This year’s International Book Fair in Sarajevo of 2021 was concluded with the reception of awards for best books, in 15 categories, which were handed out at the end of the ceremony. The President of the Jury, Lejla Alimanović, pointed out that the number of awards for this year is a bit larger because the Book Fair was not held during the previous year, due to the corona pandemic. Also, the number of the participants was much higher. More than 100 speakers from the Balkans participated this year at the Fair, Alimanović said.
In the category for best publishing undertaking of the year, the award went to the Science and Research “Ibn Sina” Institute for the book “The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn Al-Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination”, authored by William C. Chittick, through the prism of an astonishing translation by the Academic Rešid Hafizović.
The book “The Sufi Path of Knowledge” is the product of 20 years of hard research effort implemented onto Ibn Arabi’s work, by William C. Chittick, and is one of the most profoundly important works in the scientific opus of this professor at the New York University. The author, through the analysis of Ibn Arabi’s “Meccan Revelations” provided an array of gnostic, Sufi lessons. The impact of this work is equal to that of Jalale-al-deen Homaee about the Mevlana, or to that of Henry Corbin’s work on the sheikh Shihabuddin Suhrawardi. Chittick in his work presents a wide spectrum of Ibn Arabi’s perspectives and arguments about different religious beliefs, which portray Islam as the religion of mercy, opposing the extremist and rough profile of Islamic creed.
“The International Book Fair in Sarajevo, the 32nd in this sequence of events, of 2021, was visited by more than 30 000 people in the last 6 days which is truly an impressive number considering the conditions perpetuated by the corona pandemic”, Amer Kapo, the director of KJKP Centar Skenderija, said at the finishing award ceremony.