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Dans cette étude nous cherchons à explorer le lien entre haschich et humour par l'analyse du corpus des récits arabes contenus dans la Rāḥat al-arwāḥ fī l-ḥašīš wa-l-rāḥ (“Le repos des âmes dans le haschich et le vin”) de Badr al-Dīn Abū l-Tuqā al-Badrī (847-894/1443-1489). L'originalité de cette anthologie qui existe en quatre manuscrits dont seulement deux étaient connus à la critique, découle du fait qu'elle est le plus ancien recueil en langue arabe de textes en prose et en vers inspirés du haschich. Dans la première partie, nous abordons le haschich d'un point de vue historique, médicale et juridico-religieux. Longtemps utilisé en médicine et pour la fabrication de cordes et tissus, on ignore quand le cannabis (qinnab) est passé de médicament à substance enivrante et récréative. Cependant l’utilisation de cette herbe était devenue un problème social, si entre le VIIe/XIIIe et le VIIIe/XIVe siècle plusieurs oulémas y consacrèrent des écrits, tant qu'ils l'incluront dans la liste des munkarāt, (les choses blâmables, défendues), à côté du vin (ḫamr), de la fornication (zinā) et de l’homosexualité (liwāṭ). Parallèlement, la littérature n’a pas manqué de représenter l’expérience de psychotropes. Et c'est autour des enjeux littéraires soulevés par cette substance que nous centrons la deuxième partie de notre travail. Par l'étude d'un certain nombre de motifs nous montrons que le personnage du ḥaššāš fonctionne comme un «catalyseur thématique» des motifs littéraires auparavant associés aux ivrognes, aux stupides ou aux fous. L’ordre que nous avons suivi est: la méprise, la stupidité et folie, le rapport au rêve et à l’imaginaire et l'avidité. Nous concluons sur le fait que le passage à la littérature du motif du mangeur de haschich représente le processus de cristallisation d’une figure narrative à potentiel fortement humoristique, née dans la première époque post-abbasside et dérivée d’une série de matériaux narratifs attribués auparavant à d’autres figures littéraires. / In this study we explore the link between hashish and humor through the analysis of Arabic stories contained in the Rāḥat al-arwāḥ fī l-ḥašīš wa-l-rāḥ (“The delight of the souls on hashish and wine”), written by Badr al-Dīn Abū l-Tuqā al-Badrī (847-894/1443-1489), that exists in four manuscripts of which only two were known until now. This work, of which no complete edition has been established yet, seems to be the oldest and most comprehensive Arabic anthology containing poetry and anecdotes inspired by hashish. In the first part we discuss hashish from a historical, medical, legal and religious perspective. Early on, hashish was used in medical treatments and for the manufacture of ropes and fabrics but it is not clear when cannabis (qinnab) has changed from a remedy into an intoxicating and a recreational substance. However, the use of this herb had become a social problem, since between the VIIth/XIIIth and the VIIIth/XIVth centuries several ʿulamā’ wrote about it and the consumption of hashish was considered among the munkarāt (forbidden or reprehensible actions), as well as wine (ḫamr), fornication (zinā) and homosexuality (liwāṭ). Literature quickly represented the psychotropic experiences. Thus the aesthetics of hashish consumption is the main issue of the second part of our study. There, we focus on some comic motifs that appear in a number of anecdotes and we prove that the ḥaššāš character acts as a «thematic catalyst» of literary motifs which were associated in classical Arabic literature with drunkenness, insanity and foolishness. Thus, the order of our presentation is: the mistake; hashish, insanity and foolishness; dream and imagination and finally food and avidity. We infer from this, that the hashish eater as literary motif represents the process of crystallization of a humorous narrative character that took shape during the first part of the post-abbasid period and developed from a series of narrative materials earlier attributed to other literary figures.

Dans cette étude nous cherchons à explorer le lien entre haschich et humour par l'analyse du corpus des récits arabes contenus dans la Rāḥat al-arwāḥ fī l-ḥašīš wa-l-rāḥ (“Le repos des âmes dans le haschich et le vin”) de Badr al-Dīn Abū l-Tuqā al-Badrī (847-894/1443-1489). L'originalité de cette anthologie qui existe en quatre manuscrits dont seulement deux étaient connus à la critique, découle du fait qu'elle est le plus ancien recueil en langue arabe de textes en prose et en vers inspirés du haschich. Dans la première partie, nous abordons le haschich d'un point de vue historique, médicale et juridico-religieux. Longtemps utilisé en médicine et pour la fabrication de cordes et tissus, on ignore quand le cannabis (qinnab) est passé de médicament à substance enivrante et récréative. Cependant l’utilisation de cette herbe était devenue un problème social, si entre le VIIe/XIIIe et le VIIIe/XIVe siècle plusieurs oulémas y consacrèrent des écrits, tant qu'ils l'incluront dans la liste des munkarāt, (les choses blâmables, défendues), à côté du vin (ḫamr), de la fornication (zinā) et de l’homosexualité (liwāṭ). Parallèlement, la littérature n’a pas manqué de représenter l’expérience de psychotropes. Et c'est autour des enjeux littéraires soulevés par cette substance que nous centrons la deuxième partie de notre travail. Par l'étude d'un certain nombre de motifs nous montrons que le personnage du ḥaššāš fonctionne comme un «catalyseur thématique» des motifs littéraires auparavant associés aux ivrognes, aux stupides ou aux fous. L’ordre que nous avons suivi est: la méprise, la stupidité et folie, le rapport au rêve et à l’imaginaire et l'avidité. Nous concluons sur le fait que le passage à la littérature du motif du mangeur de haschich représente le processus de cristallisation d’une figure narrative à potentiel fortement humoristique, née dans la première époque post-abbasside et dérivée d’une série de matériaux narratifs attribués auparavant à d’autres figures littéraires. / In this study we explore the link between hashish and humor through the analysis of Arabic stories contained in the Rāḥat al-arwāḥ fī l-ḥašīš wa-l-rāḥ (“The delight of the souls on hashish and wine”), written by Badr al-Dīn Abū l-Tuqā al-Badrī (847-894/1443-1489), that exists in four manuscripts of which only two were known until now. This work, of which no complete edition has been established yet, seems to be the oldest and most comprehensive Arabic anthology containing poetry and anecdotes inspired by hashish. In the first part we discuss hashish from a historical, medical, legal and religious perspective. Early on, hashish was used in medical treatments and for the manufacture of ropes and fabrics but it is not clear when cannabis (qinnab) has changed from a remedy into an intoxicating and a recreational substance. However, the use of this herb had become a social problem, since between the VIIth/XIIIth and the VIIIth/XIVth centuries several ʿulamā’ wrote about it and the consumption of hashish was considered among the munkarāt (forbidden or reprehensible actions), as well as wine (ḫamr), fornication (zinā) and homosexuality (liwāṭ). Literature quickly represented the psychotropic experiences. Thus the aesthetics of hashish consumption is the main issue of the second part of our study. There, we focus on some comic motifs that appear in a number of anecdotes and we prove that the ḥaššāš character acts as a «thematic catalyst» of literary motifs which were associated in classical Arabic literature with drunkenness, insanity and foolishness. Thus, the order of our presentation is: the mistake; hashish, insanity and foolishness; dream and imagination and finally food and avidity. We infer from this, that the hashish eater as literary motif represents the process of crystallization of a humorous narrative character that took shape during the first part of the post-abbasid period and developed from a series of narrative materials earlier attributed to other literary figures.

Principe spirituel pour Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (1165-1240) et archétype universel pour Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), le Féminin est au centre de cette recherche où il sera étudié sous l’angle de l’expérience mystique dont il est un médian incontournable. L’accent sera mis surtout sur le rapport entre le Féminin comme principe ou archétype et l’expérience mystique tel qu’ils s’articulent chez nos deux penseurs tant dans leur vécu personnel que sur le plan de leurs élaborations théoriques. Elle consiste, pour éviter tout anachronisme, davantage en un dialogue d’idées qu’une comparaison de la pensée du maitre soufi andalou avec celle du psychanalyste moderne suisse. C’est à ce premier niveau d’analyse, où le Féminin et le Masculin forment une androgynie primordiale, que leurs pensées se rejoignent de manière significative. Les deux penseurs reconnaissant au Féminin en particulier une fonction transcendantale qui s’accomplit à travers une prédisposition à l’établissement d’une relation avec le monde subtil de l’Esprit qui s’enracine soit dans une tradition religieuse donnée, l’islam dans le cas d’Ibn ʿArabī, ou d’une analyse thérapeutique aux allures néanmoins mystiques dans le cas de Jung. L’expérience du Féminin chez nos deux penseurs révèle un rapport différencié quant à la nature et à la forme de l’expérience spirituelle qui est son support d’expression. Leurs conceptions se distinguent aussi sur la question de Dieu (transcendant ou immanent) dont la rencontre est perçue comme la finalité vers laquelle tend la dynamique transformatrice de la personnalité qu’implique ce cheminement initiatique qu’induit la rencontre du Féminin spirituel. Avant de réaliser cette ultime et unificatrice rencontre, il faut d’abord rencontrer et entrer en relation avec ce Féminin comme figure d’une altérité intérieure et extérieure en vue de dépasser le dualisme primaire où les humains sont embourbés tant individuellement que collectivement. C’est sur ce point en particulier que l’étude montre des convergences signifiantes, qui révèlent, d’un côté, le lien transversal qu’il y a entre le soufisme et la psychologie analytique et de l’autre les aspects implicites d‘une psychologie des profondeurs nichant en arrière-plan de la mystique akbarienne. Cette ébauche de dialogue, opérée dans une approche interdisciplinaire, révèle certes des postures épistémologiques très différentes, mais aussi une convergence de vue tacite jusque-là et que la méthode de la phénoménologie herméneutique retenue pour ce travail de maitrise a éclairé d’un nouveau jour. C’est dans cet esprit qu’elle peut ouvrir de nouvelles pistes de réflexion à nos sociétés contemporaines prises avec une crise de sens et de perte de repères identitaires inquiétante. Le sous-bassement de cette crise est une vision dualiste de la femme et de l’homme, et corollairement d’une division binaire entre nature et culture, au lieu de saisir leur nécessaire et paradoxale complémentarité qui doit se réaliser en premier lieu en chaque être humain. / A spiritual principle for Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (1165-1240) and a universal archetype for Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), the Feminine is at the center of this research, where it will be studied from the perspective of the mystical experience of which it is an inescapable mediator. The emphasis will be on the relationship between the Feminine as a principle or archetype and the mystical experience as articulated by our two thinkers in their personal experience as well as in their theoretical elaborations. It consists, to avoid any anachronism, more of a dialogue of ideas than a comparison of the thought of the Andalusian Sufi master with that of the modern Swiss psychoanalyst. It is at this first level of analysis, where the Feminine and the Masculine form a primordial androgyny that their thoughts meet in a significant way. Both thinkers in fact recognize in the Feminine a transcendental function that is fulfilled through a predisposition to establish a relationship with the subtle world of Spirit that is rooted either in a given religious tradition-Islam in the case of Ibn ʿArabī or of a therapeutic analysis with nonetheless mystical overtones in the case of Jung. The experience of the Feminine in our two thinkers reveals a differentiated relationship as to the nature and form of the spiritual experience that is its medium of expression. Their conceptions also differ on the question of God (transcendent or immanent) whose meeting is perceived as the finality towards which tends the transforming dynamics of the personality that implies this initiatory path that induces the meeting of the spiritual Feminine. Before realizing this ultimate and unifying encounter, one must first meet and relate to this Feminine figure of inner and outer otherness in order to overcome the primary dualism in which humans are mired both individually and collectively. It is on this point in particular that the study shows significant convergences, which reveal, on the one hand, the link between Sufism and analytical psychology; and on the other hand, the "deep psychological" aspects of Akbarian mysticism. This draft dialogue, carried out in an interdisciplinary approach, certainly reveals very different epistemological postures, but also a convergence of views implicit until then and which the method of hermeneutic phenomenology chosen for this master's thesis has shed new light on. It is in this spirit that it can open up new avenues of reflection for our contemporary societies caught up in a disturbing crisis of meaning and loss of identity markers. The underpinning of this crisis is a dualistic vision of woman and man, and consequently of a binary division between nature and culture, instead of grasping their necessary and paradoxical complementarity which must be realized first and foremost in each human being.

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This dissertation engages a cultural discussion on time concepts that took place between Arab thinkers and creative writers in the aftermath of the June War of 1967 against Israel and the onset of a period of Arab cultural self-critique. It focuses on a set of intellectual projects and examines their propositions on Islamic notions of time and their place in the modernity of Arab thought. Intellectuals such as the Syrian poet Adonis (b. 1930), the Moroccan philosopher Mohammed ʿAbed al-Jabri (1935-2000), and the Lebanese psychologist Mustapha Hijazi (b. 1937) critiqued the alleged Arab “event-based” and “discontinuous” perception of time which lacks the notion of the temporal as a homogenous impersonal medium. Focusing on the example of Sufism, they argued that time in the Islamic worldview is a heterogenous mix of sacred and profane events in an ontology deprived of change. My dissertation debates these findings in two ways. I first draw on the French philosopher Henri Bergson’s concept of “duration” to problematize these thinkers’ discursive ideal of homogenous time which imposes on the heterogeneity of lived temporality the attributes of space and, as such, produces a mechanistic vision of the world. I then focus on the discourse of Ibn ʿArabi (d. 637/1240) and Mulla Sudra (d. 1049/1640) to demonstrate that Sufism advances a view of time as a flux of change internal to the life of the soul and leading to moral self-perfection. Finally, my dissertation focuses on alternative Arabic engagements with Sufi writings on time through the works of the Moroccan ethicist ʿAbdurrahman Taha (b.1944), the Iraqi Marxist Hadi al-ʿAlawi (1933-1998), and the Egyptian novelist Gamal al-Ghitani (1945-2015). I argue that these thinkers and writers draw on the heterogeneity of time in Sufism to critique the semantic neutrality and abstraction of modern time which depends on capitalism as a life form.

Based on a broad survey of the reception of Firdausī’s Shāhnāma in medieval times, this dissertation argues that Firdausī’s oeuvre was primarily perceived as a book of wisdom and advice for kings and courtly élites. The medieval reception of the Shāhnāma is clearly manifested in the comments of medieval authors about Firdausī and his work, and in their use of the Shāhnāma in the composition of their own works. The production of ikhtiyārāt-i Shāhnāmas (selections from the Shāhnāma) in medieval times and the remarkable attention of the authors of mirrors for princes to Firdausī’s opus are particularly illuminating in this regard. The survey is complemented by a close textual reading of the Ardashīr cycle in the Shāhnāma in comparison with other medieval historical accounts about Ardashīr, in order to illustrate how history in the Shāhnāma is reduced to only a framework for the presentation of ideas and ideals of kingship. Based on ancient Persian beliefs regarding the ideal state of the world, I argue that Ardashīr in the Shāhnāma is represented as a Saviour of the world. Within this context, I offer new interpretations of the symbolic tale of Ardashīr’s fight against a giant worm, and explain why the idea of the union of kingship and religion, a major topic in almost all medieval Persian mirrors for princes, has often been attributed to Ardashīr. Finally, I compare the Ardashīr cycle in the Shāhnāma with nine medieval Persian mirrors for princes to demonstrate that the ethico-political concepts contained in them, as well as the portrayal of Ardashīr, remain more or less the same in all these works. Study of the Shāhnāma as a mirror for princes, as this study shows, not only reveals the meaning of its symbolic tales, but also sheds light on the pre-Islamic roots of some of the ethico-political concepts presented in the medieval Perso-Islamic literature of wisdom and advice for kings and courtiers.

Based on a broad survey of the reception of Firdausī’s Shāhnāma in medieval times, this dissertation argues that Firdausī’s oeuvre was primarily perceived as a book of wisdom and advice for kings and courtly élites. The medieval reception of the Shāhnāma is clearly manifested in the comments of medieval authors about Firdausī and his work, and in their use of the Shāhnāma in the composition of their own works. The production of ikhtiyārāt-i Shāhnāmas (selections from the Shāhnāma) in medieval times and the remarkable attention of the authors of mirrors for princes to Firdausī’s opus are particularly illuminating in this regard. The survey is complemented by a close textual reading of the Ardashīr cycle in the Shāhnāma in comparison with other medieval historical accounts about Ardashīr, in order to illustrate how history in the Shāhnāma is reduced to only a framework for the presentation of ideas and ideals of kingship. Based on ancient Persian beliefs regarding the ideal state of the world, I argue that Ardashīr in the Shāhnāma is represented as a Saviour of the world. Within this context, I offer new interpretations of the symbolic tale of Ardashīr’s fight against a giant worm, and explain why the idea of the union of kingship and religion, a major topic in almost all medieval Persian mirrors for princes, has often been attributed to Ardashīr. Finally, I compare the Ardashīr cycle in the Shāhnāma with nine medieval Persian mirrors for princes to demonstrate that the ethico-political concepts contained in them, as well as the portrayal of Ardashīr, remain more or less the same in all these works. Study of the Shāhnāma as a mirror for princes, as this study shows, not only reveals the meaning of its symbolic tales, but also sheds light on the pre-Islamic roots of some of the ethico-political concepts presented in the medieval Perso-Islamic literature of wisdom and advice for kings and courtiers.