing perfection in God as 

an epic journey of a flock of soul-birds across seven 

valleys to the palace of their king, the s

imUrgh

. Only 

a select few reached their goal. Another mystic who 

wrote in Persian verse, J

alal

 

al

-d

in

 r

Umi

 (d. 1273), 

spoke of the higher soul as a falcon striving to free 

itself of the world and ascend to its heavenly home. 

Likewise, he wrote that humans occupied a place 

in creation between angels and animals, the for-

mer possessing pure intellect, the latter possessing 

pure sensuality. By following the intellect, humans 

could surpass the angels, and by succumbing to the 

senses, they could fall lower than the animals. Life 

was a struggle between these contending aspects of 

human nature. 

It was in philosophy and mysticism that Mus-

lim understandings of the nature of the soul and 

spirit were most fully developed before the mod-

ern era. In modernity these understandings have 

become more widely known than ever before, 

thanks to the publication of printed editions and 

translations of Islamic texts dealing with these 

subjects. At the same time, however, contempo-

rary Muslim understandings have been affected 

by modern scientific ideas and Enlightenment 

rationalism. s

alaFism

 and W

ahhabism

 have played 

a major role in limiting speculation on such spiri-

tual matters to the Quran, hadith, and the consen-

sus of traditionally minded ulama.

See also a

dam

 

and

  e

ve

;  a

llah

; 

asceticism

; 

baqa

 and 

fana

; 

ethics

 

and

 

morality

; i

smaili

 s

hiism

; 

martyrdom

; s

UFism

; 

theology

.