IFAO

This paper examines the universal scope of a peculiar mystical trend, referred to as pietism, vividly seen in Egypt during the 13th-15th centuries and founded by Abraham Maïmonides, the son of the well-known medieval philosopher and physician. The aim of this analysis is to look into and beyond the specificities of this current, after briefly discussing its discovery thanks to the Judeo-Arabic literature left in the Cairo Genizah, its position within the history of Jewish mysticism and its emergence among the Jewish Cairene community at the time of the settlement of Sufi ṭarîqa-s. The specificity of Egyptian pietism is at the crossroads of two religions, Judaism and Islam, and of two languages, Hebrew and Arabic as well as its borrowing from philosophy, esoteric references, cosmology, and trends of thought at the time. The basis of pietism is in Jewish theology and Muslim mysticism, i.e., Sufism : on the one hand, the main Jewish precepts to which those believers remain faithful and on the other hand, Sufi concepts (retained in Arabic) and practices to which they turn to in order to proceed nearer to God. The intermingling of components, far from introducing any kind of antinomy, appears as a way of strengthening the quest for the Divine and as an opportunity to pull mysticism out of one religion and one language, to offer a path to the One for those eager to reach Him.