For a Kinder, Gentler Society
Check the most common questions about publishing with Algora. Go to FAQ's
Now that your book is published let's have a smile.
From the Ancient World to the Indian Subcontinent
This rigorous yet accessible narrative presents the history of Ishq (sacred love) in Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, and Punjabi traditions from pre-Islamic Arabia through the twentieth century, covering poets and mystics including Rumi, al-Hallaj, Rabi’a, Bulleh Shah, and the Sikh Gurus, plus twentieth-century voices like Iqbāl, Faiz, and Amrita Pritam, affirming that the fire of ishq continues.
ISHQ: A History of Sacred Love is a sweeping literary narrative nonfiction work that traces the concept of ishq—a term denoting an all-consuming, obsessive love that dissolves boundaries between lover and beloved—across four millennia and multiple civilizations.
Have you ever woken at three in the morning with an unidentifiable ache—not a physical pain, but a deep, sourceless longing? For four thousand years, the poets, mystics, and philosophers of the East have explored this exact wound, giving it a name: ishq.
In this sweeping, beautifully crafted work of literary narrative nonfiction, Inderjeet Singh Chawla traces the history of this all-consuming sacred love across four millennia and six civilizations. Ishq is not ordinary affection; derived from an ancient Arabic word for a climbing vine that winds so tightly around a tree that it kills what it embraces, it is a terminal, absolute obsession that demands the annihilation of the self.
The journey begins in the river valleys of Mesopotamia with Sumerian hymns inscribed in wet clay, before moving to the pre-Islamic Arabian desert, where weeping at the abandoned ruins of a campsite became the first philosophical expression of absence as the truest medium of love,. From there, Chawla guides readers to the intellectual epicenter of Abbasid Baghdad. Here, the mystic Al-Hallaj is executed for claiming to be God—proving that true ishq dissolves the boundary between lover and Beloved—and the female mystic Rabia introduces the radical concept of pure, disinterested love.
The fire of ishq then sweeps through Persia, finding its ultimate voice in Rumi’s weeping reed flute, before converging in the Indian subcontinent. In the Punjab, the Arabic and Persian traditions fuse with Sanskrit devotion, echoing through the verses of Kabir, the romance of Waris Shah, and the radical, head-on-palm courage of the Sikh Gurus.
Grounded in rigorous scholarship but written with gripping, accessible pacing, ISHQ is no detached academic study. It was born from the author’s own profound spiritual awakening upon hearing a song by Bulleh Shah in a Delhi concert hall.
Whether you are a longtime student of Rumi, a lover of Qawwali music, or encountering this immense spiritual tradition for the first time, ISHQ invites you to view the wound of separation not as a problem to be solved, but as the very condition of being fully alive.
The fire burns. Step into the flame.
| Release Year |
|---|
The Cave
Roger Huard invites readers to explore Plato’s myth of the Cave, which is central to his magnum opus on political philosophy, “The Republic.
A Western Testament
Is it time to dump Western capitalism’s values?Or on the contrary, to re-found our market-based society by dumping its distortions and returning to the fundamental values of our Greek-Judeo-Christian heritage?
Atheism isn’t only significant as a philosophical position held in opposition to religion; it has its own value as a way of life. What would atheism propose to replace the existence of God?
and the Triumph of the New Man
This book is first and foremost a detailed and meticulous study of Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses (1930). No other relevant, up-to-date books explore this thinker and his great work.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.