Lull absorbed Sufi practices and Arabic frame-tale structure into Christian devotion

Evidence

The boxing of tales within tales was characteristic of medieval Arabic literature and is found in such well-known story collections as Kalila wa-Dimna and The Thousand and One Nights. The Book of the Lover and the Beloved, which is boxed within Blanquerna, and which deals with the approach of the mystic to God who is the ‘Beloved’, was, according to Lull, made ‘according to the manner of the Sufis’ and, as is the case with The Book of the Gentile, it is possible that it was modelled on a lost Arabic book. Certainly the book is pervaded by Arab themes and in it Lull makes explicit his admiration for Sufism: Blanquerna remembered that ‘a Saracen related to him that the Saracens have certain religious men, and that among others are certain men called Sufis, who are most prized amongst them, and these men have words of love and brief examples which give to men great devotion’. Lull seems to have absorbed the Sufi practice of meditating on the names of God and turned it into a Christian devotional practice. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 91

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows how medieval Arabic literary and devotional forms migrated into Latin Christian writing.
• XREF: The Thousand and One Nights frame story connects to broader reception history of Arabic literature in Europe.