Love as the driving force of creation : Sufism in Ahmed Bahjat's "Abraham's Birds" from Animal Stories in the Qur'an

Abstract EN

This paper explores the short story Abraham’s Birds by the Egyptian writer Ahmed Bahjat as a Sufi piece of literature.

The story is part of his collection Animal Stories in the Quran.

The paper does not concern itself with questioning whether Bahjat is a Sufi himself or not; rather, it analyzes the artistic elements of the story: inspiration, way of writing, subject matter, style, language, and imagery in an attempt to prove that it is a piece of Sufi literature.

A very short background about Sufism is given at the beginning.