Cosmic and Animal Piety in Islam: Everything Glorifies God

Edinburgh University Press, Edimbourg, 2026, 324+xxiii p., ISBN 9781399555609

Examines the concept of praise (tasbīḥ) in Islam, encompassing its human and nonhuman expressions

  • Provides a census and explanation of Qur’anic verses on cosmic piety
  • Explores case studies on dogs and cats based in hadith literature and Muslim culture
  • Reveals the bond between zoology and theology in Islam
  • Engages with hermeneutic tools from Hebraic and Syriac literature

‘Do you not realise [Prophet] that who is in the heavens and who is on earth prostrate before God: the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, the beasts and many human beings.’ (Q 22:18)

This book offers an original perspective on animal studies, Islam and the extensions of religion, engaging with ideas and narratives in which nonhuman creatures (both animate and inanimate) are portrayed as the ideal worshippers of God. Moreover, it argues that this piety of animals and the wider worshipping cosmos not only represents an ideal form of worship, but also serves as a model for more fallible human piety.

Sommaire

Introduction

Part I: Cosmic Worship
1. Cosmic Worship in the Qur’an: The Genealogy of Some Verses and the Foundation of its Rationale (Guillaume de Vaulx d’Arcy)
2. When the Cosmos Worships God: What Grammar Tells Us about Qur’anic Other-Than-Human Persons (Melanie Hanitsch)
3. The Testament of Adam: The Syriac Origins of a Hadith on the Prayers of Creatures (Nicolas Payen)
4. Creatures’ Sensitivity and Animal Piety in the Hadith Literature (Imran Khan)
5. The Natural World as a Medium of Otherworldly Contemplation and Animals as Figures of Piety in Ibn Barraǧān of Seville (d. 536/1141) (Florence Ollivry)
6. Animal Piety, Angelic Piety and Human Impiety (Pierre Lory)

Part II: Animal Worship
7. Animals in the Qur’an: Symbols, Representations and Models of Piety (Geneviève Gobillot)
8. Animal Devotion in Medieval Arabic Zoography. A Reading of al-Ǧāḥiẓ’s Book of Animals (Nicolas Payen)
9. Can Animals be Called Muslims? Archaeology of the Statement: ‘We Animals,Are Monotheists, Muslims and Believers’ (Epistles of the Brethren in Purity) (Guillaume de Vaulx d’Arcy)
10. The Role of Animals and Saints in the Tawba of the Sleeping Man from the Kitāb al-Tawwābīn of Ibn Qudāma al-Maqdisī (Hala Abdel Meguid)
11. Animals my Masters, according to Ibn ʿArabī (Denis Gril)
12. On Cats and Piety. Presentation and Translation of al-Qārī’s Risālat al-Birra fī ḥubb al-hirra (Jens Ole Schmitt)
13. Living the Life of a Dog. Cynicism in the Sufi Milieu (Walid Ghali)
Conclusion