“God Loves Me”: The Theological Content and Context of Early Pious and Sufi Women’s Sayings on Love1

Abstract

Sufi sayings on divine love are expressed as deeply personal revelations of intimate experiences with the object of their attachment. However, no matter how personal an expression of such intimacy may be, when it is communicated, the lover’s expression is constrained by the language and culture of her or his day. Maria Dakake has found that [pious and] Sufi women from the seventh to the thirteenth century shared a common language of domesticity in describing their intimacy with God.