Cyrus Zargar
Cyrus Zargar is the Al-Ghazali Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida and Director of Research at the Tokat Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies. A leading scholar of Sufism whose work encompasses philosophy, literature, ethics, and films, Professor Zargar has lectured widely across North America and internationally on the intellectual and spiritual traditions of Islam.
Educated at UC Berkeley, Professor Zargar’s scholarship explores how Islamic philosophical and literary traditions cultivate virtue and self-transformation through poetry and storytelling. His work is particularly concerned with the ethical and metaphysical dimensions of Persian and Arabic Sufi literature, and with the ways in which imagination and beauty shape human understanding and spiritual formation.
His books and academic writings have been translated into multiple languages and are widely cited in Islamic studies, religious studies, and comparative philosophy. Religion of Love: Sufism and Self-Transformation in the Poetic Imagination of ʿAṭṭār (State University of New York Press, 2024) examines the symbolic and ethical dimensions of Sufi poetry through the writings of the Persian poet Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār. Through a sustained engagement with the poetic imagination, the work explores how love functions as a transformative force in the spiritual and ethical life. The Ethics of Karbala (Routledge, 2024) studies the events and memorialization of the Battle of Karbala from the perspective of virtue ethics, focusing on virtues of chivalry and nobility.
His earlier works include The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism (Oneworld Publications, 2017), which investigates the role of narrative and moral cultivation in Islamic thought, and Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of Ibn ʿArabī and ʿIrāqī (University of South Carolina Press, 2011), a major study of beauty and embodiment in Sufi metaphysics and aesthetics.
In addition to his scholarship, Professor Zargar serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Sufi Studies (Brill), as well as Associate Editor for the Studies in Islamic Thought series and Managing Editor for the journal Islamic Intellectual Traditions (Brill). He is actively engaged in projects that bring classical Islamic thought into conversation with contemporary philosophical and ethical debates. His forthcoming book, under contract with University of California Press, explores the nature of meaning and revealed language in Islamic thought.
At Tokat, Professor Zargar overseas research which lies at the intersection of philosophy, literature, and ethics: how the poetic and spiritual traditions of Islam cultivate moral imagination, spiritual perception, and the transformation of the self.
