# Christian Blake Pye ![engraved silver candlestick ](/sites/g/files/omnuum12196/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2026-07/EC8A5211.jpg?itok=_u7-TaWU) email Religious Studies B.A. Armstrong State University M.A., Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin Christian Blake Pye (PhD, Religious Studies, University of Texas at Austin) studies how Islamic Neoplatonism provided a framework for both universal empire and policies of religious tolerance. His forthcoming monograph T*he Caliphate of Tahqiq: Ibn ‘Arabi, Islamic Empires, and the Problem of Religious Difference* gives the history of how the Sufi philosopher Ibn ‘Arabi’s (d. 1240) epistemology of *tahqiq* or “realization” disrupted scriptural authority, helped give rise to Islamic sacred kingship, and prepared the way for the policy of “Total Peace” between religions in the Mughal Empire (1526-1857) of South Asia. His work on *tahqiq*’s role in the Mughals’ official 1587 Persian translation of the *Mahabharata* has been published in the journal Modern Asian Studies. Forthcoming articles show how advocates of *tahqiq* in the eastern Islamic world promoted the veneration of celestial bodies as elite paths to sacred authority and divinized the office of caliphate. --- Attachments- [ picture\_as\_pdf PyeCVJul2026.pdf ](/sites/g/files/omnuum12196/files/2026-07/PyeCVJul2026.pdf) - [ picture\_as\_pdf Pye\_\_\_Sufi\_Method\_behind\_the\_Mughal\_Peace\_with\_All.pdf ](/sites/g/files/omnuum12196/files/2026-07/Pye___Sufi_Method_behind_the_Mughal_Peace_with_All.pdf) --- - ## By Term [2026-29](/term/2026-29)