Author: Nussi̇pkhanov, Timur

Annotation: This study examines the relationship between bodily desire (ten kumarı) and spiritual desire (can kumarı), as set out by Abay Kunanbayev in the Seventh Word of his Book of Words (Kara Sözler), from the perspective of theological anthropology. The central question of the article is how Abay grounds the human being not merely as a biological and social entity, but as a subject who is oriented toward knowledge, bears moral responsibility and attains perfection through faith. The research employs qualitative content analysis and comparative textual reading; the Seventh Word in particular, together with the Twelfth, Thirteenth, Seventeenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Eighth and Thirty-Eighth Words, is evaluated alongside Abay’s poetry, Qur’anic verses and hadith. The relationship between bodily and spiritual desire is further explained with reference to the stages of the nafs—al-nafs al-ammāra, al-nafs al-lawwāma and al-nafs al-muṭmaʾinna—and a comparison is drawn with the conceptions of soul, body and nafs in Ibn Sīnā, al-Ghazālī and Rūmī. The theological framework of the study is constructed with due regard to the Hanafi-Maturidi heritage of the Kazakh Muslim milieu in which Abay lived, while particular care is taken to note that there is no direct historical evidence that Abay was a systematic representative of any specific school of kalām or Sufism. The article argues that Abay’s originality lies in his treatment of the human being’s innate desire to know within the integrity of faith, reason, heart and ethics; in his subordination of bodily desire to a spiritual end rather than its negation; and in his construal of “becoming human” as a continuous process of moral and cognitive perfection.

Keywords: Abay Kunanbayev, Seventh Word, Book of Words, soul–body relationship, nafs, Maturidism, faith, desire for knowledge, theological anthropology.

Pages in journal: 234 - 246