William Chittick

William Clark Chittick (born June 29, 1943) is an American philosopher, writer, translator, and interpreter of classical Islamic philosophical and mystical texts.

He is best known for his work on Rumi and Ibn 'Arabi, and has written extensively on the school of Ibn 'Arabi, Islamic philosophy, and Islamic cosmology.

He is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University.

Born in Milford, Connecticut on June 29, 1943, Chittick earned his B.A. in history in 1966 from the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.

As part of his undergraduate program, he undertook the study of Islamic history at the American University of Beirut during the 1964–1965 academic year.

During this time, he became familiar with Sufism as he chose to focus on the subject for his junior year independent study.

Following a period of scholarly inquiry into the precepts of Sufism, he attended a public lecture by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who was then the Aga Khan Visiting professor of Islamic studies at the American University of Beirut.

This lecture deepened his interest in Sufism, and, upon his graduation from Wooster, led him to pursue graduate studies at the University of Tehran's Faculty of Letters, where he spent eight years (1966-1974) working towards his doctoral degree in Persian literature.

While pursuing his studies at the University of Tehran, Chittick also served as a research assistant at the Center for the Study of Islamic Science from 1971 to 1972.

He earned his PhD in 1974 under Nasr's supervision.

His PhD dissertation, which was published in 1977 and later reprinted in 1992, focused on Jami's Naqd al-nusus.

This work is a critical commentary on Ibn 'Arabi's Naqsh al-fusus, which is a shortened version of his Fusus al-hikam.

Chittick later taught comparative religion at Aryamehr Technical University and joined the faculty of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy in 1978.

While in Tehran, he met Sachiko Murata, who was also studying there, and they got married.

During his stay in Tehran, Chittick studied under and collaborated with distinguished scholars of Islamic thought such as Jalal al-Din Ashtiyani, Henry Corbin, Toshihiko Izutsu, Badi’ al-Zaman Furuzanfar, Jalal al-Din Humai, Mehdi Mohaghegh, and Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai.

This extended contact with such scholars gave Chittick a unique appreciation and mastery of classical Arabic and Persian, as well as a broad understanding of medieval Islamic philosophical, theological, and mystical texts.

Prior to the revolution in 1979, Chittick returned to the United States with his wife, and served as an associate editor for Encyclopædia Iranica in the early 1980s.

Chittick began working at Stony Brook University in 1983 as an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies.

He is currently Distinguished Professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University.

Chittick has been the recipient of several academic honors throughout his career.

These include the Kenan Rifai Distinguished Professorship at the Institute of Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University, as well as an Honorary Professorship at the School of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Minzu University.

In addition, he has been awarded fellowships from a number of esteemed organizations, such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Harvard Centre for the Study of World Religions, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).

William Chittick is “renowned for his translations and interpretations of classical Islamic philosophy and mystical texts”.

He has been variously called “one of the most important contemporary translators and interpretors of Islamic mystical texts and poetry”, “arguably the leading scholar of Ibn al—Arabi writing in English”, "a well known scholar on Rumi and Sufism”, “one of the leading American scholars of the Sufi mystical tradition”, “a leading Western scholar of Islamic spirituality”, “One of the most prominent scholars of Sufi Islam and of the concept and practice of Ihsan” “a distinguished scholar on Sufism”, “a leading and greatly respected scholar in the field of the classical Muslim intellectual tradition”, and “one of the major scholars of Islamic thought” in the contemporary world. According to Mohammed Rustom, Atif Khalil, and Kazuyo Murata, "Students of Islamic thought are, in one way or another, indebted to Chittick’s writings". Taneli Kukkonen of New York University states that "Over the course of four decades, William Chittick has done more than anyone to elucidate for an Anglophone audience’s benefit the theosophical side of Sufi literature and later Islamic philosophy".

Chittick has published 30 books and numerous articles on Islamic intellectual history, Sufism and Islamic philosophy.