Awālim al-Mithāl

Awālim al-Mithāl / عوالم المثال (Worlds of the Imaginal) is a multi-part compositional cycle tracing the intertwined musical, linguistic, literary, and philosophical lineages of the Persian, Arabic, and Turkic worlds. The work explores how imagination functions as a mode of cultural transmission: how melodic systems, poetic forms, and metaphysical ideas travel, transform, and overlap across traditions.

Each movement engages with the writings of Rūmī, Ibn ʿArabī, and Yūnus Emre alongside Henry Corbin’s philosophy of the imaginal realm, weaving together modal materials from the dastgāh, maqām, and makam systems to articulate a shared musical grammar of orientation and transcendence.

The cycle thus operates at once as research, composition, and cartography, mapping the meeting points of sound, word, and world.