NOTE SUL SUFISMO VISIVO: RAPPRESENTAZIONI GRAFICHE A SUPPORTO DELLA REALIZZAZIONE SPIRITUALE NEL TAṢAWWUF

This article provides introductory considerations on Visual Sufism, that is, on the vast and complex topic of the use of graphic representations in Sufi literature, focusing on one aspect in particular. That is about how these diagrams in many cases have been conceived by the Sufi masters who designed them and by their users as graphic tools to support spiritual realization. At the same time, through the analysis of the texts, it questions the reasons that led some Sufi thinkers to adopt this particular means of expression. In order to do so, authors of different periods have been taken into consideration, starting from al-Ḥallāǧ (d. 309/922), passing through Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) -whose impulse appears decisive in the development of this phenomenon-then continuing with some eminent exponents of the Akbarian School such as Ḥaydar Āmulī (d. after 787/1385) and Muḥammad Šīrīn Maġribī (d. 810/1408), concluding with a contemporary Naqšbandī master named Abū l-Ḥasan Zayd Fārūqī (d. 1993). This excursus, though brief and summary, by retracing more than a thousand years allows us to ascertain the diffusion and long fortune of the graphic means of expression in
the history of Taṣawwuf, which remains little known even today and is only rarely perceived as one of the spiritual techniques proper to Sufism.