Amin Ghodratzadeh is PhD candidate for the ERC Advanced Grant "Beyond Sharia: The Role of Sufism in Shaping Islam," focusing on the project: Wise Fools and the Interrogation of God. This project studies the origin, ideology and presentations of the wise fools in Iran, Central Asia, Syria and Egypt between the 9th and 12th centuries, as possible forerunners of qalandars. They were a prominent social type in Islamic urban culture. Mainstream religious schools at that time remained within a fairly clearly defined orthodoxy, but the wise fools show us what was happening on the fringes of religious and philosophical thinking. Wise fools violated social norms, but they were tolerated–admired even. They were not expected to comply with law or custom. As they had renounced the world completely, they were considered to be involved with fundamental questions relating to the holiest tenets of Islam, including God’s justice, benevolence and compassion, and the hereafter. In order to understand the development of the phenomenon of the wise fools, Amin will study a wide genre of texts, ranging from literary sources to philosophical, ethical and religious books.
Amin has a special interest in Islamic mystical philosophy, Persian poetry, and philosophical treaties.
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