Abstract This article adopts a multi-directional gaze to consider Christian and Sufi texts side-by-side, in a study of Divine maternity across both bodies of literature. In both the Christian and the Sufi texts, maternity is a crucial way of conceiving the Divine, and is a crucial configuration of the relationship between devotee and Divine. The texts are all chronologically close, spanning the 1170s to 1250: the anonymous texts Ancrene Wisse and the Wooing Group ( c. 1230), and the works by the Sufis Muḥyddin Ibn ʿArabī (1165–1240), Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār ( c. 1145–1220), and ʿUmar Ibn al-Fāriḍ (1181–1235).
Ayoush Lazikani (Wed,) studied this question.