Sufi Institutions (Handbook of Oriental Studies: Section 1; The Near and Middle East) 9004389075, 9789004389076

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Sufi Institutions

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Handbook of Oriental Studies Handbuch der Orientalistik section one

The Near and Middle East Edited by Maribel Fierro (Madrid) M. Şukru Hanioğlu (Princeton) Renata Holod (University of Pennsylvania) Kees Versteegh (Nijmegen)

Handbook of Sufi Studies VOLUME 1 Editor in Chief Alexander Knysh (University of Michigan and St. Petersburg State University) Editors Marcia K. Hermansen (Loyola University Chicago) Christian Lange (Utrecht University) Bilal Orfali (American University of Beirut) Alexandre Papas (CNRS, Paris) Founding Editor Bernd Radtke

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/hsuf

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Sufi Institutions Edited by

Alexandre Papas

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Papas, Alexandre, editor. Title: Sufi institutions / edited by Alexandre Papas. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2021. | Series: Handbook of Sufi studies ; vol. 1 |  Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020034591 (print) | LCCN 2020034592 (ebook) |  ISBN 9789004389076 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004392601 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Sufism—History. | Sufism—Social aspects. |  Sufism—Economic aspects. | Public administration—Islamic countries. Classification: LCC BP189.2 .S78 2020 (print) | LCC BP189.2 (ebook) |  DDC 297.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034591 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034592

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0169-9423 ISBN 978-90-04-38907-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-39260-1 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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Contents Acknowledgments ix List of Figures x Abbreviations xii

Introduction: What Is a Ṣūfī Institution? 1 Alexandre Papas

Part 1 The Economy of Sufism 1

Economies of Sufism 27 Adam Sabra

2

Endowments for Ṣūfīs and Their Institutions 58 Nathan Hofer

3

Donations to Ṣūfīs and Ṣūfī Institutions 81 Hussain Ahmad Khan

4 Sufism, Futuwwa, and Professional Guilds 89 Mehran Afshari

Part 2 Ṣūfī Places and Dwellings 5

Ṣūfī Places and Dwellings 105 Daphna Ephrat and Paulo G. Pinto

6

Ṣūfī Shrines 145 Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen

7

Ṣūfī Lodges 157 Peyvand Firouzeh

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Contents

Ṣūfī Outposts (ribāṭs) 174 Nathan Hofer

Part 3 The Social Role of Ṣūfīs 9

The Social Role of Ṣūfīs 187 Rachida Chih

10

Ṣūfī Altruism 218 Richard McGregor

11

Sufism, Urbanisation, and Sociability in Cities 227 Nathalie Clayer

12

Ṣūfīs in Rural Environments 239 Ahmet Yaşar Ocak

Part 4 Sufism and Worldly Powers 13

Sufism and Worldly Powers 255 Alexandre Papas

14

Ṣūfī Terminology of Power 292 Luca Patrizi

15

Ṣūfīs as Court Advisors 303 Neguin Yavari

16

Sufism, the Army, and Holy War 315 David Cook

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Contents

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vii

Ṣūfī Sultanates and Imamates 322 Knut S. Vikør

Part 5 The Organisation of Mysticism 18

The Organisation of Mysticism 335 Mark Sedgwick

19

The First Communities 362 Jean-Jacques Thibon

20 Ṣūfī Lineages and Families 374 Ismail Fajrie Alatas 21

Established Ṣūfī Orders 385 Semih Ceyhan

22

Cyber Sufism 405 Stéphane A. Dudoignon Index 415

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Acknowledgments The editor of this handbook would like to thank all contributors for their efforts and patience. I am grateful to several people who have worked with me throughout the editorial process: Alexander Knysh, Valerie Joy Turner, Abdurraouf Oueslati, and Nienke Brienen-Moolenaar.

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Figures 5.1 5.2 5.3

5.4

7.1 7.2

7.3 7.4 7.5

7.6

7.7 7.8

9.1 9.2 12.1

Khānqāh al-Ṣalāḥiyya in Jerusalem, views of the portal elevation. Photo by Daphna Ephrat 109 Khānqāh al-Ṣalāḥiyya in Jerusalem, the mosque minaret. Photo by Daphna Ephrat 110 Khānqāh al-Farāfra in Aleppo, muqarnas hood. Yasser Tabbaa Archive, courtesy of Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT) 111 Khānqāh al-Farāfra in Aleppo, detail of upper part of courtyard with citadel in background. Yasser Tabbaa Archive, courtesy of Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT) 112 View of the open-air burial and entrance portal from the courtyard of Turbat-i Shaykh Aḥmad Jām. Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh 160 View of tomb enclosures added on the site of Shāh Khalīlullāh’s mausoleum in Bidar; both as an independent structure, and attached to the main ninth-/ fifteenth-century mausoleum (right). Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh 163 View of the raised platforms at the shrine complex of Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband at Bukhara. Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh 164 View of open-air grave in front of the entrance īvān at the mausoleum of Zayn al-Dīn Abū Bakr Tāybādī. Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh 164 Elevated view of the astāna of Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī in Māhān developed around the ninth-/fifteenth-century dome chamber from the tenth/ sixteenth through twentieth centuries. Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh 166 View of the Ṣūfī cells, tomb, and mosque at the tekke of Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, and the Selīmīye mosque (right) in Konya. Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh 167 View of the tomb of Nizām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (centre) and the mosque (on the left) at his shrine complex in Delhi. Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh 169 View of Salīm Chishtī’s tomb within the great mosque of Fatehpur Sikri (located in the southern part of the palace complex). Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh 169 Servants at the zāwiya of Shaykh Raḍwān during the saint’s mawlid (Upper Egypt). Photo by Rachida Chih 207 Servants at the soup kitchen of the zāwiya of Shaykh Raḍwān during the saint’s mawlid (Upper Egypt). Photo by Rachida Chih 207 Shrine of Dede Garkın in Dedeköy near Mardin (eastern Anatolia). Photo by Ahmet Yaşar Ocak 244

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xi

Figures 12.2

Exterior of Bābā Ilyās shrine near Amasya (Black Sea Region). Photo by Ahmet Yaşar Ocak 244 12.3 Interior of Bābā Ilyās shrine near Amasya (Black Sea Region). Photo by Ahmet Yaşar Ocak 245 14.1 ʿAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī sitting upon a throne, Mughal, eighteenth century. Courtesy of Victor & Albert Museum, South & South East Asia Collection 298 14.2 Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī holding a globe, detail of miniature by Bichitr from Minto Album, c. 1610–18, India. Courtesy of Chester Beatty Library 299 15.1 Youth and Dervish, Isfahan, second quarter of the seventeenth century. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum, Rogers Fund, 1911 305 15.2 Akbar and Jahangir in apotheosis (folio from the St. Petersburg Album), attributed to Bichitr, about 1640. Private Collection 310 20.1 The silsila of the Ṭarīqa ʿAlawiyya belonging to the Ḥaḍramī scholar Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAṭṭās (d. 1929) of Pekalongan (Central Java, Indonesia). Photo by Ismail Fajrie Alatas 377

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Abbreviations Periodicals AI AIUON AKM AMEL AO AO Hung. ArO AS ASJ ASP ASQ BASOR BEA BEFEO BEO BIE BIFAO BKI BMGS BO BrisMES BSOAS BZ CAJ DOP EW IBLA IC IJHAS IHQ IJMES ILS IOS IQ JA

Annales Islamologiques Annali dell’ Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures Acta Orientalia Acta Orientalia (Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae) Archiv Orientální Asiatische Studien Arab Studies Journal Arabic Sciences and Philosophy Arab Studies Quarterly Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Bulletin des Études Arabes Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient Bulletin d’Études Orientales de l’Institut Français de Damas Bulletin de l’Institut d’Égypte Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies Bibliotheca Orientalis British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Byzantinische Zeitschrift Central Asiatic Journal Dumbarton Oaks Papers East and West Revue de l’Institut des Belles Lettres Arabes, Tunis Islamic Culture International Journal of African Historical Studies Indian Historical Quarterly International Journal of Middle East Studies Islamic Law and Society Israel Oriental Studies The Islamic Quarterly Journal Asiatique

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xiii

Abbreviations JAIS JAL JAOS JARCE JAS JESHO JIS JMBRAS JNES JOS JQR JRAS JSAI JSEAH JSS MEA MEJ MEL MES MFOB MIDEO MME MMIA MO MOG MSR MW OC OLZ OM QSA REI REJ REMMM RHR RIMA RMM RO ROC RSO

Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies Journal of Arabic Literature Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt Journal of Asian Studies Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Journal of Islamic Studies Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Journal of Near Eastern Studies Journal of Ottoman Studies Jewish Quarterly Review Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam Journal of Southeast Asian History Journal of Sufi Studies Middle Eastern Affairs Middle East Journal Middle Eastern Literatures Middle East Studies Mélanges de la Faculté Orientale de l’Université St. Joseph de Beyrouth Mélanges de l’Institut Dominicain d’Études Orientales du Caire Manuscripts of the Middle East Majallat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmi al-ʿArabi, Damascus Le Monde Oriental Mitteilungen zur Osmanischen Geschichte Mamluk Studies Review The Muslim World Oriens Christianus Orientalistische Literaturzeitung Oriente Moderno Quaderni di Studi Arabi Revue des Études Islamiques Revue des Études Juives Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée Revue de l’Histoire des Religions Revue de l’Institut des Manuscrits Arabes Revue du Monde Musulman Rocznik Orientalistyczny Revue de l’Orient Chrétien Rivista degli Studi Orientali

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xiv SI SIk SIr TBG VKI WI WO WZKM ZAL ZDMG ZGAIW ZS

Abbreviations Studia Islamica (France) Studia Islamika (Indonesia) Studia Iranica Tijdschrift van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land en Volkenkunde Die Welt des Islams Welt des Orients Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften Zeitschrift für Semitistik

Other ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt BGA Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum BNF Bibliothèque nationale de France CERMOC Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain CHAL Cambridge History of Arabic Literature CHE Cambridge History of Egypt CHIn Cambridge History of India CHIr Cambridge History of Iran Dozy R. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, Leiden 1881 (repr. Leiden and Paris 1927) EAL Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature EI 1 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st ed., Leiden 1913–38 2 EI Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., Leiden 1954–2004 EI 3 Encyclopaedia of Islam Three, Leiden 2007– EIr Encyclopaedia Iranica EJ 1 Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1st ed., Jerusalem; [New York 1971–1992] EQ Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān ERE Encyclopaedia of Religions and Ethics GAL C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, 2nd ed., Leiden 1943–49

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xv

Abbreviations GALS

C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, Supplementbände I-III, Leiden 1937–42 GAP Grundriss der Arabischen Philologie, Wiesbaden 1982GAS F. Sezgin, Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums, Leiden 1967GMS Gibb Memorial Series GOW F. Babinger, Die Geschichtsschreiber der Osmanen und ihre Werke, Leipzig 1927 HO Handbuch der Orientalistik IA Islâm Ansiklopedisi IFAO Institut Français d’Archeologie Orientale JE Jewish Encyclopaedia Lane E. W. Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon RCEA Répertoire Chronologique d’Épigraphie Arabe TAVO Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients TDVİA Türkiye Diyanet Vakfi Islâm Ansiklopedisi UEAI Union européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants van Ess, TG J. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft WKAS Wörterbuch der Klassischen Arabischen Sprache, Wiesbaden 1957-

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Introduction

What Is a Ṣūfī Institution? Alexandre Papas 1

A Dichotomy in Ṣūfī Studies

The very existence of the present handbook series—in addition to other recent publications, such as the Journal of Sufi Studies (published from 2012) and ongoing large collaborative projects focusing on Islamic mysticism—is an eloquent testimony to the extraordinary growth of Ṣūfī studies, which has tended to become an independent discipline. This specificity is true of both eastern and western scholarship on Islam. With departments of Ṣūfī studies (tasavvuf anabilim dalı) in most university divinity schools (ilahiyat fakültesi), a country such as Turkey can boast that, since the 2000s, it has been one of the world’s leading producers of academic research on Sufism (Şimşek). This global intellectual expansion has resulted in, among other outcomes that should be explored (for example, the works of contemporary Ṣūfī intellectuals), the publication of important surveys, both individual or collective, discussing Sufism as a whole. The present handbook does not purport to do the same, but offers a modest contribution to the discussions opened by these seminal surveys. Without trying to be exhaustive (many references can be found in Knysh, Historiography, and Zarcone, Işın, and Buehler (eds.), v–xxi), I review some of these survey works to understand how Sufism has been constructed conceptually. Our aim is not to decide if this conceptual construction was legitimate or not—there is no science without the construction of subjects—but to examine how authors have established frameworks, assembled elements, and built concepts. We do not feel the need to deconstruct the Orientalist conception of Sufism. The Western discovery of Sufism was a more complicated process than the somewhat facile scenario suggested by the distortions of European Orientalism. Without detailing the history of this discovery (again see Knysh, Historiography, 212–7), suffice it to identify various actors—not just Orientalists (a term which, strictly speaking, should be reserved for philologists rather than scholars of Islam)—who explored the study of Sufism well before the colonial period. For instance, among the first trailblazers were two Frenchmen, the famous Huguenot merchant Jean Chardin (1643–1713) who, during his stay in Ṣafavid Persia in 1711 provided the first informed account about soufys (Chardin, 5:152–63), and later, in 1758, the man of letters

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004392601_002

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François-Marie de Marsy (1714–63) was one of the first European authors to use and define the word soufisme (Marsy, 6:437–40). We shall not dwell on the issue of deconstructing the Orientalist conception of Sufism—but, in passing, it is useful to note that “deconstruction” (a philological and philosophical term coined by Jacques Derrida, often misused in the social sciences) does not consist of deconstructing concepts, rather it concerns the language (especially the writing style) of conceptualisation; that is, more precisely, those aspects of the wording of concepts that depend on the diachronic determinisms of writers. If we limit our review to books in English and French, we find two pioneering titles. The mystics of Islam published in 1914 by the British Orientalist Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (1868–1945) is a study of “the religious philosophy of Islam” that aims to set forth the mystics’ “central doctrine” (Nicholson, 1). After providing a summary of the historical development of Sufism from early ascetics to later mystics, and noting the purported external influences (Christianity, Neoplatonism, gnosticism, and Buddhism) on it, Nicholson focuses on the notions of divine light, gnostic knowledge, and love of God, which all rest on a “pantheistic faith” (Nicholson, 4–20). Nicholson, who also translated Rūmī’s Mathnawī, gave up studying the various Ṣūfī paths (ṭarīqa, pl. ṭuruq) derived from this doctrine, for they “are in number as the souls of men” (Nicholson, 27). Two French colonial administrators in Algeria named Octave Depont (1862–?) and Xavier Coppolani (1866–1905) took a different approach to Sufism. They explored the world of Ṣūfī orders in their book Les confréries religieuses musulmanes on a larger scale than the works of Louis Rinn (1838– 1905) in his Marabouts et khouan and Alfred Le Chatelier (1855–1929) in his Les confréries musulmanes du Hedjaz, which were published ten years before (Depont and Coppolani, x–xvi). Printed in 1897 to aid in colonial administration and state control, the thick volume addressed, for the most part, North African Ṣūfī brotherhoods, which were perceived as a threat to France’s “civilising mission.” After a brief introduction to doctrinal principles of Sufism, the authors detail the organisation of Ṣūfī orders (ch. 3), their numbers (ch. 4), their financial system (ch. 5), and their political roles (ch. 6); the second part of the book surveys several major Ṣūfī orders on the basis of firsthand documents and fieldwork notes. Although outdated, the books of Nicholson and Depont-Coppolani launched the academic study of Sufism in two directions, which did not coincide in later phases of the history of the field. In short, one direction is oriented toward the doctrines of Islamic mysticism, while the other is concerned with its sociopolitical manifestations. As evidence of this “divorce,” we consider the next pair of monographs devoted to Sufism, the first of which was written by Nicholson’s student Arthur John Arberry (1905–69). In Sufism: An account of

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What Is a Ṣūfī Institution ?

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the mystics of Islam, published in 1950, Arberry, who also translated the Qurʾān into English, abandoned his mentor’s interest in non-Muslim influences and presented Sufism “as if it were an isolated manifestation, viewing the movement from within as an aspect of Islam, as though these other factors which certainly determined its growth did not exist” (Arberry, 11). Arberry built his definition of Sufism on four pillars (to use his own words), i.e., the Qurʾān as the supreme authority for the guidance of mystics, ḥadīth (prophetic tradition) as their second source of intellectual enlightenment, the saints (awliyāʾ) as models of pious behaviour and worldly interactions, and spiritual experiences (aḥwāl and maqāmāt) specific to Ṣūfīs (Arberry, 13–4). One short chapter (ch. 8) is devoted to Ṣūfī orders, while the last chapter deplores the decay of spirituality that resulted from the Ṣūfī orders that rule over “credulous masses” and the “charlatanry” of the cult of saints. Here Arberry explicitly repeats the arguments of Muslim reformists, such as Tawfīq al-Ṭawīl, an Egyptian reformist historian of Sufism (Arberry, 119–20). By contrast, Arberry’s contemporary, John Spencer Trimingham (1904–87), trained as both a social scientist and a Protestant missionary, published an entire book on The Sufi orders in Islam (in 1971). After mentioning, somewhat fleetingly, his debt to Rinn and Le Chatelier, Trimingham (who was originally a specialist on Islam in Africa) reconsiders the historical development of the brotherhoods according to three stages, which are chronological as well as social in nature: the khānaqāh (lodge) stage, a golden age during which elite circles of master and disciples lived a rigorous but informal spiritual life; the ṭarīqa stage, when initiatory schools developed around a corpus of teachings and a bourgeois mysticism conformed to social and legal standards; and lastly the ṭāʾifa (order) stage, which saw Sufism become a popular and crowded movement that fragmented into multiple lineages and the cult of saints dominated (Trimingham, preface, 102–3). Citing Muslim reformists, albeit critically, he, too, bemoans the decline of Sufism, from the epitome of high spirituality to vulgar mysticism, and considers this a result of the ascendancy of hereditary Ṣūfī orders and the ubiquitous spread of saint veneration (Trimingham, 70–1, 246–8). In both works, the decline thesis was less due, as is often claimed, to the Protestant background of its promoters, who might be inclined to juxtapose the personal experience of mystics to the institutionalisation of mysticism, than to the replication of the views of Muslim reformism concerning Sufism (views that were partly influenced by Western modernism and elitism). Simply put, early Sufism or spirituality was not in question, the problem was in the Ṣūfī orders. Whatever role Muslim reformism played in the shaping of this conception, there is, now, a sharp dichotomy in Ṣūfī studies, in the two directions

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we have pointed out. In other words, scholars of Islam agreed that there was an irreconcilable difference between Ṣūfī doctrine and Ṣūfī orders. Still, in its content, Trimingham’s book appears to be an exception to academic works on Islamic mysticism during that period. Indeed, the bulk of studies focus on Sufism in its trans-historical form, that is, metaphysical doctrine, but also its spiritual techniques and poetic expressions. This was perhaps, again, a result of the conscious or unconscious impact of Muslim reformist ideas on Western scholarship, as if scholars shied away from social and political history in order to discuss the “inner life of Islam” (the spiritual and intimate experience of religion) to use Annemarie Schimmel’s (1922–2003) expression, or even a hiérohistoire (a prophetic and esoteric history of the soul) to invoke a term used by Henry Corbin (1903–78) who was more interested in Islamic philosophy and Shīʿī gnosis than in Sufism in the strict sense. As Mark Sedgwick showed, a movement called Traditionalism, inspired by the French esoterist and Ṣūfī René Guénon (1886–1951), attracted some early twentieth-century European intellectuals and, after the 1960s, spread among limited circles in the Islamic world, Russia, and the United States (Sedgwick). Without going into the details of this multifaceted movement, we must note its perennialist “philosophy” (that is, its idea that all religions originated in a primordial religion) and declinist vision of the modern world, which only a small elite was supposedly able to understand. These elements led several eminent academics to construct (again, this is not a value judgment) a concept of Islamic mysticism detached from its everyday worldly expressions and from the contingences of time, particularly those of the early modern and modern periods. Traditionalists like Seyyed Hossein Nasr and their fellow-travellers such as Schimmel, who was close to Nasr (Hicks, 158), produced scholarly introductions to Sufism in which readers could discover an aesthetic spiritual tradition based on an eternal essence. In his Sufi essays (published in 1972), Nasr was not indifferent to Islamic history and did not pretend to cover all aspects of Sufism. Nevertheless, in the context of the “disintegration of Western cultural values and disenchantment with the experiences of modernism,” he claimed to expose “the real nature of a spiritual way” as opposed to the distortions imposed by certain Orientalists, Westernized Muslims, and exoteric-minded Muslims (Nasr, 11–3). In line with Traditionalist authors (René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, Martin Lings, etc.) whom he considered genuine teachers of authentic Sufism, Nasr wrote his book for Western audiences and Western-educated Muslims (Nasr, introduction). Much less ethereal in writing style and content, Schimmel’s famous Mystical dimensions of Islam (published in 1975), starts with a chapter entitled “What is Sufism?” After considering mysticism in general and the history of European scholarship on Sufism in particular (drawn partly

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from Arberry’s An introduction to the history of Ṣūfism, 1942), Schimmel summarised her answer as follows: “Sufism meant, in the formative period, mainly an interiorisation of Islam, a personal experience of the central mystery of Islam, that of tauḥīd, ‘to declare that God is One.’ The Sufis always remained inside the fold, and their mystical attitude was not limited by their adherence to any of the legal or theological schools” (Schimmel, 17). Throughout this erudite book, which includes descriptions of mediaeval Ṣūfī orders, she privileges a literary conception of Sufism and portrays Muslim mystics as engaged in a pure and loving quest for God, far from “spiritless legalism,” on the one hand, and “saint worship and pirism [the veneration of pīr, the spiritual leader],” on the other (Schimmel, 22, 32, 238, 405–6; see also Bernd Radtke’s critical remarks in Radtke, 1–25). In the works of Nasr and Schimmel, we find little discussion about the social and political realities Ṣūfīs faced throughout their history. Yet, both books provide a stimulating emphasis, though somewhat exaggerated account of the difference between Arab and Persian Sufism. Therefore, it is not surprising that Nasr and Schimmel both contributed to the monumental three-volume The heritage of Sufism about Persian Islamic mysticism (edited in the 1990s by the late Leonard Lewisohn (1953–2018)). Although he himself was influenced by Traditionalists and the Niʿmatullāhī Ṣūfī order that patronised the project and the publication, Lewisohn abandoned the decline thesis and opened his project to a great variety of specialists in order to provide multiple approaches. Covering an entire millennium (750–1750) and a large area (Iran, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, and Anatolia, and China, marginally), the collection of almost seventy chapters opened new avenues of research, mainly, though not exclusively, into the intellectual history of Sufism, thanks to many detailed studies focusing on original and heretofore unexplored works of various types, e.g., mystical, philosophical, poetic, hagiographic, exegetic, and practical. Thus The heritage of Sufism reintegrated Muslim mystics into their historical contexts. Yet, the book could not but present a fragmented image of Sufism, one that necessarily juxtaposed rather than combined the two main approaches (doctrinal on one side, sociopolitical on the other) that we have identified. In any case, the collection represented an intellectual laboratory whose experiments were also conducted simultaneously in Istanbul and Paris, as we will see. Before detailing the academic studies of Sufism in the 1990s, it seems appropriate to mention two introductory works in French published in the 1960s by scholars who did not adhere to Traditionalism and who had alternative approaches. These approaches are, perhaps retrospectively, more relevant today than, for instance, Louis Massignon’s (1883–1962) approach. And Massignon, in any case, did not write a monograph on Sufism per se. The first of these

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works, simply entitled Mystique musulmane, was authored by Georges Chehata Anawati (1905–94) and Louis Gardet (1904–86). Anawati was an Egyptian Dominican and Gardet a Thomist who belonged to a long and ongoing tradition of Catholic scholarship on Islam, a tradition that, over time, renounced its proselytising mission and promoted Muslim-Christian dialogue (Avon). After a sketchy and declinist historical overview, the book primarily focuses on mystical experiences, spiritual techniques, and specific practices, such as dhikr (the repetition of God’s name). In addition to this special interest in the practical aspects of Sufism, the authors, who were well-versed in Christian methods of prayer, but also aware of Brahmanic traditions, thanks to the Christian Indologist Olivier Lacombe (1904–2001), preferred a comparative approach (Anawati and Gardet, 13–5, 235–56). Our second reference is Marijan Molé’s (1924–63) Les mystiques musulmans, published posthumously in 1965. Molé, a Slovene Iranologist based in France (Khismatulin and Azarnouche), submitted a short but suggestive essay on Muslim mystics, which follows a chronological order, the last period (from the seventh/thirteenth to eleventh/seventeenth century) was interestingly titled “la maturité” (Molé, ch. 4). Here again, we find discussions of Ṣūfī practices, particularly on samāʿ (spiritual concert) (Molé, 18, 34, 52, 97, 111–3), in addition to a reappraisal of the problem of what the author calls “the prehistory” of Sufism (Molé, ch. 1). Despite their emphasis on practical Sufism, these three authors ignored the social, economic, and political activities of Ṣūfīs, thus endorsing the dichotomy I suggest exists in Ṣūfī studies. In the 1990s, based on their field experience in various Muslim countries from the 1980s onwards (experiences that convinced them of the centrality and the vitality of Ṣūfī orders), a group of French researchers proposed to expand on the work of Trimingham and so began to organise regular meetings in Paris and Istanbul. They invited foreign academic authorities (e.g., Hamid Algar, Frederick De Jong, and Klaus Kreiser), and published the proceedings on a regular basis, often in the form of thick collective monographs devoted to a single Ṣūfī brotherhood (e.g., the Naqshbandiyya, the Melāmiyye, the Qādiriyya, etc.). Under the leadership of Nathalie Clayer, Marc Gaborieau, Alexandre Popovic (1931–2014), Gilles Veinstein (1945–2013), and Thierry Zarcone, the study of orders (ṭuruq) progressed with a clear research agenda: to explore the social world of Sufism, lineage by lineage. In addition to these monographs, the group published a first opus Les ordres mystiques dans l’islam (in 1986) and, ten years later, a volume for the general public entitled Les voies d’Allah—the first book of this type ever published in a

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Western language (Popovic and Veinstein (eds.), Les ordres; Popovic and Veinstein (eds.), Les voies). These works are striking for their almost exclusive emphasis on what we call the non-doctrinal dimensions of Sufism. Probably in response to the preponderance of religious studies (sciences religieuses) on mysticism in the French academy, great attention was paid to Ṣūfī forms of organisation, the social impact of Ṣūfī groups, their political activities, their cultural achievements, and their complex historical developments. At the disciplinary level, history and anthropology dominated over islamologie as a religious science. The divorce between the two sub-fields, which can be summarised as, respectively, taṣawwuf studies and ṭarīqa studies, seemed complete. During this period of intensive academic production on Islamic mysticism, a new generation of scholars (born in the 1940s and 1950s) emerged, especially in the United States. Once again, we limit ourselves to essays centred on Sufism. Two prominent scholars who are close to the Traditionalist “school” have published innovative handbooks. William Chittick, a recognised authority in the study of the great Andalusian Ṣūfī Ibn al-ʿArabī, wrote Sufism: A beginner’s guide, “to find a middle way between academic obscurity and enthusiast advocacy,” and “to show how basic teachings appear in various guises in diverse circumstances” (Chittick, vii–viii). Chittick reincorporates the contributions of Ṣūfīs into the general system of Islamic thought. Besides jurists ( fuqahāʾ) and theologians (mutakallimūn), the author methodically re-examines the main topics of Sufism (struggle against the ego, dhikr, samāʿ, mystical experiences, love for God, the names of God, and so forth) according to the three scriptural dimensions outlined in the wellknown ḥadīth, i.e., submission (islām), faith (īmān), and excellence (iḥsān). Ṣūfīs were those who subordinated islām and imān to iḥsān, the highest goal. Overall, this is a brilliant and unique reconstruction of doctrinal Sufism, in both its diversity and unity; it also includes a sub-study on Aḥmad Samʿānī (d. 534/1140), an important though little-known Ṣūfī from Marv (Chittick, 142–77). However, historians of Sufism might not be at ease with bold generalisations such as “being a Sufi certainly has nothing to do with the Sunni/Shi’ite split, nor with the fact that all Muslims are affiliated with one or another of the schools of jurisprudence … It has nothing to do with social class, although some Sufi organizations may be more or less class specific. There is no necessary correlation with family …” (Chittick, 23). This is certainly true in principle but not as much in practice. Likewise, anthropologists would be reluctant to consider figures such as Nāẓim al-Qubruṣī (1922–2014), Javād Nūrbakhsh (1926–2008) and others as representatives of Sufism in the modern Muslim

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world (Chittick, 38). These masters were important, but they existed in addition to many other Ṣūfī shaykhs who were unknown in the West but influential in Turkey, Iran, and beyond. The second handbook noted above is not American but French. Eric Geoffroy published an Introduction au soufisme in 2003. An expert on the Shādhiliyya Ṣūfī path, among other areas, Geoffroy carefully reconnects Sufism to Islam, but is more interested than Chittick (in his handbook, not in general) in the historical contexts in which Muslim mystics lived. Convinced that “the inward-directed approach of Sufism is not incompatible with a critical approach” (Geoffroy [trans. Gaetani], xvii), Geoffroy offers an excellent working instrument by which to understand Sufism from within and in all its facets. Systematically mentioning the scriptural references to Ṣūfī notions, Geoffroy first discusses key issues (Sufism and Shīʿīsm; the role of the feminine; Sufism, quietism, and popular religion; and above all, Sufism and Islam). Then, in chapter 3, he presents a precise historical overview of Sufism, alternating facts, intellectual biographies of Ṣūfī masters, and developments on the main trends in mystical Islam. Practical aspects are described at length in chapter 4, where he again mixes scriptural and text references with anthropological observations. In these chapters, we find an exemplary effort to downplay the dichotomy between the two approaches to Sufism. Yet, the last sections of the book revive the Traditionalist views: Sufism is called on to undertake the defence of “the transcendent unity of religions” against “the pressures of exoterism”; especially when one recalls that “objective signs of degeneration have affected Sufism [itself] throughout the ages,” that “the appearance of initiatory paths … certainly had some negative effects,” and that “from the fifteenth century on, signs of ossification were clear.” These would be symptoms which “relate to what one can call the illness of ‘brotherhoodism,’ a form of degeneration inherited from the institutionalization of Sufism” (Geoffroy [trans. Gaetani], 194–5). Regardless of their merits, such views cannot be taken for granted in the social sciences because of their subjective and teleological natures. The works of Chittick and Geoffroy remain, we think, the best syntheses on Ṣūfī theory and practice to date. Four other important handbooks have been published in the same period—more precisely, between 1997 and 2017—by US-based scholars; these mark decisive steps in the historical study of Sufism. The first was written by Carl Ernst, a well-known specialist of Islamic studies, especially Sufism in India and Pakistan. In the Shambhala guide to Sufism, Ernst builds on his experience in the subcontinent, and carefully avoids “referring to Islam as a changeless monolithic religion” and stresses that “the multifarious activities that we [non-Muslims as well as Muslims themselves] subsume under the terms Sufism and Islam were not spheres of existence or

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separable from religious life in general” (Ernst, xv). By refusing to give a fixed definition to these constantly contested terms, and opposed to any essentialism or dogmatism, Ernst conducts a dispassionate analysis of Sufism “in the broadest descriptive sense” (Ernst, xvii). Thus, his interpretative essay is neither a doctrinal survey nor a study of historical Sufism, but an exploration of the subtle meanings of Sufism based on diverse primary texts and through a series of topics, namely scriptural sources, saints and sainthood, spiritual practices, the functioning of Ṣūfī orders, Ṣūfī poetry and music, and the state of Sufism in the contemporary world. Among the many virtues of this book, which is addressed to a broad audience, is the fact that it paved the way for more objective and pluralistic approaches to Sufism. Not surprisingly, it was also a specialist of the diverse forms of Sufism in the Indian subcontinent, and an innovative historian of the globalisations of Islam, who wrote the handbook entitled Sufism: A global history. With his unique background, Nile Green “devotes equal value and emphasis to each period of its [Sufism’s] history” (Green, xi); thus, he introduces our field to the broader area of global theory, making Sufism a horizontal phenomena, rather than a vertical one. In more conceptual words, in the pen of the global historian, Sufism appears as a tradition constructed through time periods and regional contexts, rather than mysticism in the private sphere. In this new perspective, “brotherhoods formed the conceptual and eventually the institutional channels through time and space that served to constitute Sufism as a tradition” (Green, 9). In an original way, Green extends the scope of Ernst’s handbook, to survey the unexpected diversity and longevity of Sufism, and put an end to attempts to nationalise (Arabise or Persianise mostly) or essentialise its conception. Furthermore, he narrates the history of Sufism with an emphasis on three interdependent types of power: discursive (Ṣūfī teachings that shape people’s actions), miraculous (Ṣūfī saints who perform miracles to influence society), and economic (the material strength of Ṣūfī leaders that brings a tradition into being) (Green, 5–8). The last two handbooks we mention were written by the same author, and give us the rare opportunity to follow the intellectual evolution of a scholar of Islamic studies. Alexander Knysh published Islamic mysticism: A short history in 2000 and Sufism: A new history of Islamic mysticism in 2017. Thanks to a wide range of interests and expertise, from Sufism in Yemen to Islam in the Caucasus, including historiography and Ṣūfī doctrine, Ibn al-ʿArabī and the fifth-/eleventh-century scholar al-Qushayrī, Knysh is particularly qualified to provide both overviews and clear narratives. In the first handbook, readers followed “Sufism’s evolution from a simple world-renouncing piety to a series of highly sophisticated doctrines that circulated within a formal and highly

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institutional framework known as the ṭarīqa” (Knysh, Islamic mysticism, 2). Thus, Knysh never juxtaposes spiritual aspects and temporal aspects of Sufism, and proposes “to furnish a picture of Islamic mysticism that is firmly rooted in the historical and socio-political contexts within which it developed” (Knysh, Islamic mysticism, 3). This descriptive account intentionally neglects the philosophy of history and ephemeral theoretical pretensions. In chapters 8 and 9, we find an excellent synthetic account of Ṣūfī institutions, one that not only covers Ṣūfī orders and establishments over time and space, but also understands them as a means to cultivate (not simply perpetuate) Ṣūfī thought, ethics, and practices. In his second handbook, Knysh offers a more complex, less positivist narrative that tries to emancipate Ṣūfī studies from false debates and schematic dichotomies—an ambition that already surfaced in his previous survey. Knysh convincingly argues that Sufism can be approached consistently by Western as well as Islamic epistemologies. Therefore, concepts such as “Sufism,” “asceticism,” and “mysticism” appear as efficient analytical tools. Moreover, according to the author (Knysh, Sufism, introduction) the latter two terms co-exist in Sufism. This dual (outsider and insider) perspective, abolishes barriers between “invented” Western concepts and “authentic” Islamic notions, and thus reopens the door (left ajar by Anawati and Gardet) for comparative analyses in Ṣūfī studies (Knysh, Sufism, ch. 4)—a sub-field we hope to explore in a future handbook. As for the perspective of Sufism: A new history of Islamic mysticism (specifically its chapter 5), it is an important milestone in overcoming the dichotomy we first discussed. Confirming the accuracy of the term “order” (after the Islamologist Fritz Meier (1914–2009)) to describe the ṭuruq, Knysh presents these institutions as propitious milieus for the cultivation of initiatory teachings, and ritual activities that were transformed “to a loftier cognitive and cosmological plane created by collective Sufi imagination.” Moreover, Sufism’s evolution from informal circles to hierarchically-structured institutions (often described by the Weberian concept of “routinisation”) was in fact much more nuanced, and depended on historical and cultural contexts. Therefore, attempts to explain the relationships between masters and disciples in these institutions as only power relations “fails to do justice to the complexity of human aspirations” (Knysh, Sufism, 142, 144, 161, 164). That is, Ṣūfī institutions should not be reduced to simple traditional communities with no spiritual life, and their organisation should not be perceived as just a system of power. At the end of this historiographical review, we see the present handbook as just a part of the scholarly heritage briefly discussed above. In order to continue the recent efforts aimed at reconciling divergent tendencies in Ṣūfī studies, we must follow and deepen the research directions outlined by our predecessors, and discuss the question of Ṣūfī institutions.

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Looking for a Third Way: The Institutional Approach

To clarify our approach and answer the basic question, “what is a Ṣūfī institution?” we return to the classical (i.e. from the 1850s to the 1920s) theories of institutions (Scott, xi). Here we are dealing with institutional theories of sociology, not those applied in economics and political sciences. Therefore, the concept of “institutions” not only includes the establishments but also the community systems within societies. In parallel with the ideas developed by American sociologists such as William Graham Summer (1840–1910) and Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929), European social theorists, chiefly Max Weber (1864–1920) and Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), also developed variants of analysis (Scott, ch. 1). As is well known, Durkheim defined sociology itself as “the science of institutions, of their genesis, and of their functioning,” and labelled an institution as “all the beliefs and modes of behaviour instituted by the collectivity,” without reducing institutionalisation to a pure determinism: “Despite the fact that beliefs and social practices permeate us in this way from the outside, it does not follow that we receive them passively and without causing them to undergo modification” (Durkheim, Les règles, xxiii and n. 1). He later refined his concept, explaining that symbolic systems, in particular systems of knowledge and beliefs, were social institutions. For Durkheim, categories of thought and belief depend, among other factors, on the way in which a collectivity is organised and on its religious institutions. More broadly, nearly all the great social institutions (e.g., categories of thought, magic, moral and legal rules) “have been born in religion … If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion” (Durkheim, Les formes, 22, 598–9). In other words, an institution is not so much a communal organisation decided by individuals as a socially-based system of collective representations and beliefs that remain constant over time and are derived from religion. Likewise, the institutionalisation process is not simply a late introduction of rules and regulations, but the slow social accomplishment of religious ideals. Against the simplistic views on institutions, we must realize that religious thoughts do not float outside their collective construction, and social institutions are not just pragmatic tools that enable society to function. In our opinion, the Durkheimian concept of social institutions is path breaking, not strictly holistic or functionalist, and religion-oriented, and therefore, particularly appropriate for Islamic studies. We share with Nathan Hofer, a historian of mediaeval Sufism who contributed two chapters to this volume, the conviction that Sufism has a fundamentally social character. Ṣūfī institutions can be defined as “the socially constructed and accepted ‘ways of doing things’ [repertoire of praxis but also technical vocabulary]” in a Ṣūfī collectivity. This

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definition allows us to better understand how Sufism emerged as a social fact; Hofer states, “it is the institutions of Sufism that constrain and enable the production of Sufi culture in any given time and place” (Hofer, 15–8). As a result, breaking with most of the historiography of Sufism, Hofer argues that the institutionalisation of Ṣūfī doctrine and practice took place during the early formative period (around the fourth/tenth century), not after, and became foundational for the later organisation of Sufism into establishments and orders (Hofer, 22–3). In the present book, we propose two ways to go a step further, both of which were already envisioned by Durkheim: first, we examine Ṣūfī institutions through the prism of the longue durée rather than using an “evolutionist” model; and second, we rethink their mystical dimensions instead of confining mysticism to private supernatural experiences. While we use a sociological concept of Sufism, the contributors of this volume are mainly historians and thereby more attentive to periods and temporality than sociologists. As a collective work with some encyclopaedic ambitions, we tried to encompass a vast area and many historical periods, multiplying the sociopolitical situations in which Sufism developed. Moreover, we tried to follow these developments over the longue durée, as suggested by Fernand Braudel (1902–85) and his colleagues in the French Annales School of historical writing. It is useful to note that this notion does not refer to a long period but a slow, sometimes very slow, process of history, a process that is made up of different durations and temporal rhythms. A longue durée phenomenon remains stable and changes slowly over centuries, with variations from one region to another. Durkheim touched on the slow nature of institutions, but did not elaborate on it. In our discussions throughout the book, Ṣūfī institutions seem to evolve according to what Braudel famously called “the slow pace of civilisations” (Braudel, 267). Our second point concerns the mystical dimensions of Ṣūfī institutions. If mysticism means the knowledge of mysteries, then Sufism is Islamic mysticism, since it claims to provide knowledge of the “ultimate truth” (ḥaqīqa) and/ or of “the world of the invisible” (ʿālam al-ghayb) beyond the knowledge of the “world of the visible” (ʿālam al-shahāda), all expressions derived from Qurʾān 23:92, 32:6, and other verses (Algar, 7; Geoffroy [trans. Gaetani], 10; Daaif). Anxious to bring together the two sub-fields of Ṣūfī studies (taṣawwuf studies on the one hand and ṭarīqa studies on the other), we strive to understand the institutionalisation of a set of practices and a shared technical terminology, but also doctrines, speculations, and experiential knowledge. When Durkheim claimed that religion gave birth to major institutions, he was referring to the

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religious categories of thought at the origin of social organisations, wherein religious categories are still present but hidden. We support the thesis that Sufism is more than a cumulative tradition established over generations; it is a paradoxical form of mysticism entrenched in the social world, which was necessarily institutionalised, and whose institutions were in continuous tension with their own inherent economic, social, political, and mystical tendencies. To summarise and answer concisely our initial question: a Ṣūfī institution is the physical as well as intellectual manifestation of the vicissitudes of Ṣūfī collectivities over the longue durée; it is the setting in which Ṣūfīs experience and consider their mystical life in relation to the societies in which they are embedded. Our collection of essays elaborates on this short definition at length. We cover five topics in the five parts that constitute the present volume. In the first part, entitled “The economy of Sufism,” we suggest that Ṣūfīs accumulated symbolic and material capital simultaneously, not simply in the sense of the establishment of a spiritual and financial treasury, but more subtly, in the sense of the growing debates over wealth and poverty understood as economies (working and begging), spiritual lifestyles (social engagement and asceticism), and forms of religious experience (cumulative erudition and purgative devotion). Ṣūfī institutions reflect the complexity of these debates, in that Ṣūfīs did not make firm distinctions between the critical options outlined here. In his general essay, Adam Sabra explains that, early on, Ṣūfīs debated the social and moral-ethical implications of wealth and poverty. The great Muslim thinker al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) celebrated poverty but advised to live from one’s labour. In contrast, the master al-Shādhilī (d. 656/1258) placed a religious value on trade and did not consider wealth to be evil in and of itself. This kind of attitude accompanied, in part, the development of generously endowed (mawqūf, from waqf ) lodges in Ayyūbid and Mamlūk Egypt. In these institutions, Ṣūfīs could be exempted from work and often they acted not only for their spiritual attainment, but in the name of pious charity, they provided food for the poor and residences for single women; lastly, the practice of praying for their patrons and their families was the beginning of a prayer economy. Under the Ottomans, sultans, but also members of the Ottoman military-administrative class and middle-class people, all sought blessings, and donated lands to Bektāşī and Mevlevī networks, which then became active proselytisers. In fact, as early as the seventh/thirteenth to eighth/fourteenth century, spiritual “chivalry” ( futuwwa) groups undertook pioneer and missionary activities in rural areas; later, in Mughal India, Ṣūfī communities also served as pioneers and missionaries. Like lodges, shrines represented a full-fledged economic and

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religious system. For example, the maintenance of Central Asian holy sites was funded by waqf, donations, and offerings, especially during massive pilgrimages, and these sites fostered the renovation of other construction and increased the productivity of lands. Modern critics who attacked corrupt financial and spiritual elements of this system could not put an end to mass devotions around deceased mystics. Remarkably, Ṣūfī institutions adapted to contemporary economic conditions by reinventing traditional business models, like the Pakistani Chishtiyya qawwālī (devotional music) that turned into world music or, in Senegal, the agrarian spirituality of the Murīdiyya that became globalised as a migrant economy. Nathan Hofer focuses on pious endowments (waqf, pl. awqāf ), that is, irrevocable trusts that enable someone to use part of his or her wealth to support a religious or socially beneficial cause, in this case, Sufism. From the third/ninth century until now, waqfs were beneficial to Ṣūfīs in many ways. They provided them with spaces for learning, teaching, reading, writing, meditating, and celebrating collectively. More profoundly, endowments shaped specific patterns of Ṣūfī social activity, which changed over time; these included innovations in devotional life and conceptual language in mediaeval Baghdad, the systematisation of Ṣūfī thought and practice, as represented by Ṣūfī literature in fifth-/ eleventh- to sixth-/twelfth-century Khurāsān, and so forth. Hussain Ahmad Khan studies the range of donations (mainly futūḥ and nudhūr), another aspect of the economy of Sufism. Donations were well developed in the Middle East, the Maghrib, and India throughout the mediaeval and early modern periods, and proved instrumental in funding Ṣūfī establishments and Ṣūfī ways of life. However, Ṣūfī circles continuously debated the issue of the acceptance of gifts and were acutely aware of the problematic aspects of this common practice: whereas giving and receiving donations was not devoid of ulterior motives that revealed the weaknesses of men (including mystics), futūḥ especially favoured pious life and elevated alms to the rank of divine openings onto hidden truths. Mehran Afshari shows that, faced with earning a living or relying on God, Ṣūfīs found an alternative solution. They utilised the early Islamic chivalry code ( futuwwa) to render their professional activities spiritual. From initiation rituals and symbols to civilities and moral precepts (generosity, selfabnegation, etc.), Ṣūfī communities in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Anatolia institutionalised spiritual values. To cultivate these principles, in the seventh/ thirteenth century Ṣūfīs created a literary genre called Kitāb al-futuwwa or futuvvat nāma in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. Conversely, later variants of these writings infused Ṣūfī religiosity and altruism in trade and craft guilds. The second part of this book, devoted to the “Ṣūfī places and dwellings,” explores the spatial inscriptions of mystics: where and how they lived, practiced

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their beliefs, received spiritual education, and found their final resting places. We understand these sites not only as forums for Ṣūfī practice and knowledge transmission but also as sites conceived by Ṣūfī collectivities as meeting places of the immanent and the transcendent. Shrines, lodges, and outposts thus appear to constitute a spatial institutionalisation in every sense, that is, as geographical and architectural spaces, collective and social spaces, ritual and imaginary spaces. Daphna Ephrat and Paulo Pinto present a historical overview of Ṣūfī places and dwellings. Along with the evolution of Sufism, from the late fourth/tenth to the ninth/fifteenth century, the lodges (khānqāhs) developed into centres of teaching and spiritual training, with their own structures of authority and companionship in Khurāsān, Iraq, and beyond. Quite early, Ṣūfī dwellings were funded by dynastic states, such as that of the Saljūqs who encouraged sharīʿa-oriented Sufism. In addition, informal groups pursuing ascetic lifestyles continued to gather in smaller hospices, for example, in Syria. The institutionalisation of Sufism also took place at the lodges presided over by revered masters following the model of the Prophet and his community, rather than in statesponsored establishments. These were centres where disciples orbited around their masters. The centres often contained the graves of the saintly founders, and thus served as spaces of communal worship and pious visitations (mazār). The premodern period (tenth/sixteenth to twelfth/eighteenth century) saw the geographical expansion of Ṣūfī places and their religiosity. For instance, the Ottoman capital hosted a large number of lodges of many different orders, such as the Khalwatiyya and the Naqshbandiyya; in Mughal India, shrine complexes (dargāhs) were hubs for the locally embedded Ṣūfī orders and for interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims. As opposed to simplistic scenarios (decline vs. rise, modernity vs. inertia), Ṣūfī institutions experienced five processes of relative transformation during the modern period: reform, in so far as Ṣūfīs encountered Muslim reformist ideas, particularly in the lodges of Mecca; crisis and adaptation, when lodges were tightly controlled by the state as in Syria, or even closed, as in socialist Bosnia; revivalism, in the sense that shrines, as alternative religious spaces, attracted masses and were also used by state authorities to promote a certain version of the nation’s “cultural heritage”; and globalisation, since Muslim migrants and converts established new connections and encouraged cultural transfers between Ṣūfī spaces on a transcontinental scale. Peyvand Firouzeh takes us into the Ṣūfī lodge, a physical establishment belonging to a group of Ṣūfīs gathered around a master. The very fluidity of the terminology related to this institution reflects its diverse regional characteristics, heterogeneous ascetic-mystic practices, and its differentiated development. However, in the longue durée, from the fifth/eleventh century to the present,

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from North Africa to Southeast Asia, all lodges, beyond their material entities, were surrounded by narratives linking Sufism to the spiritual memory of its architecture. As political events and everyday life in the lodges show, the institution established itself as a key player in history. Terminology is also enlightening in the case of ribāṭ (pl. rubuṭ), or borderland outposts, as discussed by Nathan Hofer. Originally connoting war and pious renunciation, this paradoxical term was widespread in frontier regions before the emergence of Sufism; it was then interpreted by Ṣūfīs as a place for spiritual struggle with one’s ego and mystical quest. Outposts dedicated to this function emerged in Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere in the third/ninth to fourth/tenth century, and then proliferated across the Muslim world after the sixth/twelfth century. These establishments institutionalised militant and political forms of Islamic mysticism in the early modern Maghrib and in western and sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial period. Related to but distinct from Ṣūfī lodges, shrines came to be identified with Sufism par excellence from the sixth/twelfth to seventh/ thirteenth century onwards, according to Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen. Here, too, the rich lexis reflects the variety of holy sites, from a sacred tree to a whole complex, from grottoes to mausoleums with cupolas. Whether during their expansion throughout the Muslim world until the eleventh/seventeenth to twelfth/ eighteenth century or in the face of criticism from Wahhābī, Deobandi, and Jadīd reformist movements, Ṣūfī shrines are ubiquitous in the sociopolitical history of Islam; they provide their pious visitors with the opportunity to step out of time and approach the sacred. The third part discusses the social roles of Ṣūfīs, that is, the different ways in which they responded to social demands as well as to their own agendas for changing society in accordance with Ṣūfī values. This ambiguous position betrays the fact that Muslim mystics were torn between God and men, more precisely between manifesting their saintly vocations and their ongoing presence in the secular world. As a “friend of God,” a father or a brother in his community, and an authority at the heart of sociability, the spiritual master (shaykh) himself became an institution. The opening chapter of part 3, written by Rachida Chih, adopts a threefold approach (textual, historical, and anthropological) to analyse the status of the master and his relationship with his disciples. Raised to the rank of saints (awliyāʾ), Ṣūfī masters attracted followers more because of the divine blessing (baraka) they dispensed than because they taught mystical gnosis. Sufism was integrated into society at large as early as the ʿAbbāsid period. This trend continued under the Mamlūks, the Ṣafavids, and the Ottomans. For all devotees, companionship with the master presupposed the observation of a certain set

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of manners (ādāb) codified in writings mostly in Arabic and Persian, which offered a model of society based on the prophetic ideal. This model was defined by three concepts. First, companionship (ṣuḥba) was based on a binding pact between the master and his disciples, one that demanded that they observe mutual obligations. Authors such as al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) and al-Shaʿrānī (d. 973/1565), described disciples’ submission to their master in detail; but these descriptions can be found also, for example, among contemporary Ṣūfī brotherhoods in Egypt. Second, within the frame of lodges and shrines, service (khidma) to the master and to the companions extended to the site and their visitors, and the inhabitants around these sites. The hierarchy of Ṣūfī orders and their servants, attendants, and deputies created social functions that mixed charity, social services, and spiritual guidance. Third, the mediation (shafāʿa; tawassul) performed by Ṣūfī leaders and their lodges and shrines (through the baraka of the deceased saint) meant, first, that saint would intervene with God on behalf of certain individuals, but could also include food distribution, healing sessions, and arbitration in conflicts, as, for instance, among tribes in twelfth-/eighteenth-century Morocco or, today, in regions where state authorities have failed or are ineffective. In the globalised contemporary world where master-disciple relationships can be long distance, as in the Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya, the annual visits to the shaykh remain essential social events that confirm his institutional stature and exceed the confines of his lodge or shrine. Contrary to their image as exclusive friends of God, Ṣūfīs devoted considerable attention to altruism (īthār), as Richard McGregor shows. Ṣūfī thinkers such as ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī l-Harawī (d. 481/1089) demanded discipline of the self in return for divine favour, practiced chivalry and benevolence, and ultimately made selflessness a mystical experience. Hagiographers provided biographical examples of this conception, with shaykhs like Abū Marwān ʿAbd al-Mālik b. Ibrāhīm al-Qaysī l-Yuḥānisī (seventh/thirteenth century) feeding the poor as part of their spiritual training, or Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Nūrī (d. 295/907) for whom altruism was the key to proper conduct and eternal life. These activities were institutionalised in, for instance, langars (soup kitchens) and sabīl-kuttābs (Qurʾān schools with public fountains). In general, Muslim spiritual authorities had a strong and reciprocal impact on urban sociability, as Nathalie Clayer argues. Ṣūfī saints and orders were active in the emergence of cities and the urban fabric. In the eighth-/fourteenth- to ninth-/fifteenth-century Balkans, or later in twelfth-/eighteenth- to nineteenth-century Cyrenaica, several cities developed around shrines or lodges. Ṣūfīs developed sociability at the local level (in Istanbul neighbourhoods, for example) as well as on a global scale (in

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hubs for ḥajj, such as Jerusalem). City facilities also reshaped Ṣūfī lifestyles and institutions with the emergence of new products, such as coffee; new technologies, such as printing; and modern administration in the form of associations. Ahmet Yaşar Ocak studies rural environments, which are not separate, but distinct from urban settings, and reveals a religious landscape where the constraints of nature fostered ascetic, but active forms of Sufism. Initially, Yasawī Ṣūfīs proselytised in remote and rural areas, such as the Qipchaq Steppe, whereas Naqshbandīs chose to cultivate land and bring spiritual education to Transoxanian villages. Ṣūfī institutions were instrumental in persuading people to settle uninhabited lands, secure roads, and educate people. In addition, rural Anatolia proved emblematic of a politico-religious form of Sufism: local autonomy and hostility toward the central powers were accompanied by nonconformist tendencies. The fourth part of our volume deals with “Sufism and worldly powers.” We demonstrate the inextricable interrelationship of mysticism and politics, thereby departing from the premise of their presumed separation, a view that still holds sway in the political sciences and sociology. Ṣūfīs often dealt with politics, but in their own unique way. Historical research on chronicles, mirrors for princes, hagiographies, and speculative treatises suggests that Ṣūfīs were compelled to position themselves as interlocutors of power institutions, not simply for their own survival and promotion but, more deeply, to overcome the principled contradiction between world renunciation and sociopolitical involvement. In the chapter’s introductory essay, Alexandre Papas explores five successive yet overlapping historical contexts in which Ṣūfīs and worldly powers interacted in a variety of complex ways. First, during the early mediaeval period, ascetics (zuhhād), then Ṣūfīs proper, confronted not just “infidel” regimes, but also Muslim rulers they considered illegitimate or corrupt. This was a casus belli that led to a reflection on jihād later developed by al-Ghazālī. In general, Muslim mystics maintained an ambivalent relationship with the state apparatus of the ʿAbbāsids and the Būyids. Second, when Ṣūfī orders emerged in the late mediaeval period from the Maghrib to India, sultans’ patronage of Ṣūfīs was as much pragmatic as religious (i.e., belief in the supernatural power of holy individuals who made predictions and lent legitimacy to rulers). Third, the Islamic millennial shift (tenth/sixteenth to eleventh/seventeenth century) accentuated this tendency towards saintly rulership. In this regard, three cases of Ṣūfī dynasties were emblematic: the Jazūliyya in Morocco, the Ṣafaviyya in Iran, and the Naqshbandiyya/Khwājas in eastern Turkestan. It appears that the theories of the “esoteric government,” which derived from the concept of

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sanctity (walāya) as governorship (wilāya), found later elaborations in these cases. Fourth, in the twelfth/eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the rise of colonial powers across the Muslim world revived the discussion of jihād. Whereas some saintly leaders sought accommodation with the new authorities, notably in Africa, others, such as Shāmil/Shamwīl (d. 1288/1871) in the Caucasus, led armed resistance and called for jihād. Lastly, from the twentieth century onwards there emerged what we call a “baraka bureaucracy,” that is, Ṣūfī officials (for example, in Soviet Uzbekistan) or Ṣūfī associations pursuing a political agenda, as in Indonesia and western Europe. The backing, and occasionally even the creation, of political parties by Ṣūfī lineages is observable in Iraqi Kurdistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere and can be interpreted as attempts to lend a spiritual dimension to nationalist ideologies. Luca Patrizi discusses the Ṣūfī terminology of power to show how Muslim mystics integrated the practices and ethos of the royal court into their system of thought and ritual culture. Derived from non-Islamic and Islamic sources, Ṣūfī authors such as Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī (d. 430/1038) and others used analogies between temporal power and spiritual power, likening saints to kings, sultans, etc. and applying the court etiquette of the age to Ṣūfī ādāb. Ṣūfī institutions imitated the practice of the royal banquet (majlis). This usage was not just metaphorical; collective assemblies were established with the characteristics of court assemblies, as described by the influential Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049). Neguin Yavari studies proximity, rather than analogy, between Ṣūfīs and royalty. For example, the famous al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234) served as an advisor and ambassador to the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Nāṣir (d. 622/1225). Interpersonal relationships like this changed scale in the post-Mongol period in Egypt, Iran, Asia Minor, Central Asia, and India. Books of wise council and advice were written by Muslim mystics, e.g., al-Simnānī (d. 736/1336), Aḥmad Kāsānī (d. 949/1542) and even Ṣūfīs at the Qājār court. These books bear witness to their authors’ ambitions and include calls for a new religious order based on Sufism, involvement in designing and practicing politics according to Ṣūfī values, defence of the monarchy, and so forth. In addition to the court, Ṣūfīs were also active in the army, as demonstrated by David Cook. From the scriptural interpretations of jihād (struggle of the soul, of the tongue, of the sword), early Ṣūfīs like ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak (d. 181/797) combined warfare and asceticism. During the Ottoman conquest, Ṣūfī brotherhoods were closely affiliated with the Janissary corps. Whereas Naqshbandīs acted as fighters or saints protecting armies in early modern Asia, Africa was the scene of anti-colonial jihāds led by Qādirīs and Tijānīs (among other groups) fighting for greater spiritual goals related to the reform of Islam

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and its mystical aspects as manifested in Sufism. Knut Vikør reconsiders and relativises the concept of the Ṣūfī kingdom or state. This ultimate phase of institutionalisation seems to emerge from an absence of alternative political structures in three historical configurations. The aforementioned Khwājas of Central Asia illustrate the transition from tribal to political-religious order; the jihād movements of Dan Fodio (d. 1234/1817) and al-Ḥājj ʿUmar b. Saʿīd Tall (d. 1280/1864) in West Africa established new states based on an Islamic reformist (not Ṣūfī) agenda; and the power of the Ṣūfī leader al-Jazāʾirī (d. 1300/1883) in Algeria, as well as the Sanūsiyya brotherhood in Libya, emerged when existing states were devastated by colonial intervention. The last part, “The organisation of mysticism,” revises the still pervasive “evolutionist” model derived from Trimingham by emphasizing the complex development of Sufism and the coexistence of various trends within it, rather than presenting it as a simple unidirectional process. We describe the institutional forms taken by Ṣūfī practices over time, collective behaviours, and doctrinal elaborations. Organisation does not mean sclerosis of spiritual life, or a triumph of the mundane over the supra-mundane; it does not indicate decline or the progress of Sufism as a social fact, but more fundamentally, it relates to the concrete responses given by Ṣūfīs to the eternal question of how one can ensure religious stability in an unstable world by perpetuating the key precepts of Islam while at the same time acknowledging the ephemeral nature of things. In the general essay authored by Mark Sedgwick, organised Sufism is presented as a ṭarīqa (path, order) system, but this is only one of the organisational forms that Sufism has taken. History shows plural, successive, and interrelated institutionalisations. Following the example of the closely-knit circles of masters and disciples (which remained a structural nucleus), already widespread in the fifth/eleventh century, later Ṣūfī lodges regulated the secular and spiritual activities of their users. Many Ṣūfī shrines (Mīhana in Khurāsān; Ṭanṭā in Egypt) were not only sites of pilgrimage but also institutions akin to lodges, providing religious and education services. In parallel, itinerant structured groups such as the Qalandars existed beyond the comfort of lodges, until the nineteenth century. Ṭarīqa Sufism developed as the central Ṣūfī organisation from the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries. Many existing lodges were integrated into orders but others remained independent. As successful orders spread, they fragmented into autonomous sub-orders that then created sub-sub-orders. Various individuals assisted the shaykh, including the muqaddam (deputy), khalīfa (representative), khādim (servant, guardian), maddāḥ (reciter), etc. Membership was offered to disciples (murīds), formally and informally to admirers (muḥibbs), but in any case, it remained fluid. The

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succession process was also flexible and potentially conflictual, resulting in division into groups headed by a deputy, a representative, or a son of the shaykh. Hereditary succession was common and formed Ṣūfī families. While orders experienced life cycles (birth, maturity, replacement), other Ṣūfī organisations appeared without replacing orders. These were instituted by the states, whose old patronage tradition culminated, for instance, in the Majlis al-Ṣūfī (Sufi Council) in nineteenth-century Egypt. From the 1960s onward, modern organisational and administrative techniques were incorporated into ṭarīqas. The Nurcus in Turkey deny being a ṭarīqa, but organise themselves like a traditional ṭarīqa into educational institutions. The Threshold Society in the United States is a non-profit organisation, but is also still a recognizably neo-Mevlevī ṭarīqa. Returning to the beginnings of Ṣūfī organisations, Jean-Jacques Thibon details the markers of Ṣūfī lifestyles, which began to be formalised (not standardised) in the second/eighth century. The first means of organisation in Sufism, and one that had a deep effect on its subsequent history, included wearing garments such as the patched cloak (muraqqaʿa), engaging in rituals such as clothing disciples in the Ṣūfī robe (lubs al-khirqa), taking spiritual paths (ṭarīqas), following the lineage of initiating masters (silsila), and living in specific places (lodges). The fifth/eleventh to sixth/twelfth century constitute a pivotal phase in both the institutionalisation and the sophisticated discussions of these identity markers by Ṣūfī authors such as al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) and al-Hujwīrī (d. between 465/1072 and 469/1077). At the core of Ṣūfī organisation stands the principle of continuity in the form of a hereditary line (nasab) and spiritual lineage (silsila), as analysed by Ismail Fajrie Alatas. Ṣūfīs introduced the silsila to authenticate transmission of teachings and trace lines of initiatory descent, anchoring both in the prophetic past. However, some ṭarīqas stressed prophetic descent as a prerequisite for spiritual mastership assuming that Muḥammadan nasab favoured the inheritance of prophetic ḥasab (merit) and baraka. Silsilas and nasabs intersected, creating tensions but, quite often, both genealogies combined to strengthen one another (e.g., Sharifian Sufism in Morocco), and resulted in hereditary sanctity (sayyid families in Java) and family ṭarīqas, such as the ʿAlawiyya of Yemen. Semih Ceyhan describes the general organisation of established Ṣūfī orders while explaining the way Ṣūfīs themselves envisioned this development through classifications (according to spiritual and teaching methods, litanies, etc.) and narratives, especially hagiographical narratives. After the passing of an eponymous master, a ṭarīqa remained active because of the efforts of the master’s deputies (khulafāʾ). By ramifying into sub-branches, Ṣūfī orders grew very diverse and widespread as these deputies were dispatched to various localities. Thus, a cartography of Ṣūfī orders can be drawn. For example, Iraq was the centre for the spread of

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the Qādiriyya, the Rifāʿiyya, and the Suhrawardiyya, while the Mawlawiyya, the Bektāshiyya, the Bayrāmiyya, and the Jalwatiyya developed from Anatolia. Far from either declinist or overly enthusiastic visions sometimes ascribed to Ṣūfī authors, many of these ṭarīqas represented the spread and institutionalisation of spiritual paths (ṭuruq) as a territorial and an ongoing process. To conclude this section of our book, Stéphane A. Dudoignon addresses cyber Sufism as a new type of organisation resulting from the increase of Ṣūfī activities on the internet from the mid-1990s onwards, and further examines its impact on the evolution of Sufism from the mid-2000s. In the context of mass education and professional diasporas, orders such as the Murīdiyya have availed themselves of the internet to enhance their visibility, transcend distances between disciples and teachers (marabouts), and offer a virtual space for collective rituals. The irruption of web 2.0 contributed to the creation of an online Sufism, represented, for instance, by the Niʿmatullāhiyya, whose spiritual authority is fragmented and sometimes reduced to a psychological role, but is still available to diverse audiences and is a way of adapting to the rapid pace of globalisation. Bibliography Algar, Hamid, Sufism. Principles and practice, Oneonta 1999. Anawati, Georges Chehata and Louis Gardet, Mystique musulmane. Aspects et tendances, experiences et techniques, Paris 1961. Arberry, A. J., An introduction to the history of Ṣūfism, London 1942. Arberry, A. J., Sufism. An account of the mystics of Islam, London 1950. Avon, Dominique, Louis Gardet, L’entrée d’un catholique thomiste en islamologie 1926–1949, Liame 9 (2002): 75–94. Braudel, Fernand, Civilization and capitalism, 15th–18th century. Vol. 1: The structures of everyday life, trans. Siân Reynolds, Berkeley 1992. Chardin, Jean, Voyages de Mr le chevalier Chardin, en Perse et autres lieux de l’Orient, 10 vols., Amsterdam 1711. Chittick, William C., Sufism. A beginner’s guide, Oxford 2000. Daaif, Lahcen, Invisible, in Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (ed.), Dictionnaire du Coran (Paris 2007), 425–7. Depont, Octave and Xavier Coppolani, Les confréries religieuses musulmanes, Algiers 1897. Durkheim, Émile, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Paris 1912, trans. Joseph Ward Swain, as The elementary forms of the religious life, London 1915.

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Durkheim, Émile, Les règles de la méthode sociologique, Paris 1967, trans. W. D. Halls, as The rules of sociological methods, New York 1982. Ernst, Carl W., The Shambala guide to Sufism, Boston 1997. Geoffroy, Eric, Initiation au soufisme, Paris 2003, trans. Robert Gaetani, as Introduction to Sufism. The inner path of Islam, Bloomington 2010. Green, Nile, Sufism. A global history, Chichester 2012. Hicks, Rosemary R., Comparative religion and the cold war transformation of IndoPersian “mysticism” into liberal Islamic modernity, in Markus Dressler and AvindPal S. Mandair (eds.), Secularism and religion-making (Oxford 2011), 141–69. Hofer, Nathan, The popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173–1325, Edinburgh 2015. Khismatulin, Alexey and Samra Azarnouche, The destiny of a genius scholar. Marijan Molé (1924–1963) and his archives in Paris, Manuscripta Orientalia 20/2 (2014): 45–56. Knysh, Alexander, Islamic mysticism. A short history. Leiden 2000. Knysh, Alexander, Historiography of Sufi studies in the West and in Russia, Pis’mennye Pamiatniki Vostoka / Written Documents of the Orient 1/4 (2006): 206–38. Knysh, Alexander, Sufism. A new history of Islamic mysticism, Princeton 2017. Lewisohn, Leonard, ed., The heritage of Sufism. Vol. 1: Classical Persian Sufism from its origins to Rumi (700–1300), Oxford 1993. Lewisohn, Leonard, ed., The heritage of Sufism. Vol. 2: The legacy of medieval Persian Sufism (1150–1500), Oxford 1999. Lewisohn, Leonard and David Morgan, eds., The heritage of Sufism. Vol. 3: Late classical Persianate Sufism (1501–1750), Oxford 1999. Marsy, François-Marie de, Histoire moderne des Chinois, des Japonais, des Indiens, des Persans, des Turcs, des Russiens, &c., 30 vols., Paris 1755–78. Molé, Marijan, Les mystiques musulmans, Paris 1965. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, Sufi essays, New York 1972. Nicholson, Reynold A., The mystics of Islam, London 1914. Popovic, Alexandre and Gilles Veinstein, eds., Les ordres mystiques dans l’islam. Cheminements et situation actuelle, Paris 1986. Popovic, Alexandre and Gilles Veinstein, eds., Les voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui, Paris 1996. Radtke, Bernd, Neue kritische Gänge. Zu Stand und Aufgaben der Sufikforschung/New critical essays. On the present state and future tasks of the study of Sufism, Utrecht 2005. Schimmel, Annemarie, Mystical dimensions of Islam, Chapel Hill, NC 1975. Scott, Richard W., Institutions and organizations. Ideas, interests, and identities, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2014.

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Sedgwick, Mark, Against the modern world. Traditionalism and the secret intellectual history of the twentieth century, Oxford 2004. Şimşek, Halil İbrahim, Türkiye’deki İlahiyat Fakültelerinde Tasavvuf Anabilim Dalının Durumu ve Yapılan Doktora Tezlerinin Yönelimleri, Türk Dünyasında İslâmî İlimlerin Yeri 2/3 (2012): 91–110. Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Sufi orders in Islam, Oxford 1971. Zarcone, Thierry, Ekrem Işın and Arthur Buehler, eds., Journal of the History of Sufism 1–2. Special issue: The Qâdiriyya Sufi order, Istanbul 2000.

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Part 1 The Economy of Sufism

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Chapter 1

Economies of Sufism Adam Sabra From its earliest formation, Sufism has been deeply involved in the economies of the societies where it has been practiced. Ṣūfīs have adapted their theory and practice to a wide variety of social, economic, and ecological environments. Ṣūfīs have founded cities or villages, converted nomads, begged for a living, received the largesse of kings, wandered the world, lived in seclusion, managed shrines, led artisan guilds, worked as civil servants, and migrated to far off lands in the New World to practice commerce. If Sufism and Ṣūfīs have been shaped by a wide range of economic systems, they have also been causal agents, transforming the societies around them as pioneers, agricultural reformers, and even founders of states. Given the immense variety of social and political environments in which Sufism has been practiced, there is no one economy of Sufism. Nonetheless, we can identify some patterns and major historical developments. This essay begins with an examination of how Ṣūfīs conceptualised poverty, charity, and wealth. For some, poverty was an important spiritual value and even a way of life. Others believed that Ṣūfīs should live in society, practicing licit trades and focusing on transforming their inner selves. For those who lived in poverty and pledged themselves to religious devotions, the principal question was whether to accept the patronage of wealthy and powerful persons. Beginning in the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, patrons began to build institutions to house Ṣūfīs and to allow them to devote themselves to prayer. These institutions were funded with the Islamic legal instrument of waqf, a term that may be translated as endowment or trust. As waqfs became more popular and economically important, control over them gave Muslim states, families, and individuals considerable economic power, as well as the power to influence religious life through patronage. For some religious households, Sufism was an important path to building lasting power and prosperity. In the spite of the increasingly worldly character of some Ṣūfīs, others continued to live much more marginal or ordinary existences. They lived as wandering beggars, or, more commonly, as peasants, herdsman, craftsmen, shopkeepers, and merchants. Sufism began as an urban phenomenon, but spread to rural areas, across oceans, and into the nomadic societies of the steppes. Each society has had its own ecological niche, and Ṣūfīs found ways to

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004392601_003

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flourish in each. Ṣūfī networks have often stretched across these ecological and social barriers, contributing to the integration of different social systems. Ṣūfīs have been agents of commercial and agricultural diffusion and have helped extend the authority of states into new regions. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Sufism has come under increased criticism over its supposed incompatibility with modernity. This critique is inseparable from the attack on the landholding classes that dominated much of the early modern Muslim world. Among these landholders were Ṣūfī lineages that based their wealth on control over waqfs and shrines, many of which functioned like family firms and were deeply embedded in the political and social order of local societies. As we see, attempts to reform Sufism, including the nationalisation of endowments and shrines and even the abolition of Ṣūfī networks, forced Ṣūfīs to reorganise themselves to meet the challenge of regulation by nation states. At the same time, however, the migration of Ṣūfīs from rural to urban settings, the spread of Ṣūfī communities across transnational boundaries, and the invention of new technologies created opportunities for Ṣūfīs to sustain their networks in new ways. Rather than die out or be replaced by Islamist movements, Ṣūfī networks and religious entrepreneurs have continued to innovate in the twenty-first-century economy. 1

Poverty, Charity, and Wealth

The status of wealth has been an issue of concern to Ṣūfīs from its earliest days. Ṣūfī sources explain the origin of their name as being from the ahl al-ṣuffa (inhabitants of the portico), a group of Meccans who lived in the portico of the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, after the emigration from Mecca. The abandonment of property and family to follow the Prophet into exile is a powerful origin story, though modern scholars consider it apocryphal. The story also identifies the origins of Sufism as an ascetic movement in Islam. Later Ṣūfī thinkers such as Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988) argued that asceticism was the first step on the path to seek God (Sabra, Poverty and charity, 17). Gradually, he argued, the seeker should renounce material possessions and even the appetite to acquire material goods. Similar attitudes were expressed by a number of authors of Ṣūfī manuals in the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries. The most systematic treatment is that of Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (450–505/1058–1111) in his extremely influential book, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (Reviving the religious sciences). Al-Ghazālī was influenced by Neoplatonic psychology; he argued that the soul is a mirror whose surface is tarnished by sin and material attachments.

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In order for the believer to obtain true knowledge (ḥaqāʾiq al-maʿlūmāt), he must first polish the mirror of his soul, by obedience to God’s commands and a gradual rejection of the material world and all its luxuries. “This world,” he writes, “is an enemy of God.” For al-Ghazālī, poverty is a virtue defined as “the absence of what is needed” (Sabra, Poverty and charity, 17). All created beings are poor in the sense that they are dependent on God, who enjoys absolute wealth since he is in no way dependent on his creation (Sabra, Poverty and charity, 19–20). Poverty comes in gradations as one progressively becomes indifferent to wealth, then rejects it altogether. The implication of practicing such pious poverty is that it will lead one to live from their labour or from begging. Al-Ghazālī advises the pious pauper to keep his poverty a secret and avoid debasing himself before the wealthy since the spiritual status of the content pauper is higher than that of a rich man (Sabra, Poverty and charity, 22). Al-Ghazālī’s views were challenged by a number of critics, especially those of the Ḥanbalī school of law, who also considered themselves ascetics, but who argued that each person has his own path to follow. Neither the wealthy nor the poor is inherently superior. One’s spiritual status depends one’s obedience to God’s law. The Ḥanbalī scholar Ibn al-Jawzī (510–97/1116–1200), for example, questioned the Ṣūfī origin story of the ahl al-ṣuffa. He attacked the philological argument that the term Ṣūfī is derived from ṣuffa, and argued that the people of the portico were simply needy individuals obliged to live on charitable contributions. Once they acquired some wealth, they left the portico and resumed normal lives (Sabra, Poverty and charity, 23). Extreme poverty and hunger should not be regarded as signs of piety, Ibn al-Jawzī says, but rather as dire straits that force the poor to accept the charity of the wealthy, making the poor dependent on them. Poverty leads many people to accept alms from religiously dubious sources. For Ibn al-Jawzī, how wealth is used is what makes it religiously sanctioned or not. Poverty is an illness. Those who bear it patiently will be rewarded for their perseverance, but poverty is not something that should be sought out. Ibn al-Jawzī’s attitude is mirrored in the writings of two later Ḥanbalī thinkers, Ibn Taymiyya (661–728/1263–1328) and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (691–751/1292–1350). For Ibn Taymiyya, both wealth and poverty could be trials, depending on the individual (Sabra, Poverty and charity, 24). Ibn al-Qayyim emphasises the purposes for which wealth is accumulated and used. Positive attitudes towards wealth persist among some Ṣūfīs. The Shādhilī order, which spread in North Africa, Syria, and the Arabian Peninsula, placed great value on practicing a trade. Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī (593–656/1196–1258) is said to have forbidden his followers from accepting alms or gifts (Sabra, Poverty and charity, 27). His followers dressed in ordinary clothes and continued to

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pursue their professions. Al-Shādhilī explicitly rejected the wearing of coarse clothing of the sort often chosen by Ṣūfīs to indicate their rejection of material luxuries (Hofer, 146). He argued that wearing torn or coarse clothing advertised the Ṣūfī’s desire to receive alms, and therefore his dependence on his fellow creatures. Merchants and craftsmen should continue to follow the profession that God had chosen for them (Hofer, 148). The Shādhilīs enjoyed considerable support among the religious scholars of Mamlūk Egypt, and the network has continued to influence prominent scholars of al-Azhar up to the present day. The Shādhilīs’ proximity to the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk rulers in Egypt, and their political power, with all its ambivalent consequences, was characteristic of this community (Hofer, 142). From this point, it is easy to say that being a merchant is a divinely chosen profession and wealth is a sign of God’s favour. The Shādhilīs argued that Ṣūfīs should remain fully engaged in society, and this attitude appealed to many merchants, shopkeepers, and religious scholars. At the other end of the spectrum, we find forms of Sufism that have been labelled “antinomian” because their practitioners often adopted practices that violated Islamic norms of dress and behaviour (Karamustafa, God’s unruly friends). These dervishes, who were particularly popular in the Iranian lands and Anatolia from the seventh/thirteenth century onwards, lived itinerant lives, travelled in groups, and accepted people’s alms as a means of supporting themselves (Karamustafa, God’s unruly friends, 14–5). They did not practice a trade, wore woollen sacks for clothes, and sometimes shaved their hair, beard, moustache, and eyebrows, giving them a distinct and strange appearance (Karamustafa, God’s unruly friends, 19). They were even known to pierce their genitals as a way of restraining sexual desire. The Qalandars and Ḥaydarīs were the two groups most commonly associated with these practices. In addition, the Qalandars became a common trope in Persianate Ṣūfī literature. Soon the rulers of the mediaeval Middle East sought to be patrons of these groups. By the late seventh/thirteenth century, Mamlūk amīrs and sultans were building institutions to house the Qalandars (Sabra, Poverty and charity, 28). Rather than repress these groups as heretical, the rulers of the Mamlūk realms showered them with patronage, just as they did with more conventional Ṣūfīs. It should be noted that the geographical spread of these groups during the mediaeval period was limited, and even in Egypt they were usually assumed to have originated in Iran and spoke Persian (Karamustafa, God’s unruly friends, 55). By the twelfth/eighteenth century, Qalandars were also present in Central Asia and India (Papas, 131). Egypt had its own types of unconventional Ṣūfīs. These included the group known as the Ḥarāfīsh, poor men described as able-bodied beggars who consumed hashish (Sabra, Poverty and charity, 29).

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Another type was common in North Africa, the majdhūb Ṣūfī, who was typically a solitary, childlike individual who wandered into public places naked, ignoring social conventions (Geoffroy, 309–33). 2

Networks, Institutions, and Households

From the fifth/eleventh until the late thirteenth/nineteenth century (and in some places to the present), Sufism was increasingly characterised by the growth of more or less organised networks, the endowment of religious institutions, and the rise of wealthy and politically influential households and lineages to prominence. These developments heralded a sea change in the social background and economic organisation of Ṣūfīs. Although some Ṣūfīs continued to practice pious poverty and asceticism, others embraced wealth and political engagement. Increasingly, both groups came to benefit from the patronage of wealthy individuals and even sovereigns who endowed institutions for them to inhabit and use for prayers and other rituals. Ṣūfī had long held rituals and sometimes resided in lodges or other specialised buildings. These buildings were known by a variety of names, including ribāṭ (originally a frontier fort), duwayra (small house), and ṣawmāʿa (hermitage) (Böwering and Melvin-Koushki). Of these, the term ribāṭ was the term used longest. In North Africa and Iberia, it referred to a private home used as a meeting place and residence by Ṣūfīs. By the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, in the eastern part of the Islamic world, the term khānaqāh/khānqāh predominated. Derived from the Persian word for “dwelling place,” this term was used to refer to Manichaean lodges; it was also adopted by the Karrāmiyya, a Central Asian ascetic movement (Böwering and Melvin-Koushki; Hofer [Ṣūfī Outposts] in this volume; Firouzeh in this volume). In the fifth/eleventh century, a fundamental change took place in the way in which many religious institutions were funded. Founders, many of them sovereigns or politically powerful people, established endowments known as waqfs to provide permanent sources of income for the institutions of their choice, often structures built on their instructions. A waqf was a legal instrument by which the founder ceded ownership over some property, in these cases usually urban real estate or agricultural land, whose rents would serve as income. The founder would designate a building to be used as a religious institution, the purpose of that institution, and the salaries to be paid to a variety of office holders to administer the endowment and provide the intended services. Waqfs were used to found a wide variety of institutions, such as madrasas

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(law schools), khānqāhs, zāwiyas (lodges), Ṣūfī shrines, Qurʾān schools for orphaned and poor boys, hospitals, and soup kitchens (imarets, an Ottoman term). Waqfs could also be founded to fund family trusts, and many endowments benefited both the descendants of the founder and a religious or charitable institution. This dual role made them a useful tool for wealthy and powerful people to protect their assets from seizure by a ruler or state after their death. Although not all waqfs were founded by wealthy or powerful persons, the spread of these endowments meant that Ṣūfīs received considerable patronage. This development accelerated their acceptance in official religious circles, and increasingly, from the Saljūq period onward, religious scholars also defined themselves as Ṣūfīs. The state-sponsored institution for Ṣūfīs par excellence was the khānqāh. The founder of the Ayyūbid dynasty, Ṣalāh al-Dīn b. Yūsuf (d. 589/1193; known in the West as Saladin) founded the first khānqāh in Cairo in 569/1174, after he had abolished the Fāṭimid caliphate. This institution was known as Saʿīd al-suʿadāʾ (lit., ‘Happiest of all,’ or ‘Best of the saved’), after the Fāṭimid eunuch whose palace it replaced; it provided lodging and a place of seclusion within the city of Cairo (Fernandes, 21). Its leader received the title shaykh al-shuyūkh (chief shaykh), and some 300 Ṣūfīs were provided with residential units where they could remain in seclusion and prayer (Fernandes, 23). They received a monthly stipend, as well as daily distributions of meat and bread. Additional food was distributed in Ramaḍān, and the Ṣūfīs also received regular rations of soap, oil, candles, clothing, and sweets. They could make the hajj at the khānqāh’s expense, and if they died with an estate valued at less than twenty dīnārs, other Ṣūfī residents could divide the deceased’s estate among themselves without interference from the state. They were not supposed to engage in any work outside the khānqāh (Fernandes, 24). Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn intended for his khānqāh to be a closed institution that provided a residence for foreign Ṣūfīs. This stipulation has been interpreted as part of his method to disestablish the Fāṭimid dynasty and its official religion, Ismāʿīlī Shīʿism (Fernandes). In the Mamlūk period, khānqāhs continued to be built, some by sultans such as al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn (d. 741/1341), who had one completed in 725/1324, and others by leading amīrs, such as Baybars al-Jāshnikīr (d. 709/1310), who finished one in 707/1307 (Fernandes, 29, 69). Not all were as well-populated as that of Salāh al-Dīn; Baybars’s foundation provided for 100 Ṣūfīs; while al-Nāṣir Muḥammad’s foundation provided for forty resident Ṣūfīs and sixty visitors (Fernandes, 69, 71). Increasingly, khānqāhs were incorporated into larger waqf complexes, many of which included a tomb for the founder and his descendants. Endowment deeds often stipulated that the Ṣūfīs pray for the souls of the founder and his family (Sabra, Poverty and

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charity, 99). This practice instituted a prayer economy in which the living religious devotees offered prayers for their dead patron and his or her spouse and descendants. The creation of residential lodges for Ṣūfīs who were banned from seeking outside employment also reinforced the parallel between the pious poor and the less fortunate paupers of society. Like the pious poor, ordinary paupers often offered prayers for their benefactors in exchange for the alms they received, a phenomenon that is still common in many Muslim societies today. At al-Nāṣir Muḥammad’s khānqāh outside Cairo, leftover food was distributed to the poor on a daily basis, and additional handouts were made to neighbours on major holidays (Sabra, Poverty and charity, 88). The larger waqf complexes had their own kitchens to feed the numerous beneficiaries and staff, and these kitchens often fed neighbours and the poor. In the Ottoman Empire, freestanding soup kitchens were known as imarets. While khānqāhs evolved into religious communities aimed primarily at foreign or travelling Ṣūfīs who were supported by sovereigns and other powerful individuals, zāwiyas were more often in private hands. The term zāwiya originally referred to a corner of a mosque that was used by a certain religious group for its meetings; later, from the ninth/fifteenth century onwards, it commonly denoted Ṣūfī institutions. Zāwiyas were funded by waqfs, but the range of their patrons was wider, and not all founders of zāwiyas came from the military or administrative elites. Typically, control over zāwiyas was given to a specific shaykh, who could then pass it on to a chosen successor, such as his son, or son-in-law. The endowment properties were often less extensive and valuable than those donated to found a khānqāh (Roded, 36). In rural areas, zāwiyas sometimes played an important role in the local economy. Unlike khānqāhs, zāwiyas were rarely intended to be closed communities, and the shaykh’s disciples often held other forms of employment elsewhere in the town or village. After the Ottoman conquest of the Mamlūk Empire in 922/1516–17, zāwiyas became the predominant Ṣūfī institution, and the ruling elite ceased founding khānqāhs in the former Mamlūk realms. One final Mamlūk institution is worthy of note: the women’s ribāṭ. Unlike the more general use of the term ribāṭ, this institution was founded specifically to provide a residence for divorced and widowed women, until they could remarry. The most famous of these institutions was the Ribāṭ al-Baghdādiyya, founded in Cairo in 684/1285 by Tidhkārbāy Khātūn, the daughter of Sultan Baybars (Rapoport, 40). Most were built in the late seventh/thirteenth and early eighth/fourteenth centuries in the Mamlūk realms. Women’s ribāṭs were closed residential institutions, and the women there were expected to devote themselves to prayer and religious instruction. Perhaps because they

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were closed communities, one ninth-/fifteenth-century manual that provides a model foundation deed describes it as a khānqāh for women (Rapoport, 41). It is notable that the person who presided over the ribāṭ was also a woman; she was given the title of shaykha. In general, women did not act as religious instructors in Ṣūfī institutions, but since all of the residents were women, the situation was unique. The shaykha led the residents in prayers, dhikr (remembrance of God), and delivered sermons. Over the course of the ninth/fifteenth century, women’s ribāṭs became less common and by the time of the Ottoman conquest of the Mamlūk Empire had disappeared altogether. The second major institutional development, which began in the sixth/ twelfth century, is the formation of Ṣūfī networks (ṭarīqa, pl. ṭuruq, lit., “way” or “path”). Mirroring the Sunnī schools of law, the Ṣūfī networks were named after the founders who supposedly established them. In most cases, the founders wrote relatively little, and the project of creating a network with canonical literature (including a hagiography of the founder), a set of rituals, and material assets, such as Ṣūfī lodges and shrines, fell to his successors. It is important to note that in most cases, Ṣūfī networks were informal and personal in character. Authority was passed down from one individual to another, whether within a family or to a close disciple, and each recognised shaykh was free to choose his own successor. There was relatively little vertical integration, and while some shaykhs clearly enjoyed precedence over others, they had a limited ability to select successors or control the distribution of assets (Sedgwick in this volume). In a number of cases, Ṣūfī networks took on political roles, and even established states. Typically, this sort of political role came in response to a collapse of state power in a certain region, especially a frontier where states did not exercise much authority (Papas in this volume; Vikør in this volume). The most famous case of a Ṣūfī-founded state is the Ṣafavid dynasty in Iran. Its founder, Shāh Ismāʿīl (r. 907–30/1501–24) turned his family’s Ṣūfī lineage into a revolutionary Shīʿī state in which the relationship between the shah and his followers was that of master and disciples. In this case, the rise of the Ṣafavids from a Sunnī Ṣūfī network to a revolutionary Shīʿī movement was preceded by a period of missionary activity among Turkmen tribes in eastern Anatolia. Another case of Ṣūfī revolutionaries took place in late ninth-/fifteenth-century and early tenth-/sixteenth-century Morocco. The inability of local Moroccan rulers to prevent Portuguese encroachment in North Africa led to a revolt in which the Jazūlī branch of the Shādhilī network assisted the Saʿdī dynasty in their rise to power. When the Saʿdīs (r. 916 to 1069 or 79/1510 to 1659 or 68) fragmented in the eleventh/seventeenth century, a similar process brought the ʿAlawī dynasty to the throne. In virtually every early modern Islamic state in the tenth/

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sixteenth to thirteenth/nineteenth century, Sufism played an important role in validating, though not necessarily establishing, dynastic power. In the Ottoman Empire, the Bektāşī network came to be associated with the Janissaries, the elite military unit recruited from the Christian population of the Balkans. When Sultan Maḥmūd II (r. 1223–55/1808–39) abolished the Janissaries in 1826, he also banned the Bektāşīs, although the network later recovered to some degree. The tekke (a Turkish term for a Ṣūfī lodge) of Hacı Bektaş (d. 669/1270) and dergāh (central shrine) received financial support in the form of endowments from the reign of Sultan Murād I (r. 761–91/1360–89). The institution, which contained the founder’s tomb, gradually evolved from an imaret into a Ṣūfī shrine (Faroqhi, The tekke of Hacı Bektaş, 183–4). The shrine eventually held a number of villages and a salt mine among its assets, although these assets fluctuated, depending on the political situation (Faroqhi, The tekke of Hacı Bektaş, 188). Initially, some of these properties were held as mālikanes (more or less private property), but over the course of the tenth/ sixteenth century these were turned into waqf endowments (Faroqhi, The tekke of Hacı Bektaş, 190). Local property owners donated their lands to the tekke, and to endowments associated with the Mevlevī network in the same area (Faroqhi, The tekke of Hacı Bektaş, 190). Over a period of centuries, the tekke of Hacı Bektaş received so many donations (from Ottoman sultans to local landowners) that it became one of the wealthiest Ṣūfī institutions in the region, although it was not as wealthy as the Mevlevī dergāh in Konya (Faroqhi, The tekke of Hacı Bektaş, 194). In spite of the connection between the Bektāşīs and the Janissaries, from the mid-twelfth/eighteenth to the twentieth century it was the supposed descendants of the founder who controlled the tekke (Faroqhi, The tekke of Hacı Bektaş, 207). The Bektāşī network existed on the periphery of what the Ottomans considered orthodox. The Naqshbandīs, on the other hand, were firmly in the mainstream. They recruited many religious scholars. In some places, their shaykhs were leaders of large mosques, but in Istanbul they had patrons who provided specific shaykhs with tekkes where they could teach (Le Gall, 48). Some were endowed by sultans, while others were established by and for Bukharan shaykhs. Some were established by women from Bukhara (Le Gall, 48–9). Other benefactors included members of the Ottoman military administrative class and middle-class people such as craftsmen, scribes, religious functionaries, and their wives. Some institutions received dozens of small donations over the years. Most Naqshbandī tekkes had modest material assets at their disposal. Although their tekkes were concentrated in certain neighbourhoods, the Naqshbandīs did not control all of the religious space in them, and other orders remained (Le Gall, 54).

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In Cairo, the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries saw a shift towards dominance of Ṣūfī networks by certain lineages that were organised as households, in a manner reminiscent of military administrative households (Sabra, Household Sufism in sixteenth-century Egypt). Two of these lineages, the Sādāt al-Wafāʾiyya and Sāda al-Bakriyya, presented themselves as branches of the Shādhilī network, which was popular with religious scholars and merchants. Others were associated with the Khalwatīs, some of whose followers came from the Ottoman ruling class. Finally, there was the Aḥmadī network, which was very popular in rural areas of the Nile Delta. By the end of the tenth/ sixteenth century, it was clear that the Ottoman authorities allowed the dominant lineages to control many of the religious institutions of Cairo in exchange for Ṣūfī support of the Ottoman dynasty. By the middle of the eleventh/seventeenth century, the Ottoman authorities recognised the existence of a number of hereditary Ṣūfī lineages as religious titles. The holders of these titles were called ṣāḥib al-sajjāda or shaykh al-sajjāda (master of the carpet), indicating that they had control over the assets of the lineage. These assets could be very substantial. By the end of the twelfth/eighteenth century, the Sādāt al-Wafāʾiyya controlled some fifty-two endowments, while the Sāda al-Bakriyya controlled forty-four (Marsot, 141). Most of these endowments dated to the Mamlūk period and had been inherited by the Ottomans. In principle, the assets held by the lineage head were all at his disposal, and he would use them to support family members, slaves, and employees, in addition to funding the religious activities he organised. By the early nineteenth century, the shaykh al-Bakrī also held the title of naqīb al-ashrāf (head [of the syndicate] of the descendants [of the Prophet]) and organised expensive and lavish celebrations of the Prophet’s birthday (Marsot, 145). When Shaykh Muḥammad al-Bakrī donated his waqf in 1779, he held property in real estate, grain, and coffee (Marsot, 146). Between 1807 and 1813 Shaykh Abū l-Anwār al-Sādāt donated properties that included real estate, merchants’ warehouses, a coffee house, orchards, ferry boats, and agricultural tax farms to his endowments, although his endowments were confiscated by the Ottoman governor Meḥmed ʿAlī (Marsot, 149–50). It has been suggested that the various Ṣūfī shaykhs used the lands they held as tax farms to carve out exclusive areas in which to proselytise for their network (De Jong, 41). Although it is unclear whether such a definitive delineation of territory existed prior to the nineteenth century, it seems likely that peasants living on lands held as tax farms or waqf lands that were controlled by a certain lineage would consider the lineage heads as their patrons. To all intents and purposes, the Ṣūfī lineage heads were a nobility whose clients included the inhabitants of villages under their control.

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Cities, Villages, Steppes, and Oceans

Ṣūfīs have been active in a wide range of societies, geographies, and ecologies. The classic matrix for examining religious thought has often involved distinguishing between the country and the city (Clayer in this volume; Ocak in this volume). Islam is often portrayed as an urban religion, and scholars tend to distinguish between the literate Islam of the urban scholarly class and the “popular” religion of the urban lower classes and rural areas. This two-tier model of religion has come under criticism by scholars of religion for a number of reasons. In his study of Moroccan Sufism, Vincent Cornell emphasises the interplay between popular and more specialised images of Ṣūfī saints (Cornell, xxxv–xxxvi). In doing so, he calls into question the juxtaposition of elite and popular, urban and rural religion. In his study of antinomian Sufism, Ahmet Karamustafa argues that the Qalandars were not an expression of popular religion or the survival of pre-Islamic practices, but rather a new form of religiosity that responded to “a historically specific social and cultural context” (Karamustafa, God’s unruly friends, 10). Like Cornell, Karamustafa denies that there was ever a clear distinction between the Islam of the elites and the Islam of the masses (Karamustafa, God’s unruly friends, 5). Furthermore, scholars of Sufism now acknowledge the existence of a much wider range of social and ecological structures into which Ṣūfīs are embedded. These include frontier societies, steppe societies, and oceanic networks and diasporas. Sufism appears to have originated in urban settings, and important founding figures such as al-Junayd (d. 298/910) and Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (325–412/937–1021) were active in Baghdad and Nīshāpūr, respectively. The patrons of Ṣūfī institutions were also urban based in most cases, and their patronage of Sufism in major cities reflected this fact. Cornell argues that Sufism spread in mediaeval Morocco as part of the diffusion of “Sunnī internationalism” (Cornell, 15, 106–7). Scholars who travelled to the East to perform the hajj and study played a crucial role in the diffusion of Ṣūfī ideas in the cities of Maghrib on their return. In the cities of the eastern Islamic world, Sufism often overlapped with the practice of futuwwa. Often translated as “chivalry,” futuwwa (Ar., P. javānmardī) literally means “youthfulness.” Initially, in Khurāsān, this ideology of ethical conduct was associated with frontier military organisations, urban associations, and Ṣūfī groups (Zakeri; Ridgeon, 29–45). It became an important part of the ideology of trade and craft guilds in the central Islamic lands. One such manifestation was in the akhīs of eighth-/fourteenth-century Anatolia. The term akhī probably comes from a middle Turkish word referring to a generous person, although the eighth-/fourteenth-century traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (703–70

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or 79/1304–68 or 69, or 1377) understood it to be the Arabic for “my brother” (Pancaroğlu, 63). The akhī associations appear to have been urban futuwwa groups composed of craftsmen and merchants who maintained lodges to provide hospitality to travellers, many of whom were engaged in commerce. The lodges provided communal meals and rituals, such as collective dhikr, and even singing and dancing (Pancaroğlu, 67). The leader (naqīb) of the association initiated new members in a ceremony that involved dressing in a specific item of clothing, such as a sash or trousers (Pancaroğlu, 69). Elites, including the early Ottoman sultans, supported the akhī associations and participated in their activities. A genre of writing called futuwwatnāmes (books of futuwwa) described the correct conduct of the “young man” (Pancaroğlu, 68–9; Taeschner). The caliph al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh (r. 575– 622/1180–1225), encouraged the spread of futuwwa and was a master himself. Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (539–632/1145–1234) spread the caliph’s message by authoring two treatises on futuwwa, and also used the opportunity to institute new regulations for the organisation of ribāṭs (Ohlander, 249–303). Al-Suhrawardī played an important role in the spread of futuwwa in Anatolia and Iran, where it became increasingly popular in the post-Mongol era. The Ottomans supported the construction of such lodges in frontier regions as part of their policy of settlement and pacification, and these often became selfsufficient economic institutions. There seems to have been considerable overlap between the Ṣūfī lodge, the akhī lodge, and the Ottoman soup kitchens (imaret) (Pancaroğlu, 73–81). The connection with craftsmen and merchants continued in Timūrid Iran, where a ninth-/fifteenth-century futuwwa manual makes the connection explicit (Ridgeon, 106). Whether one is speaking of eastern Anatolia or the Maghrib, mediaeval religious and political authorities tended to see cities as centres of power and orthodoxy and rural areas as potential sources of heresy. Rulers such as the Saljūqs in Iran and Anatolia; the Ayyūbids and Mamlūks in Egypt, Syria, and the Ḥijāz; the Ḥafṣids in Tunisia; and the Marīnids in Morocco promoted institutionalised Sufism in the major cities of their realms. They also used support for Ṣūfīs to extend normative religion to rural areas. In the process, Sufism was “popularised” to some degree, though most Ṣūfīs continued to adhere to Islamic legal norms. In Saljūq Anatolia after the Mongol conquests, religious and political elites competed for one another’s support. This competition often took the form of endowing institutions for Ṣūfīs, many of whom were refugees from the Mongols (Wolper, 22–3). After the Mongol victory over the Saljūq rulers of Anatolia in 641/1243, local amīrs began to assert themselves, providing an opportunity for increased patronage. This policy also helped the amīrs form alliances with urban elites, with the now greatly reduced authority

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of the Saljūq court (Wolper, 25–7). In this period the replacement of the Saljūq court with a number of competing amīrs also transformed urban spaces in towns such as Tokat, Amasya, and Sivas, as single state-sponsored institutions gave way to multiple foundations in each town, foundations that represented competing authorities (Wolper, 59). In the absence of a strong, stable state, Ṣūfī leaders sometimes served as intermediaries between local townsmen and peasants and their rulers. In the second half of the ninth/fifteenth century, Khwāja Aḥrār (806–95/1404–90), a Naqshbandī shaykh in Central Asia, developed a system of ḥimāyat (protection, clientage). Jürgen Paul has shown that Khwāja Aḥrār’s tenants, including peasants, craftsmen, and merchants, looked to him for protection from, and intervention with, the Timūrid rulers of his time (Paul, Forming a faction, 534). The shaykh was a landholder with considerable holdings throughout Central Asia, including some 250 plots that were endowed as waqf (Paul, Forming a faction, 537). In addition, because of his connections with the Timūrid court in Herat, he was able to negotiate tax reductions for himself and his clients (Paul, Forming a faction, 540). Finally, he established a spiritual centre in Samarqand that also served as a political and economic locus for himself and his successors (Paul, Forming a faction, 544). Cornell has shown that Ṣūfīs functioned as missionaries in areas of rural Morocco in the fourth/tenth century, establishing ribāṭs in the countryside to bring Sunnī Islam to areas that were thought to harbour Khārijīs and other “heretical” forms of Islam (Cornell, 33). Many of these new centres of learning were established along trade routes. Importantly, Ṣūfī instruction of this type sought to transcend tribal differences and create a more universal Islamic identity (Cornell, 55). In spite of this, Cornell notes that Sufism and its teachings were received in rural areas differently, according to region and ethnic groups. Holy men also served as mediators and intercessors between the rural population and their rulers, often tribesmen from different parts of Morocco (Cornell, 58). A study of the social origins of the mediaeval Moroccan saints finds that 50.6 per cent of them were Berbers, 41 per cent were Arabs, 42 per cent (including many Arabs) were from Fez, and 70.51 per cent were literate. This is not the profile of a peasant religion. Furthermore, 48 per cent were middle class, 38 per cent were lower class, and 14 per cent were upper class (Cornell, 104–8). Craftsmen, scholars, shopkeepers, and rural landowners predominated among Moroccan saints, although labourers, peasants, and pastoralists made up a significant proportion as well. Admittedly, these numbers are likely to be skewed somewhat, because they are based on written sources. Nonetheless, Ṣūfī writings, especially hagiographical works, often offer unusual detail about the lives of ordinary people

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in premodern Middle East societies. Unlike chronicles, which tend to focus on the ruler’s court, and biographical dictionaries, that usually concentrate on religious scholars, Ṣūfī hagiography offers information about urban craftsmen, and even rural people. One example of this is the life of Muḥammad al-Ḥanafī (c. 767–847/1365 or 6–1443), an Egyptian Ṣūfī shaykh who began his career as an orphan and was later apprenticed to a tradesman. He rebelled, and pursued a career as a religious ascetic and teacher. Eventually, he became so popular among the Mamlūk elite that he was able to intercede at the sultan’s court for his followers (Sabra, From artisan to courtier). Ṣūfīs have often served as pioneers in rural society and in newly conquered lands acquired by Muslim empires such as the Ottomans and the Mughals. In the late tenth/sixteenth and early eleventh/seventeenth centuries, the Mughal Empire sought to increase the revenue it extracted from its territories in Bengal. This meant increasing the production of rice, cotton, and silk, including that destined for export to Europe (Eaton, 202–3). As far back as the eighth/ fourteenth century, charismatic pīrs (P., shaykhs) developed a reputation for their ability to clear forests and create new areas for cultivation (Eaton, 208–10). In some cases, they did so under the authority of Hindu monarchs. Sometimes, Hindus provided the capital, while Muslims provided the labour, while other times, pīrs acted on their own initiative to organise local people to clear forests (Eaton, 222–4). Like many frontier societies, the Muslim pioneers of Bengal had a reputation for being egalitarian and ungovernable (Eaton, 225). As time went on, religious institutions, such as mosques and shrines, were built, and these institutions received some of the best lands in Bengal as donations (Eaton, 234–8). A similar dynamic was at work in tenth-/sixteenth-century rural Morocco. Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Jazūlī (d. 869/1465) and his followers encouraged pastoralists to give up their nomadic way of life and take up agriculture (Rodríguez Mañas, Agriculture, Ṣūfism, and the state, 457). They established new lodges to bring additional areas under cultivation. Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh al-Ghazwānī (d. 935/1528) combined missionary work with the development of irrigation, and established lodges that provided charitable assistance to the rural poor (Rodríguez Mañas, Agriculture, Ṣūfism, and the state, 458). Over the next century, a series of shaykhs in the countryside worked to develop rural areas into economically vibrant communities centred around Jazūlī lodges. They employed rural labourers, offered charity, and gave lands or tenancies to landless peasants (Rodríguez Mañas, Agriculture, Ṣūfism, and the state, 460). Donations were held in common by the lodges, and a social hierarchy based on religious authority determined how the lodge’s assets were utilised and the income was distributed (Rodríguez Mañas, Agriculture, Ṣūfism, and the state, 461). The novices did most of the manual labour. Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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Shrines, Donations, and Celebrations

The veneration of saints and the visiting (ziyāra) of shrines are often seen as characteristically Ṣūfī practices. This is only partly true. Shrines dedicated to deceased members of the Prophet Muḥammad’s family arose early in Shīʿism, and there is evidence that visiting the pious dead is a practice that goes back to the early third/ninth century, when the earliest known pilgrimage guide was written (Taylor, 5). Such guides were written with increasing frequency from the sixth/twelfth century onwards, an indicator of the growing popularity of visiting cemeteries. This development can be seen as part of the rise of vernacular Islam in the late mediaeval period (roughly seventh/thirteenth to ninth/ fifteenth centuries); once established, shrine visitation remained an integral part of vernacular religious practice, up to the present day (Mayeur-Jaouen in this volume). Vernacular religious practice can be defined as those specific to a given region or locale. Although such practices are widely defused among the population, they may also enjoy the support of learned and political elites. For this reason, it is problematic to identify vernacular religious practice with “popular religion.” Shrines are particularly good examples of this phenomenon, in that they often attract visitors from the same village, town, or city. Some shrines are places of regional interest, or become associated with a particular political regime or Ṣūfī network. There are saints’ shrines whose existence is unknown outside a small village, and there are shrines, such as that of al-Ḥusayn in Cairo, that are known throughout the Islamic world and beyond. In some cases, shrines have served as headquarters for a particular Ṣūfī order; the shrine of Hacı Bektaş discussed above is an example of this. Control over shrines and the income derived from pilgrimages to them was and remains a significant economic asset. In particular, the votive offerings (nadhr, pl. nudhūr) made at shrines can amount to a significant sum of money. This is in addition to endowments that benefit the shrine. It should be noted that this mode of piety is not restricted to Sufism or to Sunnism. Shīʿī shrines, such as those of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭalib in Najaf, Imām Ḥusayn in Karbala, and ʿAlī l-Riḍā in Mashhad, witness pilgrimages and religious devotions in some ways similar to what one finds in Ṣūfī shrines. Although in the mediaeval period visiting shrines provoked some criticism from figures such as Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, it was not until the rise of the puritanical movement led by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (1115–1206/1703–92) and his allies in the Suʿūdī dynasty that shrines became highly controversial. The veneration of saints and shrines, particularly among Ṣūfīs, is a major issue for modern Salafīs. Given the role of shrines in local and regional religious life and in the economy of many Muslim societies, attacks on Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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practices associated with shrines, and even on the shrines themselves, call into question traditional religious allegiances and economic relationships. The building of shrines and other funerary structures became increasingly popular in the late mediaeval period. In Iran, this was in the wake of the Mongol conquests, when Ṣūfīs played an important role in converting the Mongols to Islam. The Timūrid rulers of Iran and parts of Central Asia patronised many shrines in the ninth/fifteenth century (Subtelny, 196). The larger shrines were often funded by waqf, and the Timūrids made a point of renovating shrines that had fallen into disrepair and were not the property of a specific Ṣūfī lineage (Subtelny, 200). For example, three such shrines were those of the Ṣūfī ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī (d. 481/1089; a Ḥanbalī who fell well within the bounds of Sunnī orthodoxy) in Herat; that of Imām ʿAlī l-Riḍā (148–203/765–818; the eighth Shīʿī Imām) in Mashhad; that of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661; also regarded by Sunnīs as one of the rightly-guided caliphs and an important early Ṣūfī) in Balkh (for a detailed study of the latter, see McChesney). Given the veneration in which Sunnīs hold the family of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt, āl al-bayt), such shrines likely attracted both Sunnī and Shīʿī pilgrims. The shrine of Anṣārī first attracted patronage by Shāhrukh (r. 807–50/1405– 47) in 829–30/1425–6. Shāhrukh established the practice of weekly visits to the shrine on Thursdays, and the shrine served as a pulpit from which to espouse pro-Timūrid propaganda (Subtelny, 202–3). In 882/1477–8, Sultan Ḥusayn Bāyqarā (Timūrid ruler of Transoxiana, r. 873–911/1470–1506) built a funerary platform for the burial of several members of his family and the same location served as a ceremonial location for political purposes. Other members of the Timūrid elite also donated to the shrine’s endowments (Subtelny, 204). In addition, Sultan Ḥusayn exempted the shrine’s endowments from taxation, something that likely encouraged additional donations. The case of Mashhad is even more remarkable. With support from the Timūrids, the shrine city became one of the largest cities in Khurāsān, eclipsing Ṭūs-Nīshāpūr (Subtelny, 205). Architectural patronage came from Shāhrukh’s wife Gauharshād and their son Baysunghur (Subtelny, 206). The Ṣafavid dynasty also patronised this shrine as a Shīʿī alternative to the pilgrimage to Mecca, which was in the hands of Sunnī Ottomans (Subtelny, 207). The shrine had substantial endowments in agricultural lands, and this provided the bulk of its income. The supposed shrine of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib in Balkh was “rediscovered” in 885/1480–1 (Subtelny, 208). This sort of politicised discovery of a shrine was quite common. During the conquest of the city in 857/1453, Sultan Mehmed II is supposed to have rediscovered the burial place of the Companion of the Prophet Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī (d. 52/672) outside Constantinople, in an area

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now known as Eyüp. That site became the royal shrine of the Ottoman dynasty and was visited during the accession ceremony of each new sultan (Veinstein). After the conquest of Damascus in 922/1516, Sultan Selim I rediscovered the tomb of Muḥyī l-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (560–638/1165–1240). The Balkh site also had a long history of being regarded as a sacred place. The political significance of this rediscovery is underlined by the role of Sultan Ḥusayn Bāyqarā, with the assistance of the prominent Naqshbandī Ṣūfī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (817–98/1414–92) (Subtelny, 211). In order to preserve the special character of this site, the Timūrids suppressed information about other discoveries that might have led to the foundation of competing shrines. Sultan Ḥusayn had a domed mausoleum built over the site to encourage pilgrimages to it. Within a few decades, the shrine in Balkh was receiving one million dīnārs annually in votive offerings by pilgrims (Subtelny, 213). Again, a regional shrine could function as an alternative to the pilgrimage to Mecca, which in this period was in the hands of the rival Mamlūk Empire. This policy also had the effect of redirecting revenues and gifts that might have been sent to the Ḥijāz to regional shrines in Khurāsān and under Timūrid control (Subtelny, 214). The development of the shrine also promoted the status of Balkh as a city. As part of this larger agenda, the Timūrids renovated a major canal from the Balkh River to supply the city and its surroundings with water for irrigation. A similar policy was followed in the area around the shrine of al-Anṣārī (Subtelny, 216). The Balkh canal was held in part as state property, and in part as private property, which could become waqf. The result of irrigation was a substantial increase in the agricultural productivity of the region around Balkh. Sultan Ḥusayn also donated considerable endowments to the Balkh shrine, including residential buildings, a bazaar, shops, and a bathhouse. He privatised and then donated the state’s share in the canal, placing it under the administration of the shrine (Subtelny, 219–20). He may have done so in order to increase the productivity of the lands in question, and not merely to provide a source of income for the shrine. Nile Green has identified what he calls “shrine firms,” one of four types of religious firms that operated in Bombay in the period from 1840 to 1915, the other types being associations (anjuman), communities ( jamāʿat), and brotherhoods (ṭarīqa, translated in this essay as network) (Green, Bombay Islam, 15). In most cases, shrines were controlled by lineages of descendants of the saint buried there. They were often linked to Ṣūfī networks, and had the widest appeal of all of the types of religious firms that existed at that time (Green, Bombay Islam, 17). The use of the term “firm” suggests that shrines were economic in nature, whether these entities were controlled by lineages or founded by rulers as independent entities. Because they were relatively secure, usually

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through waqfs, they were free to pursue long-term economic planning and investment. There is an obvious parallel between the development of stable Ṣūfī households and the growth of shrine firms. To some degree, these two categories overlapped, although the assets held by the wealthiest religious households in Ottoman Egypt probably dwarfed those held by most shrines. The economic vitality of many shrines depended on the celebration of festivals, whether saints’ birthdays (mawlid, colloquial mūlid) or death commemorations (ʿurs). The former is typical in the Arabic-speaking world, while the latter is more common in South Asia. These annual celebrations bring together large numbers of people; in some cases, millions of people attend. The pilgrims make votive offerings in the shrines, buy souvenirs, and spend money on lodging, food, etc. One of the largest mawlids is the grand mawlid of al-Sayyid al-Badawī (d. 675/1276) in Ṭantā in the middle of the Nile Delta. Every autumn, after the planting season is over, as many as two million Egyptian peasants descend on the town for this event (Mayeur-Jaouen, 208). Unlike tenth-/sixteenth-century Balkh, twentieth-century Ṭanṭā did not depend on the shrine for its economic livelihood. In the early part of the century, it was an important industrial centre, providing cotton (Mayeur-Jaouen, 211). The popularity of the mawlid spread in part due to the development of modern transportation, particularly railways and paved roads, in rural Egypt. By 1963, 150,000 pilgrims travelled by train for the mawlid, while another 250,000 came by bus (Mayeur-Jaouen, 221). The annual income to the shrine from offerings also skyrocketed. In 1975, it was 98,000 Egyptian pounds, but by 1992 it was estimated that the sum had risen to two to three million pounds (Mayeur-Jaouen, 232–3). Even taking into account the declining value of the Egyptian currency, this is a substantial increase. The donation boxes are opened twice per month, with 4.5 per cent going to each khalīfa, 13 per cent to the personnel who operate the shrine, and 10 per cent to the state-sponsored Supreme Council of Sufi Networks (Mayeur-Jaouen, 233). Another case of a shrine whose popularity has grown in recent decades is that of Data Darbar, in Lahore, Pakistan. Data Ganj Bakhsh/ʿAlī Hujwīrī (d. c. 465/1072 or 469/1077), a saint and the author of an early Ṣūfī manual Kashf al-maḥjūb (Revealing the unseen), is buried there. His ʿurs (death anniversary) is commemorated annually, and is a well-attended pilgrimage in Pakistan. Until 1960, the shrine was in the hands of the sajjāda nashīns, hereditary administrators of the shrine, believed to be the descendants of the saint. This phenomenon is widespread in South Asia, and is similar to the ṣāḥib al-sajjāda in the Ottoman context. In 1960, the shrine was nationalised by the Pakistani government and placed under the control of the Ministry of Awqāf of Punjab. Beginning in the colonial period, there was an increased sense that

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the private management of religious shrines was enabling them to be used for personal enrichment, rather than for the pious purposes for which they were created (Strothmann, 6). As we have seen, this division between the public and private or material vs. spiritual does not reflect premodern Ṣūfī ideas. It relates more to the increased ambition of the modern state, and its attempt to regulate religious practice and reduce the political influence of traditional religious lineages. Strothmann notes that this shrine is atypical of South Asian shrines in three ways: it is not affiliated with a Ṣūfī network, its architecture has changed to reflect foreign aesthetics, and it is run by the government (Strothmann, 7). The modernist reformers Muḥammad Iqbāl (1877–1938) and his son Jāvīd (1924– 2015) were both very critical of the private administration of religious endowments and shrines, which they saw as a way to perpetuate reactionary forms of spiritual and political life. The establishment of state control over endowments was thus a way to stop “the paralyzing influence of the Mullah and Pir over the rural masses of Islam” and end “feudalism” ( jagirdari) (Jāvīd Iqbāl, quoted in Strothmann, 83). The decision to nationalise the shrine was part of a larger project of Islamic modernism, which sought to fundamentally reshape Pakistani religion, society, and politics. Another controversial decision was made to redesign the shrine to accommodate the increasingly large number of visitors. Historians and conservators were unhappy with the changes, which were completed in 1990. The complex reflects a modern, transnational design, rather than the historical roots of the shrine, but the changes allow clean and comfortable access to a wider range of people (Strothmann, 104). According to Pakistan’s Waqf Ordinance of 1979, the revenues of the waqfs taken over by the state can be used for any approved Islamic purpose, but 20 per cent must be spent on the shrine (Strothmann, 125). The sources of income of the shrine include votive offerings (50 per cent), rents from lands (16 per cent), rent from shops (12 per cent), service contracts, and shoe-keeping (5 per cent) (Strothmann, 125). As a major source of income for the Awqāf Department, the shrine of Data Darbar receives preferential treatment in comparison to smaller or rural shrines (Strothmann, 131). As the largest shrine firm in Pakistan, and one that has benefited from significant state investment, there is simply more to be gained by increasing the profitability of Data Darbar than by investing smaller sums in minor shrines of local significance. In terms of services, the hospital, madrasa, library, and research centre are funded directly by the Awqāf Department, and not by the funds collected by the shrine itself (Strothmann, 147). Organising the annual ʿurs is an important function of the shrine and involves a lengthy process (Strothmann, 205). Food is given away in large quantities at the shrine, and many poor people come to

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receive it. Poor, homeless, and runaway children (almost entirely boys) routinely turn up at the shrine to obtain food (Strothmann, 246–7). An NGO has been set up to address the problem of unaccompanied children and is funded by donations. In addition to the food provided by the shrine administration, people bring langar (food to be distributed) from home or purchase it in nearby shops and distribute it at the shrine in fulfilment of vows (Strothmann, 253). On the night of 1–2 July 2010, two suicide bombers allegedly belonging to the Pakistani Taliban attacked the Data Darbar shrine, killing at least fifty people, and wounding more than 200. This was not the first attack by a Salafī organisation against a Ṣūfī shrine in Pakistan; shrine desecration by Salafīs has taken place in recent years in many Muslim countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Mali, and Yemen. To date, these attacks have not had the intended effect of eliminating Ṣūfī practices. This is hardly surprising, given the religious and economic significance these shrines and their saints hold for local people. Indeed, shrines play an important role in defining local, regional, and national identity in most Muslim societies, in spite of the frequent criticism, that unorthodox religious practices allegedly take place there. Although Salafism often spreads through local networks and the influence of local preachers, its simplified version of Islam emphasises a universal adherence to the Prophetic sunna (example, or custom), with little tolerance for local traditions and folk customs. As we see, this hostility, or at least condescension, towards vernacular religious beliefs and practices is also characteristic of Islamic modernism. 5

State Regulation and Transnational Networks

Since the mid-nineteenth century, Ṣūfīs, their institutions, and their practices have come under increasing regulation by the colonial and Muslim states. As with the Data Darbar shrine, this regulation has often been linked to a modernist discourse about “popular” or “folk” religion and its allegedly backward customs and support for premodern social and political structures. In a few places, such as Republican Turkey and the Soviet Union, Ṣūfī networks were banned altogether and for many years only survived underground. In Saudi Arabia, under the influence of Salafī ideas of religious reform, Ṣūfīs were labelled heretical innovators and their shrines were systematically levelled. In recent decades, Salafī interpretations of Islam, fuelled in part by funding from the Gulf States, have spread throughout the Muslim world and in the Muslim diasporas. The nationalisation of religious shrines and teaching institutions, the banning of some Ṣūfī practices, and the rise of alternative religious movements and political parties have deprived Ṣūfīs of their leading role in religious

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philanthropy in much of the Muslim world. These alternative religious movements include the Muslim Brotherhood (in Egypt and other Arab countries), the AKP (Justice and Development Party, in Turkey), the Muḥammadiyya Movement (in Indonesia), and a host of Salafī groups. That said, it would be a mistake to conclude that Sufism is a relic of the past and that secularisation or the rise of Salafism means that Sufism will be replaced by more modern forms of religious practice and organisation. Ṣūfīs have proved remarkably able to adapt to new social and political developments and exploit possibilities provided by new technology. Ṣūfīs have made good use of tape cassettes, CD s, and DVD s to promote their distinctive music and rituals. One thinks of the Egyptian singer Shaykh Yāsīn al-Tuhāmī (1948–), whose recitations of Ṣūfī poetry to the accompaniment of music have become as popular as those of many pop singers, or the late Pakistani qawwālī (devotional music inspired by Chishtiyya performances) singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948–97), whose recordings received international recognition. There are now Ṣūfī satellite TV channels, and Ṣūfī orders have their own websites on the internet. Ṣūfīs have adapted quite well to the economic challenges of modernity. The earliest reforms challenging the social, economic, and political prominence of Ṣūfīs began in the nineteenth century. In 1812, the Ottoman governor of Egypt Meḥmed ʿAlī (governor, r. 1805–48) appointed Muḥammad al-Bakrī, the new shaykh al-sajjāda al-Bakriyya, to a supervisory role over all of the Ṣūfī networks and institutions in Egypt (De Jong, 20). This was a new office; no Ṣūfī leader had ever been invested with such sweeping powers. Frederick De Jong argues that Meḥmed ʿAlī’s intent in creating what amounted to a new position was to give himself the authority to control the material resources of the Ṣūfī networks and the teaching that went on in Ṣūfī institutions and circles (De Jong, 20–3). Al-Bakrī also served as naqīb al-ashrāf, giving him control over the endowments benefiting the descendants of the Prophet. Members of the Bakrī lineage held these posts for most of the nineteenth century. Beginning in 1847, the head of the Bakrī lineage had the sole authority to appoint the heads of Ṣūfī networks and administrators of Ṣūfī institutions and shrines (De Jong, 42). He adjudicated disputes over the jurisdiction (qadam, lit., “precedence”) of Ṣūfī networks (De Jong, 41, 51). There was also a need to avoid conflicts in the timing of mawlids, and al-Bakrī was responsible for organising the official celebrations of the Prophet’s birthday (De Jong, 57, 61). By 1892, control over the various Ṣūfī waqfs passed to the Ministry of Awqāf and in 1895 a council was set up to govern the Ṣūfī networks, with al-Bakrī at its head. In 1905, the principle of qadam was abolished and replaced with administrative regulations, bringing an end to an era (De Jong, 125–88). The Bakrīs remained titular leaders of the Ṣūfī networks in Egypt (shaykh mashāyikh

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al-ṣūfiyya) until 1946, but their power had long been diminished in favour of government institutions (Luizard, 9). After the overthrow of the monarchy in 1952, the new military rulers of Egypt took an increased interest in regulating Sufism, both to “modernise” it, and also to promote Sufism as an alternative to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was formally dissolved in 1954. In 1976, the Egyptian government issued new regulations governing the organisation and activities of Ṣūfī networks in Egypt, and establishing a new entity, the Supreme Council of Sufi Networks, to regulate them (Luizard, 10). By this time, many of the Ṣūfī shrines had fallen under the control of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, since they were historically important buildings. This model of governance and regulation is similar to Egyptian state policy towards secular cultural activities; these were regulated, for example, by the Supreme Council for Culture, which falls under the Ministry of Culture. Modern Turkey presents an even more restrictive example of state regulation of Ṣūfī activities. Following the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate and sultanate, a major rebellion took place in southeastern Turkey (in 1925). The leader of this revolt was Shaykh Said, a Kurdish Ṣūfī shaykh who wanted to reinstitute the caliphate. After the defeat of this revolt, the Turkish government banned all Ṣūfī networks (Yavuz, 52–3). The ban was not enforced uniformly. The Naqshbandī Ṣūfī networks were regarded with greater suspicion, for example, than the Mevlevīs. Nonetheless, many Ṣūfī networks and lineages lost control over their assets, especially shrines, which the Turkish Republican government treated as potential sources of sedition. In Ṣūfī circles, opposition to the secular policies of the government continued. The Nur movement founded by Said Nursi (1877–1960) emphasised an inward spiritual transformation, while Naqshbandī Ṣūfīs were more confrontational in relation to the government (Yavuz, 56). With the advent of a multi-party system and policies of economic liberalisation in the 1980s, Ṣūfī and other Islamic movements found greater opportunities to assert themselves. These political changes resulted in the creation of what Hakan Yavuz calls an “Islamic bourgeoisie” (Yavuz, 92). The new bourgeoisie was critical of the crony capitalism that plagued Turkey and proposed a different form of mercantile ethics, based on Islamic teachings. Ṣūfīs played an important role in the construction of this Islamic business class (Yavuz, 95). One by-product of this alliance between Sufism and capital was the creation of new forms of Islamic consumerism. These included private Islamic schools offering superior education, hotels offering “Islamic holidays” (without alcohol and with gender-segregated pools), etc. (Yavuz, 98). Today, virtually all major Islamic movements in Turkey have their roots in Sufism, especially the Naqshbandī Khālidī movement that swept the late

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Ottoman Empire (Yavuz, 135–6). This movement became a mainstay of the Ottoman political order, and after the closing of Ṣūfī tekkes in 1925, Naqshbandīs were extremely active in resisting the new policies of compulsory secularisation. Although the closing of Ṣūfī institutions had catastrophic effects for some Ṣūfī networks, the Naqshbandīs managed to regroup, and they continue to serve as mosque imams, civil servants, and as private teachers (Yavuz, 140). An important group emerged at the İskenderpaşa Mosque under the leadership of Mehmet Zahid Kotku (1897–1980); this group included a number of future political leaders in Turkey. Kotku and his successors taught that piety is not only reconcilable with wealth, but that commerce is a real and effective way to realise one’s spiritual values in society (Yavuz, 141–3). The Süleymancıs are a Naqshbandī network present in some parts of rural Turkey and among the Turkish diaspora in Europe. They are best known for offering Qurʾān classes and sermons that are not part of the state-regulated religious services of the Diyanet (Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs) (Hart, 195–6). Kimberly Hart calls the Süleymancıs a “neo-tarikat” because they use the traditional framework of a Ṣūfī network with certain modern innovations: They use modern media, such as radio, printed books, and television; they recruit individuals rather than entire families or groups; and they focus on immigrants or rural/urban migrants (Hart, 197). Migrants and immigrants make good recruits because they are often far from family and in an unfamiliar environment, where their religious values do not predominate. In these circumstances, the neo-tarikat provides not only companionship and spiritual community, but also a network to locate employment, find a spouse, etc. (Hart, 197). It must be noted that these characteristics are not all that innovative. Rural-urban migration is not a new phenomenon and the description of a traditional network applies to rural more than urban society, even in the premodern period. Hart also notes that in rural Turkey, unlike in Europe, the Süleymancıs operate much more like a traditional Ṣūfī network (Hart, 197). Like other Ṣūfī-inspired networks in contemporary Turkey, the Süleymancıs avoid the word tarikat (Ar. ṭarīqa) because of the ban on traditional Ṣūfī networks. Instead, they call themselves a cemaat (community), to avoid this negative association (Hart, 199–200). In particular, the Süleymancıs emphasise their freedom to leave the community if they wish, something they claim differentiates them from members of a tarikat. It should also be noted that membership in the Süleymancı network can lead to opportunities to emigrate abroad or migrate within Turkey. Students who complete their studies in Süleymancı schools can become hocas (religious teachers) elsewhere in Turkey or in Europe (Hart, 214). Their school system has now spread abroad as

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well. Since they practice strict gender segregation, they train female hocas to instruct all-female groups. Women trained in the Diyanet, by contrast, cannot be appointed as lower-level imams, although they can become public school religion teachers or preachers (Hart, 215). The Gülen movement is another Turkish religious group to emerge in the post-WWII era and define itself as a community (cemaat) instead of a Ṣūfī network (tarikat). Like the Süleymancıs, the followers of Fethullah Gülen are part of a transnational religious movement that emphasises the role of individual religious reform and education. The Gülen movement has its origins in the Nursi movement, a modernist Ṣūfī current that promoted the study of modern science while maintaining a critical attitude towards the secularising project of Republican Turkey. Gülen, known to his followers as hocaefendi (revered teacher), rallied many of the followers of Said Nursi after his death in 1960. In addition to Gülen’s writings, which have an international market, the movement had a newspaper Zaman, a TV station, a bank, and many businesses; yet the principle economic asset of the Gülen movement was its education system. This included a highly successful system of private schools in Turkey, as well as schools abroad, including charter schools in the United States (Hendrick, 136–43, 217–31). Economic activities are so central to this movement that a full discussion of them is beyond the scope of this essay; suffice it to say, the Gülen movement provides yet another example of the voluntary affinity between Ṣūfī networks as an organisational form and type of religiosity and neoliberal economics. The success of the Gülen movement in exploiting the opportunities provided by the neoliberal turn in Turkey’s economic policy, and in cultivating a form of pious capitalism, demonstrates the adaptability of Ṣūfī ethics and organisations. Perhaps the best-studied modern Ṣūfī network with regard to economics is the Murīdiyya, originally of Senegambia (and following independence in 1960, of Senegal and Gambia), and its various diaspora populations in Europe and North America, especially New York City. This network has played an important role in agriculture, especially in the cultivation of peanuts, but also expanded into urban areas, due to the migration of its followers from rural areas to cities. As Senegalese have migrated abroad, the Murīdiyya have become established in the diaspora communities and the network in Senegal has benefitted from the circulation of people, commodities, and remittances from the diaspora and to the home country. The Murīdiyya were founded by Aḥmadu Bàmba Mbàkke (1850–1927) in Senegambia, shortly before the beginning of French colonial rule in 1883 (Glover, 83). The son of a shaykh of the Qādiriyya network, Aḥmadu Bàmba was heir to a long tradition of Ṣūfī political activism in Senegambia and West

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Africa in general. The French colonisers regarded the Ṣūfī networks with some trepidation, since Ṣūfī shaykhs had led the resistance to French colonisation in many parts of North and West Africa. Alarmed by the spread of Aḥmadu Bàmba’s influence, the French exiled him to Gabon and then Mauritania, and only allowed him to return to Senegal permanently in 1907. The Murīdiyya interpret Aḥmadu Bàmba’s exile as evidence of his resistance to colonial rule, but his followers consistently avoided confronting the French, and eventually the French came to see the Murīdiyya as cooperative with French rule. Virtually all Murīds are Wolof, and studies of the spread of the Murīdiyya emphasise the importance of the collapse of the Wolof polities as a causal factor in the development of the group (Cruise O’Brien, 59–60). Initially, the order was entirely rural. The construction of railways connected these rural areas to the cities and to foreign markets, creating an incentive to bring new land into cultivation, especially for peanut farming. The French administration gave shaykhs title to large tracts of land to which the Murīd ṭalibés (disciples, students) emigrated in order to cultivate their estates (Cruise O’Brien, 65–6). These estates are called daras, from the Arabic word for house (dār) (Cruise O’Brien, 163). Families send their sons to work on the daras, where they did the arduous work of reclaiming marginal lands for cultivation. Unlike other Ṣūfī networks in the region, the Murīds established some daras in which there was little to no education. Cruise O’Brien argues that these daras were based on the Wolof tradition of collective work groups (Cruise O’Brien, 165). The ṭalibés either volunteered to submit to the shaykh and work on his dara, or were brought by their parents and left in the shaykh’s care. In most cases, the boys came from impoverished families. The dara provided a minimal degree of economic security, membership in a community, and, for those who served for several years, the possibility that the shaykh would provide for the ṭalibé’s marriage (Cruise O’Brien, 173). When the ṭalibé left the dara, he was a respected figure in his home village and might even receive a plot of land from his shaykh. In short, service in the dara, while arduous, provided a means of social mobility for poor, landless, and orphaned boys. In addition to the labour that the shaykhs received from their disciples, they also built patronage networks. After independence, these patronage networks made the wealthiest shaykhs into powerful political brokers who could recruit their disciples to vote in elections (Coulon). Peanuts remain central to the Senegalese economy, but as the economy developed and people increasingly migrated from rural areas to cities, the Murīdiyya evolved into urban religious societies, known as dahiras, from the Arabic word for a study circle (dāʾira) (Cruise O’Brien, 251). These societies organise religious rituals and collect donations to be sent to the shaykhs (Cruise

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O’Brien, 253). They also provide mutual aid for their members, such as assisting with medical care, marriage, or funerals (Cruise O’Brien, 255). The growth of the network also contributed to urbanisation in Senegal. The shrine town of Touba, where the founder is buried, is now the second largest city in the country, after Dakar. Each year, millions of Murīds participate in the Grand Magal, or pilgrimage, to the Great Mosque of Touba. This event is supported by donations from Murīds, including those in the diaspora communities abroad. Senegalese migrants have settled in a number of cities overseas, but perhaps the most vibrant Murīd community abroad is Little Senegal, in New York City (Kane, The homeland is the arena, 62). When they arrived in the United States, most of these immigrants were unskilled, undocumented, and had little knowledge of English, and so they worked as street vendors (Kane, The homeland is the arena, 63). Connections to the Murīdiyya have helped them to establish themselves and obtain vending licenses (Kane, The homeland is the arena, 65). Murīds established their own mosque, Masjid Touba. In the 1980s, Senegalese in New York were able to obtain citizenship and branch out into a variety of businesses, including money transfers, to allow immigrants and visiting businessmen to transfer money home. Gradually, Little Senegal grew into an ethnic enclave in the city. More than 75 per cent of the Senegalese immigrants are men, most of whom support families at home in Senegal (Kane, The homeland is the arena, 78). In addition to street vendors, many of these men drive gypsy cabs, especially in Harlem (Kane, The homeland is the arena, 80). Women often work as hair braiders, which can be a remunerative profession (Kane, The homeland is the arena, 81). Murīds began to organise dāʾiras in New York in the 1980s. Every three months, the donations collected were remitted to Touba (Kane, The homeland is the arena, 94). In the 1990s, the Murid Islamic Community of America was founded, providing an umbrella organisation for smaller associations throughout the United States. Many of the dāʾiras reproduce village social ties from Senegal (Kane, The homeland is the arena, 95). In addition, there are now women’s dāʾiras and NGO s. One such NGO funded a number of charitable activities in Touba, including the building of an 8 million-dollar hospital. The movement of funds also takes place in the opposite direction. When Masjid Touba was built in the 1990s, a prominent Murīd leader donated $55,000 towards the purchase of the building, which was to be acquired without recourse to an interest-bearing loan (Kane, The homeland is the arena, 96–7). With a reputation as hard workers and law-abiding citizens, Murīd communities have developed good relations with municipal leaders in New York and Atlanta. Every summer, the Murīd community of New York celebrates Murīd month, funded by contributions by community members (Kane, The homeland is the arena,

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151). The month is marked by an annual march, public prayers, and lectures (Kane, The homeland is the arena, 154–5). These events serve to reinforce community ties and demonstrate the integration of the Murīdiyya into New York City society. Shaykhs visiting from Senegal play an important role by reinforcing the transnational ties that bind all Murīds into a single community. The Murīdiyya are a remarkable example of Sufism’s adaptability to the changing economic and social conditions of modernity. From their origins as agricultural pioneers in the peanut industry, to the creation of new spiritual communities for migrants in urban areas, to their transformation into a transnational religious movement, the Murīdiyya epitomise the challenges and possibilities of capitalist development for modern Ṣūfīs. Bibliography Amīn, Muḥammad Muḥammad, al-Awqāf wa-al-ḥayāt al-ijtimāʿiyya fī Miṣr, 648– 923 H/1250–1517 M: dirāsa tārīkhiyya wa-thaqāfiyya, Cairo 1980. ʿĀmrī, Nillī, al-Walāya wa-l-mujtamaʿ. Musāhama fī l-tārīkh al-dīnī wa-l-ijtimāʿī fī l-ahd al-Ḥafṣī, Tunis 2001. Babou, Cheikh Anta, Brotherhood solidarity, education and migration. The role of the dahiras among the Murid Muslim community of New York, African Affairs 101 (2002): 151–70. Babou, Cheikh Anta, Urbanizing mystical Islam. Making Murid space in the cities of Senegal, IJAHS 40 (2007): 197–223. Böwering, Gerhard and Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Ḵānqāh, EIr. Buggenhaven, Beth Anne, Prophets and profits. Gendered and generational visions of wealth and value in Senegalese Murid households, Journal of Religion in Africa 31 (2001): 373–401. Chih, Rachida, Le soufisme au quotidien. Confréries d’Egypte au XXe siècle, Arles 2000. Copans, Jean, Les marabouts de l’arachide. La confrérie mouride et les paysans du Sénégal, Paris 1980. Cornell, Vincent J., Realm of the saint. Power and authority in Moroccan Sufism, Austin 1998. Coulon, Christian, Le marabout et le prince. Islam et pouvoir au Sénégal, Paris 1981. Cruise, Donal B. O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal. The political and economic organization of an Islamic brotherhood, Oxford 1971. Dale, Stephen F. and Alam Payind, The Ahrārī waqf in Kabul in 1546 and the Mughūl Naqshbandiyyah, JAOS 119 (1999): 218–33. De Jong, Fred, Ṭuruq and turuq-linked institutions in nineteenth-century Egypt. A historical study in organizational dimensions of Islamic mysticism, Leiden 1978.

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Eaton, Richard M., The rise of Islam and the Bengal frontier, 1204–1760, Berkeley 1993. Elboudrari, Hassan, Quand les saints font les villes. Lecture anthropologique de la pratique sociale d’un saint marocain du XVIIe siècle, Annales 40 (1985): 489–508. El Hour, Rachid, Pauvreté, charité et traditions culinaires des soufis-saints d’après les sources hagiographiques maghrébines (VIe/XIIe–VIIIe/XIVe siècles), JSS 3 (2014): 157–82. Faroqhi, Suraiya, The life story of an urban saint in the Ottoman empire. Piri Baba of Merzifon, Tarih Dergisi 32 (1979): 653–78, 1009–18. Faroqhi, Suraiya, The tekke of Haci Bektaş. Social position and economic activities, IJMES 7 (1976): 183–208. Faroqhi, Suraiya, Vakıf administration in sixteenth-century Konya. The zaviye of Sadreddin-i Konevi, JESHO 17 (1974): 145–72. Fernandes, Leonor, The evolution of a Sufi institution in Mamluk Egypt. The khanqah, Berlin 1986. Geoffroy, Éric, Le Soufisme en Egypte et en Syrie sous les derniers Mamelouks et les premiers Ottomans. Orientations spirituelles et enjeux culturels, Damascus 1995. Glover, John, Sufism and jihad in modern Senegal. The Murid order, Rochester 2007. Green, Nile, Bombay Islam. The religious economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915, Cambridge 2011. Green, Nile, Terrains of exchange. Religious economies of global Islam, Oxford 2014. Gross, Jo-Ann, The economic status of a Timurid Sufi Shaykh. A matter of conflict or perception, Iranian Studies 24 (1988): 84–104. Gross, Jo-Ann, The waqf of Khoja ʿUbayd Allāh Aḥrār in nineteenth-century Central Asia. A preliminary study of the Tsarist record, in Elisabeth Özdalga (ed.), Naqsh­ bandis in Western and Central Asia. Change and continuity (London 1999), 47–60. Gutelius, David, Sufi networks and the social contexts for scholarship in Morocco and the northern Sahara, 1660–1830, in Scott S. Reese (ed.), The transmission of learning in Islamic Africa (Leiden 2004), 15–37. Hanretta, Sean, Islam and social change in French West Africa. History of an emancipatory community, Cambridge 2009. Hart, Kimberly, And then we work for God. Rural Sunni Islam in western Turkey, Stanford 2013. Hendrick, Joshua D., Gülen. Ambiguous politics of market Islam in Turkey and the world, New York 2013. Hofer, Nathan, The popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173–1325, Edinburgh 2015. Kane, Ousmane, Les marabouts sénégalais et leur clientèle aux États-Unis, Afrique contemporaine 231 (2009): 209–28. Kane, Ousmane, The homeland is the arena. Religion, transnationalism, and the integration of Senegalese immigrants in America, Oxford 2011.

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Taylor, Christopher S., In the vicinity of the righteous. Ziyāra and the veneration of Muslim saints in late medieval Egypt, Leiden 1999. Trépanier, Nicolas, Foodways and daily life in medieval Anatolia. A new social history, Austin 2014. Veinstein, Gilles, Le rôle des tombes sacrées dans la conquête ottomane, Revue de l’histoire des religions 222/4 (2005): 509–28. Werner, Christoph, Vaqf en Iran. Aspects culturels, religieux et sociaux, Paris 2015. Wolper, Ethel Sara, Cities and saints. Sufism and the transformation of urban space in medieval Anatolia, University Park 2003. Yavuz, M. Hakan, Islamic political identity in Turkey, Oxford 2003. Yıldırım, Rıza, Dervishes, waqfs, and conquest. Notes on early Ottoman expansion in Thrace, in Pascale Ghazaleh (ed.), Held in trust. Waqf in the Islamic world (Cairo 2011), 23–40. Zakeri, Mohsen, Javānmardi, EIr. Zarcone, Thierry, Waqfs et confréries religieuses à l’époque moderne. L’influence de la réforme des waqfs sur la sociabilité et la doctrine mystique, in Faruk Bilici, Le waqf dans le monde musulman contemporain (XIXe–XXe siecles). Fonctions sociales, économiques et politiques: actes de la table ronde d’Istanbul, 13–14 novembre 1992 (Istanbul 1994), 237–48. Zarcone, Thierry, Writing the religious and social history of some Sufi lodges in Kashgar in the 20th century, in Ildikó Bellér-Hann, Birgit N. Schlyter, and Jun Sugawara (eds.), Kashgar revisited. Uyghur studies in memory of Ambassador Gunnar Jarring (Leiden 2017), 207–31. Zevaco, Ariane, From old to new Macha. Mass resettlement and the redefinition of Islamic practice between Tajikistan’s upper valleys and cotton lowlands, in Stéphane A. Dudoignon and Christian Noack (eds.), Allah’s Kolkhozes. Migration, de-Stalinisation, privatization and the new Muslim congregations in the Soviet realm (1950s–2000s) (Berlin 2014), 148–201.

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Chapter 2

Endowments for Ṣūfīs and Their Institutions Nathan Hofer The pious endowment, known in Arabic as a waqf (pl. awqāf ) or ḥabs/ḥubūs (pl. aḥbās) and in Persian and Turkish, respectively, as vaqf/vakıf, is an inalienable trust that enables a person to divert a portion of their wealth into a charitable or socially beneficial cause. More precisely, the waqf is a procedure in Islamic jurisprudence in which an individual (wāqif, or founder) lawfully alienates revenue-generating property on behalf of a designated beneficiary. The founder also names a trustee (mutawallī or nāẓir) who is paid from said revenue to maintain the property as an inviolable asset in perpetuity. The details of a waqf are recorded and legally witnessed in a waqfiyya or waqf-nāma (endowment deed), which includes descriptions of the property, the beneficiary, the trustee, and precise stipulations concerning the distribution of revenue. In theory, there are two types of waqf: the charitable endowment (waqf khayrī), in which the beneficiary is a public good or service—e.g., mosques, water fountains, hospitals, schools, soup kitchens, and so on; and the family endowment (waqf ahlī or dhurrī), in which the wāqif designates his or her own descendants as trustees and/or beneficiaries; and the revenues revert to a charitable cause when no descendants remain (Garcin, Le waqf). In practice, however, most endowments are a hybrid (waqf mushtarak), wherein the wāqif designates family members as trustees and a public service as beneficiary (for introductory overviews, see Abbasi; Peters et al.; Haji Abdullah; Dallal; Hennigan; Çizakça, A history). The waqf developed from early Islamic traditions and jurisprudence regarding donations and trusts (Oberauer, Early doctrines); it was systematized by Ḥanafī jurisprudents in the early third/ninth century (Hennigan) and subsequently elaborated by the Sunnī and Shīʿī schools of jurisprudence with a number of crucial differences in conceptualisation and execution (Haji Abdullah). Once introduced in the third/ninth century, the waqf replaced the charity tax (zakāt) as the primary economic vehicle funding the majority of public services and institutions in the Islamic world (Hodgson, 124). Its use was so widespread that at the beginning of the nineteenth century it is estimated that threequarters of all immovable property in the Ottoman Empire were alienated in endowments (Hennigan, xvii). The adoption of the waqf on such a large scale

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by wealthy and ruling elites is a result of a combination of factors (Ghazaleh, Held in trust): establishing a waqf is itself a meritorious act. The alienated property is (theoretically) exempt from taxation and (theoretically) protected against confiscation or seizure. The waqf permits the transfer of wealth across generations, as it supersedes laws of inheritance and circumvents state appropriations. But it may also be used to ensure that family members do not receive an inheritance, to create heirs outside the family, or to create local groups of solidarity, most commonly Ṣūfīs and/or jurists who belong to the same order or school (Bargaoui). Its charitable operations ameliorate class antagonism and social conflict. Assuming the waqf is managed properly (see Bakhoum), it drives regional economic growth and provides sustainable funding for infrastructure, both rural and urban (Zuki). As a tool of state patronage, it contributes to political stability by providing a socio-legal framework in which the ruling class subsidise the activities of scholars and local elites in exchange for the latter’s support for and legitimisation of the state. There are multiple reasons the ʿulamāʾ embraced waqf-financed patronage, despite the scholars’ traditional anxieties about receiving payment for scholarship. Foremost among these reasons was that the waqf facilitates the production and transmission of knowledge on a large scale. The construction of waqf-funded spaces provided scholars with room, board, learning materials, and stipendiary posts that offered both income and prestige (Berkey; Chamberlain; Ephrat; Makdisi, The rise). But more importantly, the nature of the waqf itself alleviated much of the scholars’ anxieties about the commodification of knowledge. As a charitable institution, the waqf was designed to compensate those who provide for the poor by recasting what is essentially a financial transaction into a pious act that endows the donor with baraka (blessing). As knowledge became an increasingly valuable commodity, the waqf served to organise the social relations between those who possessed it (ʿulamāʾ) and those who needed it (society), and thereby recast a potentially illicit payment for knowledge into a pious exchange of alms (in this case knowledge) for baraka (Décobert). Ṣūfīs benefitted from the waqf for the same reasons. The construction of khānqāhs, ribāṭs, zāwiyas, etc., facilitated the transmission of Ṣūfī thought and practice on a massive scale (Ephrat and Pinto in this volume; Firouzeh in this volume). Ṣūfī anxieties about payment were likewise alleviated by the pious social calculus of the waqf. Ṣūfīs are scholars possessing both discursive and experiential knowledge (ʿilm and maʿrifa); they are literally and metaphorically poor ( fuqarāʾ); and they are highly charged conduits of baraka. Endowments proved indirectly beneficial to Ṣūfīs in many ways as well: they learned new ideas, texts, or rituals that may have been developed in or transmitted through

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endowed spaces; they studied with a teacher who drew income from an endowment; or they had access to manuscript copies donated as an “eternal endowment” (waqf muʾabbad) to a local library (Sublet). From the third/ninth century to the present, endowments have subsidised the development and transmission of Sufism across the Muslim world. The waqf provided Ṣūfīs with spaces to congregate, it housed them, fed them, funded their travel to and lodging in Mecca, paid their salaries, bought their political loyalty, supported their mawlid (Prophet’s birth) celebrations, enriched their families, bolstered their social capital, incentivised their settlement in frontier zones, financed construction of their tombs, and underwrote their saintly afterlives. A full accounting of Sufism as a historical phenomenon requires significant attention to the material conditions that shaped the many Ṣūfī “sociabilities” that in turn shaped Islamic civilisation (Gaborieau). Reconstructing those conditions will necessarily entail the study of endowments founded by and for Ṣūfīs. The first in-depth scholarship devoted to Ṣūfī endowments appeared in the early 1980s as part of the so-called second stage, or wave, of waqf studies (Hoexter, Waqf studies). These early studies of Ṣūfī endowments focused on the wealth of economic and social data contained in the extant waqfiyyas for Ṣūfī lodges or shrines. Much of this data is unavailable in other sources and have significantly improved our understanding of the political contexts and institutional frameworks through which Sufism flourished, particularly after the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries (e.g., Mahendrarajah, The shrine; Mahendrarajah, The Gawhar; Schwarz). The history of a particular Ṣūfī endowment is best understood in terms of both the founding stipulations of the waqfiyya and the subsequent management of the waqf properties and revenue. Political and social contexts change; later jurists interpret earlier rulings differently; and supervisors may interpret the founder’s stipulations as the situation demands. The legal maxim shurūṭ al-wāqif ka-naṣṣ al-shāriʿ (i.e., “the stipulations of the founder are like the decrees of the Lawgiver”) was oft-violated. One must pay attention to the wealth of contextual and historical detail from other sources in order to reconstruct the history of the property or organisation in the long term, not the history of the document in the short term (Deguilhem, The waqf; Shatzmiller; Singer, 303–4). Unlike the first wave of waqf studies and its stereotype of mismanaged and inefficient waqfs, studies of the longterm management of waqf have shown that they were typically run efficiently and carefully, and generated a long and rich documentary trail (Hoexter, Endowments; McChesney, Waqf ). The shrine of Muḥammad Bashārā in Mazār-i Sharīf, for example, is five hundred years old and the documentary record left in its administrative wake is extraordinarily large (Gross). By extracting waqf

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studies from the confines of legal history, scholars from the second wave have had a much larger impact on Islamic studies, including Ṣūfī studies. The extent to which the second wave have penetrated the larger milieu is clear from the publication of special issues devoted to the waqf in prestigious journals: The Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient (1995) and Islamic Law and Society (1997); the publication of a collection of methodological and historical studies of waqf across the Islamic world (Deguilhem, Le Waqf ); and Mariam Hoexter’s state-of-the-field survey published in 1998 (Hoexter, Waqf studies). The larger scope and visibility of this scholarship has precipitated what one historian has described as a third wave of waqf studies that is characterised by its multi-disciplinary engagement with other fields (Moumtaz, Theme issue). These scholars have brought waqfs into conversations about the public sphere (Hoexter, The waqf), citizenship (Isin), the nation state (May, God’s land; Moumtaz, Is the family), neoliberal governance (Atia), and the cultural roots of capitalism and European economic power (Choudhury; Kuran, The provision; Kuran, Institutional roots; Kuran, The long divergence; Shatzmiller). One indication of the importance of this work is the prominence of Islamic studies in a recently established academic journal devoted to multi-disciplinary, comparative studies of endowments (Chitwood et al.). This work has much to offer historians of Sufism (e.g., Erie), though it engages with Ṣūfī studies only tangentially. This state of affairs is at least partially due to the fact that there is so much scholarship now that it is simply impractical to engage with all of it (McChesney, Waqf, 3–4). Recent bibliographic surveys show that, in the last forty years, scholars of endowments have produced a mountain of Himalayan proportions (Durmuş and Kaya; Islahi; Rashid). Furthermore, Ṣūfī studies and waqf studies are animated by separate discourses that, while overlapping to some degree, developed from different sets of questions, sources, conceptualisations, approaches, and biases. In terms of Ṣūfī endowments in particular, the result has been a proliferation of studies devoted to specific Ṣūfī spaces (e.g. Blair, Ilkhanid; Fernandes, The foundation; Hallenberg; Mahendrarajah, The shrine; Mahendrarajah, The Gawhar; Schwarz); or to Ṣūfī life in specific places (Bölükbaşi; Chabbi; Ephrat and Mahamid; Faroqhi; Fernandes, Three Sufi; Fernandes, The evolution; Homerin; Lifchez; Little; Roded); or to surveys of endowments that include Ṣūfīs and Ṣūfī life among other illustrations (ʿAfīfī; Amīn; Deguilhem, Le Waqf; Deguilhem and Hénia; Ghazaleh, Held in trust; Hennigan; Lambton; Lev, Charity; Peters et al.). But there has been no synthetic history of Ṣūfī endowments in general. One way to narrate a more comprehensive history of Ṣūfī endowments is to focus on specific patterns of Ṣūfī social activity, the role that endowments play

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in shaping or facilitating those patterns, and how both Ṣūfī activity and endowments change over time. In these terms, the history of Sufism can be heuristically divided into a number of unique morphological patterns. Each pattern is characterised by the dynamic relationship between the changing political and material conditions created by endowments and changing patterns of Ṣūfī social activity. Changes to one element of the social ecosystem produced noticeable adaptations in the others. Innovations in the use of the waqf after the seventh/thirteenth century meant that it could fund an increasing variety of architectural projects, public services, and forms of patronage. One tangible result of this patronage was the consolidation and dissemination of distinctly Ṣūfī modes of authority that in turn shaped Timūrid, Ṣafavid, and Mughal notions of royal authority (Moin; Rahimi; Rizvi). Likewise, Mamlūk and Ottoman rulers developed creative ways to fund their patronage of Ṣūfīs. These methods included the waqf irṣādī, in which lands from the public treasury were alienated as endowments (Cuno; Haji Abdullah, 55; Hernandez; Johansen), and the cash waqf (Çizakça, Cash; Mandaville). Competition for these resources contributed to the anti-Ṣūfī Ḳāḍīzādelī movement and changed the social and political landscape of Ottoman Istanbul and the provinces (Baer; Sariyannis; Ulumiddin; Green). In these ways, existing patterns of Ṣūfī activity persisted in new material conditions and new patterns developed. At the centre of this developmental process were the transmission of accumulated knowledge and the reproduction of social relations across time and space. From the vantage point of endowments, then, the history of Sufism is not a strict chronology of sequential events, but rather a diachronic morphology of accumulating social patterns across Muslim society. The first patterns of Ṣūfī activity emerged in third-/ninth-century Iraq and are characterised by innovations in devotional practice, conceptual language, and notions of prophetic authority. Baghdad in particular had a thriving intellectual and devotional culture that was a central factor in the development of Ṣūfī thought and practice. The city was home to a number of pious movements that had sprung up in the wake of the Islamic conquests. These included the murābiṭūn—pious warriors who defended the frontier by day and practiced their devotions at night; the zuhhād—wandering renunciants who rejected the trappings of social life in favour of a praxis of ostentatious self-mortification; and the ahl al-ḥadīth—traditionists who collected and transmitted traditions about the Prophet Muḥammad in order to model their piety on his exemplary ideal (Melchert). The Ṣūfīs drew on the language of the latter in particular (Thibon, Transmission). Furthermore, the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s (r. 198– 218/813–33) efforts to consolidate the power and authority of the caliphate

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created a vibrant intellectual culture in Baghdad. On one hand, he supported and generously funded the palace library at the Bayt al-Ḥikma, patronised the translation of Greek learning into Arabic, and held debates in his salon. On the other hand, he designated an ʿAlid as his successor and established a religious test (miḥna) for judges and jurists (Nawas). Al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s activity injected Aristotelian problems into Muslim theology and galvanised the renunciants, jurists, and ḥadīth folk against him. The early period of Ṣūfī innovation must be understood against this social, political, and intellectual backdrop, much of which was made possible by endowments. The earliest endowments were donations of weapons, horses, and houses in support of the jihād along the frontier (Gil; Peters). In these defensive outposts, or ribāṭs, pious militants and renunciants mingled and practiced the devotions that Ṣūfīs adopted and adapted in the jihād against the self (Garcin, Assises; Martire; Hofer [Ṣūfī Outposts] in this volume). Furthermore, many of the rural inns, caravanserais, and provisions for travelers in the early ʿAbbāsid era were funded by endowments from wealthy patrons (Spuler et al., 437–8). And al-Ma‌ʾmūn himself established a large endowment to fund his intellectual projects, including the palace library known as the Bayt al-Ḥikma, although it is unclear how much of the archival activity that happened there was in fact connected to his other political efforts (Algeriani and Mohadi; Gutas and van Bladel). Finally, the operational costs of the mosques in which Ṣūfīs convened their teaching circles, such as the Shūnīziyya in Baghdad, were funded by the public treasury, which relied in part on charitable donations for this purpose. The second morphological pattern developed as Ṣūfīs from Baghdad began to travel to Khurāsān, just as the waqf was becoming a more prominent economic vehicle aiding the transmission of knowledge. This pattern is characterised by the systematisation of Ṣūfī thought and practice in communal spaces and the production of a specific Ṣūfī literature. These communal spaces, khānqāhs and ribāṭs, were likely modelled on the khānqāhs of the Karrāmiyya (Zysow). By the fifth/eleventh century, there were Ṣūfī khānqāhs in every major town in Khurāsān and Central Asia (Lewisohn). Ṣūfīs began to live in these lodges communally, according to rules of conduct (ādāb), a practice that began with Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049) (Meier, 310–1). While Ṣūfī communal life was spreading across the region, there was a flurry of literary activity in the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries, in which Ṣūfīs produced texts across several genres (hagiographies, biographical dictionaries, practical manuals, and lexicographies), the purpose of which was to create a coherent tradition that linked Sufism’s present to the Muslim community’s sacred past. While we do not know the details or extent to which these Ṣūfī lodges were endowed

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(Karamustafa, 127), there is no doubt that Ṣūfī activity was facilitated by the introduction of endowments to fund madrasas and khānqāhs during this period (Malamud). There were already a number of endowed centres of learning in Baghdad in the early fourth/tenth century (Makdisi, Muslim institutions). And the first madrasas and khānqāhs associated with Ṣūfīs appeared in Nīshāpūr shortly thereafter. Both al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) and al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) were known to have taught Sufism at endowed spaces in Nīshāpūr: al-Sulamī at his duwayra (Thibon, L’oeuvre, 238–44) and al-Qushayrī at his madrasa (Malamud, 430–1). In general, endowments during this era furnished the capital—social, cultural, and economic—that these early Ṣūfīs required to fund the early stages of what Alexandre Papas has called the “Sufi patronage of patrimony and memory” (Papas, Toward a new history, 88). A third pattern of Ṣūfī activity can be seen as the earlier patterns of innovation and systematisation continued to develop in the context of the Saljūq and post-Saljūq military patronage states. This pattern is characterised by two major innovations to the political economy of the region. First was the Saljūq’s patronage of scholars and Ṣūfīs to promote a particular ideological program of political legitimisation (Safi). The second was the waqf policy in Syria of Nūr al-Dīn Zangī (d. 569/1174) which Stefan Heidemann describes as “the systematic use of a legal instrument of private law for general public duties and purposes, which fell—in the broad sense—under the responsibility of the state” (Heidemann, 155). The combination of these two innovations— state patronage of Sufism and waqf-financed public services—allowed the Zangid and Ayyūbid sultans to undertake a massive campaign of public piety (Talmon-Heller). From this point on, nearly all Muslim rulers began to fund public services and patronise scholars using awqāf instead of the public treasury (Lev, The ethics, 612; Sabra, 69–71). At the same time, economic opportunities for Ṣūfīs in the East were becoming increasingly scarce. Economic crises brought a sizable number of Khurāsānī scholars to Baghdad, Damascus, and eventually Cairo beginning in the mid fifth/eleventh century (Gilbert). Many of these scholars were Ṣūfīs who brought the Khurāsānī model of the khānqāh to Baghdad, where they founded similar lodges known there as ribāṭ and which subsequently spread as far as Morocco (Chabbi). The Ṣūfīs who passed through these ribāṭs were some of the most influential scholars of ḥadīth of their time and enjoyed increasing levels of patronage by the ruling class (Van Renterghem). These rulers established Ṣūfī organisations and patronised Ṣūfī individuals by setting up endowments to pay for the construction of lodges, hospices, tombs, or other spaces for Ṣūfīs to gather. In addition to providing stipends for Ṣūfīs and salaries for a “head Sufi” (shaykh al-shuyūkh), revenues

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from these endowments paid the wages of the construction workers, the waqf supervisors, the cooks, custodial workers, singers, bath attendants, and maintenance crews. This model was widely replicated and created the conditions in which Sufism exploded in popularity across the Muslim world. Between the seventh/thirteenth and tenth/sixteenth century, for example, the number of Ṣūfī lodges in Damascus doubled, from 38 to 76 (Miura, 13). The Mamlūks founded and endowed hundreds of Ṣūfī lodges, large and small (Fernandes, The evolution; Homerin; Little); as did rulers in the Mongol Īlkhānate (Blair, Ilkhanid; De Nicola, Patrons; De Nicola, The ladies; Lambton; Mahendrarajah, The Ṣūfī); in Marīnid Morocco (Cornell; Sanseverino); in Timūrid and postMongol Central Asia (Arbabzadah; May, The relationship; McChesney, Earning a living; Subtelny); in Mughal India (Ernst); and so on. In addition to their patronage of living Ṣūfīs, Muslim ruling elites also began to patronise the dead. Rulers would often alienate properties for the construction and upkeep of shrines at the graves of Ṣūfīs that had become regular objects of pilgrimage (Khan in this volume). The shrine-complex differed from region to region in its form, but the function was generally to produce a built environment in which visitors could find family, belongings, and other miscellanea belonging to the shaykh; the tomb of the shaykh; a mosque; and some space for accommodating short- and long-term visitors. By the eighth/ fourteenth century, these types of buildings had become so numerous across the entirety of the Muslim world that one could travel from the Maghrib to South Asia without paying for lodging (Blair, Sufi saints). Ruling elites who created large endowments on behalf of Ṣūfīs and saints not only benefited from the social and cultural capital generated by their patronage, but also gained the means to raise economic capital for large projects in need of financing. Despite the large sums required to found such an enterprise, the revenues of a waqf often exceeded the stipulated disbursements. In one example from eighth-/fourteenth-century Egypt, two-thirds of the revenue from one individual’s large waqf holdings were unassigned (Taher and Garcin). And the last two Mamlūk sultans held massive waqfs in which 90 per cent of the revenues were unassigned (Petry, Fractionalized estates; Petry, A Geniza). The unassigned revenue functioned as a kind of slush fund that provided economic security in turbulent years or funded construction and agricultural efforts. After conquering Baghdad, for example, Hülegü reinstated the official waqf supervisor and rebuilt Baghdad with the resulting revenue (Gilli-Elewy, 170). The Timūrid sultans used complex forms of the waqf mushtarak to endow lodges and shrines that served as vehicles for wealth preservation and imperial agricultural reforms (Dale; Mahendrarajah, The Gawhar; Subtelny, 192–234).

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At the same time, Ṣūfīs with means founded and endowed lodges and shrines of their own on an equally large scale. In the broader context of state and local patronage of Ṣūfī lodges and shrines, yet another pattern of Ṣūfī activity emerged as the disciples of well-known shaykhs and pīrs reproduced and transmitted the unique method (ṭarīqa) of their masters. The post-mortem institutionalisation of a Ṣūfī masters’ method, reputation, and sanctity was one of the critical components of the development of Ṣūfī orders (Sedgwick in this volume; Ceyhan in this volume). This process depended, to large extent, on access to the material resources necessary to build, maintain, and accommodate visitors at the shrine or lodge of a Ṣūfī master. Revenue from endowments, either established by a wealthy patron or a Ṣūfī with means, provided the resources to maintain the social milieu in which Ṣūfīs practiced and propagated the master’s ṭarīqa (Papas, No Sufism). Endowed lodges and shrines were of central importance in the early appearance of a number of orders, including the Suhrawardiyya (Ohlander), Shādhiliyya (Hofer), Mevleviyye (Holbrook), Kubrawiyya (DeWeese), Naqshbandiyya (Paul), Mujaddidiyya (Dale and Payind), and Chishtiyya (Ernst and Lawrence)—to name only a few. Once established, endowed Ṣūfī lodges, particularly those associated with a specific order, often developed increasingly complex functions and became critical to the regional economy. Similarly, the creation of shrine complexes drove economic growth as benefactors expanded the precincts of the shrine itself and added new structures for lodging, food, and other activities. New construction and upkeep often depended on the strategic leveraging of existing endowment revenue for the acquisition of new properties to be alienated as waqf. Ṣūfī lodges and shrines could drive urbanisation as much as urban spaces transformed Ṣūfī life and practice (Hallenberg; Karataş, The city; Karataş, The Ottomanization; Mañas; McChesney, Waqf; Rodriguez-Manas; Wolper; Yürekli; Clayer in this volume). Indeed, a distinct pattern of Ṣūfī activity that has been described as “colonizing Sufis” (Green, 133) is characterised by the use of endowments to bring organised Sufism to new regions. Here one finds imperial expansion carried out by offering Ṣūfīs land grants, endowments, or other enticements to colonise or tame new regions of the world. In the early stages of their expansion, the Ottoman armies granted newly annexed territories to Ṣūfī dervishes in exchange for their military, political, or colonial assistance (Kafadar). When sultan Meḥmed II conquered Constantinople in 857/1453, he declared himself wāqif over the entire city, and then parcelled out land to subordinates to supervise as waqf irṣādī in order to rebuild the city and attract scholars to the new capital (Atçıl, 61). Ṣūfī dervishes utilised land

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grants and endowments to establish lodges that often developed into vital social and economic centres, functioning as “vectors of colonization” that were critical to the Islamisation of the Balkans (Yıldırım), Bulgaria (Koltaş), northern Greece (Lowry), and Bosnia (Aščerić-Todd). One finds a similar pattern with the Delhi Sultanate (Eaton, The Sufis; Huda); and the Mughal expansion into Bengal (Eaton, The rise; Kozlowski). There are also cases in which Ṣūfīs used endowments to settle new areas of their own initiative. The Islamisation of the Maldives began in earnest when a local Ṣūfī returned from study in Ḥaḍrawmawt and established a khānaqāh in Vadu in 980–1/1573 (Peacock, 65). Likewise, waqfs were central to the establishment of Ṣūfī networks in the Western Indian Ocean region during the nineteenth century (Bang). For subSaharan Africa the picture is different. Given a vastly dissimilar economy of resources in the Islamic regions stretching from West Africa to the Nile Valley, the use of waqf was rare (Hunwick). Rather, in exchange for “spiritual services rendered or to come,” rulers granted Ṣūfīs and their families regional administrative privileges, land grants, or tax exemptions. These financial mechanisms were instrumental in the Islamisation of the region and the establishment of overlapping Ṣūfī networks (O’Fahey). Similarly, in the nineteenth century the Sanūsī order established a network of lodges spanning the trans-Saharan trade route by developing land the local Bedouin had granted them. These lodges were nominally waqf properties, but only in the sense that the Ottoman authorities granted them that status because they were unable to tax them (Vikør, Sufism and social welfare). These lodges were all based on organisational principles articulated by al-Sanūsī (d. 1276/1859) himself, whose directions concerning the founding of zāwiyas were very precise (Vikør, Sufi and scholar, 189). Finally, there is a pattern of Ṣūfī activity unique to the European colonisation of Muslim areas and post-colonial nation states. This pattern is characterised by Ṣūfī interactions with colonisers mediated through endowed lodges, colonial attempts to centralise control of endowments in order to extract their revenue, and the post-colonial nationalisation of endowments and interference with the operation of Ṣūfī orders. There was no single Ṣūfī response to colonialism or single valence to the character of Ṣūfī interactions with colonial authorities (Vikør, Sufism and colonialism; Voll; Papas in this volume). Some Ṣūfīs allied themselves with colonial authorities, such as the Tījāniyya in Algeria. Other Ṣūfīs fought against colonial rule, using their networks of lodges supported by endowments to organise the resistance (Medici; Vikør, Sufi and scholar). In any case, we must take care not to assume that the Ṣūfī affiliation of the leaders or members of an anti-colonial movement necessarily indicates

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the Ṣūfī character of the resistance movement itself (Knysh, 294–300). There is more uniformity of activity with the European and Ottoman authorities’ centralisation of control over the awqāf in their territories. Europeans generally found the waqf baffling—an economic institution neither public nor private—and colonial authorities attempted to take control of them or nullify them in a variety of ways (Çizakça, A history; Medici; Powers). For Ottoman administrators, a combination of external and internal pressures to modernise the Ottoman economy led to a concerted policy of centralisation. In 1826 the sultan Maḥmūd II (r. 1223–55/1808–39) began a multi-year project to reorganise endowments under the supervision of the ministry for waqf affairs. This policy had disastrous consequences for endowments, as larger portions of the revenue were needed to pay the bureaucrats’ salaries, many of whom then embezzled even more money from the waqf revenue (Argun, 240–3; Barnes; Çizakça, A history, 75). As a result, most scholars—including Ṣūfīs—saw their income and political power decline dramatically (Singer). The gutting of the waqf revenue alongside the growth of European-inspired municipalities with their tax-driven provision of social services, ultimately led to the obsolescence of the waqf system in Ottoman territory (Kuran, The provision). While many endowments survived colonialism and the dissolution of premodern Islamic states, they typically did so only under the auspices of centralised bureaucracies. For example, in the 1930s, the Turkish Republic pursued the same Ottoman centralisation policies and ultimately nationalised the awqāf (Zencirci). There are similar continuities between the colonial and the post-colonial management of awqāf elsewhere. Most nation states centralised control of the endowments within their borders; the unique character of each state produced different results in terms of politicising endowments (Kogelmann, Islamische fromme Stiftungen; Kogelmann, Die Entwicklung). Acting as representatives of a reformist political Islam, a number of post-colonial states instituted restrictive “policies of bureaucratizing Sufi lifeworlds” in order to marginalise Ṣūfī leaders or banish them from the public sphere (Malik, 588). These policies included one or more of the following tactics: eliminating existing waqf ahlī and preventing the establishment of new ones; effectively nationalising the awqāf by placing existing waqf khayrī under the regulatory purview of the state, typically in a ministry of endowments; confiscating waqf properties in order to redistribute them to the private sector; and restricting waqf supervisors’ use of traditional legal instruments to keep the awqāf solvent (Sait and Lim, 161–4). Both the Egyptian and the Syrian governments made concerted efforts to maintain tight control of Ṣūfī endowments and Ṣūfī orders (Luizard; Pinto). In Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s ḥamlat al-ʿawda ilā l-īmān (or al-ḥamla

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al-īmāniyya; faith campaign) included courting Ṣūfī leaders and funding repairs and new construction of Ṣūfī shrines; the campaign was led by vicepresident, ʿIzzat Ibrāhīm al-Dūrī, who belonged to branches of the Qādirī and Naqshbandī orders. The politics of sectarianism stoked by the American occupation resulted in the creation of three regulatory bodies for endowments: Sunnī, Shīʿī, and other. The creation of the Dīwān al-Waqf al-Sunnī, which is dominated by the Salafī movement, has had a profound effect on Sufism in Iraq. In Baghdad, for instance, the Salafī leadership of the Dīwān has attempted (mostly unsuccessfully) to eliminate Ṣūfīs and Ṣūfī practices from the shrine of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (Al-Gailani). In recent years, politicians in Morocco and Algeria have publicly embraced what they see as a non-political form of Islam; in 2002 a prominent Ṣūfī was named to head the Moroccan ministry of endowments (Muedini). Pakistan legislated centralised control of endowments and the management of national shrines in 1959, both to modernise the national imagination and to reduce the influence of local saints and their families. Subsequent Pakistani governments have marshalled different versions of the saintly patrimony to shore up various nationalist projects and have used shrines as platforms for state ideology (Ewing; Philippon, A sublime; Philippon, An ambiguous; Zaman, 194–225). The Malaysian government banned the neo-Ṣūfī movement Al Arqam in 1994 after members successfully used awqāf to fund their own social services outside the government structures (Nagata). In many cases, however, Ṣūfī endowments persist and continue to function as sites of social mobilisation and the production of counter-publics (Malik, 591). In Bosnia, a newly created directorate of waqfs has been charged with managing the endowments that survived Tito’s policy of nationalisation and the destruction by Serbian forces between 1992 and 1995 (Trakic). In addition to protecting the endowments for Ṣūfī tekkes, the constitution of Islamska Zajednica Bosne i Hercegovine (the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina) contains provisions for the Ṣūfī orders in Bosnian society (Karčić). Finally, there are several aspects of Ṣūfī endowments that remain unexplored. One such area is the patronage of relics rather than saints for economic and political ends, or what McChesney has described as “reliquary Sufism” (McChesney, Reliquary). A study of Ṣūfī endowments in East Africa remains to be undertaken, although there is some work on endowments in the region in general (Athuman; Carmichael; Carmichael and Cooper; Oberauer, Fantastic charities; O’Fahey and Vikør; Sheriff). Another question is the role of endowments outside the traditional boundaries of the Muslim world. There are, for example, awqāf in North America. The most well-known is the North American

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Islamic Trust (NAIT), founded in 1973, the revenue of which are used to finance mosque construction around the country and to fund the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). As the waqf experiences a revival in many parts of the Muslim world, particularly in Southeast Asia (Budiman and Kusuma; Ibrahim, Amir, and Masron; Islam; Khan; Mohammad et al.; Nour), Ṣūfīs in Europe and North America may follow this trend and found endowments for their own activities. And while past scholarship has shown little interest in addressing this question, the recent growth of research on Sufism in Europe and North America, particularly in its social and political aspects, suggests that this state of affairs will soon change (Dressler, Geaves, and Klinkhammer; Piraino; Raudvere; Sedgwick; Sharify-Funk, Dickson, and Xavier). Bibliography Abbasi, Muhammad Zubair, The classical Islamic law of waqf. A concise introduction, Arab Law Quarterly 26 (2012): 121–54. ʿAfīfī, Muḥammad, al-Awqāf wa-l-ḥayā al-iqtiṣādiyya fī Miṣr fī al-ʿaṣr al-ʿUthmānī, Cairo 1991. Al-Gailani, Noorah, The shrine of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī in Baghdad and the shrine of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Jīlānī in ʿAqra. Mapping the multiple orientations of two Qādirī Sufi shrines in Iraq, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2016. Algeriani, Adel Abdul-Aziz and Mawloud Mohadi, The house of wisdom (bayt alhikmah) and its civilizational impact on Islamic libraries. A historical perspective, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 8/5 (2017): 179–87. Amīn, Muḥammad, al-Awqāf wa-l-ḥayā al-ijtimāʿiyya fī Miṣr 648–923 H./1250–1517. Dirāsa taʾrīkhiyya wathāʾiqiyya, Cairo 1980. Arbabzadah, Nushin, Women and religious patronage in the Timurid empire, in N. Green (ed.), Afghanistan’s Islam. From Conversion to the Taliban (Oakland 2017), 56–70. Argun, Selim, Elite configurations and clusters of power. The ulema, waqf, and Ottoman state (1789–1839), PhD dissertation, McGill University, 2013. Aščerić-Todd, Ines, Dervishes and Islam in Bosnia. Sufi dimensions to the formation of Bosnian Muslim society, Leiden 2015. Atçıl, Abdurrahman, Scholars and sultans in the early modern Ottoman empire, Cambridge 2016. Athuman, Suleiman, Competing and conflicting power dynamics in waqfs in Kenya, 1900–2010, PhD dissertation, Bayreuth University (Germany), 2017. Atia, Mona, Building a house in heaven. Pious neoliberalism and Islamic charity in Egypt, Minneapolis 2013.

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Papas, Alexandre, No Sufism without Sufi order. Rethinking tarîqa and adab with Ahmad Kâsânî Dahbidî (1461–1542), Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies 1/2 (2008): 4–22. Paul, Jürgen, Die politische und soziale Bedeutung der Naqsbandiyya in Mittelasien im 15. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1991. Peacock, A. C. S., Sufi cosmopolitanism in the seventeenth-century Indian Ocean. Sharīʿa, lineage and royal power in Southeast Asia and the Maldives, in R. M. Feener (ed.), Challenging cosmopolitanism. Coercion, mobility and displacement in Islamic Asia (Edinburgh 2018), 53–80. Peters, R., Waḳf (II. In classical Islamic law), EI2. Peters, R., Doris Behrens Abouseif, D. S. Powers, A. Carmona, A. Layish, Ann K. S. Lambton, Randi Deguilhem, R. D. McChesney, G. C. Kozlowski, M. B. Hooker, and J. O. Hunwick, Waḳf, EI2. Petry, Carl, Fractionalized estates in a centralized regime. The holdings of al-Ashraf Qāytbāy and Qānṣūh al-Ghawrī according to their waqf deeds, JESHO 41/1 (1998): 96–117. Petry, Carl F., A Geniza for Mamluk studies? Charitable trust (waqf) documents as a source for economic and social history, MSR 2 (1998): 51–60. Philippon, Alix, A sublime, yet disputed, object of political ideology? Sufism in Pakistan at the crossroads, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 52/2 (2014): 271–92. Philippon, Alix, An ambiguous and contentious politicization of Sufi shrines and pilgrimages in Pakistan, in Michel Boivin and Rémy Delage (eds.), Devotional Islam in contemporary South Asia. Shrines, journeys and wanderers (London 2015), 174–89. Pinto, Paulo, Dangerous liaisons. Sufism and the state in Syria, in S. Jakelic and J. Varsoke (eds.), Crossing boundaries. From Syria to Slovakia (Vienna 2003), 1–10. Piraino, Francesco, Between real and virtual communities. Sufism in western societies and the Naqshbandi Haqqani case, Social Compass 63/1 (2016): 93–108. Powers, David S., Orientalism, colonialism, and legal history. The attack on Muslim family endowments in Algeria and India, Comparative Studies in Society and History 31/3 (1989): 535–71. Rahimi, Babak, Between chieftaincy and knighthood. A comparative study of Ottoman and Safavid origins, Thesis Eleven 76/1 (2004): 85–102. Rashid, Syed Khalid, Bibliography and review of waqf literature produced in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia & Indonesia during 1977–2007, New Delhi 2009. Raudvere, Catharina, Sufism today. Heritage and tradition in the global community, London 2009. Rizvi, Kishwar, The Safavid dynastic shrine. Architecture, religion and power in early modern Iran, London 2011. Roded, Ruth, Great mosques, zāwiyas and neighborhood mosques. Popular beneficiaries of waqf endowments in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Aleppo, JAOS 110/1 (1990): 32–8. Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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Rodriguez-Manas, Francisco, Agriculture, Ṣūfism and the state in tenth/sixteenthcentury Morocco, BSOAS 59/3 (1996): 450–71. Sabra, Adam, Poverty and charity in medieval Islam. Mamluk Egypt, 1250–1517, Cambridge 2000. Safi, Omid, The politics of knowledge in premodern Islam. Negotiating ideology and religious inquiry, Chapel Hill 2006. Sait, Siraj and Hilary Lim, Land, law and Islam. Property and human rights in the Muslim world, London and New York 2006. Sanseverino, Ruggero Vimercati, Fès et sainteté, de la fondation à l’avènement du Protectorat (808–1912). Hagiographie, tradition spirituelle et héritage prophétique dans la ville de Mawlāy Idrīs, Rabat 2014. Sariyannis, Marinos, The Kadizadeli movement as a social and political phenomenon. The rise of a ‘mercantile ethic’? in Antonis Anastosopoulos et al. (eds.), Political initiatives ‘from the bottom up’ in the Ottoman Empire (Rethymno 2012), 263–89. Schwarz, Florian, An endowment deed of 1547 (953 h.) for a Kubravi khanaqah in Samarkand, in Lorenz Korn, Eva Orthmann, and Florian Schwarz (eds.), Die Grenzen Der Welt. Arabica et Iranica ad honorem Heinz Gaube (Wiesbaden 2008), 189–210. Sedgwick, Mark, Western Sufism. From the Abbasids to the new age, Oxford 2016. Sharify-Funk, Meena, William Rory Dickson, and Merin Shobhana Xavier, Contemporary Sufism. Piety, politics, and popular culture, London 2017. Shatzmiller, Maya, Islamic institutions and property rights. The case of the ‘public good’ waqf, JESHO 44/1 (2001): 44–74. Sheriff, Abdul, Mosques, merchants and landowners, Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 27/1 (1992): 1–20. Singer, Amy, Charity’s legacies. A reconsideration of Ottoman imperial endowmentmaking, in Michael D. Bonner, Amy Singer, and Mine Ener (eds.), Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts (Albany 2003), 295–313. Spuler, Bertold, Robert G. Hoyland, Gwendolin Goldbloom, and Berenike Walburg, Iran in the early Islamic period. Politics, culture, administration and public life between the Arab and the Seljuk conquests, 633–1055, Leiden 2015. Sublet, Jacqueline, Le Manuscrit autographe: un statut particulier? Des exemples à l’époque mamelouke, in A. Görke and K. Hirschler (eds.), Manuscript notes as documentary sources (Würzburg 2011), 173–81. Subtelny, Maria E., Timurids in transition. Turko-Persian politics and acculturation in medieval Iran, Leiden 2007. Taher, Mustapha Anouar and Jean-Claude Garcin, Enquête sur le financement d’un waqf égyptien du XVe siècle. Les comptes de Jawhār al-Lālā, JESHO 38/3 (1995): 262–304. Talmon-Heller, Daniella, Islamic piety in medieval Syria. Mosques, cemeteries and sermons under the Zangids and Ayyūbids (1146–1260), Leiden 2007.

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Chapter 3

Donations to Ṣūfīs and Ṣūfī Institutions Hussain Ahmad Khan With the emergence of the phenomenon of Sufism, first in the Middle East and Persia, primary sources from as early as the fifth/eleventh century onwards, among which we find al-Qushayrī’s (d. 465/1072) Risāla (treatise) and Khwāja ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī’s (d. 481/1089) Ṭabaqāt al-Ṣūfiyya (Classes of the Ṣūfīs), began discussing various types of donations, such as futūḥ (sing. fatḥ) and nudhūr (sing. nadhr), that sultans, kings, nobility, and others (merchants and shopkeepers are frequently mentioned) gave to Ṣūfī shaykhs and later, to their institutions. Futūḥ is derived from an Arabic root, fataḥa, that means “to open”; it is largely understood as alms or charity, and can take the form of money or food, clothing, or housing. In the mystical writings of the well-known theoretician of Sufism, Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), futūḥ also connotes “revelations” or “spiritual openings,” hence the title of his opus magnum, the Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (Meccan openings). Often, Persian Ṣūfī sources translate futūḥ as “God-given charity” or unsolicited gifts (Auer; Islam, 90–5). We may speculate that both dimensions of futūḥ, i.e., alms and revelations, are intended in expressions describing the lifestyle of Muslim mystics. Living “on donations” (ʿalā l-futūḥ) means relying on God’s opening “the gates of livelihood” (abwāb al-rizq) to the Ṣūfī; this is the most elevated kind of futūḥ, because it comes from the hidden treasures of God’s creation (min al-kawn) (Goldziher, 48–50). Nudhūr (nadhr, votive gifts) refers to the personal vows to dedicate or sacrifice something (e.g., money or animals) for an individual Ṣūfī or a Ṣūfī institution, after the fulfilment of his/her desire (Pedersen). Sometimes niyāz and ṣadaqa are also used like nadhr. Nadhr is given after a conditional pledge has been fulfilled, such as the wish for male progeny, or a pardon, or a successful conquest of territory. 1

Views and Debates on Donations

Over time, a wide range of debates emerged in Ṣūfī circles about accepting donations. Those who favoured their acceptance, especially futūḥ, argued that it helps Ṣūfīs dedicate their lives to worshipping God and also saves them from seeking work, and enables them to avoid subjecting themselves to a worldly

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authority. For South Asian Chishtī Ṣūfīs, acceptance of futūḥ was a reflection of tawakkul (absolute trust in God). Ṣūfīs did not ask for donations nor did they refuse them and in most cases, quickly distributed the donations to their followers among the lower social classes, such as craftsmen, cultivators, and labourers. In principle, they opposed accepting donations from kings and the nobility. This position was more of an ideal, one that could not be followed given the circumstances. For instance, the seventh-/thirteenth-century Chishtī Ṣūfī, Farīd al-Dīn Ganj-i Shakar (d. 664/1265), who lived in Pakpattan (in the Punjab), refused donations, but, in cases of acute poverty, permitted his followers to beg (“use the begging bowl”), a practice that was not as common among Ṣūfīs as it was among dervishes (Papas). The shaykh Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (d. 725/1325) of Delhi advised Burhān al-Dīn Gharīb (d. 738/1337) of the Deccan, to have “worthy people” as disciples and adopt a policy of “not rejecting, not asking, not saving” alms. He declared: “If anyone brings you something, do not reject it, but do not ask for anything, and if they bring a little of something good, do not reject it (politely) in order to have it increased, nor should you specify everything (else that you need) in accepting it” (Ernst and Lawrence, 21). We find equivalent attitudes (that is, the refusal or acceptance of donations, but only out of necessity) in other contexts, for instance, among the Shādhilīs of Ifrīqiyya in the seventh/thirteenth century (Amri, 155). Donations were not always unsolicited; sometimes they were demanded, either implicitly or explicitly, and were made an essential part of rituals. In sixth-/twelfth- to seventh-/thirteenth-century Morocco, a boat could not weigh or cast anchor without giving alms (a part of their merchandise, such as oil, figs, etc.) to the hermitage of Abū ʿAlī l-Ḥasan al-Qazzāz in Badis (Bādisī, 96– 9). More generally, one could evaluate the popularity of mediaeval Maghribi saints by measuring (with a yardstick) the amount of futūḥ they collected (Alouani, 137, 166, 183). In early modern times, two Indian Naqshbandī Ṣūfīs, Shāh Palangpūsh (d. 1110/1699) and Shāh Musāfir (d. 1126/1715) in the city of Awrangabad, used to demand nadhr to remove the misfortunes of their followers. In the hagiography entitled Malfūẓāt-i Naqshbandiyya, Shāh Maḥmūd (d. 1175/1762), the successor of Shāh Musāfir, stressed the spiritual and social importance of giving nadhr. To him, those who neglected nadhr would go insane or simply die (quoted in Green, 16–7). However, abandoning employment left Ṣūfīs completely dependent on donations, and this, too, could be problematic. For instance, a Chishtī Ṣūfī in Delhi, Shāh Kalīm Allāh Jahānabādī (d. 1142/1729), had to rent out his property to generate additional income, since donations were not enough to support his khānaqāh and for him to recover from illness (Ernst and Lawrence, 5). Whatever their pecuniary value, in fact, donations from common people were often quite modest, and many pilgrims

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throughout the modern period brought nudhūr, as in the case of such donations to shrines in Cairo (De Jong, 31). It is important to remember that, in the economy of Sufism, the issue of income was not necessarily thought to reflect people’s generosity; that is, from a Ṣūfī viewpoint, one’s income was ultimately God’s will. So, rather than asking for or expecting alms, many Ṣūfīs preferred to have an occupation. For example, we find Ṣūfīs with professions such as bannāʾ (mason), saqaṭī (pedlar), ḥaddād (blacksmith), ḥallāj (cotton carder), qawārīrī (glassmaker or seller), warrāq (bookseller or copyist), and nassāj (weaver) (Schimmel, 84; Afshari in this volume). Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband (d. 791/1389), the eponymous master of Naqshbandiyya Ṣūfī silsila, was an embroiderer or engraver; similarly, Bahāʾ al-Dīn ʿAmīlī (d. 1030/1621) was an architect in the Ṣafavid Empire and was involved in the construction of the Masjid-i-Shāh (mosque) in Isfahan. This was in line with doctrinal positions (of certain Ṣūfīs) against inactivity. Among other authors, the prominent Baghdad-based Muslim jurist and theologian Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200) defended those who believed in working for a living and rejecting alms, as opposed to those who were slothful: We have seen a horde of more recent Sufis lounging around in the ribāṭ so as to avoid working for a living, occupied by eating and drinking, song and dance; they seek the things of the world from any tyrant, not hesitating to accept the gift of even the tax-collector! Most of their ribāṭs have been built by despots who have endowed them with illegal properties … The Sufis’ concern revolves around the kitchen, food, and ice water … while they spend most of their time in amusing conversation and visiting the nobility … cited in Homerin, 64

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Donations and Court Patronage

Premodern Muslim societies largely believed in baraka, an Arabic word meaning “[divine] blessing,” “well-being,” or “grace.” This applied to the Ṣūfīs’ miraculous powers, which motivated people to support them, both individually, and through their institutions. According to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, baraka “encloses a whole range of linked ideas: material prosperity, physical well-being, bodily satisfaction, completion, luck, plenitude … [suggesting] the proposition (again, of course, wholly tacit) that the sacred appears most directly in the world as an endowment—a talent and the capacity, a special ability—of particular individuals” (Geertz, 44). Mediaeval sultans believed

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that by providing Ṣūfīs with material and financial support, they could invoke baraka to win wars, protect themselves and their kingdoms against enemies, and resolve their personal issues. For instance, in 708–9/1309–10, the sultan ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī (r. 695–715/1296–1316) asked Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ to use his baraka for the conquest of a fort in the Kakatiya kingdom of Telingana; likewise sultan Muḥammad Tughluq (r. 725–52/1325–51) requested the blessing of a Suhrawardī Ṣūfī, Shaykh Rukn al-Dīn (d. 735/1335) of Multān, to crush a revolt. In return, the sultan pledged the waqf income from one hundred villages to the Ṣūfī after the victory (Rizvi, 1:160, 213). Supporting Ṣūfīs and their institutions materially was politically significant for sultans and kings, in terms of commanding legitimacy and gathering faithful subjects. Most mediaeval sultans obtained a khilāfat-nāma (i.e., a letter from the caliph in Baghdad recognising their rule) that bound them to support religious communities. Through a policy of patronage and non-intervention in Ṣūfīs’ affairs the sultans legitimised their rule (Safi, 126). In India, appointing a Ṣūfī to a ceremonial position, such as shaykh al-islām (an advisor to the sultan on religious matters), made him eligible for a stipend, donations ( futūḥ), and land grants. Muḥammad Tughluq appointed Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Bukhārī (d. 785/1384) of Ucch Sharīf (in the Punjab), as shaykh al-islām; he was also granted a khānaqāh in Sistan (at Sehwan) that was financially supported by the income of nearby villages (Rizvi, 1:279). Such material strength aided in proselytising activities, e.g., those of Suhrawardī Ṣūfīs in India, and new converts were considered faithful subjects of the state (Aquil (ed.)). Ṣūfīs patronised by kings largely became mediators between the local populace and the state. In many cases, Ṣūfīs avoided visiting the royal courts, but when they did so, it became an occasion for large grants and gifts. For instance, Rukn al-Dīn visited the court of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī in Delhi twice and each time the sultan gave him 200,000 tankas (a significant amount at the time) on his arrival and 500,000 tankas when the shaykh returned to Multān. It is said that the shaykh immediately distributed these donations among the people of Delhi (Rizvi, 1:211). Muslim rulers who assumed the title of bādshāh (monarch or king, from the Persian pādishāh) and did not request a khilāfat-nāma from the caliph were still politically compelled to support the Ṣūfīs. These kings were, as in the case of the Mughals in India, ethnically, culturally, and religiously different, and required intermediaries who commanded respect among the people. If making donations to individual Ṣūfīs and their institutions had political undertones, the Ṣūfīs’ acceptance or rejection of such donations did as well. By accepting donations, they accepted the legitimacy of the donor. For instance, a contrario, Shāh Musāfir refused to accept nadhr by a Central Asian soldier because the latter was aiding the enemies of Shāh Musāfir’s patron (Green, 16).

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With the institutionalisation of Sufism in the Middle East, Iran, and in Central and South Asia, the belief in baraka and donations to Ṣūfī institutions such as shrines and khānaqāhs also became institutionalised in a sense. Khānaqāhs were often huge complexes with staff such as healers, builders, labourers, grocers, water-carriers, butchers, gardeners, and cooks. Kings and nobles donated large sums in exchange for prayers from the Ṣūfīs in this world and in the hereafter. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (r. 564–89/1169–93) established one of the earliest known khānaqāhs in Cairo, named al-Salāḥiyya or Saʿīd al-Suʿadāʾ, to house itinerant Ṣūfīs; he also gave huge endowments and futūḥ in the hope that the khānaqāh would continue to flourish after him (Hofer, 35). The khānaqāh sheltered approximately 300 Ṣūfīs, most of whom were non-Egyptians. In some instances, khānaqāh appeared to be more resourceful than the local administration. For instance, in seventh-/thirteenth- and eighth-/fourteenth-century India, endowments and futūḥ granted by the sultans, nobility, and traders made the khānaqāh of the Suhrawardiyya so affluent that local governors borrowed grain from them during periods of drought. A hagiographical story in Iran relates that the invocations of the shaykh Amīn al-Dīn Balyānī (d. 745/1345) gave Faqīh Rūḥ al-Dīn Rāmgardī a donation of 200,000 dinars so that he could repay his debt to the governors of Shiraz (Aigle, Le soufisme, 243). Yet, in most mediaeval khānaqāhs, Ṣūfīs distributed futūḥ among needy people immediately upon receiving them. Ṣūfī traditions did not lay down strict rules for how futūḥ were to be used, so donations collected for one purpose could be used for another. For instance, on his deathbed, Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ asked that his servant (who was reluctant to do so) distribute all his grain to the public kitchen (Islam, 113). Mediaeval rulers gave huge futūḥ to Ṣūfī shrines for two reasons: first, they believed that those close to God did not die, but were remained alive in their graves; second, it was in the interest of the kings to support deceased Ṣūfīs instead of living ones, because there was less possibility of conflict with those already dead. Muslim rulers in Central and South Asia and Iran continued to give donations and to rebuild, repair, and maintain the shrines of Ṣūfīs who had died centuries earlier. Donations from kings and the nobility were one of the ways of controlling Ṣūfīs and their institutions. When the successors of Burhān al-Dīn Gharīb’s shrine were unable to cover their expenses, they sought donations from the sultans of the Deccan. In the mediaeval Muslim world, particularly in Iran and the Ottoman Empire, artisan guilds headed by a Ṣūfī shaykh or those that were part of a Ṣūfī ṭarīqa enjoyed the patronage of kings, artisans, and traders for many reasons (Afshari in this volume): First, they garnered support for the king or for the opposition to the king; second, they increased the productivity of the artisan guild by relating craft practices to divine help; third, they intensified the

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process of conversion. For instance, artisan guilds and traders donated futūḥ in large numbers to a Khurāsānī dervish named Ḥasan Jurī (d. 743/1342) and his militant followers to initiate a resistance movement, popularly known as the Sarbidarān movement, against the oppression of local landlords. The movement was successful in establishing an independent state at Sabzevar between 738/1337 and 783/1381 (Aigle, Sarbedārs). The Ottomans appointed a shaykh of the Rifāʿiyya Ṣūfī order, Sayyid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Kamāl al-Dīn b. ʿAjlān (d. 1025/1616), based in Damascus, as the shaykh mashāyikh al-ḥiraf (head of guilds). Similarly, in 1098/1687, the Ṣūfī master of the Khalwatiyya silsila was appointed head of the artisan guild in Tripoli, Lebanon (Wilkins, 255). The main objective of such appointments and the financial support of these Ṣūfīs was to reduce the chances of revolt and increase the productivity of the guilds. Shāh ʿAbbās I (r. 995–1038/1587–1629) of the Ṣafavid Empire financially supported various Ṣūfī factions, such as Niʿmatīs/Niʿmatullāhīs, Ḥaydarīs, and Lutīs in artisan guilds dominant in the bazaars of Iran, which were hubs of political and social life. The main objective of this financial support was to create a division among the artisan guilds and thereby reduce the chances of revolt (Keyvani, 249–50). 3

Donations from Non-Muslims

Interestingly, non-Muslim rulers also adopted a strategy of offering donations to Ṣūfī shrines to obtain their support, and many of these rulers actually believed in baraka. The futūḥ of non-Muslim rulers to Ṣūfīs and Ṣūfī institutions provides some interesting quantitative data. For instance, in twelfth-/ eighteenth-century India, a Maratha dīwān (prime minister) at Poona gave the Naqshbandī shrine of Shāh Palangpūsh and Shāh Musāfir in the city of Awrangabad the right to collect donations from Maratha rulers and nobility. Through these donations, the custodians built parts of the shrine, purchased new land for themselves, managed public kitchens, and held annual ʿurs (festivals on the anniversary of a saint’s death). In 1186/1772, the custodians collected a large sum (678 rupees) to organise the ʿurs (Green, 60–1). The Maratha State was in conflict with the Mughals and the Afghans. A famous Naqshbandī master, Shāh Wālī Allāh (d. 1176/1762) of Delhi, invited Afghan rulers to save Delhi from Maratha rule, which had overpowered the Mughals. Similarly, in the early nineteenth century, the maharaja Ranjit Singh (d. 1254/1839)—despite the fact that he fought against the Muslim rulers of Multān and Bahawalpur states, which had the support of Chishtī Ṣūfīs such as Ḥāfiẓ Jamāl Multānī (d. 1226/1811) and Sulaymān Tawnsawī (d. 1267/1850), and had also destroyed

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Ṣūfī shrines in Multān and Jhang—used to make generous donations to the shrines of ʿAlī b. ʿUthmān al-Hujwīrī (d. between 465/1072 and 469/1077) in Lahore, Farīd al-Dīn Ganj-i Shakar in Pakpattan, ʿAbd al-Qādir II (d. 940/1533) in Ucch, Shāh Ḥusayn (d. 1008/1599) in Lahore, and Miyān Mīr (d. 1045/1635) in Lahore. The Sikh maharaja offered land and subsidies to Ṣadr al-Dīn Shāh (d. 1270/1853), head of the Qādiriyya of Multān. He also participated in Ṣūfī festivals, especially the basant festival (spring festival) held at the shrine of Shāh Ḥusayn. Sometimes, he asked others to give futūḥ to a particular Ṣūfī or shrine, as in the case of Aḥmad Khān Sial who was asked to pay tribute to the Ṣūfīs in Ucch. Following the tradition of mediaeval Muslim kings, the maharaja donated 9,000 rupees when the custodian of the Pakpattan shrine, Dīwān Shaykh Muḥammad Yār, visited him (Singh, 204–9; Papas and Touseef, 212). When the maharaja was on his deathbed, the communities linked to these shrines held special prayers for the well-being of their patron. In the pre-colonial Muslim world, in many ways futūḥ and nudhūr defined political relationships, and shaped social and cultural lives in the form of the institutions of khānaqāhs and shrines, and more significantly, they enabled people to find mystical meanings in worldly practices. During the colonial period, donations to Ṣūfīs continued, perhaps to a lesser extent, in regions such as the Indian subcontinent in particular. For example, throughout the nineteenth century, the lodge of Sulaymān Tawnsawī in the Punjab seems to have been managed by futūḥ from the local ashrafiyya (Muslim nobility) (Khan, 37–40 and n. 17). Bibliography Aigle, Denise, Sarbedārs, EIr. Aigle, Denise, Le soufisme sunnite en Fārs. Šayḫ Amīn al-dīn Balyānī, in Denise Aigle (ed.), L’Iran face à la domination mongole (Tehran 1997), 231–60. Alouani, Salah, Tribus et Marabouts. Aʿrāb et walāya dans l’intérieur de l’Ifriqiya entre le VIe/XIIe et le XIIe/XVIIIe siècles, Helsinki 2010. Amri, Nelly, Les Shâdhilîs de l’Ifrîqiyya médiévale. Filiations et affiliations à l’aune de l’historien, in Eric Geoffroy (ed.), Une voie soufie dans le monde. La Shâdhiliyya (Paris 2005), 133–58. Aquil, Raziuddin, ed., Sufism and society in medieval India, New Delhi 2010. Auer, Blain, Futūḥ, EI3. Bādisī, al-ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, El-Maqṣad (Vies des saints du Rîf ) de ʿAbd el-Ḥaqq el-Bâdisî. Traduction annotée de G. S. Colin, Archives marocaines, vol. xxvi, Paris 1926.

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De Jong, Frederick, Cairene ziyâra-days. A contribution to the study of saint veneration in Islam, DI 17/1–4 (1976–77): 26–43. Ernst, Carl W. and Bruce B. Lawrence, Sufi martyrs of love. The Chishti order in South Asia and beyond, New York 2016. Geertz, Clifford, Islam observed. Religious development in Morocco and Indonesia, Chicago 1971. Goldziher, Ignaz, Materialien zur Entwickelungsgeschichte des Ṣûfismus, WZKM 13 (1899): 35–56. Green, Nile, Indian Sufism since the seventeenth century. Saints, books and empires in the Muslim Deccan, New York 2006. Hofer, Nathan, The popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173–1225, Edinburgh 2015. Homerin, Emil T., Saving Muslim souls. The khanqah and the Sufi duty in Mamluk lands, MSR 3 (1999): 59–83. Islam, Riazul, Sufism in South Asia. Impact on fourteenth century Muslim society, Karachi 2002. Keyvani, Mehdi, Artisans and guild life in the later Safavid period, PhD dissertation, Durham University, 1980. Khan, Hussain Ahmad, Artisans, Sufis, shrines. Colonial architecture in nineteenth century Punjab, London 2015. Papas, Alexandre, Dervish, EI3. Papas, Alexandre and Muhammad Touseef, L’histoire du soufisme à Multan (Pakistan). Nouvelles données, Journal of the History of Sufism 7 (2018): 199–228. Pedersen, Johannes, Nad̲ h̲r, EI2. Rizvi, Saiyid Athar Abbas, A history of Sufism in India. Early Sufism and its history in India to AD 1600, vol. 1, Lahore 2004. Safi, Omid, The politics of knowledge in premodern Islam. Negotiating ideology and religious inquiry, Chapel Hill, NC 2006. Schimmel, Annemarie, Mystical dimension of Islam, Chapel Hill, NC 1975. Singh, Rishi, State formation and the establishment of non-Muslim hegemony in the post-Mughal nineteenth-century Punjab, PhD dissertation, SOAS, 2009. Wilkins, Charles L., Forging urban solidarities. Ottoman Aleppo 1640–1700, Leiden 2010.

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Chapter 4

Sufism, Futuwwa, and Professional Guilds Mehran Afshari The business and trade guild of a second-/eighth- to fifth-/eleventh-century Ṣūfī is usually apparent in his appellation. For example, Sarī l-Saqaṭī (d. 253/867) was a seller of bric-a-brac (saqaṭ); the leader of the Malāmatiyya (or “path of blame”) in Nīshāpūr, Ḥamdūn Qaṣṣār (d. 271/884), was a laundryman (qaṣṣār); another member of the Malāmatiyya, Abū Ḥafṣ [ʿAmr b. Salma] al-Ḥaddād (d. between 265/879 and 270/884) was a metalworker (ḥaddād); Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz (d. c. 286/899) was a cobbler (kharrāz) who sewed and sold leather goods; and Abū ʿAlī Daqqāq (d. 405/1015) was a flour seller (daqqāq). However, it was also common for early Ṣūfīs to leave behind their trade when embarking on the spiritual path. They understood that the proper practice of tawakkul (entrusting one’s affairs to God), mentioned repeatedly in the Qurʾān as a trait of those who are truly faithful (see, for example, 5:11, 9:51, 14:11, 58:10), required them to forsake worldly activity and depend only on God for their sustenance. Early Ṣūfīs, therefore, were opposed to the idea that the spiritual wayfarer should work for a living (Mustamlī Bukhārī, 3:103; Ibn al-Jawzī, 225, 227). Thus, when they were initiated into Sufism, they gave up their previous employment and lived a life of simple poverty, sometimes even begging for alms in order to humble their egos (Ibn al-Jawzī, 218, 226). 1

Earning a Living and Relying upon God in Sufism

The celebrated Bishr b. Ḥārith al-Ḥāfī (d. 227/841 or 842), remembered for renouncing the study of ḥadīth and for walking barefoot, is one example of an early Ṣūfī who renounced earning a living through trade or labour. Before taking to a life of asceticism, Bishr earned a living by making yarn from cotton (al-Sarrāj, 195). However, despite examples in which early Ṣūfīs renounced work, this was not the general trend and Ṣūfīs tended to accept that earning a living and having a profession was something practiced by the prophets of God. Adam, for instance, was said to be a farmer (Mustamlī Bukhārī, 3:1103); Seth was a weaver of burlap; David was an armourer; Solomon wove baskets from palm leaves, which he then sold for two loaves of barley bread each; and both Moses and Abraham were shepherds (Mustamlī Bukhārī, 3:1104). Nevertheless,

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Ṣūfīs did not tend to believe it was obligatory to earn a living, merely that it was permissible. In short, they did not believe they needed to have a profession, although they could if they chose to (Mustamlī Bukhārī, 3:1105). Most Ṣūfīs understood tawakkul to mean that relying on God to provide for one’s daily sustenance and needs was better than earning a living, and said that only those who had fallen from the spiritual station of tawakkul had to seek a living and earn a livelihood (al-Sarrāj, 195–6; Mustamlī Bukhārī, 3:1107). Conversely, in the second/eighth century there were some Ṣūfīs who emphasised the importance of earning a living, as they believed this was the practice of the Prophet of Islam. For example, it was reported that ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak (d. 181/797), an early scholar and ascetic, said that there is no good in anyone who has not humbled himself through work, while he also advised his followers that they should not let their profession or earning a living cause them to forget to rely on God in all their affairs (al-Sarrāj, 196). Similarly, Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. 161/777–8), a prominent early Ṣūfī said, “Earning a permissible livelihood to provide for one’s family is a religious obligation” (al-Sarrāj, 196). He himself worked as a gardener and shared his earnings with his companions (al-Sarrāj, 178). However, later, most Ṣūfī shaykhs relied on begging or wealthy individuals to sponsor their lodges and provide food for them to eat (Ibn al-Jawzī, 229), as we read repeatedly, for example, in the biography of Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049) (Ibn Munawwar, 1:118, 148–9, 152–3). Abū Ḥafs Ḥaddād (d. 264/878), who was a blacksmith, gave what little money he made each day to the dervishes and spent his nights going door-to-door begging for alms, living on the bread he obtained in this manner (al-Sarrāj, 197; Mustamlī Bukhārī, 3:212). It is related that Abū Ḥafs said, “I gave up earning a number of times before returning to it again, until one day I resolved to give it up and then never again returned to it” (al-Sarrāj, 196; Hujwīrī, 190). However, we should hesitate before accepting this report, as Abū Ḥafs was a Malāmatī and the Malāmatiyya as a rule believed in continuing to earn a living and work in a profession. The leader of the Malāmatiyya, Ḥamdūn Qaṣṣār, had a disciple by the name of ʿAbdallāh Ḥajjām, who practiced cupping (ḥijāma) as a profession. ʿAbdallāh asked his master whether he should discontinue his profession, to which Ḥamdūn replied, “On the contrary, you should strive harder in your profession. I prefer that you become known as ʿAbdallāh the ḥajjām (the practitioner of cupping) rather than ʿAbdallāh the zāhid (ascetic) or ʿārif (mystic)” (al-Sulamī, 94). The Malāmatiyya movement originated in the third/ninth century, from beliefs and practices associated with the ideals of chivalry or futuwwa (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 67, 68, 74–5, 81). Individuals known to belong to this group of Ṣūfīs are mentioned in classical books on Sufism as those who

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subscribed to the ideals of futuwwa; they are given descriptions and titles such as ʿayyār, javānmard, ṣuʿlūk (all words that imply a chivalrous disposition). Examples of such persons include Aḥmad Khiḍruwiyya (d. 246/860), Shāh Shujāʿ Kirmānī (d. c. 300/913), and Abū l-Ḥasan Pūshangī (d. 348/959). These Ṣūfīs introduced the ideals of futuwwa into Sufism—their efforts are evident in the moral precepts discussed in Ṣūfī works on futuwwa, such as the Risāla Qushayriyya by Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) and the Kitāb alfutuwwa of Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021). Discussions such as theirs gave rise to the Malāmatiyya, a Ṣūfī movement closely linked to the practice of futuwwa; in fact the Kitāb al-futuwwa is similar in content to al-Sulamī’s work on the movement, the Risālat al-Malāmatiyya. However, this is not to say that these figures gave rise, directly, to futuwwa as a practice or moral code and it is important to distinguish between ideals and principles, on the one hand, and a fully-developed code, on the other (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 68). Centuries later, after the decline of the Malāmatiyya of Khurāsān, the Khwājagān or early Naqshbandiyya, more than other Ṣūfī orders, emphasised the importance of earning a living, and their followers tended to have a trade (Zarrīnkūb, 207–8). 2

Futuwwa

Even though many of the craftsmen who became Ṣūfīs left their trades behind, craftsmen and merchants who did not become Ṣūfīs nevertheless followed a code that (like Sufism) emphasised the struggle against one’s lower desires and the importance of undertaking spiritual wayfaring. The moral precepts that were of particular importance to these craftsmen and merchants included helping others, generosity, clemency, self-abnegation, altruism, hospitality, keeping one’s word and fulfilling contracts, keeping the secrets of others, showing kindness, and forgiving the mistakes of others (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 58–66). This code was called futuwwa in Arabic (from fatā, meaning “youth”) and javānmardī in Persian, both of which are similar to the English term “chivalry.” While futuwwa is a phenomenon that arises out of the Islamic tradition, chivalric codes can be traced to Sāsānid Iran, suggesting that pre-Islamic Persian sources influenced the practice (Zakeri, Sāsānid soldiers, 84–94). Originally, futuwwa reflected the moral code of a class of warriors known as ʿayyār (a designation that was later adopted by merchants and craftsmen). We do not know exactly when merchants and craftsmen began following the same code as the ʿayyār, but the Qābūs nāma indicates that it was well before

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the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh (r. 575–622/1179–1225) combined futuwwa with Sufism and asceticism. Written by the Ziyārid prince Kaykāwūs b. Iskandar ʿUnṣur al-Maʿālī in 475/1082, the Qābūs nāma is a Persian text on futuwwa that discusses not just the code of honour for ʿayyārs and soldiers, but also that of craftsmen and merchants (Kaykāwūs, 242, 249). Kaykāwūs also speaks about the futuwwa of the Ṣūfīs, further illustrating that only some Ṣūfīs followed the moral precepts of the futuwwa code and that Sufism had little to do with its rituals and ceremonies (Kaykāwūs, 249–57). In the early centuries of Islam, the ʿayyār were predominantly active in the cities of Iraq which, prior to the Arab conquests, was part of the Sāsānid empire. They were ordinary people, rather than nobility, but daring and martial in character, and frequently involved in political affairs. Some would disrupt the peace and security of cities and steal from homes and shops (Ibn al-Athīr, 9:126, 248). But the unruliness of the ʿayyār paid off in 197/813 when Ṭāhir Dhū l-Yamīnayn (d. 207/822), the Persian commander of al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s (d. 218/833) forces, attacked Baghdad with the intention of removing al-Amīn (d. 198/813) from the caliphate and installing al-Ma‌ʾmūn in his place. The city’s ʿayyārs fought Ṭāhir’s soldiers and brought about a memorable defeat (Ibn al-Athīr, 6:189–90). Later, in the seventh/thirteenth century, the ʿAbbāsid caliph, al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh, who was sympathetic to the code of futuwwa, officially declared himself head of the ʿayyārs, in the hope that it would prevent them from causing disorder and committing criminal acts in the cities (Ibn al-Athīr, 11:286–7; Taeschner, 55–72; Zakeri, From futuwwa, 30–4; Cahen, 235–42). It was during this period that Ibn al-Miʿmār (d. 642/1244) wrote (in Arabic) his Kitāb al-futuwwa, one of the oldest works on the topic, and thereby affirmed the adherence of al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh and his followers to the code of chivalry. This work shows that futuwwa in Baghdad at this time had, to varying degrees, become mixed with asceticism and Sufism, and the number of fighters and ruffians in its ranks had diminished. Ibn al-Miʿmār enumerates the conditions a person must meet to be accepted into the code of futuwwa: (1) he must be male; (2) he must be adult; (3) he must be of sound mind; (4) he must be a pious Muslim; (5) he must not have any blemish or disability in his body; (6) he must have muruwwa (lit., “manliness,” from the Arabic word marʾ, meaning “man”), which is more or less synonymous with futuwwa but which seems to have been used by Ibn al-Miʿmār specifically to refer to the traits of fairness, munificence, and generosity (Ibn al-Miʿmār, 160–78). Members of futuwwa fraternities organised themselves into a hierarchy of ranks and grades. The first among these ranks is the jadd (grandfather), of whom all of the members are disciples. Second is the kabīr (elder), a lower rank than the jadd, his disciples are those individuals that he initiated into

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futuwwa. Other names for this rank include shaykh (elder), pidar (father), and pīr (elder). Third in rank is the zaʿīm (chief), whose job it is to give advice and moral exhortation to the disciples. Fourth is the wakīl (deputy) who serves as the representative of the kabīr and shaykh and who succeeds them. Fifth is the naqīb (leader), appointed by the kabīr or pidar, whose responsibility it was to look after the affairs of the junior members and meet their needs (Ibn al-Miʿmār, 75–7, 192, 206). The members of the futuwwa were organised into independent groups based on their association with some of the leading elders of the organisation. Each group was called a “house” (bayt) or “party” (ḥizb). Typically, a “house” was larger than a “party” and a single house might contain several parties (Ibn al-Miʿmār, 75). New members of a futuwwa order were initiated through a number of rituals, including tying the girdle, donning the trousers of the futuwwa, and drinking salty water or salty milk from a bowl. The practices of futuwwa spread throughout Muslim lands, but were especially prevalent in regions such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Anatolia. The initiation practices of these diverse groups in various regions appear to have differed from one another over time but, according to Ibn al-Miʿmār, in the seventh/thirteenth century, it appears that an aspirant would take an existing member as a mentor and then be admitted to the futuwwa society after performing whatever rituals of initiation were required. During the initiation, the special girding (called a shadd, or “binding”) worn by members of the futuwwa was placed on the floor in the middle of the gathering. The naqīb would then emerge from the members gathered, and ask both the kabīr and the aspirant’s mentor (known as a ṣāḥib or ustād) for permission to begin the ceremony. He would recite a sermon (khuṭba) in Arabic, praising God and the Prophet, then invoke blessings on the ruler or caliph of the time, and recite some verses of the Qurʾān or sayings of the Prophet on the merits of futuwwa. Then he would command the aspirant to stand up. When the aspirant stood, the naqīb would ask the gathering if anyone had anything to say or any objection to the aspirant. If no one objected, the naqīb would respectfully announce the name of the aspirant and say that he wishes suchand-such a person (namely, his mentor) to accept him as a friend (rafīq) (It is noteworthy that whereas Ṣūfīs used the term murīd to denote a disciple, among the futuwwa orders it was common to use the term rafīq). At this point, all the members of the gathering would stand up and the kabīr would say to the mentor, “This gathering also wishes you to accept this aspirant as a friend.” The mentor would say: “I accept.” The naqīb then would then wrap the girding around the waist of the aspirant, now called a “son” ( farzand) and present him

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with the trousers of futuwwa. The kabīr would get up and firmly tie the knot of the girding, before giving the aspirant a bowl of salty water (or salty milk) to drink (this part of the ritual is known as the shurb, or “drinking”). All of those gathered would pass the bowl and take a drink from it, until it reached the hand of the mentor. He would drink and say, “Peace be with you, youths!” Then the naqīb would answer on behalf of those assembled. The mentor would say, “I have accepted, for the sake of God, in following the Prophet, this person as an aspirant through this ritual of drinking.” Then the naqīb himself would take the bowl of salty water and drink from it before bringing the ceremony to a close (Ibn al-Miʿmār, 192–3, 236–9). By the late seventh/thirteenth century and early eighth/fourteenth century, Najm al-Dīn Zarkūb (d. 712/1312) wrote that the mentor himself, rather than the naqīb, would present the trousers of futuwwa and wrap the girding around the waist of the aspirant. This was done because the disciple had entered the society of futuwwa and become the student of his mentor (Zarkūb, 195). A statement of the Iranian preacher and polymath Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī (d. 910/1504–5) illustrates the way in which the initiatory practices of futuwwa varied over time and place. Writing almost three centuries after Ibn al-Miʿmār, Kāshifī says, “A rank called ‘the father of God’s covenant’ (pidar-i ʿahd Allāh) delivers moral admonition to the disciple during the initiation ceremony and teaches him several utterances. Then there is a rank called ‘the master of the girding’ (ustād-i shadd) who wraps the girding around his waist and presents him with the bowl of salty water to drink” (Kāshifī Sabzawārī, 131–8). Rank and file members of the futuwwa orders were given the title of “brother” (akh) and would address one another as “my brother” (akhī) (Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, 1:292). However, this practice was not exclusive to the futuwwa orders; Ṣūfīs also addressed one another in these terms (ʿAbbādī, 78). In the eighth/fourteenth century, the traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 770/1368–9 or 779/1377) met craftsmen in Anatolia who followed the futuwwa code and were known as “brothers.” He said that whatever they earned through their trade during the day, they would deliver to the elder or head of the guild in the mid-afternoon. With this money, food and fruit were purchased for the guild lodge. According to Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, the craft guildsmen of Anatolia would wear a robe and walk around in a specific style of shoes. They also carried a dagger on their belt. On their heads, they wore white felt hats with a tassel hanging from the tip. When they were in the lodge, they would remove their hats. He also describes, in great detail, the hospitality of the youth, as this reflects one of the fundamental precepts of the futuwwa code (Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, 1:292–3). Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s descriptions can be compared to those of Aflākī in Manāqib al-ʿārifīn (The virtues of

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the gnostics), a work on the “brothers” of Anatolia in the seventh/thirteenth century. According to Aflākī, the “ruffians” (rinds) of Anatolia were disciples of the “brothers”; that is, they subscribed to the futuwwa chivalric code. Although these brothers were, to varying degrees, ascetics, and some of them adopted the habits of the Ṣūfīs, some were like the ʿayyārs and frequently disturbed the peace and caused commotion in cities (Aflākī ʿĀrifī, 2:755–8, 840–1; Ridgeon, Morals and mysticism, 80–3). The most famous brother in the history of Anatolia was Nāṣir al-Dīn Awrān/Evren who appears to have lived sometime in the seventh/thirteenth or eighth/fourteenth century. Today his grave is situated in Kırşehir, Turkey. Although he was the elder of the tanner’s guild, his initiatic genealogy (which is preserved in the Kırşehir Museum) indicates that he belonged to an initiatic chain that included elders from other guilds. These elders included Akhī Ḥusām Sūzangar (who was associated with the needlemakers guild) and Akhī Muḥammad Ḥaṣīrbāf (who was a mat weaver) (Köksal, et al., Kırşehir, 48; Köksal, Ana kaynaklarıyla, 43–91). Guildsmen in eighth-/fourteenth-century Iran called their leader “kulū,” which might have been a corruption of the word kalān, signifying “great” or “senior.” The presence of kulūs in Shiraz in this century is notable in the political influence they exercised whenever rule in the city passed from one dynasty to another (Afshari (ed.), Chahārdah risāla, 34–7). To teach initiates the moral precepts, doctrines, etiquette, and rituals of futuwwa, masters composed treatises in Persian, Turkish, or Arabic. In Persian, such works were known as futuvvat nāmas, while in Arabic a work in this genre would be entitled Kitāb al-futuwwa. The most detailed extant example of one of these works in Arabic is the aforementioned Kitāb al-futuwwa of Ibn al-Miʿmār; it expounds the teachings of futuwwa in line with what the caliph al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh adopted in the seventh/thirteenth century. The oldest surviving Persian futuvvat nāmas were also written in the seventh/thirteenth century, by Ṣūfī masters such as Abū Ḥafs Shihāb al-Dīn ʿUmar Suhrawardī (for more on his Futuvvat nāma, see Ridgeon, Jawanmardi, 25–40; Zakeri, From futuwwa, 34–49). Another futuvvat nāma was written by Najm al-Dīn Zarkūb toward the end of the seventh/thirteenth century, and a didactic poem on futuwwa was composed by Mawlānā Nāṣirī Siwāsī (d. after 689/1290) around the same time. The Futuvvat nāma of Mīr Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī (d. 786/1385) from the eighth/fourteenth century makes extensive use of classical Ṣūfī moral thought with regard to futuwwa, but also discusses some of the etiquette of the futuwwa guilds, such as the donning of the trousers of futuwwa (for a general introduction to the genre of futuvvat nāmas in Persian, see Taeschner, 235–73, 394–401). However, the most detailed futuvvat nāma in Persian was written

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in the ninth/fifteenth century by Kāshifī Sabzawārī, and was entitled Futuvvat nāma-yi sulṭānī. Of the many Turkish works on futuwwa, perhaps the most well-known and comprehensive is the fütüvvetnāme of Khalīl Būrghāzī, from the seventh/ thirteenth century (see Gölpınarlı, 32; Taeschner, 319–93). Other noteworthy works of futuwwa in Turkish include the Fütüvvetnāme-i Imām Caʿfer Ṣādıq and the Fütüvvetnāme-i raḍavī from the tenth/sixteenth century, and the Fütüvvetnāme-i Şeykh Ḥüseyn Ghaybī from the ninth/fifteenth century (Gölpınarlı, 33–5). There are also a number of untitled and previously unknown works that the Turkish scholar, M. Fatih Köksal, has introduced in his work on futuwwa (Köksal, Ana kaynaklarıyla). The classical Persian futuvvat nāmas from the seventh/thirteenth century divide the members of the futuwwa into two groups: (1) military (sayfī; from the Arabic word for sword) and (2) civilian (qawlī; from the Arabic word for speech). The military members were traditionally drawn from the ʿayyārs and fighters, while the civilians were drawn from the merchants and craft guilds (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 46). The civilians recited the ceremonial formulae in the futuwwa rituals (Nāṣirī, 24–5; Suhrawardī, 101). The Futuvvat nāma of Najm al-Dīn Zarkūb, written at the end of the seventh/thirteenth, or beginning of the eighth/fourteenth century, mentions a third group within the futuwwa, called the “drinkers” (shurbī) (Zarkūb, 187, 191–2). It seems that the shurbīs were those members of the futuwwa who, rather than being tradespeople, were inclined towards Sufism and asceticism, and wore clothes made of wool. It appears that this designation was applied to the Qalandars (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 46). All the futuvvat nāmas identify the progenitor and archetype of the futuwwa as ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, with Salmān al-Fārsī, the Persian Companion of the Prophet, as his successor. The followers of futuwwa believed that on the day of Ghadīr seventeen individuals were initiated into the order of futuwwa and the first of these was Salmān. Most of the works on futuwwa that survive from the seventh/thirteenth century onwards reveal Shīʿa tendencies. This Shīʿism was outwardly Twelver, though in terms of its beliefs and practices, it was strongly influenced by the ghulāt (so-called extremists) (Gölpınarlı, 75–79). From the seventh/thirteenth century also, we see that some futuvvat nāmas identify certain types of tradesmen as unworthy of joining the fraternity— winebibbers, gamblers, and fornicators were widely barred from the futuwwa. For example, Ibn al-Miʿmār said that musicians and painters were not allowed to join (Ibn al-Miʿmār, 176–8) and Mawlānā Nāṣirī Siwāsī said that butchers, skinners, and barbers who work in bathhouses are forbidden from joining the

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fraternity (Nāṣirī, 10–2). However, we have extant futuvvat nāmas written by people from some of these rejected professions. For instance, from the twelfth/ eighteenth century, when the Ṣafavids ruled Iran, despite the views of authors such as Nāṣirī Siwāsī, there are futuvvat nāmas for butchers and bathhouse workers (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 147–54; Afshari (ed.), Chahārdah risāla, 177–95). Indeed, it has been said that Javānmard Qaṣṣāb, the legendary pīr of the butcher’s guild, was one of the seventeen persons supposedly initiated into the futuwwa by ʿAlī (Kāshifī Sabzawārī, 122, 381; Afshari, Soufis, héros et metiers en Iran). As for bathhouse workers, they bathed and cleaned others, shaving the heads of their customers or trimming their hair and massaging them. They would also let the blood of their customers through cupping (hijāma), believing it to be therapeutic. They too traced their futuwwa to Salmān al-Fārsī but placed greater emphasis on this, going so far as to call themselves “Salmānīs” (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 182–98, 201–9, 212–3; Afshari (ed.), Chahārdah risāla, 201–7, 213–8, 223–7). Therefore, it is clear that those professions that were rejected or banned from joining the futuwwa fraternity were not universally agreed upon at all times and in all places. On the contrary, at various times in history, and even perhaps from one city to another, these rules and norms could, and did, vary. 3 Guild Futuvvat Nāmas and Treatises from the Professions Unlike the Ṣūfīs who did not practice a trade, having a profession and earning a living were important (even sacred, perhaps) for the people of futuwwa because they worked with the goal of helping others. This was an important precept of futuwwa religiosity (Gölpınarlı, 119). A considerable number of futuvvat nāmas in Persian and some in Arabic and Turkish were guild-based in character, meaning that they were written in order to introduce new members of a particular trade guild to the doctrines, etiquette, and ceremonies of the guild. Naturally, these teachings were mixed with those of the futuwwa chivalry code more generally. This sub-genre of futuvvat nāmas is characterised, to a greater or lesser extent, by an emphasis on serving others. For example, in the Futuvvat nāma-yi ṭabbākhān (that is, the futuvvat nāma for the cooks), God is related as having said to Abraham, “Strive to bring the hot cooked food to the lips and mouths of my servants!” (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 170). The Futuvvat nāma-yi salmāniyān (for the bathhouse workers) repeatedly enjoins its readers to show respect to customers when shaving their heads and to serve them for the sake of God (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 185–6). In the

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same vein, the Futuvvat nāma-yi nanvāyān (for the bakers) says that if a baker mistreats people, the pīr of the guild should reprimand him for his behaviour (Afshari (ed.), Chahārdah risāla, 162). In these guild futuvvat nāmas, each professional guild traces its trade back to one of the prophets. In this way, the progenitor of most crafts is none other than Adam, the first man. For example, the guild of butchers claims Adam as the first butcher (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 148), the guild of cobblers claims him as the first cobbler (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 156), and the guild of bakers claims him as the first baker (Afshari (ed.), Chahārdah risāla, 156). Adam is said to have learnt all of these trades from the Angel Gabriel. Conversely, the guild of cooks traced their lineage back to Abraham (Afshari (ed.), Chahārdah risāla, 169–70), the tailors to Idrīs (Afshari (ed.), Sī futuvvat nāma, 83), and the weavers to Job (Afshari (ed.), Sī futuvvat nāma, 189). Virtually all of these futuvvat nāmas include a myth and legend that tell the story of how one of these prophets originated the craft in question. These myths and legends also tell how each of the tools of a particular trade came into being. The futuvvat nāmas were usually short treatises consisting of several questions and answers, intended to teach the followers of the guild and its initiates to remember God when doing their work and to recite prayers and invocations as they laboured. These works also taught them to show deference to their teachers and the guild elders, to remember the good deeds of those forebears and teachers of the guild who had passed away, and to always observe the code of chivalry ( javānmardī) with their customers. In the course of training, as alongside the names of the prophets, the names of the famous masters of each guild were also mentioned. Many of these were the names of real historical figures, such as a figure by the name of Sulṭān Walad, who was a master of the guild of skinners (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 152). Other figures are ambiguous, possibly mythical, such as Shaykh Ẓahīr, one of the masters of the guild of cobblers (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 162), Ustād Nawrūz Rūmī, a master of the guild of chefs (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 173), and Ustād ʿAbdallāh Aqtash and Aḥmad Rūmī, masters of the guild of dyers (Afshari, Sī futuvvat nāma, 112), and Ustād Suhayl Sharwānī, a master of the guild of weavers (Afshari (ed.), Sī futuvvat nāma, 189). Finally, there are those names that are clearly of a mythical character, such as Javānmard Qaṣṣāb of the guild of butchers and skinners (Afshari (ed.), Chahārdah risāla, 184). After appearing in the guild futuvvat nāmas that were mainly composed in the tenth/sixteenth to twelfth/eighteenth centuries when the Ṣafavids ruled Iran, and even in the two centuries that followed, these lists of masters’ names that blended historical and legendary personalities found their way into shorter treatises introducing only the masters of several guilds (usually seventeen

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guilds). These treatises on guilds were usually composed in Iran by the Ṣūfīs of the Khāksār order, who were heavily influenced by futuwwa (Gramlich, 1:78– 80; Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 347–58) and who attached great importance to the guild of bathhouse workers (Salmānīs). In the past, when initiates joined the Khāksār order, they would spend some time working in this profession (Afshari (ed.), Futuvvat nāma-hā, 180–1). The ʿAjam dervishes, a branch of the Khaksār, also attended the “sokhanvarī” ceremony, that is, a poem recitation in coffee houses, during which they commemorated seventeen guilds and included themselves as one of them (Afshari, Tāza bi tāza, 111–25). The guild treatises identify the first master of each guild, in other words, who first practiced their craft. Works similar to these Persian guild treatises, written in Arabic and slightly later, also survive in manuscript form (al-Shaykhalī, 184). Other manuscripts of treatises in this vein also exist in Turkish (Gölpınarlı, 121–2). However, it should be noted that these treatises in Persian, Arabic, and Turkish are not uniform in terms of which guilds they introduce, nor the names of their masters; these details vary from one treatise to another. It seems that they reflect the earlier beliefs of the people of futuwwa that only certain trades were permitted to follow the code of chivalry, and that fraternities were not open to all. As we have seen, these beliefs varied from one time and place to another; in some cases, a trade that was forbidden from joining the futuwwa in one treatise is considered a member of the fraternity in another. The members of guilds continued to follow the futuwwa code in many Islamic lands until the early twentieth century. Recalling his childhood in Bukhara, the Tajik writer Ṣadr al-Dīn ʿAynī (d. 1954) says that the guilds of Bukhara at that time had organisations and institutions like those of the futuwwa. Each of these guilds followed a particular master, just as depicted by the Khāksārs centuries earlier. For example, ʿAynī relates, the guild of cobblers followed Bābā Pārahdūz Bukhārī (ʿAynī, 467–73), who appears to have been a legendary figure akin to the aforementioned Javānmard Qassāb. And just as the grave of the latter is popularly believed to be in southern Tehran, the grave of Bābā Pārahdūz is commonly thought to be in Bukhara. Furthermore, according to ʿAynī, the members of the guilds of his youth even had a hierarchy: bābā (father), āqsaqāl (elder), ustād (teacher), and ṣāḥibkār (master) (ʿAynī, 467–73). The guild of early twentieth-century Bukhara had handwritten treatises handed down from their masters containing invocations that their members should recite as they laboured and worked, exactly like the futuvvat nāmas of the various guilds in Iran. Interestingly, in Uzbekistan today, we can still find knowledge transmitted from one generation of artisans to another (blacksmiths for example), with professional textbooks (risāla) to teach the craftsman the spiritual values attached to his work (Dağyeli, 111–56, 261–76).

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Bibliography ʿAbbādī, Quṭb al-Dīn Abū l-Muẓaffar, Manāqib al-Ṣūfiyya, ed. Muḥammad Taqī Dānish­ pazhūh and Īraj Afshār, Tehran 1362 Sh [1983]. Aflākī ʿĀrifī, Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad, Manāqib al-ʿārifīn, ed. Taḥsīn Yāzījī, 2 vols., Ankara 1961. Afshari, Mehran and Mehdi Madayeni, eds., Chahārdah risāla dar bāb-i futuvvat va aṣnāf, Tehran 1381 Sh [2002]. Afshari, Mehran, ed., Futuvvat nāma-hā va rasāʾil-i Khāksāriyya, Tehran 13942 Sh [2013]. Afshari, Mehran, ed., Sī futuvvat nāma-yi dīgar, Tehran 1391 Sh [2012]. Afshari, Mehran, Soufis, héros et metiers en Iran. La guilde des généreux et bons bouchers, Journal d’histoire du soufisme 7 (2018): 187–98. Afshari, Mehran, Tāza bi tāza, nav bi nav, Tehran 1385 Sh [2006]. ʿAynī, Ṣadr al-Dīn, Yāddāsht-hā, ed. ʿAlī Akbar Saʿīdī Sīrjānī, Tehran 1361 Sh [1982]. Cahen, Claude, Mouvements populaires et autonomisme urbain dans l’Asie médiévale du Moyen Âge, III, Arabica 6/3 (1959): 233–65. Dağyeli, Jeanine Elif, Gott liebt das Handwerk. Moral, Identität und religiose Legitimierung in der mittelasiatischen Handwerks-risāla, Wiesbaden 2011. Gölpınarlı, Abdülbâki, Futuvvat dar kishvarhā-yi Islāmī, trans. Tawfīq H. Subḥānī, Tehran 1379 Sh [2000]. Gramlich, Richard, Die Schiitischen Derwischorden Persiens, Erster Teil. Die Affiliationen, Wiesbaden 1965. Hujwīrī, ʿAlī b. ʿUthmān, Kashf al-maḥjūb, ed. Maḥmūd ʿĀbidī, Tehran 1383 Sh [2004]. Ibn al-Athīr, Kitāb al-kāmil fī l-tārīkh, vol. 9, Leiden 1863. Ibn al-Athīr, Kitāb kāmil al-tawārīkh, vol. 6, Uppsala 1851. Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs iblīs, ed. al-Sayyid al-Jumaylī, Beirut 1409/1989. Ibn al-Miʿmār, Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. al-Makārim, Kitāb al-futuwwa, ed. Muṣṭafā Jawād, Muḥammad Taqī l-Dīn al-Hilālī, ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm al-Najjār, and Aḥmad Nājī l-Qaysī, Baghdad 1958. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Riḥlat Ibn Baṭṭūṭa. Tuhfat al-nuẓār fī gharāʾib al-amṣār, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-ʿUryān, Beirut 1407/1987. Ibn Munawwar, Muḥammad, Asrār al-tawhīd fī maqāmāt al-Shaykh Abī Saʿīd, ed. Muḥammad Riḍā Shafīʿī Kadkanī, 2 vols., Tehran 1371 Sh [1992]. Kāshifī Sabzawārī, Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ, Futuvvat nāma-yi sulṭānī, ed. Muḥammad Jaʿfar Maḥjūb, Tehran 1350 Sh [1971]. Kaykāwūs b. Iskandar, ʿUnṣur al-Maʿālī, Qābūs nāma, ed. Ghulām Ḥusayn Yūsufī, Tehran 1345 Sh [1966]. Köksal, M. Fatih, Ana kaynaklarıyla Türk ahiliği, Istanbul 2015. Köksal, M. Fatih et al., Kırşehir müzesi’n deki ahilik belgeleri, Kırşehir 2008. Mawlānā Nāṣirī, Futuvvat nāma-yi Mawlānā Nāṣirī, ed. Franz Taeschner, Leipzig 1944.

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Mustamlī Bukhārī, Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad, Sharḥ al-taʿarruf li-madhhab al-taṣawwuf, ed. Muḥammad Rawshan, 4 vols., Tehran 1363 Sh [1984]. Ridgeon, Lloyd, Jawanmardi. A Sufi code of honour, Edinburgh 2011. Ridgeon, Lloyd, Morals and mysticism in Persian Sufism. A history of Sufi-futuwwat in Iran, London and New York 2010. al-Sarrāj, Abū Naṣr ʿAbdallāh, Kitāb al-lumaʿ fī l-taṣawwuf, ed. Reynold A. Nicholson, Leiden 1914. al-Shaykhalī, Ṣabāḥ Ibrāhīm Saʿīd, al-Aṣnāf fī l-ʿaṣr al-ʿAbbāsī, Baghdad 1976. Suhrawardī, Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar, Futuvvat nāma, in Murtaḍā Ṣarrāf (ed.), Rasāʾil-i javānmardān, Tehran 1370 Sh [1991]. al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Risālat al-Malāmatiyya, ed. Abū l-ʿAlāʾ ʿAfīfī, Cairo 1364/1945. Taeschner, Franz, Zünfte und Bruderschaften im Islam, Zürich 1979. Zakeri, Mohsen, From futuwwa to mystic political thought, in Shahrokh Raei (ed.), Islamic alternatives. Non-mainstream religion in Persianate societies (Wiesbaden 2017), 29–51. Zakeri, Mohsen, Sāsānid soldiers in early Muslim society, Wiesbaden 1995. Zarkūb, Najm al-Dīn, Futuvvat nāma, in Murtaḍā Ṣarrāf (ed.), Rasāʾil-i javānmardān, Tehran 1370 Sh [1991]. Zarrīnkūb, ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn, Dunbāla-yi justujū dar taṣavvuf-i Īrān, Tehran 1376 Sh [1997].

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Part 2 Ṣūfī Places and Dwellings

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Chapter 5

Ṣūfī Places and Dwellings Daphna Ephrat and Paulo G. Pinto 1 Introduction While the mystical tradition of Islam originally flourished in private houses and other informal places or in nearby mosques, from the fourth/tenth Islamic century onward, buildings known mostly by the terms khānqāh (P.), zāwiya (Ar.), ribāṭ (Ar.), and tekke (Tk.) became the primary centres associated with Sufism. Their development and spread paralleled the evolution of Sufism into an elaborate set of customs based on master-disciple relations, which ultimately culminated in the formation of Ṣūfī orders or ṭarīqas. In spite of their temporal and regional varieties, the buildings that gave Sufism a concrete form shared important characteristics: all accommodated Ṣūfī masters and followers; provided space for communal activities; and, at times, gave shelter to travellers and opened soup kitchens for the poor. On the whole, they were organised and spatially arranged to serve their functional and symbolic purposes. Some were large-scale, state-sponsored hospices designed by the endowing rulers to support groups of Ṣūfīs, whereas others were modest lodges built by or for individual Ṣūfī masters and their small circles of disciples; these typically also included a tomb for the master of the lodge. Gradually, the lodges and tombs of revered Ṣūfī masters emerged as loci of spiritual guidance, social cohesion, popular religiosity, and occasionally, also centres of political activism. Shrine complexes erected around burial places of revered masters of the spiritual paths were lavishly endowed and provided large spaces for ritual activities and accommodation for pilgrims and visitors. We find evidence of the foundation, expansion, and architectural form of Ṣūfī institutions of various types, and accounts of their significance to the formation of Ṣūfī associations and society in general preserved in hagiographies, endowment documents, travellers’ accounts, and guides for pilgrims, in epigraphic inscriptions, in the ruins of buildings, and in buildings that still exist. From the nineteenth century onward, processes of modernisation and globalisation considerably diminished the appeal of Ṣūfī lodges and saints’ tombs, as the state (with its modern education system) and the media and entertainment industry took over roles previously reserved for Ṣūfīs in many parts of the Islamic world. Some lodges preserved their traditional functions,

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whereas many others underwent significant changes in terms of the orbit and pattern of their geographical expansion, and in their formats and designations. Numerous magnificent shrines (both old and recent) have acquired a sanctity of their own, and maintained their importance as prime centres of Muslim religious and communal life. 2

The Development of Ṣūfī Institutional Settings in the Mediaeval Period (Late Fourth/Tenth to Ninth/Fifteenth Century)

2.1 Beginnings The genesis of specifically Ṣūfī structures is not well known. When dealing with their origins, the usual starting point is the second-/eighth-century duwayra (the diminutive of dār, “house”) or ribāṭ—the first one we know of is a fortified cloister on the island of ʿAbbādān (modern Ābādān) on the Persian Gulf. This ribāṭ became a chief training ground for Iraqi ascetics. Originally a military outpost against sea raiders, it was later manned mostly by pious volunteers who, alongside their military service, engaged in acts of worship and supererogatory piety (Knysh, 17). During the second/eighth century, early Muslims who renounced the world combined worship with holy war and settled in fortified strongholds (ribāṭs) along the Arab-Byzantine frontier. Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. c. 161/777) is cited as a typical example of a celebrated ascetic-cum-warrior (Chabbi, Ribāṭ). Yet, it is difficult to verify any historical connection between the ribāṭs of the frontier areas and later institutions with this name that were regularly and consistently connected with activities of Ṣūfī masters and their disciples (Chabbi, La fonction, 102; Hofer [Ṣūfī Outposts] in this volume). Such institutions became prominent in the eastern lands of the Muslim world toward the end of the fourth/tenth century. Ṣūfīs in Khurāsān adopted the institution known as khānqāh (originally linked to the Karrāmiyya ascetic and missionary movement), and adapted it for their own purposes (Bosworth, 8). These can be considered the first Ṣūfī organisations. The word khānqāh, a compound of the Persian khān/eh (usually meaning “house”) and the locative suffix –gāh, conventionally denoted a dwelling occupied by Ṣūfīs; it was used for meetings, as residences, for study, and for communal prayer under the supervision of a Ṣūfī master (Chabbi, K̲ h̲ānḳāh; Böwering and Melvin-Koushki). Sources from this age depict such dwellings as centres of teaching and spiritual training presided over by Ṣūfī masters, and self-sufficient hospices for residents and travelling Ṣūfīs. Rules of ethical behaviour and companionship were set to regulate the collective activities of denizens of the khānqāh—most famously, the code of the celebrated Ṣūfī, Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049) (Chabbi, K̲ h̲ānḳāh, 1025–6; Meier, 306–10; Graham, 83–135; Omer, 11–4). The Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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code he laid down for inhabitants of his khānqāh consists of ten injunctions; these are quoted in a biography written by Muḥammad b. Munawwar entitled Asrār al-tawḥīd fī maqāmāt al-shaykh Abū Saʿīd (Ibn Munawwar, 316–7 in O’Kane, 493–5). The first set of injunctions focuses on the constant recollection of God. All inhabitants must maintain ritual purity and have clean clothing, supplicate God for forgiveness after the dawn prayer, recite the Qurʾān at daybreak, not talk to anyone until the sun rises, recite litanies between the last two ritual prayers, and perform supererogatory night prayers. Such injunctions, designed to regulate a social organisation, demanded that residents receive the poor and weak to ease their burdens, always eat in the company of others, and not leave without mutual consent. Historians of early Sufism in Khurāsān of the late fourth/tenth and fifth/ eleventh centuries have shown that, from this point forward, the connection between the khānqāhs and followers of Ṣūfī masters became a permanent feature of the Muslim religious landscape. This important development marked the evolution of Sufism into an established pietistic tradition with its own structures of authority and companionship. While integrating themselves into the madrasas and the established schools of law and law colleges, Ṣūfīs in Khurāsān, such as ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), ʿAlī b. ʿUthmān al-Hujwīrī (d. c. 465/1072), Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072), and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), defined the basic beliefs and practices of the distinctive Ṣūfī traditions, and reiterated that each group needed an authoritative master to guide his disciples through the stages and stations of the Path, and closely monitor their behaviour (Malamud). 2.2 The Foundation of State-Sponsored Institutions The stabilisation and spread of the khānqāh as a Ṣūfī institution gained momentum following the disintegration of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate and the rise to power of the sultanate of the Great Saljūqs (431–590/1040–1194) in Iran and Iraq. In addition to founding and endowing a number of madrasas, Saljūq officials and later the sultans themselves, founded and patronised a string of khānqāhs throughout Khurāsān. The rulers designated their khānqāhs for groups of Ṣūfīs, as places to lodge, share their meals, and conduct their rituals, and they supervised the establishments they lavishly endowed. Although the patronage of religious scholars and Ṣūfīs was initially practised primarily in Khurāsān, the practice later became common in Saljūq Baghdad and the Saljūq successor states (Firouzeh in this volume). East of Khurāsān, khānqāhs swiftly spread beyond the Saljūq domains and reached the fringes of the Iranian-Afghanistan border, and from there, they spread into the territories of a new Islamic polity—the sultanate of Delhi (602–962/12o6–1555). The Chishtiyya formed in Ajmer (in the heart of Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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Rajasthan) around Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī (d. 633/1236); it was one of the earliest Ṣūfī orders and the most widespread in the territories ruled by the sultanate and in the Indian subcontinent as a whole. Chishtī’s disciples set up numerous khānqāhs throughout India; these served as residences for disciples and sometimes as inns where free meals were served to visitors. In general, Chishtī shaykhs remained aloof from the ruling elite. However, beginning in the eighth/ fourteenth century, the centralised administration of the order grew weaker and less independent, and over time they were compelled to forge ties with the rulers, a practice that came to be generally accepted. This acceptance resulted in a significant change in the resources available to the khānqāhs (Nizami, 51– 71; Gaborieau; Ernst and Lawrence). The late sixth/twelfth century marked the beginning of an alliance between Ṣūfī khānqāhs and the political rulers of Egypt and Syria. The process of founding khānqāhs in Egypt began under the Ayyūbids, following the restoration of Sunnī Islam as the official religion of the state (after over two hundred years of Fāṭimid Shīʿī rule). Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin, d. 589/1193) founded his first khānqāh—a hospice known as Saʿīd al-Suʿadāʾ or Ṣalāḥiyya—in 569/1173, in order to house Ṣūfī newcomers to Cairo. He built it in the heart of the city and endowed it with a charitable trust (waqf ) to ensure that the khānqāh would continue to provide a home for Ṣūfīs long after he had passed away. Ṣūfīs living in the khānqāh received daily rations of food and sweets, small stipends, and time away from the khānqāh to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca. At the top of the khānqāh’s organisation, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn created a salaried position, known as shaykh al-shuyūkh (lit., “the master of masters”) whose job was to mentor the Ṣūfīs in the khānqāh and act as a liaison between the ruling class and local Ṣūfī communities in the Ayyūbid sultanate (Hofer, 35). Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn also founded the first khānqāh in Jerusalem. In 585/1189, about two years after the liberation of Jerusalem from the crusaders, he turned the Patriarch’s residence near the Church of the Resurrection into a khānqāh. He named it ‘Ṣalāḥiyya’ in his own honour, and endowed it liberally for groups of Ṣūfī followers—whether indigenous or, more probably, foreign—and created the office of director of the khānqāh and trustee of its pious endowment (Ephrat, Spiritual wayfarers, 113). The regulations regarding the use of the endowment made clear that the founder designed it to safeguard mainstream Sufism and to promote his image as its supporter: Members of the above-mentioned group [i.e., the beneficiaries] should all congregate in this place every day after the afternoon prayer for the recital of the Qurʾān and for dhikr, which should be followed by prayers for this waqf donor and for the Muslims in general…. They should [also] gather with their shaykh every Friday after sunrise, either in this place or Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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in al-Aqṣā Mosque, where they should recite the holy book as much as possible, then pray for the donor and the Muslims and read aloud in the presence of their shaykh the words of the leading Ṣūfī shaykhs, may God make them beneficial. al-ʿAsalī, 94

In Damascus, the foundation of khānqāhs began in the mid-sixth/twelfth century under the Zangids, but it was not until the establishment of Ayyūbid rule in 582/1186 that they grew rapidly. The overall increase in their numbers was such that they became an integral part of the urban landscape and its surroundings, alongside mosques and madrasas. It is noteworthy that khānqāhs were often built in the heart of old Damascus, neighbouring the Great Mosque

Figure 5.1

Khānqāh al-Ṣalāḥiyya in Jerusalem, views of the portal elevation Photo by Daphna Ephrat

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Figure 5.2

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Khānqāh al-Ṣalāḥiyya in Jerusalem, the mosque minaret Photo by Daphna Ephrat

and the citadel. The religious and political centrality of this area can hardly be underestimated. Although no deeds of endowment or remnants survived, we can surmise that, regardless of the density of this prestigious area, their buildings were sufficiently spacious to house groups of Ṣūfīs. These buildings thus projected an aura of religious prestige and highlighted the piety of their founders and their role as patrons and supporters of Ṣūfīs (Ephrat and Mahamid, 189–92).

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The affinity between the nature and location of the Ṣūfī institutions was apparent in Aleppo as well. During the early phase of their development, under the reign of the Zangid Nūr al-Dīn (541–69/1147–74), almost all khānqāhs in Aleppo were situated at the foothill of the citadel and the palace, in order to be close to their protector and patron (Elisséeff, 3:367). Apparently, later, under the Ayyūbids and the early Mamlūks, khānqāhs were clustered in the area beneath the citadel, which had gained increasing importance as Aleppo was transformed from a military garrison into a fortified palatial city. Other khānqāhs were situated in the northern and prosperous northwestern quarters of the walled city, not far from the Great Mosque. Among them was the Khānqāh al-Farāfra, the only one in Aleppo to have survived. The building

Figure 5.3 Khānqāh al-Farāfra in Aleppo, muqarnas hood Yasser Tabbaa Archive, courtesy of Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT)

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Figure 5.4

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Khānqāh al-Farāfra in Aleppo, detail of upper part of courtyard with citadel in background Yasser Tabbaa Archive, courtesy of Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT)

was erected in 635/1237 in commemoration of Sultan al-Malik al-Nāṣir Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf (r. in Aleppo 579–89/1183–93), and endowed by Ḍayfa Khātūm, who ruled in the name of her grandson until her death. Like the contemporary madrasas, the heart of the building was a courtyard with an ornamented fountain, a richly decorated portal, and buildings laid out around the courtyard that housed a mosque, a central hall (īwān), and residential cells. Yet, the Khānqāh al-Farāfra differed from contemporary madrasas by its additional and relatively large number of living units (Tabbaa, 164–82). The Mamlūks (648–922/1250–1517) followed the Ayyūbids, and under their rule, state-sponsored and formally organised khānqāhs became increasingly common. The functions of the structures changed as well: while the early khānqāhs were places for instruction in Sufism, the later institutions often also served as centres for legal instruction, in much the same way that madrasas did. Constituting a marker of the rapprochement between mystical and juristic Islam, this fusion of educational and devotional activities in the royal establishments founded in Cairo and other great cities ruled by the Mamlūks was so complete that by the end of the Mamlūk period it was increasingly

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difficult to distinguish the establishments that supported the activities of the mystics from those of the jurists. Similarly, the terms madrasa, khānqāh, and ribāṭ (and sometime jāmiʿ) were often used interchangeably (Fernandes, 20, 33, 39–41; Amīn, 3:817–8; Berkey, 47–50, 56–60). 2.3 The Evolution of the Lodge as the Primary Ṣūfī Centre The ruling elites’ patronage of Ṣūfīs, alongside the religious scholars of the madrasas, was a clear indication that they were recognised as disseminators of the message of Islam. Beginning with the Great Saljūqs, the new political elites supported juridical Sufism, thoroughly grounded in the Qurʾān and the prophetic Sunna, as part of their public policy of patronising Sunnī scholarship through state-sponsored organisations in exchange for ideological support. The khānqāh thus functioned as an ideological branch of the state apparatus, in the sense that the Ṣūfīs who lived there wittingly or unwittingly participated in legitimising the endowing rulers as supporters and defenders of Islam (Safi, xxv, xxix–xxx, 4–5; 96–7; Broadbridge). Funded by endowment trusts for the benefit of Ṣūfī jurists and guardians of faith, the khānqāh may have been used as an instrument of a public policy to bolster the rulers’ prestige (Arjomand). At the same time, as in the case of other charitable foundations in the public sphere, such as mosques and madrasas, the foundation of khānqāhs was considered an act of piety, one that established a bond of shared values between the rulers and the beneficiaries and generated positive public opinion that condoned or even legitimised the rule of the royal donor (Hoexter, 130–4). The formal institutional structure of the khānqāh could hardly contain the activities and energy of the growing numbers of mediaeval Muslim men and women who identified themselves in some way as Ṣūfīs. At the same time, some Ṣūfīs pursuing an ascetic mode of life sought to avoid the patronage of the ruling elite and distance themselves from formally organised and statesponsored institutions. It is no wonder, then, that informal groups of Ṣūfī masters and their disciples continued to gather in mosques and private homes. Alternatively, they gathered in much more modest and less institutionalised Ṣūfī structures known as zāwiyas or ribāṭs. Cities and smaller towns and villages, in Egypt and Syria especially, were littered with zāwiyas. In contrast to the khānqāh, zāwiyas and ribāṭs in the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk sultanates were built for living and holding teaching sessions by Ṣūfī shaykhs themselves or by their close associates. In these cases, the shaykhs were typically buried in the zāwiya. Each zāwiya was independently owned and operated; each was associated with its founder and, after his death, his successors

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(Fernandes, 16–32; Hofer, 52–3). Toward the end of the seventh/thirteenth century, wealthy patrons—particularly senior local governors (amīrs)—also began to found zāwiyas for the benefit of individuals and their circles of disciples. These became prevalent in the later Mamlūk period and were, at least partially, a result of the desire of Mamlūk amīrs to compete with each other for status, legitimacy, and spiritual benefit. These zāwiyas were smallscale structures founded and funded for specific Ṣūfī masters (Hofer, 52–3; Mahamid, 206). The famous eighth-/fourteenth-century Moroccan traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, who lodged in zāwiyas during his long travels, provides us with a unique testimony about the proliferation of zāwiyas in Egypt and the life of their inhabitants: There are many zāwiyas in Egypt …, and the amīrs compete with others to build them. Each has a shaykh and doorkeeper, and their affairs are admirably organised. They have many special customs, one of which relates to food. The servant of the zāwiya comes in the morning to the fuqarāʾ [mendicants] and each one indicates what he desires, and when they assemble for meals, each man is given bread and soup in a separate dish, no one sharing with another. They eat twice a day, and are given winter and summer clothes and a monthly allowance of twenty to thirty dirham [a silver coin]. Every Thursday night they receive sugar cakes, soap to wash their clothes, the entrance fee of a bath, and oil for their lamps. These men are celibate; the married individuals among them belong to a separate category. They must attend the five daily prayers, spend the night in the zāwiya, and assemble in a special room (qubba) in the zāwiya. Each sits on his special prayer rug…. Copies of the Qurʾān are distributed among them, and they recite the verses together after the morning and afternoon prayers…. On Fridays, the servant gathers all of the prayer rugs and takes them to the mosque. The mendicants leave together with their shaykh and go to the mosque, where everyone prays on his rug. After the prayer, they read the Qurʾān silently, and return to the zāwiya with their shaykh. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, 37–8

In Anatolia, dervish lodges, mostly known as tekkes (tekiyye or tekye, from the Arabic takiyya, “a place or thing on which one leans; or where one rests”) first appeared after the establishment of Saljūq Sultanate of Rūm in the late fifth/ eleventh century. But it was only following the disintegration of the sultanate into principalities in the mid-seventh/thirteenth century that dervish lodges began to proliferate in the region. In the important trading cities of central

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Anatolia—Sivas, Tokat, and Amaysa—a significant number of tekkes was built in the span of one hundred years, from the mid-seventh/thirteenth to the mideighth/fourteenth century. Dervish leaders set up lodges to serve as centres for communal worship and to standardise their practices in this region, which was being transformed by large numbers of immigrants who had fled the Mongol expansion and the breakdown of central authority. They attracted the support of semi-independent local rulers, who probably sought to secure their newly acquired properties by funding dervish lodges, thereby displaying their connection with popular dervish leaders. The deeds of the building endowments that survived to the present shed light on the wide range of functional designations of the dervish lodges. Building patrons who endowed dervish lodges also stipulated that the residents perform duties such as welcoming visitors, praying, reciting the Qurʾān, and distributing food to the poor. Dervishes and guests were served meals, and sheltering travellers and pilgrims was one of the lodge’s primary functions (Wolper, 25–32). In the Maghrib, the institutional centres of Sufism are commonly denoted by the terms ribāṭ and zāwiya. A ribāṭ originally referred to a fort erected to protect an exposed border. While in al-Andalūs and Ifrīqiyya the ribāṭ continued to serve its original military functions, the ribāṭs of Morocco were often founded as rural mosques that served as centres for the dissemination of religious knowledge and practice. Textual evidence suggests that the ribāṭ was conceived as a formal institution for rural Ṣūfīs in Morocco as early as the third/ninth century. A noteworthy example is Ribāṭ Nakūr in the town of Nakūr in the Rif Mountains of northern Morocco; this ribāṭ embodies the essential characteristics of what later became a pivotal religious and sociopolitical institution in the formative period of Moroccan Sufism (from the fifth/ eleventh through the seventh/thirteenth century). The site was privately built and locally maintained; in it authoritative Ṣūfī shaykhs taught Islamic creed and dispensed justice to sedentary and pastoralist peoples alike. Since the rural ribāṭs also served as teaching centres for normative Islam, they complemented urban Islamic institutions. In addition, their position amidst multiple social and intellectual networks allowed them to play an important role in the formation of the earliest Ṣūfī orders in Morocco, and foster the doctrinal and practical homogeneity of Sunnī Islam in the region by combining mystical doctrines with membership based on ethnic or tribal ties (Cornell, 39–40). Although Ṣūfī orders in the Maghrib are sometimes called zāwiyas, the zāwiya as an institution antedates the establishment of Ṣūfī orders (ṭarīqas) in the region. The origin of the zāwiyas can be found in the domed shrines, in the rābiṭa (a hermitage to which a holy man retired, surrounded by his followers), and in the ribāṭ, which served inter alia as a centre for waging jihād. However,

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the zāwiya organisation, as a prominent Ṣūfī centre with a wide range of functions, was commonly linked to the consolidation and spread of the ṭarīqas in the region, most visibly the Shādhiliyya. Under the patronage of the Ḥafṣids (627–982/1229–1574) in Ifrīqiyya and the Marīnids (614–869/1217–1465) in Morocco, new Shādhilī lodges were built and funded for popular leaders of the order. Paradoxically, with time, Shādhilī lodges became seats of opposition to the central power. However, in general they served as centres of social stability, by securing the allegiance of local tribes or villages to one or another Shādhilī leader. Zāwiyas became more common and more elaborate under the patronage of the Saʿdian sharīfs (descendants of the Prophet) (916–1069/1510–1659), who often allied themselves with local religious fraternities. One of the largest and finest zāwiyas in Morocco was established in Marrakesh for the renowned Shādhilī shaykh Muḥammad al-Jazūlī (d. 869/1465), whose followers were influential in bringing the Saʿdian dynasty to power (Cornell, 235). It was at the lodges presided over by revered spiritual masters—the zāwiyas, the ribāṭs, and the tekkes—rather than in state-sponsored and organised establishments that the institutionalisation of Ṣūfī practices of establishing authority and constituting a following, and the eventual formation of ṭarīqa-based Sufism, took place. There the master guided his disciples in his distinctive spiritual path, supervised their conduct, set up hierarchies among his disciples and followers, and formed a community of devout followers. In their lodges, Ṣūfīs attempted to pattern their micro-communities on the sacred community of the Prophet and his Companions (ṣaḥāba); they compared themselves to the “people of the porch” (ahl al-ṣuffa) who slept on his roofed porch (portico) in Medina. In the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, a genre of literature known as ādāb al-murīdīn (“rules of conduct for seekers of the path”), which had its origins in the writings of the great mystics of the Islamic East, laid down the conceptual foundations for the organisation, regularisation, and routinisation of lodge communities. One of the earliest and most widely read works of Ṣūfī rules for novices was written by Abū l-Najīb al-Suhrawardī (d. 563/1168) (Milson; Netton). This literature matured in the writings of his nephew and disciple ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234), the presumed founder of the Suhrawardiyya order. ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī, who had been trained in the ribāṭ-based community established by his uncle in Baghdad, was probably the first master to present a systematic description of the regulations of life in the Ṣūfī lodge in his manual, ʿAwārif al-maʿārif (The benefits of intimate knowledge). The system, which was replicated thereafter, detailed the hierarchy within the institution; the rights, obligations, and roles of its various members; the activities they engaged in; and the manner and customs by which

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they interacted with one another (Ohlander, 194–247). Al-Suhrawardī laid out a body of regulations governing the ritual for departing from and entering the ribāṭ; this action represented a highly ritualised break between its sacralised space and the profane space of the outer world, a transition whose gravity he highlighted. The acts associated with these rituals symbolised the mendicant’s commitment to embark on a practical and spiritual journey under the supervision of the spiritual guide and master of the lodge (al-Suhrawardī, 1:304–5, in Ohlander, 231–2). For al-Suhrawardī, the ribāṭ is first and foremost a space for the greater jihād against the lower self (mujāhadat al-nafs), the seat of selfish lusts and passions, though it is also a space for the lesser jihād against the infidels. In waging the greater jihād through acts of supererogatory piety and self-exertion, al-Suhrawardī finds one of the most powerful arguments for the necessity of such a space vis-à-vis the Ṣūfī path (al-Suhrawardī, 1:265–6, in Ohlander 194–5). 2.4 Ṣūfī Lodges as Centres for the Worship of Saints By the turn of the seventh/thirteenth century, Sufism had risen to a prominent position in religious life and social structure. While the lodges were originally centres of small groups of disciples orbiting around their spiritual masters, those containing the gravesites of their founders and their heirs became sites of communal worship and pious visitations (mazār). Ordinary believers flocked to the lodges to partake in the rituals of the Ṣūfīs, to pray and recite dhikr, to listen to the master’s preaching, to seek his blessing (baraka) in times of trouble, or simply to benefit from his proximity. The heads of Ṣūfī lodges were ascribed a variety of miracles, from simple acts of reading minds to spectacular feats of healing and telepathy, to miraculous travels from various remote locales to Mecca to perform a pilgrimage (Gramlich; Renard, 91–117). The growing prominence of Ṣūfī masters went hand in hand with the spread of the so-called cult of saints that, from the sixth/twelfth century onward, became central to the religious experience of many Muslims. Various pious individuals with Ṣūfī affiliations were celebrated by their fellow believers as holy men or “friends of God” (awliyāʾ Allāh). They were recognised as such during their lifetime or after their death. Not all of those whom the Ṣūfīs considered God’s friends and channels to Him were necessarily accorded saintly status by the public. Yet, increasingly, there was an overlap between two spheres of sainthood: sainthood as a metaphysical closeness to God (walāya) and sainthood as the exercise of spiritual authority on the mundane plane (wilāya) (Cornell, xxxv; Karamustafa, 134, 143–55). Conjunctions of such beliefs, teachings, and practices found their most salient expression in visits (ziyārāt) to, and supplication and worship at saints’ tombs (Meri, Cult; Meri, Etiquette;

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Taylor). While the living friends of God represent the various stages of mystical progress and closeness to God, the dead saints, in their graves, combine the merits of transcendent humans with the merits of those still alive. Thus, the graves of the saints (walī, pl. awliyāʾ) were a double-fold repository of divine grace through immanence. The walī reached a degree of sanctity through transcendence, and his grave, by virtue of his presence there, is a concentration of the sacred inherent in the cosmos. Pilgrimage guides pinpointed the specific locations of blessings (baraka) where pilgrims might come to seek the active assistance and intercession of the saints or simply benefit from close proximity to the divine grace that emanates from their graves. The process by which certain Ṣūfī masters came to be venerated as popular saints is clearly apparent in shrine communities (Karamustafa, 143). Such communities became prominent in the sixth/twelfth century, particularly in small provincial towns, as illustrated by the case of Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049) in Mīhna, Khurāsān. According to sacred biographies composed by two of his descendants, “the cult practice at the shrine” included five ritual prayers in congregation, food served mornings and at night, every morning a recital of the Qurʾān at his [Abū Saʿīd’s] sanctified tomb, candles every evening until bedtime and every dawn until daylight, providing Qurʾān reciters mornings and evenings, and a group of Sufis resident at his sanctified tomb amounting to more than 100 persons from among his offspring and devotees. Ibn Munawwar, 341, in O’Kane, 527–8

At the extreme western edge of Islamdom in Morocco, newly converted pastoralist Berber communities formed around rural mosques and ribāṭs of pious figures venerated as popular saints. A noteworthy example is Ribāṭ Shākir in the region of Rajrāja in the Atlas foothills; the ribāṭ was built around the end of the fourth/tenth century on the site of the tomb of a Ṣūfī saint known as Sīdī Shākir. For more than three centuries, this ribāṭ served those engaged in the propagation of Islam and Sufism among the Maṣmūda Berbers of the Rajrāja, and then remained as a permanent centre of worship and pilgrimage. In addition to the tombs of its shaykhs, the ribāṭ included a mosque and perhaps rooms to accommodate visitors (Cornell, 54–62). A large number of men and women visited the complex of Ribāṭ Shākir year-round as full-time worshipers or as seasonal visitors who came, on the twenty-seventh day of Ramaḍān, for the yearly festival (mawsim) of Sīdī Shākir. One of these was Munya bt. Maymūn (d. 595/1199), a virtuous woman who came to the ribāṭ from her hometown of Marrakesh. She was said to have visited the ribāṭ and prayed alongside a group

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of novices; she also reported that a thousand devout women followers visited the ribāṭ in a single year (al-Tādilī, 316 in Ephrat, Quest, 82–3). During the sixth/twelfth century, the popularity of Ṣūfī sainthood made major inroads into small towns and rural areas. It also spread in urban centres, reaching the peak of its expansion among urban dwellers in the late mediaeval period, as clearly manifested in Mamlūk Cairo. The link between Sufism and the Cairene populace was generally a venerated shaykh, who resided in the Ṣūfī lodge surrounded by his followers. Two circles radiated from the shaykh. The first, and probably narrower circle, consisted of young people and others who came to the lodge to receive the shaykh’s spiritual guidance and be initiated into his spiritual path. At least some of those who were attracted to the shaykh’s circle lived in his lodge and severed their family ties, as in the case of the zāwiya of Shaykh Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-Kāzarūnī (d. 776/1374), whose lodge was on Rawḍa Island. The second, wider circle, visited the lodge, and later the tomb, to receive the shaykh’s blessings (baraka) in times of trouble, to listen to popular preachers, and to celebrate the Prophet’s birthday (mawlid). In addition to the Prophet’s mawlid, others gathered in mawlids to honour the various Ṣūfī saints (Shoshan, 11–2). An example is the ceremonies that took place at Inbāba (west of Cairo) at the tomb of Ismāʿīl al-Inbābī. In the ninth/fifteenth century, on the night of the twelfth of each month, the Cairenes commemorated him. Sources report that large numbers of people used to travel by boat to al-Inbābī’s tomb; they pitched tents in the hundreds, set up fairs, and endeavoured to enjoy themselves “to the utmost” (Ibn Iyās, 2:37, in Shoshan, 17). The development of lodge-tomb complexes that provided settings for public activities and popular worship likely played a significant role in sustaining and perpetuating the veneration of saints, both living and dead. This general trend is corroborated by the first such gatherings in Anatolia. As we have seen, these buildings were designed to serve both the residents and the generality of believers. Apart from prayer halls and enclosed courtyards, rooms for travellers, and sometimes a chamber for ritual meals, almost all the dervish lodges contained domed chambers for the tombs of saints. Often the saint’s tomb was the nucleus of a tekke and the most important part of the complex endowment (waqf ) that provided steady funds for its upkeep and salaries for the officials responsible for the administration of the waqf. Because of its tangible connection to a holy figure, the lodge attracted visits from wandering dervishes, merchants, and pilgrims. At the same time, by sheltering travellers and pilgrims, the fame of the lodge, as both hostel and pilgrimage site, expanded. Large windows allowed access to the tomb. These windows usually faced a main thoroughfare and had marble revetments with inscriptions and ornamentation that drew attention to the windows and the tombs of the saints. On market

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days, the exterior of these buildings became an extension of the interior space, where food and other charity were offered. Such structural flexibility may be one of the reasons many of these mediaeval Anatolian buildings continued to be adapted and used well into the modern period (Wolper, 32–4). 2.5 From Tombs to Shrine Compounds The popular veneration of Ṣūfī saints led to the development of elaborate shrine compounds around their tombs. Architecturally, they projected the sanctity of the entombed figure, and spatially, these structures provided areas for large communal gatherings; this signified the accessibility and outward orientation of the site (Mayeur-Jaouen in this volume). Three shrines from the early eighth/fourteenth century provide illustrations: the shrine of Zayn al-Dīn Yūsuf (d. 697/1298) in the northern cemetery of Cairo, that of Nūr al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī (d. 699/1299–1300) at Mantaz on the Iranian plateau, and that of the well-known Andalusian mystic Abū Madyan (d. 594/1197) at ʿUbbād, outside Tlemcen in North Africa (Blair; Ibrahim, 79–110; Golombek, Cult of saints, 419–30). In all three sites, the graves of the saints were marked by similarly sized and magnificently decorated domed tombs. Local architectural traditions determined the materials and profiles of the tombs, but there was clearly an “ideal type,” visually recognisable throughout the Muslim world (Blair, 42). Several types of buildings were contained in the shrine complexes surrounding the lodges and tombs of the popular saints and these served functional and symbolic designations. All had spaces that served various communal gatherings, from routine Friday prayers to Ṣūfī-inspired recitations and dancing. In addition, the complex contained quarters for Ṣūfī followers and rooms near the entrance were probably used to shelter travellers and pilgrims. The architectural composition also indicates the importance of pilgrims for the three buildings: the elaborate decoration of the exterior and the façade of the ʿUbbād and Mantaz complexes served as beacons for pilgrims coming from afar. In the case of the ʿUbbād shrine, political considerations, by way of bountiful endowments, must have played a significant role in monumentalising and sustaining the site. About one hundred fifty years after Abū Maydan’s death, the Marīnid sultan Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī turned his domed tomb into a monumental complex, apparently to commemorate the conquest of the Muwaḥḥid (Almohad) capital of Tlemcen. To support and assure the perpetuation of the complex, which included a madrasa with cells for students, the sultan endowed it with the revenues from gardens, houses, orchards, windmills, baths, and arable land (Blair, 41). Although saintly cults spread throughout the mediaeval Islamic world from North Africa to South Asia, shrine complexes seem to have enjoyed a special

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status in the Turco-Mongol world. Indeed, royal and other shrines—among them the shrines of popular Ṣūfī masters—appear to have been the main beneficiaries of endowments by the Timūrid dynasty (771–913/1370–1507), starting with Tīmūr himself. The shrine of the Turkish mystic and poet Khwāja Aḥmad Yasawī (d. 563/1167) in the southern Kazakhstan town of Turkestan is a good example. Over two hundred years after Yasawī’s death, the founder of the Timūrid Sultanate ordered the construction of a grand memorial complex atop the small mausoleum. He personally drew the design for the future mausoleum, and instructed its builders. It would seem that the sultan was motivated not only by purely religious considerations, but also by a wish to visibly assert his power in an area that had only recently become part of his expansive realm (Hasse, 218–9; Golombek and Wilber). His descendants, sultans Shāhrukh and Ḥusayn Bāyqarā, continued his building enterprise. Most notable is the shrine of the patron saint of Herat, Khwāja ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī (d. 481/1089), which they sponsored and built at Gāzurgāh, to the northwest of city. During the reign of Ḥusayn, the Anṣārī shrine reached a political high point: in 882/1477–8, to underscore his claim to be a descendant of Anṣārī, the sultan had a funerary platform built in the courtyard of the gravesite; there he placed the tombs of his father, uncle, and brothers (Subtelny, 200–5). Some other smaller shrines belonged to dynastic families, as in the case of Abū Saʿīd (noted above) and Aḥmad-i Jām (d. 536/1141–2). Until the tenth/ sixteenth century, when Shīʿism became prevalent under the Ṣafavid dynasty, Aḥmad-i Jām’s shrine was the main pilgrimage destination in eastern Iran. Largely as a result of the efforts of his descendants, the shrine (Turbat-i-Jām) gradually developed around the grave of the Ṣūfī master and saint. In the early eighth/fourteenth century, a descendant of the shaykh built a lodge northeast of the grand dome chamber (the core of the complex); in succeeding generations, family members constructed a grand hall (īwān) for the chamber, and built a large mosque and arcade, along with a smaller mosque around the dome (Golombek, Chronology, 27–44). Since such shrines were usually centres of Ṣūfī communal life, their members often worked and managed the lands belonging to their endowments. The agricultural enterprise of the Central Asian Naqshbandī shaykh Khwāja ʿUbaydallāh Aḥrār (d. 895/1490), which his disciples managed through a communal centre in Tashkent and a tomb shrine outside Samarqand, represented a successful version of a small-scale, communally-run complex. Building on the assets he presumably inherited from his family, Aḥrār amassed a large amount of money in the regions of Samarqand and Shāsh (later known as Tashkent). At the same time, he gathered a circle of disciples, and transformed

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the Naqshbandī community into a faction—a system of patronage and protection—around which he organised his agricultural and commercial activities. The patronage system, which included peasants, artisans, and traders, also facilitated the expansion of the spiritual network he established, first from his lodge in Shāsh, and then from his shrine outside Samarqand (Weismann, Naqshbandiyya, 34–48). From the late sixth/twelfth century, the influence of organised Sufism grew steadily. Some of the spaces and sites surrounding revered spiritual masters functioned as the effective loci of Ṣūfī associations, and ultimately became central to the identity formation and spread of the Ṣūfī orders. Branches of the emerging ṭarīqas were brought together within regional and transregional spiritual networks that extended from the lodges, tombs, and shrines of their alleged founders and covered the entire Islamic world (Popovic and Veinstein (eds.); Ceyhan in this volume; Sedgwick in this volume). Among the most significant examples are the ribāṭ of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jilānī (d. 561/1166) in Baghdad, the tekke-tomb compound of Jalāl al-Dīn Rumī (Mevlana) (d. 672/1273) in Konya, that of Ḥājjī Bektāsh (d. c. 669/1270) in Kırşehir, and those of Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī and ʿUbaydallāh Aḥrār. 3

Geographical Expansion and Shrine Remodeling in the Premodern Period (Tenth/Sixteenth to Twelfth/Eighteenth Century)

The premodern period was marked by a dramatic expansion of Ṣūfī institutions. Organised spiritual networks, headed by deputies, spread the ṭarīqas to lands ruled by the Ottoman, Ṣafavid, and Mughal empires, solidifying both Islamic dominance and imperial order. In the central provinces, newly endowed Ṣūfī lodges developed as complexes that comprised buildings specifically designed for confraternal life and responded to the needs of stable and permanent Ṣūfī communities. In remote areas, where central authority was a distant force, saints of important shrines accumulated wealth and wielded great influence over the lives of tribesmen and villagers. The royal patronage of tombs and shrines was another defining characteristic of the period. Mediaeval shrines of venerated Ṣūfī saints were remodelled to become part of large ensembles, including a variety of buildings such as mosques and madrasas, ritual and assembly rooms, living quarters, and kitchens. These trends were not uniform. They were shaped by particular historical and geographical settings and influenced by the various expansion patterns of the different Ṣūfī orders, their relationships with the ruling classes, and the modes and intentions of imperial patronage.

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3.1 Ottoman Turkey With the transformation of Anatolia into an Ottoman state (by the ninth/ fifteenth century), local dervish groups took on a significant role, one which endured until the end of the empire. As the Ottomans sought hegemony over Anatolia, they relied on the dervishes for military support and to establish firm control over newly acquired territories. In return, the dervishes were given land and endowments for tekkes (Barkan). The imperial patronage of dervishes was first manifested after the conquest of Constantinople in 857/1453. In recognition of the major role of the dervishes in the Ottomanisation of Constantinople, the sultans awarded them numerous Byzantine churches for use as tekkes. These buildings were modified to accommodate dervish functions: they altered, covered, or destroyed Christian decorations and architectural features; installed minarets, ablution fountains, chambers, and prayer niches; and provided residences for shaykhs and quarters for dervishes (Lifchez, 80). Thus, a precedent was established in which the Ottoman sultans patronised dervishes in their capital and beyond. Under the Ottomans, Sufism flourished and ṭarīqas proliferated. Some orders were relatively conservative and orthodox in their principles and practices; others were suspected of Shīʿī and heterodox tendencies. Among the more conservative was the Mawlawī/Mevlevī order (the so-called “whirling dervishes”), which had been established in the central Anatolian city of Konya prior to the reign of the Ottomans. While the Mevlevīs attracted the elite of society, some more heterodox groups became extremely popular with the masses. Most prominent among them were the Bektāshīs, who were directly linked to the imperial army and among the first dervishes to establish tekkes in the environs of Istanbul (Kreiser). Soon after the consolidation of the empire, important ṭarīqas appeared in Anatolian cities and in the countryside. Three ṭarīqas of particular note generated large followings and numerous offshoots; these were the Khalwatiyya/ Halvetiyye, the Naqshbandiyya/Naqşibendiyye, and the Qādiriyya/Qādiriyye. Khalwatī shaykhs were invited to Constantinople in the tenth/sixteenth century to join the fight against the heretics, particularly on the western frontier of the Balkans. Close relationships between Khalwatī shaykhs and Ottoman sultans continued until the middle of the subsequent century, and for almost two centuries, the Khalwatiyya had the largest number of tekkes and affiliates in the Ottoman capital (Trimingham, 75; Clayer, 65–7, 70). The introduction of the Naqshbandiyya into Anatolia was related to Ottoman state building and the Ottomans’ concomitant search for an orthodox alternative to unruly dervishes. After the conquest of Constantinople, the order established a firm presence there and in nearby Bursa; in numbers and influence, they were second

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only to the Khalwatiyya, and by the mid-eleventh/seventeenth century they boasted twelve active tekkes in Constantinople and other areas of Anatolia (Le Gall, 35–60). By contrast, the Qādiriyya order was introduced into Anatolia by Eşrefoğlū ʿAbdallāh Rūmī (d. 874/1469) and in Istanbul by Ismāʿīl Rūmī (d. 1041/1692–3), who is said to have founded some forty tekkes by the end of the Ottoman period (Işın). Three exceptional tekke tomb complexes developed in the Anatolian plateau and survived to the present, those of Sayyid Ghāzī (probably martyred in the early second/eighth century) near Eskişehir, of Hacı Bektaş Veli (Ḥājjī Bektāsh Walī, d. 669/1270) in Kırşehir, and of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī in Konya (Goodwin, 62–3). The tombs of Sayyid Ghāzī and Hacı Bektaş were established in the period of the principalities, were then incorporated into the nascent Ottoman Empire, and underwent radical architectural transformation in the imperial age. A specific form of architectural patronage shaped the structure of the important Anatolian centres that housed the saints’ shrines. Separate buildings, which included massive cooking facilities for gatherings, provided the settings for the rituals and ceremonies of the orders and reflected their multifunctional designations. The shrine of Sayyid Ghāzī (also known as al-Baṭṭāl) marked the gravesite of an early mythical warrior. It was originally the haunt of wandering dervishes who were eventually absorbed into the Bektāshī/Bektāşī order (Goodwin, 64). The vast Anatolian plateau that separates the shrines of Sayyid Ghāzī and Hacı Bektaş belonged, for much of the ninth/fifteenth century, to the Qara­ mānids (c. 654–880/1256–1475) who were rivals to the Ottomans. The Hungarian war captive George de Ungaria, writing in the mid-eighth/fourteenth century, relates His [Sayyid Ghāzī’s] tomb and sacred site lies between the territories of Othman and Charaman, and although there is frequent discord between them and one of them invades the lands of the other, neither has yet once dared to approach his tomb. For they know from experience that his great revenge came upon those who have dared to do so. And among all of them is the common opinion that no one who implores him for help, especially in matters of war and negotiation of battle, is ever denied his wish. This is proven by the multitude of offerings of all kinds, animals as well as cash, which the king, the princes and all the common people annually give to the tomb. He has indeed the greatest fame and estimation, not only among the Turks, but in all nations and their sect (Islam). de Ungaria, 286–8, in Yürekli, Architecture, 5

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The monumental complex that emerged around the burial site of Sayyid Ghāzī still stands today. In the course of its renovation, his tomb was completely rebuilt on a colossal scale, the old buildings around it were restored, and lead-plated tombs were added to them. New buildings included enormous kitchens and common spaces that were large enough to cater to a great number of pilgrims, in addition to the dervishes who lived on the premises. From a hill, the complex, with its remarkable palatial appearance, still dominates the surrounding plateau (Yürekli, Architecture, 87–102). The fertile land and barns beneath the tekke belonged to the Bektāshī order; these supplied grain, yogurt, and vegetables for the kitchen. Moreover, pilgrims brought gifts of sheep and horses, goats, and cattle. As a result, the dervishes were rich enough to pay salaries and purchase cooking oil, honey, and other luxuries on the open market (Goodwin, 64). The shrine of Ḥājjī Bektāsh, the founder of the Bektāshiyya, was built in Kırşehir in the early seventh/thirteenth century and from the late ninth/fifteenth century onward was also largely remodelled. Its transformation was even more radical than that of the shrine of Sayyid Ghāzī: the only part that certainly predates the late ninth/fifteenth century is the core of today’s so-called ‘hall of the forty’ (qırqlar meydanı). A series of new buildings were added, creating a monumental complex arranged around a linear succession of courtyards. Once again, the complex has a palatial aspect. The courtyards are flanked by individual buildings, including a kitchen and bakery, assembly rooms, offices, living quarters, stables, and storage facilities (Yürekli, Architecture, 101–25). The third shrine arrangement was at Konya, the centre of the Mevlevī order of dervishes. Once Rūmī was declared orthodox by the chief muftī, this site was elevated in stature. Though it was originally established in the seventh/thirteenth century, the shrine attained extraordinary stature and monumentality in the tenth/sixteenth century, when, with the ongoing patronage of Ottoman sultans, starting with Süleymān (r. 926–74/1520–66), it was remodelled. The sultan commissioned a domed mosque next to the shrine of Rūmī, and initiated the construction of a domed hall adjacent to the tomb, and a monumental Friday mosque just outside the shrine complex (Goodwin, 65). With imperial endorsement, the major Anatolian shrines became principal centres of interregional networks of various social groups that grew to include the followers of over one hundred tekkes and saints’ tombs. In many cases, the tombs of these saintly figures became part of large complexes that included facilities for dervishes; kitchens and bakeries to supply food to initiates, pilgrims, festival attendees, travellers, and the poor; and systems to pipe water to pools and fountains, as well as to residential and educational buildings. The centre

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was usually a hall (meydan or semahane) for prayer and devotional activities (Yürekli, Architecture, 135–54). 3.2 Ṣafavid Iran As the Ottoman state was becoming a world power, the Ṣafaviyya Ṣūfī order provided Iran, for the first time since its conquest by the Arabs, with a dynasty whose state religion was Shīʿism. The Ṣafaviyya began as a Sunnī order associated with Shaykh Ṣafī l-Dīn (d. 735/1334). The order began in Ardabil (northern Iran), then expanded throughout Iran during the days of Shaykh Ṣafī’s son, who was successor as the head of the order. He established the centre of the order in Ardabil, and built a dome over his father’s grave, which became a focus of pilgrimage. His descendants accumulated immense power, and assumed control over Azerbaijan and Iran. In 907/1501, Shaykh Ismāʿīl founded the Ṣafavid Empire in Tabriz and established Shīʿī Islam as the official religion. After the rise of his descendants and the establishment of the state, the shrine of Ṣafī l-Dīn developed as a dynastic mausoleum and as a political base for the imperial dynasty. The existing buildings were renovated and lavishly decorated; a rectangular courtyard, which led into a large ceremonial hall, was added; and new buildings were constructed. The architectural space reflected their various uses and the events that were held there. The shrine of Shaykh Ṣafī l-Dīn was a highly venerated site, and a grandiose setting for the enactment of ceremonial rites. Ṣūfī rituals, such as dhikr, were performed at the shrine, alongside Ṣafavid imperial ceremonies, such as the presentation of ambassadors. Thus, the commemorative architecture was not only utilised to commemorate the saintly ancestor of the Shīʿī dynasty buried on its premises, but also to present and represent the Ṣafavid court (Rizvi, Safavid, 7, 75–158; Rizvi, Its mortar; Rizvi, Imperial setting). 3.3 Mughal India The Mughal period (932–1274/1526–1858) marked the heyday of the ṭarīqas in India. Contemporary sources mention two thousand Ṣūfī khānqāhs and ribāṭs in Delhi and its surroundings during the tenth/sixteenth century, and provide a long list of prominent Ṣūfī masters who belonged to various spiritual lines and local Ṣūfī organisations. Two major ṭarīqas were introduced into the region during the tenth/sixteenth century: the Qādiriyya and the Naqshbandiyya. The Qādiriyya was introduced into the subcontinent from Uch, northeast of Multān, in the late ninth/fifteenth century. Later, however, the Qādiriyya of India appears to have lost ground to other orders, especially the long-established Chishtiyya, the Suhrawardiyya, and the Naqshbandiyya, which spread throughout India in the footsteps of the conquering Timūrid

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army and following the establishment of the Mughal Empire (Trimingham, 44). Among the Naqshbandīs who settled in Mughal India were several descendants of Aḥrār who integrated themselves into the religious administrative elite. They were followed by Ṣūfī masters, who, in the subsequent two centuries, disseminated the Naqshbandī path throughout the country. Most consequential among them was Bāqī bi-Llāh (d. 1011/1603) in Delhi. He established the first Naqshbandī lodge in the Mughal capital and, unlike his colleagues, did not confine his activities to the foreign Mughal elite, but propagated the ṭarīqa among the local population. Among his disciples was Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1034/1624), the founder of the Mujaddidiyya, which, over the course of time, superseded nearly all the Naqshbandī lines in India (Rizvi, History, 178–81; Weismann, Naqshbandiyya, 49–55). The social potential of Sufism in India was fully realised with the development of shrine complexes (dargāhs) as centres of gravity for locally embedded and popular ṭarīqas in Mughal India. The Persian term dargāh (lit., “door of the court”) offers a sense of the “royal” atmosphere that prevailed in many Ṣūfī venues (Dehlvi, 1–3). Built over the graves of revered indigenous Ṣūfī saints, the dargāhs served as centres of popular worship and as major points of interaction with non-Muslims; they even helped the process of Islamic acculturation in India. Biological or spiritual descendants of the saints supervised visits and devotional activities at the shrines and acted as intermediaries between the ancestors and their growing followings (Troll (ed.); Taneja (ed.); Aquil). The first dargāhs were built in the early days of the sultanate of Delhi, and their number grew under the sultans’ successors. The Mughals, drawing their inspiration from their Timūrid ancestry, built majestic funerary structures. Under their patronage, the shrines of Chishtī saints, popular with Hindus and Muslims alike, were granted extensive court patronage, especially from the time of Akbar (r. 963–1014/1556–1605). The emperor favoured the Chishtiyya order, whose roots can be traced to Iran and hence the Mughal’s Timūrid history and lineage. His patronage of the shrine of Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī, the spiritual ancestor of all Chishtīs in South Asia, is well-known (Currie; Tirmizi). Akbar initiated his imperial patronage of the shrine in Ajmer during his ongoing conquest of Rajasthan, a region with a considerable Hindu constituency. He gathered together many pilgrims who were also architects, engineers, craftsmen, and artisans and recruited them to renovate the shrine. He used his fortune to restore it extensively, and built two adjacent mosques surrounding the gravesite. In Delhi, one of Akbar’s courtiers rebuilt the mausoleum of Muʿīn al-Dīn’s spiritual descendant Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (d. 725/1325) shortly after the governor of Delhi built a mausoleum for the saint’s disciple, Amīr Khusraw. The buildings at the shrine, with their proximity to the mausoleum

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of Akbar’s father Humāyūn, constituted an integral part of the imperial ensemble that occupied the area south of the early Mughal palatial citadel Dīn Panāh. Akbar’s patronage of Niẓām al-Dīn’s shrine continued with the restoration of its congregational mosques (Yürekli, Writing down feats, 102; Koch, 64–5). In his new capital of Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar built his imperial palace next to the shrine of the Chishtī shaykh Salīm, atop a hill outside the city. When the shaykh died in 979/1572, Akbar built a mausoleum in the courtyard. The descendants of the shaykh who occupied residences around the old convent of Salīm Chishtī were charged with the maintenance of the royal palace and the mosque (Petruccioli, 15). Thus, the site was transformed from the modest mosque and convent established by a Chishtī shaykh, into an imperial palace in the new capital (Yürekli, Writing down feats, 102). 3.4 Ṣūfī Centres as Foci of Regional Cults and Political Dominion In the age of the great empires, Ṣūfī orders developed as regional cults with networks extending to remote areas that were the dominion of individual Ṣūfī saints. Each network comprised various communities linked together by their focus on a sacred centre. The centre was the place in which a living saint and a central tomb or shrine were located. Each village, town or district had its own shrine or tomb that influenced not only the lives of initiated members of the orders, but also those of the rest of the population in the area. The bond was essentially one of personal attachment to the saint-founder or acting head of the shrine; on the material plane this was expressed through a direct relationship to the tomb and associated lodge. Common people attended the lodge seeking the holy man’s baraka, relief from worldly anxieties, or in order to participate in collective sessions of dhikr. Over the course of the eleventh/ seventeenth and twelfth/eighteenth centuries, the lodges and tombs became the centres of devotional and communal life of large circles of ordinary men and women affiliated to the Ṣūfī organisations through their attachment to a Ṣūfī saint. By the eleventh/seventeenth century, Ṣūfī institutions were very much integrated into the social, cultural, and sometimes, political life of the Muslim empires and monarchies. When central political authority became strong and was able to impose its control, Ṣūfī institutions were often incorporated into the larger mechanisms of governability and state-sponsored production of moral order in Muslim empires and monarchies from North Africa to Central Asia and India. Conversely, where central authority was weak or in areas that were remote, people sought security and stability with Ṣūfī saints. In such circumstances, leaders became very influential by converting their charisma into economic and political power.

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In the eleventh/seventeenth century, following the migration and uprisings of nomads from eastern Anatolia, Ottoman authority in central and western Anatolia was weakened. Shaykhs and heads of lodges were compelled into political action to protect themselves and their followers, as people turned to them for protection and assistance. Thus, strife and instability contributed to the creation of an extended network of dervish institutions. Yet the Ottoman state was never so weak as to permit the rise of Ṣūfī shaykhs into powerful positions, as took place in certain parts of Morocco (Faroqhi, Sainthood, 193–208; Faroqhi, Tekke). In the fragmented political and social system of Morocco, where the central authority was too remote to be effective, holy men and the leaders of zāwiyas provided local communities with a stable social and political framework. For local tribesmen, in disputes, these leaders’ moral authority served as a guarantee for the political, legal, and ecological arrangements they arbitrated. In periods of weak governmental authority (as in the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/ seventeenth centuries), zāwiyas like the one in the desert town of Tamgrout (on the southern edge of the Daraa valley) became regional centres of power and operated almost as autonomous principalities (Gellner, Saints, 41–2; Gellner, Muslim society, 114–30; Hammoudi, Sainteté). The situation in Sindh, on the northwestern fringe of the Mughal Empire, seems to have been somewhat similar to that in Morocco. Since temporal authority was remote and had little impact on local life, local tribes in the area tended to follow Ṣūfī saints (pīrs) whose power base was in the countryside. Pīrs of important shrines possessed substantial land holdings and political power, and wielded great influence over peoples’ lives. The pīrs reached the zenith of their power in the twelfth/eighteenth century, which witnessed a weakening of the central Mughal authority in the region. It was also during this period that waves of tribesmen settled in the Indus Valley. The development of the dargāh as the spiritual domain of the saint in India helped build durable relationships between the pīrs and the local population. The tribesmen clung to the dargāh to seek the blessings (baraka) of the saints, find relief from worldly anxieties, and participate in communal dhikr. Thus, the dargāh strengthened the authority of the pīr, who supervised the site; it also facilitated the fulfilment of his social and economic functions, notably his role as arbitrator. Intertribal trade took place around the dargāh, where tribes-folk would also gather for religious festivals. Leadership of the site passed within families that had great wealth and political power. The pīrs of the key shrines behaved like kings, wore turbans, and sat on thrones (Ansari, 7–8, 13, 22–33). In eastern Turkestan, Naqshbandī leaders, locally known as Khwājas/ Khojas, acquired prominent social and political positions during the eleventh/

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seventeenth and the first half of the twelfth/eighteenth century. They came to exercise considerable influence on the nomadic and sedentary population of the oases, and later became rulers themselves. From their central lodge in the oases of the Tarim Basin, the Khwājas’/Khojas’ groups extended their reach as far as the Chinese frontier (Weismann, Naqshbandiyya, 81–2; Papas, Soufisme et politique, 51–86, 139–56). In the late twelfth/eighteenth century, Ṣūfī lodges and saints’ tombs and shrines dotted the landscapes of the Islamic world. Leaders of the regional and transregional orders that dominated these sites reached out to the common people, thus contributing to the dissemination of a more meaningful religious experience among the lower strata of Muslim societies, and spreading Islam from the urban to the rural population. These seats of Ṣūfī saintly authority provided a space for expanding circles of followers, played a vital role in the expansion of Islam beyond the dominion of the state and, eventually, contributed to the mobilisation of popular support in the face of growing challenges posed to Muslim societies and their ruling empires and monarchies in the following century. 4

Ṣūfī Institutions in the Modern Period: Decline, Renewal, and Expansion

By the late twelfth/eighteenth century, Ottoman Empire Sufism was very much integrated into the administrative and political apparatus of the state. Sultans were initiated into the Khalwatiyya, and in certain areas of the empire Ṣūfī orders such as the Mawlawiyya, Qādiriyya, and Rifāʿiyya became markers of privilege among members of the local administrations. Thus, in twelfth-/eighteenth-century Aleppo the notable families were classified as Qādirī or Rifāʿī according to their affiliation to one of the two Ṣūfī traditions (Meriwether, 52–8). This political aspect led the Ottoman state to take measures to centralise and control the organisation of the Ṣūfī orders into tekke/ zawiya-based communities in the second half of the twelfth/eighteenth century (Luizard, Le Moyen Orient, 351). Certain authors saw in this process of centralisation and bureaucratisation of the social organisation of the Ṣūfī communities a sign of religious stagnation and decline of the mystical aspects of Sufism (Trimingham, 103–4). However, this view has been proven inaccurate as a general picture of Sufism in the modern period, for mystical experience organised by personal connections

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to a shaykh remained a central feature of Ṣūfī religiosity even in highly centralised and hierarchical religious contexts, such as Egypt, where bureaucratic structures coexisted with charismatic forms of Ṣūfī leadership throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Chih, 32–44). The complexity and diversity of the social expressions that Sufism presented in the late twelfth/eighteenth century were fundamental in allowing the emergence of various responses to the new social and political contexts that confronted it. Among these challenges was the growing political and economic power of the European states and their increasing colonial presence in areas of long-standing Muslim rule. Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, the French conquest of Algeria in 1830, the Russian conquest of the Caucasus and Central Asia after 1830, and the suppression of the Mughal Empire by the British in 1858 made clear that the imbalance of power rendered the whole Muslim world vulnerable to European colonial conquest. In this political context, various areas of the Muslim world were confronted with similar issues of political sovereignty, technological advancement, and moral reform of society. The modern period in the Muslim world has brought new challenges and opportunities to Sufism, challenges that generated uneven processes of decline, renewal, and expansion, and in turn transformed the way Ṣūfī forms of religiosity were understood, practiced, and lived by their adepts. This does not mean that there were no continuities with the Ṣūfī religiosity of previous periods, these were numerous and very important (O’Fahey and Radtke). Traditional forms of Sufism and its organization adapted to the profound and vast changes that affected most Muslim societies throughout the last two hundred years and, sometimes, thrived in modern contexts. The transformations in Ṣūfī institutions and their devotional and collective spaces in the modern period can be summarised by five processes: (1) crisis, which led to a decline in followers and the closing and destruction of lodges, shrines and tombs; (2) reform, which led to the reconfiguration of doctrines, rituals, and forms of organisation of Sufism according to ideals of religious authenticity; (3) adaptation, which led to a reformulation of the doctrines, rituals, and forms of organisation of Sufism according to principles considered to be “modern”; (4) revivalism, which led to a reaffirmation of elements of the Ṣūfī tradition and enabled them to maintain their attraction in modern contexts; (5) globalization, which was the participation of Ṣūfī communities and institutions in the transnational flow of material and symbolic exchanges that became broader and more intense in the late twentieth and twentiethfirst centuries. In most cases these processes overlapped and created hybrids,

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producing uneven combinations of decline and expansion, continuity and change, tradition and modernity throughout the vast universe of contemporary Sufism. 4.1 A Hub for Ṣūfī Reform: Mecca in the Modern Era As the introduction of new technologies of transportation, such as railroads and steamships, accompanied European imperial and colonial advances, traveling between distant parts of the Muslim world became faster and cheaper. People and, therefore, ideas could move faster and in greater numbers than ever before. The impact of these technological innovations was particularly obvious in the Muslim pilgrimage, the hajj: the numbers of pilgrims rose steadily throughout the nineteenth century (for example, from Central Asia: Papas, Welsford, and Zarcone (eds.)). Mecca became the meeting place of large numbers of pilgrims, who could exchange religious views and learn about the realities of other areas of the Muslim world. Many pilgrims settled in the city temporarily or permanently, to acquire religious knowledge or simply to live in the sacred centre of Islam. Ṣūfī shaykhs from different parts of the Muslim world established residences in the city, where they led their communities and attracted new members from the constant flow of pilgrims. This process made Mecca a major religious centre for Sufism throughout the nineteenth century with almost all the Ṣūfī orders (ṭuruq) present in its religious landscape (Trimingham, 121; Gaborieau and Grandin, 69–70). Mecca’s geographic position exposed these Ṣūfī shaykhs and their communities to the major challenges that emerged in the Muslim world. The first was Wahhābism, a reform movement founded in 1740 by Muḥammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1206/1792) which rejected all doctrines and practices that did not have a direct reference in the Qurʾān or the ḥadīth (the collection of traditions about the Prophet) as un-Islamic innovations (bidaʿ). The Wahhābīs considered Ṣūfīs and Shīʿīs to be heretics that should be fought and suppressed (Commins, 26–32). Later in the nineteenth century, another reformist movement, the Salafiyya (named after the salaf, or Companions of the Prophet, that it claimed to emulate), emerged among religious and intellectual circles in Cairo, Aleppo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Delhi, aiming to restore the “original” Islamic tradition. While the Salafiyya was not inherently hostile to Sufism, it questioned which parts of the Ṣūfī traditions derived from the “original” prophetic message, and which should be seen as later innovations. In the pluralistic universe of Mecca’s zāwiyas, adepts of a given ṭarīqa were confronted with the cultural differences that shaped their understanding, practice, and experience of the mystical path as expressed in doctrines and rituals.

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The consciousness of cultural differences and the necessity of addressing the challenges posed by other religious actors, like Salafīs and Wahhābīs, triggered some Ṣūfī shaykhs to make an effort to determine what elements united the diverse understandings and practices of the religious tradition; they undertook a quest for the “original” Ṣūfī tradition. This quest of origins unleashed a vast movement of reform in Sufism. Reformist trends appeared in Mecca, the Maghrib, and India, and later spread to most of the Muslim world. One of the early Ṣūfī reformers was Aḥmad b. Idrīs al-Fāsī (d. 1253/1837), a Moroccan shaykh who settled in Mecca in 1799. While it is not clear to what extent his message was actually reformist, he attracted to his circle religious thinkers who created new Ṣūfī orders. One of these was ʿAbdallāh al-Maḥjūb al-Mīrghanī (d. 1207/1792), a sayyid (descendant of the Prophet) whose ancestors lived in Central Asia and founded the Mīrghaniyya, a Ṣūfī order that preached respect for the sharīʿa and the ḥadīth, and spread into Sudan under the name of Khatmiyya. The role of Mecca as the connecting ground of Ṣūfī religious ideas from different regions of the Muslim world, ideas that were central to the modern reform movements in Sufism was also apparent in the trajectory of Mawlānā Khālid al-Baghdādī (d. 1242/1827), a Kurd born near Sulaymaniyya, who reformed the Naqshbandī tradition and founded the Naqshbandiyya Khālidiyya. Shaykh Khālid performed a hajj in 1805 and, in Mecca, became acquainted with the Naqshbandiyya Mujaddidiyya, a branch of the Naqshbandī order. In 1809, he went to Delhi to be initiated by Shāh Ghulām ʿAlī (d. 1824) (Weismann, Taste of Modernity, 25), who recognized him as a Naqshbandī shaykh after a year and sent him to spread the order in the Ottoman Empire. In 1823, after passing through Sulaymaniyya and Baghdad and creating communities over a vast territory, all unified by his religious authority, Shaykh Khālid settled in Damascus (Weismann, Taste of modernity, 23–55). Despite Mecca’s centrality to Ṣūfī reform, important reformed orders (ṭuruq) also appeared elsewhere. This was the case of the Tijāniyya, a ṭarīqa founded by Aḥmad al-Tijānī (d. 1230/1815), born in ʿAyn Māḍī, near Tlemcen in Algeria. After experiencing a vision of the Prophet in 1782, he founded his own Ṣūfī order. In 1798 he settled in Fez, Morocco, under the protection of the sultan, Mawlāy Sulaymān (r. 1792–1822); he remained there until his death. The Tijāniyya’s centralised power structure and tight control over its members allowed it to spread throughout Morocco, and into Algeria, Tunisia, the Sahel, and western Africa, connecting these territories through its powerful institutions (El Adnani).

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Crisis and Adaptation: Closing Ṣūfī Lodges, Negotiating Ṣūfī Modernity During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most Muslim societies were directly confronted by European imperial or colonial powers, which elicited a variety of responses in Ṣūfī milieus. Ṣūfī orders, in particular those that were unified and operated from active lodges and shrines, were viewed by imperialist powers with suspicion and anxiety. The orders’ strong social bases and capacity for mobilization often led to their surveillance and repression by colonial authorities. However, other forms of relations between Sufism and colonial powers also existed. In addition to repression, colonial authorities also co-opted the Ṣūfī orders, as a way to tame the political potential of these institutions in their favour. They recognised and protected the religious authority of the shaykhs and their lodges who accepted or, at least, did not openly oppose colonial power structures. Thus, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many saintly lineages in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco accepted and, sometimes, cooperated with French colonial rule (Hammoudi, Master and disciple, 98–133). Another challenge that emerged in the nineteenth century was the issue of adapting Ṣūfī institutions to modern society or, in other terms, incorporating Sufism into the social and cultural project of “modernity.” By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ṣūfīs were confronted with two distinct forms of modern ideology, i.e., secularism, usually associated with nationalism or ideas of social reform, and the Salafiyya, which, despite its claims to revive tradition, used modern intellectual tools to access the meaning of sacred texts without the mediation of either religious authorities or a vast interpretive tradition that was often memorized as part of the proper exegetic training deemed necessary to this task. This textual relation emerged in the Muslim world from the early nineteenth century onwards through a process linked to the diffusion of the printing press and modern forms of schooling (Eickelman, 107–34; Messick, 392–7). While both forms of modernity influenced the way Sufism was adapted, reformed, or revived in the changing political and social contexts of this period, Ṣūfī ideas and concepts also shaped the way modernity was imagined and lived in Muslim societies. The Naqshbandiyya order was mobilised by these issues, and it is no coincidence that one of the most influential codifications of Ṣūfī-inspired “Islamic modernity” was elaborated by the Naqshbandī shaykh Said Nursi (d. 1960). Said Nursi was a Kurd born in Nurs, in Anatolia who became an Islamic scholar and Ṣūfī shaykh. He lived through the end of the Ottoman Empire and the adoption of the secularist policies of Muṣṭafā Kemāl Atatürk (1881–1938), the leader of the Republic of Turkey, which was created in 1923. Nursi wrote his major work, 4.2

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Risale-i nur külliyatı (Collection of the epistles of light) between 1926 and 1949. It was not printed until 1956, due to government censorship, though it circulated clandestinely in handwritten or mechanically reproduced copies. In this book, which is a commentary on the Qurʾān, Said Nursi presented Islam as an ethical and spiritual framework for religious subjects fully integrated in modern society. His writings gave rise to the Nur/Nurcu (light) movement, which consisted of devotional communities organised around schools devoted to the study of the Qurʾān and Said Nursi’s texts and to the performance of spiritual exercises derived from Sufism, such as meditation on God’s names. Despite its clear Ṣūfī influence, the Nurcu movement is not a Ṣūfī order and its adepts do not consider the Nur movement to be a Ṣūfī tradition, rather it is more a Ṣūfī-inspired adaptation of Islamic spirituality that arose in response to the secular character of the Turkish Republic (Yavuz). The case of Said Nursi shows one way in which Sufism faced the challenges of the twentieth century, with the end of the empires after World War I and the emergence of nation-states and communist regimes in places with important Muslim populations such as the Soviet Union, and later the Balkans and China. The nationalist and communist ideologies that guided the construction of these states were geared to the establishment of sovereign and modern societies in which religious life was suppressed by official atheism, tamed by secularism, or rationalised according to the moral and social/economic needs of the nation. In Turkey, Ṣūfī lodges were closed and Ṣūfī forms of religiosity were forbidden in 1925. In Egypt, the al-Majlis al-Āʿlā lil-Ṭuruq al-Ṣūfiyya (Supreme council of Sufi orders) was created in 1903 with a view to controlling Ṣūfī activities in the country (Luizard, Le soufisme). The modernistic views that guided the organisation of the Wazīrat al-Awqāf (Ministry of religious endowments) in Syria between 1949 and 1961 (Deguilhem, 125–35), considered Sufism a kind of “folk” religiosity that should disappear with the modernisation of society and, therefore, Ṣūfī orders were excluded from regulations and funding by the state. Even in countries where Sufism was inscribed in the idea of “cultural authenticity” (as in Morocco), controls over Ṣūfī institutions and their activities were put into place. In socialist countries with Muslim populations, Ṣūfī places suffered from various policies. In Yugoslavia, during the interwar period they were partially transformed into museums or schools on the orders of the ministry of awqāf, then in 1952, all the tekkes of Bosnia-Herzegovina were closed, following a decision by the Ulema-Madžlis (an assembly of Muslims scholars linked to the state). Despite a certain easing of these policies in the late 1960s, tekkes were again shut down in 1972. Yet, in Kosovo and Macedonia, the same Ulema-Madžlis

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left them open (Clayer and Popovic). The situation was different in Soviet Central Asia. After years of harsh persecution, Ṣūfī communities survived and in the 1940s and 1950s even found niches to thrive next to state enterprises. Previously abandoned mosques and shrines were used again by Ṣūfī īshāns (authorities), especially Naqshbandīs and Qādirīs. Khrushchev’s (d. 1971) antireligion campaign, supported by the state Muslim authorities, strongly limited these activities. For example, by 1959, thirty shrines in Uzbekistan, sixty-two in Tajikistan, and four in Turkmenistan were closed (Tasar, ch. 1 and 4). The equivalent alliance between a socialist state and reformist Muslim authorities occurred in Xinjiang, where important Ṣūfī shrines were turned into museums, and lodges and inns were shut down (Papas, Les tombeaux). In China more generally, some waqfiyya land owned by Ṣūfī orders of the Hui minority was confiscated during the Land Reform programme in the early 1950s and many Ṣūfī buildings were closed after the implementation of the Religious System Reform in 1958. The Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976 and its trail of destruction worsened the situation (Dillon, ch. 11). 4.3 Revivalism and Globalisation: Ṣūfī Places and Dwellings Today Despite the difficulties that these policies created and the negative impact they had on many Ṣūfī practices, Ṣūfī institutions continued to exist and, by the 1960s, they started to show signs of revival and renewed expansion of the tradition. The liberalisation of political life in Turkey in the 1950s and the decline of authoritarian secular nationalism in the Arab world in the 1970s enabled the emergence of new forms of inscribing Islam in the public sphere. During the 1960s and 1970s, political Islam, embodied in organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, was the most visible framework of this project, but after its relative decline and fragmentation in the 1980s, Sufism appeared as a major force in the configuration of Islamic social landscapes. Because of the lack of regulation or funding from the state, Sufism also escaped the tight control that other forms of Muslims religiosity were subjected to in Syria under the Baathist regime (1963–present). Therefore, after the 1980s, Ṣūfī gathering places proliferated in most Syrian cities as spaces where pious Muslims could cultivate their religious subjectivities beyond the limits imposed by the state in a form of revivalism that attracted both disaffected followers and new adepts across the social spectrum (Pinto, 113–29). Also, the cult of saints in Egypt and Syria allowed the faithful to be in contact with and protected by the forms of power embodied in the saints’ shrines and the territory they bless; this often opposed and neutralised in both symbolic and material ways the authoritarian state’s pretensions to absolute power (Reeves, 306–23).

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Therefore, it is fair to say that after the 1980s there was a revival of Sufism throughout the Muslim world, one that involved not only an increase in the number of disciples and communities but also a greater visibility of Ṣūfī places and dwellings. This expansion benefitted reformed forms of Sufism as well as traditional Ṣūfī institutions centred on the charismatic authority of shaykhs expressed through notions of baraka (grace, divine power, blessing) and karāmāt (miraculous deeds); the cult of shrines also thrived in this period. Even the leader of a modernistic Islamic movement, such as Fethullah Gülen, who created the Hizmet (‘Service’) from the Nurcu movement in the 1960s, was keen to claim Ṣūfī concepts as central to his understanding of Islam (Gülen, 1–53). This does not mean that the challenges and competition from other understandings of Islam or secular ideologies were not present, but simply that Sufism was again a visible player in the religious and cultural field of Muslim societies. The increased visibility of Sufism came not only from its place in the public, especially urban landscape, but also from a process of commodification of Sufism as a “cultural heritage” or “Islamic spirituality” and its consumption in local and global arenas. Since the 1950s, several Mawlawī/Mevlevī tekkes were allowed to work as cultural associations where the ritual of the whirling dervishes was presented to tourists; public performances enabled these tekkes to recreate their religious life in a framework of cultural heritage. Similarly, the poetry of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273), the inspirer of the order (ṭarīqa), was globally consumed as a form of “universal spirituality.” The twentieth century also saw the globalisation of Sufism as religious beliefs and practices beyond Muslim-majority societies. This happened through Muslim immigration to Europe and the Americas, as well as the conversion of non-Muslims to Ṣūfī codifications of Islam. Already in the 1920s, North African migrants had Ṣūfī gatherings in coffee shops in the outskirts of Paris (Hamès, 442), and in the 1950s and 1960s, Indian and Pakistani migrants also brought their Ṣūfī affiliations to Great Britain. Some of these orders (ṭuruq) developed in large transnational organisations that connected discrete communities with different social and cultural universes across a vast territory religiously delimited by the devotion to a saint or shaykh. This was the case of the Ṣūfī communities organised around the devotion to Zindapir (d. 1999), a pīr (shaykh/ saint) who lived at his dergāh (Ṣūfī lodge) in Ghamkol Sharif; his communities were scattered across a broad expanse from Pakistan to the United Kingdom. This vast and discontinuous territory demarcated by the presence of Zindapir’s devotees was connected to the centre through practices of mimesis and remembrance of the saint and his lodge in each community (Werbner, 157–8).

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Another pathway to the globalisation of Sufism was through conversion. This was the case of the branch of the Naqshbandiyya led by Nazım Kıbrısı (d. 2014), born in Cyprus and established in Damascus, where he was a disciple of ʿAbdallāh al-Dāghestānī (d. 1973), an important reformer of the Naqshbandiyya from Dagestan. Shaykh Nazım started his own branch of the order, the Naqshbandiyya Haqqaniyya, which he first expanded into Lebanon and Cyprus. After his master’s death, he established a community in London, which he visited often, and in 1990 he sent his son-in-law Hisham Kabbani as his deputy to establish the order in the United States. He adapted the order in ways that were in harmony with Western expectations towards “Oriental spirituality,” thereby attracting numerous conversions of Europeans and Americans, and appealing to Muslim immigrants and their descendants. This inclusive and individualised approach helped to unite his vast and heterogeneous group of followers, whose only gatherings for collective religious life took place when he or his deputies visited their dergāh, or when they went on pilgrimages to the central dergāh in Cyprus, where he settled again (Stjernholm). The cultural transfer that shaped the expansion of Sufism was marked not only by the expansion of Ṣūfī orders from Muslim-majority societies, but also by the creation of new ones, such as the Maryamiyya, created in the 1960s by the Swiss convert Frithjof Schuon (d. 1998), who established a centre in Indiana. This process of cultural transfer was linked to the conversion of Europeans to Ṣūfī forms of Islam in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Schuon was initiated into the ʿAlawiyya order by the Algerian shaykh Aḥmad al-ʿAlawī (d. 1934) (Sedgwick, 175). The Western interest in Sufism was guided by notions of traditionalism (the idea that certain traditions were passed on from time immemorial) and perennialism (the idea that all religions share a common origin in a single perennial religion), which opened the way to religious engagement and conversion (Sedgwick, 5–6, 173–4). While in Europe Sufism is sometimes appropriated within the range of decontextualised “Oriental spiritualities” that make up New Age religiosity (Haenni and Voix, 241–56), in Morocco, from the 1990s, Sufism was associated with New Age spirituality (yoga, zen, transcendental meditation, Osho, etc.), through which Moroccans could inscribe their religious practices and beliefs into an Islamic framework in a discourse of cultural authenticity that accommodates moral and religious individualism and, sometimes, a high degree of eclecticism and relativism. Also, by the last decades of the twentieth century and the early twentieth-first century, a renewed affirmation of the Islamic character of Sufism became a clear trend in Ṣūfī institutions in Europe and the United States (Sedgwick, 236–48).

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The continuing capacity of renewal through adaptation, reform, and revivalism that Sufism has shown in the last two hundred years, as well as its continuing expansion both in local and global contexts, shows its vitality as a tradition that is still capable of producing meaning and giving identity to its followers in the modern world. In this sense, Sufism was not just affected by the emergence of modernity in the Muslim world, but it also became an important framework in shaping what it means to be Muslim and modern. Bibliography Amīn, Muḥammad, al-Awqāf wal-taʿlīm fī Miṣr fī zamān al-Ayyūbiyyīn, in al-Tarbiya al-ʿArabiyya al-Islāmiyya (Amman 1990), 3:817–8. Ansari, Sarah F. D., Sufi saints and state power. The pirs of Sind, Cambridge 1992. Aquil, Raziuddin, ed., Sufism and society in medieval India, New Delhi 2010. Arjomand, Said A., Philanthropy, the law, and public policy in the Islamic world before the modern era, in W. F. IIchman, S. N. Kats, and E. L. Queen II (eds.), Philanthropy in the world’s traditions (Bloomington, IN 1998), 109–32. al-ʿAsalī, Wathāʾiq maqdisiyya tāʾrīkhiyya, Amman 1983–9. Asher, Catherine Blanshard, Architecture of Mughal India, Cambridge 1992. Barkan, Ömer Lutfi, Kolonizatör türk dervişleri, Vakiflar Dergisi 2 (1942): 297–377. Berkey, Jonathan, The transmission of knowledge in medieval Cairo. A social history of Islamic education, Princeton 1999. Blair, Sheila S., Sufi saints and shrine architecture in the early 14th century, Muqarnas 7 (1990): 35–49. Bonner, Michael, Aristocratic violence and holy war, New Haven 1996. Bosworth, C. Edmund, The rise of the Karrāmiyya in Khurāsān, MW (1960): 6–14. Böwering, Gerhard and Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Kānaqāh, EIr online: http://www .iranicaonline.org.articles. Broadbridge, Ann, Kinship and ideology in the Islamic and Mongol worlds, Cambridge 2008. Chabbi, Jacqueline, La fonction du ribāṭ à Baghdad du Ve siècle au début du VIIe siècle, REI 42 (1974): 101–21. Chabbi, Jacqueline, Khānḳāh, EI2. Chabbi, Jacqueline, Ribāṭ, EI2. Chih, Rachida, Le soufisme au quotidien. Confréries d’Egypte au XXe siècle, Arles 2000. Clayer, Nathalie, Mystiques, état et société. Les Halvetis dans l’aire balkanique de la fin du XV e siècle à nos jours, Leiden 1994.

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ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris 1996), 68–83. Gellner, Ernest, Saints of the Atlas, Chicago 1969. Gellner, Ernest, Muslim society, Cambridge 1981. Golombek, Lisa, The cult of saints and shrine architecture in the 14th century, in Dichran K. Kouymjian (ed.), Near Eastern numismatics, iconography, epigraphy and history. Studies in honor of George C. Miles (Beirut 1974), 419–30. Golombek, Lisa, The chronology of Turbat-i Sheikh Jam, Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies 9 (1971): 27–44. Golombek, Lisa and Donald Wilber, Timurid architecture of Iran and Turan, Princeton 1988. Goodwin, Godfrey, The dervish architecture of Anatolia, in Raymond Lifchez (ed.), The dervish lodge. Architecture, art and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey (Berkeley 1992), 57–69. Graham, Terry, Abū Saʿīd ibn Abī ʾl-Khayr and the school of Khurāsān, in Leonard Lewisohn (ed.), The heritage of Sufism. Classical Persian Sufism from its origins to Rumi (700–1300), vol. 1 (Oxford 1993), 83–135. Gramlich, Richard, Die Wunder der Freunde Gottes. Theologien und Erscheinungsformen des islamischen Heiligenwunders, Freiburg 1987. Gülen, M. Fethullah, Key concepts in the practice of Sufism, Istanbul 2000. Haenni, Patrick and Raphael Voix, God by all means. Eclectic faith and Sufi resurgence among the Moroccan bourgeoisie, in Martin Bruinessen and Julia Howell (eds.), Sufism and the modern in Islam (London 2007), 241–56. Hamès, Constant, L’Europe occidentale contemporaine, in Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein (eds.), Les voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris 1996), 442–7. Hammoudi, Abdellah, Sainteté, pouvoir et societé. Tamrout au viie et viiie siècles, Annales ESC 30 (1980): 615–41. Hammoudi, Abdellah, Master and disciple. The cultural foundations of Moroccan authoritarianism, Chicago 1997. Hasse, Claude-Peter, Shrines of saints and dynastic mausolea. Towards a typology of funerary architecture in the Timurid period, Cahiers d’Asie Centrale 3/4 (1997): 215–27. Hoexter, Miriam, The waqf in the public sphere, in M. Hoexter, S. N. Eisenstadt, and N. Levtzion (eds.), The public sphere in Muslim societies (Albany 2002), 119–38. Hofer, Nathan, The popularization of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173–1325, Edinburgh 2015. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Riḥlat ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Beirut 1992. Ibn Munawwar, Asrār al-tawḥid fī maqāmāt al-shaykh Abū Saʿīd, ed. Muḥammad Riḍā Shāfiʿī Khadkanī, Tehran 1987. Ibrahim, Layla ʿAli, The zawiya of Šaiḫ Zain al-din Yūsuf in Cairo, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 34 (1978): 79–110.

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Chapter 6

Ṣūfī Shrines Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen 1 Definition What is a Ṣūfī shrine? The answer is certainly not easy; especially since the expression “Ṣūfī shrine” has no equivalent in Arabic, Persian, or Turkish. If we try to translate it, we find a rich lexicon relating to the cult of the dead and Muslim saints, not necessarily Ṣūfīs. The terms qabr, türbe, mazār, maqām, dargāh, designate mausoleums and tombs of the ʿAlids (descendants of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib), of the Companions of the Prophet, and—especially in the Muslim world before the recent urbanisation—“natural sanctuaries,” such as trees, springs, rocks, or caves, often associated with the presence of a certain “friend of God,” or saint (Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich). It was only in the sixth/twelfth to seventh/thirteenth century, after Sufism was institutionalised, i.e., organised into brotherhoods or communities to become a dominant form of Islam (at least until the end of the nineteenth century), that Muslim shrines came to be identified with Sufism par excellence (Ephrat and Pinto in this volume). A Ṣūfī shrine is usually centred around the tomb of a Ṣūfī shaykh, or saint. In Arabic, it is called qabr (meaning “grave,” i.e., the place where a body is buried). Its synonym, turba (Ar.) or türbe (Tk.), is derived from the Arabic for “dust.” These words can designate a simple stele or a masonry or wooden construction (ṣundūq, tābūt in Arabic) that marks the location of the tomb. If it attracts worshippers and visitors, the community often builds a sanctuary that then becomes a focal point and the beginning of a cemetery (Râghib; Grabar). Certain family or tribal necropolises sometimes become Ṣūfī shrines, especially when the family or the ancestor buried therein is identified with a Ṣūfī brotherhood or a Ṣūfī shaykh. Two commonly used terms for Ṣūfī shrines are maqām (a place where a saint resides) and mazār (a place of pious visitation, or ziyāra). A tree with branches to which people tie rags, a cave where people light candles can become a mazār associated with the cult of a Ṣūfī shaykh. This association is usually confirmed by a legend (widespread among the saint’s followers) and eventually, the construction of a sanctuary. One can metonymically designate such a sanctuary by the name of a walī (saint) buried in it, as is often the case in the Middle East and the Maghrib, or a nabī (prophet) in Palestine (Canaan).

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Again, metonymically, such a site can be designated by the Arabic qubba (the dome that crowns the sanctuary) or the Persian dargāh (threshold or palace). The most common term in mediaeval texts is mashhad. In the writings of the fourth-/tenth-century geographer al-Muqaddasī, mashhad can be a place commemorating the passage of a saint, or a place built following a divinely inspired vision (al-Muqaddasî). It may also be, as the root sh-h-d suggests, the martyrion (a place built in memory of a martyr), for example, a Shīʿī Imām, as in the city of Mashhad around the shrine of Imām Riḍā (d. 203/818). In Sunnī lands, mashhad refers to the mausoleum of a hero of the Arab-Islamic conquests, or one of the members of the House of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt) (Williams). 2

Early History

Hagiographies and historical chronicles, on the one hand, and anthropologists’ fieldwork, on the other hand, make it possible to reconstruct the history of Muslim shrines. Archaeology (stratigraphy and architectural surveys), epigraphy and art history illuminate some sites, but the archaeological excavation of active sanctuaries is often impossible for logistical and ethical reasons. The oldest Ṣūfī mausoleums, often built of wood, have been destroyed by fire, and only the date of their reconstruction, not that of their original building, is known (Grabar). For the recent period, such phenomena as demographic explosion, urbanisation, destruction from wars, as well as recent reconstructions or enlargements make it difficult to undertake an accurate historical study of such holy sites. The first wave of Muslim shrine construction dates to the second half of the third/ninth century, despite the ḥadīths that condemn the construction of tombs and advocates the levelling of tombs (taswiyat al-qubūr) (Leisten, Architektur für Tote; Leisten, Between orthodoxy; Diem and Schöller). Initially, mausoleums were open cubes surmounted by a cupola. They were gradually made into enclosed spaces, endowed with a mihrāb and crowned by a dome. Complexes that combine an oratory, or even a mosque, with the mausoleum of a saint were rare before the second half of the sixth/twelfth century. The construction of sanctuaries became widespread in the Muslim world in the fourth/tenth century. This is the result of four major factors. First, the Islamisation of pre-Islamic places (natural sanctuaries, tombs of Jewish, Byzantine, or Coptic saints, and Buddhist sites) went hand-in-hand with the conversion to Islam of the pious visitors who frequented them. Muslim traditions integrated local stories and pre-Islamic figures, such as Khiḍr in the Near East (Khizr/Hızır in the Turko-Persian world) who took on the traits of

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St. George and the Prophet Elijah (Hasluck; Albera and Couroucli). The second factor is the importance of the cult of the ʿAlids in Shīʿīsm; this was matched by Sunnīs’ reverence for the Prophet’s Companions. These parallel cults occurred in the context of clashes between the two communities (Mulder). The third factor was the spirit of jihād and, more generally, the spirit of the frontier. In fourth-/tenth-century Khurāsān, in Nīshāpūr, the khānaqāhs were home to ascetics practicing peregrination and popular preaching. In North Africa, the ribāṭs (fortified enclosures around tombs of martyrs of the jihād) sacralised a defensive fort against the attacks of the Franks or the Berber tribes. In Ifrīqiyya, the oldest ribāṭ was founded in Monastir in 180/796, followed by that of Sousse in 206/821. In Morocco, as early as the third/ninth century, ribāṭs affirmed the presence of Islam against the Barghawāṭa (a Berber tribe) of the Atlantic plains. The Ragrāga (another Moroccan tribe) distinguished themselves in the jihād in the Atlantic region and became the legendary propagators of Islam in the Maghrib; they were said to have been converted to Islam by the Prophet himself (Ferhat). Under the influence of the mystical movement, which appeared around the fifth/eleventh century, and developed during the al-Muwāḥḥidūn (Almohad period) (sixth/twelfth century) and especially during the Marīnid period (614–869/1217–1465), the ribāṭs became places of Ṣūfī pilgrimages (Hofer [Ṣūfī Outposts] in this volume). We find this frontier spirit in Nubia, where forty-nine anonymous tombs in Aswan date to the first half of the fifth/ eleventh century, and were later attributed to Ṣūfī shaykhs of the seventh-/thirteenth century. Ṣūfī orders thus annexed older sanctuaries even as they created new ones. The fourth and final factor in the development of shrines is the role of the mediaeval dynasties, which in Iran and Central Asia built mausoleums funded by pious foundations: after the disappearance of these dynasties, some of these tombs were occupied by Ṣūfī shaykhs and their cults (Kervran). 3

The Expansion of Ṣūfī Shrines

The first tombs of Muslim mystics appeared in the third/ninth century, along with other mausoleums. While the inscription on the stele of Dhū l-Nūn al-Miṣrī’s (d. 246/861) grave is perhaps apocryphal (Massignon), the tomb of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d. 298/910), which is in present-day Uzbekistan, is probably the authentic grave of this famous mystic. It honours the author who first developed a theory of holiness (walāya) in Islam. The veneration of the living shaykh extended to the deceased saint: he was not considered dead, rather he continued to guide and instruct his disciples from the grave. Therefore, for Ṣūfīs, the visit to a sanctuary is not a form of worship of the dead, but an

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initiatory practice and a spiritual relationship with a master who is still present. This transmission mode, called uwaysī, takes place when a Ṣūfī visits the tomb of the master and visions, nocturnal or diurnal, occur. The prolific and influential Ṣūfī author al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) already recommended visiting the tombs of saints, although Ṣūfī sanctuaries, strictly speaking, were rare before the development of Ṣūfī orders in the sixth/twelfth and seventh/ thirteenth centuries. After 544–5/1150, we witness the rise of large monumental complexes in the East that combined tombs and pious institutions. At the same time, pilgrimages to the tombs of local and trans-regional saints multiplied. Written works reflect both phenomena. Between the sixth/twelfth and the beginning of the eleventh/seventeenth century, the historian Yūsuf Rāghib identified some twenty guidebooks devoted to Qarāfa, Cairo’s great cemetery (Rāġib). More generally (beyond Egypt), the guidebook of the pious visits (kitāb al-ziyāra) by Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Abī Bakr al-Harawī, a Shīʿī pilgrim who died in Aleppo in 611/1215, promoted the sanctuaries and visits to them in order to revive a sense of unity in Islam at a time when the ʿAbbāsid caliphate was disintegrating (al-Harawī; Meri, A lonely wayfarer’s guide). It was also in the sixth/twelfth century that, under Fāṭimid domination and due to Ṣūfī influence, the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday was sponsored in an official sense (Kaptein). This model inspired the celebration of annual festivals at the tombs of Ṣūfī saints, such as the Egyptian mawālid (mulids) and the Maghribi mawāsim (moussems), which often followed the solar calendar of the seasons observed by farmers and cattle breeders. Patron saint festivals around shrines often combined Ṣūfī rituals and trade fairs (Mayeur-Jaouen, The mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi; Reysoo). With the resurgence of Sunnī Islam under the Ayyūbids, the Mamlūks, and the Ottomans, the role of Ṣūfī orders asserted itself. After the death of an eponymous saint, a saint’s main disciples established around his sanctuary a brotherhood whose branches remained linked by pilgrimages to the mausoleum of the holy founder. The cult of Ṣūfī shaykhs often entailed worship in multiple locations. For example, the followers of the Qādiriyya order (Ceyhan in this volume), who followed and revered ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilānī (d. 561/1166) in a huge mausoleum in Baghdad, also founded a number of sanctuaries in honour of the founder, from Morocco to Indonesia. Several Mongol dynasties converted to Islam and the waves of migration that resulted from various invaders led Ṣūfīs to resettle in areas from Iran and Central Asia to Anatolia and India, which became a seat of Persianate culture. The first sanctuaries of the Chishtiyya, a brotherhood founded by Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī (d. 633/1236) who came to Ajmer in 602/1206, appeared in the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries (Ernst and Lawrence).

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It was the worship at the shrine of Ajmer, rather than the saint himself, that led to many conversions of Hindus to Islam. When the wish of Hindu pilgrims at the tomb of Chishtī (to heal an only son or have male offspring) was granted, some converted to Islam (Siddiqui). Under the Mughal Empire, from 926/1526 onward, the alliance between saints and princes, whose gifts to the mausoleum of Ajmer funded offices including candlestick lighters, the musician assigned to the tomb, the annual pilgrimage, and maintenance of the buildings (Tirmizi), culminated. Once on the throne in 963/1556, Akbar walked to Ajmer in 971/1564 and renewed this pilgrimage almost every year. In India during this time, the annual patron saints’ festivals, known as ʿurs (lit. “wedding”), became common. In the Maghrib, the time of so-called “maraboutism” began. The Andalusian Abū Madyan al-Shuʿayb (d. 589/1193 or 594/1198), revered in Tlemcen under the name of Sidi Boumediene, was the first great Ṣūfī saint of the Maghrib (Andezian). In the seventh/thirteenth century, the Shādhiliyya order spread, followed by the Jazūliyya (Ceyhan in this volume), and in the ninth/fifteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries, saints multiplied to such an extent that they “now embodied a group, a region or a city of which he [the saint] became the standard bearer” (Ferhat, 22). Large zāwiyas or complexes henceforth represented political and spiritual power. A zāwiya served many purposes simultaneously; it was a mosque, a mausoleum, a place of education, the seat of a Ṣūfī brotherhood, a centre of economic and political power, and a refuge from the violence of Bedouins and tribes (Firouzeh in this volume). Holiness, which had become hereditary, was formed around the great sanctuaries and murābiṭ/ marabout lineages (Amri). In the Arab Orient (bilād al-Shām) during the seventh/thirteenth to ninth/ fifteenth century, the Frankish and Mongol perils, and the spirit of the Sunnī resurgence increased the need for the veneration of Ṣūfī awliyāʾ. The ʿAbbāsid caliph’s move to Cairo after the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 656/1258 consecrated Egypt’s new status as an institutional religious centre. In the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries, with the support of the Mamlūk state that dominated Syria and Egypt, there appeared a “second wave” of Ṣūfī orders (Geoffroy). Sultan Qāytbāy (r. 872–901/1468–96), the pious Muslim prince par excellence, built many Ṣūfī shrines. Rituals at such shrines took on features that are remarkably similar throughout the Muslim world, namely, circumambulation of the saint’s tomb, like the Meccan ṭawāf around the Kaʿba, with visitors reciting the fātiḥa (first sūra of the Qurʾān), lighting candles, burning incense, offering flowers, silver, and gold. During ceremonies at the shrine, they performed dhikr (a ritualised repetition of God’s names) and samāʿ (the so-called “spiritual concert”). Annual

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pilgrimages were an occasion for encampments; pious visits were accompanied by songs and dances, banquets, and sacrifices. Frequent rituals involved touching the tombs (tamassuḥ) to partake of the baraka that was believed to emanate from the grave, and rolling on the ground around the tombs (tamrīgh) (Taylor). Criticism of such practices was voiced, the most famous and virulent being that of the renowned Ḥanbalī scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) (Olesen; Memon). Without condemning the practice of ziyāra itself, he denounced the cult of Muslim saints as a manifestation of polytheism (shirk) and as imitation of Christians and Jews. These condemnations remained marginal in an age when belief in the intercession of the saints was widespread. However, they were later taken up by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1206/1792), his followers the Wahhābīs, and more recently by various groups of Salafīs. After conquering the Arab provinces in 922–3/1516–7, the Ottomans somehow made Sufism a “state religion,” sponsored Ṣūfīs, and renovated the mausoleum of the well-known mystic Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) in Damascus (Atlagh). Throughout their realm, they encouraged the cult of relics of the Prophet (e.g., his footprints and hairs from his beard). Ṣūfī zāwiyas, which multiplied across the empire, were sometimes simple neighbourhood oratories, and sometimes complexes belonging to a particular Ṣūfī order, with a mausoleum, a cemetery, and a mosque. Festivals, banquets, hospice activities, and recitations of the Qurʾān were funded by the revenue from waqfs (charitable foundations and donations). Waqf deeds describe the economy of the sanctuary precisely: sums of money or quantities of wheat were allocated to pay the staff of the mosque (the imām, muezzin, preacher, Qurʾān readers, porter, sweeper, and lamplighter). Special funds were earmarked for the maintenance of mats or carpets in the prayer hall, and of oil lamps (Faroqhi; Hofer [Endowments] in this volume). Apart from the waqfs, Ṣūfī centres benefitted from the gifts of rulers: for example, in the great Moroccan zawāyā, they obtained a share of taxes on commercial activities related to the trans-Saharan trade. More generally, tax exemptions for Ṣūfī centres contributed to the flourishing of these sanctuaries and pilgrimages to them. At the most modest level, the donations ( futūḥ, nudhūr) offered by the devotees made it possible to welcome pilgrims and feed resident Ṣūfīs (Khan in this volume). 4

Modern Criticism of Ṣūfī Shrines

The most radical condemnation of the cult of Muslim saints was launched in the twelfth/eighteenth century by the aforementioned Muḥammad b. ʿAbd

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al-Wahhāb. Supported by the Saʿūd family, Wahhābīs treated the cult of saints as paganism and Sufism as idolatry. Between 1157/1744 and 1233/1818, in the Najd region of the Arabian Peninsula, where the Wahhābī movement originated, many shrines were destroyed and sacred trees were cut (Peskes). A century later, in 1924, the Saudi emirate conquered the holy cities of the Ḥijāz and in 1932 established the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The mausoleums of the cemetery of Baqīʿ in the city of Medina were razed to the ground. Only the shrine of the Prophet, which remains a site of pious visitations, escaped destruction. The struggle between the advocates of the sacredness of local territories— embodied by Ṣūfī sanctuaries—and those who promote the idea of a monolithic Islam based on a single version of the Wahhābī-inspired creed remains as acute today as it was in the past. In the early nineteenth century, several Ṣūfī orders rejected not Sufism itself, but, the practices of the cult of saints: circumambulations, animal sacrifices, candles, and so on. In India, Aḥmad Barelwī (d. 1246/1831) permitted the ceremony of reading the Qurʾān and distributing food at the tombs of saints, but refused to allow it to take place on specific dates. The process of Westernisation and modernisation of Muslim societies contributed to the growth of anti-Sufism criticism. In India, Deobandi members of the Chishtiyya scholars (ʿulamāʾ) believed in the intercession of saints, but disliked the rituals performed at their sanctuaries (Metcalf). In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in Central Asia and among Russian Muslims the so-called “Jadidism” (from the Arabic jadīd, “new”) linked in part to the Naqshbandiyya, emerged. Its representatives stigmatised “Ishānism,” that is, the very existence of a Ṣūfī “clergy” (the īshāns being the hereditary guardians of tombs) by presenting their activities as a major cause of the decline of Islam. The saints were not involved, nor was Sufism as mysticism per se, or as a means of transmitting and preserving Islamic knowledge. Actually, the Tatar Muslim reformists wanted to fight the cult of saints, seen as archaic and pagan survivals, according to a vision of Islam that was inspired by the evolutionary way Europe was then reading the history of religions (Dudoignon, Is’haqov, and Möhämmätshin (eds.)). The secularised rationalism of the Muslim reformists owed much to European scientism: it rejected the “superstitions,” the miracles of the saints, the lack of hygiene of pilgrimages, and the lack of decency associated with the festive atmosphere of popular ziyāras. Another common theme was the economic waste involved in hoarding food and other goods around Ṣūfī shrines in very poor countries. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and in the colonial context of the age, this hostility to Ṣūfī shrines grew even harsher. It was directly related to the growing urbanisation and secularisation of Muslim societies, especially

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the rise of new urban and educated social classes. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 in Egypt, was a typical representative of this anti-Ṣūfī rhetoric. In Algeria, the ʿUlamāʾ Association (Jamʿiyyat al-ʿUlamāʾ al-Muslimīn) of Ben Badis/Bin Bādīs, founded in 1931, recognised in its statutes the existence of saints, which it defined as sincere believers who fear God. Yet, any worship of the saints was rejected as heretical and as a vestige of paganism, and the Algerian ʿulamāʾ attacked rural sanctuaries, sometimes violently (Andezian). In the twentieth century, throughout the Muslim world Islamists of various types showed their hostility to Ṣūfī shrines, adding to the already strong influence of Wahhābīs/Saudis who rejected Sufism as a whole. In spite of the ascendancy of the reformist anti-Ṣūfī discourse, for a long time it had little effect on events and the life of Ṣūfī shrines and sanctuaries. They were probably much more affected by the consequences of the growing urbanisation, industrialisation, and modernisation throughout the second half of the twentieth century (Clayer in this volume). The Muslim world became predominantly urban in the 1970s, and this led to the decline or even the disappearance of “natural” sanctuaries in many regions. In the countryside as in the city, sacred springs and trees disappeared. Stories of the miraculous saving of holy sites and saints’ from the pickaxe and later bulldozers tell us more about the inexorable process of their demolition than of their preservation (Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich; Canaan). Although modern twentieth-century neighbourhoods in Arab cities continue to build sanctuaries for new saints, the vast majority of Ṣūfī shrines are confined to ancient quarters or cemeteries. Similarly, despite the fact that roads and railways facilitate pilgrimage and air travel enables visits by transnational pilgrimages and members of Ṣūfī orders, the majority of sanctuary visits take place within national boundaries (Werbner). The nationalist ideology and political independence of Muslim states have resulted in the construction of large sanctuaries, despite the fact that the dominant discourse of Muslim elites condemns their visitation. The considerable incomes generated by the sanctuaries attracted the attention of state authorities, anxious to keep popular Ṣūfī teachers under control and still promote a modern economy. Atatürk’s republican Turkey, in a clear rupture with the Ottoman past, suppressed Ṣūfī institutions with the law of December 13, 1925. The Ṣūfī shrines came under the control of the ministry of waqfs and when, after a long time in hiding, Ṣūfī orders resurfaced, they were deprived of their earlier material foundations (Zarcone). In the Central Asian republics of the USSR, Soviet authorities waged a pitiless struggle against mosques, mausoleums, and khānaqāhs. In Bourguiba’s Tunisia, some of the zāwiyas were closed or repurposed (Boissevain).

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Elsewhere, Ṣūfī sanctuaries often served to legitimate political power: hence the support of Moroccan ʿAlawīs and the Hashemites of Jordan for the tombs of saints. We can also mention the ambiguous Nasserist policies vis-à-vis Ṣūfī shrines in Egypt. Many renowned sanctuaries became part of a national identity construction: after the breakup of the USSR in 1991 and the independence of the republics of Central Asia, local saints became national heroes and authorities used them to endorse reconstructed national identities. Thus, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband (d. 791/1389) was celebrated in 1993 in Bukhara as the patron saint of Uzbekistan liberated from the Soviet yoke (Chambert-Loir and Guillot (eds.)). In Turkey, in 1950, the political process led to the reopening of certain mausoleums. This, in its turn, resulted in the rebirth of pilgrimages, for example, to the tomb of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273) in Konya and to Ḥājjī Bektāsh. In Tunisia, under the presidency of Ben Ali, from 1987 and until the revolution (December 2010–January 2011), the state encouraged people to frequent Ṣūfī zāwiyas. Today, in Morocco, shrines and moussems are subject to a process of patrimonialisation and folklorisation promoted by the ʿAlawī monarchy and its ministry of waqfs, for example, around the “seven saints” of Marrakech (Pénicaud). The beginning of the twenty-first century saw an intensification of the struggle between supporters and opponents of Ṣūfī shrines: some shrines were burned or razed during the 2011 revolutions in Tunisia and Libya; ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and its affiliates deliberately destroyed Ṣūfī shrines in Iraq and Timbuktu (Mali); great sanctuaries in Pakistan were bombed in a particularly violent manifestation of this criticism, which is often linked to various groups of Salafīs who are hostile toward Sufism and deny the intercession of saints buried in tombs. Another face of this secularisation is the defence of cultural heritage, which allows for the preservation and upkeep of holy sites. Be this as it may, the resilience of Ṣūfī sanctuaries (which are often rebuilt) and their considerable role in the physical and spiritual landscape of contemporary Islam remain impressive. Bibliography Aitpeva, Gulnara, ed., Mazar worship in Kyrgyzstan. Rituals and practitioners in Talas, Bishkek 2007. Albera, Dionigi and Maria Couroucli, eds., Sharing sacred spaces in the Mediterranean. Christians, Muslims and Jews at shrines and sanctuaries, Bloomington, IN 2012. Amri, Nelly, Les saints en islam. Les messagers de l’espérance. Sainteté et eschatologie au Maghreb aux XIV e et XVe siècles, Paris 2008.

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Andézian, Sossie, Expériences du divin dans l’Algérie contemporaine. Adeptes des saints de la région de Tlemcen, Paris 2001. Atlagh, Riad, Paradoxes d’un mausolée, in Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (ed.), Lieux d’islam. Cultes et cultures de l’Afrique à Java (Paris 1996), 132–53. Boissevain, Katia, Sainte parmi les saints. Sayyida Mannûbiya ou les recompositions cultuelles dans la Tunisie contemporaine, Paris 2006. Boivin, Michel and Rémy Delage, eds., Devotional Islam in contemporary South Asia. Shrines, journeys and wanderers, London 2016. Canaan, Taufiq, Mohammedan saints and sanctuaries in Palestine, London 1927. Chambert-Loir, Henri and Claude Guillot, eds., Le culte des saints dans le monde musulman, Paris 1995. Diem, Werner and Marco Schöller, The living and the dead in Islam. Studies in Arabic epitaphs, Wiesbaden 2004. Dudoignon, Stéphane, Dämir Is’haqov, and Räfyq Möhämmätshin, eds., L’islam de Russie. Conscience communautaire et autonomie politique chez les Tatars de la Volga et de l’Oural, depuis le XVIIIe siècle, Paris 1997. Ernst, Carl W. and Bruce B. Lawrence, Sufi martyrs of love. The Chishti order in South Asia and beyond, New York 2002. Faroqhi, Suraiya, The tekke of Haci Bektas. Social position and economic activities, IJMES 7/2 (1976): 183–208. Ferhat, Halima, Le Maghreb aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Les siècles de la foi, Casablanca 1993. Garcin, Jean-Claude, Assises matérielles et rôle économique des ordres soufis, in Gilles Veinstein and Alexandre Popovic (eds.), Les voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris 1996), 213–23. Geoffroy, Éric, La seconde vague. Fin XIIIe–XVe siècle, in Gilles Veinstein and Alexandre Popovic (eds.), Les voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris 1996), 55–67. Gonnella, Julia, Islamische Heiligenverherung im urbanen Kontext am Beispiel von Aleppo (Syrien), Berlin 1995. Grabar, Oleg, The earliest Islamic commemorative structures. Notes and documents, Ars Orientalis 6 (1966): 7–46. al-Harawī, ʿAlī b. Abī Bakr, Guide des lieux de pèlerinage, trans. Janine Sourdel-Thomine, Damascus 1957. Hasluck, Frederick William, Christianity and Islam under the sultans, Margaret Hasluck (ed.), vol. I and II, Oxford 1929, reprint Istanbul 2000. Kaptein, N. J. G., Muhammad’s birthday festival, early history in the central Muslim lands and development in the Muslim west until the 10th/16th century, Leiden, New York, Köln 1993. Kervran, Monique, Les structures funéraires et commémoratives en Iran et en Asie centrale du 9e au 12e siècle, PhD dissertation, Paris-IV Sorbonne, 1987.

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Kriss, Rudolf and Hubert Kriss-Heinrich, Volksglaube im Bereich des Islams. Vol. 1: Wallfahrtswesen und Heiligenverehrung, Wiesbaden 1960–2. Leisten, Thomas, Architektur für Tote. Bestattung in architektonischen Kontext in den Kernländern der islamischen Welt zwischen 3/9 und 6/12 Jahrhundert, Berlin 1998. Leisten, Thomas, Between orthodoxy and exegesis. Some aspects of attitude in the shariʿa toward funerary architecture, Muqarnas VII (1990): 12–22. Massignon, Louis, La cité des morts au Caire (Qarâfa—Darb al-Ahmar), BIFAO LVII (1958): 25–79. Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine, The mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta. Egypt’s legendary Sufi festival, Cairo 2019. Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine, Pèlerinages d’Égypte. Histoire de la piété copte et musulmane XVe–XXe siècle, Paris 2005. Memon, Muhammad, Ibn Taymîya’s struggle against popular religion with an annotated translation of his Kitâb iʾtiqâd al-sirat al-mustaqîm mukhâlafat ashâb al-jahîm, The Hague 1977. Meri, Josef W., The cult of saints among Muslims and Jews in medieval Syria, Oxford 2002. Meri, Josef W. (trans.), A lonely wayfarer’s guide to pilgrimage. ʿAlī ibn Abī Bakr al-Harawī’s Kitāb al-ishārāt ilā ma‌ʿrifat al-ziyārāt, Princeton 2004. Metcalf, Barbara, Islamic revival in British India Deoband, 1860–1900, Princeton 1982. Mulder, Stephennie, The shrines of the Alides in medieval Syria. Sunnis, Shiʾis and the architecture of coexistence, Oxford 2014. al-Muqaddasî, La meilleure répartition pour la connaissance des provinces (Aḥsan at-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm), trans. André Miquel, Damascus 1963. Olesen, Niels H., Culte des saints et pèlerinages chez Ibn Taymiyya (661/1268–728/1328), Paris 1991. Pénicaud, Manoël, Dans la peau d’un autre. Pèlerinage insolite au Maroc avec les mages Regraga, Paris 2007. Peskes, Esther, Muḥammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb, 1703–92, im Widerstreit. Untersuchungen zur Rekonstruktion der Frühgeschichte der Wahhābīya, Berlin 1993. Rāġib, Yūsuf, Les premiers monuments funéraires de l’islam, AI IX (1970): 21–36. Reysoo, Fenneke, Pèlerinages au Maroc. Fête, politique et échange dans l’islam populaire, Paris-Neuchâtel 1991. Schimmel, Annemarie, Islam in the Indian subcontinent, Leiden-Köln 1980. Siddiqui, Iqtidar Husayin, The early Chishti dargahs, in Christian Troll (ed.), Muslim shrines in India (Delhi 1989; repr. 2003), 1–23. Taylor, Christopher S., In the vicinity of the righteous. Ziyara and the veneration of Muslim saints in late medieval Egypt, Leiden 1999. Tirmizi, S. A. I., Mughal documents relating to the dargah of Khwaja Muʾinuddin Chishti, in Christian Troll (ed.), Muslim shrines in India (Delhi 1989; repr. 2003), 48–59.

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Troll, Christian, ed., Muslim shrines in India. Their character, history and significance, Delhi 1989; repr. 2003. Werbner, Pnina, Pilgrims of love. The anthropology of a global Sufi cult, Bloomington, IN 2003. Williams, Caroline, The cult of ʿAlid saints in the Fatimide monuments of Cairo, Muqarnas III (1985): 39–60. Zarcone, Thierry, La Turquie moderne et l’islam, Paris 2004.

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Chapter 7

Ṣūfī Lodges Peyvand Firouzeh 1 Introduction Zāwiya (Ar. ‘corner’ or ‘nook’), khānaqāh/khānqāh (P. ‘dwelling place’ or ‘place of residence’), and tekke (Tk., from Arabic ittakā, ‘to rely on’ or ‘receive support’) refer to the institution and physical establishment of a group of Ṣūfīs gathered around a master, known as pīr in Persian, and as shaykh in Arabic. From modest single buildings to monumental complexes, the wide range of structures denoted by these terms (and their variants) consist of spaces for a variety of individual and collective functions that may include, but are not limited to, meetings and large ritual assemblies, teaching sessions, residences, burial places, prayers, retreats, and meals (Ephrat and Pinto in this volume; for the application of the term khānaqāh to non-Ṣūfī establishments and in non-Islamic contexts, see Böwering and Melvin-Koushki, 456–66). They may act as charitable institutions, in which case, the same or additional designated spaces may be used to make amenities accessible to the public, such as feeding and accommodating the poor and travellers. The considerable range of geographical and temporal variations, evident in the variety of buildings and terms referring to similar buildings, demonstrate the prevalence of Sufism in the everyday lives of rural and urban communities in Islamicate societies, and also shows the social and political status of diverse Ṣūfī ṭarīqas (generally referred to as ‘Ṣūfī orders’). 2

Terminology and Its Temporal-Geographical Variations

A variety of terms, at times used interchangeably, refer to the buildings utilised by Ṣūfī ṭarīqas. Apart from zāwiya, khānaqāh, and tekke, they include ribāṭ, āstāna (‘doorway,’ ‘threshold’), dargāh, langar, ṣawmaʿa (‘hermitage’), and duwayra (lit., ‘little house’), among others. If we consider the Islamic world in its entirety over a longue durée, the terminology used to refer to the various types of institutions affiliated with Ṣūfī ṭarīqas, here collectively called ‘Ṣūfī lodges,’ has varied widely depending on the forms and functions of these buildings. The fluidity of terminology is rooted in the linguistic diversity across Islamic

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lands, heterogeneous ascetic-mystic practices, and the physical characteristics and developmental history of Ṣūfī lodges, which do not adhere to a fixed and universal typology. Broadly speaking, the term zāwiya is commonly used to denote large Ṣūfī complexes in North Africa, whereas the same term is used in eastern Islamic lands to refer to a smaller mosque or other spaces within a larger complex reserved for Ṣūfī gatherings or retreats (Little, 91–105). In Khurāsān and Transoxiana from the fourth/tenth century, the predominant term was khānaqāh. Tekke is associated most strongly with Ottoman regions, while khānaqāh, āstāna, zāwiya, and dargāh were also used in the same region to describe structures varying in scale and architectural functions (Lifchez, 75–76). The latter term, dargāh (that usually implies the presence of a shrine or tomb of a Ṣūfī) is most commonly associated with South Asia. In Iraq until the middle of the seventh/thirteenth century, residences of Ṣūfīs were called ribāṭs, which, as an architectural term, referred to a look-out post, small fort, fortified city, caravanserai, staging-post, or an urban establishment for mystics. (For the prehistory of ribāṭ as a non-Ṣūfī establishment from the early Islamic period and its subsequent evolution, see Bosworth, 284–6; Meier, 335–421; Hofer [Ṣūfī Outposts] in this volume). While some of these terms have a regional or temporal sphere of reference, some were used in the same area contemporaneously. In eighth-/fourteenthcentury Cairo, for instance, a range of terms, including khānaqāh, ribāṭ, takiyya, zāwiya, and even madrasa (‘teaching college’), were used concurrently to refer to structures associated with the activities of Ṣūfī ṭarīqas (Behrens-Abouseif, 44; Sedgwick in this volume). Some terms obtained nuanced meanings depending on the region, and thus referred to different types and scales of buildings in different geographical areas. The term āstāna is a case in point. While in Ottoman lands and in early modern Central Asia, the term was often used to refer to major complexes (Lifchez, 75–76; McChesney, 68), in South Asia it typically referred to a shrine or stopping-place of a revered Ṣūfī, a place marked by a stone, tree, or small building. For example, several āstānas, including those in Awrangabad and Srinagar, are associated with Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī (d. 633/1236), a Ṣūfī of Ajmer, and ʿAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī (d. 561/1166) of Baghdad (Green, Migrant Sufis, 498). The transregional mobility of Ṣūfīs was another factor in the variety of architectural terminology. For instance, in twelfth-/eighteenth and thirteenth-/ nineteenth-century Cairo, takāyā (s. takiyya) were distinguished from the zawāyā (s. zāwiya) because they were ‘convents for Turkish and Persian Ṣūfīs.’ Some were reserved specifically for ṭarīqas from Turkish provinces, such as the Mawlawiyya takiyya (Tk. Mevleviyye tekke), the Gulshaniyya takiyya (Gülşeniyye tekke), and others (Delanoue, 249; De Jong, 214). Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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Beyond geographical and linguistic considerations, the physical nature of Ṣūfī lodges also lends itself to terminological fluidity. Large complexes commonly consist of a combination of spaces or buildings with various purposes: funerary buildings, teaching spaces, soup kitchens, travel lodges, ritual halls, prayer halls, and mosques. The names for each of these spaces can refer to the whole complex. Scale, too, could be a key factor in the choice of terminology. For instance, from the tenth/sixteenth century onwards, in Ottoman Anatolia, a tekke was commonly a building or complex specifically designed for the communal life of a large and organised community of Ṣūfīs, and possibly controlled by the state. In the same context, a zāwiya was usually associated with more modest structures and mobile users: for example, a zāwiya could refer to a section of a residential house or a mosque where Ṣūfīs assembled (Clayer, 416–17), or complexes consisting of cells, a prayer hall, and other amenities reserved for travellers, including itinerant Ṣūfīs. In Damascus, the term khānaqāh was associated with larger institutions, and reflected the official patronage they received, whereas the zāwiya accommodated more modest ṭarīqas that prioritised the principle of spiritual poverty (Geoffroy, 166–75). By contrast, in India, the term takiyya applied to small-scale establishments (Gaborieau, 207). In general, ṣawmaʿa or duwayra were mainly reserved for smaller structures as well. As sacred sites, Ṣūfī lodges attracted elite and urban patrons, who transformed the structures into a palimpsest of building and refurbishing campaigns that manifested the site’s sociopolitical history. Oftentimes during these processes, when spaces serving new functions were added, the primary term used to denote the building no longer accurately represented the full spectrum of its functions. Also, very commonly, a whole complex would be known by its most venerated part, especially if it included the tomb of a Ṣūfī shaykh, such that the terminology no longer necessarily reflected the nature and function of all of the different parts of the complex. An example is the venerated site associated with Shaykh Aḥmad-i Jām (d. 536/1141) in north-east Iran; it started as a turbat (burial place, lit., ‘soil’) of the Ṣūfī and expanded into a multi-functional institution with several buildings constructed around the grave (Golombek, Chronology, 43) (fig. 7.1). The complex, and in fact the whole town, are named after the first and most venerated part of the structure: Turbat-i Jām. 3 The Pre- and Early History of the Institution While the prehistory and early phases of the evolution of the Ṣūfī lodge are shrouded in uncertainty, its history as an organised physical institution with rights of ownership is usually dated to the fifth/eleventh century. It is not clear when the terms in question were first applied to Ṣūfī establishments, but we do Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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View of the open-air burial and entrance portal from the courtyard of Turbat-i Shaykh Aḥmad Jām Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh

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know of a few scattered references to the buildings prior to the fifth/eleventh century. For instance, the mediaeval geographer al-Muqaddasī (d. c. 380/991) refers to the khānaqāh of the Karrāmiyya (the sect named after the preacher Ibn Karrām (d. 255/869)) that flourished in the central and eastern parts of the Islamic world from the third/ninth century. Al-Muqaddasī also speaks of Ṣūfī groups linked to mosques and ribāṭs in the countryside (Chabbi). The early ʿAbbāsid ribāṭs in ʿAbbādān are another group of institutions connected to the prehistory of the Ṣūfī lodge (see Böwering and Melvin-Koushki; Gramlich, Die Nahrung der Herzen, 1:476, 484; Böwering, 47–48; Gibb, 2:281). Generally speaking, from the fifth/eleventh century, the development of Ṣūfī lodges underwent a transition. First, the ruling elites under the Saljūqs, Ghaznavids, Zangids, and Ayyūbids became involved in the patronage of specialised buildings for Ṣūfīs, a sign of the institutionalisation and politicisation of the ṭarīqas. Second, the regulation of communal life at Ṣūfī lodges can be attributed to this period, as we know, for example, from the writings of the Ṣūfī Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049) (Nicholson, 46). 4

The Ṣūfī Lodge: Narratives and Networks

A common thread among Ṣūfī lodges across Islamicate societies is the central role of Ṣūfī bodies (living or dead) to the Ṣūfī lodge. Ṣūfī lodges were shaped around the presence, or memory of the presence, of the Ṣūfī in that locale. This includes his/her past or present space of retreat, the historic stopping place of a renowned figure, or permanent burial (Green, Making space, 4–5; for an example of a Ṣafavid dynastic shrine that grew from a modest zāwiya, see Rizvi, 24–56). The correlation between the sacredness of the space and the body is evident in rituals related to a Ṣūfī’s burial place. For instance, in South Asia, materials that came into contact with the grave of a Ṣūfī were treated as relics. The flower petals, the surrounding earth, or the water used to wash the graves could all be ingested to circulate the baraka (blessing) of the Ṣūfī (Flood, 472). Narratives—oral, hagiographic, and epigraphic—played an indispensable role in making a Ṣūfī lodge a sacred place, and connecting the body of the Ṣūfī with the site and its audience (on the correlation between the development of sacred sites and the writing of hagiographies, see Yürekli; Green, Making space, 18). The Ṣūfī’s trajectory before and after their sojourn at the site provided key aspects (such as genealogies, chains of initiation, education, and travels) of these narratives. On the one hand, the building commemorating the body or former presence of a Ṣūfī was physically embedded in a locale, and its connection to the place was strengthened by texts. On the other hand, the

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same narratives situated a Ṣūfī lodge as a node on the map of the wider Islamic world and beyond. It was connected to people, places, and times near and far. In this sense, Ṣūfī lodges were both local and global. Ṣūfī lodges were thus grounded in an interplay of mobility and stasis. The architecture, as a permanent structure, encouraged mobility among pilgrims, rulers, travellers, merchants, and scholars by being part of regional and transregional networks of sacred sites. In addition to commemorating the sanctity of Ṣūfīs’ teachings and miracles, the architecture and the narratives surrounding it also provided a place for the permanent commemoration of the Ṣūfīs’ mobility, a reminder of their origins and past travels. 5

The Architecture of Ṣūfī Lodges

Zāwiyas, khānaqāhs, and tekkes ranged from modest single buildings to grand composite complexes consisting of several private or communal, residential or non-residential spaces. A prototypical, large Ṣūfī complex could include a ritual hall (called jamāʿat-khāna, dhikr-khāna, tawḥīd-khāna, or samāʿ-khāna, sometimes also used as a mosque), a mausoleum for the founding Ṣūfī or other important figures of the ṭarīqa, lodging for the Ṣūfī shaykh and his dependents, cells for disciples and travellers, a mosque, library, bathhouse, hospital, gardens, water reservoir, fountain, granaries, and a soup kitchen to feed residents, travellers, and the poor. Although not an indispensable element of the Ṣūfī lodge, the burial place of the ṭarīqa founder was a common feature of both single buildings and larger complexes. The tomb, in many cases one of the oldest parts of the complex, sanctified the site and secured a larger following for the ṭarīqa through pilgrimage. With respect to the architecture of the burial areas, Ṣūfī establishments can be divided into two groups: those that housed the cenotaph in a designated covered space, such as a domed chamber (for example, the mausoleum of Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī, d. 834/1430–1, in Māhān), and those with open, uncovered tombs. In the latter case, the gravestone, together with a tree or shrubs, would oftentimes be placed on a raised platform (sometimes called takht, lit., ‘bed’ or ‘throne’), protected by a grilled enclosure (sometimes called ḥaẓīra, but this term also concurrently refers to a domed structure, as O’Kane shows: O’Kane, Tāybād, 96). While in many cases open-air burial places served to expand existing funerary structures, in other cases, they were the primary structures in the complex, around which later expansions took place. Examples of the former are numerous and include the enclosure at the site of the mausoleum of

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Shāh Khalīlullāh (d. before 858/1454), son of the Iranian Ṣūfī Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī in Bidar (fig. 7.2), and the raised platforms at Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband’s (d. 791/1389) shrine complex in Bukhara (fig. 7.3). Some examples of the latter in the greater Khurāsān region include the shrine at Gāzurgāh, the shrine of Shaykh Aḥmad-i Jām in Turbat-i Jām (fig. 7.1), and that of Shaykh Zayn al-Dīn Abū Bakr Tāybādī (d. 791/1389) in Tāybād (fig. 7.4) (Yazdani, 141–45; Golombek, Chronology, 41–43; O’Kane, Tāybād, 96). While in some contexts the open-air burial sites have been interpreted in terms of the prohibition of covering holy graves, the existence of a direct, universal correlation between them is debated (see, for example, O’Kane, Tāybād, 96). A Ṣūfī ṭarīqa required that a primary space serve as a communal place for gatherings, teaching sessions, and rituals. To this end, especially during the early phases of the history of the ṭarīqa and the formation of their architecture, any space could be adapted for this purpose. For instance, gatherings and retreats could be held in private residences or mosques. When organised teaching and lodging for large groups of followers and travellers became key functions of the ṭarīqas, the architecture of Ṣūfī lodges were similar to structures like madrasas and caravanserais. These complexes consisted of lodging cells arranged around an open courtyard, and incorporated

Figure 7.2

View of tomb enclosures added on the site of Shāh Khalīlullāh’s mausoleum in Bidar; both as an independent structure, and attached to the main ninth-/ fifteenth-century mausoleum (right) Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh

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Figure 7.3

View of the raised platforms at the shrine complex of Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband at Bukhara Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh

Figure 7.4

View of open-air grave in front of the entrance īvān at the mausoleum of Zayn al-Dīn Abū Bakr Tāybādī Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh

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other elements for teaching, burials, and rituals, including, perhaps, a mosque within or near the courtyard. Beyond these morphological similarities, the institutionalisation of Ṣūfī lodges was connected to the evolution of the madrasa under the state patronage of the Saljūqs and their elites, such as the vizier Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092), and the Ayyūbids and Zangids in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Under the patronage of the Ilkhanids, Timūrids, and Turkmens (for instance Uzun Ḥasan Āq Qoyūnlū, r. 857–82/1453–78), and the Mamlūks of Egypt, the madrasas and Ṣūfī lodges could be paired together in one complex. An Ilkhanid example in Sivas included the lodge of the Ṣūfī Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī (d. 688/1289) (Wolper, 11–12). Some Timūrid examples include the complexes of Muḥammad Sulṭān (d. 806/1403) and Ulugh Beg b. Shāhrukh (d. 853/1449) in Samarqand, those of Shāhrukh (r. 807–50/1405–47), Amīr Kukeltāsh (d. 844/1440), Sulṭān Ḥusayn Bāyqarā (r. 873–911/1469–1506), Amīr Jalāl al-Dīn Fīrūzshāh (d. 848/1444–5), and the Ikhlāṣiyya complex of Mīr ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī (d. 906/1501) in Herat, as well as the shrine complex of Khvāja ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī (d. 481/1089) at Gāzurgāh, outside Herat (see Golombek and Wilber, I, nos. 29, 30, 56, 71–2, pp. 48, 260–4, 307–10, 448, supplementary catalogue nos. 60, 70, 77, 90–1, pp. 314–5, 449–50; O’Kane, Timurid architecture, no. 54, pp. 23, 339–43; Allen, A catalogue, no. 427, p. 102; Subtelny, 44–7). Such hybrid complexes did not necessarily belong to a specific Ṣūfī ṭarīqa, and were often patronised by the state that controlled the affairs of the Ṣūfī lodge, for example, through the appointment of the head of the complex. During the Timūrid period there was also a shift away from the courtyard model, in terms of the spatial arrangement of the Ṣūfī lodge. Large complexes were designed as one grand building under a single roof, for instance, the monumental khānaqāh of Khwāja Aḥmad Yasawī (d. 562/1166) in Turkestan (southern Kazakhstan) was built under the patronage of the dynasty’s founder, Tīmūr (r. 771–807/1370–1405) (see Yusupova, 236–8). At the centre of this new organisational model, also seen under the Shaybanids and the Tuqay-Timūrids, there was often an assembly hall covered by a colossal dome with cells on different levels (Yusupova, 233); this lent a more monumental scale to the architecture of Ṣūfī lodges. The composite nature of the complexes was the result of a variety of private and communal functions, from solitary retreats to large ritual assemblies, as well as the holiness of the sites themselves, which attracted the sort of elite and urban chain patronage that could sustain several phases of development. The primary structures of the sites, whether for ritual or funerary purposes, or bound by other associations to a holy figure, were restored and expanded, sometimes resulting in a completely different structure from the first phase of the building. We can see these transformative processes in a few extant shrine

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Elevated view of the astāna of Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī in Māhān developed around the ninth-/fifteenth-century dome chamber from the tenth/sixteenth through twentieth centuries Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh

complexes, such as those of Shaykh Aḥmad-i Jām in Turbat-i Jām (fig. 7.1), Shaykh Ṣafī [l-Dīn Ardabīlī] (d. 735/1334) in Ardabil, Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī in Māhān (fig. 7.5), and Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (d. 672/1273) in Konya (fig. 7.6). Such continuity makes the architecture something of a palimpsest, marked by many layers of physical construction, and served to document and shape architectural genealogies, urban dynamics, and sociopolitical history.

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Figure 7.6

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View of the Ṣūfī cells, tomb, and mosque at the tekke of Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, and the Selīmīye mosque (right) in Konya Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh

Patronage and Financial Resources

The income of Ṣūfī lodges came from the alms tax (zakāt), donations from urban or elite patrons, and awqāf (s. waqf, pious endowment), and in some cases from begging (suʾāl). The endowments provided revenue from the produce of agricultural lands in places near or far, markets, water rights, and other sources. From as early as the Saljūq period, organised communities of Ṣūfī ṭarīqas entered into diverse and complex relationships with ruling authorities, using their sanctifying power to bless a ruler’s reign in exchange for just treatment of their communities, and for financial support in the form of landed property, real estate, and ceremonial gifts (see Safi; Peacock; Sabra in this volume). In return, rulers strengthened their legitimacy by presenting themselves as upholders of the sharīʿa and patrons of organised religion, or by affiliating themselves to the supernatural forces associated with Ṣūfī masters (Manz, 192). The sway they held with the public and their claims to intimacy with the divine meant that Ṣūfīs had the cultural and political power to lend credibility to conquerors,

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would-be rulers, and sultans with ambitions to expand their dominion (some well-documented examples of such patronage include the shrines of the Ṣafaviyya and Bektāshiyya orders. See Rizvi; Wolper; Yürekli). The bestowal of kingship on the ruler usually took place through a real or imaginary encounter with a Ṣūfī, which sometimes occurred at a Ṣūfī lodge. During these encounters, the Ṣūfī usually predicted what areas the ruler would conquer and offered blessings for his reign (Digby, 75). Such politicisation of Ṣūfī communities went hand in hand with financial support for Ṣūfī lodges. Rulers went on pilgrimages to Ṣūfī lodges; these visits usually included the ritual circumambulation of the tomb and donations to the shrine. Mughal rulers, for instance, regularly visited the shrine of the Chishti Ṣūfī, Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (d. 725/1325) in Delhi (fig. 7.7) while on pilgrimage tours from their capitals (Koch, 18–24; on Mughal patronage of shrines, see Green, Auspicious foundations, 71, 80). The decision of whether to support a Ṣūfī lodge, or accept the court’s support for a Ṣūfī lodge, hinged on the dynamics of the personal and political relationships formed between the community and court. While these decisions varied, Ṣūfī lodges often acted as permanent material repositories of the temporary alliances formed between Ṣūfīs and rulers (see Wolper, 19). On the whole, the growth (in numbers and size) of Ṣūfī lodges, and their transformation from humble structures to grand-scale monuments that increasingly dominated the landscapes and townscapes of Islamicate societies testifies to the general continuity of patronage (for a discussion the role of Ṣūfī lodges in the transformation of urban landscapes in Anatolia, see Wolper). Ṣūfī lodges played a significant financial role in the transformation of rural areas by drawing pilgrims and attracting patronage from the local and transregional elite. As Ṣūfī lodges expanded in urban settings they became important nodes in the cityscape, alongside the palace and mosques. The relationship between the palace and Ṣūfī lodge varied: sometimes the two stood in close proximity, but tensions could also result in the expulsion of the Ṣūfī lodge from the city proper. In India, Awrangabad, Firozabad, Fatehpur Sikri (fig. 7.8), and Ajmer offer examples of proximity between the palace and Ṣūfī lodge (Green, Making space, 23–5). By contrast, the Chishti Ṣūfī Gīsū Darāz (d. 825/1422) had to relocate outside the city walls of Bahmanid Gulbarga. Similar relationships existed between several royal funerary sites and Ṣūfī shrines: Humāyūn’s tomb and the shrine complex of Niẓām al-Dīn Awlīyāʾ in Delhi, the tombs of Awrangzeb and his son Aʿẓam Shāh within the shrine of Zayn al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 771/1369) at Khuldabad, and the Bahmanid royal necropolises in the proximity of the shrines of Gīsū Darāz in Gulbarga and Shāh Khalīlullāh, son of Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī in Bidar (Green, Making space, 23–5; Asher).

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Figure 7.7

View of the tomb of Nizām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (centre) and the mosque (on the left) at his shrine complex in Delhi Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh

Figure 7.8

View of Salīm Chishtī’s tomb within the great mosque of Fatehpur Sikri (located in the southern part of the palace complex) Photo by Peyvand Firouzeh

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Life at the Ṣūfī Lodge

The core human relationship at the Ṣūfī lodge was that between the Ṣūfī master (pīr or shaykh) and the disciple or student (murīd). Members of the ṭarīqa are referred to as ikhwān (‘brothers’), and akhawāt (‘sisters’). Regular rituals of dhikr (Ar. ‘remembrance,’ recitation, or repetition of God’s name and other sacred phrases), as well as samāʿ (Ar. ‘listening,’ also known as ḥaḍras, musical sessions that could include singing, playing instruments, dancing, recitation of poetry and prayers), ṣuḥbat (‘companionship,’ that is, instruction sessions), and ʿurs (‘spiritual wedding,’ festival held on the death anniversary of Ṣūfīs) brought the members together in ritual halls or in public areas (Papas, 9; Frishkopf, 118–20). Sources such as hagiographies, travelogues, and waqf documents shed light on day-to-day life at the khānaqāh, which regularly acted as a charitable institution. Apart from members of the ṭarīqa, life at the Ṣūfī lodge also involved travellers, pilgrims, and the poor who benefitted from food and lodging at the site (see Gramlich, Das Sendschreiben, 104, 394, 400, 477). The ṭarīqa’s care for the poor, strangers, and animals is evident from waqf documents that mention funds allocated for food and clothing, sums for the burial of travellers who died in the city, and food for birds. Ṣūfī lodges also served as commercial hubs frequented by merchants, as in the case of the khānaqāh of Shāh Niʿmatullāh Walī at Taft, or as sanctuaries offering refuge in times of war. As the use of Ṣūfī lodges as public spaces grew, there was an increasing need to regulate codes of behaviour; we see this in the works of Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr and Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) (see, for instance, Pūrjavādī, 87–91). In addition to the institutions’ sources of income, waqf documents also tell us about the professions connected to Ṣūfī lodges, such as the khādim (attendant) who acted as a financial officer, and the mutawallī (keeper, guardian). Life at Ṣūfī lodges has long been conditioned by the shifting dynamics between the lodges and the state, a dynamic that sometimes involved the state’s desire to control the power of Ṣūfī lodges by policing and regulating its activities. Many Ṣūfī lodges around the world continue to perform ritual and charitable functions to this day. However, some modern states have subjected Ṣūfī lodges to rigid regulations that sometimes resulted in the abolition of rituals, the transformation of lodges into museums, and their partial or complete demolition. Examples include the suppression of operations at the tekke of Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī in Konya and its reopening as the Mevlana Museum, and the banning of functions at the Niʿmatullāhī khānaqāhs in Iran.

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Chapter 8

Ṣūfī Outposts (ribāṭs) Nathan Hofer Ṣūfīs have generally used the term ribāṭ (pl. rubuṭ) to denote rural lodges or outposts that housed itinerant Ṣūfīs, provided centres of instruction for novices, or facilitated outreach to surrounding communities. Many ribāṭs combined these functions. Beyond this general statement, however, it is not possible to formulate a singular description or definition of the Ṣūfī ribāṭ that captures its wide variations in form and function across time and space. This difficulty is complicated further by the fact that the term itself predates Ṣūfī usage and continued to develop in multiple ways in both Ṣūfī and non-Ṣūfī contexts across the Islamic world (Picard and Borrut). In Arabic usage more broadly, ribāṭ (from the root r-b-ṭ, ‘to tie’) may connote several abstract and concrete nouns, all of which developed from the basic meaning of garrisoning horses in preparation for battle (for a more detailed linguistic overview, see Chabbi and Rabbat as well as Böwering and Melvin-Koushki). In the Qurʾān, the noun and verb (rābaṭa) appear only once (Q 8:60 and Q 3:200, respectively), both in the context of a divine command for the believers to prepare for battle against their adversaries. This Qurʾānic mandate imbues an otherwise mundane activity with a strong sense of piety and divine favour. Not surprisingly, then, by the post-conquest period, the idealised practice of ribāṭ as defensive warfare had become enmeshed with the developing ideology of jihād and a life of militant piety along the frontier (see, for example, al-Farāhīdī [d. 170/786] on Q 3:200 [al-Farāhīdī, 2:90–1]). The literary, lexicographical, and archeological evidence suggests that by the end of the second/eighth century the term encompassed not only militant piety in defense of Islam, but the physical outposts where that defense took place as well, and in some cases travellers’ hospices (De la Vaissière). Functionally and architecturally, many of the early ribāṭs developed organically from Byzantine and Persian precedents along the northern Syrian and Central Asian frontiers of the Islamic/ʿAbbāsid empire (Jallūl, 15–40). The fundamental question concerning the history of the Ṣūfī ribāṭ is why and by what discursive and practical means did Ṣūfīs take up this particular term, and only in particular times and places, to designate structures for the performance and propagation of Sufism? Ṣūfīs generally adopted the term in those areas where its use was already widespread: frontier regions, coastal areas, and along caravan routes. By the time Sufism appeared in Iraq in the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004392601_010

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third/ninth century, many of these ribāṭs had already begun to serve as retreats for ascetics and devotees seeking divine favour in militant piety. By the early third/ninth century at the latest, then, Muslims had begun to link the figure of the frontier warrior (murābiṭ/mujāhid) with Late Antique ideals of monasticism and renunciation (al-zuhd fī l-dunyā). The earliest example of such linkage is the famous ḥadīth that the students of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak (d. 181/797) transmitted widely: “The monasticism of my community is jihād” (Ibn al-Mubārak, 67–8, nos. 15 and 16). Thus, we find many ribāṭs in this period functioning as spaces for the performance of militant piety and renunciation. It is worth noting here, however, that these early murābiṭūn took their name from the practice of ribāṭ and not necessarily from the structures of the same name. That is to say, while murābiṭūn often lived in ribāṭs, they also lived in buildings known by other terms as well (e.g., qaṣr or ḥiṣn); it was the devotion to militant piety, not the architectural setting, from which their name derived (Picard and Borrut, 40). As for the aforementioned ribāṭs themselves, they were undoubtedly associated with renunciants before Ṣūfīs adopted the term. The fourth-/tenth-century ribāṭ at Guardamar on the southeast coast of al-Andalūs is instructive of this period. The structure combines elements of the frontier outpost with pious communal life: it includes individual devotional cells (marked with mihrābs) as well as guest quarters for travellers (Ruiz 2004); but there is no evidence to suggest a link with Sufism (see Green, 56–7). This is not surprising, since it was during this same time period that early Ṣūfī authors were just beginning to construct a coherent tradition for themselves in Baghdad (Karamustafa, 1–37; Knysh, Islamic mysticism, 43–67; Green, 24–44). The early doctrinal and biographical treatments of Sufism claim many of the earlier pious frontier warriors as their own, as a means of legitimising their nascent movement. While many of these figures were not actually Ṣūfīs, or were only tangentially connected to the movement, a number of early Ṣūfīs did travel to frontier outposts for devotional purposes. The uncle and teacher of the famous al-Junayd (d. 298/910), Sarī l-Saqaṭī (d. 253/867), for example, reportedly spent time on the frontier in Tarsus and at the ribāṭ in ʿAbbādān (al-Iṣfahānī, 10:116–7 and 10:110–1, respectively). Simultaneously, these early sources often describe the Ṣūfīs as mujāhids who battle the nafs (ego self) and the material world, and as murābiṭs who join a community of like-minded individuals in order to patrol and surveil their spiritual states and progress along the Ṣūfī path (Böwering, Règles, 139). In this vein, the etymologies of ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234) regarding the Ṣūfī ribāṭ are quite clever: the ribāṭ is where individuals tie themselves in obedience to God and where one defends the pious against misfortune (al-Suhrawardī, 99–100; Grämlich, 107). These etymologies are clearly a later gloss on a much longer process of conceptual

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development, the origins of which are obscure. That is, while the aforementioned practical and discursive processes by which Ṣūfīs incorporated and associated themselves with the ribāṭ are more or less clear, it is much more difficult to determine when and where the first explicitly Ṣūfī ribāṭ emerged. There is scant evidence that Ṣūfīs lived together communally, in ribāṭs or otherwise, prior to the early fourth/tenth century. Early Ṣūfī sources depict some Ṣūfīs travelling together in small bands, and describe the mujāwirūn (temporary residents) of Mecca as pious collectivities with their own unique adab, or rules of comportment (al-Sarrāj, 190 and 169, respectively; see also Ende on the mujāwir). The Ṣūfīs of Baghdad often gathered together at the Shūnīziyya Mosque in Baghdad (al-Qushayrī, 542 and 566; Knysh, al-Qushayrī’s epistle, 377 and 397). And while some individual Ṣūfīs did live on the premises, temporarily or otherwise (e.g., al-Baghdādī, Ta‌ʾrīkh, 6:423–4 and 7:609), they did not live communally (there was a Ṣūfī khānqāh on the site in later years [al-Ḥamawī, 3:374]). The famous ribāṭ at ʿAbbādān, an island in the Persian Gulf near Basra, was originally a military garrison (see Elwell-Sutton; Knysh, ʿAbbādān). Once the site was no longer militarily useful it became a devotional retreat associated with the Sālimiyya of Basra. Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896), credited with the founding of the Sālimiyya, was a regular visitor to the ribāṭ (al-Tustarī, 106; Keeler and Keeler, 29). But explicit evidence for its association with Ṣūfīs exists only in the sixth/twelfth century (this from the testimony of an anonymous copyist who passed through in 533/1138–9; Ibn Ḥawqal, 53). Similarly, there is some sketchy evidence of a Ṣūfī hospice in the Palestinian city of Ramla from the fourth/tenth century (Hofer, Sufism, 45), but the record is difficult to interpret (e.g., Meier, Abū Saʿīd, 302–4). As an important coastal city, Ramla contained multiple ribāṭs (al-Maqdisī, 164) and it is likely that one of these developed into a Ṣūfī hospice. Later sources describe the Ramla hospice as a khānqāh, while the earlier sources describe it as a duwayra (e.g., al-Sulamī’s lost Taʾrīkh al-ṣūfīya, cited by Ibn ʿAsākir, 54:304–5). This last term tracks well with the fact that al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) himself was also said to have a duwayra in Nīshāpūr at roughly the same time (Thibon, 24). Another possible candidate for the first explicitly Ṣūfī ribāṭ, also known as a khānqāh in subsequent years, is that belonging to Ibn Khafīf (d. 371/982) of Shīrāz (Sobieroj, Ibn Ḫafīf, 176–7). One of Ibn Khafīf’s students, Abū Isḥāq al-Kāzarūnī (d. 426/1033), supposedly founded more than 60 ribāṭs in Central Asia; these were a combination of Ṣūfī hospices and traveller’s lodges (Meier, Die Vita; Sobieroj, Mittelsleute). Itinerant Ṣūfīs continued to use some of these outposts in the eastern frontier regions as late as at the eleventh/seventeenth and twelfth/ eighteenth centuries (Papas, 173–4, 180). So, while we may not know precisely when and where Ṣūfīs first lived communally in ribāṭs, it was almost certainly

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in the East (most likely Khurāsān, where garrisons, outposts, and caravanserais proliferated) and no earlier than the fourth/tenth century. Finally, we should not discount the relevance of the Karrāmiyya, a devotional movement of the peasant and working classes of Khurāsān who followed the teachings of Ibn Karrām (d. 255/869) and often lived together in khānqāhs (Bosworth) (on the khānqāhs, see Firouzeh in this volume). Perhaps the most important development in the evolution of the Ṣūfī outpost was the institutionalisation of rules specific to a particular shaykh and the organisation of communal life that followed. The earliest indisputable evidence for organised Ṣūfī life appears in the fifth/eleventh century with the ten rules of Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049). These rules were clearly designed to foster harmonious communal living in pious devotion (Ebn-e Monavvar, 493–4; Meier, Abū Saʿīd, 310–1; the purportedly earlier “eight rules” of al-Junayd are actually from the seventh/thirteenth century [Radtke]). While Ibn Abī l-Khayr’s hospice was known as a khānqāh and not a ribāṭ, the innovation of rule-based Sufism he pioneered was absolutely critical for the subsequent development of Ṣūfī lodges and outposts. For it was émigrés from Khurāsān who established the first urban ribāṭs in Baghdad to house visitors from the East, especially Ṣūfīs (Chabbi, La fonction). It was in the ribāṭs of Baghdad that Abū l-Najīb al-Suhrawardī (d. 563/1168) and his nephew, Abū Ḥafṣ al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234), developed their “ribāṭ-based Sufism,” which was far more organised, both socially and conceptually, than the earlier rulebased Sufism (Ohlander). The ribāṭ-based Sufism of Baghdad had a profound impact, in turn, on organised Sufism in Syria and Egypt (Hofer, The popularisation, 40–1). The rapid growth of ribāṭ-based Sufism across the Muslim world after the early sixth/twelfth century owes a great deal to wealthy or ruling-class patrons who built and endowed madrasas, khānqāhs, and ribāṭs on a grand scale, providing room and board for Ṣūfīs of all kinds. These projects bolstered the credentials of their patrons and, more importantly, opened up Ṣūfī spaces to increasingly large numbers of people, including in many cases women (al-Ālūsī, 59–67; Karamustafa, 125–6). Fuelled by the wealth of elite donors, ribāṭ-based Sufism spread rapidly across the Muslim world, appearing in both urban and rural areas, from the Maghrib to South Asia, and attracting ever larger segments of the population. It was the mass popularisation of increasingly organised forms of Sufism that precipitated the emergence and development of Ṣūfī brotherhoods after the seventh/thirteenth century (Popovic and Veinstein (eds.)). But a fatwa by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) on the permissibility of subsidised Sufism offers an early indication of the anxiety that many scholars, even those with Ṣūfī propensities, felt regarding this elite patronage (Pūrjavādī, 96–100). These anxieties only increased during the period

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of mass popularisation. In particular, the ribāṭ-based Sufism that depended on wealthy patronage came under scathing criticism from many sides for its perceived excesses and contradictions (e.g., Ibn al-Jawzī, 254; Ibn Taymiyyya, 34; al-Subkī, 174–8; al-Udfuwī; Ibn al-Ḥājj, 3:184–93). After the seventh/thirteenth century, the terminology of Ṣūfī lodges developed in roughly two geographical directions. In the east, a few Ṣūfīs continued to use the term ribāṭ in urban centres like Baghdad (Jawwād), Mecca (Mortel), and, to a lesser extent, Damascus (al-Nuʿaymī, 2:150–152) and Cairo (al-Maqrīzī, 4:793–805), but these were the exception. Broadly speaking, Ṣūfīs from the Balkans to Central and South Asia overwhelmingly adopted the Persian term khānqāh, the Arabic term zāwiya, and, in the wake of the Ottoman conquests, the Turkish word tekke (see Firouzeh in this volume). In the west, Ṣūfīs in North Africa and the Mahgrib continued to use the term ribāṭ, developing a unique type of Ṣūfī outpost that then became influential in West and subSaharan Africa. There is no solid evidence for early Ṣūfī usage of the word ribāṭ in Ifrīqiyya or al-Andalūs, where the term retained its primary military valence owing to the region’s susceptibility to constant raiding from Christian Europe. In the far Maghrib, however, early (non-Ṣūfī) ribāṭs along the Atlantic coast, from Māssa in the south to Nakūr in the north, served as centres of instruction and communication hubs in rural areas and were instrumental in spreading Mālikī Islam throughout the region. The earliest of these ribāṭs explicitly associated with Sufism was the Ribāṭ Tīṭ-n-Fiṭr of the Ṣanhāja Berbers and the Ribāṭ Shākir of the Maṣmūda Berbers, both of which came to be associated with Sufism after the fifth/eleventh century (Cornell, 40–54). It was from these ribāṭs that Ṣūfī masters, many with ties to urban centres like Fez, spread organised Sufism throughout the Maghrib (Sanseverino). Given the autonomy, authority, and large following of these Ṣūfī masters, these ribāṭs could also serve an important political function in times of crisis, both in mobilising the population and in providing shelter for combatants. For example, there is a wellknown tradition in the Maghrib that the Mahdī (an eschatological figure), will appear at the ribāṭ in Māssa (Ibn Khaldūn, 6:369). And in fact, one claiming to be the Mahdī organised a large Ṣūfī rebellion against al-Murābiṭ (Almoravid) oppression in 541/1147 from that ribāṭ in Māssa (Ibn Khaldūn, 6:310). Perhaps the most well-known case of a ribāṭ-based Ṣūfī revolt in the Maghrib was that of the Jazūliyya Ṣūfīs and their jihād against Portuguese incursions in the tenth/sixteenth century (Cornell, 233–45; 258–97). The ribāṭ in the Maghrib was thus a fundamental element not only in the propagation of Sufism, but in the sociopolitical character of the region through the colonial period. Another region in which the ribāṭ as Ṣūfī outpost proliferated was Upper Egypt during the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk periods (Hofer, The popularisation,

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181–249). The usage of ribāṭ in this context is primarily due to two factors. First, it was a refugee from the al-Muwāḥid (Almohad) revolt in the Maghrib— ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Qināʾī (d. 592/1196)—who first brought Sufism to Upper Egypt. Al-Qināʾī settled in the village of Qena, where he founded his own ribāṭ that he used to develop a large network of disciples. These disciples in turn founded ribāṭs up and down the Nile, where they propagated a uniquely Maghribī-Egyptian fusion of Sufism beginning in the early seventh/thirteenth century. Second, the Ṣūfīs of Upper Egypt saw themselves as moral regulators of the region, commanding the good and forbidding the wrong in the face of a weak state presence and large Christian and Shīʿī population (El-Leithy). The Maghribī-style ribāṭ was the ideal vehicle for this project of political and moral regulation. The Ṣūfī traditions of the Maghrib were also critically important to the development of Sufism in West and sub-Saharan Africa (Vikør, Sufi brotherhoods, 442). Sufism first appeared in the Kingdom of Timbuktu as early as the ninth/fifteenth century, although there is little evidence of Ṣūfī brotherhoods in the region prior to the nineteenth century (Seesemann; Triaud; Vikør, Sufi brotherhoods). Nevertheless, while Sufism appeared relatively late, by the nineteenth century it had become massively popular and the Ṣūfī brotherhoods constituted some of the most effective vehicles of anti-colonial resistance throughout the region, albeit in a variety of forms (Vikør, Sufism and colonialism). Not surprisingly, the type of ribāṭ that developed in Maghribī Sufism also played an important role in the propagation and popularisation of Sufism across sub-Saharan Africa. However, although most of the Ṣūfī lodges and outposts across this region functioned like the Maghribī-style ribāṭ, they did not usually adopt that name. Rather, with a few notable exceptions, these lodges and outposts were known as zāwiyas or by words drawn from local languages. A typical example of the development of the Maghribī-style ribāṭ in West Africa is that of the Murīdiyya of Senegal. Over the latter part of the nineteenth century Amadu Bamba (d. 1927) and his followers founded a large number of hospices known in Wolof as daara tarbiyya [Ar. Dār al-tarbiya]; these functioned as centres of instruction, employment, and political activism, spreading Islam and Sufism into rural areas (Babou, 105–8). The use of the term ribāṭ was widespread in the Sokoto Caliphate (1804–1903), where it was used for fortified settlements or outposts that grew and developed into important social and economic centres (Philips). Sufism was integral to the success of the Sokoto jihād and these ribāṭs were critical to the growth and stability of the caliphate (Salau). In the Sahara, Ṣūfī lodges were consistently known as zāwiyas but functioned much like the Maghribī ribāṭ. They were scattered

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across trade routes and served as critical information hubs and centres of social outreach (Clancy-Smith, 102). A final, contemporary example of the reach of the Maghribī-style ribāṭ is the European branch of the Darqawiyya brotherhood led by the British-born Ṣūfī Abdelqadir (né Ian Dallas). Abdelqadir converted to Islam in Morocco and joined the Darqawiyya brotherhood in the late 1960s before establishing a branch of the Darqawiyya in London. In a 1978 booklet, Jihad: A ground plan, he laid out his vision for the establishment of an Islamic society by means of the “Ribat model.” This model involved the training—both spiritually and militarily—of murābiṭūn in his ribāṭ from where, once they were prepared, they could engage in warfare against non-believers. While never actually pursuing the military portion of the project, he did found Ṣūfī ribāṭs of this type in Norwich, Grenada, and Johannesburg (Sedgwick, 236–46; Hermansen, 483–9). Bibliography al-Ālūsī, ʿĀdil, al-Ḥayāt al-ṣūfīya wa-taqālīduhā fī l-mawrūth al-shaʿbī l-ʿarabī. Dirāsa ta‌ʾrīkhīya fī l-rubuṭ wa-l-zawāyā l-Islāmīya, Cairo 2002. Babou, Cheikh Anta, Fighting the greater jihad. Amadu Bamba and the founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–1913, Athens, OH 2007. al-Baghdādī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad al-Khaṭīb, Ta‌ʾrīkh madīnat al-salām, ed. Bashār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf, 17 vols., Beirut 2001. Bosworth, C. E., Karrāmiyya, EI2. Böwering, Gerhard, Règles et rituels soufis, in Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein (eds.), Les voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris 1996), 139–56. Böwering, Gerhard and Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Ḵānaqāh, EIr online: http://www .iranicaonline.org/articles/kanaqah, 2012. Chabbi, Jacqueline, La fonction du ribāṭ à Baghdad du Ve siècle au début du VIIe siècle, REI 42 (1974): 101–21. Chabbi, Jacqueline and Nasser Rabbat, Ribāṭ, EI2. Clancy-Smith, Julia, Rebel and saint. Muslim notables, populist protest, colonial encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904), Berkeley 1994. Cornell, Vincent, Realm of the saint. Power and authority in Moroccan Sufism, Austin 1998. Ebn-e Monavvar, Moḥammad, The secrets of God’s mystical oneness, or The spiritual stations of Shaikh Abu Saʿid, trans. John O’Kane, Costa Mesa, CA 1992. el-Leithy, Tamer, Sufis, Copts, and the politics of piety: moral regulation in 14th-century Upper Egypt, in Adam Sabra and Richard McGregor (eds.), The development of Sufism in Mamluk Egypt (Cairo 2006), 75–120. Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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Meier, Fritz, Abū Saʿīd-i Abū l-Ḫayr (357–440/967–1049). Wirklichkeit und Legende, Leiden 1976. Meier, Fritz, Die Vita des Scheich Abū Isḥāq al-Kāzarūnī, in der persischen Bearbeitung von Maḥmūd b. ʿUthmān, Leipzig 1948. Mortel, Richard, Ribāṭs in Mecca during the medieval period. A descriptive study based on literary sources, BSOAS 61 (1998): 29–50. al-Mubārak, ʿAbdallāh b., Kitāb al-jihād, ed. Nazīh Ḥammād, Jeddah 1983. al-Nuʿaymī, ʿAbd al-Qādir, al-Dāris fī ta‌ʾrīkh al-madāris, 2 vols., Beirut 1990. Ohlander, Erik S., Sufism in an age of transition. ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī and the rise of the Islamic mystical brotherhoods, Leiden 2008. Papas, Alexandre, Mystiques et vagabonds en islam. Portraits de trois soufis qalandar, Paris 2010. Philips, John Edward, Slavery on two ribāṭ in Kano and Sokoto, in Paul Lovejoy (ed.), Slavery on the frontiers of Islam (Princeton 2003), 111–24. Picard, Christophe and Antoine Borrut, Râbata, ribât, râbita. Une institution à reconsidérer, in Nicolas Prouteau and Philippe Sénac (eds.), Chrétiens et musulmans en Méditerranée médiévale, VIIIe–XIIIe siècle: échanges et contacts (Poitiers 2003), 33–65. Popovic, Alexandre and Gilles Veinstein, eds., Les voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui, Paris 1996. Pūrjavādī, Naṣr Allāh, Du mujaddid. Pizhūhishhāyī dar bāra-ʾi Muḥammad-i Ghazālī va Fakhr-i Rāzī, Tehran 2002. al-Qushayrī, Abū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karīm, al-Risāla al-qushayrīya, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd, Damascus 2003. Radtke, Bernd, The eight rules of Junayd. A general overview of the genesis and development of Islamic dervish orders, in Todd Lawson (ed.), Reason and inspiration in Islam. Theology, philosophy and mysticism in Muslim thought, in honor of Hermann Landolt (London 2005), 490–502. Ruiz, Rafael Azuar, ed., Fouilles de la rábita de Guardamar I. El ribāṭ califal. Excavaciones y estudios (1984–1992), Madrid 2004. Salau, Mohammed Bashir, Ribats and the development of plantations in the Sokoto Caliphate. A case study of Fanisau, African Economic History 34 (2006): 23–43. Sanseverino, Ruggero Vimercati, Fès et sainteté, de la fondation à l’avènement du Protectorat (808–1912). Hagiographie, tradition spirituelle et héritage prophétique dans la ville de Mawlāy Idrīs, Rabat 2014. al-Sarrāj, Abū Naṣr ʿAbd Allāh, Kitāb al-lumaʿ, ed. Reynold Nicholson, Leiden 1914. Sedgwick, Mark, Western Sufism. From the Abbasids to the new age, Oxford 2017. Seesemann, Rüdiger, Sufism in West Africa, Religion Compass 4.10 (2010): 606–14. Sobieroj, Florian, Ibn Ḫafīf aš-Šīrāzī und seine Schrift zur Novizenerziehung (Kitāb al-iqtiṣād). biographische Studien, Edition und Übersetzung, Stuttgart 1998.

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Sobieroj, Florian, Mittelsleute zwischen Ibn Khafīf und Abū Isḥāq al-Kāzarūnī, AS 51 (1997): 651–71. al-Subkī, Tāj al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Muʿīd al-niʿam wa-mubīd al-niqam, ed. David Myhrman, London 1908. al-Suhrawardī, Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar, ʿAwārif al-māʿārif, Cairo 2004. Thibon, Jean-Jacques, L’oeuvre d’Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, 325/937–412/1021, et la formation du soufisme, Damascus 2009. Triaud, Jean-Louis, L’Afrique occidentale et centrale, in Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein (eds.), Les voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris 1996), 417–27. al-Tustarī, Sahl, Tafsīr al-qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, Cairo 2004. al-Udfuwī, Kamāl al-Dīn Jaʿfar, al-Mūfī bi-maʿrifat al-taṣawwuf wa-l-ṣūfī, ed. Muḥammad ʿĪsā Ṣāliḥīya, Kuwait 1988. Vaissière, Etienne de la, Le ribāṭ d’Asie Centrale, in E. de la Vaissière (ed.), Islamisation de l’Asie centrale. Processus locaux d’acculturation du VIIe et XIe siècle (Paris 2008), 71–94. Vikør, Knut S., Sufi Brotherhoods in Africa, in Nehemia Levtzion and Randall Pouwels (eds.), The history of Islam in Africa (Athens, GA 2000), 441–76. Vikør, Knut S., Sufism and Colonialism, in Lloyd Ridgeon (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Sufism (Cambridge 2015), 212–32.

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Part 3 The Social Role of Ṣūfīs

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Chapter 9

The Social Role of Ṣūfīs Rachida Chih 1 Introduction More often than not, becoming a Ṣūfī means connecting with a living master (shaykh, pīr, bābā, dede), establishing a direct and intimate relationship with him, following the initiatory path (ṭarīqa) he teaches, and emulating him. It also means establishing relationships with the other disciples of that master: the ideal model is that of the Prophet Muḥammad and his Companions (ṣaḥāba). The disciples emphasise not so much their affiliation with a particular initiatory path, but the quasi-filial ties to their master, and this filiation influences all aspects of their lives, spiritually and socially. It is difficult to estimate how many disciples a master might have because they form a nebula of groups that maintain more or less close ties to him. The influence of a master radiates in concentric circles over a space that represents his sacred territory: it could be a quarter or neighbourhood, a village, an entire region; in short, it might be anywhere in the world where his disciples are. Such a territory therefore fluctuates and is unstable, and it evolves in accordance with the shaykh’s reputation during his lifetime and after his death. The circles correspond to the degree of proximity that the disciples maintain with him: the innermost circle is made up of his closest disciples, who sometimes bear the title of lieutenant (khalīfa, naqīb, muqaddam) because they represent him in his absence; a second circle is made up of those who have chosen to serve the master and live permanently with him; this affords them a special status. The other followers comprise the largest circle and represent the civitas (independent community) as a whole; they visit the shaykh in weekly meetings or, if they live far from him, at festivals celebrating the birth of the Prophet (mawlid) or of the founders of the master’s sacred lineage. This large majority has not necessarily been initiated into the path, but seeks the shaykh’s spiritual influence (baraka), his protection and intercession on earth and in the afterlife. Whatever their degree of attachment and proximity to the master, all his disciples and followers must respect rules of behaviour (ādāb) in relation to his person. These can be summarised as absolute submission and obedience to his authority in return for his grace and divine blessings, of which he is considered to be the source:

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Do not think that spiritual openness is the result of your devotion, because it is only through your shaykh’s baraka that you will get to know God. If you oppose your shaykh internally (bāṭinan) or openly (ẓāhiran), you are opposing God and his Messenger. Your shaykh will not be able to help you progress if you do not demonstrate your truthfulness to him. al-Ṭāhir, 175

This quotation is taken from a thirteenth-/nineteenth-century Ṣūfī manual, a literary genre which, since the appearance of the first treatises between the third/ninth and fifth/eleventh centuries, has transmitted a behavioural ideal specific to the Ṣūfī in relation to his master, to his brothers on the path, and in the diverse circumstances and environments of social life. These manuals, combined with other sources, especially the hagiographies (manāqib, tadhkirāt, malfūẓāt) that are rich in first-hand testimonies and often consist of anecdotes about the manner in which a master runs his institution, allow us to analyse the model of social life in Ṣūfī communities. This social model is resilient and adaptable to the modern world, as shown in numerous anthropological fieldworks carried out on contemporary Ṣūfī orders in local and transnational contexts. A discussion of the social role of the Ṣūfīs requires a three-fold approach: textual, historical, and anthropological, without which the complexity of the subject cannot be demonstrated or explained. In sociology, the social role represents the manner in which an individual should behave in order to be integrated into his environment; it is intrinsically linked to another concept, that of status. Therefore, it is initially necessary to define the status of the master and examine the historical conditions surrounding the appearance of this figure of authority in order to understand the religious and social leadership he exerts over his community. In a second stage, I present three terms that express the master/disciple relationship in Sufism; these are ṣuḥba (companionship), khidma (service), and shafāʿa (intercession/mediation). These polysemous concepts refer to social, political, and religious relations; this chapter examines only the social relations. 2

The Social Emergence of the Ṣūfīs

According to a classic understanding of sociology, “the role comprises at once rights and obligations (which are associated with the status), as well as certain attitudes and character traits often deemed to favour the tasks related to the

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status” (Rocheblave-Spenlé). Between the third/ninth century and the fifth/ eleventh century, the evolution of Sufism toward collective ways of life took place concurrently with the affirmation of the spiritual master’s authority and his function, particularly in the transition from shaykh taʿlīm (the teaching shaykh) to shaykh tarbiya (the shaykh of spiritual direction) (Meier, Khurāsān; Silvers-Alario). The respective status of both master and disciple, their rights, and obligations are defined by a documented set of norms of behaviour. From the beginning of institutionalised Sufism in the fifth/eleventh century, drawing on Qurʾān 35:32, which discusses three types of believers, Ṣūfīs established a hierarchy in relation to God; this was comprised of the common believers (ʿāmma), the spiritual elite (khāṣṣa), and the elite of the elite (khāṣṣat al-khāṣṣa) that they identified with. They considered themselves a separate and superior group: al-qawm (people of divine knowledge) (al-Sarrāj; J. Brown). Claiming to embody God’s attributes or ethics (takhalluq bi-akhlāq Allāh) based on their victory over their carnal souls in the battle (mujāhada) against it, Ṣūfīs designated themselves as the awliyāʾ (“friends of God”) from the verse (Q 10:62–5), (awliyāʾ is the plural of walī, a polysemic term that implies a subtle intertwining of spiritual and earthly functions). According to Michel Chodkiewicz, the word walī, based on the verb waliya, which means assistance, protection, sanctuary, kinship alliance, and proximity, expresses this dual relation of divine friendship and protection, like that reflected in the Roman notion of amicitia, identified and studied by Peter Brown in relation to Late Antiquity (Chodkiewicz). The first doctrinal elucidation of the concept of walāya was undertaken by al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (died probably 298/910); with his theory of sanctity (walāya) and its relation to prophecy (nubuwwa) developed during a period of weakening of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, al-Tirmidhī gives the mystic prerogatives similar to those of the Prophet, of whom he is heir. This set the Ṣūfīs in competition with other religious groups on the long-debated issue of authority. Nelly Amri, a historian of sainthood in Islam, writes that al-Tirmidhī brought the walī into the religious and historical conscience of the Muslims: Between those who feel invested and manifest themselves to their contemporaries, those who recognise such signs—or on the contrary deny those men such qualities—, and then those who project onto them their ideal of human perfection, their need for assistance and relief in material and moral adversity, and the assurance or at least the promise of salvation. Amri, Walī et awliyāʾ, 30

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Raised to the status of protector, the Ṣūfī/walī came to be seen as someone with whom it was desirable or preferable to establish a relationship. The social role of Ṣūfīs, despite local variants, is highly consistent, though certain political circumstances have been considered turning points, during which times Ṣūfīs were called on for assistance, comfort, and relief in adversity. The hagiographical sources reveal that men tend to submit to a saint not so much because he is a model of perfection, but for the blessings (baraka) he offers. This blessing benefits those who journey toward God and then return to the human world to guide and intercede on behalf of its inhabitants, spreading both happiness on earth and eschatological hope. What men seek in the company of a living saint reveals much about their hopes and expectations, but also their anxieties. Testimonies from ancient sources or those collected currently in the field reflect the disciples’ belief that any good occurring in their lives (plentiful crops, healing, fertility, success in exams, in their careers, marriage) is a divine reward for service rendered to a “friend of God” and for obedience to his orders, and respect for the rules of companionship, which were first conceived in the fourth/tenth century in the Ṣūfī communities of Khurāsān, in Iran. The swift success of the maxim pronounced by the master of Nishāpūr Abū Ḥafṣ al-Ḥaddād (d. between 265/879 and 270/883) and reported by al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), biographer of Ṣūfīs, to the effect that “Sufism is based entirely in good manners” (al-taṣawwuf kullu-hu ādāb) indicates the importance assigned to the rules of proper behaviour of the masters and their disciples, even above asceticism and the study of religious science. From about the fourth/ tenth to fifth/eleventh century, Sufism expanded beyond the major centres of intellectual life and began to spread to smaller towns and the countryside. Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988), originally from Ṭūs (Iran), was a great traveller who toured the Muslim world from Khurāsān via Baghdad to Egypt. He learned from the heritage of his predecessors (Dhū l-Nūn al-Miṣrī, al-Junayd, al-Bisṭāmī, al-Shiblī) and was the first to document (in al-Lumaʿ fī l-taṣawwuf, The radiant lights on the science of Sufism) the rules of behaviour specific to Ṣūfīs in all the circumstances of religious and social life. This included the ritual acts (ablutions, prayers, fasting, pilgrimage); ways of eating and dressing; the manners of travel, marriage, and professional life; the spiritual audition (samāʿ); relations with family and children; occupations; and illness. He also devoted a section to the ādāb of companionship (ādāb al-ṣuḥba) the foundations of which are compassion, commiseration, love, solidarity, mutual aid, good understanding, and the prohibition of any kind of egotism (“avoid the company of those who say ‘my shoes’”) (Sarrāj, ch. 63 to 88). Subsequently, other works of this genre appeared, generally these were edited by heads of

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khānqāhs/khānaqāhs, whose establishments welcomed the poor and travellers. These heads included, for example, Abū Isḥāq Kāzarūnī (d. 426/1033) in Kāzarūn, west of Shiraz and Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049) in Mīhana, Khurāsān, where the future modalities of Ṣūfī paths were established in their institutional and organised forms (Ephrat and Pinto in this volume; Firouzeh in this volume). During this period in which the Islamic sciences were being established and defined, these figures worked to integrate Sufism into Sunnī culture in a didactic and apologetic style. They showed that the actions and behaviour of the Ṣūfīs were in perfect harmony with Qurʾānic precepts and reflected the exemplary behaviour of the Prophet and his Companions, as reported in the ḥadīths. Ṣūfī manuals incorporated the social codes of the various religious currents that began to gain importance in the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries in Iran, especially in Nīshāpūr: the organisational model of the Karrāmiyya, who were likely the founders of the first khānqāhs; the concept of ta‌ʾdīb (the importance of adab in mastering the soul) of the Malāmatiyya, the “people of blame” (a group that Abū Ḥafṣ al-Ḥaddād is said to have begun); and the chivalrous attitude of the futuwwa (connected to chivalry and companionship), whose cardinal virtue is īthār (preferring others to oneself) (Thibon, Adab et éducation spirituelle; Ridgeon; McGregor in this volume). Furthermore, manners and social relations prevalent in lay society were transposed onto Sufism, granting them a spiritual finality of sorts. The analogy to the circles of power and princely courts is very powerful (Papas in this volume; Patrizi in this volume): social relations in Sufism are based on reciprocal loyalty and solidarity between the master and disciple; this draws on the sultan’s relations of loyalty with his subjects (access to the divine presence is equated with appearing before kings). The master expects absolute obedience from his disciple, who should therefore behave appropriately. Al-Tirmidhī had already developed the idea that God treats His chosen ones in the same way kings educate their servants (Radtke, Drei Schriften, 65). The title of the anonymous fourth-/tenth-century treatise Adab al-mulūk fī bayān ḥaqāʾiq al-taṣawwuf (The conduct of kings or the Exposition of the realities of Sufism) clearly addresses this parallel between Ṣūfīs and kings and treats the “poor” ( fuqarāʾ) as the kings of this world and the next. The famous master from Baghdad, al-Junayd (d. 298/910), noted of Abū Ḥafṣ al-Ḥaddād: “You educated your companions according to the sultans’ etiquette” (addabta asḥābaka ādāb al-salāṭīn). He replied: “No, Abū l-Qāsim, for the excellence of the outer adab reflects the excellence of the inner adab” (al-Sulamī, Kitāb ādāb al-ṣuḥba, 86). Al-Sulamī’s work represents a pivotal moment for Sufism in the second half of the fourth/tenth century and the turn of the fifth/eleventh century:

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he summarised its early formulations and revealed the importance that the figure of the master had acquired in his time, and his function in the life of the emerging Ṣūfī communities. In his writings, al-Sulamī demonstrates this evolution of mysticism, in which the education of the soul no longer depends on asceticism as in the first centuries of Islam, but rather on social life elevated to the status of a spiritual discipline (Thibon, L’œuvre d’Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī). His works, Kitāb ādāb al-ṣuḥba (Treatise on the etiquette of companionship) and Jawāmiʿ ādāb al-ṣūfiyya (Compendium of Ṣūfī etiquette) state that the progress of the aspirant on the spiritual path results from his attitude toward his master, and that attitude is determined by adab and is not the result of any spiritual discipline. However, there is an evolution toward a greater authority of the masters, which is linked to their clearly defined status as successors of the Prophet. While al-Sulamī refers to customs alien to Arab culture, he also refers extensively to the ḥadīth in order to illustrate various rules; adab is linked to the Prophet, who, having been educated by God, represents the supreme model. Al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072), al-Sulāmī’s disciple in Nishāpūr and the author of the Risāla, produced a highly effective synthesis of all the preceding literature; in it, he addressed both masters and disciples, a fact that explains the manual’s great success to this day. Two centuries later, at the end of the sixth/twelfth century, the codes that articulated social relations in Sufism were fixed definitively and did not change again: Sufism had achieved its social integration. Khānqāhs and zāwiyas spread in the urbanised quarters of inner cities or, when no space was available, they were built in still empty areas on the outskirts of cities, and very soon thereafter new quarters grew around them (Clayer in this volume). In rural environments, saints and their descendants became central to the identities of villages and tribal communities (Ocak in this volume). The well-known manual by ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234), ʿAwārif al-maʿārif (The benefits of intimate knowledge) represents what historians call an age of transition (Ohlander, Sufism), during which the great mystical paths (the rise of the ṭarīqa) emerged, along with a more strongly established institutionalisation of Sufism (Knysh, Islamic mysticism). During this period, when the ʿAbbāsid caliphate was weak, on the eve of the Mongol invasion and their capture of Baghdad in 656/1258, Ṣūfīs of the central and eastern regions of the caliphate established their identity and their role in society, and were strengthened by an increasing number of followers, and by the patronage of political elites. During his long reign, the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh (r. 575– 622/1180–1225) attempted to fight against the disintegration of the caliphate and supported al-Suhrawardī’s project to open his ribāṭ in Baghdad to the whole population, that is, to those who were not affiliated but sought the Ṣūfī’s

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blessing (tabarruk). The master assigned everyone in the ribāṭ a status and a role according to their degree of participation in the activities of the community and established the rights and obligations of each role. Al-Suhrawardī granted the non-affiliated people many dispensations (rukhṣa, pl. rukhaṣ), including not submitting to the strict spiritual discipline. In this, he followed the line established by his uncle Abū l-Najīb (d. 563/1168) in Ādāb al-murīdīn (Book of aspirants’ manners); thus, he was able to integrate into his community whole segments of the urban population that lived outside the walls of the ribāṭ and extend his influence to society at large (Ohlander, Sufism, 243). These “possessors of dispensations” (arbāb al-rukhṣa), however, were subject to a minimum of moral instruction (adab), as described in his famous manual. The rapid and widespread success of the ʿAwārif, especially in India and Central Asia, is linked to its style and form: it is a practical guide with a clear message for novices, who first familiarised themselves with all the external aspects of Sufism, then embarked on the path of spiritual progress. It contains a set of rules of exterior manners (ādāb al-ẓāhira) that are closely linked to the seeker’s inner development. These rules cover travel, eating habits, behaviour at the table and generally in public, and attire. The shaykh’s recommendations involve the disciple’s private and family life, a tendency also found in subsequent Persian manuals, such as the treatise by Yaḥyā Bākharzī (d. 736/1335–6), Awrād al-aḥbāb wa-fuṣuṣ al-ādāb (Litanies of the beloved and bezels of good manners) which gives advice relative to the Ṣūfī environment. Shaykh Bākharzī, who headed a khānqāh in Bukhara, taught his disciples values that were meant to include their ordinary family and social circles: among other things, advice on how to treat women and educate children (Feuillebois-Pierunek, ʿIzz al-Dīn Kāshānī). The fall of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate reinforced the authority of the Ṣūfīs, as evidenced by the increase in numbers of hagiographies describing a world order in which the true masters are the saints who form an invisible government with a council (dīwān) and its own hierarchy, above which is the pole or supreme recourse (quṭb, ghawth) (Papas in this volume). In addition to political upheavals, socioeconomic factors, such as the economic crisis and the profound changes impacting the countries around the Mediterranean in the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries (for example, the Black Death, Bedouin acts of pillage, ruralisation) drove people to seek the comfort and protection of the shaykhs, who, in turn, complained that they no longer had true disciples. In the context of these crises, the zāwiyas experienced a great resurgence; some of them were transformed into large complexes that served as a means of integrating the rural population into the urban social fabric. The establishment of zāwiyas around the city of Kairouan, for example, was directly

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linked to the desertion of villages by their populations in Ifrīqiyya during the Middle Ages (seventh/thirteenth to ninth/fifteenth centuries) that resulted from social problems and insecurity. The masters took on the function of thaumaturges and faced increasingly concrete expectations from their contemporaries, as evidenced by numerous miracles attributed to them in hagiographic documents. They were credited with miraculous healings, aiding travellers, releasing prisoners, and protecting the needy. The provision of hospitality and nourishment became major functions of the zāwiya complexes (Amri, Zāwiya et territoire). In Egypt, the Ṣūfī al-Shaʿrānī (d. 973/1565), who witnessed the collapse of the Mamlūk state and the Ottoman occupation in 922/1517, believed that the shaykhs of the zāwiya played a vital role in society. His own zāwiya, built around 930/1524 by Qāḍī Muḥyī l-Dīn Uzbekī in the quarter of Bāb Shaʿriya, on the edge of the old Fāṭimid Cairo, was endowed with sufficient resources to enable him to feed two hundred residents per day and welcome seventy temporary guests (Garcin, L’insertion de Shaʿrānī; Winter, 46–50). In his Ṣūfī manual, al-Anwār al-qudsiyya fī maʿrifat qawāʿid al-ṣūfiyya (Holy lights on the knowledge of the rules of the Ṣūfīs), which mixes spiritual ethics and sociability, al-Shaʿrānī updates the rules of adab from the classical literature of Sufism, and illustrates them with living examples adapted to his time. The peak period for the Muslim, Mughal, Ottoman, and Safavid empires between the ninth/fifteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries was likely also the acme of Sufism, during which it completed and consolidated its integration into society. The prominent Ṣūfī orders spread along with military conquests and the patronage of the political elites; such was the expansion of some, for example, the Naqshbandiyya in Central Asia and India, and the Khalwatiyya in the Ottoman Empire, that it had important consequences for the organisation and even the very structure of the Ṣūfī orders concerned. New manuals on ādāb showed greater codification and hierarchy, and ultimately affirmed the specific identity and exclusivism of each order. These were written by masters such as the Naqshbandī Aḥmad Kāsānī Dahbidī (d. 949/1542), author of Risāla-yi ādāb al-ṣiddīqīn (Treatise on the rules of the truthful) and Muṣṭafā al-Bakrī (d. 1162/1749), the initiator of the renewal of the Khalwatiyya in Egypt and a prolific author who specialised in handbooks for aspirants (Papas, No Sufism; De Jong). The nineteenth century and the direct contacts between Muslim countries and colonial Europe do not represent so much a rupture in the history of Sufism as a continuation of the period of great Muslim empires. Exchanges intensified and brought about the expansion of new or revived Ṣūfī orders such as the Naqshbandiyya-Khālidiyya of Mawlānā Khālid al-Baghdādī (d. 1242/1827), the Tijāniyya of Aḥmad al-Tijānī (d. 1230/1815), and the paths associated with

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the teachings of the Moroccan Ṣūfī Aḥmad Ibn Idrīs (d. 1253/1837). These orders were founded by Ṣūfī figures with the status of ‘renewers’ (mujaddid) or ‘seal of the saints’ (khatm al-awliyāʾ), directly initiated by the Prophet. Within those orders a certain exclusivism set in, along with the adoption of specific ritual practices that served as marks of identity and community membership. For example, the recitation of a special prayer upon the Prophet in the branches of the Tijāniyya in West Africa, or the introduction of the forty-day retreat in the Khālidiyya (Triaud and Robinson; Abu-Manneh). The first quarter of the twentieth century, however, represents a turning point. The Saudi dynasty in Arabia, driven by the Wahhābī ideology and hostile to Ṣūfīs, seized power. Along with the development of fundamentalist religious movements and the rise of nationalisms, they terminated the predominant position that the Ṣūfīs had held for centuries in the mental universe of the Muslims. In the 1960s, sociologists even predicted the protracted and inexorable decline of the social role of Ṣūfīs. While we cannot deny the negative impacts on Ṣūfī practices that stemmed from the Salafisation and growing secularisation in contemporary Muslim societies, field studies conducted over the past twenty years from Morocco to Indonesia, including Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan, but also Europe, show that the model of social life that Ṣūfīs practiced is resilient and even experienced a new vitality in the last quarter of the twentieth century of, as it adapted to modernity. This historical perspective shows a parallel evolution between the growing role of Ṣūfīs in society, which resulted from historical circumstances and patronage from political elites, and the role they created for themselves as spiritual guides through their writings, a role that was recognised by their followers. The model of the ideal community developed by the Ṣūfīs in the khānqāhs and the zāwiyas, with their rules of behaviour stemming from the Sunna and customs (notably, courtly culture), gradually extended to the rest of society, and integrated all believers, even as the Ṣūfī institutions met the increasingly concrete social demands for protection, assistance, and mediation, and maintained their initial vocation as a place for spiritual retreat and the initiation of novices. 3

Sufism as a Model of Social Life: Companionship, Service, and Mediation

In Sufism, the relationship between a master and his future disciple (murīd) is generally sealed by a pact during a ceremony, one of the first descriptions of which can be found in the Risāla by al-Qushayrī. When making the pact

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(akhdh al-ʿahd), the novice takes an oath of allegiance (bayʿa) to the shaykh, demonstrating his submission. The term bayʿa, which denotes the act of shaking hands (muṣāfaḥa) with a crossing of fingers (mushābaka) peculiar to certain initiation rites, also carries the idea of an agreement between a seller and a buyer. Thus, in the Qurʾān the term ʿahd can mean both “testamentary designation” or “contract.” Indeed, the pact requires reciprocity: the act of submission on the part of the disciple and the duty to transmit knowledge on the part of the master. It establishes between the two a relationship of companionship (ṣuḥba), modelled on the relationship between the Prophet and his Companions (Gril, Le modèle prophétique). As a social relationship, this attachment to the shaykh is subject to certain rules of behaviour and duties; henceforth, books on Sufism speak of the “rights of the master” (ḥaqq al-murshid) and the “rights of the disciple” (ḥaqq al-murīd) as reciprocal “duties” (shurūṭ wa-ādāb). These rules must be respected by the body of believers, even those who attach themselves to the master but have not made the pact with him, but only hope to benefit from his blessings (tabarruk). The strict etiquette observed in the presence of the master reinforces the sacred character of his person (ḥurmat al-shaykh), whose word should be, for his disciple, “like a call from God and his Messenger.” This formulation by al-Suhrawardī was taken even further by an Egyptian Ṣūfī in the eighteenth century, for whom “the presence of the shaykh is the presence of God Himself” (ḥaḍrat al-shaykh ḥaḍrat Allāh) (al-Samanūdī, 107). Surrounding the shaykh are interdicts that the disciple must respect, inwardly and outwardly, to adhere to the pact, which is a pact made with God. Whoever breaks the code of submission must be banished, because to disobey the master is to disobey God; his attitude equates with ingratitude, which is similar to kufr (impiety), and he must be excluded as he endangers the community. For Ṣūfīs, the attitude of the disciples toward the master is based on the Qurʾān and the Sunna, just as the figure of the master draws its model from the Prophet, of whom he is heir on earth. The chapter on the rules of conduct of the novice toward his master in al-Suhrawardī’s ʿAwārif al-maʿārif is a commentary on Q 49:1–5: O you who believe, do not raise your voice above that of the Prophet and do not address him in a loud voice as you do among yourselves, for fear that your works will be invalidated, without your realising it … Certainly those who call you from outside your private apartments, most of them do not understand.

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Thus, on the basis of these verses, many rules were established that relate to respecting the privacy and personal space of the master. The disciple must present himself before his shaykh in a state of ritual purity (muṭahharan), wearing his most beautiful clothes, and in a state of repentance. According to al-Qushayrī, Abū ʿAlī l-Daqqāq (d. 405/1015) stated that he never attended a session with his master al-Naṣrabādhī (d. 367/977–8) without first performing the major ablution (al-Qushayrī, Risāla, bāb al-ṣuḥba). Al-Qushayrī himself adopted this behaviour, in addition to the practice of fasting. The disciple should not knock at his master’s door but make his presence known by invoking God out loud, and wait for the latter to allow him to enter or leave. In the presence of his shaykh, the disciple should not sit until invited to do so and, once sitting, should remain silent, head down, and speak only if asked to by the shaykh. If the disciple is authorised to speak, he should do so without raising his voice; he must not take leave until authorised and, when exiting, should never turn his back on his shaykh, rather he should leave the room stepping backwards. He should not walk in front of his shaykh (except at night), nor sit at his table unless invited; he should not tread upon his prayer mat, sleep in his bed, wear his clothes or his shoes, and he should not use his prayer beads. He must not spy on his shaykh, nor try to find out how long he sleeps or what he eats, or what relations he maintains with women (al-Ṭāhir, 121–7; Chih, Le soufisme, 231–2). These rules are modelled on those that the believers were asked to obey with respect to the Prophet according to the Qurʾān 53:33: O, you who believe, do not enter into the Prophet’s apartments unless you have been given permission, without looking at his plate. But if you are called, enter, and once you have eaten, disperse and refrain from speaking with familiarity; that would annoy the Prophet, who would be ashamed to tell you, but God is not ashamed of the truth. Gril, Le modèle prophétique, 348

The disciple must abandon all personal will and place himself in the hands of the shaykh to become like a “cadaver in the hands of the washer of the dead” (a phrase attributed to the Iraqi master Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896)). With regard to his spiritual training, and in all aspects of his private life (travel, marriage, and work), he should not undertake anything without first consulting his master, as only he knows what is appropriate for the disciple. Finally, he should not conceal any of his thoughts or actions from his shaykh. In al-Anwār

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al-qudsiyya, al-Shaʿrānī gives many examples of this hayba (reverential fear) that takes hold of disciples before their master, who is a being touched by God’s grace and gifted with clairvoyance ( firāsa), so much so that disciples cannot bear his gaze and are obliged to look down. This attitude evokes in the Ṣūfīs the reverential fear that the Companions felt in the presence of the Prophet, before whom they stood motionless and silent “as if they had birds perched on their heads” (al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, jihād 37, no. 2842). The followers of a contemporary master from Upper Egypt confess feeling like children in the presence of their shaykh, before whom they always appeared looking down, afraid of having violated orders, and thus being deprived of his confidence (Chih, Le soufisme, 233). The masters say that they themselves educated their disciples like sons, expecting from them a respect and obedience similar to those that a son must express toward his father. The pact is described as a second birth, a new spiritual existence (wilāda maʿnawiyya); this explains the use of the terms of paternity and maternity in master-disciple relations: the master is both the progenitor in matters of the spirit (ab maʿnawī) (al-Suhrawārdī; Ohlander, Sufism) and a nurturing mother, according to the well-known statement by Najm al-Dīn Rāzī, translated here: Just as the infant drinks milk at the breast of its mother or wet-nurse, receiving from them the sustenance without which he would perish, so too the infant of the spirit drinks milk of the path and Truth from the nipple of the mother of prophethood, or the mother of sainthood (walāya), receiving from both the prophet or the shaykh who stands in place of the Prophet, the sustenance without which he would perish. Algar, 223–4

The Egyptian Ṣūfī al-Shaʿrānī, following the death of his master al-Shinnāwī, was spiritually weaned, as he himself described it, under the guidance of al-Khawwāṣ (Geoffroy, 192). The attitude of the shaykh toward his disciple is also the subject of a chapter in the Ṣūfī manuals; it must reflect both the qualities of the father and mother: that is, authority and firmness, but also affection, benevolence, accessibility, and tenderness. Furthermore, the shaykh should adopt behaviour that inspires the disciple to respect him and his authority, and emulate him; he should be a model, not only in the spiritual realm but also in social behaviour, as was the case with the Prophet and his Companions (Knysh (trans.), al-Qushayri’s epistle). Sufism repurposes family ties by transposing them to another plane and directing them to a different goal. Malamud’s anthropological reading of the Ṣūfī manuals from the classical period and Hammoudi’s analysis of modern

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hagiographies examine the dyadic and hierarchical relationship between masters and disciples as modelled on the relationships of power, authority, and gender in mediaeval societies: normative relations among Ṣūfīs reproduce normative relations in the larger world in order to reinforce those social forms of submission, inequality, and dependence by connecting them to a divine origin. Hammoudi sees the master/disciple relationship as the foundation of authoritarian power in contemporary Arab societies. This unequal relationship finds its fulfilment in khidma (service), a concept with varied contents that refers to productive, domestic, and ritual activities (khādim means both domestic servant and a client) (Touati, 255). Yet, we see that the concept of khidma, meaning service rendered to a shaykh, as it appears in a ḥadīth, became a common adage in Ṣūfī circles. “Sayyid al-qawm khādimu-hum” (The lord of a group is he who is at their service) is two-fold: the disciples are at the service of the shaykh and he is at the service of his disciples. 3.1 Serving the Master “Abū Manṣūr al-Maghribī was asked: ‘How long have you accompanied Abū ʿUthmān (al-Ḥīrī d. 298/910)?’ He replied: ‘I have served him, but I have not accompanied him. Companionship relates to brothers and pairs; with the masters it is a matter of service’” (Gril, Maîtres, 554). The Ṣūfī Ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī (sixth/twelfth century) prioritised service rendered to the shaykh ahead of religious duties: the disciple must be ready to respond to the demands of his master first, even before he goes to pray (Massignon, 117). In Sufism, service to the master and to the companions is a way to exercise one’s humility and abnegation, and forget one’s rank and social status. Khidma consists of serving the shaykh but also his visitors and the inhabitants of the village or neighbourhood who gravitate around the zāwiya, khānqāh, or tekke. Since their inception, Ṣūfī establishments served as places to welcome and provide hospitality to travellers and pilgrims (sāʾiḥūn) undertaking their initiatory voyage; indeed, such establishments were often built at transit points, on the outskirts of towns or in places within the cities where travellers arrive, for example, in the caravanserais (Ephrat and Pinto in this volume). Outside the shaykh’s family, a limited number of people live permanently in these places where Ṣūfīs congregate. In the khānqāh of Shaykh Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (eighth/fourteenth century), only the most advanced disciples, the nephews of the shaykh and the administrators of the khānqāh, lived in small cells or in homes located near the establishment. The novices studied, prayed, and slept on the ground in the main hall, the jamāʿat-khāna (Matringe, 77; Ernst and Lawrence). As the numbers of disciples grew, the master began delegating some of his duties to those among them who were more advanced

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in age and experience; he granted them his teachings so that they, in turn, could train aspirants. Al-Suhrawardī gave them the title of khādim (pl. khuddām) and described them as superintendents with multiple roles: to solicit and collect donations for the ribāṭ, receive complaints from the residents, feed the travellers, and serve the population in general (al-Suhrawardī, ch. 11; Ohlander, Sufism). In the Egyptian Khalwatiyya, founded by Muḥammad al-Ḥifnī in the eighteenth century, these roles were played by the naqīb al-nuqabāʾ (chief attendant), also called naqīb al-ḥaḍra or naqīb al-jamāʿa because he was, among other duties, responsible for the smooth running of the dhikr sessions (ḥaḍra). The naqīb al-nuqabāʾ was described as the repository of the shaykh’s secret, the door through which he may be accessed (maḥall sirr al-shaykh wa-bābuhu), his representative in his absence; he brought the novices close to the master to perform the pact and replaced the shaykh during dhikr sessions. He must possess a certain maturity and experience, show good character (ḥusn al-khuluq), a conciliatory nature, and perfect honesty. He must set an example for others by showing great spiritual energy (himma). He must enquire about his brothers if they are absent, and the brothers must respect and carry out his orders, even if they are older than he is. He often acts as a supervisor and attendant, according to al-Suhrawardī. He must be learned, knowledgeable about the path and its rules, and ensure that the disciples respect those rules, especially those related to behaviour toward the master and those connected to the dhikr. He must be able to relate to everyone and speak to them gently, without raising his voice or joking with them, or staring at them. If the disciple needs some information regarding the customs of the zāwiya, he should not address the shaykh directly, rather he should enquire through the naqīb; however, with regard to a vision, a dream, or an inspiration, he must wait until the master has retired privately and speak only to him, after receiving his authorisation (al-Samanūdī; al-Dardīr). At present, in the Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya order in Morocco, as in the Naqshbandī branch of Shaykh Zindapir in Pakistan, the khulafāʾ are treated with great respect by the master, whom they provide with comprehensive services: they belong to literate urban circles and are, through their writings and in practice, those who spread his teachings; they take care of a local zāwiya (which can be a private home) where dhikr sessions are organised on a weekly basis; finally, they are in charge of the enormous organisation of the mawlid (celebration of the Prophet’s birthday), or ʿurs, death anniversary, in Pakistan, which draws thousands of visitors from the entire country and from abroad each year (Chih, Sufism; Werbner). In addition to the naqīb al-jamāʿa, the Khalwatī manuals of the eighteenth century also mention a group of nuqabāʾ responsible for domestic tasks; they

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help and assist the shaykh (muʿāwinū l-shaykh). Given the selflessness of their tasks, they are compared to the Prophet’s Anṣār, the original Companions who protected and shared their homes with him and his Companions (al-Samanūdī, 151). Four nuqabāʾ suffice for the zāwiya to work and the role of each is subject to precise rules, mainly related to food and table manners. The practice of eating together has inspired a great number of texts on ādāb, undoubtedly due to its strong social dimension. The rules of the Khalwatiyya were copied directly from mediaeval treatises, particularly from al-Ghazālī and al-Suhrawardī (Feuillebois-Pierunek, La maîtrise du corps). At the bottom of the hierarchy, but spiritually the highest, is the person in charge of the sandals (naqīb al-niʿāl): he is responsible for the cleaning, maintenance, and arrangement of the sandals according to the individual’s rank (rutba), which he must attend to, without mistaking their owners. He must fulfil his task for God with humility. Above him is the brother responsible for the transport and distribution of water (sāqī l-māʾ): he is charged with the cleaning of the jugs and goblets, and subject to a strict hygienic lifestyle, he must keep his hands and clothes clean, should not blow his nose or spit; and while distributing water, he should not deny it to anyone, even to those who do not belong to the community of brothers. When distributing water, he must always begin with whomever is sitting to the right of the master and end with whomever sits to his left. He must know the etiquette of drinking (ādāb al-shurb), so that he can teach it to others; for example, one needs to drink while sitting, to grasp the jug with the right hand, and take only three mouthfuls, breathing after each one, and remember to recite the basmala (“In the name of God”) and the ḥamdala (“Praise to God”) with each mouthful. Finally, the person in charge of the water is responsible for washing the clothes of the disciples; he must do this without resentment, without balking at the task. The person responsible for the table must be skilful, energetic, clean, virtuous, a good cook, and a model of scruples and asceticism (wariʿan wa-zāhidan). When serving meals, he must recite Sūrat al-Fātiḥa, inwardly request divine permission for that meal and its blessing following an established formula. He then sets the table according to a prearranged scheme (he is assisted by the water carrier, as the two tasks are closely related), all the while reciting Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ (Q 112), which chases demons away. During the meal, he must remain standing, ready to serve the brothers, while inwardly reciting Sūra Quraysh (Q 106) against the abdominal problems that food may cause. At the end of the meal he gathers the leftovers to share them with the person in charge of the water. When clearing the table, he praises God for the meal and hopes that it will bring strength, health, light, and purity to those who have partaken in it. He must always ensure that some food remains for a potential visitor and,

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after serving him, he should never let him eat alone, but should sit with him. He must not touch the dishes before serving them, except to taste them, and he must not show favouritism, as that would compromise his commitment to the path and warrant his dismissal. If someone were to make a donation to the zāwiya, he must not keep any of it for himself but bring it to the master, to dispose of as he wishes. He must, of course, know good table manners in order to teach them to the novices. There are many table manners, for example, one must sit on one’s knees or stretch out only the right leg, take small bites and chew them at length, not blow his nose or spit during the meal, and turn his face away if he feels the need to cough or sneeze, and not place on the plate anything that might have been in his mouth, not lean over or stretch at the table, not stick meat or cheese in the bread, or tear off pieces of bread with his teeth, but instead break it off with his hands, limit himself to the necessary amount of food (neither too much nor not enough), not begin eating before being authorised to do so, not throw anything to the ground (such as watermelon rinds, which should be placed before oneself), eat with only three fingers, and finally, begin and end the meal by taking a bit of salt, if there is any available (this custom was thought to ward off illnesses). Since their foundation, Ṣūfī establishments welcomed a very diverse population: “One of the best examples of this is the khānqāh of Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049) where ‘ordinary people, poor folk and labourers, urban and rural  … [and] even the most ostracized outcasts of society, such as a wretched young drunkard in one instance’ received hospitality” (Graham, 122). At every stage of their expansion, these establishments, built in urban environments or on the outskirts of towns, served as places where the rural population could be integrated. In addition to the initiatory knowledge, the population was instilled with a minimum of customs and the good manners of the literate and urbanised men, a milieu from which arose the Ṣūfīs who created these rules of behaviour and set them in writing with an increasingly wider audience in mind. In return for the service rendered to the shaykh, the disciples had access to his friendship and trust. According to a ḥadīth qudsī (sacred tradition) narrated by al-Bukhārī, “My servant does not approach Me for something more dear to me than the obligations that I have imposed upon him” (al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, book 76, 509). God brings close to him those He loves, and so the shaykh draws his disciples close or drives them away. According to accounts collected, for the disciples, the love and trust of the master are a source of empowerment, a driving force; in turn, those who are entrusted with important tasks gain a certain aura, or respect, within the group. In a contemporary zāwiya, such as

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that of Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib in Qurna, Upper Egypt, one can see young people working at different tasks; often they are students and, once married and settled into their professional life, they leave their places to other young students. Sometimes, one may split his time between his studies and serving the master in his zāwiya (called a sāḥa in Upper Egypt): It is my shaykh who made me what I am,” he says, “he is my educator (murrabī), he knows me inside out, I keep no secrets from him. He entrusts me with responsibilities in the sāḥa and often seeks my opinion regarding its management. This confidence is the result of the many years I have served him. Chih, Le soufisme, 234

The intimate relationship created between the master and his disciple renders the latter completely open and transparent in the eyes of the master, who can then assign him responsibilities. It is easy to imagine the tensions, rivalry, and envy that this pursuit of the shaykh’s trust can generate among the disciples, but also the consternation that the loss of this trust can cause (Werbner, 136–40). Certain disciples remain khādim of the shaykh their entire lives and forsake founding a family or pursuing a career. The anthropologist Abdallah Hammoudi refers to this as social atypism, citing the example of a nineteenthcentury Moroccan Ṣūfī: “But at the age when other young men married women, probably in order to be served by them, he did the opposite and began serving a master. This decision constitutes an inversion of the ‘normal’ course of life and can definitely be regarded as a ‘transgression’” (Hammoudi, 94). These servants are closest, on a day-to-day basis, to the saint and perform tasks that give them more access to his private life: bringing him water, preparing his meals, getting his clothes, making his bed. This proximity to so many aspects of the master confers on this servant a special status among the disciples; some even seek the servant’s blessing (baraka) or ask him to make a talisman (ḥijāb), because he has become a master at the art of “spiritual healing” (ʿilāj rūḥānī), that is, healing through the baraka of saints. In the Moroccan Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya Ṣūfī order, a certain Sīdī Bābā served as a caretaker of the mosque and the mausoleum of the master’s ancestors, and lived permanently in the zāwiya, where he received visits from women who, with a photo or a bottle of water, requested cures for cases in which traditional medicine had failed, often the cause is then attributed to spirits ( jinn) or to the evil eye (Dominguez Diaz, 187). Although his master Sidī Ḥamza (d. 2017) did not grant talismans, he did present himself as a doctor of the soul (ṭabīb al-nafs), an expression that appeared

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in Sufism as early as the fourth/tenth century, perhaps because spiritual development involves a profound mental and psychological transformation, and the Ṣūfīs have written about these powerful effects on men (al-Qushayrī, Tartīb al-sulūk, trans. by Meier, A book of etiquette). Nowadays, people come with different kinds of problems—those of the modern individualistic and materialistic world; yet the shaykh still presents himself as a refuge. Serving the shaykh requires a certain reciprocity and the shaykh is also bound to achieve what his followers expect of him. In some ways, companionship (ṣuḥba) evokes a clientelism relationship underlying premodern Muslim societies. In the scholarly circles of Damascus (Chamberlain), as in the ruling class of Iran (Paul, Khidma; Mottahedeh), the relationship of subordination implies mutual obligations of loyalty, along with the resulting economic, social, and political advantages. The Ṣūfī technical terms of adab, tarbiya (education), majlis (assembly), and ḥaḍra (presence) originally refer to the courtly etiquette related to the entourage of the sultans. By donning the attributes of power, the Ṣūfīs assert their own power, although it is not intrinsically earthly, rather it is a metaphysical power that extends into the afterlife. Like the Prophet with his community, in cities, the Ṣūfīs exert interior and exterior authority, such that certain mediaeval hagiographies, most notably in the Maghrib and Egypt, ascribed to them a specific territory. The relation is understood and lived as a gift (that is, allegiance, recognition, and service rendered to the saint) and as a counter-gift (to guarantee salvation) (Elboudrari, Allégeance, 269). We have mentioned the concept of a contract contained in the terms for realising the pact (bayʿa and ʿahd): support and help versus loyalty and attachment; such are the two poles of the reciprocal relations on which the ṣuḥba is based. 3.2 Mediation and Arbitrage Only a limited number of disciples join the order to pursue the spiritual path whereas, for the neighbourhood or village, the shaykh is perceived more as an intercessor and a patron. In return for the service and loyalty rendered to him, he assists his followers in their daily lives: he feeds them, heals them, and resolves conflicts. Generally, as the reputation of a master’s sainthood spreads, his wealth also increases through the donations of his followers. In the past and even the present, visitors to the zāwiya, if they have the means, rarely arrive without gifts, while those without wealth offer their service. The young people who work free of charge in their shaykh’s fields during their summer vacation reply that it is a way of serving God (khidma li-Llāh) (Chih, Le soufisme, 339). The master’s duty to provide guidance is linked to another value, that of hospitality and the dispensation of food; it is even the main social function of a saint (itʿām al-taʿam “to provide food”). Thus, it is said of the Moroccan shaykh

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ʿAbdallāh al-Sharīf (d. 1088/1678): “In a single night our shaykh fed fourteen thousand visitors and before he died had left behind five hundred authentic initiates (ʿārifūn), friends (awliyāʾ) and witnesses of God, capable of leading [others] to Him” (Elboudrari, Quand les saints, 498). Thus, the image of the saint that redistributes the donations given to him, without keeping any of it for himself, is a hagiographic topos that reveals a mechanism for establishing clientelist relations and for the social appropriation of a territory. Finally, through the mediation that he performs in conflicts, the shaykh is a guarantor of peace and social stability. The master first performs mediation in his community of disciples and their families. Given that the disciples are all pursuing intimacy as well as the intellectual, spiritual, and physical proximity to the shaykh, they are subject to competition and tension, as well as envy and resentment. The hagiographies of the masters echo this and mention these feelings as a way to highlight the education of their disciples. The hagiography of the Iranian Ṣūfī Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr states: “When a dispute occurred between two dervishes, it was our Shaikh’s practice to remain silent until they had emptied their hearts. When he knew that their interiors were cleansed, then he would say a few words and effect a reconciliation and make peace between them” (Karamustafa, Reading, 242). In the Akhlāq matbūliyya by the Egyptian Ṣūfī al-Shaʿrānī, we discover that the masters of the Aḥmadiyya ṭarīqa staged a weekly ritual, inspired by ʿAbbāsid rituals, to end disagreements between the disciples: the shaykh would sit behind a curtain, so as to not be seen by anyone during the judgement session; the naqīb would intervene and make known what the khalīfa had decided, conciliation (ṣulḥ), banishment (ḥajr) or reprisal (qiṣāṣ, lex talionis). And the two opponents sat there, head lowered, without one signaling to the other with the hand or the head. Mayeur-Jaouen, 91

Anglo-Saxon anthropology has clearly demonstrated that intertribal arbitration was the function par excellence of the saintly founders of brotherhoods in Morocco (Gellner). At the turn of the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries in particular, it was exercised more frequently, because this was a period of major political instability and insecurity, during which peasants sought out the saints as authority figures comparable to those of the tribal chiefs (Touati, 253). Arbitration, not just between tribes but also between the tribes and central power (makhzen), became an essential nationwide function for the zāwiya of Ouezzane: from the early twelfth/eighteenth century on, the successors of the founder, ʿAbdallāh al-Sharīf, became specialists in the areas of

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influence of their zāwiya, that is, in the Gharb, the Rif, and the Oriental region. At the same time, in Iran and Central Asia, a similar tension appeared between Naqshbandī saints and nomads in the system of patronage and protection established by Khwāja Aḥrār (Paul, Forming a faction). In the border regions of the Punjab and Sindh, Ṣūfīs established sanctuaries and served as mediators and conciliators for transhumant nomads, farmers, and herdsmen who fought over land and grazing rights; these Ṣūfīs and their descendants retained this role until the early twentieth century (Kozlowski). In Tripolitania, Libya, the Algerian Ṣūfī Muḥammad al-Sanūsī (d. 1276/1859) settled and founded zāwiyas near the border between various tribal clans; then he and his khalīfas established themselves as mediators and arbitrators (Evans-Pritchard). The saint’s khidma means the exercise of his walāya/wilāya over his sacred territory; he represents the ideal patron, as defined by Peter Brown in relation to the Christian holy men of Late Antiquity: “He is a man who uses his ‘power’ to smooth over the thorny issues of village life … He would arrange the cancelling of debts, he would settle disputes among the villagers on the spot, and so save them the long trek to the local town to conduct their litigation” (P. Brown, 85). According to J. S. Trimingham, the Ṣūfī shaykhs were able to mediate in the conflicts of traditional, tribal, and clan societies; but that role was said to have disappeared with the establishment of a modern state, the breakdown of traditional social structures, and the creation of a bureaucracy that took charge, in the cities and in the countryside, of functions of justice traditionally entrusted to the Ṣūfī shaykhs. The anthropological fieldwork carried out in the 1990s in Upper Egypt shows that the shaykhs continued to arbitrate and offer hospitality in this region, especially when the state failed to resolve conflicts that brought into play the honour and reputation of the parties, namely vendettas. Arbitration by the shaykhs is called ṣulḥ (“conciliation,” “accommodation”); the solution to a conflict should also lead to a peace agreement between the parties to ensure that the conflict does not resurface. Aḥmad Raḍwān (d. 1967), a Ṣūfī from the region of Luxor, thus defined the sāḥas: “The sāḥas are everywhere in Upper Egypt because they serve as places of worship, for welcoming visitors, for the arbitration of conflicts and conciliation” (Chih, Le soufisme, 2). These sāhas have open-air courtyards with covered or shaded areas to protect from the sun; in these courtyards the shaykh, sitting on wooden benches or mastabas (masonry benches), surrounded by notables and usually on a Friday after the prayer and dhikr, received those who sought some material assistance, advice or arbitration from him. As the shaykh was a recognised and respected moral and religious authority, one of God’s elect, submitting to his arbitration made it possible to avoid the shame (ʿār) that befell those who did not engage in blood feuds with regard to matters of honour.

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Figure 9.1

Figure 9.2

Servants at the zāwiya of Shaykh Raḍwān during the saint’s mawlid (Upper Egypt) Photo by Rachida Chih

Servants at the soup kitchen of the zāwiya of Shaykh Raḍwān during the saint’s mawlid (Upper Egypt) Photo by Rachida Chih

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Sufism as a Form of Social Organisation and Identity

For al-Suhrawardī, the ṣuḥba (companionship) essentially refers to the relationship that unites the disciple and the master, whereas ukhuwwa (fraternity) evokes the fraternal relations among brothers more specifically. However, he sometimes uses ṣuḥba and ukhuwwa as synonyms. In the ʿAwārif, the links between brothers are highly valued, the relationship of emotional closeness between the disciple and the master must be transferred to the brothers, who then perfect themselves through mutual help, while providing each other comfort, assistance, and friendship. Aware of the tension and envy that can arise among brothers, the masters underscore (in their manuals) the importance of solidarity and mutual aid, like the one that must exist in a family united under a father’s watchful eyes. Al-Sarrāj illustrates this point by quoting al-Kharrāz (d. c. 286/899): “I was a companion to the Sufis for fifty years and there never occurred any acts of opposition between us” (al-Sarrāj, 177). Spiritual progress is at once an individual and a collective matter; the path is also a community ideal, in which everyone knows their place and how to behave toward others. Generally, the disciple should not scrutinise the shortcomings of his brothers, nor place himself above them; he must set a good example, help them, serve them, and never forget them in his prayers. A disciple hoping to obtain forgiveness from a brother he has offended should stand, uncover his head, place his right hand over his left hand, express his repentance, and maintain that position until God takes him into His mercy. For his part, the offended brother should accept the repentance offered. It is very important for brothers who live together and share the same space to maintain friendship among themselves. Many stories about the lives of the Ṣūfīs emphasise the pilgrimage (siyāḥa), that long initiatory voyage, a spiritual quest to meet the great masters. They present the initiation as a free individual choice. However, such a case is rare; normally families and whole villages and tribes are affiliated with the same master over generations. The founding master sometimes becomes the patron saint of craft guilds: the most striking example can be seen in the close ties between the Bektāşiyye (Ar. Bektāshiyya) and the Akhīs voluntary organisations in Anatolia in the Middle Ages. These groups of merchants and craftsmen, which existed in cities and villages, were modelled, structurally, on the futuwwa organisations: they had a master (pīr), an initiation ritual dating back to ʿAlī and the Prophet Muḥammad, an oath (ʿahd), and rules of companionship (ṣuḥba). They practised one of the characteristics of the futuwwa: hospitality toward travellers and solidarity with the poor (Mélikoff, 109). In other cases, religious identity was superimposed on tribal identity, where it reinforced social

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cohesion: in Mauritania in the nineteenth century, a disciple of Aḥmad Tijānī, Muḥammad al-Ḥāfiẓ, converted his entire tribe, the Īdaw ʿAlī, to the Tijāniyya. After his death in 1830, these conversions continued, until belonging to the Tijāniyya order was tantamount to belonging to the tribe. The Murīdiyya of Amadu Bamba (d. 1927) in Senegal allowed the Wolof ethnic group to reconstitute itself and regain a certain social and political cohesion after colonisation (Hamès). In Tripolitania, the Sanūsiyya zāwiyas were integration and identification structures that transcended clan divisions and gave birth to the first Libyan state. In India and Pakistan, until now the Ṣūfī orders remain important; in village societies, the pīr-murīd relation is so deeply rooted that one who does not have a pīr is considered to be on the wrong path and may be socially ostracised. In Urdu, the adjective be-pīr (lit., “without pīr”) refers to someone who is vicious, cruel, ruthless, and without empathy, in effect without morals (Werbner, 131). In the last quarter of the twentieth century, Sufism renewed its appeal among the urbanised and educated middle classes who wished to return to Islam and for whom it represented a more acceptable path than the strict fundamentalist Islam that was developing at the same time; it was also more suited to their search for personal development. From the 1950s, the south to north waves of immigration after World War II and decolonisation brought about a diaspora of Muslims in the West and, along with it, Ṣūfī orders (Geaves; Malik and Hinnells (eds.)). The transnational Ṣūfī orders often recruit from the educated middle- and upper-classes: the Chishtī Ṣābirīs studied by Rozehnal tend to be “ethnically and geographically diverse with a minority of foreign Muslims”; the Būdshīshiyya in Morocco and the Gümüşhanevi branch of the Naqshbandiyya in Istanbul recruit from universities, among professors and students. In a modern globalised world, where disciples rarely live near their masters and are sometimes even dispersed throughout the world because of migratory flows, how can the duty of ziyāra (visiting the master) be maintained when the very existence of the path is based on that duty? Indeed, as noted by the well-known Persian Ṣūfī ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī (d. 481/1089): “Visiting pīrs is one of the duties ( farīḍa) of these people because by visiting pīrs they learn things which they could not learn anywhere else” (Meier, Khurāsān, 194). In the aforementioned regional and transnational brotherhoods in Morocco and Pakistan, ziyāra is emphasised in order to consolidate and maintain the relationship to the master but also between the brothers themselves. For the Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya in Morocco, it is one of the pillars of the order: from its birthplace of Madagh in the Moroccan northeast to the border with Algeria, the brotherhood spread throughout Moroccan cities as far as Europe (with

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Moroccan immigration and European converts); this explains why most followers live far from their master. The date of the great annual meeting of the members of the ṭarīqa in the zāwiya of Madagh overlaps with the celebration of the birth of the Prophet (al-mawlid al-nabawī); it is a unique opportunity to see the master and, for some, to meet him for the first time. This ziyāra, which brings together several thousand people, is thus the subject of real organisation; buses are chartered for the occasion and it requires prior registration with the muqaddam (the representative of the shaykh in a town or village), who encourages the brothers to undertake the trip. In the opinion of many disciples, this is a long journey with many participants—the zāwiya is located in a remote region difficult to access; thus, it is an experience that brings them together. In the zāwiya, brothers and sisters show their respect and mutual consideration: whatever their rank and social status, everyone is addressed with the respectful title of lallā (“my lady”) or sīdī (“my master”), wears the djellaba (long loose-fitting robe), eats the same food, and sleeps under the same roof: the brotherhood is a structure of integration that transcends social divides without eliminating them. The weekly sessions of dhikr in the local zāwiyas, where mystical poems, verses of the Qurʾān, and prayers are recited and chanted, sometimes to the rhythm of physical movements, carry a strong emotional charge and are powerful elements that establish close ties among the disciples; regular attendance at these sessions is strongly encouraged by the masters. In Turkey, the closing of the tekkes after the prohibition of the Ṣūfī brotherhoods by the new Turkish Republic in 1925 had a huge impact on the forms of Ṣūfī communities, which had to be adapted and transformed to survive in a new and hostile political context (Clayer in this volume). The concept of khidma changed “into a new kind of community service corresponding with their functioning as a benevolent association registered as a foundation (waqf ). Sohbet also assumes new forms, even becoming a kind of ‘mediated sociability’ when congregants listen to the shaykh via satellite then read his address in the order’s monthly magazine” (Silverstein). At present, when joining a Ṣūfī group the newcomer must be able to rely on the mutual aid and solidarity that has always existed among the brothers in the path. For example, in order to divert a young Egyptian from fundamentalist religious groups and persuade him to join the Ṣūfīs, a Rifāʿī group put forward the argument that he would be able to find Ṣūfī brothers in all the towns of Egypt and they would all offer him hospitality (Hoffman, 152). The Ṣūfī path thus perpetuates its traditional role of welcoming and offering hospitality, of moral and material support, but now, through a network of regional and sometimes global establishments.

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5 Conclusion Sufism is a quest for inner development and a model of social life: its norms dictate all aspects of spiritual and worldly life, which are inseparable; slightest infringement of a norm governing an exterior act can negatively influence the interior development. The shaykh represents the incarnation of the Prophet’s model of spiritual perfection that he communicates to his disciples and all believers. The relationship with the master is voluntary and though it contains the notion of a contract (ʿahd), it is not legally sealed: it derives its power from the sacred strength of a shared belief, that the master’s baraka spreads to his followers. Sufism contributed to the Islamisation of vast regions of the Muslim world, through its capacity to integrate itself into the fabric of local societies where the Ṣūfī/saint constitutes a foundation to identify with, one based on relations of loyalty, service, and protection. The search for the saint’s protection stems from his recognised role as mediator between God and men. In exchange for the protective friendship of the Ṣūfī/walī, men pledge allegiance to him and serve him. The connection to the master is considered sacred, and breaking the pact is seen as equivalent to perjury. The rules governing social relations in Sufism have changed little since their earliest conception in the Middle Ages, despite the strong criticism they provoked because they focus mainly on “blind” obedience to a master and this is construed by critics as associationism (shirk) that leads to unbelief (kufr), the greatest sin in Islam. The Ṣūfī path rests firmly on the relationship to the master: he is its pivot, the axis around which concentric circles of disciples and followers revolve. This very strong relationship is at once paternal and maternal and, according to the disciples themselves, it is first and foremost a relationship of love (maḥabba) that unites spiritual brothers in a community. This explains why the death of the shaykh leaves a great void that is difficult to fill. However, the relationship is not unidirectional. The shaykh must also respond to the expectations, hopes, and human as well as spiritual needs of his followers. In a sense, it is a collective creation that satisfies a social and historical demand for a supernatural spiritual power that manifests itself in mental attitudes and way of life (Dupront, Du sacré). Finally, it must be emphasised that the formative period of Sufism, with its doctrines and practices and its institutionalisation in the orders also brought about the expansion of other concurrent forms of spiritual life that adopted social behaviours often judged to be outside social and religious norms. As a reaction to institutionalised Sufism, groups such as itinerant dervishes,

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Qalandars, Ḥaydarīs, and other “enraptured” with God (majdhūb; majnūn), or marginal mystics, practiced begging and renounced worldly matters. They developed and maintained their own forms of community (Ephrat, Purifying Sufism; Karamustafa, God’s unruly friends; Papas, Mystiques et vagabonds). From the fourth/tenth century, voices warned against the religious and social conformism imposed by the normalisation of spiritual life such as that of Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Abū l-ʿAbbās (d. 309/921–2), for whom “violating the rules of proper behavior amidst its upholders is itself [a sign] of proper behavior!” (Knysh (trans.), al-Qushayri’s epistle, 295). This maxim is indicative of unresolved tension between the ideal of detachment from the world, self-denial, and mystic itinerancy as a path of sanctity and the temptation to play a role in society and assume the status of the founder and patron. In many cases, when the master’s reputation as God’s friend (saint) grew and spread, donations poured in, and wealth and social status changed; and this cannot but influence Ṣūfī behaviour. It is then easy to understand the social divide that may arise between those notable Ṣūfīs and the majdhūbs (those enraptured by God), who are linked to the poorest and most marginalised. Certainly, social relations in Sufism reproduce and even seem to reinforce the differences in class and background, yet the proposed universal ideal of solidarity and fraternity (ukhuwwa) under the authority of a man of God is resilient and adaptable to all environments and all periods, in the sense that, by reproducing and renewing the relationship, both individual and collective, that existed between the Prophet and his Companions, it carries a strong sacred aura in the religious conscience of Muslim societies. Bibliography Abu-Manneh, Butrus, Khalwa and rābiṭa in the Khālidī suborder, in Marc Gaborieau, Alexandre Popovic, and Thierry Zarcone (eds.), Naqshbandis. Cheminements et situation actuelle d’un ordre mystique musulman (Istanbul and Paris 1990), 281–94. Algar, Hamid (trans.), Path of God’s bondsmen. From origin to return. A Sufi compendium by Najm al-dīn Rāzī Known as Dāya, Delmar 1982. Amri, Nelly, Walī et awliyāʾ dans l’Ifrīqīya “médiévale”. De l’activité originelle d’une notion aux modalities historiques de son activation, SI 90 (2000): 23–36. Amri, Nelly, Zâwiya et territoire en Ifriqiya du VIIe/XIIIe siècle à la fin du IXe/ XVe siècle, in Juliette de La Genière, André Vauchez, and Jean Leclant (eds.), Les sanctuaires et leur rayonnement dans le monde méditerranéen de l’antiquité à l’époque moderne (Paris 2010), 243–94.

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Papas, Alexandre, No Sufism without Sufi order. Rethinking tarîqa and adab with Ahmad Kâsânî Dahbidî (1461–1542), Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies 2–1 (2008): 4–22. Paul, Jürgen, Khidma in the social history of Pre-Mongol Iran, JESHO 57/3 (2014): 392–422. Paul, Jürgen, Forming a faction. The ḥimāyat system of Khwaja Ahrar, IJMES 23/4 (1991): 533–48. Radtke, Bernd, Drei Schriften des Theosophen von Tirmidh, Beirut and Stuttgart 1992. Radtke, Bernd, ed., Adab al-mulūk fī bayān ḥaqāʾiq al-taṣawwuf, Stuttgart and Beirut 1991. Raudvere, Catharina, The book and the roses. Sufi women, visibility, and zikir in contemporary Istanbul, London 2003. Ridgeon, Lloyd, Morals and mysticism in Persian Sufism. A history of Sufi-futuwwat in Iran, Abingdon 2010. Rocheblave-Spenlé, Anne-Marie, Rôles et statuts sociaux, Encyclopædia Universalis online. Rodriguez-Manas, Francisco, Charity and deceit. The concept of itʿām al-taʿām in Moroccan Sufism, SI 91 (2000): 59–90. Rozehnal, Robert, Islamic Sufism unbound. Politics and piety in twenty-first century Pakistan, New York and Basingstoke 2007. Samanūdī, Muḥammad, Tuḥfat al-sālikīn wa-dalāʾil al-sāʾirīn li-manhaj al-muqarrabīn, Cairo 2008, Beirut 2009. al-Sarrāj, Abū Naṣr, al-Lumaʿ fī l-taṣawwuf, ed. R. A. Nicholson, Leiden 1914. al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, al-Anwār al-qudsiyya fī maʿrifa qawāʾid al-ṣūfiyya, Beirut 1992. Silvers-Alario, Laury, The teaching relationship in early Sufism. A reassessment of Fritz Meier’s definition of the shaykh al-tarbiya and the shaykh al-taʿlīm, MW 93/1 (2003): 69–97. Silverstein, Brian, Sufism and modernity in Turkey. From the authenticity of experience to the practice of discipline, in Martin Van Bruinessen and Julia D. Howell (eds.), Sufism and the modern in Islam (London 2007), 39–60. al-Suhrawardī, Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar, ʿAwārif al-maʿārif, Beirut 1999. al-Sulamī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Kitāb ādāb al-ṣuḥba, ed. M. J. Kister, Jerusalem 1954. al-Sulamī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā, Beirut 1998. al-Ṭāhir, Aḥmad, Sharḥ al-kashf al-rabbānī ʿalā-l-mawrid al-raḥmānī, Cairo 1889. Thibon, Jean-Jacques, Adab et éducation spirituelle (tarbiya) chez les maîtres de Nīshāpūr aux IIIe/IXe et IV e/Xe siècles, in Francesco Chiabotti, Ève FeuilleboisPierunek, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, and Luca Patrizi (eds.), Ethics and spirituality in Islam. Sufi adab (Leiden 2017), 102–30.

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Thibon, Jean-Jacques, L’œuvre d’Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (325/937–412/1021) et la formation du soufisme, Damascus 2009. Touati, Houari, Entre Dieu et les hommes. Lettrés, saints et sorciers au Maghreb (XVIIe siècle), Paris 1994. Triaud, Jean-Louis and David Robinson, eds., La Tijāniyya. Une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l’Afrique, Paris 2000. Trimingham, John Spencer, The Sufi orders in Islam, Oxford 1971. Werbner, Pnina, Pilgrims of love. The anthropology of a global Sufi cult, Karachi and Oxford 2005. Winter, Michael, Society and religion in early Ottoman Egypt. Studies in the writings of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb āl-Shaʿrānī, New Brunswick, NJ 1982.

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Chapter 10

Ṣūfī Altruism Richard McGregor The idea of selflessness, the willing forfeiture of one’s interests for another, seems to have pervaded cultural and religious systems throughout history. We might rightfully start to explore this idea by distinguishing between actions and motivations that serve others, and those that serve ourselves. Any discussion of the concept of altruism, however, quickly encounters a conundrum. Why, for example, should a Muslim pay zakāt, the obligatory tax for the poor? Why should anyone give charity in any form? Why be patient and forgiving with friends? And why do we love our children? It seems that whatever form of altruism we examine, the boundary between serving others and ourselves, is in fact murky. On closer inspection, we might question who exactly benefits from charitable giving. Beyond improving the situation of the poor, the benefactors profit at several levels: they have a clear conscience in the face of economic inequality, they may live in a socially peaceful, less hostile public space, and earn heavenly credit against their sins, and improve their own afterlife. Selflessness toward family and friends might occasion a similar quandary about altruism: the happiness and success of friends enriches our lives, and the sacrifices we make for children are long-term investments in a thriving family, which reflects well on us. But we can muddy the waters around altruism further, by questioning if any act can be truly selfless. Acts of selflessness are taken quite seriously in several branches of Islamic knowledge. The practice of Islamic law, with its institutions of pious endowments (waqf, pl. awqāf ) and its charitable giving (zakāt and ṣadaqa), recognises and regulates altruism. Yet, it is in the field of Sufism that the complexities of altruism are most carefully explored. Here the term īthār, with its sense of privileging or preferring the other, is key. As we see, Ṣūfī thinkers followed various strands of the idea, which together form a multi-layered understanding of altruism. The first of these strands centres on the obligations imposed by religious law, obligations that demand the discipline of the self in return for divine favor and ultimate reward in the afterlife. The second strand embraces altruism as the religio-cultural virtue of chivalry, benevolence, and humility. Building on this chivalry, the third dimension moves beyond any sense of transactional reward for virtue, and transforms

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selflessness into a mystical experience that decentres the subject’s selfhood, and ultimately collapses that self into its relationship with the divine. In Arabic, the notions of altruism and selflessness (īthār) include such terms as akrama (to treat with reverence, to honor), faḍḍala (to give preference), and qaddama (to set another forward). An overview of the terminology used by exegetes and philologists (Ohlander, Altruism) is based on key scriptural reference, such as Qurʾān 59:9, which states, “And they prefer them to themselves, although they are indigent.” The context for this passage is the welcome extended by the Muslims of Medina (the Anṣār), despite the hardship, to their coreligionists (the Muhājirūn) fleeing Mecca. The moral value of this selflessness is recognised in the Qurʾānic revelation, which, in several instances, recasts worldly wealth in terms of its metaphysical import, most clearly by enjoining charity. The common understanding that zakāt is the obligatory tax paid yearly, in contrast to ṣadaqa, which is voluntary giving, is not born out in the Qurʾānic text (see, for example, 9:103–4). Later legal discourse, however, confirms these conceptual boundaries, projecting them back into the Qurʾānic material (see Wier and Zysow). Regardless, the Qurʾān claims that God recognises all charitable giving: “Those who spend their wealth (in God’s way) by night and by day, secretly and publicly—they will have their reward with their Lord. And no fear shall they have, nor will they grieve” (Q 2:274). The heavenly credit such giving accrues will be counted against the record of one’s misdeeds: “If you give publicly, this is beneficial. But if you conceal your giving to the poor, that is better, for it will atone for some of your sins. God is well-informed of all that you do” (Q 2:271). Thus, while social recognition of one’s altruism is desirable, one’s account with heaven is primary. Beyond these worldly calculations, however, an ethical claim is made upon the conscience. All such giving must be done with mindful selflessness; the Qurʾān tells us that kind words are better than alms followed by reproachful or hurtful words (Q 2:263–64). The various pre-Islamic conceptions of virtue, which celebrated heroic notions of selflessness, hospitality, loyalty, and generosity were important sources for Ṣūfī altruism. The great poets of pre-Islamic Arabia often boasted that they were unmatched in gift-giving; their friends were rewarded in good times, and the poor and hungry were sustained in times of need (Homerin, 67–9). The term futuwwa denoted this virtuous condition, which Sufism appropriated early in its history. Al-Sulamī’s (d. 412/1021) Kitāb al-futuwwa (Book of chivalry) is replete with hagiographical stories of altruistic Ṣūfīs, while ʿAbdallāh al-Harawī (d. 481/1089) describes three levels of futuwwa. First, one abandons fractious quarreling, and forgets the faults and offences of others. Ascending

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to the second stage, one seeks reconciliation with estranged companions, and honours (without prejudice) those who have caused offense or outrage. At the third level, one seeks no reward for one’s generosity, forgives one’s enemies, and seeks neither apology nor retribution from those who have caused offence (al-Harawī, 84). Al-Harawī’s definition of Ṣūfī chivalry resonates well with the definition of altruism, which maintains that one can be selfless in relation to others and move toward an ethics in which the tensions and friction are removed from such calculations. Much of this selfless ethics was mirrored in the Persian concept of jawānmardī, which was also incorporated variously into the Ṣūfī tradition (Ridgeon, Morals and mysticism, 5–6; Ridgeon, Reading Sufi history, 384–5). Like the pre-Islamic image of the selfless hero, the Muslim figure of the Ṣūfī shaykh, often at significant personal risk, defended the poor and the exploited. Several examples can be enumerated. In the Egyptian context, Muḥammad al-Ḥifnāwī (d. 1181/1768) embraced his role as a defender of the masses; this became a central component of his profile as a saintly figure (Clancy-Smith, 152). Interceding to protect victims of oppression might also require defending individuals higher up the social ladder. In 1201/1786, the Ottoman representative in Egypt, Ḥasan Pasha, took to openly extorting money and women from prominent Cairene families. The only successful resistance was mounted by a group of Ṣūfī shaykhs. Abū l-Anwār (d. 1228/1813) (Winter, 142), head of the Wafāʾiyya Ṣūfī order, Aḥmad al-ʿArūsī (d. 1208/1794) (Winter, 119–24), and Aḥmad al-Dardīr (d. 1201/1786), then head of the Khalwatiyya order in Egypt, banded together to march to the citadel and deliver a letter of protest to the ruler (al-Jabartī, 2:196). Many a Ṣūfī shaykh was known for charity toward the hungry. The seventh/ thirteenth-century Maghribī saint, Abū Marwān al-Yuḥānisī, was famous for his generosity during the yearly celebrations of the Prophet’s birthday (mawlid al-nabī), during which he typically fed the needy multitudes for eight consecutive days (al-Qashtālī, 105–7). In the same region, the Ṣūfī hagiographer Ibn Qunfudh (d. 810/1407) claimed that, for many Ṣūfīs, feeding the poor was essential to their spiritual discipline and training (Ibn Qunfudh, 23; Berque makes much the same point in regard to the Ṣūfī zāwiya [lodge] generally, see Berque, 127). In Cairo, the yearly saint day commemorating Aḥmad al-Dardīr has long been an occasion during which his zāwiya distributes significant alms to the poor, in the form of money and food (Waugh, 66). In Iran and India, the langar played much the same public charitable role (Papas, 23–4). Such altruism not only benefits the needy, but is an organizing principle for the Ṣūfī’s relationship to those in power with worldly possessions. In the Indian context, a twelfth-/eighteenth-century hagiography presents Bābā

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Palangpūsh’s retort to the criticism that he spends too much time with the wealthy of this world: I have been licensed and appointed by God—may He be exalted and glorified!—to make money from the wealthy for my visiting them, and bestow it upon the indigent. Truly the lion goes out in search of food after three days, when his hunger has grown. He does not set up his authority over lesser animals until he has brought a massive prey into his claws. After eating something, he leaves what remains for those beneath him like jackals and foxes and so on, and in his accustomed manner turns back to his rest! Digby, 61

The shaykh likens his charity to the acquisitiveness of a predator who leaves scraps for the animals below him in the food chain. In the same period, another Ṣūfī teacher explains that tradition calls on the shaykh to act simply as a conduit between the wealthy and the poor. This is reflected in the term faqīr (lit., ‘impoverished’), a common term for Ṣūfīs in the Persian-speaking world. Bābā Musāfir, who was known for visiting the sick and helping widows in distress, declared, “A faqír should not own anything. If God … sends something from nowhere, he should spend it immediately. If anything remains, it is the custom of a faqír not to keep it with him … This has been the way of faqírs of former times” (Digby, 106). Social assistance is also formalised through the institution of the waqf, or perpetual endowment. Here, wealth established permanent service institutions, typically for the poor, and in formalised Ṣūfī communities (Sabra in this volume). Waqfs can be found throughout the Islamic world, but given its size and wealth, Cairo was particularly well-endowed. Ribāṭs or Ṣūfī hostels were established in the Mamlūk period to house Ṣūfī communities, or to provide wider social services. One example, from the middle of the ninth/fifteenth century, was the Ribāṭ Zawjat Ināl, intended specifically to house destitute widows. Zaynab, the wife of Sultan Ināl (r. 857–65/1453–61) established the ribāṭ near the Ṣūfī zāwiya of the Sādāt al-Wafāʾiyya, and appointed Ḥusnāʾ (d. 888/1483) the daughter of one of the order’s founding figures ʿAlī Wafāʾ (d. 807/1405) as its first director (McGregor, 58). A much larger waqf had been established a century earlier by Sultan Baybars al-Jāshnakīr (d. 710/1310). This consisted of an assemblage of institutions that included a khānqāh, a ribāṭ, and a qubba funerary complex. The khānqāh provided housing for one hundred Ṣūfīs, who attended daily prayers and devotional exercises in return for a monthly stipend. The ribāṭ served as a hospice for

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one hundred Muslims, chosen from among the poor of the city, thirty of whom resided there; all received a monthly stipend, and a daily ration of bread and meat. Additional funds were earmarked for manumitting slaves, providing bail for poor Muslims in jail, providing shrouds for those who died destitute, and buying medicine for the poor (Fernandez, 24–7; Firouzeh in this volume). In this configuration, charity was inseparable from the practice and institutionalisation of Sufism. The charitable function of a waqf supported other types of religious activities. In the eleventh/seventeenth century, Shāhīn Aḥmad endowed a sabīl-kuttāb (public fountain and Qurʾān school) that included money in perpetuity to cover school fees, along with food and clothing, for students who were orphaned (Badr and Crecelius, 83). Another foundation provided for the needs of blind students studying at al-Azhar, and for local Muslim poor (Crecelius, 135). Alongside the waqf and related charitable institutions, Ṣūfī theorists have explored altruism for its role in spiritual training. These reflections took place beyond the transactional relationship of divine reward and punishment; they focus instead on the transformative possibilities of selflessness. A prominent theme was that of begging, which was generally seen as beneficial for the Ṣūfī novice. Not all Ṣūfī shaykhs agreed, however, for example, Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī (d. c. 656/1258) forbade his followers from begging for alms. This position set a tone for his order, which expanded across the Islamic world and asserted its independence in part through its financial autonomy. Al-Shādhilī is reported to have worn fine clothes to signal his independence from worldly political powers (Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh, 98). Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049), an early Persian Ṣūfī master, defended his wealth, saying that God put some Ṣūfīs at the station of contemplation (which includes wealth), and others at the station of mortification (al-Hujwīrī, 346). Another prominent teacher claimed that, for some Ṣūfīs, service to their shaykh and the community is more beneficial to their spiritual training than any of the supererogatory devotions Ṣūfīs were famous for (Chih in this volume). This was the context in which Abū l-Najīb al-Suhrawardī (d. 563/1168) said, “Service (khidma) is a rank second only to that of shaykhood” (Ohlander, Sufism, 207). Al-Suhrawardī’s position on begging, however, recognised the multiple levels at which khidma operated. He allowed it for his followers on two conditions: when it benefited fellow Ṣūfīs, and when the Ṣūfī him/herself was in need. He supported this with the rationale that begging restrained the pride of one’s ego (al-Suhrawardī, 71). Since disciplining the ego is a central concern in mystical training, the humiliation concomitant with begging could be a useful tool in a Ṣūfī’s training. The Khurāsānī Ṣūfī master Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988) relates a number of stories in which adepts were enjoined to beg,

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in order to decrease their pride and arrogance (al-Sarrāj, 191–2). The influential Ṣūfī author al-Hujwīrī, popularly known as Dātā Ganj Bakhsh (d. c. 467/1074), relates stories from early Ṣūfī history on the usefulness of begging as an exercise in self-effacement. Begging should be done for the sake of discipline, not for profit; thus, aspirants curb their egos by learning that they are nothing in the eyes of others (al-Hujwīrī, 360). The third dimension of altruism continues with this focus on inner benefits. More precisely, the ultimate import of īthār is that it bridges the divide between the seeker and the divine. Al-Harawī lists the three levels of preference that culminate in a transcending of the self. At the first level, īthār is manifested as preferring others, respecting their rights, and aspiring to noble acts, generally. This is followed by a level at which the seeker prefers God’s satisfaction above all others, even if that entails burdens of poverty or his own anguish. At the last stage, ‘preference’ as we normally understand it, is abandoned, since it preserves the distance of the subject-object relationship. Rather than struggling to discern God’s preference, and exerting oneself in its pursuit, the boundaries break down, and the Ṣūfī leaves behind that very struggle (al-Harawī, 44–5). Al-Hujwīrī identifies the school of Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Nūrī (d. 295/907), associated with al-Junayd’s school of ‘sober’ Sufism, as one that is centrally concerned with the concepts of companionship and altruism. For al-Nūrī, the Ṣūfī path was a place shared by a community (although some teachers would disagree with him) and thus retirement (ʿuzla) is an inferior and even baleful practice. In an echo of the Neoplatonists’ struggles against the lower self, with its worldly desires and appetites, for al-Nūrī, Ṣūfī altruism is the key to proper conduct, and thus the key to eternal life. But beyond the rewards of paradise, which are predicated on distance between the individual and God, a higher altruism leads to union with the divine, and a collapsing of that distance (al-Hujwīrī, 189–93). To illustrate the depths of Ṣūfī preference, the story is told of a convert to the Ṣūfī path, Aḥmad Ḥammadī. Inspired but discomfited by the Qurʾānic verse, “They prefer them to themselves, although they are indigent” (Q 59:9), Aḥmad had set off into the desert with his camels, intent on staying as long as needed to attain to some insight. He tells of a hungry lion that killed one of his camels, but rather than eating it, the lion withdrew to a nearby high ground and roared. Foxes, jackals, wolves, and others gathered to eat, but the noble lion kept his distance until they had eaten their fill. Then he approached the remains with the intention of satiating his hunger, but seeing a lame fox on the horizon, the lion withdrew again until the unfortunate fox had eaten. After eating what was left of the kill, the lion turned to Aḥmad and said, “Even a lowly dog can prefer others over itself in the matter of food; but a great person sacrifices even in

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matters of spirit, and life itself” (al-Hujwīrī, 193). The lion’s lesson for Aḥmad clearly points beyond any calculation or reward for one’s altruism, and toward one’s spiritual orientation on the mystical path. Al-Nūrī himself embodied this insight in his own saintly acts. One day the caliph was set to execute three Ṣūfīs for heresy and al-Nūrī stepped forward to offer himself to the executioner, saying, Yes, my doctrine is founded on preference (īthār). Life is the most precious thing in the world: I wish to sacrifice for my brethren’s sake the few moments that remain. In my opinion, one moment of this world is better than a thousand years of the next world because this is the place of service (khidma) and that is the place of proximity (qurba), and proximity is gained by service. al-Hujwīrī, 191

In a subsequent exchange with the chief judge, al-Nūrī won mercy for the Ṣūfīs by describing their intimate connections with God. After he exonerated them, the caliph asked them what they would like from him, to which they responded, “The only boon we ask of thee is that thou shouldst forget us, and neither make us thy favorites nor banish us from thy court, for thy favour and displeasure are alike to us” (al-Hujwīrī, 191). Thus, al-Nūrī’s path of īthār not only signals indifference to the material things of this world, but also that such selfless indifference gives meaning to proximity with God—the goal of all Ṣūfīs in both this life and the next. The Maghribī Ṣūfī saint, Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Sabtī (d. 601/1205) represents another model of sanctity connected to altruism. Inspired by the Prophet’s Sunna, and Qurʾānic passages, including “They prefer them to themselves, although they are indigent” (Q 59:9), he concludes that īthār is an essential part of the Prophet’s legacy. Al-Sabtī resolved to put it into practice, in his life and teachings; he vowed to only ever accept one-seventh of any gift ever given to him, and to leave the rest to his fellow Ṣūfīs and the poor. He notes that after decades of practicing this altruism, his spiritual capacities were greatly increased. Whatever the saint’s thoughts resolved upon, inevitably came to pass. Whenever he called on God, the divine voice would immediately attend to him, announcing labbayka—here I am, at your service! (al-Tādilī, 460). The tri-fold structure of altruism that has emerged from this survey closely mirrors the observations that we can make of the Ṣūfī treatment of other key concepts. For example, we can see in the concept of tawakkul (complete trust in God) much the same dynamic—of a movement from a preliminary

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transactional level, to a spiritually reflective position—that turns toward the self, and ultimately to a mystical harmonisation of the individual with the divine (al-Tustarī, 104–5). It should come as no surprise that we can find a similar progression in the early Ṣūfī conceptions of asceticism (zuhd). The Ṣūfī master of Baghdad Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz (d. 286/899) identified three dimensions, the highest of which transcends any transactional reward, bringing the seeker into an all-encompassing love and submission to the divine (al-Kharrāz, 43). Bibliography Badr, H. and D. Crecelius, The waqfs of Shahin Ahmad Agha, AI 26 (1992): 79–114. Berque, Jacques, Al-Youssi : problèmes de la culture marocaine au XVII ème siècle, Paris 1958. Clancy-Smith, J., The man with two tombs. Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman, founder of the Algerian Rahmaniyya, ca. 1715–1798, in G. Martin and C. Ernst (eds.), Manifestations of sainthood in Islam (Istanbul 1993), 147–70. Crecelius, D., The waqfiyah of Muhammad Bey Abu al-Dhahab II, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt XVI (1971): 125–46. Digby, Simon, Sufis and soldiers in Awrangzeb’s Deccan. Malfuzat-i Naqshbandiyya, London 2001. Fernandez, L., The foundation of Baybars al-Jashankir. Its waqf, history, and architecture, Muqarnas 4 (1987): 21–42. al-Harawī, ʿAbdallāh al-Anṣārī, Les étapes des itinérants vers Dieu : édition critique, avec introduction, traduction, et lexique (Manāzil al-sāʾirīn), ed. and trans. S. de Beaurecueil, Cairo 1962. Homerin, E., Altruism in Islam, in J. Neusner and B. Chilton (eds.), Altruism in world religions (Georgetown 2005), 67–88. al-Hujwīrī, The kashf al-mahjúb. The oldest Persian treatise on Sufism, trans. R. A. Nicholson, London 1911. Ḥusayn b. Qunfudh, Aḥmad b., Uns al-faqīr wa ʿizz al-ḥaqīr, ed. M. Fāsī, Rabat 1965. al-Jabartī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī’s history of Egypt (ʿAjāʾib al-āthār), ed. T. Phillip and M. Perlman, 4 vols., Stuttgart 1994. al-Kharrāz, Abū Saʿīd, al-Ṭarīq ilà Allāh. Kitāb al-ṣidq, ed. ʿAbd al-Halīm Maḥmūd, Cairo 1985. McGregor, Richard, Sanctity and mysticism in medieval Islamic Egypt, Albany 2004. Ohlander, Erik S., Altruism, EI3. Ohlander, Erik S., Sufism in an age of transition. ʿUmar al-Suhrawardi and the rise of the Islamic mystical brotherhoods, Leiden 2008.

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Papas, Alexandre, Vagrancy and pilgrimage according to the Sufi Qalandari path, in M. Boivin and R. Delage (eds.), Devotional Islam in contemporary South Asia. Shrines, journeys and wanderers (New York 2016), 15–30. al-Qashtālī, Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm, Tuḥfat al-mughtarib bi-bilād al-Maghrib, ed. F. de la Granja, Madrid 1974. al-Qushayri, Al-Qushayri’s epistle on Sufism, trans. A. Knysh, Reading 2007. Ridgeon, Lloyd, Morals and mysticism in Persian Sufism. A history of Sufi-futuwwat in Iran, New York 2010. Ridgeon, Lloyd, Reading Sufi history through ādāb. The perspectives of Sufis, Jawānmardān and Qalandars, in F. Chiabotti et al. (eds.), Ethics and spirituality in Islam. Sufi adab (Leiden 2016), 379–401. al-Ṣabbāgh, Muḥammad b. Abī l-Qāsim b., Durrat al-asrār wa tuḥfat al-abrār, Cairo 2001. al-Sarrāj, Abū Naṣr, The Kitāb al-lumaʿ, ed. and trans. R. A. Nicholson, Leiden 1914. al-Suhrawardī, ʿAbd al-Qāhir b. ʿAbdallāh, Ādāb al-murīdīn, Cairo n.d. al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Kitāb al-futuwwa, ed. S. Ates, Ankara 1977. al-Tādilī, Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf b. Yaḥyā, Akhbār Abī l-ʿAbbās al-Sabtī, appended to his al-Tashawwuf ilā rijāl taṣawwuf, ed. A. al-Tawfīq, Rabat 19972. al-Tustarī, Sahl, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, ed. M. Geratallah, 3 vols., Cairo 2002. Waugh, Earl, Visionaries of silence. The reformist Sufi order of the Demirdashiya alKhalwatiya in Cairo, Cairo 2008. Wier, T. H. and A. Zysow, Ṣadaḳa, EI2. Winter, Michael, Egyptian society under Ottoman rule, 1517–1798, New York 1992.

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Chapter 11

Sufism, Urbanisation, and Sociability in Cities Nathalie Clayer Ṣūfīs and their institutions have played a role in urbanisation processes in two ways: sometimes, directly or indirectly, they were at the origin of city foundations and urban developments; at other times, they were active in the integration of individuals and groups in the urban fabric, and participated in urban affairs, including in the life of contemporary megacities, in a wide variety of ways. Contrary to the idea that Sufism should be limited to world-renouncing mysticism or folk Islam, naturally rooted in isolated and rural settings rather than in urban spaces, the relationship between Ṣūfīs and cities has long been and remains very close. As Ahmet Karamustafa has shown, Sufism as an interiorised mode of piety appeared in the educated urban milieus of Baghdad, the ʿAbbāsid capital, in the second half of the third/ninth century and spread into a variety of urban places, thanks to the activities of the disciples of Baghdadi masters, first in Lower Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia (Karamustafa). There, the educated urban groups eventually merged with the followers of other inwardlooking mystical movements that operated in urban spheres, especially those of the Malāmatiyya (lit., the “path of blame”) that had spread among traders and craftsmen and was linked to futuwwa groups (chivalry associations of young urbanites) (Afshari in this volume). With the formation of local communities, including charismatic masters (shaykhs) and their disciples, Sufism in cities acquired a high level of social visibility. From the fourth/tenth century onward, the process of Sufism’s integration into city life was strengthened by the establishment of lodges that bore various names, including ribāṭ, khānaqāh, dargāh, zāwiya, or tekke) (Ephrat and Pinto in this volume; Firouzeh in this volume). Since the Ṣūfī concept of sainthood gave urban Ṣūfī leaders, dead or alive, a charisma based on their proximity with God (walāya), they became foci of attraction for people beyond the circle of initiated disciples or the urban middle and upper classes. From the fifth/eleventh century on, partly through the cult of saints and partly the development of antinomian mystical currents, Sufism spread, largely outside cities and towns, to villages, steppes, oases, and deserts (Ocak in this volume). That is, Sufism was not exclusively an urban phenomenon. However, with the

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spread of Islam and because or, maybe, despite the transformations of societies, Ṣūfīs remained, in many cases, key actors of urbanisation processes and the development of urban sociabilities. 1

Ṣūfīs and Urbanisation Processes

Ṣūfīs have been actors of urbanisation, whether as participants in the formation of urban centres and their modelling, or in the integration of individuals or groups into the urban fabric. For instance, Ethel Sara Wolper has shown that, in mediaeval Anatolia, with the collapse of the Saljūqs and the rise of local principalities in the mid seventh/thirteenth century, Ṣūfī lodges became physical structures around which the cities of Sivas, Tokat, and Amasya were re-organised (Wolper). However, according to Maxime Durocher, if during the seventh/thirteen to ninth/fifteenth century, in Tokat particularly, several urban and peri-urban lodges were erected, it is difficult, because of the lack of sources, to determine the exact place and function of such institutions in the urban development (Durocher). The Ottomans, who emerged as a new power in the region in the mid eighth/fourteenth century and established a huge empire encompassing the Balkans and the Arab lands, cultivated close relations with various Ṣūfī groups and saints. In some cases, this relation put Ṣūfīs at the heart of city formation. For example, the foundation of Babadağ, in Dobruja (in today’s Romania), which at that time was located in a newly conquered region, resulted from a decision of sultan Bāyezīd II (r. 886–918/1481–1512) in the 890s/1480s to create a city centre around the tomb of the saint Ṣārı Ṣaltūq (who was active in the Balkans in the second half of the seventh/thirteenth century). According to the legend, the sultan saw the saint in a dream. The sultan endowed the future city through a pious foundation (waqf ) and offered tax exemptions to would-be settlers. A new mausoleum (türbe) was erected, as well as a dervish lodge (tekke), a mosque, a madrasa, an imaret (popular kitchen), a caravanserai, a public bath (ḥamām), and even streets (Kiel). Further west, in Bosnia, Ṣūfī institutions were also active in developing and Islamising mediaeval Christian towns or expanding new Islamic towns after the Ottoman conquest of the ninth/fifteenth century. Tekkes were the first Islamic institutions erected in mediaeval towns such as Visoko, Rogatica, and Zvornik (Aščerić-Todd). In at least two cases, urban centres emerged as the result of the activity of Ṣūfīs, with or without the support of political-administrative figures. The town of Skender-Vakuf was founded by the dervish ʿAlī Dede Iskender who had received a tract of land (tīmār). But the most significant case is that of Sarajevo itself. The future Bosnian metropolis probably emerged from the

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foundation of a Ṣūfī lodge (the Ghāzīler tekke) by dervishes who came with the Ottoman troops during the conquest and settled there in the 830s/1430s. Later, in 866–7/1462, the local Ottoman governor, ʿIsā Beg, often considered the city founder, made a donation for the construction of another Ṣūfī lodge and additional buildings, including a mosque, which gave to Sarajevo a real urban character. In the early tenth/sixteenth century, another local governor, Ghāzī Khusrev Beg, also endowed the town with a complex of buildings comprising a khānaqāh for the Khalwatī/Halvetī dervishes. Many toponyms in the city remind us that several Sarajevo neighbourhoods grew around Ṣūfī lodges or shrines. Similar processes took place elsewhere in the Muslim world, where Ṣūfī shrines, in particular, formed the core of new cities. Eric Ross, who cites the examples of Mawlay Idriss Zerhoun and Ouazzane in Morocco, and Khuldabad in the Deccan (in the Indian subcontinent), uses the concept of “shrine-town” (Ross, Sufi, 3). In Shīʿī areas, certain Ṣūfī shrines had equally symbiotic relations with urban settlements. Such was the case of Ardabil (in northern Iran), where the tomb and the zāwiya of Shaykh Ṣafī l-Dīn Ardabīlī (d. 735/1334), situated in the bazaar area, grew and changed along with the city (Rizvi). The example of sub-Saharan Africa, where Jean-Louis Triaud observed three types of encounter between Islam and cities—urban Islamic enclaves, cities around Islamic courts, and saintly cities—is particularly striking in that it shows that, even in (partially) nomadic societies, Ṣūfīs also contributed to urbanisation. In these regions, from the second half of the twelfth/eighteenth century, that is, during the second wave of the Islamisation of sub-Saharan Africa, Ṣūfīs who had already been active among nomadic tribes were influential in the foundation of many cities, for religious, but also for economic and political reasons (Triaud; Hamès). Leaders of the Sanūsiyya Ṣūfī order in Cyrenaica considered the construction of zāwiyas (Ṣūfī lodges) not only a means to sanctify the space and to foster religious activities, but also to advance education, trade, crafts, and politics. Their centre was the new city of al-Jaghbūb (in present-day Libya). The Tijānī Ṣūfīs were responsible for the development of various cities (Tivouane and Kaolack in Senegal, Nioro in Mali, Kano in Nigeria), whereas other Ṣūfī shaykhs in Mauritania built zāwiyas that became the nuclei of sedentarisation and urbanisation. The Murīds, who built the holy city of Touba (in Senegal), represent an extreme example: Shaykh Aḥmadu Bàmba Mbàkke (1853–1927) founded the city in 1887, but it developed mainly during the twentieth century. Touba remained a city entirely managed by the disciples of this charismatic leader, and its urban design is the product of the application of Ṣūfī principles and concepts symbolised by the “Touba,” that is the “tree of paradise,” according to certain prophetic ḥadīths (Ross, Sufi).

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If Ṣūfī networks play a role in urbanisation processes, it is also because of the links between the shaykh (the charismatic leader) and his disciples, and between the disciples themselves; these links contribute to the integration of individuals and groups into the urban fabric. In the Indian case, Ṣūfī shrines, and the production of Ṣūfī writings that publicised and promoted them, mediatised mobility from the eighth/fourteenth century onwards. These buildings and texts have been part and parcel of the geography of migration in the urban topography (Green). More recently, in sub-Saharan Africa, urban and transnational migrations appear to have been facilitated by Ṣūfī networks, which provided access to housing and helped newcomers integrate into local commercial networks (Riccio; Fall). Thus Ṣūfī institutions acted not only as cores and markers of urban spaces, they were also loci of sociability. 2

Ṣūfīs and the Urban Social Fabric

On the one hand, Ṣūfīs were very active in the religious and social life of cities. On the other hand, the evolution of urban settings also altered patterns of Ṣūfī organisations and practices. Paradoxically perhaps, Ṣūfī lodges within cities have been places of retreat and isolation from the outer world. In some cases, special rooms or cells built inside lodges were devoted to seclusion (khalwa). This was particularly (but not exclusively) true in establishments belonging to Ottoman Halvetī groups, which placed seclusion at the heart of their practices, because spiritual leaders and some elected members engaged in individual khalwas as part of their regular spiritual exercises, and other members occasionally did so as well (Curry). Nevertheless, most of the religious practices held in Ṣūfī lodges or in other spaces (private places, mosques, madrasas) were collective and implied a religious sociability, during religious festivals and pilgrimages, as well as in everyday life, including pious and meditative visits to saints’ tombs, practices of devotion to shaykhs, prayers, and communal rituals such as the dhikr (remembrance of God through a repetition of formulas and divine names). Generally, this sociability of several circles of initiated and non-initiated people around the spiritual master (and sometimes his family) was hierarchical, codified, and often gendered (Clayer, Life; Le Gall). As places of initiation of the disciples by the spiritual master, Ṣūfī establishments and other Ṣūfī spatial arrangements were also sites for education and transmission not only of Ṣūfī creeds, ethics, and principles, but also of Islamic knowledge, as well as the profane sciences and arts (literature, poetry, calligraphy, and so on). For instance, the transmission of the Mathnavī-yi maʿnavī (the well-known mystical poem

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written by Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, d. 672/1273) was central to the diffusion of the Naqshbandī Ṣūfī path in tenth-/sixteenth-century Istanbul, and took place together with the transmission of the teachings of Ibn al-ʿArabī (the well-known Andalusian Ṣūfī, d. 638/1240) and the rigorous observance of the sharīʿa (Le Gall). Therefore, rich libraries can be found in such places (for example, at Timbuktu, on which see Ross, A historical), even though oral transmission (through formulas, tales, poetry, and religious hymns) remained central in the diffusion of beliefs for most followers. Similarly, Sufism could be connected with the urban economy in a number of ways. In premodern Anatolia and the Balkans, and probably also in the Arab lands, urban crafts and trade guilds were influenced, for a long period, by futuwwa and Ṣūfī principles inherited from the tradition of the Akhī guilds (Kara; Aščerić-Todd). Urban craftsmen and traders shared with them a brotherhood organisation, as well as a religious ethics and esoteric principles. Ṣūfī lodges were often located in bazaars or their vicinity, attesting to their intimate links to economic activities. Through the system of pious foundations (waqf, pl. awqāf ) and donations made by powerful patrons or more modest followers, dervish establishments were founded, maintained, and embellished, and their religious staff rewarded from the revenue of shops, mills, agricultural lands, etc. Thus, Ṣūfī institutions became small enterprises managed by an administrator (mütevellī in Turkish), often a descendant of the founder. From a social point of view, many Ṣūfī lodges also functioned as inns, offering hospitality to travellers, and to villagers coming from the countryside to the city for administrative or economic purposes. They served as homes for social assistance: food and material support were given to various groups of the urban population, well beyond the circles of initiated members. As in rural areas, the charisma of shaykhs made them not only spiritual guides, but also advisers in social matters and arbitrators in conflicts. People came to ask the shaykhs for advice concerning their families, their personal lives, and their professional activities. Places of contacts and sociability, the dervish lodges may also have been places of disputes. On the one hand, conflicts regularly happened over the shaykh’s succession (Zarcone, Shaykh) or competition occurred between spiritual leaders; on the other hand, Ṣūfīs were involved in sociopolitical factions for the territorial control of cities or their neighbourhoods, as in medieval Iran (Rahimi). Ṣūfī lodges and other spatial arrangements, such as gates and pathways, were the nucleus of sociability in and beyond the neighbourhoods where they were located. The study of the tekke of Imrahor founded in the Yedikule quarter in Istanbul at the beginning of the tenth/sixteenth century shows that, in the course of the nineteenth century, among the dervishes who were initiated

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by the shaykh, some lived inside the lodge itself while others were artisans and religious servants living around and in nearby neighbourhoods. Other initiated dervishes were employed in the sultan’s palace. A few fellow disciples had a common name indicating their provincial origin (Clayer and Vatin). If the local dimension is often predominant, the fact remains that some lodges were still connected to social networks that went far beyond the city itself, ensuring the function of shelters for ethno-regional mobile networks. In this case, the urban Ṣūfī establishments became nodes of mobility between different places in the Muslim world and its holy places. Ṣūfīs opened tekkes in Istanbul, Konya, Bursa, Antakya (Antioch), Aleppo, Damascus, and Jerusalem to welcome Indian and Central Asian pilgrims on a hajj (for the “Hindi” and “Özbek” tekkes, see Zarcone, Histoire; Zarcone, Sufi; Can; Choudhury). In the Middle East and in the city of Cairo in particular, the Ṣūfī lodges of the Mevlevīs and the Bektāşīs likewise served as hubs for Turkish-speaking sociability, while other establishments attracted people from the Maghrib. In addition to these long distance networks, urban Ṣūfī lodges were also part of shorter distance networks that allowed for the integration of villagers or inhabitants of small towns into larger urban centres and facilitated the life of neo-urbanites when urbanisation processes were at work. Perhaps more in the cities than elsewhere, Ṣūfī places of worship were often used as meeting places for various religious groups, despite the great differences in practices, beliefs, and imaginary. This frequently occurred in Anatolia and is still quite visible in India. However, in times of crisis, such places also became sites of tensions, disputes, and conflicts among confessional communities and sectarian groups (Werbner, Globalising). 3

The Impact of the City on Ṣūfī Institutions

The process of integrating Ṣūfīs and their institutions into urban societies was changing. In so far as they were influenced by local as well as global transformations, Ṣūfīs themselves underwent changes by becoming involved in new forms of urban sociability or tensions. Here it is not possible to analyse every local or regional change. Among global processes in the premodern epoch, we should mention the spread of the consumption of coffee that was imported from the Arabic Peninsula in the tenth/sixteenth century. Dervish circles, which began to use the virtues of coffee to stay awake during night vigils, promoted the new beverage. The drinking of coffee became ritualised. In some lodges, spaces were dedicated to its preparation and consumption, and religious duties were associated with it. In the Ottoman capital, it is significant that Ṣūfīs using coffee were attacked by ʿulamāʾ who considered the practice

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to be illicit (Zilfi; Baer). In his epistolary correspondence, the Damascene Ṣūfī scholar ʿAbd al-Ghanī l-Nābulusī (d. 1143/1731) felt the need to discuss, using religious arguments, the habits of urban sociability in relation to coffee consumption (Akkach). Later transformations, such as trans-imperial mobility, affected urban Sufism as well. According to Choudhury, over the “long” twelfth/ eighteenth century, the lodges erected for Indian dervishes in Istanbul and other cities of the Ottoman Empire might be considered Ottoman institutions, since their users interacted with the urban society and the local authorities. And as such, “international” tekkes were places where imperial subjects of various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds found a new way of identifying themselves in the context of the decentralization of the Ottoman Empire and trans-Asiatic imperialist rivalries (Choudhury). The nineteenth century saw major changes in the Muslim world. The spread of printing in cities was an innovation that brought changes in the Ṣūfī circles, as well as between Ṣūfī circles and other urban and foreign actors. In particular, the production of lithographs and printed books, a practice that mostly was confined to cities and towns led to the standardisation, systematisation, and popularisation of certain forms of Sufism (Chih, Mayeur-Jaouen, and Seesemann (eds.)). Above all, global phenomena, such as new methods of governance that imposed a stronger state discipline on social groups and bodies, and the efforts of colonial powers and local urban reformers to “modernise” cities, to control their population, and to deal with public health issues had a strong impact on the place of Ṣūfīs in the urban fabric. The state reorganisation of urban Sufism in Egypt (De Jong) and in the central Ottoman lands (Silverstein) was significant in this respect. This reorganisation was aimed at imposing stricter control on Ṣūfīs, while also regulating the presence of Ṣūfīs in urban public spaces and controlling visitation to Ṣūfī lodges. These reformist agendas were often associated with criticism expressed by political and administrative authorities and westernised intellectuals who denounced Ṣūfī lodges as places that condoned laziness, the consumption of drugs, etc. In fact, reformist Ṣūfīs themselves advocated, in one way or another, the adaptation to “modernity.” This was the case, for example, of the Xidaotang, a Ṣūfī group in northwest China that, at the turn of the twentieth century, was heavily involved in economic activities (Hille). Some other new currents, e.g., the Malāmatiyya/ Melāmīs in the central Ottoman lands and the Tijānīs in North Africa, went so far as to reject the principle of having specific spaces and promoted new types of sociability, as described later on in this chapter. In a somehow related spirit, modernisation and secularisation theories predicted the impending demise of Ṣūfī orders and institutions in modern cities and their survival in rural areas, where they were perceived as remnants

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of a premodern archaic social and economic order. However, recent studies have demonstrated that such predictions were premature. Ṣūfī groups have continued to be active in major cities, in private as well as in public spheres. Devotional life in urban Ṣūfī sacred places continued and even intensified in the colonial and post-colonial contexts, as Alexandre Papas argues in his study of the Bombay megalopolis (Papas). For his part, Constant Hamès, discussing the case of Nouakchott in Mauritania, points out that Ṣūfīs made their way into colonial and post-colonial cities that were founded and planned without any Islamic or Ṣūfī reference (Hamès). Sufism also spread to major cities in western Europe and the United States, where the first Ṣūfī organization appeared around 1915 (Malik and Hinnells (eds.); Raudvere and Stenberg (eds.); Sedgwick). In continuity with the evolution that took place from the end of the nineteenth century, two kinds of transformation, somewhat contradictory, affected the Ṣūfī milieus and their status in the city. First, Ṣūfīs adopted new forms of institutionalised and bureaucratised sociability, such as voluntary associations and political parties (Papas in this volume); consequently, the horizontal links between members sometimes became stronger than the vertical link between the master and the disciples. Second, some spiritual leaders became guru-like authorities and some Ṣūfī currents hybridised, becoming part of the so-called “New Age” religiosity. In the global urban context, the evolution of Ṣūfī networks toward voluntary associations can be observed in many areas of the Muslim world. In the case of Indonesia, several Ṣūfī orders, which are kinds of voluntary associations but retain the vertical charismatic authority of the shaykh over his disciples, applied a bureaucratised model of modern civic association and political party that had appeared there since 1912 (van Bruinessen). In the Balkans, Ṣūfī associations were established in the Albanian capital city of Tirana during the interwar period, with the goal of controlling and reforming several Ṣūfī brotherhoods. In Yugoslavia, similar associations were formed in Sarajevo and Prizren by dervishes themselves during the socialist period, as a means of joining forces to resist the anti-Ṣūfī mood of the official socialist Islamic institutions. In Turkey, we find a similar evolution, both despite and due to the fact that tekkes were closed in 1925 and ṭuruq (Ṣūfī orders) are still officially banned. Although Ṣūfī networks survived in secrecy, after 1925, neo-brotherhood networks developed around clandestine readings and teachings of the Qurʾān (the Süleymancıs) and the writings of Said Nursi (the Nurcus). From the 1960s onwards, under the umbrella of voluntary associations (vakıf ) or as congregations (cemaat) various Ṣūfī groups openly re-emerged in urban localities, notably in the ever-expanding megalopolis of Istanbul (today over 15 million inhabitants). More than ever before, Ṣūfī shaykhs serve as patrons, providing resources and

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guidance in a changing urban environment, especially in the historical part of the city that includes the Stambul Peninsula and Üsküdar (Atacan). Today, Ṣūfī activists are increasingly visible in the public sphere, organising a variety of events such as lessons and conferences, and becoming involved in economic as well as political activities (Silverstein; Özdalga). In the countries in which Ṣūfī orders were not banned, such as in Egypt, sociopolitical transformations led to changes similar to those mentioned above. According to Rachida Chih’s investigations, networks appeared around new social settings that differed from the original Ṣūfī lodges (Chih). In Egyptian cities, even in the sprawling Cairo (almost 20 million inhabitants), institutions have been created exclusively for disciples. The primary links are now among the disciples themselves and not between the master and his followers. The disciples meet in private apartments, in mosques, and in so-called gardens (sing. rawḍa). The rawḍa is a building that contains (at least) a large room for gatherings, but can also serve as a social and cultural centre, a mosque, a Qurʾān school, and occasionally, a clinic or even a hospital. In Africa, the Murīdiyya, the Tijāniyya, and other Ṣūfī orders also developed a form of local voluntary association, the daaira (from the Arabic dāʾira, lit. “circle”), which provides mutual support for urban members. In Senegal these organisations made their way into factories, universities, administrations, and various neighbourhoods where Ṣūfī rituals and festivals are organised (Villalón). The institutionalisation of Sufism observed in the urban settings of various countries can be intertwined with the rise, in the same spaces, of a more charismatic form of Sufism. For example, in Indonesia, tensions erupted between the charisma of certain Ṣūfī shaykhs and the political parties they were close to. In the 1980s, mystic figures and healers emerged and successfully established urban circles of followers, then, in the 1990s, saintly figures multiplied on the local scene (van Bruinessen). Esoteric knowledge and miracle-working seem to be the principal asset of these new religious personalities that attract either the urban poor, as in Mali (Soares), or dislocated migrants, like those living in western Europe. However, the research of Pnina Werbner among South Asian Ṣūfīs in Britain shows that, even around the same charismatic figures, urbanites or neo-urbanites look for different things, and that each Ṣūfī group in a given city may have different characteristics (more or less political, more or less in relation with the local authorities) and different ways to build personal and collective identities (Werbner, Intimate). In a similar vein, Alexandre Papas’ study on the megacity of Bombay stresses the development of “parochial” and spiritual lifestyles around Ṣūfī shrines in response to a violent environment characterised by social inequalities, overpopulation, poverty, pollution, and interreligious tensions (Papas).

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To sum up, Sufism is still extremely active in urban settings throughout the world, and surely capable of adapting itself to ever-changing local sociopolitical and global contexts and contributing to these changes. Bibliography Akkach, Samer, Letters of a Sufi scholar. The correspondence of ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (1641–1731), Leiden 2010. Aščerić-Todd, Ines, Dervishes and Islam in Bosnia. Sufi dimensions to the formation of Bosnian Muslim society, Leiden 2015. Atacan, Fulya, Sosyal değişme ve tarikat. Cerrahiler, Istanbul 1990. Baer, Marc David, Honored by the glory of Islam. Conversion and conquest in Ottoman Europe, Oxford 2008. Can, Lâle, Connecting people. A Central Asian Sufi network in turn-of-the-century Istanbul, Modern Asian Studies 46/2 (2012): 373–401. Chih, Rachida, What is a Sufi order? Revisiting the concept through a case study of the Khalwatiyya in contemporary Egypt, in Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (eds.), Sufism and the ‘modern’ in Islam (London and New York 2007), 21–38. Chih, Rachida, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, and Ruedigger Seesemann, eds., Sufism, literary production and printing in the nineteenth century, Würzburg 2015. Choudhury, Rishad, The hajj and the Hindi. The ascent of the Indian Sufi lodge in the Ottoman empire, Modern Asian Studies 50/6 (2016): 1888–1931. Clayer, Nathalie and Nicolas Vatin, Un établissement de derviches stambouliote. Le tekke d’Imrahor, Anatolia Moderna/Yeni Anadolu VI (1997): 31–82. Clayer, Nathalie, Life in an Istanbul tekke in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries according to a ‘menakibnâme’ of the Cerrahi dervishes, in Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph Neumann (eds.), The illuminated table, the prosperous house. Food and shelter in Ottoman material culture (Würzburg 2003), 219–35. Curry, John, The transformation of Muslim mystical thought in the Ottoman empire. The rise of the Halveti order, 1350–1650, Edinburgh 2011. De Jong, Fred, Ṭuruq and ṭuruq-linked institutions in nineteenth century Egypt, Leiden 1978. Durocher, Maxime, Zāwiya et soufis dans le Pont intérieur, des Mongols aux Ottomans. Contribution à l’étude des processus d’islamisation en Anatolie médiévale (XIIIe– XVe siècles), PhD dissertation, Sorbonne Université, Paris 2018. Fall, Abdou Salam, Les liens religieux confrériques, réseaux privilégiés d’insertion urbaine à Dakar, in Adriana Piga (ed.), Islam et villes en Afrique au sud du Sahara (Paris 2003), 325–44.

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Green, Nile, Making space. Sufis and settlers in early modern India, Oxford 2012. Hamès, Constant, Islam et urbanisation dans l’espace nomade oust-saharien, in Adriana Piga (ed.), Islam et villes en Afrique au sud du Sahara (Paris 2003), 195–206. Hille, Marie-Paule, Le Xidaotang, une existence collective à l’épreuve du politique. Ethnographie historique et anthropologique d’une communauté musulmane chinoise (Gansu, 1857–2014), PhD dissertation, EHESS, Paris 2014. Kara, Mustafa, Tekkeler ve zaviyeler, Istanbul 1977. Karamustafa, Ahmet T., Sufism. The formative period, Edinburgh 2007. Kiel, Machiel, Ottoman urban development and the cult of a heterodox Sufi saint. Sari Saltuk Dede and towns of Isakçe and Babadağ in the northern Dobrudja, in Gilles Veinstein (ed.), Syncrétismes et hérésies dans l’Orient seldjoukide et ottoman (XIV e–XVIIIe siècle) (Paris 2005), 283–298. Le Gall, Dina, A culture of Sufism. Nasqhbandis in the Ottoman world, 1450–1700, New York 2005. Malik, Jamal and John Hinnells, eds., Sufism in the West, London and New York 2006. Özdalga, Elisabeth, Transformation of Sufi-based communities in modern Turkey. The Nakşibendis, the Nurcus, and the Gülen community, in Celia Kerslake, Kerem Öktem, and Philip Robins (eds.), Turkey’s engagement with modernity (New York 2010), 69–92. Papas, Alexandre, Bombay mystical city. Muslim shrines and saints in the urban fabric from 1800 to present, in Daphna Ephrat, Ethel Sara Wolper, and Paulo G. Pinto (eds.), Saintly spheres and Islamic landscapes. Emplacements of spiritual power across time and place (Leiden 2020), 335–65. Rahimi, Babak, Theater state and the formation of early modern public sphere in Iran, Leiden 2012. Raudvere, Catharina and Leif Stenberg, eds., Sufism today. Heritage and tradition in the global community, London 2009. Riccio, Bruno, L’urbanisation mouride et les migrations transnationales sénégalaises, in Adriana Piga (ed.), Islam et villes en Afrique au sud du Sahara (Paris 2003), 359–75. Rizvi, Kishwar, The Safavid dynastic shrine. Architecture, religion and power in early modern Iran, Edinburgh 2010. Ross, Eric, Sufi city. Urban design and archetypes in Touba, Rochester 2006. Ross, Eric, A historical geography of the trans-Saharan trade, in Graziano Krätli and Ghislaine Lydon (eds.), The trans-Saharan book trade. Manuscript culture, Arabic literacy and intellectual history in Muslim Africa (Leiden 2011), 1–34. Sedgwick, Mark, Western Sufism. From the Abbasids to the new age, Oxford 2017. Silverstein, Brian, Sufism and governmentality in the late Ottoman empire, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 29/2 (2009): 171–85.

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Soares, Benjamin F., Saint and Sufi in contemporary Mali, in Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (eds.), Sufism and the ‘modern’ in Islam (London and New York 2007), 76–91. Triaud, Jean-Louis, L’islam en Afrique de l’Ouest. Une histoire urbaine dans la longue durée, in Adriana Piga (ed.), Islam et villes en Afrique au sud du Sahara (Paris 2003), 129–48. van Bruinessen, Martin, Saints, politicians and Sufi bureaucrats. Mysticism and politics in Indonesia’s new order, in Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (eds.), Sufism and the ‘modern’ in Islam (London and New York 2007), 92–112. Villalón, Leonardo A., Sufi modernities in contemporary Senegal. Religious dynamics between the local and the global, in Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (eds.), Sufism and the ‘modern’ in Islam (London and New York 2007), 172–91. Werbner, Pnina, Globalising the Asian Muslim umma. Alternating movements East–West of spirituality, reform and militant jihad, in Bryan S. Turner and Oscar Salemink (eds.) Routledge handbook of religions in Asia (London 2015), 385–401. Werbner, Pnina, Intimate disciples in the modern world. The creation of translocal amity among South Asian Sufis in Britain, in Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (eds.), Sufism and the ‘modern’ in Islam (London and New York 2007), 195–216. Wolper, Ethel Sara, Cities and saints. Sufism and the transformation of urban space in medieval Anatolia, University Park 2003. Zarcone, Thierry, Histoire et croyances des derviches turkestanais et indiens à Istanbul, Anatolia Moderna/Yeni Anadolu II (1991): 137–200. Zarcone, Thierry, Shaykh succession in Turkish Sufi lineages (19th and 20th century). Conflicts, reforms and transmission of spiritual enlightenment, Journal of Asian and African Area Studies 7/1 (2007): 18–35. Zarcone, Thierry, Sufi pilgrims from Central Asia and India in Jerusalem, Kyoto 2009. Zilfi, Madeline C., The politics of piety. The Ottoman ulema in the postclassical age, Minneapolis 1988.

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Chapter 12

Ṣūfīs in Rural Environments Ahmet Yaşar Ocak 1 Introduction Islamic mysticism, with its institutionalised form, the ṭarīqas (orders), has become one of the most well-studied topics in the historiography of Islam. It is noteworthy that the majority of the literature that has appeared until now tends to focus on urban mystic thought, the great Ṣūfīs who generated it, and the ṭarīqas that began to emerge from the sixth/twelfth century onward. We have far fewer studies about Sufism in rural settings. However, since roughly the 1980s, the eastern and western Islamic world have seen an increase in interest in Sufism in the rural environment, and the number of anthropological studies of rural Sufism has grown considerably, as evidenced by this chapter. We should point out that historians of this field of mysticism are not as fortunate as scholars of urban Sufism, as they face a lack of firsthand sources. Before commencing with our topic, we must define “rural environment” and “rural Sufism.” It generally refers to what takes place outside cities, even if it has social and economic ties with them, albeit limited; thus, “rural environment” means, first, nomadic and tribal, and second, countryside. Sociological and anthropological studies have long provided many examples showing that the culture of these two settings relies mostly on oral tradition and greatly emphasises mythology. Hence, it should be underscored that “rural Sufism” is intended to designate Sufism and Ṣūfīs among nomadic tribes and villages and villagers, which represent the two types of lifestyle in the rural context. In these surroundings, the essential character of Sufism undoubtedly suits the abovementioned social, economic, and cultural basis and naturally generates notions and practices according to it. Consequently, this topic relates to the practical rituals that take place in the rural environment and the mythological beliefs taken up in miracle stories, rather than the more theoretical or doctrinal written texts of urban Sufism. This distinction should certainly not be exaggerated and it is important not to be too rigid in our analysis (Peacock and Yıldız (eds.), Introduction; Gril). Still, we focus on the specificities of rural contexts, as opposed to what is characterised by cities (Clayer in this volume); moreover, we must keep in mind that, in the mediaeval and early modern periods, the institutions of knowledge (schools, colleges, libraries, and so forth)

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were concentrated in cities and the level of illiteracy was extremely high in the countryside. The primary problem in rural Sufism is one of sources. Aside from the limited written sources that are rarely produced in this setting, the oral nature of the topic clearly makes it difficult to effectively comprehend Ṣūfī Weltanschauung, belief, and culture. As stressed above, the reason for this is the environment— in rural settings, oral culture predominates over written culture. Despite the plentiful, varied sources on urban Sufism in the Islamic world today (as opposed to the Middle Ages), attaining these resources presents certain difficulties. Since it would be challenging to trace the overall history of rural Sufism in mediaeval and modern Islam, in this chapter I emphasise the Turkish world, with occasional mention of other areas. Lastly, I cover mainly the mediaeval and early modern periods, and occasionally modern times, because contemporary rural Sufism has become less differentiated (although it did not vanish, as the development of the Maijbhandarī ṭarīqa in Bangladesh shows, see Harder, chs. 1–2) for a number of reasons: the disappearance of nomadism, rural exodus, the absorption of villages into cities, and the modernisation of agriculture (e.g., in Egypt, see Chih). 2

Rural Geography, Socioeconomic Conditions, and Sufism

Perforce, the term “rural Sufism” requires consideration of a geographical factor along with physical, societal, and economic factors. Accordingly, but without falling into geographical determinism, it is important to remember that Ṣūfīs in rural settings were moulded by such factors and rural Sufism reflected a world that embodied a mystical mentality, beliefs, and practices. In Mamlūk Egypt, an interesting group of rural saints lived in the Nile Delta; they were composed of poor peasants and servants whose ascetic spiritual lives and attachment to terroir reflected their frugal, rooted lifestyle; their miracles responded to the fears of peasants at that time—land spoliations by powerful elites, robberies by Bedouin highwaymen, attacks on cattle by wild animals, and natural and health disasters (Mayeur-Jaouen). Likewise, a singular feature of existence in nomadic societies was the necessity of establishing regularity in the course of life, according to natural conditions (i.e., searching for new pastures and water for camels, horses, and sheep, the principal means of livelihood; remaining there until resources are depleted; and then migrating to other places). After the Arab conquests in roughly the first/seventh and second/eighth centuries, Islam quickly took hold in the countryside. It spread at a time of fear

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and anxiety generated by the first clashes between Muslim conquerors and local peoples in Syria and Egypt. The Ṣūfīs’ lenient, receptive approach played a significant role in the emergence of this new way of life. Though some Ṣūfīs were educated in large cities such as Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, Kufa, Basra, Nīshāpūr, Shiraz, and Isfahan, others were not necessarily in metropolises and shared their encounters and thought with the nomadic tribes and villagers among whom they lived in the remote deserts and steppes. Some of these educated Ṣūfīs spread Islam through mysticism to, for instance, Turkish villages and nomadic tribes of Transoxiana. Aḥmad Yasawī (d. 562/1166) is one of the few whose names and backgrounds are known today. 3

The Case of Aḥmad Yasawī and the Yasawiyya

It can be said that the Turks became acquainted with Islam and Sufism simultaneously. It is also known that the Qarakhānids (382–609/992–1212), who formed a confederated state with Turkish nomadic tribes in fourth-/tenthcentury Transoxiana, were Muslims; Iranian Ṣūfīs had introduced them to Islam. Aḥmad Yasawī and his ṭarīqa, the Yasawiyya, are an early example of rural Sufism in that period (Köprülü, Ahmed Yasavi; Eraslan; DeWeese, Foreword). After receiving training in the Islamic sciences at the foremost centres of the Islamic world, Yasawī embraced mysticism by affiliating himself with Khwāja Yūsuf Hamadānī (d. 535/1140), one of the most important Ṣūfīs of the era, and with Arslān-bāb (Bābā), a shaykh apparently from Yasawī’s place of origin, the southern Kazakh steppe. His teaching, later synthetised in the Dīwān-i ḥikmat (Collection of wise sayings) that expresses a philosophy of Ṣūfī life, spread extensively among the nomadic Turkish tribes (Yasawî; Köprülü, Early mystics, 127–40; DeWeese, Ahmad Yasavi). This influence persisted, and after roughly a century, Yasawī’s legacy was transferred to the Naqshbandiyya (Yaman). In what is now Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the culture generated by Yasawī continued throughout early modern times (DeWeese, The Yasavî presence). Aḥmad Yasawī and others like him, who had received an excellent Islamic education and abandoned a comfortable urban existence to live in the steppes of Central Asia among nomadic Turkish tribes and villagers, must have sought to convert the inhabitants of these regions to Islam. Surrounded by many disciples, Yasawī continued his mission up to his death, at the tekke on the site of the large khānaqāh (head lodge), which was rebuilt in 791/1389 by Tīmūr (r. 771–807/1370–1405) in the city of Turkestan (old Yasī), in modern-day Kazakhstan. Yasawī was especially successful in spreading Islam in Khwārazm and the Qipchāq territories, through the widespread propaganda activities of

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the Yasawiyya ṭarīqa he founded, and through his successors, such as Ḥakīm Ātā, also known as Sulaymān Bāqirghānī (d. 582/1186–7), whom he had taught (DeWeese, The Yasavî presence). It has been suggested that in the 610s/1210s, at the beginning of the Mongol incursion into Central Asia, some Yasawī dervishes migrated to India and some nomadic Turkish tribes journeyed to Anatolia via Iran (Köprülü, Anadolu’da). This theory has come under criticism recently. It has been proposed that the Yasawīs did not come to Anatolia; this new theory is based on the lack of primary evidence and the silsila (the chain of descent of the order’s shaykhs) of the ṭarīqa (Karamustafa). However, we know that tenth-/ sixteenth- and eleventh-/seventeenth-century Ottoman sources, particularly, indicate the existence of Yasawīs (even a small number) in rural areas of central Anatolia (Muṣṭafā ʿAlī, 5:58–61; Evliya Çelebi, 2:134–5, 3:237). With regard to the Islamisation of the territory of the Golden Horde, legends hold that Bābā Tükles (considered of Yasawī descent) converted Özbek Khān (r. 712–42/1313– 41) during the eighth/fourteenth century, and through him, Mongol nomads (DeWeese, Islamization). 4

Ṣūfīs in Villages and among Villagers

Among the most important examples of Sufism are the Naqshbandīs, who evolved and expanded from the Yasawīs’ village social base in Central Asia, in modern-day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (former Transoxania) especially. The Naqshbandiyya most often emerged among rural villagers, especially landowning farmers. The Khwājagān shaykhs in the Naqshbandī line of descent in Transoxania from the eighth/fourteenth century on took over the teachings of the Naqshbandiyya order (Algar), and their activities encompassed the region’s villages and their environs. The lodges and mausoleums of these shaykhs still exist in Bukhara and its surrounding towns. One of these tombs from the ninth/fifteenth century, that of Khwāja ʿUbaydallāh Aḥrār (d. 895/1490), demonstrates how far the Naqshbandiyya had spread in rural Central Asia, particularly among farmers in villages (Gross). Agricultural production was the basis of the economic activity of Khwāja Aḥrār’s disciples, and agricultural lands comprised the majority of their property holdings. In addition to his Ṣūfī activities, Khwāja Aḥrār provided assurances to the people vis-à-vis the state by developing a system in which landowners of small- and medium-size holdings voluntarily ceded their lands, through waqfs (pious foundations), to him or the order, and in this way, the villagers came into his circle of disciples (Paul). Perceived as a protective mechanism, the order prevented arbitrary

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interference by local political authorities. Khwāja Aḥrār served as a patron for those villagers who turned over their lands to him, as he could prevent the confiscation of their produce for non-payment of taxes. He protected them and benefitted the ṭarīqa; it is clear that, as the apparent owner of wealthy agricultural lands (apparent in the sense that the shaykh controlled the waqf, but the farmers continued farming the land), he became very prominent in this rural setting and a powerful shaykh. Khwāja Aḥrār’s influence in the rural environment was not solely because of his position as a Ṣūfī, but perhaps more because he could defend the rural populace from the onslaught of political power (Tīmūr’s successors). Books of legends and works by the shaykh’s contemporaries, such as ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492), refer to Khwāja Aḥrār’s vast lands; for instance, Jāmī relates in his Yūsuf u Zulaykhā that he made provisions for the road to paradise with produce taken from thousands of fields (Jāmī, 2:31). In southeast Anatolia in the seventh/thirteenth century, the Wafāʾī shaykh Dede Garkın offers a similar example. He established the Garkınī ṭarīqa, a branch of the Wafāʾiyya order, first in Elbistan and later at a lodge in the village near Urfa that took his name, and he gathered a wide circle of disciples. His mausoleum is still there, and a surviving charter lists him as the owner of more than twenty-four villages (Ocak, Ortaçağ, 236). The lodges in these villages were centres of agricultural activity in the fullest sense, and the order’s disciples consisted entirely of village farmers and nomadic tribes that came to the area during the summer months to pasture their sheep and camels. Dede Garkın’s chief successor, Bābā Ilyās Khurāsānī (d. 638/1240), was active in the lodge he established at Çat, near Amasya. Initially, he established a good rapport with the Saljūq administration, and ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kayqubād I (r. 616–34/1220–37) gave him fourteen villages as a waqf. However, his relationship became strained under Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kay Khusraw II (r. 634–44/1237–46), and he was killed in the rebellion of 638/1240. His successor, Hacı Bektaş Veli, served until his death (d. c. 669/1270) as religious leader and head of the Bektāshiyya, in the lodge he founded in the central Anatolian village of Sulucakaraöyük (today’s Hacıbektaş, in the district of Nevşehir) (Beldiceanu-Steinherr). 5

Sufism, Nomadic Tribes, and Tribal Saints

As noted, the perception of Islam among the nomadic tribes differed from the understanding of Sufism that derived from the more formal, theoretical Ṣūfī thought that developed in the written culture of urban Ṣūfī institutions. This variance was fostered by the difficult natural conditions that shaped the lives

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Figure 12.1

Shrine of Dede Garkın in Dedeköy near Mardin (eastern Anatolia) Photo by Ahmet Yaşar Ocak

Figure 12.2

Exterior of Bābā Ilyās shrine near Amasya (Black Sea Region) Photo by Ahmet Yaşar Ocak

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Figure 12.3

Interior of Bābā Ilyās shrine near Amasya (Black Sea Region) Photo by Ahmet Yaşar Ocak

of the nomads and their oral cultures and narrative writings tended to focus on myths. Few Ṣūfīs affiliated with nomadic tribes produced mystical theories like their urban counterparts, but they (i.e., those affiliated with nomadic tribes) created a situation suited to the structures of Ṣūfī culture in which disciples transmitted thought from the successors (khalīfas) of the great Ṣūfīs. In these circumstances, tales of the shaykhs were a more effective means of transmission than sophisticated speculative doctrines. Close examination shows that these oral traditions and narrative texts describe relations between the nomads’ societal structures and their view of the world and themselves. They are, on the one hand, mystical stories and, on the other, “oral texts” that perform a sociological function in nomadic society. Dede Garkın, the aforementioned Wafāʾī shaykh in Anatolia and leader of the Turkmen Garkın clan, was a significant, influential figure in northern Iraq and southeast Anatolia, particularly among the Turkmen and Kurdish tribes (Ocak, Ortaçağ, 44–5). In contrast, among the Turkish and Mongol tribes that lived largely in Qipchāq lands north of the Black Sea and in the Balkans, religious authority was vested in the Yasawīs, Ḥaydarīs, and Qalandars. Although these groups found support among the nomads and the villagers, the difficult life Ṣūfī groups led as a result probably played a role in their loose adherence

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to Sunnī principles. The Turkmen tribes that settled in Anatolia were governed by individuals who acted as chiefs and religious leaders; they used winter and summer pastures granted to them by the Anatolian Saljūqs in accordance with traditional principles of shared property (Cahen, 572–5). Though they also paid a specific annual tax (Turan), they often avoided it, either by refusing to pay the tax collectors or by rebelling. The Bābāʾī revolt (to which we return) was apparently triggered by an attempt to collect taxes (Elvan Çelebi, 146). In addition to Turkmen, but fewer in number, there were a number of tribes: Qarluqs, Khalajs, Qanghlıs, and Qipchāqs. These nomads spread throughout eastern, southeast, and central Anatolia, bringing with them their traditional tribal organisation, customs, and traditions. To prevent likely revolts, the Anatolian Saljūqs divided the tribes into small groups and settled them in different areas. Over time, the nomads adopted a sedentary life and began to work in agriculture and establish villages. These “tribal villages” were usually named after the heads of the tribes, who were Ṣūfīs and can be called “tribal saints.” 6

The Functions of Rural Ṣūfī Institutions

6.1 Settling Uninhabited Lands: Farms and Villages Ṣūfī circles in rural areas generally comprised villagers and tribal disciples. Ṣūfī leaders in ṭarīqa centres situated in large cities were sent to the countryside. When tribal Ṣūfīs settled in uninhabited areas along roads and opened lodges, the central political authorities supported them through charitable endowments. Nomadic tribal Ṣūfīs occupied vacant lands, cultivated the area by planting fields, and building personal farms, from which they gained their livelihoods. Over time, many farmers also settled near Ṣūfī lodges and became affiliated with the ṭarīqa, establishing new farms and villages in turn. It is apparent that from the sixth/twelfth century onwards, the ṭarīqas began to spread across uninhabited lands from North Africa to Syria and in India and Central Asia by means of this remarkable process (Ibn Jubayr, 240, 245, 265–6, 271–4; Nizami; Drague; Taeschner; Barkan). Eastern and central Anatolia experienced the same course of settlement along a westward path concurrent with the Saljūq conquests. Extant written and archival sources also attest that the same process took place in the Balkans, and coincided with the Ottoman conquests beginning in the eighth/fourteenth century. Ottoman archival documents describe the settlement of vacant lands and the opening of lodges as şenlendirme, which means “to populate and make prosperous” (Faroqhi).

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6.2 Security for Roads and Mountain Passes In addition to their crucial functions of spreading Sufism and populating uninhabited regions, Ṣūfī lodges had two other purposes (i.e., securing roads and protecting mountain passes) that were a natural result of these functions, whether in North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, Saljūq and Ottoman Anatolia, or the Ottoman Balkans. Lodges were not established randomly, but in locations chosen according to specific criteria and usually with the knowledge of ruling powers. Naturally, the land had to possess the minimal requirements for subsistence, including fertile soil, a source of water, and proximity to a road. Shaykhs only established lodges in such places. Since political authorities were obligated to protect roads and mountain passes (derbend in Ottoman documents) to safeguard travel and commerce, they viewed the lodges as vital entities to help accomplish this task and insisted on their establishment in such locales (Barkan). 6.3 Lodging and Feeding Travellers Another critical role of the lodges was providing food and accommodation for travellers, Muslim or non-Muslim, including merchants, dervishes, students, and others. Guests received all the necessities they required (such as food and drink) free for three days, during which time they could complete preparations for their onward journey. In exchange for this service and under the condition that income from their agricultural activities was used solely for the upkeep and repair of their lodges, and for their own needs and those of wayfarers (expressed in Ottoman sources as āyende ve ravāndeye iṭʿām-i ṭaʿām, which means “to feed notables and travellers”), dervishes were exempt from paying taxes to the governing authority (Barkan). We find the same function and terminology in other regions, for example, in Morocco throughout the tenth/sixteenth century. There, prolonged warfare had resulted in the stagnation of agriculture, peasants’ migration, and poverty—these problems were eased by the Ṣūfī institutions of the Jazūliyya order, which not only provided food and temporary shelter but also settled desolate lands (mawāt) and revived agriculture. Interestingly, certain lodges performed educational roles and struggled against illiteracy (Rodriguez-Manas). 6.4 Healthcare and Education The combination of Ṣūfī charitable activities and education among rural communities developed in the nineteenth century onwards. For instance, in northern Jordan, when the Ottoman administration provided few public services,

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peasants relied on Ṣūfī brotherhoods that offered charity health care and religious education, albeit limited, in elementary Qurʾānic schools. The families of shaykhs benefited from a new system, co-opted by the Ottomans, that allowed them to acquire the most lucrative agricultural lands (Walker). Facing the rising influence of Wahhābī groups, as in east Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century, Ṣūfī orders were particularly active in educating and proselytising the semi-illiterate rural population. We may mention the Qādiriyya of Somalia, whose scholars propagated a cosmological view along with orthoprax models of behaviour in brief, simple, and straightforward printed works used by itinerant “bush preachers” (Reese, ch. 6). Today, we still find a form of village Sufism in various countries where Qurʾānic schools run by Ṣūfīs predominate over state institutions. Such is the case in rural Senegal, where daaras founded by Tijānīs attract more pupils than “French schools” (Smith, 60–84). 7

Non-conformism, Mahdist Revolts, and Rural Sufism

Because of its distance from centres of religious authority and political power, rural Sufism also had a “non-conformist” dimension, perhaps more than Sufism in urban contexts. In general, in historical studies “non-conformism” is understood to mean that which does not fit acceptable, commonly recognized societal rules, and it is used to describe the attitudes of those groups frequently in conflict with the political authority. It is especially applicable to Sufism, since some rural Ṣūfīs rebelled against pressure from the ruling power for a variety of reasons (particularly tax burdens). Depending on location, uprisings of non-conformist Ṣūfī shaykhs in rural areas were referred to as qiyām (revolt) or ʿiṣyān (rebellion); these were almost always fuelled by mahdist, i.e., messianic (from the Arabic mahdī, “the rightly guided one”), ideologies. Facing opposition to tax impositions, disruption of law and order, episodes of pillaging, and loss of control, the political authorities preferred to suppress these disturbances with military force, and massacres sometimes occurred. Political authorities faced with such uprisings generally proclaimed that those involved were heretics and then cowed them into submission by force of arms or by burdening them with hefty taxes. Though the authorities sought to exert greater control, this was not easy to achieve, given that nomads were accustomed to an autonomous lifestyle and often revolted against the constraints of the governing power. In Anatolia, nearly a dozen revolts occurred in the Saljūq and Ottoman periods alone. These revolts were usually inspired by mahdist ideologies and their leaders were mostly tribal chiefs with religious charisma who were viewed as

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mahdīs. As emphasised, rural Sufism not only involves differences of belief but also issues related to economic and social conflicts with political powers and settled areas. During the Middle Ages, the most striking mahdist movement in Turkish history (in terms of “non-conformist” Sufism), the effects of which extended to later centuries, was the so-called “revolt of the Bābāʾīs” (Ocak, La Révolte). Moreover, in 819/1416, an eminent scholar of Muslim jurisprudence in the Balkans, shaykh Badr al-Dīn/Bedreddīn (d. 819/1416), led a movement with mahdist overtones that attracted Muslim and Christian villagers. This Balkan uprising ended in failure, and the shaykh was executed (Balivet). Unsure of the fate of their lands and seeking to maintain their livelihoods, the villagers had regarded shaykh Badr al-Dīn as a mahdī and a saviour. His disciples also included former Balkan landowners whose properties had been seized by the Ottomans. A somewhat similar situation took place in the ninth-/fifteenth-century Maghrib, where the autonomy of rural Ṣūfī communities (ṭāʾifa) brought them into conflict with Marīnid powers (Geoffroy, 209–10). Bibliography Algar, Hamid, A brief history of the Naqshbandî Order, in Marc Gaborieau et al. (eds.), Naqshbandîs. Cheminements et situation actuelle d’un ordre mystique musulman (Istanbul 1990), 3–44. ʿAlī, Muṣṭafā, Kunh al-akhbār, vol. 5, Istanbul 1277/1861–2. Balivet, Michel, Islam mystique et révolution armée dans les Balkans ottomans. Vie du Cheikh Bedreddîn le “Hallâj des Turcs” (1358/59–1416), Istanbul 1995. Barkan, Ömer Lutfi, İstila devrinin kolonizatör Türk dervişleri ve zâviyeler, Vakıflar Dergisi 2 (1942): 279–304, arşiv belgeleri, 304–53. Beldiceanu-Steinherr, Irène, Les Bektâşî à la lumière des recensements ottomans (XVe–XVIe siècles), WZKM 81 (1991): 21–79. Cahen, Claude, Le régime de la terre et l’occupation turque en Anatolie, Cahiers d’histoire mondiale 2 (1955): 566–80. Çelebi, Elvan, Menâkıbu’l-kudsiyye fî menâsıbi’l-ünsiyye, ed. İsmail E. Erünsal and Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, Ankara 2014. Çelebi, Evliya, Evliya Çelebi seyahatnamesi, vol. 2 and 3, Istanbul 1314/1898–9. Chih, Rachida, What is a Sufi order? Revisiting the concept through a case study of the Khalwatiyya in contemporary Egypt, in Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (eds.), Sufism and the “modern” in Islam (London 2007), 21–38. DeWeese, Devin, Islamization and native religion in the Golden Horde. Baba Tükles and conversion to Islam in historical and epic tradition, University Park 1994.

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DeWeese, Devin, Yasavī “šayḫs” in the Timurid era. Notes on the social and political role of communal sufi affiliations in the 14th and 15th centuries, OM 15 (76/2) (1996): 173–88. DeWeese, Devin, Foreword, in Fuad Köprülü, Early mystics in Turkish literature, New York 2006. DeWeese, Devin, Ahmad Yasavi and the divan-i hikmat in Soviet scholarship, in Michael Kemper and Stephan Conermann (eds.), The heritage of Soviet oriental studies (New York 2011), 263–90. DeWeese, Devin, The Yasavî presence in the Dasht-i Qipchaq from the 16th to 18th century, in Niccolo Pianciola and Paolo Sartori (eds.), Islam, society and states across the Qazaq Steppe, 18th–early 20th centuries (Vienna 2013), 27–66. Drague, Georges [Georges Spillman], Esquisse d’histoire religieuse du Maroc, Cahiers d’Afrique et d’Asie 2 (1950): 1–35. Eraslan, Kemal, Ahmed-i Yesevî, TDVIA 2 (1989): 159–61. Faroqhi, Suraiya, XVI–XVIII. yüzyıllarda orta Anadolu’da şeyh aileleri, in Osman Okyar (ed.), Türkiye iktisat tarihi semineri. Metinler, tartışmalar, 8–10 Haziran 1973 (Ankara 1975), 197–226. Geoffroy, Eric, Le soufisme en Égypte et en Syrie sous les derniers mamelouks et les premiers ottomans, Damascus 1995. Gril, Denis, Saints des villes et saints des champs. Etude comparée de deux vies de saints d’époque mamelouke, in Rachida Chih and Denis Gril (eds.), Le saint et son milieu ou comment lire les sources hagiographiques (Cairo 2000), 61–82. Gross, Jo-Ann, Khoja Ahrâr. An interpretative approach to understanding the roles and perceptions of a Sufi shaykh in Timurid society, in Marc Gaborieau et al. (eds.), Naqshbandîs. Cheminement et situation actuelle d’un ordre mystique musulman (Istanbul 1990), 109–22. Harder, Hans, Sufism and saint veneration in contemporary Bangladesh. The Maijbhandaris of Chittagong, London 2011. Ibn Jubayr, Riḥlat ibn Jubayr, ed. M. J. De Goeje, Leiden 1907. Jāmī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Yūsuf u Zulaykhā, in Aʿlākhān Afṣaḥzād et al. (eds.), Haft Awrang, vol. 2, Tehran 1378/1999. Karamustafa, Ahmet T., Origins of Anatolian Sufism, in A. Yaşar Ocak (ed.), Sufism and Sufis in Ottoman society (Ankara 2005), 78–84. Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad, Anadolu’da İslamiyet, Dâr al-Funûn Edebiyat Fakültesi Mecmuası 4 (1338/1922): 282–311, 5 (1339/1923): 385–420, 6 (1340/1924): 457–86. Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad, Ahmed Yesevi, IA 1 (1941): 210–5. Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad, Early mystics in Turkish literature, New York 2006.

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Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine, Les Compagnons de la Terrasse; un groupe de soufis ruraux dans l’Égypte mamelouke, in Denise Aigle (ed.), Hagiographies médiévales comparées, 1. Saints orientaux (Paris 1995), 169–79. Nizami, Khaliq Ahmad, Some aspects of khānqah life in medieval India, SI 8 (1957): 51–69. Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar, La révolte de Bâbâ Resul ou la formation de l’hétérodoxie musulmane en Anatolie au XIIIe siècle, Ankara 1989. Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar, Ortaçağ Anadolu’sunda iki büyük yerleşimci derviş. Dede Garkın ve Emîrcî Sultan, Ankara 2011. Paul, Jürgen, Forming a faction. The ḥimāyat system of Khwaja Ahrar, IJMES 23 (1991): 533–48. Peacock, Andrew C. S. and Sara Nur Yıldız (eds.), The Seljuks of Anatolia. Court and society in the medieval Middle East, London 2013. Reese, Scott, Renewers of the age. Holy men and social discourse in colonial Benaadir, Leiden 2008. Rodriguez-Manas, Francisco, Agriculture, Ṣūfism and the state in tenth/sixteenthcentury Morocco, BSOAS 59/3 (1996): 450–71. Smith, Gina Gertrud, Medina Gounass. Challenges to village Sufism in Senegal, Copenhagen 2008. Taeschner, Franz, Das Heiligtum des Elvan Çelebi in Anatolien, WZKM 56 (1960): 227–31. Turan, Osman, Le droit terrien sous les seldjoukides de Turquie, REI 16 (1948): 43–5. Walker, Bethany, Rural Sufism as channels of charity in nineteenth-century Jordan, in Nefissa Naguib and Inger Marie Okkenhaug (eds.), Interpreting welfare and relief in the Middle East (Leiden 2007), 217–34. Yaman, Ali, Orta Asya’da Yesevilik. Allahçılar Laçiler, Ankara 2017. Yasawî, Ahmad, Dîvân-i hikmet, ed. Hayati Bice, Istanbul 1993.

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Part 4 Sufism and Worldly Powers

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Chapter 13

Sufism and Worldly Powers Alexandre Papas In spite of the repeated warnings by Ṣūfīs about the dangers of political power and those who wield it, a continual relationship has existed between spiritual authorities and worldly powers; in fact, Sufism has been so useful to rulers that the institutionalisation of Islamic mysticism may appear to be the creation of rulers and states, and Sufism itself has eventually acquired its own hierarchical organisations and structures of power. Paradoxically, the political commitment of certain individuals or groups did not hinder them from preaching an ideal of world renunciation. This continuous oscillation between quietism and activism, religious authority and political power, transcendence and immanence should not be understood to indicate that Sufism was an instrument of worldly powers or spirituality was diluted by exclusively temporal concerns. In terms of their political and doctrinal aspects, Ṣūfīs have long discussed the very meaning of the power that God has given to some of them. This chapter explores five successive yet overlapping topics that have generated scholarly debates. (1) The early and high mediaeval period (from the second/eighth to the sixth/twelfth century) saw the expansion of Islam westward as well as eastward. Ascetics (zāhid, pl. zuhhād), then Ṣūfīs, confronted “infidel” regimes but also Muslim rulers they saw as illegitimate. This casus belli, which led to a reflection on war ( jihād, ghazawāt) as a pious act, was later discussed by the theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) who became a major reference in Ṣūfī political thought. Yet, Muslim mystics maintained an ambivalent relationship of distance and proximity with the state apparatus of the ʿAbbāsids and the Būyids. (2) The second section covers the period from the seventh/thirteenth to the ninth/fifteenth century. The emergence of Ṣūfī orders was closely observed, even fostered, by royal courts in the Maghrib, the Mashriq, Anatolia, Iran, Central Asia, and India. The sultans’ patronage of Ṣūfīs was as much pragmatic as religious, given the widespread belief in the supernatural power of holy men (walī, pl. awliyāʾ) who made predictions ( firāsa) and provided support (madad) for rulers. A subgenre of the Ṣūfī ‘mirror for princes’ literature developed in letters and treatises, especially in Persian.

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(3) The Islamic millennial shift, during the tenth/sixteenth and the eleventh/ seventeenth centuries, accentuated this tendency towards saintly rulership. In this regard, three Ṣūfī dynasties are emblematic: the Jazūliyya in Morocco, the early Ṣafaviyya in Iran, and the Naqshbandiyya in eastern Turkestan. The theories of an “esoteric government” (dawla bāṭiniyya, dīwān al-awliyāʾ) derived from the concept of the sanctity (walāya) of governorship (wilāya), and is based on the thought of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d. 298/910) and Ibn alʿArabī (d. 638/1240s), as found in later elaborations. (4) In the chapter’s fourth section, covering the twelfth/eighteenth and thirteenth/nineteenth centuries, we discuss the Ṣūfī view of the rise of colonial powers across the Muslim world. Whereas some saintly leaders sought accommodation with the new authorities, notably in Africa, others, such as Sayyid Aḥmad Barelwī (d. 1246/1831), Imām Shāmil (d. 1288/1871), and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī (d. 1300/1883), led armed resistance movements and called for jihād. In the historical context and the institutional history of Islamic mysticism, Muslim states like Egypt introduced modern administrative practices into Ṣūfī orders (ṭuruq). (5) In the last section, we propose to call what emerged from the twentieth century onwards a “baraka bureaucracy.” This refers to Ṣūfī officials, if not apparatchiks, for example in Soviet Uzbekistan and in Syria, or Ṣūfī associations ( jamāʿas) pursuing political agendas, as in Indonesia, Turkey, and western Europe. Lastly, we can observe the explicit backing, even the creation, of political parties by Ṣūfī lineages in Senegal, the Sudan, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Pakistan, a practice that can be interpreted as an attempt to give a spiritual dimension to nationalist ideologies. 1

Ṣūfīs and Mediaeval States

The distrust of scholars towards political power manifested itself very early in Islamic intellectual history. In addition to the ḥadīth stating, “God hates nothing more than a Qurʾān reader who visits a ruler (amīr)” (Wensinck, I, 397b7), many statements often repeated by mystics warn that “the worst rulers are those most remote from the scholars, and the worst scholars are those closest to the rulers” (Rosenthal, 330). According to Baghdad masters such as the celebrated al-Junayd (d. 298/910), political life contradicted the spiritual quest, and involvement in politics constituted opposition to the divine decree (Junayd). The Khurāsān Ṣūfī milieu, in the person of the influential Ṣūfī theorist al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), gave birth to the legend of Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. c. 161/777–8) who is said to have abdicated his throne in Balkh to lead an

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ascetic life (Jones). Despite advice, ideals, and legends designed to discourage mystics from worldly powers, mutual necessity between the two persisted. A high official at the ʿAbbāsid court in Sāmarrāʾ (in present-day Iraq), al-Shiblī (d. 334/946) is a vivid example of a Muslim who abandoned his post to become a Ṣūfī under the supervision of al-Junayd, but neverthless, remained close to court circles in Baghdad until the end of his life (Sobieroj). More profoundly, the tragic course of events and the weight of the corrupt and injust world, forced ascetics and gnostics to take part in temporal affairs. The first and greatest challenge was the preservation of Islam itself, the spread of which took dramatic turns in the frontier lands (thughūr) between dār al-Islām (“the abode of Islam”) and dār al-ḥarb (“the abode of war”). Interestingly, the “real” Ibn Adham probably engaged in military operations on the border with Byzantium in greater Syria, whereas his student Shaqīq al-Balkhī (d. 194/810) led a jihād against Turks in Central Asia (Mojaddedi; Ephrat and Pinto in this volume). The life and the writings of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak (d. 181/797) reveal that he was an ascetic who shunned worldliness, yet did not shun the world itself. Later sources depict him as a scholar teaching ḥadīth, and a warrior who travelled from Iran to the Arab-Byzantine frontier to fight for the sake of God. In his foundational treatise, the Kitāb al-jihād, he presents holy war as not simply a legal concept, but as a spiritual discipline, dependent on pure intentions and equivalent to intensive worship and piety (Salem, 76–104). The struggle for Islam continued until the fifth/eleventh century: the Ṣūfī moralist, proselyte and benefactor Kāzarūnī (d. 426/1033) used to dispatch fighters (ghāzī, pl. ghāziyān) to Asia Minor to wage war on the Christians of Byzantium, while he himself combatted Zoroastrians in Fārs and negotiated the tensions between religious communities with the Būyid vizier in Shiraz (Meier, Persian text ch. 17 and 23). What we might label the “ascetic jihād” of early mediaeval times defies the common assumption among scholars that Ṣūfīs distinguished between the “lesser” (aṣghar) jihād and the “greater” (akbar) jihād, and emphasised the latter over the former; this was not the case until the spiritualising theories of al-Ghazālī and Ibn al-ʿArabī; and despite their legacy, in subsequent centuries, these theories were exceptions rather than the rule (Cook, Jihad, ch. 2; see below on the Ṣūfī jihād in modernity; Cook in this volume). The Islamic states, rather than the “infidels,” were equally problematic for pious Muslim individuals. In Ifrīqiyya (modern Tunisia) under the Shīʿī dynasty of the Fāṭimids, the provocative saint Abū Isḥāq al-Jabanyānī (d. 369/979) challenged the political authorities with his insults and miracles. According to one hagiographical tradition, the patron saint of Tunis, Muḥriz b. Khalaf (d. 413/1022), defended Sunnī orthodoxy against official Shīʿīsm and encouraged

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the condemnation and execution of the Shīʿīs of Tunis under the Ḥammādids (r. 405/1015 to 515 or 518–47/1121 or 1124–52), a dynasty that severed its relations with the Fāṭimids (Idris; Pellat). There was no question of holy war; instead, Ṣūfīs supported a part of the population’s resistance against what they perceived to be illegitimate or oppressive powers. This political stance often found its moral justification in the Qurʾānic precept of “commanding right and forbidding wrong” (al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-lnahy ʿan al-munkar) (from Q 3:104 and other verses). The precept was known as ḥisba (censorship, lit. “accountability”), according to al-Ghazālī, in his Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (Revival of the religious sciences) in Arabic and his Kīmiyā-yi saʿādat (Elixir of happiness) in Persian. It was previously invoked by ascetic fighters to validate extending their self-discipline to the environment around them; it was also used by the Arab-Iranian Ṣūfī Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896), who conceptualised a religious leader assigned by God to, among other things, forbid wrong and command right. Concerning the wrongdoing of rulers and the duty to rebel, al-Ghazālī defended the right to exhort, to oppose verbally, and to sacrifice one’s life for the cause; and if necessary, the recourse to force was admissible without the rulers’ permission. Here again, the idea of doing something for God’s sake without personal or worldly motives was decisive (Cook, Commanding, 427–68). Though not specifically a Ṣūfī viewpoint, these subtly radical ideas catalysed a series of factors in the Muslim West, and these factors converged to give Sufism an unprecedented political significance. Considered a blameworthy innovation (bidʿa) by many Mālikī jurists in the Maghrib, the Iḥyāʾ was prohibited in Fez and Marrakesh in the sixth/twelfth century and publicly burnt in 509/1103 on the order of the qāḍī of Cordoba, Ibn Ḥamdīn (d. 508/1114). Yet this book continued to be read and deeply effected its Ṣūfī readers; al-Murābiṭ authorities increased their pressure. Al-Ghazālī’s revival project was accompanied by messianic expectations among Ṣūfīs, and this concerned the local rulers. Thus, the renowned Andalusian master Abū Madyan (d. 589/1193 or 594/1198), who read and spread the doctrines of the Iḥyāʾ, avoided conflicts with political authorities but was denounced to the sultan as a threat to the dynasty (dawla) because he was seen by the populace as a potential messiah (mahdī) and, moreover, his disciples were widespread (García-Arenal, 105– 14). The Ṣūfī idea of a saintly elite with access to God contributed to Mahdist hopes and convinced followers that among this elite a guide would emerge for the community of the faithful. Although what some scholars called the Ṣūfī “school of Almeria” did not exist as such, its personalities corresponded with one another by letter, and this was sufficient to arouse suspicion among juridical and political authorities. In 536/1141, the al-Murābiṭ sultan in the Maghrib

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and southern Spain ʿAlī b. Yūsuf b. Tāshufīn (r. 500–37/1106–43) ordered the arrest of three leading Ṣūfīs, namely Abū Bakr al-Mayūrqī (d. 537/1143), Ibn Barrajān (d. 536/1141), and Ibn al-ʿArīf (d. 536/1141). The first escaped, but apparently the other two were put to death (García-Arenal, ch. 5). The political involvement of these two figures has not been firmly established by historians. According to classical Muslim sources, Ibn Barrajān was a rebellious Mahdist leader who claimed to be an Imam and obtained the allegiance of 130 villages. His opposition to the inquisition of the al-Murābiṭ jurists ( fuqahāʾ) led to a resistance movement. Surnamed “al-Ghazālī of al-Andalus,” the master was a recognised scholar in ḥadīth, theology (kalām), and Sufism. Ibn al-ʿArīf is presented as a close disciple of Ibn Barrajān, though less compromised by “subversive activities” than his master. Author of the Maḥāsin al-majālis (Attractions of mystical sessions), a short treatise on the spiritual stages of the gnostic, Ibn al-ʿArīf was also a respected scholar (Böwering and Casewit, part 1; Faure). Rather than advancing political reasons for their executions, historians argued that the dramatic events described above were the result of religious tensions caused by the rise of learned Ṣūfīs whom legal scholars saw as rivals. The writings of these two Ṣūfīs are spiritual in nature and do not suggest that they approved of rebellion against a ruling authority, who was thought to be appointed by God and, therefore, legitimate. Likewise, historical sources do not confirm the violent death of Ibn Barrajān (Bellver). In terms of relationships with the state and political involvement, the case of Ibn Qasī (d. 546/1151) is clear. In Algarve (now southern Portugal), the shaykh built a fortified hermitage (rābiṭa) where he studied the works of al-Ghazālī and adepts called murīdūn (disciples) assembled. In a climate of religious repression and political instability, Ibn Qasī preached revolt against the al-Murābiṭ and seized the fortress of Mertola in 539/1144. The town officials pledged allegiance to the Ṣūfī who coined money and declared himself the Mahdī and Imām, assuming temporal power (wilāya). Less than a year later, dissension forced him to join the rising dynasty of the al-Muwāḥḥid who appointed him governor of Shilb (modern Silves). Ibn Qasī was finally assassinated in 546/1151 (Dreher; Lagardère). Here, the scholarly debate concerns not the theologicalpolitical nature of Ibn Qasī’s deeds but the distinctiveness of his thought. His esoteric book Kitāb khalʿ al-naʿlayn (Book of the removal of the two sandals) has been read as a political theosophy deeply influenced by Ismāʿīlī conceptions in which the saint takes on a messianic and eschatological mission on earth (Ebstein). Whatever the doctrine, the murīdūn revolt in Iberia seems to be the first major insurrection led by Muslim mystics. Remarkably, another insurrection was noted by historians. In 638/1240, the heterodox Ṣūfī sect of the Bābāʾīs led

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by the Turkmen shaykhs Bābā Ilyās Khurāsānī (d. 638/1240) and Bābā Isḥāq (d. 638/1240) challenged Saljūq rule in Anatolia. Although little is known about the Bābāʾī doctrine, it was clearly imbued with Ṣūfī antinomianism and strongly tinted by messianism. As for the political dimension, most experts consider the insurrections to be a result of sociopolitical conflicts between semi-nomadic groups and sedentary populations supported by the Saljūqs, while others emphasise local causes related to taxes and a regional feud with the Chalcedonian Armenians (Ocak, Babaîler; Beldiceanu-Steinherr; Ocak in this volume). Whereas the narratives of intercessory meetings between the Saljūq sultans and fourth-/tenth- and fifth-/eleventh-century Qalandars (Kalenders) such as Bābā Ṭāhir ʿUryān (d. 401/1010) (lit., “the naked”) and Darwīsh Āhū-pūsh (lit., “the one covered by a gazelle skin”) are legendary (Ocak, Marjinal Sûfîlik, 18–22; Baldick), later, better attested cases show that the relationships between Anatolian Ṣūfīs and power institutions tended to fluctuate between mutual suspicion and common interests. In terms of the literature produced by court authors in the Muslim East, it depicts holy individuals as legitimising the reign of temporal rulers. Hagiographers, for example, of the Khurāsānī saint Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049), extrapolated the effectiveness of his power from the authority he exercised over the political and military elite. To these authors, true sovereignty was in the hands of the saint, not those of the sultan. This explains why the biographer of the Persian Ṣūfī Aḥmad-i Jām (d. 536/1141) described him as the spiritual patron of the Saljūq sultan Sanjar b. Malikshāh (d. 552/1157). More concretely, signs of contacts between Ṣūfīs and political figures are visible in another kind of document that is crucial later: letters exchanged between the Saljūq vizier Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092), who asks for advice and from two Ṣūfīs, ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī l-Harawī (d. 481/1089) and Abū l-Ḥasan Bustī (d. ?). This confirms the rapprochement between rulers and ascetics, though at this point, it cannot yet be considered a relation of patronage and reciprocal services (Karamustafa, 144–55, 176). An imaginary of Ṣūfī sainthood as similar to governorship began to emerge, though these speculations only found their full expression and institutional application in the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/ fourteenth centuries onwards. 2

Ṣūfīs and Sultans

Often explained by the Mongol invasions of the 610s/1220s onwards and the resultant necessity of re-establishing social structures and restoring religious authority, the rise of Ṣūfī orders in the Muslim East was also the result of a

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longer, less conjunctural, process. The royal patronage—including Mongol— of Islamic asceticism-mysticism provided the economic basis for its institutionalisation (Ephrat and Pinto in this volume). This patronage also introduced new forms of collaboration between Ṣūfīs and sultans. In Iran, the Ilkhānid Mongol ruling circles included spiritual masters who played a part in the Mongols’ conversion to Islam. For a long time, the orientalist scholarly tradition maintained that these figures who had the ear of the khans were antinomian dervishes comparable to inner Asian shamans. Mediaevalists showed that these Muslims in fact belonged to a legalist tradition and were similar to the learned milieu of the ʿulamāʾ (Amitai-Preiss). While Tegüder Aḥmad (r. 680–3/1282–84), son of Hülegü (d. 663/1265), converted to Islam under the influence of controversial Ṣūfīs like Kamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and Īshān Mengli (d. 690/1291), Ghāzān Khān (r. 694–713/1295– 1304) embraced the Muslim faith at the hands of the Kubrawī shaykh Ṣadr al-Dīn Ibrāhīm Ḥammūya (d. 722/1322) and welcomed other Ṣūfīs at his court. A certain shaykh Niẓām al-Dīn Maḥmūd was among a delegation of scholars and officials who accompanied the khan to Syria in 699/1300. The relationship between Ṣūfīs and the Ilkhānid rulers was perhaps less spiritual than educational and diplomatic; regardless of their motivations, leaders of Ṣūfī orders were close to the sphere of power. According to his hagiography, Amīn al-Dīn Balyānī (d. 745/1345), an admirer and memorialist of Kāzarūnī, considered it his duty to struggle against the injustice of the authorities, but he did not oppose temporal powers and supported the Īnjū dynasty (c. 725–54/1325–53) of Fārs. The shaykh was the spiritual protector of the dynast Sharaf al-Dīn Maḥmūd Shāh (r. 703–25/1304–25), and had a strong influence on him and his son (Aigle). As for the Kart dynasty in eighth-/fourteenth-century Khurāsān, the elite descendants of Aḥmad-i Jām, who were linked by marriage to the Kart governors, played the role of mediators between the Karts and the Ilkhānids, and eventually collaborated in governance. What they perceived as the inevitable rise of the Chaghatayids convinced the pragmatic shaykhs of Jām to betray their kinsmen in favour of the new power (Potter). Beyond pragmatism, the principle of loyalty to those in power (whoever they may be) superseded the value of loyalty to a leader in an effort to avoid discord ( fitna). The Iranian examples remind us that the sultans’ patronage of Ṣūfīs cannot be reduced to a relationship of instrumentalisation of the Ṣūfīs by the rulers; in fact, the political engagement of saints became institutionalised in a reciprocal and collaborative system. Often buried next to one another, Ṣūfī shaykhs assumed a variety of roles in relation to rulers in Central Asia, frequent tensions between these two parties notwithstanding. One such role was proselytizing, as, for example, in the

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episode of the conversion to Islam of Berke Khān (r. 655–65/1257–67) (the future ruler of the Golden Horde) at the hands of Sayf al-Dīn Bākharzī (d. 659/1261), a disciple of Najm al-Dīn Kubrā (d. 618/1221). Another role was that of educator and spiritual mentor, as in the case of Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband (d. 791/1389), the eponymous founder of the Naqshbandiyya Ṣūfī order who taught his spiritual path to the prince of Herat Malik Ḥusayn (r. 732–71/1332–70). We also find Ṣūfīs with more straightforward political roles, mainly as mediators resolving political conflicts (e.g., when nomad armies attacked the Bukhara citadel and Ṣūfīs mediated to avoid a massacre), and as kingmakers. For example, Ṣūfī masters allegedly asserted the legitimacy of Tīmūr (Tamerlane; r. 771–807/1370– 1405), predicted his domination, and participated in his enthronement (Paul, Scheiche und Herrscher). From the early modern period onwards, the political advent of the Naqshbandiyya was an important element that had long-lasting consequences. The attitude of the early masters, known as Khwājagān, was initially quietist and apolitical. The shaykhs issued statements such as “Do not sit with rulers and sons of rulers,” recommended that their followers stay away from the public sphere in general, cultivate patience (ṣabr), and apply a principle of “solitude within society” (khalvat dar anjuman); that is, be socially active, but remain inwardly focused on God. Towards the middle of the ninth/fifteenth century, the Naqshbandī attitude changed radically when ʿUbaydallāh Aḥrār (d. 895/1490) led a Ṣūfī order that came to dominate Central Asian Islam; he stated, “a good khwāja must benefit Muslims and must also mingle with amīrs and sulṭāns….” Aḥrār acted accordingly (Paul, Solitude within society; Gross). Among the elements that changed were the land tenure system, which allowed religious figures to accumulate endowment properties; the weakening of central authority in the Timūrid political structure; and the Islamic belief system that attributed power and authority to Ṣūfī saints. Though hagiographers may have exaggerated Aḥrār’s political influence (for example, in ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn al-Wāʿiẓ al-Kāshifī’s (d. c. 939/1532) influential work, Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt (Tricklings from the fountain of life)), endowment (waqf ) deeds and letters between the shaykh (or his trusted disciples) and sultans such as Ḥusayn Bāyqarā (r. 873–911/1469–1506) document Aḥrār’s authoritarian role as advisor to decision-makers at the court and as a mediator in disputes between princes. He acted to ensure peace and unity and uphold the sharīʿa and a strict Sunnism (Chekhovich; Gross and Urunbaev, 14–17, 24–36). With Aḥrār, the “solitude within society” principle found a political significance; he shaped the doctrinal framework to ensure that political involvement became not only licit but spiritually rewarding (Algar, 145).

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The spread of the Naqshbandiyya, notably the Aḥrārīs, in India is among the major, albeit late elements that may explain the confluence between Ṣūfīs and sultans. In contrast to the idealised principle, according to which Indian Ṣūfīs (particularly the Chishtiyya order) kept aloof from politics, we find a cross-study of chronicles, hagiographies, conversations, and letters (all written in Persian), that show to what extent saintly authority and courtly power ultimately merged into a politico-religious interdependence. In contrast to exhortations such as, “If you desire to attain the position of great saints, do not pay attention to princes” by the Chishtī master Farīd al-Dīn Ganj-i Shakar (d. 664/1265), numerous narratives from the Delhi Sultanate made use of a different rhetoric, which brought saints and sultans closer together (Auer, Intersections between Sufis and power). In the chronicle Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī (Generations of [sultan] Nāṣir) by Minhāj-i Sirāj Jūzjānī (d. after 659/1260) as well as in the hagiography Fawāʾid al-fuʾād (Benefits of the heart) by Ḥasan Dihlavī (d. 737/1336) we find tales about the predictions ( firāsa) of Ṣūfī shaykhs and descriptions of them blessing rulers who then became sultans. Court chroniclers sought to establish a sultan’s destiny as decided by God, while Ṣūfī authors sought to show that the saint’s clairvoyance confirmed his role as maker of destiny and vehicle of God’s will. Other historians and Ṣūfī biographers deliberately confused the two figures: on the one hand, Ṣūfī masters were called sultans, surrounded by a court of disciples who received robes (khirqa) during a quasi-royal ceremony; on the other, sultans were depicted as shaykhs who possessed the qualities of the friends of God (awṣāf-i awliyāʾ); they were blessed and had miraculous powers. Beyond the symbolic nature of a literary culture, this rhetoric reveals ways of thinking and common conceptions and beliefs that resulted in actual practices and institutional realities. It is said that the sultan Shams al-Dīn Īltutmish (r. 607–33/1211–36) was required by his official historians to maintain his relations with Ṣūfī masters. He seems to have been particularly pious and devout, not simply in his own religious practice but also in developing Delhi as an Islamic city. In the collective memory of Indian Sufism, the sultan appears as a great patron of mysticism, strongly supported by Chishtī shaykhs and influenced by Ṣūfīs in his policy of accommodation with Hindus. Not all shaykhs promoted concord with Hindus: the Chishtī Ṣābirī master ʿAbd al-Quddūs Gangohī (d. 944/1537) wrote letters to the Mughal emperor Bābur (r. 932–6/1526–30), asking him to exclude the “infidels” from high offices and deny them financial assistance from the government (Alam, Languages, 84–8, 160–1). Concerning the Afghan Lodī dynasty, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Muḥaddith Dihlavī’s (d. 1052/1642) hagiographical compendium mentions a plethora of examples. Shaykh Muḥammad Mallāwah’s

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(d. 900/1495) prayer made the harvest so abundant that the sultan Sikandar Lodī (r. 894–923/1489–1517) thanked God for the saint’s presence; Malik Zayn al-Dīn (d. 926/1520) was a noble (vakīl) at the court of a governor Khān Jahān (cousin of Sikandar), and Zayn’s brother Shaykh Vazīr al-Dīn (d. 932/1526) fell on the battlefield; some Ṣūfīs were consulted before combat to give their predictions while others were given diplomatic missions (ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Dihlavī, 345–6, 414–5, 453–5, 585). Regarding the mediaeval Deccan, historians have suggested that the hagiographical narratives—written much later—minimised the violence of the Islamisation process in which Ṣūfīs participated. We have the onomastics like shahīd (martyr) and asad al-awliyāʾ (lion of the saints), which reveal the presence of holy warriors alongside the military, and in at least two cases, prominent Ṣūfī combatants, i.e., Ṣūfī Sarmast (d. 680/1281?) (a disciple of Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ) fought Hindus in Maharashtra, and Pīr Maʿbar Kʾhandāʾit (d. ?) joined a military expedition to South India against the Tamil in 710/1311. However, other scholars argue that surnames were merely symbolic epithets and, more importantly, the few sources available depict the Chishtīs’ social role and mystical philosophy according to which most of them were religious leaders not engaged in military activities; the “warrior Ṣūfī” was a later legendary construction used to legitimise the Muslim conquest of the Deccan (Eaton, 19–44; Ernst, 99–105). This did not mean that Ṣūfīs were apolitical. The case of the Khuldābād (in Maharashtra) Chishtīs epitomises the complex relations of independence and interdependence, of proximity and distance that mystics maintained with the powers-that-be (Ernst, 191–215). Integrated into the patronage system, Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (d. 725/1325), his deputy (khalīfa) in the Deccan Burhān al-Dīn Gharīb (d. 738/1337), and the latter’s successor Zayn al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 771/1369), did not accept (in theory) the donations, but admitted them in practice under specific legal conditions. Administrators and notables used to visit the shaykhs to take their opinions, to listen to sermons, or to be initiated. After his initiation into the Chishtiyya, Qutlugh Khān, the Tughluq governor of Daulatabad from 736/1335 to 745/1344, was reputed to be a king outwardly but a Ṣūfī inwardly. The fact that his successor did not follow the same path and Zayn al-Dīn saw him as an oppressor is a reminder that the links between Ṣūfīs and rulers were tense and fragile. In addition to the “Maussian gift” obligations (a theory of the French sociologist Marcel Mauss on the threefold obligation to give, receive, and return, an obligation that then creates social interdependence), Ṣūfī prayers for the emperor, the bestowal of relics, and attendance at the enthronement, shaykhs tried to avoid personal involvement with the court, though they encouraged their disciples to obtain government posts.

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In India from the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries onwards, the reciprocal system of patronage facilitated the construction of a large number of shrines and Ṣūfī lodges. These holy places and their surroundings embodied, both spatially and socially, the jurisdiction (wilāya) of the saint within which he could exercise direct influence. Such a political and spiritual rule over a territory, or wilāya, challenged the patronage equilibrium and could represent competition with the reigning sultan, at least as a rhetorical threat, and marked, in the intellectual history of Sufism, the rise of the politico-religious understanding of the concept of sanctity (walāya). The conceptual keystone of walāya as wilāya was transmitted to mediaeval Indian hagiographers and historians by the Ṣūfī thinker al-Hujwīrī (d. between 465/1072 and 469/1077) (Digby; Auer, Symbols, ch. 4); through Aḥmad-i Jām, too, in his controversy with Mawdūd Chishtī (d. 527/1133) (Moayyad and Lewis, 154–60); and it also surfaced in the mediaeval Middle East and was experienced at a large scale in the early modern period. Like the Mughals, the Ottomans patronised Ṣūfīs and contributed to the institutionalisation of orders, three in particular. In this period, the Naqşibendiyye were less involved in religious policy (Le Gall, 137–50); instead, the proto-Bektāşiyye, through Otmān Bābā (d. 883/1478) for instance, participated in the armed Islamisation campaigns of western Anatolia and Thrace. The association of the Bektāşīs with the Ottoman army may have been the origin of the creation of the elite Janissary regiment placed under their spiritual guidance. In reciprocation, the sultans, especially Bāyezīd II (r. 886–918/1481– 1512), made significant donations to the order. Later, the highly centralised administration of the Bektāşiyye seemed to mirror the organisational structure of the Ottoman court, and in fact the Imperial Council (Dīvān-ı Hümāyūn) confirmed or rejected the appointment of the heads of lodges (Faroqhi, 77– 92; Zarcone, Bektāşiyye). Another prominent and well-organised Ṣūfī order, the Mawlawiyya/Mevleviyye benefited from the patronage of the Saljūqs and the Ottomans over the long term. Inspired by the famous poet Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273) but established by his son Sulṭān Walad (d. 712/1312), the family-run ṭarīqa was centred in Konya but spread, both geographically and politically, toward the capital city Istanbul, with the help of successive sultans such as Murād II (r. 824–48, 850–5/1421–44, 1446–51), Meḥmed II (r. 848– 50/1444–6 and 855–86/1451–81) and Bāyezīd II (Gölpınarlı, 267–78; Thāqıb Dede, I:  139–49). The activities of a third brotherhood, the Khalwatiyya/ Halvetiyye were characterised by “Sunnitization,” rather than Islamisation. The Ottomans privileged this rather urban Ṣūfī order, which cooperated with them in the struggle to assert Sunnī Islam in Anatolia and the Balkans. Aq Shams al-Dīn (d. 863/1459) was the spiritual counsellor of Meḥmed II; Ṣofyalı

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Bālī Efendī (d. 960/1553) spied for the imperial authorities on the Ṣafavids and on the “heretics”; and his successor Nūr al-Dīn Zāde (d. 979/1571) insisted that advising state officials was more urgent than initiating the masses. This elitist political position could not but be intertwined with loyalty conflicts and regional enmities, leading rival shaykhs to very different fates and rendering occult sciences (predictions, dreams, revelations, talismans, etc.) politically sensitive (Clayer, Mystiques, 69–112; Karataş). Sufism in the Middle East drew the attention of the state authorities long before the Ottoman conquest. In 569/1173, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn or Saladin (r. 564– 89/1169–93) endowed the first Ṣūfī lodge in Cairo, named Saʿīd al-Suʿadāʾ (lit., “happiest of the happy”), and introduced the office of the “chief master” (shaykh al-shuyūkh), on the model of the one established in Damascus under Nūr al-Dīn Zangī (r. 541–69/1147–74). This marked the beginning of the Ayyūbids active interest in Sufism. Prosopography confirms that, until 709/1309, this institution remained in the hands of non-Egyptians who were more elite politicians than mystics, and were well connected with the Ayyūbid and the early Mamlūk ruling class. At the heart of this state-sponsored system, master shaykhs such as ʿImād al-Dīn ʿUmar (d. 636/1239) or Taqī l-Dīn al-ʿAllāmī (d. 695/1295) acted as viziers and diplomats, in addition to serving at the lodge, i.e. teaching law, leading rituals, and overseeing everyday activities. Above all, the purpose of the lodge was to spread the ideology of the state, in this case juridical Sufism based on Sunnī Shāfiʿī Ashʿarī doctrine (Hofer, ch. 1; Gottschalk). Other Ṣūfīs in Egypt, especially the Shādhiliyya order under the guidance of Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Mursī (d. 686/1287) and Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī (d. 709/1309), remained aloof from the state. More informal movements in Upper Egypt were even hostile to Mamlūk rule (Hofer, 128–36, 179–85). From the perspective of religious history, whatever the balance of pragmatism and personal interest that determined the attitudes of Ṣūfīs and sultans, a common belief linked these figures throughout the late mediaeval period. According to Qurʾān 25:12 (among many other verses), omnipotence belongs to God alone; the delegation of sovereignty (mulk) to men is metaphorical, and sovereigns (malik, pl. mulūk) come after the prophets, caliphs, and saints in the hierarchy of power. As a result, the position of Ṣūfīs vis-a-vis the state was fragile, but the legitimacy of rulers was equally uncertain. Under the Mamlūks and the Ottomans, in Syria and Egypt, the amīrs and sulṭāns believed (iʿtiqād) in the sainthood of Ṣūfī shaykhs, through whom they saw the possibility of supernatural assistance (madad), and the shaykhs, in turn, urged the rulers to publicly seek spiritual advice, religious legitimacy, and occult intervention (Geoffroy, 101–108).

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Conversely, although many Ṣūfīs were closely affiliated with rulers, various prominent masters of the time expressed serious doubts. For instance, the illiterate ʿAlī l-Khawwāṣ (d. 939/1532) maintained that Ṣūfīs should not actively engage with temporal rulers to advance their own interests. Yet, seeking intercession for someone else was considered laudable. Notably, the polymath al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), in his Mā rawā-hu al-asāṭīn fī ʿadam al-majīʾ ilā l-salāṭīn (What has been transmitted by the authorities about not going to the sultans), rejected contact with men of power on the grounds that, according to numerous ḥadīths, scholars may be affected by proximity to worldly rulers who have committed political misdeeds (Mauder). This debate among Ṣūfīs not only challenged the legitimacy of this or that ruler, but it also challenged secular rulership itself, such that Ṣūfī advice literature seemed to presage politicoreligious upheavals. 3

The Esoteric Government

The ancient genre of Islamic ‘mirrors for princes’ attracted Ṣūfī authors quite early. Aside from a chapter of the Kīmiyā entitled “On governing and exercising authority,” the theologian al-Ghazālī is believed to have produced a major reference work, the Naṣīḥat al-mulūk (Advice for kings, esp. part 1), on the practices of statecraft and the spiritual ideals required for a ruler conceived of as “viceregent of God” (khalīfat Allāh). Composed in Persian, it was translated into Arabic and Turkish, and was circulated widely. The Mirṣād al-ʿibād min al-mabda‌ʾ ilā l-maʿād (The path of God’s bondsmen from origin to return, esp. part 5, ch. 1–3) by the Kubrawī master Dāya Rāzī (d. 654/1256) was also written in Persian then translated into Arabic and even Chinese. This work offered kings, ministers, and deputies guidance on the spiritual path. Another Kubrawī, Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī (d. 786/1385) from Iran wrote the Dhakhīrat al-mulūk (The treasure for kings) in which he discussed the principles of governance for Muslim rulers and state officials on the model of the Prophet and the first caliphs (Bagley; Razi, 395–444; Riyāḍ). These popular works, which were copied and spread in the Mamlūk, Saljūq, Ottoman, and Mughal courts, remained in the conceptual frame of the Ṣūfī-sultan patronage system; they also revealed the mystics’ growing interest in political involvement. Beyond this, Central Asian Ṣūfīs of the Timūrid and post-Timūrid periods openly called for rulers to support Ṣūfī orders and “convert” to Sufism. If Kāshifī’s (d. 910/1504–05) Akhlāq-i muḥsinī (The Muhsinian ethics) does not bear Ṣūfī characteristics, the esoteric mirror for princes by the Herat polymath

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ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492), entitled Salāmān va Absāl urged the Āq Qoyūnlū ruler to recognise that “authentic kingship” consists of becoming a Ṣūfī ruler, that is, the “shadow of God” (ẓill Allāh) who repents (tawba) and disciplines his ego (nafs). Another prolific Naqshbandī writer, Aḥmad Kāsānī, known as Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam (d. 949/1542), explicitly argued that Ṣūfīs should seek elite patronage to defend, beyond his own order, Sunnī Islam as a whole, and that the patron-monarch should be a mystic animated by spiritual energy (himmat) and devoted to the Almighty. Ultimately, the ruler is confronted with the aporia of power in powerlessness and sovereignty in servitude. Kāsānī’s reference to the four conditions of defending the Ṣūfī path—i.e. a unified community (ikhwān), a place (makān) to gather, a stable time period (zamān), and the ruler’s (khān’s) religiosity—perhaps inspired Khazīnī, a tenth-/sixteenthcentury Yasawī shaykh who moved from Transoxiana to Istanbul and produced (in Turkic and Arabic) the Manbaʿ al-abḥār fī riyāḍ al-abrār (The source of waters in the gardens of the righteous), in which he mentions the same four conditions (Lingwood; Papas, Cheikhs et sultans; Hazînî, 343–57). With the exception of Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam’s descendants, as we see, it is difficult to assess the impact of these treatises on the political behaviour of that time. Other Ṣūfī authors wrote advice literature addressed to their fellow Muslims in general rather than the rulers in particular, without any interest in political commitment. In his al-Naṣīḥa al-kāfiya (The sufficient advice) and elsewhere, basing himself on the Prophet’s traditions, the Mālikī jurist and Shādhilī Ṣūfī from Fez, Aḥmad Zarrūq (d. 899/1494), urged the elite to obey legitimate authorities and denied Ṣūfīs the role of kingmakers and the right to oppose the sultan or justify actions against him (Kugle, 162). The Jazūliyya lineage in Morocco was a main and concrete target of Zarrūq’s denunciation. During the Marīnid period (614–869/1217/1465), Islamic mysticism was institutionalised, organised fraternities were created, and the Sharifian model of authority (an ideology derived from early Shīʿism, in which the politico-religious authority rested on descent from the Prophet) was introduced. Muḥammad al-Jazūlī (d. 869/1465) founded a Ṣūfī order that sought to establish a saintly power structure in both word and deed. In a context of moral crisis and social upheaval in Morocco, al-Jazūlī organised his Ṣūfī order according to rigorous rules. His disciples applied a fourteen-step program known as “rules of repentance” (shurūṭ al-tawba); this was followed by training to acquire ten attributes of self-discipline. Ṣūfīs were encouraged to visit religious leaders to prepare Ṣūfī networks for political mobilisation. The quasiprophetic knowledge of the master made his disciples’ obedience absolute. Al-Jazūlī cast himself as spiritual leader with social and political responsibilities to whom authority (wilāya) was granted by his closeness to God (walāya).

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In the face of the disintegrating Marīnid state, which was threatened by rising Portuguese power, the shaykh who called for holy war appeared to many as a last recourse. Al-Jazūlī died before accomplishing his grande oeuvre but the Jazūliyya realised it, at least in part (Cornell, ch. 6). The ideology of the Jazūliyya order synthetised two concepts of saintly authority: the above-mentioned Sharifian model and the imitatio Muḥammadi, which consisted of following the Prophet’s example and governing Muslims according to his directives. In a radical sense, the “Muḥammadan way” (al-ṭarīqa al-Muḥammadiyya) the Jazūlī ʿAbdallāh al-Ghazwānī (d. 935/1528) presented and the “sovereignty of saintly authority” (siyādat al-imāma) he theorised was based on an eclectic collection of writings provided to the Ṣūfī saint of the time with the prophets’ authority. The aim was to make him the vicegerent of God on earth and the leader of people, a leader whose charisma resembled that of the Shīʿī imam, though the order was based on mediaeval Ṣūfī theories of sainthood. The Jazūlī doctrine concretised itself in social reality with the involvement of its advocates in dynastic politics. Al-Ghazwānī recruited disciples among several tribes who were opposed to the Watṭṭāsid ruler who had seized Fez from the Idrīsids. He then acquired the material support of local tribal leaders and promoted himself as the paramount shaykh of Moroccan Sufism and the true sultan of the masses. The shaykh definitively broke with the Watṭṭāsids and the Idrīsids and joined the lesser-known Saʿdian sharīfs in southern Morocco. As a jihād state struggling for the liberation of the Islamic Maghrib from the yoke of foreign rule, the Saʿdian power reflected the ideology of the Jazūliyya and indeed, in 961/1554, they succeeded in establishing a monarchy by divine right and in unifying Morocco; this was done by excluding its Jazūlī intercessors from the circles of power, and finally persecuting the main shaykhs (Cornell, ch. 7–8). The nascent Ṣafavid state in Iran represents a second case of saintly rulership. The Ṣafaviyya Ṣūfī order, named after Ṣafī [l-Dīn Ardabīlī] (d. 735/1334), a member of an old and influential family from Ardabil near the Caspian Sea, grew into a religio-political movement under the successive leadership of Ṣadr al-Dīn (d. 794/1391), Khwāja ʿAlī (d. 832/1429), Junayd (d. 864/1460) and Ḥaydar (d. 893/1488). The Ṣūfī order was marked by missionary zeal and their bellicose character; as early as 851/1447, they obtained the military support of Qizilbāsh (lit., “red heads”) Turkmen tribes whose chiefs pledged allegiance to the Ṣafavid shāh (“king”) as disciples of a spiritual master. Although it is difficult to reconstruct with precision, historians have shown that the creed of the first Ṣafavids was drawn from various sources, among them, the Turkish poetry collection of Shāh Ismāʿīl (d. 930/1524). To the usual Ṣūfī conception of masters as saints (awliyāʾ) performing miracles were added less common elements,

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such as the value of spiritual chivalry ( futuwwa, javānmardī), the veneration of ʿAlī and the Imams, and “extreme” (or rather syncretic) Shīʿī views (ghulūw) on cyclic cosmic time and on the divine essence of Ṣafaviyya shaykhs whom their followers considered to be “gods” (ilāh) or “sons of god” (ibn Allāh). Chroniclers asserted that Junayd combined the temporal sultanate (sulṭanat-i ṣūrī) with the spiritual sultanate (sulṭanat-i maʿnavī) (Mazzaoui, 41–82; Babayan, xv–lvi). With the death of his father Ḥaydar and after a long period of isolation in Lahijan (in Gilan province, northwestern Iran) under the protection of the regional Zaydī Shīʿī ruling family, in 899/1494 Shāh Ismāʿīl became the master of the Ṣafaviyya and transformed the movement into a Shīʿī dynasty inspired by the millenarian and messianic spirit that animated Iranian society at that time. With the assistance of their Qizilbāsh devotees, the Ṣafavids defeated the Āq Qoyūnlū armies in western Persia and Azerbaijan. In Tabriz in 906/1501, the young holder of saintly authority (wilāya) proclaimed himself shāh, ascribed to himself divine qualities as the representative of the Twelve Imams, and established a theocracy that replicated a Ṣūfī order. Its militants, mainly composed of Turkmen tribes, observed a code of “Ṣūfī conduct” (ṣūfīgarī), that included, among other duties, absolute submission to the “perfect guide” (murshid-i kāmil). Ultimately, the new state moderated its own revolutionary tendencies, persecuted Sunnī populations, and repressed major Ṣūfī orders in Iran, all of which vitally affected the institutions of Shīʿī heterodoxy and Sunnī Islamic mysticism throughout the lands controlled by the Ṣafavids (Roemer, 209–27; Matthee). The third historical case of a Ṣūfī temporal sovereignty took place in eastern Turkestan (present-day Xinjiang). As early as the second half of the eleventh/ seventeenth century, one of the numerous descendants of the aforementioned Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam, Āfāq Khwāja (d. 1105/1694), founded the Naqshbandiyya Āfāqiyya, a well-established order in the Tarim Basin. After losing the support of the Chaghatayid Ismāʿīl Khān (r. 1080–90/1670–9), who patronised the rival branch of the Naqshbandiyya Isḥāqiyya, Āfāq was exiled in 1081/1671. Paradoxically, his nearly ten years of banishment were depicted as a transregional initiatory and ascetic journey, and became not only a major step in the construction of Āfāq Khwāja’s sanctity (both narrated by and producing a rich poetical and hagiographical tradition in Persian and Turkic) but also lent him an exceptional political status. Though arduous, Āfāq Khwāja’s itinerary, likely took him through Kashmir, possibly Tibet, and no doubt northwestern China, where he initiated disciples, appointed deputies, and opened lodges. Legends reported that Āfāq Khwāja met the fifth Dalai Lama and the Qing emperor Kangxi (r. 1661–1722), thus raising the shaykh, already a Sharifian and a

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Chingizid by marriage, to the rank of an imperial saint, equivalent to the great rulers of the neighbouring empires (Papas, Soufisme et politique, part 2). After returning to his homeland, Āfāq Khwāja conquered the Tarim Basin with the military support of Junghar Mongols. Ismāʿīl Khān and his court were exiled. In exchange for an annual tribute to the Junghars, Āfāq became the “king saint” (khān khwāja) of Kashgaria. Distinct from a khanate and a caliphate, the kingdom of the Āfāqī saints (named īshān) can be called an “ishanate,” that is, a politico-religious regime ruled by Ṣūfī saints according to the institutions, practices, and ideology of the Central Asian Naqshbandiyya. While Āfāq governed his ishanate from a central lodge in Yarkand, his son Yaḥyā (d. 1106/169) sat in the holy complex in Kashgar and received numerous visitors who pledged allegiance to the īshāns. Financial resources came from pious endowments (waqf ), as well as from numerous donations (nudhūr and mawqūfāt) and religious taxes (ṣadaqa and zakāt). Thanks to these institutions, the model of Ṣūfī sociability and ethics based on manners (ādāb) spread among the entire society headed by Āfāq as the chief guarantor of the sharīʿa and Sunna. Naqshbandī spiritual practices, such as repetition [of God’s names] (dhikr) and spiritual audition (samāʿ) became collective and devotional acts aimed at creating a mystical sense of community where, ideally, egos disappeared to allow for an experience of union with God and its holy servants, the īshāns. Inspired by the ideal of the Muḥammadan community, Āfāq Khwāja conceived of his kingdom as a Ṣūfī province (wilāya) established around his own sanctity (walāya). According to Āfāqī doctrinal writings, which echo the aporia of power in powerlessness discussed by Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam, the Khwāja saints’ quest for power was doomed to impotence. Ultimately, its political construction was viewed not as a state-building process but, on the contrary, as a destruction of profane existence, a negation of worldly illusions, and a journey to a sacred Ṣūfī land (safar dar vaṭan). The ishanate remained an Islamic utopia (Papas, Soufisme et politique, part 3). After Āfāq’s death, Ṣūfī power did not vanish and the Khwājas remained dominant actors in eastern Turkestan throughout the twelfth/eighteenth century. Some historians understood the Maghribi “Muḥammadan way” and the Central Asian Khwājas as forerunners of neo-Sufism, a movement of Ṣūfī orthodox revival (tajdīd) that spread across the Muslim world as early as the eleventh/seventeenth century. A closer reading of primary sources suggests a much more complex phenomenon. Before and after the year 1000 of the Hijra calendar (1591–2) the millenarism and messianism that marked the mystics’ perception of time intensified with the rise of non-Muslim worldly powers in many regions of dār al-Islām. It is in this context that Ṣūfīs pursued their

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long-standing reflection on saints’ power and the concepts of walāya and wilāya confronted sociopolitical reality (Cornell, 226–7; Papas, Soufisme et politique, 11–12, 231–38). It is not surprising that the mediaeval theory of an esoteric world government found its most mature and sophisticated expression in the early modern period. The Islamic hagiographical production of the time repeatedly refers to an occult hierarchy of saints who preside over the affairs of this world; their rule takes place within a subtle cosmology, but also on a societal and institutional level. In charge of the divine lieutenancy on earth (khilāfa), holy individuals hold supernatural power (taṣrīf, taṣarruf ) that is parallel or even superior to the temporal power of the sultan. These saints form an esoteric government (dawla bāṭiniyya) composed of apotropaic saints (abdāl) or “men of the invisible realm” (rijāl al-ghayb) at the head of whom stands the pole (quṭb), also known as master of time (ṣāḥib al-waqt) or succour (ghawth). The number of the saints varies. According to the Cairene Ṣūfī al-Shaʿrānī (d. 973/1565), there is even a turn of duty for the protection of the world. The “people of the turn” (aṣḥāb al-nawba) are supposed to serve esoteric functions for a given time and space. It is unclear whether they are real people or hidden figures. Saints sit in council (dīwān al-awliyāʾ) of various jurisdictions (ʿamal) under the responsibility of regional poles (aqṭāb). For instance, one or several masters of the city (aṣḥāb al-balad) take care of Tunis; an assembly is located on the Muqaṭṭam Hill in Cairo; another supervises Syria from a place near the grave of the prophet Yaḥyā (John the Baptist) in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus (Amri; Geoffroy, 96–7, 109–12). From the eleventh/seventeenth century onward, through collections of anecdotes, the council of saints became a major topic in the hagiology of Fez. These books documented concrete examples and cited witnesses to the reality of the saints’ power. In a similar vein, certain Ṣūfīs were associated with the founding of Fez and were believed to be involved invisibly in the administration and the preservation of this Maghribi city. Viewed as a “city of saints” (madīnat al-awliyāʾ), the capital was governed by a local assembly presided by Mawlāy Idrīs (d. 213/828), the founder and patron saint of Fez (Vimercati, 51, 88, 113, 135, 290). Significantly, it was ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh (d. 1132/1719), an inspired mystic from the same locale, who gave one of the most detailed descriptions of the council of godly men (dīwān al-ṣāliḥūn). His disciple, Aḥmad b. al-Mubārak al-Lamaṭī (d. 1156/1743), devoted a book to him, in which an entire chapter depicts that council. To sum up, the dīwān is located in the cave of Ḥirāʾ (in the Ḥijāz, where the Prophet retreated to meditate); on the right of the support sit four Mālikī poles and, on his left, three other poles who represent the

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three other schools of jurisprudence. Around them, in concentric circles stand various divine figures, including angels. A deputy (wakīl) speaks on behalf of everyone. At the time of the council, some members are alive; others are dead. Sometimes the Prophet is present and occupies the support’s position. The council convenes at the time of the night when the Prophet was born, and at this time, prayers are answered. On the “night of power,” once a year, when the Prophet is present with his wives and Companions, the other prophets are also present. The language used in the dīwān is Syriac, the language of the spirits and the angels. When the members gather, they determine what will happen in the world from that very moment until the same moment the next day (al-Lamaṭī, ch. 4). Such representations resisted modernity, at least in the collective memory, if not in beliefs. A late chronicler, for example, the Tunisian Maḥmūd Maqdīsh (d. 1228/1813), described the modus operandi of the assembly in his Nuzhat al-anẓār (The delight of the eyes): if a request from the people is submitted, the chiefs (nuqabāʾ) take it and invoke God, followed by the nobles (nujabāʾ), the saints (abdāl), the elect (akhyār), then the pillars (ʿamad); if the wish is not fulfilled, the ghawth takes care of it (Maqdīsh, 2:242). 4

Sufism in the Colonial Age and Modernity

A telling example of the European colonial perception of Ṣūfī orders is given in the manual Les Confréries religieuses musulmanes (The religious Muslim brotherhoods) published in 1897. In chapter 6, on the “political role of religious brotherhoods,” the two French authors and administrators considered “the maraboutic casts” as the agents par excellence of popular fanaticism, opposed to any form of power in place—throughout the history of Islam. They state, “No longer able to fight us openly [i.e. from 1240s/1830s to the 1300s/1890s] today, secret societies act in the dark, on the masses, which they direct as they wish and to which they are the support and the hope” (Depont and Coppolani, 259). The Ṣūfīs’ response to colonial rule, especially in Africa, differed, fluctuated, and was sometimes ambivalent, and often also aimed at Muslim states that Ṣūfī masters accused of infidelity. Above all, responses were debated to a far greater extent than it appeared to the British, Dutch, French, or Russian colonial observers. The figure of ʿUthmān dan Fodio (d. 1234/1817), a reformer, prolific writer, and Qādirī spiritual leader in northern Nigeria, was emblematic of this intellectual dimension of responses, though he was not directly involved in the colonial question. After receiving a classical Islamic education, the young

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ʿUthmān was deeply influenced by the twelfth-/eighteenth-century Khalwatī shaykh from Agadez, Jibrīl b. ʿUmar (d. after 1200/1785). The reformist master taught his disciple about the perils of local syncretic forms of Islam and about the politico-religious trends in Egypt and the Ḥijāz, more precisely the Ṣūfī reply to Wahhābī criticism and European encroachment. Repeated mystical visions convinced ʿUthmān dan Fodio to withdraw with his community, beyond the reach of the Hausa ruler; and in 1218/1804 he declared a holy war against a kingdom that he considered corrupt and tyrannical. Facilitated by the spread of Mahdist millennial expectations at the approach of the year 1200/1785–6 and the occasional support of Fulani pastoralist leaders, after four years of struggle the Ṣūfī jihād was victorious. Dan Fodio constructed the town of Sokoto and founded a reformed Islamic state based on the structures of a caliphate (with viziers, judges, amīrs and so forth), not a Ṣūfī order. The application of the Prophet’s model was salient in his ideology, especially the hijra, a migration “from an abode of unbelief to the abode of Islam.” Later in the century, the same argument became a standard doctrine for Muslim leaders in Africa threatened by European colonialism (Martin, ch. 1–2; Vikør). The epilogue of Dan Fodio’s experience is symptomatic of the Ṣūfīs’ divergent attitudes, which ranged from reluctant involvement in worldly affairs to concerted engagement in politics. After the conquest, ʿUthmān returned to his scholarly activities and entrusted power to his brother and to his son Muḥammad Bello (d. 1253/1837). The Sokoto Caliphate lasted until 1903. It was not a single movement, since other jihāds in West Africa were also tied to the authority of Dan Fodio. ʿUmar Tall (d. 1280/1864), a khalīfa of the Tijāniyya Ṣūfī order that established the Tukulor Empire, led a jihād in Mali against “paganism” and the French, even though, originally, the order formed by Sīdī Aḥmad al-Tijānī (d. 1230/1815) avoided politics in the Maghrib. In other words, the state founder remained an inspiration, not a full-fledged political leader. The oscillation of Ṣūfī authorities between quietism and activism in general, and more specifically between accommodation and opposition to colonial rule, continued in the historical legacy of Aḥmad b. Idrīs (d. 1253/1837). Educated in Fez and affiliated to the Shādhiliyya ṭarīqa, he set off for the East in 1213–4/1799 and resided in Mecca, the Sudan, and Ṣabyā (in southwestern Arabia). He was hostile to Wahhābism and influenced by Ibn al-ʿArabī; in his teaching, he set out (in more than fifty works) to elaborate on the concept of the “Muḥammadan way” (al-ṭarīqa al-Muḥammadiyya). This was of two types: the imitatio Muḥammadi and the act of receiving instruction from the Prophet in person, as he was alive (O’Fahey, ch. 2–4; Radtke). Ibn Idrīs did not create a Ṣūfī order, nor did he engage in politics, but several of his prominent disciples established their own lineages, or even Islamic states.

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In 1911, after leading a revolt against the Ottoman forces, Ibn Idrīs’ grandson Muḥammad b. ʿAlī l-Idrīsī (d. 1923) founded a short-lived state known as aldawla al-Idrīsiyya (the Idrīsid state) in ʿAsīr province. The political formation, which did not survive the Wahhābī conquest in 1923, was not a Ṣūfī state, in that it did not emerge from a Ṣūfī organisation with a hierarchy and institutions, as was the case of the Sanūsiyya, another lineage inspired by Muḥammad al-Idrīsī’s father. This major brotherhood was established by the disciple closest to Aḥmad b. Idrīs, the Algerian-born Muḥammad b. ʿAlī l-Sanūsī (d. 1276/1859), who set up a military-political organisation that opposed European forces in Cyrenaica (present-day eastern Libya) and then evolved into an embryonic state. Colonial and early twentieth-century historiography stressed the political and revivalist nature of the Sanūsiyya. Against this teleological thesis, scholars have shown that, although it was, originally, clearly apolitical, the Sanūsiyya Ṣūfī order took political action for specific local reasons. Holy war and political power did not serve a religious purpose, they were a product of specific historical events. Replete with speculations in line with Aḥmad b. Idrīs’ teaching, al-Sanūsī’s writings never mentioned jihād; in practice, he implemented a regional network of missionary lodges (zāwiyas). In 1298/1881, his successor Muḥammad al-Mahdī (d. 1902) undertook a long march (called a hijra) and introduced the brotherhood in the Sahara and the Sudan. Attacks by the French and Italians in 1911 forced the new shaykh Aḥmad al-Sharīf (d. 1933) to declare jihād and to create an independent Sanūsī government (ḥukūma sanūsiyya) in Cyrenaica. Aḥmad al-Sharīf was quickly defeated by the Italians, abdicated, and took refuge in Turkey. The Sanūsiyya resurfaced in the 1950s with the British recognition of Muḥammad Idrīs (d. 1969) as king of Libya. By then, the Ṣūfī ṭarīqa had completed its process of tribal segmentation and secularisation (O’Fahey, ch. 5–6; Bang, ch. 5; Triaud, 1: introduction). Comparisons have been made between the Sanūsiyya and the Naqshban­ diyya Khālidiyya in Kurdistan, largely because both movements proclaimed jihāds and created organisational frameworks to counteract the centrifugal tendencies of tribes. However, this framework seems to have been less crucial than the role of the Ṣūfī shaykh as landlord and holy man, as in the case of the Kurdish Khālidī Shaykh Saʿīd (d. 1925) who led an insurrection against the Kemalist regime, in an effort to establish an independent state where Islamic principles would be respected (Bruinessen, Agha, ch. 5). Even more striking is the somewhat similar genesis of these two movements. During the early nineteenth century, the Naqshbandiyya Khālidiyya spread rapidly in Kurdistan under the influence of the Kurdish eponymous leader Mawlānā Khālid (d. 1242/1827), whose missionary zeal and hostility toward European domination assured the popularity and legitimacy of his Ṣūfī branch. Then, driven by

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specific circumstances rather than by a predetermined plan, Khālidī shaykhs entered into politics. When the Ottomans under Maḥmūd II (r. 1223–55/ 1808–39), backed by the European powers, destroyed the Kurdish emirates, the chaos that ensued compelled the Ṣūfī leaders to take action and to support the movement for independence. The authority acquired by the families of these shaykhs or their descendants (such as the Bārzānīs) gave them key roles in Kurdish nationalism (Bruinessen, Agha, ch. 4). In contrast, Mawlānā Khālid himself was ambivalent on the question of political involvement. Accused of being “power-thirsty” (ṣāḥīb-i ẓuhūr, lit. the “manifest master”) and in conflict with the Bābān pashas (a local aristocracy) and their Qādirī supporters, the shaykh nevertheless remained aloof from the rulers and only involved himself in lobbying the elite in Sulaymaniyya, then in Baghdad, and Damascus. Mawlānā Khālid was less a theoretician than an active scholar (ʿālim ʿāmil) and organiser who brought in, thanks to a simple initiation procedure, a large number of khalīfas who were dispersed in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire and were able to enhance the influence of the order (Hakim; Weismann, Taste of modernity, 39, 47, 59–60, 94, 106). Historical reconstructions of the careers of Ṣūfī “warlords” like Sayyid Aḥmad Barelwī (d. 1246/1831), Imām Shāmil (d. 1287/1871), and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī (d. 1300/1883) have often taken comparative approaches, given that the last two figures were affiliated to the Khālidiyya and corresponded regularly with each other. When Sayyid Aḥmad was born in Awadh region in 1201/1786, the Mughal emperor still reigned in Delhi and the nawab ruled in Lucknow, though their power was largely nominal. The British did not interfere with the social order but their presence increasingly influenced the everyday life of Indian Muslims. The shaykh was initiated into the Naqshbandiyya Mujaddidiyya (founded in India by Aḥmad Sirhindī, d. 1034/1624), the Qādiriyya, and the Chishtiyya. He promoted a specific form of Islamic reformism, because he was of opinion that the British Raj had made India a dār al-ḥarb (“abode of war”). Therefore, his duty was to emigrate (hijra), then declare a jihād. In 1241/1826, as narrated in hagiographies and letters, Sayyid Aḥmad and his 500 combatants travelled to Afghanistan, and from Peshawar launched a jihād against the local Sikhs, then attacked the British. He was killed by the Sikh army in Kashmir, without fulfilling his politico-religious mission (Gaborieau, ch. 1–3, 8). Behind these dramatic events, his writings reveal several doctrinal points that can be summarised as follows: Sayyid Aḥmad Barelwī viewed himself as the “man of the call” (ṣāḥīb-i daʿwat), that is, the providential figure elected by God to conduct a sacred battle and impose the divine law; far from establishing an Islamic state in a specific territory, his utopian project was to recreate, somewhere between

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India and Transoxiana, the perfect (tāmma) imamate of the first caliphs, under his leadership (as a messiah or mahdī); thus, he intended to transcend the temporal rulers, without replacing them (Gaborieau, ch. 9–10). As a faithful member of the Naqshbandiyya Khālidiyya, Imām Shāmil (originally Shamwīl) was compelled to respond to the Russian advance on his homeland and their subsequent imposition of colonial laws in place of Islamic law and values. Imām Shāmil took over the political engagement from his Khālidī predecessors. Before him, in 1246/1830, his friend Ghāzī Muḥammad (d. 1248/1832) had proclaimed holy war against the colonial empire; he was declared imam then killed. Shāmil survived and, after the assassination of the second imam Ḥamza(t) Bek (d. 1250/1834), was recognised as the third imam of Daghestan. His military victories enabled him to unify the Caucasian mountain tribes under one banner. From an institutional perspective, Shāmil was at the top of a well-organised theocratic state administered by a council (dīwān) and regional deputies (nāʾibs). The sharīʿa was scrupulously applied by the learned class, which consisted of muftīs and judges. The army, which played a central role, included a corps of 400–500 “warrior disciples” (nāʾib murīds). In 1276/1859 Shāmil was captured and placed under house arrest in Kaluga (southwest of Moscow) then in Kiev; in 1285/1869, he went on pilgrimage, and died and was buried in Medina. Imām Shāmil was more a practitioner of Sufism than a thinker; within his circle of followers, he acted as and was perceived as a spiritual leader who performed the Naqshbandī rituals, though his Ṣūfī model of community never materialised in a large scale in north Caucasian society (Gammer, ch. 5–8, 21–24; Knysh, S̲h̲āmil). Around the same time (during a long ḥajj between 1241/1826 and 1243/1828) ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī, the offspring of a Sharifian family of notables belonging to the Qādiriyya order, was initiated into the Khālidiyya by Mawlānā Khālid. He then intended to retire to the solitude of his lodge in Oued alHammam (Wādī l-Ḥammām in northwestern Algeria). But in 1246/1830, he was stirred into action by the French conquest of Algeria, which had dire effects on local legal and religious values. Thus, he took action and endeavoured to unite Algerian chiefdoms to struggle against the French. After negotiating a provisional status, ʿAbd al-Qādir established an embryonic theocracy with Tagdempt as capital, where legislative and moral codes were defined by the sharīʿa. The main currency was named Muḥammadiyya, khalīfas administered the regions, and Ṣūfī lodges were used to promote devout public behaviour. He was defeated in 1264/1847, imprisoned, then forced into exile: the man who had been called, in 1248/1832, sultan and amīr al-muʾminīn (“commander of the faithful”), ended his life in Damascus as a spiritual master surrounded by disciples from various countries; he declined all French offers to assume

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a political role in Syria. His body was buried next to the grave of his spiritual “ancestor” Ibn al-ʿArabī, whose thought fuelled ʿAbd al-Qādir’s monumental book entitled Kitāb al-mawāqif (The book of stations). In the 372 chapters articulating three essential pivots, i.e. God ad intra and ad extra, the created world of the human servant, and the intermediate sphere between God and his servant there is no discussion of later history or politics (Bouyerdene, 19, 44, 73–76, 133; D̲ j̲azâʾirî, 1:3–20). The commonality between Imām Shāmil and ʿAbd al-Qādir and a Ṣūfī leader like Sayyid Aḥmad Barelwī is based on the fact that they all waged jihāds against colonial forces, and were supported by combatants whom sources describe as disciples (murīds). Whereas Shāmil and ʿAbd al-Qādir adopted the titles imām or amīr al-muʾminīn, only Aḥmad Barelwī claimed the title mahdī; and all three practiced Sufism through introspection, a strict adherence to the divine law, or direct communication with the Prophet. More generally, scholarly debate about these “jihād states” concentrated on the issue of Islamic mysticism as a primary motivating force. In contrast to a paradigm known as maraboutisme (in French) or miuridizm (in Russian), which appeared at the same time as the events they described, the primary sources that emerged from the colonial administration and the Ṣūfī actors themselves suggest a different scenario (Gaborieau, 177–9, 275–8; Knysh, Sufism). The militancy of the Ṣūfīs at that time were the acts of individual community leaders, who act after some hesitation and soul-searching, as they were caught up in the turmoil of historical events that were often marked by doomsday predictions and messianic expectations. Less spectacular but no less influential in the long run, in the course of the nineteenth century, modernity (in the sense of public administration) entered Ṣūfī orders. The Egyptian ṭuruq, which were institutionalised from the top-down by the Ottoman state, then under the khedival (khıdīvī, “viceregal”) government, is a well-studied example. In 1812, a firman issued by Egypt’s pasha Muḥammad ʿAlī (r. 1220–64/1805–48) created a central authority for Ṣūfī groups, and assigned as its first head Muḥammad al-Bakrī (d. 1271/1855), a shaykh of an old ashrāf family who claimed descent from the first caliph Abū Bakr. With the active support of government agencies, al-Bakrī’s administrative power increased. The hereditary charge passed to ʿAlī l-Bakrī (d. 1297/1880) who reinforced the hierarchical rules in the ṭuruq administration, and integrated the heads of lodges (mashāyikh al-takāyā) and heads of shrines (mashāyikh al-aḍriḥa) into that administration. In 1298/1881 under pressure from the khedive al-Tawfīq (d. 1309/1892), reforms of rituals and interference in the shaykhs’ management provoked a crisis of authority. In 1312/1895 a council of the ministry of the interior promulgated a series of regulations; these were completed in

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1905 as the “Internal Rules for the Sufi orders” (al-lāʾiḥa al-dākhiliyya lil-ṭuruq al-ṣūfiyya), and were designed to institute a rudimentary bureaucratic system (De Jong, 39, 95, 124, 187–8). During the twentieth century, whatever the share of political instrumentalisation or even corruption of the ṭuruq administration, the adoption of modern administrative practices brought Ṣūfī institutions closer into the state machinery, not only through interpersonal contacts between Ṣūfī administrators and state bureaucrats, but also in the use of paperwork, procedures, legal statuses, decision processes, official titles, and so forth. 5 The Baraka Bureaucracy The establishment of socialist regimes in mainly Muslim-inhabited areas and countries had an immediate impact on Ṣūfī institutions. Over the longer term, though, it caused less secularisation than bureaucratisation; this was done deliberately, to inhibit potentially subversive expressions of Sufism. Among the republics of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan boasted a long history of theorising, practicing, and organising Islamic mysticism. Before and after the repression of charismatic leaders and the police control of Ṣūfī activities that started in 1926, Soviet authorities created departments, such as the Spiritual Directory of the Muslims of Central Asia (known as SADUM) founded in 1943 and headquartered in Tashkent in order to administer Islam more efficiently. These measures generally affected Sufism and its institutions negatively. When local Ṣūfī orders lost substantial financial resources and their institutional independence, they were forced to pursue their activities clandestinely in small groups or interact closely with state officials, or sometimes both. Variations and volatility in attitudes were ongoing features of such arrangements. Still, a sort of administrative establishment for Ṣūfīs eventually emerged. The position of muftī at the head of the SADUM was held, successively, by members of the Babakhanov family, who descended from a Yasawī saintly lineage, though they no longer practiced Ṣūfī rituals and even discouraged Ṣūfī discipline and the transmission of Ṣūfī knowledge. In rural areas where the kolkhoz system structured the local political hierarchies, it was common for leaders of kolkhoz working units (brigades) to come from the sacred lineages of local Ṣūfī masters, notably orders such as the Naqshbandī and Khwāja (descendants of the four rightly-guided caliphs). In this capacity they managed to sustain Islamic religious life and institutions in the region, but not necessarily Sufism (Babajanov; Dudoignon and Noack, introduction). Up until 1963 when the Arab Socialist Renaissance Party (Ḥizb al-Baʿth alʿArabī l-Ishtirākī), which was founded in 1943 with the blessing of the Union of

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Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), seized power, Syria had hosted important Ṣūfī orders. Of course, its religious policy differed fundamentally from that of the Bolsheviks. The state sponsored the Naqshbandiyya Kuftāriyya order, headed by and named after the grand mufti of Syria, Aḥmad Kuftārū (d. 2004). His role was to counter the Ikhwān al-Muslimūn (the Muslim Brotherhood, a politico-religious movement founded in Egypt by Ḥasan al-Bannāʾ, d. 1949) and promote an “official [version of] Islam” (al-islām al-rasmī), though in fact many Ṣūfī masters and their disciples joined the anti-Baʿth opposition and maintained close ties with the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the 1970s, Kuftārū and other leaders were supported by Ḥāfiẓ al-Asad’s (d. 2000) regime, by virtue of which they controlled the religious establishment, fostered a quietist, spiritual, and educational form of Sufism. The Syrian religious leadership toyed with the idea of eliminating some Ṣūfī terminology, an idea that was introduced into Syria by the Indian Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ, a reformist “Council of Religious Scholars” founded in 1891. Thus, the Kuftāriyya developed as a transnational Ṣūfī movement. Its key institution, the Abū al-Nūr Islamic Center in Damascus included schools, universities, prayer halls, offices, a library, meeting rooms, and so on, with branches in other Syrian cities, Lebanon, the United States, and Europe (Böttcher; Weismann, Sufi Fundamentalism). The bureaucratisation of Ṣūfī institutions also occurred under anticommunist regimes, such as that in Indonesia under the New Order instituted by Suharto (d. 2008), which lasted from 1967 to 1998. Sharīʿa-oriented Sufism replaced syncretistic mysticism, first in rural areas where Ṣūfī leaders became political figures, then among urban classes as traditional Ṣūfī communities (tarekat) were gradually supplemented by formal associations. Influenced by Ṣūfī doctrines and practices, but also by European spiritualities (Theosophy, Freemasonry), some esoteric (kebatinan) movements adopted a structure resembling that of associations with administrators who assisted spiritual teachers. In the 1950s and early 1960s they were allied with the left. In addition to them, leaders of local tarekats participated in associations, mainly the Nahdlatul Ulama (Awakening of Scholars) and the Persatuan Tarbiyah Islamiyah (Union for Islamic Education) which became political parties. One of these leaders, Haji Jalaluddin, created his own association, the Partai Politik Tarekat Islam, which became an institution of Ṣūfī bureaucrats who lacked major shaykhs. Later, in the 1970s, Musta’in Romly (d. 1984), the leader of the Qadiriyya wa-Naqshbandiyya, established a Jam’iyyah Ahlith Thoriqah Mu’tabaroh (Association of the Members of Respectable Orders) to represent “orthodox” Sufism; they were recognised by the central government. Engaged in electoral politics, he campaigned on behalf of the government party, the Golkar, while officials of the Nahdlatul Ulama issued fatwās (legal opinions)

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to vote for the rival party block, the United Development Party, which was composed of Muslim parties. Musta’in lost control over the tarekat network and his opponents inaugurated a second association, the Jam’iyyah Ahlith Thoriqah Mu’tabaroh al-Nahdliyyah, which was closer to the Nahdlatul Ulama (Bruinessen, Saints). On the one hand, conflicts around the Jam’iyyah show the increasingly political role of Ṣūfī orders, but on the other hand, they reveal the varied understandings of this role: in 1984, the Nahdlatul Ulama decided not to participate directly in politics and shaykhs of other groups acted more as spiritual mentors than as political entrepreneurs. In the Turkish Republic, Islam entered politics institutionally in 1974 when Necmettin Erbakan (d. 2011), the leader of the Milli Selamet Partisi (National Salvation Party) and a follower of the Nakşibendi (Naqshbandī) shaykh Mehmed Zahid Kotku (d. 1980), was elected as a legislator in the national government. During legislative elections, Erbakan’s party members obtained important ministerial offices. For example, in 1977, the Nakşibendi Korkut Özal (d. 2016) was appointed minister of the interior. His elder brother Turgut Özal (d. 1993), a disciple of Kotku and of his successor Esat Coşan (d. 2001), created the Anavatan Partisi (Motherland Party), became prime minister in 1983, then president in 1989. Özal’s government promoted Islamic ethics and values, and legitimised charitable donations so that religious communities (cemaat) like Ṣūfī orders (which had been forbidden by Mustafa Kemal in 1925) could develop as official foundations. Ṣūfī brotherhoods, with their hierarchy of charismatic powers, formed a matrix for political Islam in Turkey: the Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) cofounded by Erbakan was administered in the manner of a cemaat whose supreme chief, surnamed “master” (hoca), maintained quasimystical relationships with his subordinates by granting blessings; more broadly, many Islamic movements were modeled on Ṣūfī communities. They had three levels, i.e. an internal discipline based on loyalty and hierarchy, Ṣūfī leaders with religious charisma, and a model of Muslim civil society. This did not prevent divisions and conflicts. Several shaykhs disavowed Erbakan because of his autocratic practices. From the 1990s onwards, Ṣūfī cemaats that favoured indirect lobbying over direct political action, set up influential networks and well-organised institutions to provide Qurʾān courses, social services, residential schools (yurts), nurseries, and clinics, and made use of various medias (Zarcone, La Turquie moderne, 188–226). In sum, along with the bureaucratisation of spirituality, the spiritualisation of bureaucracy also occurred. In the post-communist Balkans, especially in Albania, Bektāshī institutions were re-established, thanks to an association called the Komuniteti Bektashian Kryegjyshata Botërore Bektashiane (Bektashi Community–World Bektashi Chief Grandfather Centre), headquartered in Tirana. In the wake

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of three congresses held in 1993, 2000, and 2005, and successive drafts of detailed statutes, the organisation defined itself with a clear hierarchy of members ranging from aspirants to high clerics (babas/prindës, dedes/gjyshs, and a dedebaba/kryegjysh). It also had a spiritual, administrative, and economic management run by various councils, headed by the dedebaba Reshat Bardhi (d. 2011). The Bektashi Community had international ambitions, in that it claimed authority over lodges (tekkes) situated in Macedonia, Kosovo, Greece, and the United States (in Taylor, Michigan, opened in 1954). In reality, this authority was rather pan-Albanian. Despite the high centralisation of the community, struggles for power and authority took place at the top as well as the bottom. Baba Selim Kaliçani (d. 2001) opposed Baba Reshat Bardhi and in 2002 under the authority of a baba close to Baba Selim, a competing regional organisation was officially registered in Skrapar district. The registration was cancelled by a court decision, but the fact remains that Bektashi institutions were and still are largely autonomous at the local level. Divergences also arose between Ṣūfī bureaucrats and local believers regarding the definition of Bektashism itself: Ṣūfī leaders stressed the commonality of Sufism and Sunnism, whereas local opponents highlighted the differences between these two interpretations of Islam (Clayer, The Bektashi). The Turkish and the Albanian cases illustrate that baraka bureaucracy was not exclusively a product of twentieth-century states seeking to control spiritually-oriented groups; it also concerned Ṣūfī groups themselves, at least their elites, who sought to adopt the modern techniques to maintain their status and power. The phenomenon of baraka bureaucracy even produced quasiautonomous political entities and parliamentary religious parties. Contemporary Senegal serves as an emblematic example. In the heterogeneous world of Ṣūfī brotherhoods in the Republic of Senegal, two major orders stand out, the Murīdiyya and the Tijāniyya, each of which claims several million followers worldwide. Founded by Aḥmadu Bàmba Mbàkke (d. 1927), the Murīdiyya order accepted an exchange for services (échange de services) with the French colonial system, an arrangement that continued after the independence of Senegal in 1960. In short, in return for producing groundnuts (a major cash crop at the time) on an industrial scale and supporting the colonial administration, the French authorities (and later the Senegalese state) granted the Murīds a certain degree of autonomy in the capital city of Touba. Affected by the economic crisis in the 1970s, this modus vivendi between the state and the Murīds faltered, causing shifts in the “voting instruction” (ndiggël) given by the Khalifa Général to his disciples. The political power of the holy men blessed with baraka and the administrative autonomy of the rural community in Touba did not mean that the Murīds exercised political domination

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or that all the Murīds agreed on the exercise of political power. If the 2000 election of Abdoulaye Wade, surnamed le Président Mouride, marked a return to the exchange for services system, some Murīds still aspired to remain neutral and distance themselves from the state. This dissonance may mark a return to Aḥmadu Bàmba’s emphasis on spiritual training and self-discipline (tarbiya) as the genuine purpose of Ṣūfīs’ worldly action (Loimeier; Babou, 5, 62–66, 81–84). Among the Tijāniyya of Senegal, the Niasse family also faced and survived colonial rule. In 1931, outside of Kaolack the Medina community founded by Ibrāhīm Niasse (d. 1975) became a transnational path known as the Jamāʿat al-Fayḍa (Community of the divine flood). Furthermore, Niasse established the Jamʿiyyat Anṣār al-Dīn (Association of the helpers of the religion) to further the cause of Muslims by organising local sections led by steering committees. A leader of international stature, in 1957, Niasse (together with Cheikh Tidjane Sy [b. 1925], a member of the Sy family network), cofounded the short-lived Parti de la Solidarité Sénégalaise. Tidjane Sy, with his son Muṣṭafā (b. 1952), founded a separate Tijānī branch with a highly territorialised administration, the Dāʾirat al-Mustarshidīn wa-l-Mustarshidāt (Circle of the seekers of guidance); from the 1990s onwards, it played a prominent, albeit shifting, role in encouraging voting. In 2000, Muṣṭafā Sy ran for president under the banner of the Parti de l’Unité et du Rassemblement, but withdrew his candidacy a few days later. Beyond partisan strategies described by political scientists, intellectual historians have pointed out that an organisation like Niasse’s was designed to reform the socioreligious identity of common believers through the secret transmission of spiritual training (tarbiya) and mystical experience ( fayḍa) (Seeseman, The Divine Flood, ch. 2–3, epilogue; Samson, ch. 2). Outside a democratic, or electoral, setting, the Tijāniyya faced the Islamist regime in the Sudan after the coup d’état of 1989, as did two popular Ṣūfī orders, the Khatmiyya (founded by Muḥammad ʿUthmān al-Mīrghānī, d. 1269/1853) and the Mahdiyya or Anṣār (founded by Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh, d. 1302/1885), and their respective political parties, the Democratic Unionist Party and the Umma Party. Under the influence of the Islamist leader Ḥasan al-Turābī (d. 2016), the government of ʿUmar al-Bashīr tried to involve the Ṣūfī orders in state politics by creating, in 1995, the Majlis al-Qawmī lil-Dhikr wa-l-Dhākirīn (National assembly of remembrance and those who remember). Headed by a shaykh affiliated with the Qādiriyya, the institution raised funds for projects run by Ṣūfī orders, facilitated visits of masters and pilgrims from abroad, and promoted public relations. In relation to the government, Ṣūfī authorities were torn between two positions, cooperation or silent disagreement. In the Tijāniyya, the Nigeria-born Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ (b. 1939) walked hand in hand

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with the government of Khartoum, even during the bloody jihād against southern Sudan, whereas other shaykhs rejected the politicised understanding of Islam, citing al-Tijānī’s statement “politics is a Kaʿba around which all evil circumambulates” (al-siyāsa kaʿba yaṭūfu bihā jamīʿ al-shurūr). Ṭarīqa members in contemporary Sudan were thus once again faced by the classical challenge of choosing between Ṣūfī spirituality and worldly power (Seeseman, Between Sufism and Islamism; Maruyama). The bureaucratisation of Ṣūfī institutions did not preclude Ṣūfī members from reconsidering the significance of the mission that God assigned to them, especially when confronted with competing modern ideologies. While they responded to contemporary Islamism, Ṣūfīs also redefined nationalism in their own terms by imparting a spiritual dimension, a supplément d’âme one might say, to the political body shaped by nation-building processes. Thus, in Pakistan, the religious policies of Ayyub Khan (Ayyūb Khān, 1958–69), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Dhū l-Fiqār ʿAlī Bhutto, 1971–7), and Zia ul-Haq (Ḍiyāʾ al-Ḥaqq, 1977–88) were no different in this respect. The three governments were unanimous in their caution about the mobilisation power of Ṣūfī shrines and living saints (pīrs); they attempted to instrumentalise them by availing themselves of baraka and making the sacred nature of the saints a state ideology of sorts. In a tangible sense, the governments took control of the physical institutions of Ṣūfīs—i.e., shrines, lodges, and related properties—to undercut the political power of the hereditary pīr families, and to demonstrate that the state could fulfil the same caretaking and ritual functions. As a result, Ṣūfī saints and shrines became a prominent component of Pakistan’s state machinery. Paradoxically, Ṣūfī leaders themselves were involved in the construction and the ideological support of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The Chishtī-Ṣābirī shaykhs Muhammad Zauqi (Muḥammad Dhawqī, d. 1951), Shahidullah Faridi (Shahīd Allāh Farīdī, d. 1978), and Wahid Bakhsh Sial Rabbani (Wāḥid Bakhsh Siyāl Rabbānī, d. 1995) were ardent nationalists. They sacralised Pakistan in the name of the purported ḥadīth, “Love of the homeland is a part of faith” (ḥubb al-waṭan min al-īmān), and defined their Ṣūfī lineage as a sacred community antecedent of the nation-state. Zauqi, who joined the Muslim League, had close contacts with nationalists and exchanged letters with Ali Jinnah (ʿAlī Jinnāḥ, d. 1948), and was later eulogised as the esoteric founder of Pakistan (Ewing; Rozehnal, ch. 3). This was perhaps reminiscent of the concept of dawla bāṭiniyya. A more obvious and recent echo of the concept can be found in the discourse of the members of the Kasnazāniyya order in Iraqi Kurdistan; in 2005 they referred to a “spiritual state” (dawla rūḥiyya), a hypothetical state that would be governed by the Kasnazānī shaykhs. This branch of the Qādiriyya,

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established by the Kurd ʿAbd al-Karīm Shāhī Kasnazān (d. 1316/1899) in Sulaymaniyya, created the political party Tajammuʿ al-Waḥda al-Waṭaniyya al-ʿIrāqī (Coalition of the Iraqi National Unity) in 2003, right after the fall of Ṣaddām Ḥusayn’s (d. 2006) regime and the subsequent opening of multi-party system. Composed of Kurdish, Turkmen, and Arab disciples, of Sunnī as well as Shīʿī extraction, the Ṣūfī order and its party sought to transcend ethnic and confessional boundaries to promote the as yet unachieved unity of Iraq. Highly bureaucratic, the Kasnazāniyya is supervised by a presidency (riyāsat) based in the central lodge of Sulaymaniyya, with offices and commissions across the country; these regularly report their activities in written communiqués and correspond with each other by telephone and internet. In the 2014 legislative elections, the party won two seats in parliament. In addition to their strictly economic and political agenda, Kasnazānīs present themselves as representatives of modern Sufism, antithetical to both Islamism and religious communitarianism (Salihi, part 3 and 5). In the 2000s, Islamism, in the form of the Islamic Salvation Front (dissolved in 1992) or jihadist groups, prompted the Algerian government of Abdelaziz Bouteflika (ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Bū Taflīqa, b. 1937) to rehabilitate Ṣūfī institutions and to promote them as an antidote against manifestations of political Islam. Lodges (zāwiyas) and attached religious classrooms were encouraged to take an active role in society, among the youth in particular; the ministry of religious affairs allowed Ṣūfīs to distribute publications to mosques and schools; monuments were erected or restored with government funding (Muedini, 57–66). Research centres with the support of the ministry of culture—but also self-funded zāwiyas—organised large events that combined cultural, academic, and religious presentations and presented Islamic mysticism as quietist, apolitical, and peaceful. Despite this state instrumentalisation of Sufism, some cultural or intellectual actors, academic scholars of Islamic studies, and Ṣūfī practitioners tried to use Ṣūfī institutions to voice critical opinions. They pointed out that, throughout its history, Ṣūfīs have vacillated in regard to the issue of being involved in politics, and wavered between an irrepressible “will to power” and its very negation. This brief survey of the political history of Islamic mysticism shows that worldly powers were often attracted by Ṣūfīs, and that Ṣūfīs, in a reciprocal sense, were close to power institutions, and they themselves sometimes produced institutions of power. In the early mediaeval period, Muslim mystics and states found a common terrain of, alternatively, exchange and tensions in jihāds, messianic expectations, and social justice. Simultaneously, Ṣūfī thinkers laid the foundations for a concerted and systematic reflection on power. From the seventh/thirteenth century onward, Ṣūfīs and sultans benefited from

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a reciprocal system of patronage, which secured material support for the Ṣūfīs and religious legitimacy for sultans. Beyond the interests of Ṣūfī leaders and sultans, the majority, as well as the elite (whether political or religious elite), expressed their belief in the possibility of political sovereignty for saints. It is significant that, during the early modern era, saintly Ṣūfī lineages have established theocratic regimes that appear to be the political “translation” of mediaeval and post-mediaeval theories that describe the saints’ hidden government of the world. While the domination of many Muslim countries by European colonial states seems to have put an end to such attempts, Ṣūfī leaders responded to the new historical situation. Inspired by the prophetic experience of migration and sometimes claiming direct communication with the Prophet, Muslim mystics retreated before waging jihād on the colonisers, and occasionally founded full-fledged Islamic states, which were usually devoid of distinctly Ṣūfī trappings. Finally, the bureaucratisation of institutions that characterised twentieth-century societies has also affected Sufism in both its organisational modes and its construction of authority and charisma. Ṣūfī political parties have reflected this new reality, while seeking to maintain the spiritual ideals of premodern Sufism. Bibliography ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Muḥaddith Dihlavī, Akhbār al-akhyār fī asrār al-abrār, ed. ʿAlīm Ashraf Khān, Tehran 1383Sh/2005. Aigle, Denise, Le soufisme sunnite en Fārs. Šayḫ Amīn al-Dīn Balyānī, in Denise Aigle (ed.), L’Iran face à la domination mongole (Tehran 1997), 231–60. Alam, Muzaffar, The languages of political Islam. India, 1200–1800, London 2004. Algar, Hamid, Political aspects of Naqshbandî history, in Marc Gaborieau, Alexandre Popovic, and Thierry Zarcone (eds.), Naqshbandis. Cheminements et situation actuelle d’un ordre mystique musulman (Istanbul and Paris 1990), 117–46. Amitai-Preiss, Reuven, Sufis and shamans. Some remarks on the Islamization of the Mongols in the Ilkhanate, JESHO 42/1 (1999): 27–46. Amri, Nelly, Le pouvoir du saint en Ifrîqiyya aux VIIIe–IXe/XIVe–XVe siècles. Le « très visible » gouvernement du monde, in Henri Bresc, Georges Dagher, and Christiane Veauvy (eds.), Politique et religion en Méditerranée, moyen âge et époque contemporaine (Paris 2008), 165–96. Auer, Blain A., Symbols of authority in medieval Islam. History, religion, and Muslim legitimacy in the Delhi sultanate, London 2012.

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Chapter 14

Ṣūfī Terminology of Power Luca Patrizi In the technical language of Sufism, it is common to find loanwords from the classical terminology of political power used in a metaphorical way. Given the close relations between temporal and spiritual institutions of power in Islamic societies, Muslim mystics integrated the doctrine of royalty into their system of thought. As certain specialists have pointed out, this process of integration occurred in conjunction with the historical dynamics of political power, and developed as part of the progressive decline or transformation of the institution of the caliphate. A first major turning point came in the fifth/eleventh century, with the Sunnī revival that took place under the Saljūq dynasty; this revival gave the Ṣūfīs a position of power in society, in particular under the vizierate of Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092). The capture of Baghdad by the Mongols in 656/1258 certainly represents another turning point. Likewise, the power of the Mamlūks and the genesis of the great Muslim empires (Mughul, Ṣafavid, Ottoman) during the eighth/fourteenth to tenth/sixteenth centuries also marked a decisive period, perhaps even the pinnacle of the symbolic and real power of Ṣūfī shaykhs (Garcin, Les soufis, 19; Garcin, Le sultan 267–8; Papas in this volume; Vikør in this volume). This being said, a certain correlation between the terminology of power and that of Sufism existed before the fifth/eleventh century. Indeed, just as the Latin word patronus primarily indicates a master in relation to a freed slave and later the patron saint of a town or a neighbourhood, it is well known that the root w-l-y (walī, saint, or wālī, governor; walāya, sainthood, or wilāya, territorial power) contributed to these ambiguities from the beginning of mediaeval Sufism (Chodkiewicz, 33–9). 1

The Metaphor of Royalty in Islam

The use of metaphor is common in the religious domain, particularly in mysticism. The literature of the Muslim world, and particularly its poetry (a preferred mode of mystical expression) makes frequent use of metaphors. An analysis of the technical terminology of Sufism displays a recurrent use of the metaphor or royalty. The majority of ancient civilisations elaborated complex

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doctrines of royalty that were strictly tied to theological and metaphysical concepts (Brisch; Gonda). In the Semitic and ancient Middle Eastern context, the metaphor of royalty was frequently applied to God, particularly by Judaism and later by Islam. Several interesting studies address this doctrine of royalty in Judaism, as it is inscribed in the context of the ancient Middle East (Brettler). Christianity used biblical formulas, and developed its own distinctive interpretation of the metaphor of royalty through the well-known notion of Christ, as the King, in the New Testament, where he is referred to in the following forms: as “King of Israel or King of the Jews,” “King of the World,” “King of the Universe,” “King of kings” (Beskow). In Byzantine iconography, from the sixth to the seventh century, we again find Christ as the Pantocrator, “Sovereign of the Universe,” just as it appears in the mediaeval images of the “Majestas Domini,” where Christ is seated on a celestial throne. In various designations the Holy Virgin is often named “Queen,” and from the thirteenth century, one of the Gothic iconographies of the Virgin represents her coronation as Regina Coeli. Medieval Islamic thought inherited many of these historical, cultural, and theological perspectives. In Islam, one of the names of God is Mālik, “King,” and Mālik al-mulk, “King of the kingdom.” Whereas Judaism unites the image of the prophets with that of kings, as shown by the examples of David and Solomon, the same is not true with regard to the Islamic tradition, which did not embrace the exaltation of temporal power, rather it specifically rejected the kings from ancient Arabia, the Byzantine basileus, and the Iranian shāh. A ḥadīth of the Prophet Muḥammad affirms: “On the day of resurrection, the name that God will dislike the most is the one held by a man who gave himself the title King of Kings (malik al-amlāk)” (al-Bukhārī, 4:129). While the Sassanids may have influenced the Islamic empire in terms of state protocol, its very elaborate doctrine of royalty was not applied unaltered to the new Middle Eastern political reality. It must, however, be highlighted that certain ʿAbbāsid sovereigns, such as al-Ma‌ʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–33), were influenced by Sassanid culture, in an obvious political and symbolic continuity with the ancient Persian empire (Frye, 4–56; Khaleghi-Motlagh). Finally, the doctrine of royalty in the pre-Islamic Middle East exerted a strong influence on Islamic medieval thought, particularly in the Persian environment. Sufism integrated it in a metaphorical way, building part of its doctrinal system and hierarchical structure on it, as we can see from an analysis of its technical terminology. Yet, even before its appearance in Ṣūfī literature, in a passage of the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity), presumably written in Basra during the second half of the fourth/tenth century, the notion of royalty had a metaphorical meaning; the Rasāʾil uses technical mystic terminology in a

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surprising way, clearly indicating a correlation between the etiquette of the court and religious and mystical rules (adab): And there are those that consider it obligatory for the sages, when they desire to open the door to wisdom for the scholars and unveil the secrets for the disciples, that they first exert themselves, perfect their souls through education to purify them, [and] purify their morals, because wisdom, like a bride, needs a solitary encounter, and it is one of the treasures of the hereafter. Then, if the sage does not put into practice what is obligatory for him, in terms of wisdom, regarding the asceticism of the sages before the secrets of wisdom are revealed to them, in this he is like the chamberlain of the king that allows foolish people to come before the king without respect for the rules of hierarchy, and that therefore deserves punishment. Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, 4:13

2

Sufism and Power: Adab and the Metaphor of Royalty

Among the various manifestations of this metaphor in the context of mediaeval Sufism, two aspects are noteworthy: the metaphorical integration of the technical terminology of power and the practice of the ancient royal banquet. Early Sufism rejects, in principle, seeking temporal power and the company of the powerful of this world. In this regard, the model of Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. c. 161/777–8), who, legend asserts, was a king of Balkh who abdicated his power to lead the ascetic life of the Ṣūfīs in Syria, is continually invoked. Mediaeval authors, however, acknowledge an affinity between the parallel levels of earthly and spiritual royalty. These two points of view only appear to be contradictory. Starting with the ancient sources, like the Kitāb ādāb al-ṣuḥba by al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) and the Kitāb tahdhīb al-asrār by al-Kharkūshī (d. 407/1016), it seems that the school of Baghdad and the school of Khurāsān deal with this question from different perspectives. We can observe the opinion of the two schools in the following account reported by these two authors; though the confrontation seems more rhetorical than real, its value remains as a testimony of the proximity between the rules of the court and the rules for Ṣūfīs: “Junayd said to Abū Ḥafṣ: ‘You educated your companions with the rules of the sultans (addabta aṣḥābaka ādāb al-salāṭīn).’ He replied: ‘No, Abū l-Qāsim, the excellence of the external adab reveals the excellence of the internal adab’” (al-Sulamī, 86; al-Kharkūshī, 213).

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Note that Junayd (d. 298/910) is the representative, par excellence, of the school of Baghdad, whereas Abū Ḥafṣ al-Ḥaddād al-Nīshāpūrī (d. c. 270/883) is originally from Khurāsān. This may suggest that the school of Khurāsān was more influenced by the Sassanid heritage than was the school of Baghdad. Sufism of the mediaeval period consciously used the analogy between temporal power and spiritual power. In the Kitāb adab al-mulūk fī bayān ḥaqāʾiq al-taṣawwuf (“The book of the rule of the kings concerning the explanations of the realities of Sufism”), an anonymous text that dates to the fourth/tenth century, we find the metaphor of royalty applied to Sufism and named al-mulūkiyya al-ṣūfiyya (the royalty of Ṣūfīs). The most significant passages follow here. I called it “the rule of the kings,” because the Sufis renounced all secondary earthly causes, and have become kings … Why, then, should not the definition of “kings” rightly be applied to them, since for them only God is important and, in this life, [they] are content with little? … They have become the kings of this world and the hereafter. They educate themselves according to the Sunna and, internally, they put effort into service. They preserve the superior realities of divine sacredness, and thus have become kings of both worlds, kings of the two dwellings, kings of paradise. It has been reported by Abū Hurayra that the Prophet said: “The kings of paradise are men with messy hair, covered in dust and dressed in rags, to whom no one pays attention, and if they were to merely swear by God, their oath would be realised.” Such are the characteristics of the Sufis and of royalty, attested by every single one of their movements. Part of the reality of the royalty of Sufis is the fact of their dislike of the world, in accordance with God…. Royalty is realised in them because they do not move, except for His sake…. They are the real kings, and how could the name of royalty not be applied to them since God gave men the name of “kings” for what He has given them in terms of the beauty of this world and its graces? God said: “He made you kings after having given you what had never been given to anyone in the worlds” [Q 5:20]…. It is reported that Ibrāhīm b. Adham said one day: “Miserable are the sovereigns of this earth! If they had known what we are they would have killed us.” Certain sages have affirmed: “Renounce this world, and you will be a king. Renounce the hereafter and you will be crowned king.” The condition of royalty on earth, is to renounce it, and you will be prince and master of everything you renounce. It has been reported in a tradition that God said to the garden of Eden: “Rejoice for the dwellings of the kings,” which is intended to mean the houses of the ascetics and the prodigies of the

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soul. I described the reality of the states of royalty according to the specific realities of the kings of the people of spiritual courtesy (adab): they are the Sufis, those who educate themselves according to the Sunna with the goal of performing real service to God. Kitāb adab al-mulūk, 7–8

In the earliest Ṣūfī sources, it is possible to discover other references to royalty that are equally ambivalent. Two examples from the biographical encyclopaedia by Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī (d. 430/1038) are noteworthy: “A man was asking Muḥammad b. Wāsiʿ for advice. He answered: I invite you to be king in this life and the hereafter. The man asked: and how can I achieve that? He replied: Give up this lower world” (al-Iṣfahānī, 2:350–1), and “Sunayd b. Dāwūd al-Miṣṣīṣī transmitted: I asked Ibn al-Mubārak: who are the real men? He answered: the scholars. I asked him: and who are the kings? He replied: the ascetics” (al-Iṣfahānī, 8:167). To these examples, we may add an interesting excerpt from al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072): He [God] arranged the Muslims according to ranks. The masses are like subjects of the king. The hadith collectors are like the treasurers of the king. The people of the Qur’an are like the guardians of the registries and valuables [of the king]. The jurists are the king’s trustees, because the jurist [adjudicates] for God. The scholars of the roots (‘ulama’ al-usul) are like the chiefs and commanders of the armies. The awliya’ are like pillars of the [palace’s] gate, while the lords of hearts (arbab al-qulub) and the people of the purity (ashab al-safa’) are like the elect of the king and his companions. Knysh, 72

It is highly significant that the Qaṣīda al-rāʾiyya by Abū Madyan al-Shuʿayb (d. 589/1193 or 594/1198) starts with the following passage: “There is no pleasure in life outside of the company of Sufis / They are the sultans, lords and princes” (Cornell, 150–6). Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), in his own doctrinal elaboration on adab, defines adab al-khidma, as “adab of service,” specifying explicitly that its origins are from royal etiquette. He then adds: “Finally, the king of the men of God is God himself, who instituted for us different types of adab for His service” (Gril, 231). ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī (d. 973/1565) similarly expresses this analogy in his work: “When God decreed sainthood for a creature, the same way as the kings of earth decree the functions of their subordinates, He granted him invocation (dhikr) as a kind of ordainment, in order to make his sainthood manifest” (al-Shaʿrānī, 1:21). Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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One of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s works, entitled Kitāb al-tadbirāt al-ilāhiyya fī iṣlāḥ almamlaka al-insāniyya (The book of divine management in the reformation of the human kingdom), focuses on the metaphor of political power and describes the spiritual microcosm of man, in which the spirit (rūḥ) is the king (malik) who rules the “city of the body” (madīnat al-jism) (Ibn al-ʿArabī). At the foundation of the institution of the Sunnī caliphate we find, ideally, the uninterrupted transmission of the khilāfa, the legacy of Prophet Muḥammad to his successors. In the same way, the foundation of Sufism in the transmission of initiation resides in prophetic transmission, and the initiatory pact between master and disciples is an esoteric transposition of the temporal pact in Islam. The lieutenant of a spiritual Ṣūfī lineage in fact often takes the name khalīfa; this started from as early as the sixth/twelfth century. The terminology of the initiatic pact closely follows the terminology of the caliphal pact; the pact taken with the khalīfa is referred to as ʿahd, bayʿa, mubāyaʿa (De Jong, K̲ h̲alīfa (iii)). In Sufism, another fundamental term of temporal power, sulṭān, is used to identify those with remarkable spiritual mastery (Kramers). We can point out some representative figures who, among others, have been qualified with this title: Ibrāhīm b. Adham, who was called sulṭān al-ʿārifīn (“sultan of the gnostics”) has already been mentioned; Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī (d. 261/874 or 264/877–8) was also nicknamed sulṭān al-ʿārifīn; the Shāfiʿī jurist and Ṣūfī ʿIzz al-Dīn b. ʿAbd al-Salām al-Sulamī (d. 660/1262) was called sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ (“sultan of the scholars”); Jalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī’s (d. 672/1273) father, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad (d. 628/1231), was also called sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ; his grandson was known as Sulṭān Walad (d. 712/1312); Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235), a poet and Ṣūfī, was called sulṭān al-ʿāshiqīn (“sultan of the lovers”); Ibn al-ʿArabī was sulṭān alʿārifīn; Muḥammad al-Ḥanafī (d. 847/1443), an Egyptian Ṣūfī, was commonly called sulṭān Ḥanafī (Sabra, 219, 231). In Persian, the analogous term khwāja was used to designate the sovereigns of ancient Persia, particularly in the Shāh-nama of Firdawsī (d. 411/1020). This term is used equally among Ṣūfīs in the Persian- and Turkish-speaking regions to designate important masters, from Khwāja ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī (d. 481/1089), to the chain of Naqshbandiyya masters that are known by the denomination khwājagān. According to legend, this denomination comes from one of the first masters of this Naqshbandī chain, ʿAbd al-Khāliq Ghijduwānī (d. 617/1220), who appeared to Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband (d. 791/1391) in a vision in which he was seated on a large throne behind a green curtain, surrounded by khwājagān (Molé, 38–9). The terminological parallel extends to the hierarchical structure of Sufism and to ceremonial power. In fact, the spiritual hierarchy in Sufism is influenced by the categories of temporal power: the dīwān al-awliyāʾ, the “council Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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of the saints,” is clearly derived from the government institution of the dīwān (Chodkiewicz, 113–15). Above the Ṣūfī hierarchy lies the quṭb, the “pole,” who is endowed with the same attributes of a temporal monarch, but in a spiritual sense, according, for example, to Ibn al-ʿArabī and his school (De Jong, al-Ḳuṭb (2)). With regard to investiture ceremonies, al-Shaʿrānī says that the khirqa (the initiatory mantle transmitted from master to disciple) was analogous to the robe of honour (al-khalʿa) given by kings to those in his entourage (al-Shaʿrānī, 1:21).

figure 14.1 ʿAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī sitting upon a throne, Mughal, eighteenth century Courtesy of Victor & Albert Museum, South & South East Asia Collection

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figure 14.2 Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī holding a globe, detail of miniature by Bichitr from Minto Album, c. 1610–18, India Courtesy of Chester Beatty Library

3

From Metaphor to Ritual: The Banquet

The second modality in which the metaphor of royalty is integrated into Sufism is the incorporation of the practice of the ancient royal banquets, in particular the Iranian bazm (Melikian-Chirvani, 95–119). In this case, the usage is no longer just literary, but also ritual, the banquet is part of a sacred representation. During the ʿAbbāsid period, the court of Baghdad integrated the practice of the Iranian bazm, but referred to as a majlis (Shaked, 75–91; Khaleghi-Motlagh). Ṣūfīs, then, because of their familiarity with the terminology and etiquette of power, integrated the ʿAbbāsid majlis by transposing its principal characteristics into symbolic practices. At the centre, the master takes on the role of king, while the master’s entourage, that must conform to the rules (ādāb), is analogous to the king’s court. Finally, both music and chants were used in the court majlis and in the Ṣūfī majlis. In the latter, the cupbearer (sāqī), who brings the wine that leads to intoxication, is metaphorical; it appears in song lyrics and in Persian and Arabic Ṣūfī poetry. The majlis takes place in the khānqāh, the headquarters of Ṣūfī life in the Persian environment. According to the testimony of the Andalusian traveller

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Ibn Jubayr (d. 614/1217), who traveled in the Middle East in the late sixth/ twelfth century, the ribāṭs or khawāniq of Damascus were like palaces whose members, the Ṣūfīs, are kings whom God has raised above mundane things, to render them free from material attachments, so that they could dedicate themselves to the service of God and the samāʿ (Trimingham, 9–10). Another Persian term, dargāh (threshold or palace), was especially widespread in the Indian environment; it denotes the seat of a fraternity and the shrine of a great saint (Ephrat and Pinto in this volume). In this case the original meaning is also linked to the court of the caliphs in Baghdad and Samarra, and was directly inspired the court’s organisation (P., bār, bādrgāh, dargāh, darbār; to refer to “meeting place,” lit., “where one sits,” i.e., or the “seat of power”). The former was imbued with a pre-Islamic influence (Bosworth). Judging by the sources, this integration of court etiquette into Sufism can be attributed to Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049), who certainly played a key role in the process of institutionalising the collective forms of Ṣūfī sociability (Graham). The first stage of Abū Saʿīd’s life was characterised by a strong asceticism that led to a series of spiritual openings. After this, his attitude changed radically: he founded a khānqāh and established collective assemblies (majālis) with all the characteristics of court assemblies. Dressed in silk like a king, he is described resting on cushions. The disciples sometimes knelt down in front of him. According to sources, it was Abū Saʿīd who introduced the practice of chanting poetry and the use of musical instruments into the majālis, and allowed for the presence of young men in the meetings, similar to the image of the cupbearer in the Iranian bazm, and the Greco-Roman symposium (Ritter). 4 Conclusions The use of the terminology of power in Sufism appears to be more than a simple rhetorical artifice that reflected an aspect of the confrontation between temporal and spiritual institutions in Islamic societies. Likewise, this use of political terms cannot be read solely as an attempt by Ṣūfī authorities to share temporal power, a fortiori to replace it. In fact, in Islamic mysticism, the process of integrating this technical terminology began very early and went hand in hand with the integration of the technical notion of adab, a notion that was also influenced by the etiquette practiced at the Persian Sassanid court. The proof that it relates not only to a rhetorical device or a simple element of historical conjecture can be found in the complex system of Sufism that is at once doctrinal and ritual, of which this terminology represents just a small part. Finally, this system seems to have efficiently adapted itself to the elitist

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and hierarchical structure of Sufism that had developed by the end of the mediaeval period. Bibliography Sources

al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, 4 vols., Cairo 1980. Ibn al-ʿArabī, Kitāb al-tadbirāt al-ilāhiyya fī iṣlāḥ al-mamlaka al-insāniyya, Casablanca 2015. al-Iṣfahānī, Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ wa-ṭabaqāt al-aṣfiyāʾ, 2 vols., Beirut 1988. al-Kharkūshī, Kitāb tahdhīb al-asrār, Abu Dhabi 1999. Kitāb adab al-mulūk fī bayān ḥaqāʾiq al-taṣawwuf, ed. B. Radtke, Beirut and Stuttgart 1991. Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ wa-khullān al-wafāʾ, 4 vols., Cairo 1997. al-Shaʿrānī, al-Anwār al-qudsiyya fī maʿrifa qawāʾid al-ṣūfiyya, 2 vols., Beirut 1992. al-Sulamī, Kitāb ādāb al-ṣuḥba, Jerusalem 1954.

Studies

Beskow, Per, Rex gloriae. The kingship of Christ in the early church, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Uppsala 1962. Bosworth, Clifford Edmund, Courts and courtiers iii. In the Islamic period to the Mongol conquest, EIr. Brettler, Marc Zvi, God is king. Understanding an Israelite metaphor, Sheffield 1989. Brisch, Nicole, ed., Religion and power. Divine kingship in the ancient world and beyond, Chicago 2008. Chodkiewicz, Michel, Le sceau des saints. Prophétie et sainteté dans la doctrine d’Ibn Arabî, Paris 1986. Cornell, Vincent J., The way of Abū Madyan. Doctrinal and poetic works of Abū Madyan Shuʿayb ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Anṣārī (c. 509/115–594/1198), Cambridge 1996. De Jong, Frederick, K̲ h̲alīfa (iii)—in Islamic mysticism, EI2. De Jong, Frederick, al-Ḳuṭb (2) in mysticism, EI2. Frye, Richard Nelson, ed., The Cambridge history of Iran. Vol. 4: The period from the Arab invasion to the Saljuqs, Cambridge 1975. Garcin, Jean-Claude, Les soufis dans la ville mamelouke d’Égypte. Histoire du soufisme et histoire globale, in R. J. McGregor and A. Sabra (eds.), Le développement du soufisme en Égypte à l’époque mamelouke (Cairo 2006), 11–40. Garcin, Jean-Claude, Le sultan et le pharaon (le politique et le religieux dans l’Égypte mamluke), Hommages à François Daumas (Montpellier 1986), 1:261–72. Gonda, Jan, Ancient Indian kingship from the religious point of view, Leiden 1969.

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Graham, Terry, Abū Saʿīd Abī ’l Khayr and the School of Khurāsān, in Leonard Lewisohn (ed.), The heritage of Sufism. Classical Persian Sufism from its origins to Rumi (700–1300), vol. 1 (Oxford 1993), 83–135. Gril, Denis, Adab and revelation, or one of the foundations of the hermeneutics of Ibn ʿArabi, in S. Hirtenstein and M. Tiernan (eds.), Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi. A commemorative volume, Shaftesbury 1993. Khaleghi-Motlagh, Djalal, Adab i. Adab in Iran, EIr. Knysh, Alexander, Sufism. A new history of Islamic mysticism, Princeton and Oxford 2017. Kramers, Johannes Hendrik, Sulṭān, 4. In mysticism, EI2. Melikian-Chirvani, Assadullah Souren, The Iranian bazm in early Persian sources, in R. Gyselen (ed.), Banquets d’Orient, Res Orientales (Bures-sur-Yvette 1992), 4:95–119. Molé, Marijan, Autour du Dare Mansour. L’apprentissage mystique de Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband, REI 27.1 (1959): 35–66. Papas, Alexandre, Soufisme et politique entre Chine, Tibet et Turkestan. Étude sur les Khwajas naqshbandis du Turkestan oriental, Paris 2005. Ritter, Hellmut, Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-K̲ h̲ayr, EI2. Sabra, Adam, From artisan to courtier. Sufism and social mobility in fifteenth-century Egypt, in R. E. Margariti, A. Sabra, and P. M. Sijpesteijn (eds.), Histories of the Middle East. Studies in Middle Eastern society, economy and law in honor of A. L. Udovitch (Leiden 2011), 213–32. Shaked, Shaul, From Iran to Islam: On some symbols of royalty, JSAI 7 (1986): 75–91. Trimingham, John Spencer, The Sufi orders in Islam, Oxford 1971.

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Chapter 15

Ṣūfīs as Court Advisors Neguin Yavari Political notables seeking advice is a commonplace motif in premodern historiography from around the world. Haman advised the Pharaoh, Alexander relied on Aristotle’s perspicacity to conquer the world, and closer to home, mediaeval Islamic historians underline the lackluster rule of the ʿAbbāsids following the demise of the fabled Barmakid viziers in the mid third/ninth century. Equally pervasive is the exhortation of mindfulness of the corrupting nature of power. Often the most strident warnings against it are offered by those closest to the king (Yavari, Advice for the sultan, 7–44). Thus, the back and forth between the urge, or even the duty, to correct wrongs and the futility of even the most delicately calibrated and best-intentioned attempts at edification continues unabated in the records of human civilisation. In recent years, even presidents of modern democracies have been encouraged to benefit from the advice of mediaeval “mirrorists” (Koziol, 197–8). The provision of advice was not limited to courtiers and those vested in the exercise of power. In fact, the advice of unworldly exemplars who otherwise pointedly shunned the company of rulers was a particularly prized commodity across political and cultural boundaries. In the mediaeval Islamic world, interactions between Ṣūfī luminaries and those in positions of political power are noted, beginning in the fourth/tenth century, when they began to make an impact. In the collected biographies dedicated to local notables, for example, the absolute number of Ṣūfīs mentioned does not exceed ten per cent until late in the fifth/eleventh century; before the third/ninth century there are none (Bulliet, 90–1). In earlier times, a fabled Ṣūfī was one who suffered political persecution, the martyred Ṣūfī master and poet Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj, executed at the caliph’s order in 309/922 is a prominent example. By contrast, in fifth-/eleventh-century Iran, Ṣūfī masters were regularly visited, and generously patronised by the vizier Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092), the de facto ruler of the Saljūq empire (431–591/1040–1194). Shaykh Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049), for example, foretold Niẓām al-Mulk’s auspicious future when the latter was still a child; this according to the late sixth-/twelfth-century hagiography written by his grand-nephew (Muḥammad Ibn Munawwar, I:  59; Yavari, The future of Iran’s past, 68, 121–2). The elusive Ṣūfī master Abū ʿAlī l-Fārmadhī (d. 477/1084), ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) and others

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were among Niẓām al-Mulk’s trusted counselors (Yavari, The future of Iran’s past, 118–25). In these Ṣūfī luminaries the vizier found powerful allies committed to curbing confessional strife. The ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Nāṣir al-Dīn Allāh (r. 575–622/1180–1225), another political ruler who, like Niẓām al-Mulk, hoped to capitalise on the authority wielded by religious leaders (Ohlander, 19), and cultivated a close relationship with the Ṣūfī master Shihāb al-Dīn ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234). In 577/1181, al-Nāṣir installed al-Suhrawardī as director of the Ribāt al-Ma‌ʾmūniyya in Baghdad. Nine years later, the caliph sent al-Suhrawardī on a diplomatic mission to the court of the Shāh-i Armanid ruler Begtimur (r. 581–9/1185–93), to secure his support against the last Saljūq sultan, Tughril III (r. 571–90/1176–94), although al-Nāṣir had previously relied on Shāfiʿī jurists for such diplomatic initiatives (Ohlander, 90–2). Another diplomatic initiative, this time to the Ayyūbid (564/1169 to end of ninth/fifteenth century) court in Damascus began in 604/1207–8 (Ohlander, 94–6). Mediaeval historians report with great fanfare al-Suhrawardī’s reception at the court—further testimony to the growing influence of Ṣūfī masters by the early seventh/thirteenth century. In 614/1217–8, al-Suhrawardī received his most critical charge, to repel the advance of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad Khwārazm Shāh (r. 596–617/1200–20) on Baghdad and to save the caliph’s throne. Al-Suhrawardī met with the Khwārazm Shāh in Hamadān, and pleaded with him to refrain from harming a descendant of the Prophet. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad refused to heed the Ṣūfī master’s exhortations. He received his just deserts, however, when a heavy snowfall confounded his army, and a few months later, he was left to defend his throne from the invading Mongols (Ohlander, 98–104). Al-Suhrawardī also played an important role in al-Nāṣir’s short-lived attempt to rejuvenate the caliphate as an umbrella institution alone capable of accommodating the competing interests of jurists ( fuqahāʾ), Ṣūfīs, and brotherhoods ( fityān), as well as Ḥanbalīs, Shīʿīs, and Ashʿarīs (Ohlander, 291–303). In these early examples, the relationship between Ṣūfīs and politicians took place as a one to one encounter in which the king or vizier met the Ṣūfī, or the ascetic or the ascetic Ṣūfī. Unlike the advice to the king from his vizier in Niẓām al-Mulk’s Siyar al-mulūk, this performance is designed to exhibit power on both the temporal and spiritual planes. Hence, the stage directions vary as well. The mystic often refuses to come to the court, compelling the prince to journey to the Ṣūfī’s threadbare abode; as depicted in countless illustrations in mediaeval manuscripts. Unlike other advisors, such as viziers or amīrs (military leaders), and apart from a few notable exceptions, Ṣūfīs, reluctant advisors, enjoyed a long life and died in their own beds, and even had shrines built in their honour.

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figure 15.1

Youth and Dervish, Isfahan, second quarter of the seventeenth century Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum, Rogers Fund, 1911

Significantly, the advice comes in the form of isolated anecdotes rather than chapters and books. The tone of advice is also different and not as deferential as that of bureaucrats offering counsel. Rūmī’s father Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad (d. 628/1231), dubbed sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ (king of the scholars/clerics) by later hagiographers, frequented the company of the Saljūq sultan ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kayqubād (r. 616–34/1220–37). On one occasion, he is quoted as saying to the king: “You are a sultan and I am a sultan; your reign will last for as long as your eyes remain open, mine will begin when I shut them forever” (Sipahsālār, 14). Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad’s son Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273) characterised thus the edifying relationship between Ṣūfīs and rulers: Such is the custom of kings: you might have heard this before, if you recall. The paladins stand on their left hand, because the heart is on the left side. On the right hand are the chancellors and the secretaries, for the art of writing and bookkeeping belongs to this hand. They make the Sufis face them, for they are a mirror of the soul, and better than a mirror,

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Since they have polished their hearts in commemoration of God and meditation, that the heart’s mirror may receive the pristine image. Whoever is born beautiful from the loins of Creation, a mirror must be placed before him. The beautiful face is in love with the mirror: it is a polisher of the soul and kindles the fear of God in all hearts. a slightly modified translation from Rūmī, 194

Still, the scale and impact of these early encounters were modest. Both the texture and the tenor of Ṣūfī involvement in political life changed dramatically in the altered landscape of the Islamic world in the post-Mongol period, in Egypt, Iran, Asia Minor, Central Asia, and India (Potter, 77–82; Gross, The Naqshbandīya, 14–7). This transformation is the focus of the remainder of this chapter. It explores Ṣūfī engagement with rulers and courtiers to better understand the scope and evolution of Islamic thought in the early modern period. Accordingly, the emphasis is on the writings of prominent Ṣūfīs in royal service rather than enumerating individual Ṣūfīs who served in such capacities. How did Ṣūfīs themselves describe and legitimate political influence? For spiritual figures who claimed—almost by definition—to eschew mundane affairs in favour of nobler gratifications, Ṣūfī masters placed a heavy premium on proximity to power. This conundrum is nicely captured in a collected biography of Naqshbandī shaykhs by the Egyptian Ṣūfī master and poet Yāsīn b. Ibrāhīm al-Sanhūtī (d. 1935). The Ṣūfī worldview, he holds, is one that rests on shunning worldliness, but at the same time, it is instructed to uphold justice, to ensure that governors act in accordance to the law of God, and to promote public welfare (Sanhūtī, 130). Ṣūfī writings of the post-Mongol period engaged with a wider audience and amplified a universal message. The increasingly assertive authorial voice in Ṣūfī hagiographies, ethical and theological treatises, poetry, mirrors for princes, and collected biographies, is difficult to miss. Ṣūfī masters laid out their views and provided guidance on religious issues, good rule, and the adab (etiquette) of engagement with foes and foreign potentates. Among the Ṣūfīs who played an overtly political role and left behind a substantive body of writing in the later Mongol period is ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī (d. 736/1336), theologian, jurist, poet, and Ṣūfī master who wielded great power at the court of the Īlkhānid Arghūn (r. 683–90/1284–91). His aristocratic family enjoyed eminence at the court; his father was appointed governor of Iraq, one uncle was made vizier and another served as chief judge (Martini, 5–9). Al-Simnānī’s career at Arghūn’s court began early in his life. He served the sultan devotedly, and they struck up a great friendship. In 683/1284, however, al-Simnānī experienced a

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spiritual conversion (Simnānī, al-ʿUrwa, 297–312, 496–8). Abandoning the worship of a false king, al-Simnānī’s own analogy, he left Arghūn’s court in pursuit of moral edification. The bulk of his vast corpus establishes Ṣūfī rules of conduct and practice. On numerous occasions he interceded with the Īlkhānid rulers to seek a pardon for uppity magnates and rebels (Martini, 92–7). Although he was a formidable presence at the court of several Īlkhānid rulers, most of al-Simnānī’s exhortations, often expressed during disputations with religious adversaries and even the ruler, emphasised orthodoxy and good religion (Simnānī, Chihil majlis, 150; Martini, 47–52). True Islam, al-Simnānī declares, is that of the Sunnīs, the most balanced of persuasions, which praises the four rightly-guided caliphs, Abū Bakr (r. 11–3/632–4), ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 13–23/634–44), ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān (r. 23–35/644–56), and ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (r. 35–40/656–61), and Muḥammad’s progeny (ahl al-bayt) and his disciples; does not accuse any Muslim of disbelief; and respects all prophets, scriptures, and angels, such that confessional prejudice is eschewed and various communities can live in peace (Simnānī, “Zayn al-muʿtaqid” in Martini, 298–9). Although the primary audience for al-Simnānī’s exhortations was his followers—as was the case with al-Suhrawardī’s—the marked political valence in his denunciation of sectarian divide, prejudice, and factional zeal cannot be ignored. Al-Simnānī’s Chihil majlis clearly reflects the changed religious landscape of the Mongol period and beyond. In sharp contrast to earlier ruling houses, the Īlkhānids were receptive to spiritual advice from different sources, including Christians, Buddhists (Bakshis), and Muslims. The scene described above, for example, is not that of a ruler listening to the ex-cathedra pronouncements of a Ṣūfī or a theologian but a spiritual tournament of sorts, performed at the court between warring doctrines, with the ruler as the referee. In these settings, the Ṣūfī’s karāmāt (miracles) are akin to the magical powers of the shamans. It is therefore necessary to move beyond the rubric of advice to rulers, and classical loci of such advice literature, to get at the heart of the political engagement of Ṣūfī masters, which includes the call for a new religious order. In the context of a refutation of philosophy, al-Simnānī, to take one example, presents the Ṣūfī creed as the optimal antidote against fanaticism and sectarian strife, superior to the Mālikī, Ḥanafī, Shāfiʿī, and Ḥanbalī creeds. The Ṣūfī madhhab (school/ doctrine), he writes, is the fifth and the most universal (Martini, 111–2). Likewise, the prominent Naqshbandī scholar and well-known poet ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) is remembered in Niẓāmī Bākharzī’s (d. 909/1503) hagiographical account for intervening in several sectarian controversies to restore public peace (Niẓāmī Bākharzī, 191–5; Gross, The Majmūʿa-yi murāsalāt, 32–4; Algar, 118–20).

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With the advent of Ṣūfī communities/lineages (silsilas), the Ṣūfīs were no longer content with king-making—be it in the form of proffering advice, educating the prince, or interceding on behalf of a favoured contender (Potter, 92–5). Instead, they became directly involved in the design and practice of politics. The Egyptian Ṣūfī master ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī’s (d. 973/1565) Advice for callow jurists and gullible mendicants on befriending emirs, is an example of a book of rules for Ṣūfīs who engage with political authorities. In this text, the Ṣūfī shaykh should not accept gifts, financial and otherwise, because this undermines his standing as an impartial advisor. The amīr and the Ṣūfī shaykh have a covenant (ʿahd), al-Shaʿrānī writes, and fidelity to it requires that the shaykh remains independent of the amīr. The upright counselor must feel free to admonish the sultan. I will not befriend an emir unless I think that his love for me will increase the more I rebuke him, the more severe I am with him, and the more I point out his faults. If he is not like that, I send him away with a kind phrase, for there is no value in a mendicant befriending an emir except to admonish him and so that he may profit in this world and in the Hereafter. In the absence of admonition, there enters deceit, and one loses this world and the Hereafter. al-Shaʿrānī, 58–9

The Ṣūfī shaykh must renounce the world wholeheartedly before he befriends an amīr, so that he may know that his amīr and his amīr’s rival are equally deserving of respect (al-Shaʿrānī, 71). In al-Shaʿrānī’s telling, it is the Ṣūfī who decides whether or not a king is worthy of his advice. Ṣūfī communities proselytised a new template of civil religion that galvanised local populations, and relying on that popular support, engaged in a traffic in authority with political elites. The new civil religion of the Ṣūfīs also dislodged Arabic as the sole language of theology (in the eastern Islamic lands), and upended the centuries-old template of maintaining distance from rulers and politicians as a sine qua non of piety and exemplarity in the Islamic mould. None among the silsilas achieved closer collaborations with governing authorities than the Naqshbandiyya. Developed in the ninth/fifteenth century with claims to significantly older historical roots, the Naqshbandī silsila spread across a vast swath of Islamic lands, with a significant presence in Egypt, Iran, Central Asia, and India. The Naqshbandī savant Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī Kāshifī’s (d. 939/1532) account of an encounter between two rival Tumūrid princes, Abū Saʿīd (r. 855–73/1451– 69) in Samarqand and Abū l-Qāsim Bābur (r. 851–61/1447–57), who ruled in Khurāsān, is telling in this regard. Faced with an imminent attack from Bābur’s Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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forces, Abū Saʿīd asked the influential Naqshbandī master, ʿUbaydallāh Aḥrār (d. 895/1490) for advice. The military commanders in his service had ruled out resistance as futile, and advised the sultan to seek refuge in Turkestan. Aḥrār disagreed, and said: “I have assumed the task of defeating Bābur. Rest assured: I will fulfill my task.” The commanders protested, but the Ṣūfī shaykh prevailed, because, we are told, the sultan was steadfast in his conviction. The commanders of Bābur’s army were also well aware that Abū Saʿīd’s forces would not survive in battle against them. They were certain that his commanders would arrange his escape from Samarqand, and planned their attack on that basis. As Bābur’s army descended on the city, Abū Saʿīd’s soldiers were dispersed in various neighbourhoods. The people of Samarqand put up a fierce resistance, and as instructed, proceeded to cut off the nose and ears of each captured soldier. Bābur’s army was in despair. And then, a cholera epidemic befell their horses and the trenchant smell of decaying corpses exacerbated their misery. Bābur sent an emissary to Aḥrār to sue for peace (Kāshifī, II: 522–4). But the story does not end there. As the vanquished Bābur lay on his side outside the city walls, he is said to have cried out: “It may be true that we did not conquer Samarqand, but we did learn the truth about Khwāja Aḥrār, who is not an ʿārif, for if he were, he would not have destroyed us so.” Aḥrār’s retort in defence of his spiritual credentials elevated the status of Ṣūfī saints to that of prophets: “Like prophets, ʿārifs are judged by the cause not the consequence of their action. For if it weren’t so, justifying the destruction wrought by the likes of Noah and Hūd who destroyed their own people by water and wind would be a problem” (Kāshifī, II: 525–6.) To buttress his claim, Aḥrār cites Q 8:11, which addresses the believers and claims that it was not they who killed the unbelievers, but God himself. In this episode, Aḥrār emerges as the true ruler of Samarqand, the people of the city his true army, and their truth confirmed by divine intervention. Rather than advice to the sultan, the true meaning of this and numerous similar anecdotes strewn across Ṣūfī writings of the period is that members of a Ṣūfī silsila are sovereign actors beholden to and supported by the one true Lord. Accordingly, rather than ethical conduct, the Ṣūfī shaykh advises the ruler on matters of strategy and tactics in warfare. Exercising the king to instill in him the virtues required for good rule is only a secondary and derivative objective in the mirror for princes of the Naqshbandī master, Aḥmad Kāsānī Dahbidī, better known as Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam’s (d. 949/1542) Risāla-yi tanbīh al-salāṭīn, addressed to the Shaybānid sultan ʿUbaydallāh b. Maḥmūd (r. 940–6/1534–9). Ensuring the primacy of the Ṣūfī path (ṭarīqa), promoting and patronising Ṣūfī confraternities, and protecting them from all enemies are the main exhortations delivered in this treatise. Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam calls for the conversion of the sultan, such Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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Akbar and Jahangir in apotheosis (folio from the St. Petersburg Album), attributed to Bichitr, about 1640. Private Collection

that the sultan becomes a disciple of the Ṣūfī and the Ṣūfī rules the sultan (Papas, 25). Parity between king and Ṣūfī master is a perennial motif in early modern Ṣūfī writings. Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad was known as sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ, as noted. The early Ṣūfī master Junayd (d. 298/910), al-Shaʿrānī tells his readers, “used to say to those who came to him seeking the path, ‘Have you served kings?’ If they said ‘No,’ he would say: ‘Go serve them, then come back. The least demanding Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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conduct with us is beyond the conduct you are obliged to follow with kings’” (al-Shaʿrānī, 72–3). In fact, regal terminology abounds in Ṣūfī circles. One prominent example is the term walī, used for Ṣūfī saints, which echoes the wilāya, or authority of caliphs and princes (Patrizi, 199; Patrizi in this volume), or references to the divine as the true sovereign (Patrizi, 200–11). In addition to metaphors, Ṣūfī rituals mimic those found in the royal banquet, bazm (a courtly practice) that travelled from pre-Islamic Iran to the ʿAbbāsid capital (Patrizi, 205–11). Naqshbandī masters, to take another example, routinely appointed four men among their followers as a khalīfa (successor, anglicised as caliph) charged with propagating their teachings (Kāshifī, I:14). The template of non-hereditary leadership clearly emulates the ideals of governance that prevailed in the early days of Islam, when the Prophet Muḥammad was succeeded by his closest disciples, the four rightly-guided caliphs mentioned earlier. In the annals of mediaeval Islamic historiography, the ideal paradigm of pious succession was considered to have ended in 41/661 when the Umayyads instituted hereditary succession. Similarly commonplace in the premodern sources is the centrality of supernatural powers associated with Ṣūfī shaykhs to their efficacy as court advisors. Effectively, the mediatory role often assumed by Ṣūfī masters rested on their ability to deliver the favour of fortune to their patrons. ʿUbaydallāh Aḥrār’s invocation of pestilence on an opposing army is one such example, as is Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr’s oracular prediction, both mentioned above. In fact, saintly miracles were considered on a par with the evidentiary miracles attributed to prophets. Through his rectitude and his gift of revelation, the Ṣūfī acquires power over the ruler, al-Shaʿrānī writes (al-Shaʿrānī, 74–5; Geoffroy, 304–8; Papas, 18). Unless the Ṣūfī master can avail victory, defeat enemies, or heal the sultan’s friends, he will not be of any use to the ruler. Approbation for engaging with politics and with princes, although clearly manifest in Naqshbandī history and dogma, was by no means restricted to that community. The politically-minded al-Shaʿrānī, for example, was strictly anticonfessional; he never revealed his own affiliation, and enjoyed close relations with both major Ṣūfī communities active in Egypt at the time, the Shādhilī and Aḥmadī networks. Likewise in seventh-/thirteenth-century Anatolia, where the Kubrawī Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad (Lewis, 114–8) lorded over the kings, and in ninth-/fifteenth-century Egypt, the Shādhilī Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ḥanafī (d. 847/1443) held sway (Sabra, 218–26). Feted and generously rewarded by Mamlūk sultans (648–922/1250–1517), Shams al-Dīn al-Ḥanafī amassed great wealth in exchange for lending his good name and providing prudent counsel to the kings. In one instance, when al-Nāṣir Faraj b. Barqūq (r. 801–15/1399–1412, with a gap in 808/1405) was about to punish an administrator for an ill-conceived policy, al-Ḥanafī intervened to remind the sultan of Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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his own role in formulating that measure. When the irritated king asked the Ṣūfī shaykh whose kingdom it was, al-Ḥanafī is to have retorted: “The kingdom does not belong to me or to you, it belongs to God …” (Sabra, 219)—a proclamation that could well have come from a Naqshbandī shaykh, as we have seen. And in tenth-/sixteenth-century Iran, it was a Ṣafavī perfect master (murshid-i kāmil) who inaugurated a new dynasty and ruled as Ismāʿīl I (r. 907–30/1501– 24), pīr (master) and prince united in one. The new language of civil religion presented by Ṣūfī silsilas transformed the political and religious landscape of the Islamic world in the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries, and had far-reaching consequences (for example, in Central Asia, see DeWeese, 39–40). The increasing appeal of ontological monism among Islamic philosophers in the eleventh/seventeenth century, for one example, “seems largely to have been linked to the spread in the Arab East of Ṣūfī orders such as the Khalwatiyya from Anatolia and the Shaṭṭāriyya and Naqshbandiyya from India” (El-Rouayheb, 235–6). On the political register, most states in the early modern Islamic world—the Āq Qoyūnlū (eighth/fourteenth century until 907–8/1501–3), Ottoman (eighth/fourteenth century–1922), Ṣafavid (907–1135/1501–1722), and perhaps even the Mughal (932–1161/1526–1748, and as a much reduced polity until 1274/1857)—relied heavily on the input of Ṣūfī masters. Although Ṣūfī prospects diminished significantly in the modern period, their influence at various Islamic courts persisted until the turn of the twentieth century. The influential Ṣūfī Mīrzā Ḥājjī Āqāsī (d. 1265/1849), prime minister at the court of Muḥammad Shāh Qājār (r. 1250–64/1834–48), is largely blamed for the king’s failed attempts at modernising the army and effective rule (Amanat, 221– 2, 230–2). As opposition to absolutist rule and colonial encroachment gained steam in the late nineteenth century, influential Ṣūfī shaykhs persisted in their monarchical stance. Ṣūfī mirrorists such as Muḥammad Ḥusayn Naṣr Allāh Damāwandī (fl. 1260s/1840s), Ṣafāʾ al-Salṭanah ʿAlī Khān Na‌ʾīnī (fl. 1301/1883), and Dhū l-Riyāsatayn Qāḍī Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar Saryazdī (d. 1312/1894), active at the court of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh Qājār (r. 1264–1313/1848–96), were vociferous supporters of the king against the rising tide of activist clerics (Zargarīnizhād, I: 64–7, 108–10, 123–7; II: 35–80; III: 388–99; IV: 241–67), a trend that continued well into the twentieth century (Keddie, 211–30; Bos, 73–142). Bibliography Aḥrār, ʿUbaydallāh, The letters of Khwāja ʿUbayd Allāh Aḥrār and his associates, ed. Jo-Ann Gross and Asom Urunbaev, Leiden 2004. Algar, Hamid, Jāmī, Delhi 2013. Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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Amanat, Abbas, Iran. A modern history, New Haven 2017. Bos, Matthijs van den, Mystic regimes. Sufism and the state in Iran, from the late Qajar era to the Islamic republic, Leiden 2002. Buehler, Arthur F., The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the rise of the mediating Sufi shaykh, Columbia, SC 1998. Bulliet, Richard W., Islam. The view from the edge, New York 1994. DeWeese, Devin, Re-Envisioning the history of Sufi communities in Central Asia. Continuity and adaptation in sources and social frameworks, 16th–20th centuries, in Devin DeWeese and Jo-Ann Gross (eds.), Sufism in Central Asia. New perspectives on Sufi traditions, 15th–21st centuries (Leiden 2018), 21–74. El-Rouayheb, Khaled, Islamic intellectual history in the seventeenth century. Scholarly currents in the Ottoman empire and the Maghreb, Cambridge 2015. Garcin, Jean-Claude, Le sultan et le pharaon (le politique et le religieux dans l’Égypte mamluke), in Hommages à François Daumas, vol. 1 (Montpellier 1986), 261–72. Geoffroy, Éric, Attitudes contrastées des mystiques musulmans face au miracle, in Denise Aigle (ed.), Miracle et karāma. Hagiographies médiévales comparées (Turnhout 2000), 301–16. Gross, Jo-Ann, The Naqshbandīya and Khwāja ʿUbayd Allāh Aḥrār, in Jo-Ann Gross and Asom Urunbaev (eds.), ʿUbaydallāh Aḥrār, The letters of Khwāja ‘Ubayd Allāh Aḥrār and his associates (Leiden 2004), 1–22. Gross, Jo-Ann, The Majmūʿa-yi murāsalāt as a source for the history of Mawarannahr and Khurāsān in the late Timurid period, in Jo-Ann Gross and Asom Urunbaev (eds.), ʿUbaydallāh Aḥrār, The letters of Khwāja ʿUbayd Allāh Aḥrār and his associates (Leiden 2004), 23–55. Ibn Munawwar, Muḥammad, Asrār al-tawḥīd fī maqāmāt al-Shaykh Abī Saʿīd, ed. Muḥammad Riḍā Shāfīʿī Kadkanī, 2 vols., Tehran 1987. Kāshifī, Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ, Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt, ed. ʿAlī Aṣghar Muʿīniyān, 2 vols., Tehran 1977. Keddie, Nikki R., The roots of the ulama’s power in modern Iran, in Scholars, saints, and Sufis. Muslim religious institutions in the Middle East since 1500 (Berkeley 1972), 211–30. Koziol, Geoffrey, Leadership. Why we have mirrors for princes but none for presidents, in Celia Chazelle et al. (eds.), Why the middle ages matter. Medieval light on modern injustice (Abingdon 2012), 183–98. Lewis, Franklin D., Rumi. Past and present, east and west, London 2000. Lingwood, Chad G., Politics, poetry, and Sufism in medieval Iran. New perspectives on Jāmī’s Salāmān va Absāl, Leiden 2013. Martini, Giovanni Maria, ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī between spiritual authority and political power. A Persian lord and intellectual in the heart of the Ilkhanate, with a critical edition and translation of al-Wārid al-šārid al-ṭārid šubhat al-mārid and a critical edition of its Persian version Zayn al-muʿtaqad li-zayn al-muʿtaqid, Leiden 2017. Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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Niẓāmī Bākharzī, ʿAbd al-Wāṣiʿ, Maqāmāt-i Jāmī. Gushahā-yī az tārīkh-i farhangī wa ijtimāʿī-i Khurāsān dar ʿaṣr-i Taymūrīyān, ed. Najīb Māyil Hiravī, Tehran 1992. Ohlander, Erik S., Sufism in an age of transition. ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī and the rise of the Islamic mystical brotherhoods, Leiden 2008. Papas, Alexandre, Cheikhs et Sultans en Asie Centrale au XVIe siècle. Une analyse de la Risâla-yi tanbîh al-salâtîn d’Ahmad Kâsânî Dahbidî, in Nathalie Clayer, Alexandre Papas, and Benoît Fliche (eds.), L’autorité religieuse et ses limites en terres d’islam. Approches historiques et anthropologiques (Leiden 2013), 11–32. Patrizi, Luca, Adab al-mulūk. L’utilisation de la terminologie du pouvoir dans le soufisme médiéval, in Francesco Chiabotti, Eve Feuillebois-Pierunek, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, and Luca Patrizi (eds.), Ethics and spirituality in Islam. Sufi adab (Leiden 2016), 198–215. Paul, Jürgen, Forming a faction. The ḥimāyat system of Khwaja Ahrar, IJMES 23 (1991): 533–48. Potter, Lawrence G., Sufis and sultans in post-Mongol Iran, Iranian Studies 27 (1994): 77–102. Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn, The Mathnawí of Jalálu’ddín Rúmí, vol. I, ed. R. A. Nicholson, Leiden 1925. Sabra, Adam, From artisan to courtier. Sufism and social mobility in fifteenth century Egypt, in Eleni Roxani Margariti, Adam Sabra, and Petra M. Sijpesteijn (eds.), Histories of the Middle East. Studies in Middle Eastern society and economy and law in honor of A. L. Udovitch (Leiden 2011), 213–32. Salvatore, Armando, Sufi articulations of civility, globality, and sovereignty, Journal of Religious and Political Practice 4 (2018): 156–74. al-Sanhūtī, Yāsīn b. Ibrāhīm, al-Anwār al-qudsiyya fī manāqib al-sādah alNaqshbandiyya, Cairo 1925. al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, Advice for callow jurists and gullible mendicants on befriending emirs, trans. Adam Sabra, New Haven 2017. Simnānī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla, Chihil majlis, ed. Najīb Māyil Hiravī, Tehran 1987. Simnānī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla, al-ʿUrwa li-ahl al-khalwa wa al-jalwa, ed. Najīb Māyil Hiravī, Tehran 1983. Sipahsālār, Farīdūn b. Aḥmad, Risāla-i Sipahsālār dar manāqib-i ḥaḍrat-i khudāwandgār, ed. Muḥammad Afshīn-Vafāyī, Tehran 1996. Yavari, Neguin, Advice for the sultan. Prophetic voices and secular politics in medieval Islam, New York 2014. Yavari, Neguin, The future of Iran’s past. Nizam al-Mulk remembered, New York 2018. Zargarīnizhād, Ghulām Ḥusayn, ed., Siyāsatnāma-hāyi Qājārī. sī wa yik andarznāma-i siyāsī-i ʿaṣr-i Qājār, 4 vols., Tehran 2017.

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Chapter 16

Sufism, the Army, and Holy War David Cook Sufism is the mystical strain of Islam which has its roots in both early Islamic asceticism as well as the common Mediterranean and Middle Eastern asceticmystical tradition. Jihād (“struggle, exertion”) is God-sanctioned warfare, while ghazw (“raid”) is a term that, albeit used in Islamic literature, tends to be less specifically religious in scope. Statements about jihād appear in the Qurʾān; however, the primary development of the doctrine occurred during the first Islamic centuries, most probably as a result of fighting during the conquests. In general, jihād is said to have three distinct manifestations: jihād of the soul, jihād of the tongue, and jihād of the sword. The first, jihād of the soul, involves struggling against the soul’s lower impulses, as in the Qurʾān the soul is said to be a locus of evil (Q 12:53) and is presented in the sources as the starting point for true jihād. One who has not overcome the soul’s temptations cannot participate in other forms of warfare, because that person’s motives will not be pure. The best-known ḥadīth (tradition ascribed to the Prophet Muḥammad) associated with the jihād of the soul is: A number of fighters came to the Messenger of God, and he said: “You have done well in coming from the ‘lesser jihād’ to the ‘greater jihād’.” They said: “What is the ‘greater jihād’?” He said: “For the servant [of God] to fight his passions.” This tradition, while popular, is not attested in the canonical collections. Although the jihād of the soul does not appear in the Qurʾān or in the early ḥadīth, there are some verses (e.g., Q 25:52) and traditions that demonstrate its intellectual and religious roots. A great many early Ṣūfī works discuss the importance of combatting the soul, and its defects (e.g., Knysh (trans.), al-Qushayrī, 118–22). The second type of jihād, of the tongue, invokes the ḥadīth: “The best type of jihād is to speak a word of justice in the face of an iniquitous ruler” (Ibn Māja, Sunan, kitāb al-fitan, 20 [no. 4011]) and is used to reprove rulers and elites who do not uphold the Islamic social order of “enjoining the right and forbidding

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the wrong” (Q 3:104, 110). In practice, this type of jihād has been utilised by preachers and reformers to mobilise movements to fight. The third type of jihād, of the sword, is often augmented by the phrase “in the path of God.” As a theory, it developed considerably during the first centuries of Islam, and to some degree in the Qurʾān. By the period of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak (d. 181/797), who authored the earliest surviving book on jihād, the mythology associated with the term was complete, and included additional references, such as specific rewards for martyrs who die in battle, spiritual rewards for fighters, and admonitions concerning the protected status of fighters’ families. There are considerable connections between proto-Ṣūfīs during the first centuries of Islam and warfare; these are exemplified by the figure of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak, who wrote on jihād as well as asceticism, and was seen as a figure of towering courage for his willingness to confront the ʿAbbāsid caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 170–93/786–809) (an example of the jihād of the tongue). A number of other proto-Ṣūfī figures, such as Fuḍayl b. ʿIyāḍ (d. 187/803) and Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. c. 161/777–8) also participated in all three types of jihād. Most of these proto-Ṣūfīs fought in the border regions of northern Syria against the Byzantines, or occasionally in the East. After this initial period (second/ eighth to third/ninth century) of Ṣūfī fighting there is not much evidence of Ṣūfīs participating in warfare until the period of the crusades, which coincided with the development of the great Ṣūfī brotherhoods. Many of the Ṣūfī brotherhoods were closely linked with the practice of futuwwa (chivalry) or javānmardī (Zakeri). Futuwwa brotherhoods involved physical preparedness (among other things) and were mostly located in the Muslim heartlands of Iraq and Iran during the period leading up to and including the crusades. During this period, some of those in border regions (Sistan, Caucasus, and Central Asia) continued earlier ascetic practices of fighting unbelievers. Some of the Ṣūfī brotherhoods participated in the jihād against the crusaders, most notably at the decisive Battle of Haṭṭin (583/1187), in which the crusaders were defeated. The historian Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1372–3) states that these Ṣūfīs were given the task of killing the Templar and Hospitaller knights after the battle (Ibn Kathīr, xii, 321–2). The sources frequently speak of “volunteers” (mutṭawiʿūn)—for example, at the siege of Acre in 690/1291—that helped the regular troops by carrying wood for mangonels, or bringing supplies. While it cannot be said conclusively that these were Ṣūfīs, the volunteers were usually drawn from the audiences of popular preachers of this period. Ṣūfī orders were also prominent in the nascent Ottoman Empire, where they were known to have close connections with the Janissaries (elite Ottoman

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troops) (Birge, 74–5). Although a number of these Ṣūfī orders and so-called “coloniser dervishes” were later deemed to be heretical, as they had possible connections to the Shīʿa and even to ghulāt (extremist Shīʿī groups), their importance—along with the more orthodox Muslims—for the conquests during the period from the eighth/fourteenth to the tenth/sixteenth century cannot be denied (Barkan; Clayer, part II). At a more symbolic level, Anatolian and Iranian Ṣūfī groups under Shīʿī influence, especially the Bektāshīs and the Khāksārs, borrowed objects from martial culture, such as ʿAlī’s sword (known as dhū l-fiqar) and axe (tabar/tabarzīn) (Baḥraynī Ārānī; Raei; Zarcone). The closest connections between Sufism and jihād were forged in Central Asia and in India with the rise of the Naqshbandiyya brotherhood during the tenth/sixteenth century and later. The Naqshbandiyya, which stressed its adherence to mainstream Sunnī Islam—especially in the context of the multi-faceted range of Indian Islam—proved to be an important ally for the Mughal dynasty in its conquest of central India (Buehler, 8–9). The Malfūẓāt-i Naqshbandiyya is an important document that attests to the ability of Ṣūfī groups to work with imperial objectives, at least from the period of Awrangzeb (d. 1119/1707). In spite of the mainstream affinities of the Naqshbandiyya, it portrays a series of wars attended by holy figures who waged jihād, promoted a popular Islam including healings and miracles, served the spiritual needs of the troops, and gave legitimacy to the fighting. One figure stands out, Bābā Palangpūsh (d. 1110/1699; lit., “leopard skin”); he is said to have had a vision of the Prophet Muḥammad’s uncle Ḥamza (the paradigmatic Muslim martyr, killed in the Battle of Uḥud, 3/625), who gave him a sword, and told him: “Take this sword  … and go to the army of Mīr Shihāb al-Dīn in the land of the Deccan” (Digby, 69–70). Many other incidents describe the Naqshbandīs fighting in India. After the fall of the Mughal Empire, for the most part, the Naqshbandiyya in India no longer involved themselves with jihād. Yet, we know cases of Ṣūfī servicemen in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Awadh (northwestern Uttar Pradesh) who served as soldiers in the cold season and as pious mystics in the hot season (Papas, 127, 131, 135). The Naqshbandiyya also heavily influenced the resistance of Turkic Muslims to Chinese rule during the nineteenth century (Kim, ch. 2). An example of this tendency can be seen in the Dungan revolt among the Hui (ethnic Chinese Muslims) in 1279–94/1862–77, when a number of Naqshbandī teachers from Central Asia who had been travelling among the Hui for at least a century, brought about a revival not unlike that experienced by Indian Muslims. The Dungan revolt also had an anti-colonial character, though strictly speaking, the Hui were not colonised by the Chinese (Chu).

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Many important manifestations of Sufism and jihād took place in Africa, especially in western Africa (see Vikør in this volume), which has a long Islamic history, although in many regions of Africa Islam has been closely linked to syncretistic practices. This linkage was especially true for the regions of what is presently northern Nigeria and southern Niger, where, from the thirteenth/ eighteenth to the nineteenth century, the nomadic cattle-grazing Fulani people scattered across the Sahel and intermixed with the much more populous Hausas, who were settled farmers and traders. The Fulanis, led by the charismatic preacher Shehu ʿUthmān Dan Fodio (d. 1234/1817), a member of the Qādiriyya order, began a reformist jihād against the syncretistic Hausa in 1219/1804. This jihād was supposed to eradicate the non-Islamic beliefs and systems that the Hausa monarchs tolerated and even encouraged, and to establish in its place a purely Islamic state. Ultimately, by 1227/1812, the fighting foundered when the Fulani attacked the older Muslim polity of Borno (northeastern Nigeria and western Chad), which did not feel that it was a legitimate target for a jihād. Probably the most famous of all Dan Fodio’s visions is one in which ʿAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī (d. 561/1166), the eponym of the Qādiriyya brotherhood, appeared to him in a dream accompanied by the Prophet and many other early Muslims, and gave him the ‘sword of truth’ by which to fight and defeat the unbelievers (Hiskett, 66). Dan Fodio methodically demonstrated precisely the spiritual preparations that should take place prior to a jihād, namely, preaching and summoning to repentance and undertaking a hijra, during the course of which all the believers gather to fight the unbelievers (Dan Fodio). For northern Nigeria, and to some extent Islamic West Africa as a whole, the numerous writings of Dan Fodio and his close family members have continued to be normative until the present time. Thus, while some other Ṣūfī traditions, such as the Indian and Turkish orders, have de-emphasized the use of militant jihād, the West African tradition has not. It should be further stressed that while Dan Fodio’s jihād is frequently referred to as the “Fulani” jihād, because it ended by empowering a series of Fulani emirates (which exist to the present day), it also included a large number of Hausa who joined for religious reasons; currently northern Muslims in Nigeria would see the jihād as a spiritual, not ethnic, endeavor. Most anti-colonial resistance movements in Islamic Africa during the nineteenth century were led by Ṣūfīs. This trend began with the Algerian figure ʿAbd al-Qādir (also Abdelkader, d. 1300/1883), whose works include spiritual writings as well as a number of practical discussions on jihād. In general, French colonial authorities throughout West and North Africa associated Ṣūfī brotherhoods, rightly and in many cases wrongly, with militancy. This trend is

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most obvious with the figure of ʿUmar Tall (d. 1280/1864), who was the most consistent and successful opponent of the French in the area of Senegal and Mauritania, and was a Tijānī. Like Dan Fodio, who was clearly his exemplar, he preluded his jihād with a hijra, and ensured that he had completed his preaching and invitations to his opponents to convert to Islam prior to initiating violence. A later successor to Tall, but more closely associated with southern Morocco and Mauritania, is the figure of Māʾ al-ʿAynayn (d. 1910), who was a member of the Qādiriyya. Just as Dan Fodio and Tall before him, he undertook lengthy preparations prior to initiating his jihād against the French in 1904. Although he was eventually defeated, his movement, unlike the other two, had a number of proto-nationalist affinities (Martin, ch. 5). There are a number of other examples of Ṣūfī warrior brotherhoods, such as the Sanūsiyya throughout North Africa, and individual fighters from the early resistance to colonialism. However, it should be noted that some important figures, such as the Senegalese Aḥmadu Bàmba Mbàkke (d. 1927), founder of the Murīdiyya brotherhood, employed the language of jihād without its militancy. Merely utilising the term brought about the hostility of the French authorities, and as a result Bàmba spent much of his life in exile. The Murīds restricted the teachings of Tall (above), and developed new interpretations of jihād, which included physical labor (Glover, 54). Ṣūfī brotherhoods were also prominent in anti-colonial movements in East Africa, but such brotherhoods were not quite as widespread there as they were (and are) in West Africa. In Somalia, the figure of Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ḥasan (d. 1920), known to his British opponents as the “mad mullah,” was the best known of these. Ḥasan was not merely a Ṣūfī, but also channeled early forms of Somali nationalism in his numerous poems, transmitted orally. Militant forms of Sufism were weaker in the Arabic-speaking heartlands during the Ottoman and early colonial periods, largely because, by the middle of the eleventh/seventeenth century the Ottomans had severed the connections between the Ṣūfī brotherhoods and the Janissaries, and did not encourage fighting qualities among Ṣūfīs. Nonetheless, in both Egypt and greater Syria, opposition to colonial rule was frequently marshalled by Ṣūfī brotherhoods, especially the Rifāʿīs. Interestingly, the Mevleviyye represent a late military involvement of an Ottoman Ṣūfī order. During World War I, the sultan established a regiment of Mevlevī holy combatants (mücāhidīn) who bore Ṣūfī symbols and played music to support the troops in Syria in 1915 (Köstüklü). In the Caucasus Mountains, for several decades the anti-Russian jihād of Imām Shāmil or Shamwīl (d. 1288/1871) owed a great deal to the spread of the Naqshbandiyya-Khālidiyya brotherhood throughout this region (Zelkina, 200–4). However, the exact nature of Shāmil’s affiliation with and personal

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status in the local branch of this brotherhood remain a matter of dispute (Knysh, Sufism as an explanatory paradigm). At the present time, Sufism is not closely identified with fighting; however, there are a number of recent conflicts in which Ṣūfīs have fought. These include both Afghanistan and Pakistan, where a number of Ṣūfī fighting groups were prominent, for the most part in the war against the USSR (1978–89). In post-2003 Iraq as well, the Jaysh Rijāl al-Ṭarīqa al-Naqshbandiyya (Men of the Army of the Naqshbandiyya) was quite prominent among other groups, mostly Salafī jihādīs, fighting against the United States’ forces (see their website: www .alnakshabandia.net/army/). Ṣūfī organizations, however, have consistently shunned the use of suicide bombings in their tactics. For the most part, at the present time, Salafī jihādī trends in Islam identify Sufism as an enemy, and in conflicts in which Salafīs fight against a nonMuslim enemy, such as Afghanistan or Chechnya, and the majority of the local population is close to Sufism, one of the stated goals of such fighting is to shift the local belief system away from Sufism. For this reason, today Sufism is usually seen as a comparatively non-violent spiritual alternative to Salafism (Knysh, Sufism, ch. 6). More recently, as a result of the backlash against the Salafī jihādī use of indiscriminate violence, certain Ṣūfī groups, such as those in Nigeria (in relation to Boko Haram), have been actively trying to redefine even militant jihād away from the Salafī jihādī discourse, which claims that anyone who does not support an Islamic state is an unbeliever and a legitimate target for violence. In summary, the militancy of certain strains of Sufism, especially those located in South and Central Asia, the Caucasus, and in Africa, is well documented. Although Sufism overall has tended to be irenic, we cannot justifiably state that Sufism precludes militancy or violence, or that the tradition of the “greater jihād” against the soul necessarily restricts or precludes violence. It is apparent, however, that the vast majority of more recent Ṣūfī jihāds have either been associated with the Naqshbandīs or with African Ṣūfīs (mainly Qādirīs or Tijānīs). Bibliography Ārānī, Rāmesh Baḥraynī, Tabar/tabarzīn, Dāneshnāma-yi Jahān-i islām, online: http:// ‫ز‬ rch.ac.ir/article/Details?id=7344&&searchText=�‫ت� ب��ر�ی� ن‬ Barkan, Ömer Lütfi, Osmanlı imparatorluğunda bir iskân ve kolonizasyon metodu olarak vakıflar ve temlikler I:iİstilâ devirlerinin kolonizatör türk dervişleri ve zâviyeler, Vakıflar Dergisi 2 (1942): 279–386.

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Birge, John Kingsley, The Bektashi order of dervishes, London 1965. Buehler, Arthur, Sufi heirs of the prophet. The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the rise of the mediating Sufi shaykh, Columbia, SC 1998. Chu, Wen-Djang, The Moslem rebellion in northwest China. A study of government minority policy, The Hague 1966. Clayer, Nathalie, Mystiques, Etat et Société. Les Halvetis dans l’aire balkanique de la fin du XV e siècle à nos jours, Leiden 1994. Cook, David, Understanding jihad, Berkeley 2005. Dan Fodio, ʿUthmān, Bayān wujūb al-hijra ʿalā al-ʿibād, trans. F. H. al-Masri, Khartoum 1985. Digby, Simon, Sufis and soldiers in Awrangzeb’s Deccan, Oxford 2001. Glover, John, Sufism and jihad in modern Senegal, Rochester 2007. Hiskett, Mervyn, The sword of truth. The life and times of the Shehu Usuman dan Fodio, Evanston, IN 1994. Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, Beirut 1990. Ibn Māja, Sunan, 2 vols., Beirut n.d. Kim, Hodong, Holy war in China. The Muslim rebellion and state in Chinese Central Asia, 1864–1877, Stanford, CA 2004. Knysh, Alexander (trans.), al-Qushayrī’s epistle on Sufism, Reading 2007. Knysh, Alexander, Sufism as an explanatory paradigm. The issue of the motivations of Sufi movements in Russian and western historiography, WI 42/2 (2002): 139–73. Knysh, Alexander, Sufism. A new history of Islamic mysticism, Princeton 2017. Köstüklü, Nuri, Vatan savunmasında gönül erleri: mücâhidîn-i Mevlevîyye Alayı, in X. Milli Mevlânâ kongresi (tebliğler), 2–3 mayıs 2002 (Konya 2002), 213–26. Martin, Bradford G., Muslim brotherhoods in 19th-century Africa, Cambridge 1978. Neale, Harry, Jihad in premodern Sufi writings, New York 2017. Papas, Alexandre, When the Dervish starts publishing. A note on renunciation and literary production in the Indian Qalandariyya, in R. Chih, D. Gril, C. Mayeur-Jaouen and R. Seesemann (eds.), Sufism, literary production and printing in the nineteenth century (Würzburg 2015), 121–38. Raei, Shahrokh, Some notes on the Khâksâr coat of arms, Journal of the History of Sufism 6 (2015): 129–38. Willis, John, In the path of Allah. The passion of al-Hajj ‘Umar, London 1989. Zakeri, Mohsen, Javānmardī, EIr. Zarcone, Thierry, The sword of ‘Alî (zülfikar) in Alevism and Bektashism, Journal of the History of Sufism 6 (2015): 113–28. Zelkina, Anna, In quest for God and freedom. Sufi responses to the Russian advance in the North Caucasus, London 2000.

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Chapter 17

Ṣūfī Sultanates and Imamates Knut S. Vikør The concept of a “Ṣūfī sultanate” seems like an oxymoron. A Ṣūfī master (shaykh) is a spiritual guide for disciples (murīds), not a general commanding his subjects. And while we have seen in this volume that Ṣūfī brotherhoods indeed often played social, economic, and political roles of various kinds, including being involved in revolts or jihād (Sabra, Chih, Papas, and Cook in this volume), the establishment of something we could call a state requires a higher degree of institutionalisation. Nevertheless, there are some instances in which Ṣūfī revolts have led to the creation of a state. An examination of such cases seems to indicate that some contexts enabled Ṣūfī leaders to transform themselves into heads of states or statelets. Common factors seem to be the absence of alternative political structures during transitions from nomadic to urban political orders, when new states based on Islamic reformist agendas are created, or when existing states have been crushed by colonial intervention. Below we provide a number of examples to illustrate this thesis. 1

Transition to Statehood

Such cases can probably be grouped into certain types of Ṣūfī state-building. One type consists of states that arose in mediaeval or late mediaeval times on the fringes of the Muslim world, as nomadic or tribal forces began to morph into early statehood. Here we can identify two cases from Central Asia. 1.1 The Khwājas of Central Asia The dominant Ṣūfī order, or ṭarīqa, in Central Asia is the Naqshbandiyya, or Khwājagān as it was called in the time of Khwāja ʿUbaydallāh Aḥrār (d. 895/1490). He gained political prominence in his region, not least by amassing great wealth in land holdings (Algar; Paul, Politische und soziale Bedeutung; Paul, Forming a faction). He did not, however, proclaim himself sultan or ruler of his region. One of Khwāja Aḥrār’s most famous spiritual descendants, Hidāyatallāh b. Muḥammad Yūsuf, known as Khwāja Āfāq (d. 1105/1694), took that step. A regional leader both through his religious status as khwāja and his wealth, he

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was exiled by the Chaghatayid ruler who patronised a rival khwāja clan. With the support of Buddhist Mongols, Āfāq took control of the oasis of Kashgar in the Tarim Basin in 1090/1679. There, he established himself as khān, ruler of the city and region, although formally still under his Mongol patron. He legitimised his position by marrying into a local noble line, claiming to be a descendant of the Prophet, and presenting himself as a shaykh of the Naqshbandiyya. At that time, mutual relationships between Naqshbandī Khwājas and the ruling khāns, the holders of spiritual and political power, had been the norm in Central Asia. Khwāja Āfāq broke this mould by combining his religious position with temporal leadership (Papas, part 3). Here, too, money and material resources were a crucial element in the growth of his power. By controlling the income generated by pious endowments (waqfs), he could amass great wealth. Some historians note that Khwāja Āfāq’s economic policies also broke with those of his predecessors who based their rule on the redistribution of resources to the tribes (Togan, Differences in ideology and practice, 28–30). Āfāq’s policy, by contrast, was based on the accumulation of wealth and ignoring the redistributive model. This led to the development of a state structure that could become stronger than one reliant on patron-client relationships. It is reasonable to link this development to the support he could draw on due to his religious legitimacy both as defender of the sharīʿa and as the chief shaykh of the Naqshbandiyya ṭarīqa in the region. His successors ruled Kashgar, using the titles of pādishāh, khān, and töre (tribal leader; Togan, Islam in a changing society, 140), until the Chinese conquered it in the 1750s. 1.2 The Ṣafavids By the time the Kashgar rulers had faded away, another Ṣūfī leader who had attempted to form a state on the basis of his tribal following, had arisen, flourished, and fallen. But while the Ṣafavid dynasty had disappeared by the midtwelfth/eighteenth century, the state it had created persisted after their fall (Dale; Newman; Savory). Shīʿism was no doubt an important element in making Iran a permanent entity, but the dynasty’s background in the Ṣafavī Ṣūfī order was also important for its success. The eponymous founder of the order, Ṣafī l-Dīn al-Ardabīlī (d. 735/1334) and his son Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Ardabīlī (d. 794/1391) began spreading their ṭarīqa among the Turkish-speaking tribes of Azerbaijan. Their followers wore red turbans and came to be known as Qizilbāsh, “red-caps.” Although their headgear marked their brotherhood affiliation, the Qizilbāsh functioned largely as a Turkish-speaking tribe, and their organisation was as much tribal as religious. The Ṣafavī shaykhs came to nurture close relationships with the dominant

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begs (traditional chiefs) of the region, in particular the Āq Qoyūnlū, and Shaykh Junayd (d. 864/1460) married the sister of the Āq Qoyūnlū leader, Uzun Ḥasan (d. 882/1478). It was also around this time that the remarkable change of Ṣafavid religious affiliation from Sunnism to Shīʿism took place. However, in 894/1489 they fell out of favour with Uzun Ḥasan’s successor, and most of the Ṣafavid family were killed. Only Junayd’s grandson Ismāʿīl I (d. 930/1524) was saved by the loyal Qizilbāsh. In 905/1500 he returned to exact revenge. With the Qizilbāsh as his core military force, he went on to conquer most of the territories that today make up Iran, areas that before his conquest had no shared identity. Ismāʿīl I thus created a state entity that far surpassed those of his Āq Qoyūnlū predecessors, and he named himself shāh (pādishāh-i Irān). In another bold move, he demanded that the ordinary subjects of his state, and not just the ruling elite, embrace Shīʿism. This measure was surprisingly successful, and helped to forge an Iranian identity; adherence to the Ṣafavī Ṣūfī order remained, at best, an activity of the elite. Yet, the connection between the Ṣūfī order and the Qizilbāsh was a major factor in the creation of the state, even though that state was, in Ismāʿīl’s time, still basically tribal. After his death, the Qizilbāsh caused havoc by infighting and trying to control the state, and Shāh ʿAbbās I (d. 1038/1629) only stabilised it by breaking the Qizilbāsh hold over politics. Thus, the Ṣafavids’ path can be seen as a continuation of the process we saw in Central Asia: From Khwāja Aḥrār, who gained authority through economic and religious means, to Khwāja Āfāq, who combined the positions of khwāja and khān (i.e., religious and political leader), to the Ṣafavids, who used their Ṣūfī legitimacy and tribesmen loyal to Ṣūfī leaders to create a state that outlived both the dynasty they established and the Ṣūfī legitimacy upon which they originally based their claims to leadership. 2

Movements for Islamic Reform

In West Africa in the early nineteenth century, a series of movements for Islamic reform of the existing Muslim kingdoms broke out. These jihād movements were based on Fulānī ethnicity and sharīʿa piety, but also had a Ṣūfī element. The first paradigmatic revolt, by ʿUthmān b. Fodiye (Usuman Dan Fodio, 1168–1232/1754–1817), led to the foundation of a unified empire centred in Sokoto, Northern Nigeria (Last; Adelẹyẹ). After his victory, Ibn Fodiye withdrew from politics and left the business of running the state to his brother

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ʿAbdullāhī (c. 1180–1245/1766–1829) and son Muḥammad Bello (1195–1253/ 1781–1837), who took the title of amīr al-muʾminīn (sarkin musulmi), “commander of the faithful” on his father’s death. Thus, their new state is often called the “Sokoto caliphate.” However, they themselves used the name “Kadirawa” for their movement (Paden, 68). Thus, the Qādiriyya ṭarīqa was the unifying identity for the jihād and the empire, although the ṭarīqa had no official status as such. When Ibn Fodiye first spread his teachings, before the jihād, he utilised Ṣūfī elements in his vernacular poetry. But the attacks on the impious Hausa kings were couched in straightforward exoteric legal and political terms. It is also difficult to see any strong Ṣūfī influence in the political structure of the jihād, or in the structure of the ensuing Sokoto state (which was fairly decentralised, with many of the earlier kingdoms continuing as emirates under the amīr al-muʾminīn). 2.1 al-Ḥājj ʿUmar b. Saʿīd Tall Other jihadist movements, such as those of Masina in central Mali are similar to that of the Sokoto caliphate. However, when we reach the third large jihadist force, arising in the regions between Guinea, Senegal, and Mali, we see a different picture. Like the Sokoto leaders, ʿUmar b. Saʿīd Tall (c. 1208 or 09–1280/1794–1864) was of Fulānī origin (Ọlọruntimehin; Robinson). For several years, he stayed in Sokoto with Muḥammad Bello, whose daughter he married. However, he had encountered a new and different Ṣūfī ṭarīqa, the Tijāniyya. During a hajj to Mecca in 1828–30, he was appointed khalīfa of the order in West Africa. Upon his return to his native Futa Toro region, he established a religious centre at Dingiray (in Mali today), where he disseminated the Tijāniyya ṭarīqa, and also produced some of the most influential works on Tijānī doctrine. Politically quietist, he gathered a large following of Tijānī adherents, called talibés. Thus, this was clearly a Ṣūfī religious centre, with a much stronger ṭarīqa identity than the Sokoto Qādirīs. It would appear, however, that al-Ḥājj ʿUmar also used this time to develop his military strength. In 1852 he began preaching a jihād against the local kings, who were in fact the successors of a previous Islamic revolt of the twelfth/seventeenth century, but also against the pagan peoples south of his domain. He quickly gained ascendance over the Upper Niger region, and young people flocked to him to become talibés; they became, like the Ṣafavid Qizilbāsh, the core military strength of his state, though without any tribal cohesion. Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar made a point of bypassing the established notables in favour of the talibés, who were recruited only on the basis of their loyalty to the Tijāniyya order and, of course, their desire to be on the winning side. ʿUmar also emphasised his own status as khalīfa (deputy) of the Tijāniyya,

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while his son and successor, Aḥmad (d. 1315/1897), adopted the title of amīr al-muʾminīn (Ọlọruntimehin, 178). Therefore, to a certain extent, ʿUmar Tall’s state can be called a “Ṣūfī sultanate.” But it was also marked by political ambition: while he maintained close relations with Sokoto far to the east, when he wanted to expand his area northwards he fought the neighbouring Masina state, which was itself a Fulānī state influenced by the same Sokoto jihād. 3

Anti-Colonial Resistance

Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar’s state is often represented as an anti-colonial movement, since it came into conflict with the French forces that were moving inland from the Senegal coast, and his state was ultimately destroyed by the French after his death. However, ʿUmar’s agenda was clearly based on, at least in part, expanding the lands of Islam by fighting the pagans and, in part, on reforming the existing Muslim states in his regions. The French were a distraction, and he tried to stave them off with negotiations when they came too close to his domain. It was the French who made him their enemy. However, anti-colonialism was a strong motive for militancy. As colonial incursions often swept away the established state structures, resistance movements sought alternative frameworks for their actions. Non-political, but structured movements like Ṣūfī orders often provided such frameworks for anti-colonial resistance. In most cases, these did not lead to state-like institutions, but three cases come close to fitting the bill. 3.1 ʿAbd al-Qādir of Algeria The earliest of the three cases of anti-colonial resistance is that of the North African resistance leader ʿAbd al-Qādir, known as “al-Jazāʾirī” (Danziger; Étienne). His Ṣūfī background is evident from his name: his father Muḥyī l-Dīn was recognised as head of the Qādiriyya in the western Maghrib. He had some temporal influence with the tribes in the region, and when the French forces landed on the Maghribi coast in 1830 some local tribes approached him to head a resistance against the invaders. He accepted, but as he was by then an elderly man, he asked the tribes instead to accept his son ʿAbd al-Qādir (1222–1300/1808–83) as leader. In spite of his son’s youth, the tribes acquiesced and pledged allegiance (bayʿa) to ʿAbd al-Qādir as amīr al-muʾminīn. His was not a claim to a global caliphate, because he recognised the status of the Moroccan sultan across the border and he did not challenge the authority of the Ottoman governor who remained in control of eastern Algeria until 1839.

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It was thus clear that it was his family’s Ṣūfī status among the tribes that prompted ʿAbd al-Qādir to lead the struggle. He began establishing political structures, while the French took several years to muster sufficient forces to move inland and instead negotiated treaties with ʿAbd al-Qādir that de facto recognised his authority over the interior. ʿAbd al-Qādir settled in the town of Mostaganem, which was his capital. He was partly influenced by the reformist endeavours of Muḥammad ʿAlī in Egypt and attempted to create, for example, a modernised army. For the most part, we must consider his state as a traditional one. When the French finally moved against him, he quickly abandoned the towns he controlled and resorted to guerrilla warfare. We can see little or no influence of Sufism in his state or in his ideology. ʿAbd al-Qādir remained a devout Ṣūfī, and returned to this existence when he was finally defeated in 1847 and exiled to Syria. He seems to have kept his Sufism and state-building activities quite separate. The most noteworthy case in which the two activities overlapped may have been when he took time off from fighting the French to attack the rival Tijānī centre at ʿAyn Māḍī. Unlike their Tijānī brother al-Ḥājj ʿUmar in West Africa, the Tijānīs of Algeria were completely apolitical and did not take a position for or against the resistance movement. Thus, ʿAbd al-Qādir’s quarrel with them was, primarily, because they might undercut his Qādirī Ṣūfī position, rather than because of political and military aspirations. Yet, while ʿAbd al-Qādir was both a Ṣūfī and a head of state, it is probably not correct to call his political structure a “Ṣūfī sultanate.” 3.2 Imām Shāmil and the Caucasian Naqshbandiyya Many aspects of ʿAbd al-Qādir’s struggle against the French echoed the Caucasian struggle against Russian expansion into the Causasus that was taking place at the same time. The Caucasian struggle was led by the Naqshbandī shaykh Shāmil (1212–87/1796–1871, originally Shamwil, also rendered Shamīl). It is unclear what status he had in the order, but some sources say he was appointed the local khalīfa (Gammer, 67). However, he was known by the title “imām,” by which was meant amīr al-muʾminīm, and this was the title he himself used. Like ʿAbd al-Qādir, this only referred to his local region, as he also accepted the Ottoman sultan as “the only padishāh,” according to his writings. Shāmil also followed ʿAbd al-Qādir in seeking negotiations and treaties with his enemies when that served his purpose. In the Caucasus too, both sides wanted time to build up their strength, and it was only in 1836 that the war started in earnest. Shāmil was defeated in 1839, but returned and continued as a local ruler until his final surrender in 1859. Shāmil’s state followed a Muslim pattern rather than a specific Ṣūfī one, but was based on religious reform rather than traditionalism. Thus, like Ibn Fodiye,

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he insisted on the application of the sharīʿa and combatting semi- or nonIslamic customs (ʿādāt). He appointed governors, nāʾibs as well as qāḍīs and muftīs, although with some local adaptations (e.g., the muftī was appointed by the nāʾib, and in turn nominated the qāḍīs; Gammer, 225–7). The Ṣūfī element of his struggle seems, primarily, to have been one of legitimacy and mobilisation; we can find little or no trace of Ṣūfī thought in the writings we have from him (in sharp contrast to al-Ḥājj ʿUmar). Nevertheless, he clearly drew on Ṣūfī elements to bolster support. When queried about a difficult topic, he would go into khalwa (seclusion) for days and emerge with an answer given to him by the Prophet in a vision. He could read people’s thoughts and be physically present at several places at the same time. These abilities belong to the repertoire of a Ṣūfī shaykh. Like the talibés of al-Ḥājj ʿUmar, Shāmil’s soldiers were also called “students,” murīds, but here a clear distinction was made between members of the order, ṭarīqa murīds, and fighting adepts, nāʾibi murīds—although there was considerable overlap between the two. 3.3 The Sanūsī Kingdom of Libya The Qādiriyya of Ibn Fodiye and ʿAbd al-Qādir is considered to be among the “old” decentralised Ṣūfī orders, supposedly less useful as the basis for jihāds and state building than the newer Tijāniyya of al-Ḥājj ʿUmar (although this was not the case in Algeria during ʿAbd al-Qādir’s time). Another new ṭarīqa was the Sanūsiyya. This was a non-political order aimed at spreading learning among the Bedouin of Cyrenaica (eastern Libya) from the 1840s (Evans-Pritchard; Vikør). But when Italy invaded Libya in 1911 and the Ottomans pulled out, the Bedouin leaders approached the third leader of the brotherhood, Aḥmad al-Sharīf (1284–1352/1867 or 8–1933) to lead their resistance. Against the misgivings of the council of elders, al-Sharīf accepted, and the religious brotherhood was soon transformed into the organisational backbone of a guerrilla war that was carried out by Bedouin tribes. Al-Sharīf staved off Italian incursions, but had to resign after a disastrous attack on the British across the border with Egypt in 1916. The British negotiated an agreement between the Sanūsī and the Italians (the Acroma agreement, 1917), in which the new head of the order, al-Sharīf’s cousin Muḥammad Idrīs, an ally of Britain, became the de facto ruler of Cyrenaica. In a new treaty in 1920 (at al-Rajma), he was accorded the title emir. After the fascists took power in Rome two years later, the war resumed and lasted until the defeat of the Sanūsīs in 1931. Just ten years later, however, Italian rule was brought to an end by the Second World War. In the aftermath of the war, the Western powers could not agree on the future of Libya, but a majority in the new United Nations decided that Libya would become a unified state. The western region, Tripolitania, wanted

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a republic, but the less populated Cyrenaica only accepted unity if their candidate, Idrīs, became head of state. Thus, the head of the Sanūsī Ṣūfī order became king of Libya, and remained so until deposed by al-Qadhdhāfī in 1969. In this history, there is no doubt that the Sanūsī order, while originally non-political and non-militant, played a key organisational role in the jihād against the Italians. The Acroma emirate was imposed from outside, and in the later war the Italians effectively crushed the Sanūsiyya as a brotherhood. When Idrīs returned as king in 1951, the Sanūsiyya was just a tribal aristocracy of Cyrenaican nobility who effectively ran the state with the royal family. Although Idrīs himself was keenly interested in his religious roots, perhaps more so than in running the kingdom, Libya can hardly be considered a “Ṣūfī kingdom.” 4

Conclusion: Ṣūfī States

In all these cases, Ṣūfī leaders became heads of state. But the Ṣūfī influence on the actual state structures they built were negligible or completely absent. The shaykhs-sultans were known by various titles: imām (Shāmil), khān (Āfāq), shāh, emir, or mālik (Ṣafavids, Sanūsiyya), etc. But formally, most referred to themselves primarily with the classical title amīr al-muʾminīn, a title generally associated with, but not synonymous with, the office of the caliph. By the time these states arose, this title no longer had universal implications, but designated a ruler who implemented the sharīʿa in his territory. While some of these leaders also may have used Ṣūfī or religious titles, such as khalīfa of the ṭarīqa (al-Ḥājj ʿUmar) or khwāja (Āfāq), this likely denoted an authority distinct from that of political leader. A similar situation existed in relation to the administrative apparatus composed of traditional offices, such as wazīr, qāḍī, and muftī. However, here we can distinguish between the cases in which the previous Ṣūfī initiates turned militants ran the new state, and those in which the traditional notables administered the state. In the former group, we find al-Ḥājj ʿUmar’s ṭalibés, Shāmil’s murīds (with the caveat mentioned above) and the Ṣafavid Qizilbāsh. In the latter cases of Ibn Fodiye and ʿAbd al-Qādir the Ṣūfī initiates seemed to have little or no influence. The Sanūsīs represent an intermediary position; that is, the non-initiate Bedouins did the fighting, but they were led by the local Sanūsī shaykhs, who were generally drawn from outside the tribal unit. In cases where there was such a link, militancy and political leadership transformed those involved into an established state aristocracy, regardless of whether or not they maintained a religious identity.

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There seems to be no correlation between the content of the ṭarīqa’s teachings and its capacity for politics and statehood. The Tijānī example is clear proof of this: After the defeat of al-Ḥājj ʿUmar’s state, the Tijānī ṭarīqa spread under colonialism to become the dominant Ṣūfī order in West Africa, but without a hint of political militancy. In fact, the major branches of the order are those that are most independent from ʿUmar’s lineage and legacy. There is, however, an evident link between organisational structure and potential for political action, as in the cases of al-Ḥājj ʿUmar and al-Sanūsī, orders with much stricter religious hierarchy than most others. Therefore, the significance of the concept of “Ṣūfī states” is open to debate, or perhaps this Ṣūfī element has been overemphasised in Western historiography, as Knysh argues in the case of Shāmil (Knysh; Patrizi in this volume; Papas in this volume). In fact, “Ṣūfī sultans” and imams seem to have become, eventually, regular sultans and imams. Their Ṣūfī connections and Ṣūfī organisation may have helped them achieve this position, but the more they immersed themselves in statehood, the more diluted and indistinct the Ṣūfī aspect of their rule became. Ṣūfī models, ideas, or identities are better seen as resources that historical actors or movements can use in specific circumstances than as part of conventional politics. These resources, however, became dispensable and were easily set aside when these rebel movements evolved into states. Bibliography Abun-Nasr, Jamil M., The Tijaniyya. A Sufi order in the modern world, London 1965. Adelẹyẹ, R. A., Power and diplomacy in northern Nigeria 1804–1906. The Sokoto caliphate and its enemies, London 1971. Algar, Hamid, Political aspects of Naqshbandī history, in Marc Gaborieau, Alexandre Popovic, and Thierry Zarcone (eds.), Naqshbandis. Cheminements et situation actuelle d’un ordre mystique musulman (Paris 1990), 123–52. Bennigsen, Alexandre and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Le Soufi et le commissaire. Les confréries musulmanes en URSS, Paris 1986. Dale, Stephen F., The Muslim empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, Cambridge 2010. Danziger, Raphael, Abd al-Qadir and the Algerians. Resistance to the French and internal consolidation, New York 1977. Étienne, Bruno, Abdelkader. Isthme des isthmes (Barzakh al-barazikh), Paris 1994. Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Oxford 1949. Gammer, Moshe, Muslim resistance to the Tsar. Shamil and the conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan, London 2003.

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Kemper, Michael, The Daghestani legal discourse on the imamate, Central Asian Survey 21 (2010): 265–78. Knysh, Alexander, Sufism as an explanatory paradigm. The issue of the motivations of Sufi resistance movements in western and Russian scholarship, WI 42 (2002): 139–73. Last, Murray, The Sokoto caliphate, London 1967. Newman, Andrew J., Safavid Iran. Rebirth of a Persian empire, London 2012. Ọlọruntimehin, B. O., The Segu Tukolor empire, London 1972. Paden, John N., Religion and political culture in Kano, Berkeley 1973. Papas, Alexandre, Soufisme et politique entre Chine, Tibet et Turkestan. Étude sur les Khwajas naqshbandis du Turkestan Oriental, Paris 2005. Paul, Jürgen, Die politische und soziale Bedeutung der Naqšbandiyya in Mittelasien im 15. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1991. Paul, Jürgen, Forming a Faction. The ḥimāyat system of Khwaja Ahrar, IJMES 23 (1991): 533–48. Reynolds, Michael A., Mobilisation of Muslims in the Caucasus, in David Motadel (ed.), Islam and the European empires (Oxford 2014), 187–212. Robinson, David, The holy war of Umar Tal. The western Sudan in the mid-nineteenth century, Oxford 1985. Savory, R. S., Iran under the Safawids, Cambridge 1980. Shinar, Pessah, ʿAbd al-Qādir and ʿAbd al-Krīm. Religious influences on their thought and action, Studies in Islam 1/3 (1964): 135–64. Togan, Isenbike, Islam in a Changing Society. The Khojas of eastern Turkistan, in Jo-Ann Gross (ed.), Muslims in Central Asia. Expressions of identity and change (Durham, NC 1992), 134–48. Togan, Isenbike, Differences in ideology and practice. The case of the Black and White Mountain faction, Journal of the History of Sufism 3 (2001): 25–38. Vikør, Knut S., Jihād, ʿilm and taṣawwuf—two justifications of action from the Idrīsī tradition, SI 90 (2000): 153–76. Weismann, Itzchak, The Naqshbandiyya. Orthodoxy and activism in a worldwide Sufi tradition, London 2007. Zarcone, Thierry, La Naqchbandiyya, in Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein (eds.), Les Voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans l’islam des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris 1996), 451–67. Zelkina, Anna, Jihād in the name of God. Shaykh Shamil as the religious leader of the Caucasus, Central Asian Survey 21 (2010): 249–64.

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Part 5 The Organisation of Mysticism

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Chapter 18

The Organisation of Mysticism Mark Sedgwick Mysticism in Islam is organised through the relationship between murshid (guide) and murīd (seeker), and through collective institutions such as the ṭarīqa (lit. path; order), which has been the dominant organisational form since the eighth/fourteenth century. In addition, the ribāṭ or khānqāh (lodge) and the brotherhood come in different urban and rural forms. The ṭarīqa, the lodge, and the brotherhood are all defined below. We can understand mysticism in various ways, but arguably the idea of the encounter of the soul (Gr. psychē, Ar. rūḥ) with God or the Godhead is central. This encounter does not, in principle, require any form of organisation whatsoever. To the extent that it requires anything other than what is understood to come from God, it requires piety and practice. Despite this, in Islam as in other religions and traditions, mysticism has tended to be organised. And, in the Muslim world as elsewhere, rulers and states have also sought to regulate mystics and their institutions, giving rise to a further level of organisation. The organisation of mysticism has been relatively little studied. Ṣūfīs have written mostly about persons (great saints: walī, pl. awliyāʾ), theology, philosophy, and practice. Western scholars have generally followed these emphases. The first Ṣūfī texts that became available in the West dealt with theology and philosophy (Sedgwick, Western Sufism), and this was the original focus of Western scholarship on Islamic mysticism. The study of persons and practices followed. The study of organisation came last, as the sources for it are more difficult to obtain. J. Spencer Trimingham included one chapter on organisation in his work, The Sufi orders in Islam (in 1971), and since that time there has been no new comprehensive treatment of Ṣūfī organisation. Organisation matters, however, as it provides the context within which practices take place, persons operate, and theology and philosophy are developed, transmitted, and received. ​ For those who understand mysticism as primarily individual, the organisation of mysticism necessarily represents a decline from a pure ideal. This understanding is found in much of the early twentieth-century Western scholarship, which implicitly regarded organised mysticism as somehow debased. This view has now been mostly abandoned, however (Le Gall), and the

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organised mysticism of ṭarīqa Sufism is now often regarded as the norm for Islamic mysticism. This, too, is incorrect, as the ṭarīqa is only one of the organisational forms that Sufism has taken. There was Sufism before the ṭarīqa, and there is Sufism beyond the ṭarīqa today. This chapter is structured historically, following the organisation of Sufism from its beginnings through the ribāṭ and the brotherhood to the ṭarīqa, and then on to modern developments. The organisation of Ṣūfīs by rulers and states is considered after the ṭarīqa, but before modern developments. 1

The Beginnings of Sufism

At its beginnings, Sufism was individual rather than organised, though there was still a transfer of ideas and practices from individual to individual, which is in some ways a form of organisation. The very first Muslims who were later identified as Ṣūfīs did not use the term “Ṣūfī” themselves; the earliest use of this term was in and around Baghdad, at the heart of the great ʿAbbāsid caliphate, in the third/ninth century (Karamustafa, Sufism, 6). These third-/ninth-century Ṣūfīs did not understand Sufism as something they had invented, however, but as something that had been practiced by earlier ascetics and mystics. Though little is known of these earliest Muslim ascetics and mystics, they and their activities do not seem to have been organised in any particular fashion. Nothing is said about the institutional or even personal relations of the earliest (often semi-mythical) proto-Ṣūfīs whose lives are reported in the classic Risāla of Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072). These proto-Ṣūfīs appear as saintly ascetics whose practice was supported only by God and their own piety (Qushayrī, 18–43). Starting with Abū l-Qāsim al-Junayd (d. 298/910), one of the first Muslim mystics to identify himself as a Ṣūfī, it became standard to mention who a great Ṣūfī studied with. At first, the Ṣūfī who was most often mentioned in this way was al-Junayd himself (Qushayrī, 43–65). The central organisational mechanism of Sufism—the relationship between teacher and student—dates to the beginnings of Sufism, then. A teacher-student relationship is found in many human activities that involve the transmission of knowledge or techniques, and is also characteristic of the early ʿulamāʾ (religious scholars). However, one aspect of the Ṣūfī teacher-student relationship that differs from the organisation of the exoteric sciences of the ʿulamāʾ was the institution of the ʿaqd (contract). According to al-Qushayrī’s Risāla, at the beginning of the training of a Ṣūfī murīd, an ʿaqd was formed between the murīd and God, and as a result of this contract, the

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murīd owed total obedience to his murshid, known generally as a shaykh (Ar., elder or teacher) or pīr (P., also elder or teacher). “One condition for success is that there should be no opposition to the master [shaykh] in his student’s [murīd’s] heart” (Qushayrī, 406). Later, a contract between the murīd and the shaykh replaced that between the murīd and God; this contract was known as an ʿahd (covenant) or bayʿa (allegiance). Organisationally, then, the teacherstudent relationship in Sufism is distinguished from the teacher-student relationship in other Islamic contexts by the bayʿa from murīd to shaykh (Thibon in this volume). By the third/ninth century, the giving of bayʿa had become ritualised, often taking the form of the shaykh bestowing an article of clothing, normally a khirqa (cloak), on the murīd (Michon). “Taking the khirqa” thus became a synonym for giving bayʿa. This practice was sometimes justified by reference to a ḥadīth (report) of the Prophet giving a khamīṣa (shirt) to one of his followers, though many Ṣūfīs accepted that this was in fact a weak justification (Ohlander, 210). The actual purpose of the khirqa is unknown, though it has a parallel in the custom of a ruler bestowing a khilaʿ (robe of honour) as a mark of favour, a custom said to have been followed by Pharaoh, who bestowed a robe on Joseph (Genesis 41: 42). This custom survived in the Middle East and Central Asia until the Ottomans replaced it with the modern practice of bestowing stars, ribbons, and medals. The khirqa served as a visible mark of identity, like a Christian monastic habit, and likewise it varied in colour and design. Some Ṣūfīs wore muraqqaʿa (patched) khirqas as a mark of their asceticism. Since the adoption of global models of Western men’s clothing in the Muslim world from the late nineteenth century onwards, the khirqa has largely disappeared, although it is still worn by Mevlevi Ṣūfīs during their samāʿ (whirling ceremony) and by some shaykhs in Iran and Central Asia. The practice of bayʿa, in contrast, continues. It is now generally marked by the murshid assigning a wird (litany) to the murīd. 2

Early Ṣūfī Organisation

The very earliest Ṣūfīs were organised informally into groups as well as into teacher-student pairs. The Ṣūfīs who associated with al-Junayd, for example, met regularly in the Shūnīziyya Mosque in Baghdad (Karamustafa, Sufism, 20). Again, this form of organisation resembles that of the early ʿulamāʾ, and the term ḥalqa (circle) was used to refer to their gatherings/lessons. Two formal institutions, the lodge and the brotherhood, then replaced the informal groups of Ṣūfīs.

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2.1 The Lodge The first Ṣūfī lodges, called ribāṭ (fort) or khānqāh (lit., “a place of residence”), were established in eastern Iran in the fourth/tenth century (Chabbi; Firouzeh in this volume). They became widespread there during the fifth/eleventh century (Karamustafa, Sufism, 121), and then in Damascus in the sixth/twelfth century (Ephrat and Mahamid, 198). Similar institutions were then established elsewhere (Ephrat and Pinto in this volume). The term zāwiya (lit., “corner”) was later widely used, when other terms were also applied, including tekke in the Turkish context. Over the millennium during which the Ṣūfī lodge has existed, these and other terms have sometimes been used with particular shades of meaning, but often they have been used interchangeably. No clear or generally recognised typology corresponds to the different terms. This article will therefore refer to the ribāṭ to encompass all other terms. The original military significance of the term reflects an early association between Ṣūfīs and mutaṭawwiʿa (volunteer fighters) (Tor, 230). One of the most celebrated ascetics and mystics before al-Junayd and those who identified as Ṣūfīs was Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. 161/778), a volunteer on the Arab-Byzantine frontier who is said to have excelled as a scholar, eaten almost nothing, and attained knowledge of God (maʿrifa). Ibrāhīm b. Adham was followed by a number of companions, and helped inspire many other scholar-ascetics who also moved to the frontier (Bonner; Hofer [Ṣūfī Outposts] in this volume). Most of the mutaṭawwiʿa who occupied military ribāṭs were not, however, Ṣūfīs (Chabbi and Rabbat), despite the later myth that conflated Ṣūfīs and mujāhidīn (fighters of jihād). The military ribāṭ and the khānqāh ribāṭ were not the same thing. The classic khānqāh ribāṭ housed a number of Ṣūfīs who lived, ate, prayed, performed dhikr (repetitions of invocations or the names of God), and studied together under the direction of a shaykh. Many urban khānqāh ribāṭs were endowed by local rulers, and these were often quite grand; for example, the ribāṭ that was attached to the tomb of the Mamlūk sultan Baybars II of Egypt (d. 710/1310) accommodated four hundred residents (Trimingham, 171). The waqf (endowments) for many such ribāṭs provided free food and housing for their inhabitants, who were thus relieved from the need to earn a living. Some of those who lived in a ribāṭ were long-term residents, some short-term. Some were travelling students, some were the staff of the ribāṭ (cooks, musicians), and some were retired ʿulamāʾ who wanted to dedicate their final years to their devotions (Hofer, Popularisation). At least in theory, Ṣūfīs in a ribāṭ lived lives cut off from material concerns, focusing on the divine through prayer and dhikr and the recitation of the Qurʾān, sleeping and eating little. Marriage was often discouraged (Ohlander, 194–5, 229–30), despite the general encouragement

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of marriage found in Islam. Ribāṭ Ṣūfīs wore a distinctive khirqa, sometimes granted on entering the ribāṭ and sometimes granted at the completion of an initial training period (Ohlander, 210). Some critics, however, thought the inhabitants of the ribāṭs lived in a degree of comfort that brought into question whether or not they were true Ṣūfīs. Even so, local populations generally accepted them as teachers, and sometimes attended their rituals as spectators (Hofer, Popularisation). In at least some ribāṭs, the shaykh was assisted by a khādim (servant), who looked after the financing and day-to-day running of the ribāṭ (Ohlander, 207–8). In addition to ribāṭs, Ṣūfī communities also formed around certain tombs, often called qubba (dome) or maqām (site) in Arabic, or dargāh in Persian and Urdu. Often a great Ṣūfī shaykh was regarded as a walī (saint), and thus, their tombs became places of ziyāra (visitation, pilgrimage); this practice had become well established by the sixth/twelfth century, when several ziyāra manuals were written (Karamustafa, Sufism, 132). It is important to note that the practice of ziyāra to tombs is not exclusive to Ṣūfīs. It is also a standard Shīʿī practice, and is even practiced by many Sunnī Muslims who do not consider themselves Ṣūfīs. Further, the occupants of many tombs that are the object of ziyāra have no connection with Sufism. Ziyāras may be made to the tombs of members of the ʿulamāʾ, or even military commanders like Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī (d. 52/672), a Companion of the Prophet whose tomb outside Constantinople (known as Eyüp Sultan) is now one of the most important religious sites in Istanbul. Many or even most of the famous tombs are, however, those of Ṣūfīs; thus, there is a large overlap between ziyāras and Sufism (Mayeur-Jaouen in this volume). As an institution, whether Ṣūfī or not, tombs are especially important for women since, unlike mosques, tombs are not gendered spaces. Women visit tombs as often as, or more than, men do. Tombs are visited on a daily basis for baraka (blessings), or as necessary for relief from illness or other problems. Particular tombs acquired reputations for particular functions. In the nineteenth-century Punjab, for example, one tomb was known for its effectiveness against leprosy, and another for its use against possession by jinn (demons) (Gilmartin, 42). On a seasonal basis, tombs are the sites of festivals known as mawlids (Arabic) or ʿurs (in the Indian subcontinent); some of these festivals attract great numbers of people (McGregor). Many major Ṣūfī tombs are not only sites of ziyāra and mawlids but also of institutions resembling the ribāṭ. For example, one early Ṣūfī community of about one hundred persons formed around the shrine of one Abū Saʿīd (d. 440/1049) in Mīhana, Khurāsān (eastern Iran) (Karamustafa, Sufism 143).

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Another Ṣūfī community developed around the tomb of Aḥmad al-Badawī (d. 675/1276) in Ṭanṭā, Egypt, where the waqf provided for seven hundred students (Mayeur-Jaouen). Ṣūfī tombs and the communities attached to them, often descendants of the original walī and his followers, were of great importance in rural areas of the Muslim world, from Morocco to India and beyond. Until modern times, the authority of the state in the Muslim world was most prominent in cities and large towns, which were also where the ʿulamāʾ were normally located. The rural tombs, the guardians of which were known in the western Arab world as a murābiṭ (ribāṭ-keeper, rendered into French as marabout) and in South Asia as a khādim (servant), not only provided religious services but also educational (teaching the Qurʾān and basic literacy), judicial (conducting trials), and even political services (arbitrating in tribal disputes) (Gellner 315–6; Gilmartin 57–8; Rinn 18). In recent decades, these functions have declined as governments have increased their presence in rural areas and provided state-run educational and judicial services, but they have not disappeared entirely. In Upper Egypt, for example, Ṣūfī shaykhs are still thought to be better and faster at resolving land disputes than state courts are (Chih, 16–63). In South Asia, a khādim may ensure proper behaviour, but may also act as a shaykh. When central political authority was weak, the guardians of major Ṣūfī tombs often became local rulers, and sometimes even commanded military forces. During the eleventh/seventeenth century, for example, as the power of the Saʿdī dynasty in Morocco waned, a local shaykh, Muḥammad al-Ḥājjī (d. 1082/1612), established himself as a regional ruler (with the aid of military force) and ultimately claimed the title of sultan of Morocco. He was eventually defeated in battle by the ʿAlawī dynasty that still rules Morocco (Knysh, 247). Likewise, as the power of the Mughal dynasty collapsed in India, the guardians of the tomb of Bābā Farīd (d. c. 670/1271) at Pakpattan (in the Punjab) established themselves as local rulers, until, in 1810, they were defeated militarily by the Sikh Empire (Gilmartin, 46–7). During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, several insurrections against European colonial regimes and unpopular Muslim governments were led by rural Ṣūfīs (Keddie; Knysh, 257–60 and 289–300). Although the political, legal, and educational functions of rural tombs and their murābiṭ, khādims, or shaykhs have been extremely important for the functioning of rural communities, these figures all ultimately depended on the religious significance of the walī and the tomb. Ṣūfī tombs, then, are Ṣūfī institutions, not just social or political communities.

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2.2 The Itinerant Brotherhood The itinerant brotherhood was a Ṣūfī organisational form that developed in parallel with the ribāṭ, and has been identified by some scholars as a reaction against the comforts of ribāṭ Sufism. The members of itinerant brotherhoods were mendicant ascetics. Outsiders first referred to the itinerant brotherhoods by a variety of names that indicated their specific doctrinal positions. In the fourth/tenth century there are references to a Ḥusniyya (those [who] beautify [God]), a Malāmatiyya (those [who are] blameworthy), a Shawqiyya (those [who] yearn [for God]), a Maʿdhūriyya (those [who seek] excuses), and a Wāṣiliyya (those [who seek to] attain [i.e., union with God]) (Karamustafa, Antinomian Sufis). The Wāṣiliyya were given this name because they allegedly believed that once they attained union with God, they were exempt from the sharīʿa, and the Malāmatiyya were referred to thus because they practiced selfblame or, perhaps, were indifferent to public blame. Commentators debated about what acts did or might produce blame (Karamustafa, Antinomian Sufis). It seems clear, however, that these itinerant brotherhoods were often antinomian, defying religious and social norms. While we do not have information about the internal organisation of the earliest itinerant brotherhoods, they were evidently sufficiently organised to be seen as groups by outsiders. Their theology varied. Some were close to mainstream Sunnī Islam, while others held very different views, including those associated with the ghulāt (extremist Shīʿīs) of early Islam, and most strikingly, those who believed in divine incarnation. By the fifth/eleventh century, the itinerant, mendicant ascetics had become known as the darvīsh (P., beggar) or qalandar (P., uncouth). Darvīsh later became a synonym for Ṣūfī, and indeed early European literature refers to “dervishes,” not to Ṣūfīs; the term “Ṣūfī” became standard only during the twentieth century (Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 125). Qalandar came to denote itinerant, mendicant Ṣūfīs. Also by the fifth/eleventh century, the mode of life of the darvīsh or qalandar had been sufficiently formalised for particular clothing and accessories to become standard. The darvīsh or qalandar dressed in animal skins and a tāj (a felt hat, usually conical), and carried a staff, a small hatchet, a kashkūl (begging bowl), and a tasbīh (rosary). Sometimes qalandars lived alone, and sometimes in groups. Like the earliest itinerant brotherhoods, they were often antinomian. Though the details are disputed, there are numerous accounts of consumption of alcohol and narcotics, and of irregular sexual practices. By the seventh/thirteenth century, the itinerant brotherhood model and the ribāṭ form of organisation began to merge, as qalandars opened

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ribāṭs in such major cities as Damascus, Damietta, Cairo, and Jerusalem. Some qalandars became part-time itinerants, and lived part of the year in ribāṭs (Karamustafa, Antinomian Sufis). Although other forms of organisation eventually superseded the itinerant brotherhood, the qalandars remained popular in Central Asia during the eleventh/seventeenth and twelfth/eighteenth centuries, and survived there until the early twentieth century (Papas, Mystiques et vagabonds). E. W. Lane wrote about Persian dervishes in Cairo in the 1830s, and noted that they were still distinguished by their kashkūl and tāj (Lane, 248–9). The qalandar model also survives until today in the form of the Bektāşīs. During the tenth/sixteenth century the Ottoman government was threatened by Kızılbāş (lit., “red heads”), Turkic tribesmen who were inclined towards Shīʿism, and the Ottomans’ rivals, the Ṣafavids. The Bektāşīs were already linked with the elite Ottoman military forces (the Janissaries, many of whom were Bektāşīs), and were therefore promoted by Ottoman rulers as an alternative to the Kızılbāş. The Kızılbāş survived until today, as the Alevīs (Dressler), while the Bektāşīs absorbed the remains of the qalandars, including some of their unusual theological positions and ceremonies. These positions distinguish them from mainstream Sunnī Sufism. The Bektāşīs developed a unique organisational structure, on the one hand linked to the Janissaries and on the other hand divided into celibate and noncelibate branches. The celibate branch was led by a dede (grandfather) as shaykh, who presided over a hierarchy of ranks and a large number of tekkes. The non-celibate branch was led by a çelebi (gentleman) (Zarcone). When the early nineteenth-century Ottoman government was challenged by the Janissaries and suppressed them (in 1826) it also suppressed the Bektāşīs, and confiscated their property. Despite this, the Bektāşīs survived until the end of the Ottoman Empire (Zarcone), and they are still found in Albania, where the 1826 suppression was never very effective. During the 1920s and 1930s, Albanian Bektāşīs became an officially recognised religious community alongside Sunnī Islam and Christianity; they retain this status until today (Clayer). 2.3 Futuwwa Brotherhoods Young male Ṣūfīs also organised themselves into urban brotherhoods that overlapped with other non-Ṣūfī brotherhoods, known in the eastern Arab world as futuwwa (Ar., fatā, pl. fityān, youths) and in Anatolia as akhīs (brothers). Scholars continue to debate the precise nature of these brotherhoods, but it seems that they took multiple forms, some resembling military forces, some resembling trade guilds, and some resembling vagrant bands or youth gangs—and indeed the term ʿayyār (vagrant) was often used. In some ways the futuwwa brotherhoods were the counterpart of Europe’s youth confraternities,

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one variety of which played a major role in the life of mediaeval Europe by combining religious devotions, charitable activities, mutual self-help, and what Christopher Black has called “general desires for corporative identity and solidarity outside the kin group” (Black, 8). The futuwwa differed from the itinerant brotherhoods in that they were urban and settled, and they differed from both the itinerant brotherhoods and ribāṭ Ṣūfīs in that they did not live together, though they often ate together. Entry into the futuwwa brotherhood was marked not by receiving a khirqa but by receiving a shadd (girdle belt), a symbol that was also used by trade guilds (and by Christian monks). Membership in the futuwwa was further indicated by wearing sirwāl (trousers) (Algar and Raymond). The shadd was generally granted when a ṭālib (postulant) had completed a trial period and could become a murīd, then a rafīq (companion) (Taeschner, 140). The objectives of the futuwwa were periodically described in what was known as a futuwwat-nāme (a treatise on futuwwa). These included advice on the religious and spiritual training and development of young men, and have been compared to European manuals of chivalry. These manuals link the futuwwa brotherhoods to Sufism. ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234), an important Ṣūfī (on whom see below) who wrote two futuwwat-nāmes, argued that the futuwwa was a subsidiary form of Sufism (Ohlander, 284–5, 289–90). He seems to have had some success in incorporating the futuwwa into Sufism, although futuwwa brotherhoods still maintained a distinct, separate identity. In general, little is known of their internal organisation or functioning, but we have some information about the akhīs in eighth-/fourteenth-century Anatolia. By then, the akhīs were an association of urban craftsmen who pooled the profits of their trades, ate together every evening, and then performed dhikr or read Qurʾān, rather as ribāṭ Ṣūfīs did. They welcomed and handsomely entertained travellers, including Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 770/1368–9 or 779/1377), and even acted as governors in towns where the rising Ottoman power had not yet established itself (Arnakis). Thus, they combined religious, economic, and political functions, rather as rural murābiṭs and shaykhs at tombs did. The futuwwa were repressed in Iran by the Ṣafavids after the tenth/sixteenth century (Ridgeon), as the akhīs were repressed by the Ottomans around the same time, after an initial policy of patronising them was abandoned (Ocak). The term futuwwat-nāme persisted, however, to describe the literature of some trade guilds, which survived (often with Ṣūfī connections) until the economic restructuring of the nineteenth century (Ridgeon; Afshari in this volume). A form of futuwwat-nāme known as the risāla was in use in Central Asia until the early twentieth century (Dagyeli). The term futuwwa likewise survives, and is now used to describe local gangsters (Irwin, 162–3).

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During the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries, the ṭarīqa (order) became the central Ṣūfī organisation, gradually replacing and incorporating the urban ribāṭ and the brotherhood. A ṭarīq is a path or road, and thus, a ṭarīqa is literally a path, though the word came to denote a more loosely organised group of Ṣūfīs. As in the futuwwa brotherhood, and unlike participation in the urban ribāṭ or the itinerant brotherhood, participation in the ṭarīqa is part-time. Life in a ribāṭ left some time for individual activities such as teaching, but most of those who lived in ribāṭs were ʿulamāʾ, not ordinary Muslims. Ordinary Muslims sometimes attended their ceremonies, but as spectators, not participants. Similarly, belonging to an itinerant brotherhood was a full-time affair, and the qalandars were clearly distinguished from the general population by their dress and behaviour. The fact that participation in the ṭarīqa was part-time made possible a far larger membership. Also, unlike the futuwwa brotherhood or any earlier form of Ṣūfī organisation, the ṭarīqas extended beyond a single town or city. The organisational form of the ṭarīqa, then, is what allowed Sufism to spread as widely in the Muslim world as it did (Ceyhan in this volume). The ṭarīqa also differed from the ribāṭ and the brotherhood in that, like tombs, they were identified with the memory of a particular walī. The greatest and most widespread ṭarīqas are all named after the saints (awliyāʾ) who lived between the sixth/twelfth and ninth/fifteenth centuries, including the Qādiriyya (named after ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, d. 561/1166), the Suhrawardiyya (named after Abū l-Najīb al-Suhrawardī, d. 563/1168, the uncle of the ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī already mentioned and no relation of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī, the philosopher who was executed in Aleppo in 587/1191), the Shādhiliyya (named after Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī, d. 656/1258), and the Mevleviyye (named after Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, known as Mevlānā, d. 672/1273). These awliyāʾ all came from the ribāṭ system. For example, Abū l-Najīb al-Suhrawardī led a ribāṭ in Baghdad, and al-Shādhilī led a ribāṭ located outside Alexandria (Hofer, Popularisation). One of Abū l-Najīb al-Suhrawardī’s major contributions to the later development of the ṭarīqa system was the partial opening of his ribāṭ to mutashābihūn (imitators), part-time participants who were not required to follow the same rules as full-time members of the ribāṭ, to whom he gave the khirqat al-tabarruk (khirqa of blessing) (Ohlander, 194, 212–3). Thus, in a sense, Abū l-Najīb al-Suhrawardī’s mutashābihūn were the first ṭarīqa Ṣūfīs. Abū l-Najīb al-Suhrawardī was retrospectively identified as the leader of a ṭarīqa as a result of the efforts of his nephew ʿUmar (the author of the

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futuwwat-nāme already mentioned), who enjoyed the patronage of the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Nāṣir (r. 575–622/1180–1225), for whom he performed a number of diplomatic missions, and who directed five ribāṭs in Baghdad (Ohlander, 112). The Suhrawardiyya also became established as a ṭarīqa through the efforts of other followers of ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī who spread the Suhrawardiyya ṭarīqa widely, especially in India (Knysh, 200). Similarly, al-Shādhilī was retrospectively identified as the leader of a ṭarīqa, largely as a result of the writings and efforts of a later follower, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī (d. 709/1309) (Hofer, Popularisation). Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh prescribed a wird and other exercises that almost anyone could perform, and encouraged people to perform them while continuing to practice their occupations and dress like everyone else. This, combined with successful preaching and an emphasis on the sanctity of al-Shādhilī, allowed the Shādhiliyya to become a far larger organisation than any ribāṭ (Hofer, Popularisation). Although some ṭarīqas maintained ribāṭs, usually known as zāwiyas, a ṭarīqa did not need a zāwiya; rituals could be held in ordinary mosques (Chih and Mayeur-Jaouen, 32–3). Many existing ribāṭs were incorporated into ṭarīqas (Chabbi), as were many brotherhoods (Karamustafa, Antinomian Sufis). After the eighth/fourteenth century, the number of new ribāṭs founded in Damascus declined (Ephrat and Mahamid, 198), as they did a little later in Egypt, partly because of the decline of the Mamlūk elites that had supported them (Chih and Mayeur-Jaouen, 32), and partly because of the growth of the ṭarīqa. By contrast, the rural ribāṭ survived, sometimes affiliated to a ṭarīqa, as was often the case in the Punjab (Gilmartin), and sometimes quite separate from the ṭarīqas, as in Algeria (Rinn, 20). In Upper Egypt the arbitration functions of the rural ribāṭ are now carried out by respected ṭarīqa shaykhs who are not normally associated with tombs (Chih, 16–63). It is not clear exactly why the ṭarīqa emerged when it did. There are a number of theories. A. J. Arberry, writing in 1950 and adhering to a model of the rise and fall of Islamic civilisation that was popular at the time, believed that the rise of the ṭarīqa reflected the general decay of Muslim society and culture, and the triumph of “the credulous masses” (Arberry, 119–21). Annemarie Schimmel followed the opposite paradigm; she saw the ṭarīqa as popular because ordinary Muslims tired of “the scholasticism of orthodox theologians” and wanted something more intimate and personal (Schimmel, 231). As Nathan Hofer states, there really is no evidence for either of these explanations. Marshall Hodgson is careful not to propose a single explanation for the growth of what he calls “Sufism as institutionalized mass religion” (Hodgson, 210), and in this he was probably right. It is clear that there was a widespread demand for what

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the ṭarīqas provided, that the organisational form of the ṭarīqa met this demand, and that this process encountered no significant or effective opposition. Erik Ohlander sees two complementary developments: the “routinization of Sufism as a distinct mode of religiosity, identity, and social affiliation” and “an institutionalizing vision of organization, accoutrement, and praxis which was self-regulating, self-propagating, and most importantly, reproducible” (Ohlander, 187). The ṭarīqa differed not only from the ribāṭ and the brotherhood but also from the Catholic monastic order. Firstly, membership of a monastic order is full-time, with vows of chastity and poverty preventing participation in ordinary life. Secondly, a monastic order is integrated into the authority structures of the Catholic Church, structures that have no real equivalent in Islam. The Catholic “third order” is somewhat closer to the ṭarīqa, as its members (called “tertiaries”) live “in the world,” but a third order is attached to a “first order” (a male monastic order) or a “second order” (a female monastic order). The closest the Catholic Church comes to the ṭarīqa is, perhaps, Opus Dei, a largely autonomous movement established in Spain in 1928, most of whose members live in the world. Opus Dei is so unusual that the papacy has repeatedly had to invent new organisational categories to accommodate it (Walsh). 3.1 Orders and Sub-Orders As the most successful ṭarīqas spread across the Muslim world, they fragmented, as was inevitable in the absence of a strong centralised organisation and discipline of the variety that kept the Catholic monastic orders together, and which the Catholic orders derived from the organisation and discipline of the Catholic Church itself. Once major ṭarīqas such as the Shādhiliyya were found everywhere from Morocco to China, day-to-day leadership passed to the local level, and sub-orders came into being, for example, the Jazūliyya Shādhiliyya, named after the Moroccan walī Muḥammad al-Jazūlī (d. 869/1465) (Bencheneb). Sub-orders, too, fragmented over time; for example, there has been no single, united Jazūliyya Shādhiliyya for many centuries. The Jazūliyya itself has given rise to sub-sub-orders, such as the ʿĪsāwiyya, and although the ʿĪsāwiyya is in theory one single ṭarīqa, in practice its various branches operate independently (for example, the ʿĪsāwiyya of Taroudant, Morocco). An individual Ṣūfī, then, commonly belongs to a sub-order or a sub-sub-order that is loosely affiliated to one of the great orders or to another sub-order, and it is the individual Ṣūfī’s sub-order or sub-sub-order that is of organisational significance. The larger order to which a sub-order or sub-sub-order belongs normally determines its identity and its basic approach and liturgy, but generally has little or no control over its activities. Sometimes a sub-order or a sub-sub-order

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“belongs” to more than one great order; this, of course, is only possible when the larger order exercises no actual control. All are equally called ṭarīqas: the larger order (Shādhiliyya), the suborder (Jazūliyya Shādhiliyya), the sub-sub-order (ʿĪsāwiyya), and the quasiindependent local branch of the sub-sub-order (ʿĪsāwiyya of Taroudant). The name of a sub-order often indicates the larger order from which it derives, as in the case of the Jazūliyya Shādhiliyya or the Khālidiyya Naqshbandiyya. It should be noted that since adjectives follow the noun in Arabic, these two ṭarīqas are known in Arabic as the Shādhiliyya Jazūliyya and the Naqshbandiyya Khālidiyya. Abbreviated nomenclature (“Jazūliyya” and “Khālidiyya”) is also used. Most of the larger orders no longer have a living leader, though the guardians of the tomb of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī in Baghdad are still treated with great respect by Qādirīs everywhere. The leaders of some ṭarīqas in cities such as Cairo retain limited authority over the shaykhs of local sub-orders, notably when the successor to a shaykh needs to be appointed. From the Mamlūk period to the nineteenth century, for example, some Qādirī sub-orders in Egypt recognised a central mashyakha (skaykhdom) in Cairo, though some other Qādirī sub-orders did not. In contrast, another Egyptian ṭarīqa, the Rifāʿiyya, had no central authority (De Jong, 16–8). The most centralised of all the ṭarīqas was the Mevleviyye, all branches of which, across the Middle East, accepted the authority of the çelebi in Konya (Trimingham, 179). 3.2 Ṭarīqa Officials Sometimes a ṭarīqa is small, consisting only of a shaykh and between twenty and one hundred followers meeting at one location. Sometimes, however, there are more followers, who meet at more than one location. In this case, the shaykh normally appoints a muqaddam (deputy), also called a khalīfa (successor, representative), and occasionally called a khādim (the term used for the guardian of a tomb in South Asia). Sometimes a muqaddam works at the ṭarīqa’s central location under the eye of the shaykh, but more often a muqaddam lives and works in a different location, even in a different country. Given the difficulties involved in travelling long distances before the nineteenth century, such muqaddams often enjoyed a high degree of independence. Many muqaddams still enjoy great independence even today, as Ṣūfī shaykhs are primarily teachers, not administrators. Sometimes the appointment of a muqaddam is purely verbal, but sometimes a muqaddam is given a formal ijāza (licence), often in writing. An ijāza licenses its holder to admit new followers into the ṭarīqa. The term ijāza is also used among the ʿulamāʾ to describe the permission a senior scholar gives a junior

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scholar to teach a particular text (Vajda). An ijāza, then, is also a sort of certificate. Sometimes, honorary ijāzas are given, in Sufism as in classic Islamic scholarship. Not all who receive an ijāza from a shaykh, then, function as actual muqaddams. The celebrated Egyptian Ṣūfī ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shāʿrānī (d. 973/1565) was known for having twenty-six ijāzas (Chih and Mayeur-Jaouen, 39). In addition to muqaddams, a ṭarīqa may have a number of other officials who perform various duties, especially during a ḥaḍra (dhikr ceremony). The most important of these is the reciter, for whom various terms are used depending on the place, including munshid and maddāḥ. In nineteenthcentury Algeria, most ṭarīqas also appointed standard-bearers and a saqqāʾ (water-carrier) who was responsible not only for water but also for refreshments and cooking (Rinn, 87). The muqaddam, though, is the most important ṭarīqa official. 3.3 The Silsila Sub-orders are linked to the larger orders by a silsila (chain), a list of shaykhs and their predecessors (Alatas in this volume). Most silsilas trace their lineages beyond the source of the larger order to the Prophet Muḥammad himself, normally after first passing through one of al-khulafāʾ al-rāshidūn (the rightlyguided caliphs), generally ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661). This indicates an early connection with Shīʿism, though it is no longer of much importance. Modern historians, though not Ṣūfīs, regard the earlier parts of these silsilas as fictional. The silsila is the Ṣūfī counterpart of the isnād (support), the list of authorities that authenticates a ḥadīth. Likewise, it serves an important legitimising function. Just as there are honorary ijāzas, there is also an honorary bayʿa, and one individual may be attached to more than one silsila. Therefore, some shaykhs combine multiple ṭarīqas in their own silsila. Some silsilas link a shaykh directly to the Prophet, sometimes through the intermediary of Uways al-Qaranī (d. c. 37/657) (a semi-legendary early saintly figure who is thought to have direct communication with the Prophet Muḥammad) or Khiḍr (a Qurʾānic figure said to have flourished at the time of the Prophet Mūsā/Moses, who is the subject of myths and stories). These are often known as Uwaysī silsilas, and may be found when a new ṭarīqa has been founded. Both Aḥmad b. Idrīs (d. 1837) and Muḥammad b. ʿAlī l-Sanūsī (d. 1253/1859) had Uwaysī silsilas (O’Fahey and Radtke, 69–70). 3.4 Ṭarīqa Membership In theory, a follower of a shaykh (and thus a member of a ṭarīqa) is one who has given bayʿa to that shaykh. Some ṭarīqas then distinguish between a murīd,

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who has given bayʿa, and a more loosely attached follower, often called a muḥibb (admirer); one sub-order of the Shādhiliyya distinguishes four such grades (Trimingham, 188–9). In practice, however, some who attend the ceremonies and rituals of a ṭarīqa may not have given bayʿa or received any alternative rank, and not all those who have given bayʿa attend events regularly, and some may move to another town or country where there is no local branch, or may simply drift away from a ṭarīqa. In addition, because of the practice of honorary bayʿa, one person may have given bayʿa to several shaykhs, only one of whom serves as his murshid. Given this, ṭarīqa membership is fluid, and it is difficult to say exactly how many “followers” a particular shaykh actually has. Shaykhs have almost invariably been male, as have their followers in the ṭarīqa. Although there are reports of ribāṭs for women in the sixth/twelfth century, these may have been refuges for the destitute rather than communities of Ṣūfīs (Karamustafa, Sufism, 126). Some nineteenth-century Algerian ṭarīqas admitted women and even had female muqaddams (Rinn, 88–9), but this was unusual in other parts of the Muslim world. There is no theological reason for the gendering of Sufism, but gender practices in Sufism generally follow local norms. This means that as gender practices have changed during the twentieth century in some parts of the Muslim world, such that women play a greater part in public life, women have also begun to play greater roles in some ṭarīqas, both as followers and in some cases also in leadership positions (Sedgwick, Saints, 209). While nearly all shaykhs have been male, there has been variety in their occupations and backgrounds. Some have been members of the ʿulamāʾ, some have been merchants, and some have been poor and illiterate. This has organisational consequences. When a shaykh is a merchant, the organisation of Sufism and the organisation of trade may be entwined, so that a shaykh’s business trips facilitate the spread of his ṭarīqa, and the ṭarīqa may also assist the business. When a shaykh is a member of the ʿulamāʾ, activities may also become entwined. Such a shaykh has the exoteric knowledge of the ʿulamāʾ and the esoteric knowledge of the Ṣūfīs, and may combine these in his teaching. Ṣūfī organisational structures may also become entwined with other structures. In some parts of Upper Egypt, for example, roles in ṭarīqas mirror roles in agriculture. Major landowners do not themselves participate in ṭarīqas, but often contribute to them financially. Prosperous farmers are the local shaykhs (or technically muqaddams, as they publicly honour national leaders in Cairo). Murīds are mostly agricultural labourers. It has been suggested that this both mirrors and reinforces existing economically-based power structures (Hopkins, 145, 150).

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4 Succession When a shaykh or the guardian of a tomb dies, a successor must be found. Sometimes a shaykh publicly appoints a successor before his death, but this is unusual. It is sometimes noted that the Prophet Muḥammad did not (according to Sunnīs) appoint a successor himself. When no successor has been appointed, sometimes a follower of the former shaykh, often one of his muqaddams, is so clearly suited to be the new shaykh that succession passes smoothly and uneventfully. Sometimes, however, there is more than one plausible candidate, in which case the followers of the former shaykh may split into more than one group, and one ṭarīqa may divide into two ṭarīqas. The same may happen when a muqaddam of the former shaykh who lives and teaches in a distant town does not follow the shaykh’s successor, or only follows him in a formal or nominal sense. The shaykh’s successor then leads one ṭarīqa, and the former muqaddam leads another, thus becoming a shaykh himself. This is not generally considered problematic in the case of a ṭarīqa without property, but if a ṭarīqa has property, whether a tomb or waqf, a succession dispute leads to difficult consequences, and may not be easily resolved by the division of one ṭarīqa into two. Sometimes the successor to a shaykh is one of the shaykh’s sons. This tends to happen more in long-established ṭarīqas or when a tomb is involved, and is especially common if hereditary succession is already established. There is no theological justification for this hereditary succession, though a parallel can be found in the hereditary transmission of the rank and title of sayyid (master) among the descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad. However, the son of a shaykh is often well suited to succeed his father, who has often trained him by word and example from an early age. A similar phenomenon is sometimes found among the ʿulamāʾ, when the son of a scholar also becomes a scholar himself, having benefitted from his father’s training, and also from his father’s contacts. Scholarly families are also found in Judaism, and sometimes even in Western universities. By the nineteenth century, the leadership of most of the larger Egyptian ṭarīqas had become hereditary (De Jong, 37), and this was also the case elsewhere. Hereditary succession gives rise to Ṣūfī families, which have, in some periods and places, developed into a separate caste, closely identified with the ashrāf (sayyids, noble descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad) (Alatas in this volume). The ashrāf are distinguished from other Muslims by special rules concerning marriage, as the daughter of an ashrāf family may not normally marry someone from a non-ashrāf family (Arendonk and Graham). In tribal areas of Morocco, Ṣūfī families often developed into what were, in effect, Ṣūfī

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clans, with up to three hundred descendants of a walī living together around the walī’s tomb (Gellner, 314). In Kashgar and the Tarim Basin (now in Xinjiang, China), the descendants of the Naqshbandī shaykh Khwāja Hidāyatallāh Āfāq (d. 1105/1694), known collectively as the Khwājas or the Āfāqiyya, became regional rulers comparable to the Moroccan and Indian tomb guardians already mentioned, until they were defeated by Chinese forces in 1759 (Papas, Soufisme et politique). 4.1 The Ṭarīqa Cycle Not all successors to shaykhs have the abilities necessary to maintain a ṭarīqa; therefore, ṭarīqas sometimes decline and finally vanish, especially if they have no tomb or waqf to sustain them. The Shādhiliyya has now existed for eight centuries, and may continue for many more centuries, though no individual branch of the Shādhiliyya has lasted that long. Although every Shādhilī branch traces its history through Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī to the Prophet, in practice a single branch has probably not existed for more than a century, and possibly less. Branches based around tombs last longer, however, and are often as old as the tomb itself. At any point in time, some ṭarīqas will decline under less remarkable shaykhs, some will be well-established and stable, and some will grow under more remarkable shaykhs. The biographies of notable Ṣūfīs often report a Ṣūfī joining a well-established ṭarīqa, moving on to a more remarkable shaykh, and then perhaps succeeding that shaykh on his death. Such notable Ṣūfīs are often described as “reformers” intent on the “purification” of Sufism. In fact, what is happening may be less about reform or purification than the natural life cycle of the ṭarīqa, in which new ṭarīqas are constantly being born, maturing, declining, dying, and being replaced (Sedgwick, Establishments). Growing ṭarīqas under remarkable shaykhs may be closer to the Ṣūfī ideal, but well-established ṭarīqas and tombs also perform important functions. A remarkable shaykh may call for a higher degree of commitment than many people are prepared to give (Sedgwick, Establishments). For those who are looking for a more limited involvement with Sufism and who are content to repeat the wird and attend the ḥaḍra and the mawlid, a well-established ṭarīqa under a hereditary shaykh is often more appropriate. 5 Finances The activities of Ṣūfī ribāṭs, tombs and ṭarīqas are generally financed by contributions from shaykhs’ followers and admirers, or by a waqf, with the important

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proviso that while in the past ṭarīqas controlled their own waqf, in the modern period waqf properties are often controlled by the state, considerably reducing the independence of the ṭarīqas affected (Sabra in this volume). Contributions from followers and admirers may be in kind, in cash, or in labour. Those made in kind or labour take a variety of forms, from making tea before a ḥaḍra and cleaning up after it to working in shaykh’s fields, a practice which was common in northern Sudan (Karrar, 148). Contributions may also be irregular and entirely voluntary, regular and customary, or take the form of fees for particular services. Waqf, customary contributions, and fees are more important for wellestablished ṭarīqas and tombs. Waqf funds derive from gifts and legacies, sometimes from rulers and sometimes from wealthy followers. Customary contributions are often made on an annual basis, for example at a mawlid or at an ʿīd (festival) (De Jong, 160). These customary contributions are, in effect, membership fees. Sometimes, however, in the view of colonial officials, the contributions collected by rural shaykhs and murābiṭs were considered excessive in relation to the resources of the rural farmers who made them (Rinn, 95–6). It is difficult to determine whether such views reflected reality or the antipathy the colonial officials held towards Sufism. Fees were and are given in return for a variety of religious services, ranging from the provision of names for the newborn (Crapanzano, 338) to burial plots for the dead. Fees were also given for the performance of ḥaḍras at marriage celebrations (De Jong, 101) or, in rural Morocco, to cure the ill or someone possessed by jinn (Crapanzano, 338–43). Fees were never a significant source of income for new and growing ṭarīqas. Waqf income and various kinds of contributions are applied to the activities of the ṭarīqa, including the purchase and maintenance of premises, to charitable ends (sometimes in the form of free food or cash), and to the maintenance of shaykhs and their families. Some shaykhs refuse any income from ṭarīqa sources, especially if they have some other source of income, for example, if they are members of the ʿulamāʾ, and can live from teaching salaries. By contrast, some shaykhs live comfortably or even become rich. This is not normally seen as problematic. 6

The Organisation of Ṣūfīs

Given their size and potential for action, Ṣūfī organisations have long been a concern for rulers and states. It is therefore not surprising that there have been repeated attempts to organise and control Sufism.

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One way in which rulers and states commonly exercise influence over religious institutions is through patronage, since the recipients of patronage are more likely to respect the interests and wishes of their patrons. Patronage of celebrated religious institutions also helps legitimise rulers and states in the eyes of the general population (Papas in this volume). Throughout the history of Islam, rulers have shown public respect to leading Ṣūfī shaykhs, and often also given them money and property. Sometimes gifts from rulers serve other purposes. The Ottoman practice of granting waqfs in newly conquered areas to favoured Ṣūfīs, for example, helped consolidate their control of such areas (Green, 133). In Baghdad in the fifth/eleventh century, during a turbulent period when dynastic rivalries aligned with confessional disputes, a formal office of shaykh al-shuyūkh (shaykh of the shaykhs or chief shaykh) was introduced. A ribāṭ was endowed for the shaykh al-shuyūkh, whose task it was to promote Sunnī theology and loyalty to the Sunnī regime. The Sunnī ruler in Damascus followed suit, and as did the ruler in Cairo, where a ribāṭ was endowed for a shaykh al-shuyūkh in the sixth/twelfth century. The Baghdad and Cairo offices were sometimes hereditary, and as their holders became increasingly engaged in politics, it seems likely that several appointed deputies to carry out their Ṣūfī duties, at least in Cairo. Despite their titles, they seem to have exercised little real control over other Ṣūfīs, who often complained about their moral and scholarly shortcomings. After the seventh/thirteenth century, the office seems to have been abandoned (Hofer, Origins and development). The last shaykh al-shuyūkh of Baghdad was executed by the Mongols in 656/1258 (Ohlander, 111). The ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Nāṣir, ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī’s patron, also attempted to control the fityān of Baghdad, first by joining them and then by declaring himself their head (Ohlander, 271). This established a connection between futuwwa and royal authority that continued in Cairo after the Mongol destruction of Baghdad, when the refugee ʿAbbāsid prince who became caliph al-Mustanṣir II (r. 659–60/1261) dressed sultan Baybars I (d. 676/1277) in the sirwāl of futuwwa (Taeschner, 143). A similar practice developed in the Ottoman Empire, where, from 824/1421, new sultans were dressed in a sword belt, as a form of shadd, by a Ṣūfī shaykh (Algar and Raymond). Rather than appointing a single shaykh al-shuyūkh to supervise all the ṭarīqas, the Mamlūk sultans in Cairo attempted to exercise control over individual ṭarīqas. For example, they appointed a member of a leading ʿulamāʾ family, one Muḥammad ʿAshūr, to lead the Burhāmiyya, and then made this office hereditary. Throughout the Mamlūk and Ottoman periods, the ʿAshūr family seems to have maintained its authority over Burhāmīs in Cairo, and so

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presumably also (indirectly) the authority over them of the state from which its own authority derived, though it probably never exercised much control outside Cairo (De Jong, 17–8). In the early modern era, the construction of stronger and more centralised states on models inspired by nineteenth-century European practices included the expansion of state power over all religious institutions, including Sufism. In Egypt, the reforming military ruler Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha (r. 1805–48) appointed a supervisor over all the Ṣūfī ṭarīqas, giving him the power to resolve succession disputes, to approve the payment of government stipends out of the waqf that the state had taken control of, and to allocate individual ṭarīqas particular areas in which they had exclusive right to operate by virtue of qadam (seniority). The Egyptian state thus established some control over older, more institutionalised ṭarīqas, especially those with tombs, or with a claim on stipends in lieu of waqf. This system seems to have little impact on the less institutionalised, growing ṭarīqas, however, and perhaps for this reason, Khedive Ismāʿīl (r. 1863–79) attempted to ban private ḥaḍras, so that only recognised ṭarīqas could operate (De Jong, 20–44). Again, these provisions did not have their desired effect, and in 1895 a khedival decree established a Majlis al-Ṣūfī (Sufi Council) with jurisdiction over Sufism and the same powers in this area as a court of law (De Jong, 132). The Majlis passed regulations that specified, in remarkable detail, how a ṭarīqa was to operate and even what might and might not be done during a ḥaḍra, trying especially to eliminate doctrines and practices that the reformist religious establishment of the time found objectionable. Its regulations, however, were controversial, and never enforced (De Jong, 167, 172). It is not clear what influence these attempts had in terms of establishing bureaucratic control. The Majlis al-Ṣūfī is now al-Majlis al-Aʿlā lil-Ṭuruq al-Ṣūfīya (the Supreme Council for Sufi Ṭarīqas), and in theory, all Egyptian ṭarīqas must be registered and supervised by it. In practice, many of Egypt’s ṭarīqas are not registered, and many Ṣūfīs simply ignore the Majlis (Hoffman, 15). However, only registered ṭarīqas can conduct large-scale rituals and processions in public. Similar models were adopted elsewhere. In 1866, the Ottomans established a Meclis-i Meşāyiḥ (Council of Shaykhs), linked to the Şeyhülislām, the office at the pinnacle of the Ottoman religious hierarchy (Zarcone). Colonial states also attempted to control Ṣūfī organisations, but ironically, these attempts often had more in common with premodern models than with the centralised state models followed by Muḥammad ʿAlī and his successors. The British in India and the French in Algeria were both, in principle, opposed to Sufism, which they saw as a threat to their power and as inherently

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undesirable, as a mixture of superstition and exploitation of the credulous. In principle, the British government in India rejected any involvement with Sufism (Gilmartin), and the French in Algeria took steps to discourage it, for example by attempting (without success) to eliminate the payment of customary dues (Rinn, 95). Both colonial governments, however, found that governing rural areas, where shaykhs and murābiṭs were so important, required them to engage with influential Ṣūfīs. The French in Algeria recognised the importance of winning the favour of murābiṭs and watched them carefully (Rinn, 19), and the British in India went so far as to attempt to sway influential shaykhs with land grants (Gilmartin, 51). The British also increased their influence over local shaykhs by arbitrating in succession disputes (Robinson, 16), just as Muḥammad ʿAlī’s appointee in Cairo did. In the 1930s, a succession dispute over the guardianship of the tomb of Bābā Farīd at Pakpattan, the base of the Ṣūfīs who had fought off the Sikhs until 1810, led the Court of Wards to take control of the tomb and its waqf, and then to British supervision of the annual ʿurs there (Gilmartin, 49). Some states, instead of regulating Sufism, banned it entirely. In Saudi Arabia, the ʿulamāʾ follow the example of the reformist scholar Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1206/1792) and see Sufism as shirk (idolatry). The ban is only partially effective, and Ṣūfīs in Saudi Arabia continue to meet in private. In 1967, communist Albania banned Sufism, along with all other forms of religion; this lapsed after the fall of the communist regime (Clayer). Turkey, where the ideology promoted by Muṣṭafā Kemāl Atatürk (1881–1938) emphasised secularism, also banned Sufism. In 1925, the Atatürk regime took a number of steps to reduce the presence of Islam in Turkish public life, including banning the ṭarīqas and confiscating their property. Since the liberalisation of the Kemalist system during the 1950s and 1960s, the Ṣūfī ṭarīqas have been operating again, and are tolerated by the Turkish state, though not officially recognised. The ṭarīqas were also banned and repressed by the officially atheist regimes established in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Many of the nationalist regimes that took power in Arab countries after the Second World War also implemented policies that were hostile to Sufism, though none went so far as Atatürk. As al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn (the Muslim Brotherhood) and then groups inspired by al-Qaeda and al-Dawla al-Islāmiyya (the Islamic State) became more a problem for Arab regimes, there was an increasing tendency for Arab states to promote Sufism as an alternative form of Islam. This tendency is most developed in Morocco, where in 2002 a Ṣūfī, Ahmed Toufiq (b. 1943), was appointed minister of endowments and Islamic affairs.

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New Organisational Techniques

In recent decades, novel organisational techniques have been adopted by Ṣūfīs as well as by states. The ṭarīqa remains the standard organisational form of Sufism everywhere, and some ṭarīqas today are indistinguishable from those of the eighteenth century, but some have also adopted new organisational techniques, either incorporating modern practices into the ṭarīqa or grafting modern organisational forms onto it. Thus, in the 1960s, the Egyptian Ḥāmidiyya Shādhiliyya incorporated modern practices into the ṭarīqa, by adopting a carefully structured central organisation and written rules (Gilsenan). In Turkey, the Nurcus, a large organisation that follows the teachings and practices of Said Nursi (1877–1960), denies being a ṭarīqa, but behaves very much like one; at the local level its groups are called dershanes (classrooms) (Puler, 428–31), though the dershane is administered by a şura (consultation) that operates by majority vote. Each dershane selects two delegates to a local şura that meets once a month, and the şura selects delegates to a national (Turkish) şura that meets twice a year. At least in theory, the national şura does not exercise authority over şuras at the dershane level, which operate autonomously and manage their own finances (Şahinöz, 184–7). This organisational superstructure is unrelated to the organisation of the classic ṭarīqa. In America, the Threshold Society, an American Mevlevi ṭarīqa, has a formal “Ethics Agreement” that specifies, among other things, a disputeresolution process that if necessary, involves reference to an Ethics Committee. Other ṭarīqas have set up ancillary organisations following modern forms. In the 1970s in Egypt, the Muḥammadiyya Shādhiliyya set up as its public face a quasi-NGO, the ʿAshīra Muḥammadiyya (Muḥammadan Clan), which also engaged in the provision of social services (Johansen). The Threshold Society is legally organised under US law as a tax-exempt non-profit organisation, which brings certain financial advantages, and means that, in theory, it is run not by its shaykh but by a board. In practice, it is mostly run by its shaykh, not alone but in conjunction with his wife; the shaykh and his wife are described as “directors.” The Threshold Society has thus adjusted to American gender practices as well as American tax law. Despite this, it is still recognisably a ṭarīqa. In the Sudan, the Khatmiyya ṭarīqa set up a political party, al-Ḥizb al-Ittiḥādi al-Dīmūqrāṭī (Democratic Unionist Party) in the run-up to independence from Britain, and this party remains one of Sudan’s major political forces to this day. It is more a political party than a ṭarīqa, however, and although it depends on the support of Khatmīs, its program or tactics are not Ṣūfī in nature (Warburg). Much the same is true of other ṭarīqa-based political parties in other countries.

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It has sometimes been suggested that the Muslim Brotherhood draws on Sufism for its organisational model, but other models (including paramilitary ones) were more influential; the Muslim Brotherhood’s greatest debt to Sufism is in its ritual, which includes a waẓīfa (an alternative term for wird), which is clearly of Ṣūfī origin. The only way in which the Muslim Brotherhood may be said to draw on Ṣūfī organisational practice is in its use of a modified version of the rābiṭa (bonding) ritual, which was borrowed from the Naqshbandiyya. This is used to strengthen the bond between the individual Muslim Brother and other Muslim Brothers (Elsässer); thus, it is, in effect, an organisational technique. 8 Conclusion Although mysticism does not, in principle, require any form of organisation, mysticism in Islam has in practice taken a variety of organisational forms. The murshid-murīd relationship is common to all of them. This relationship has been extended by various means. Just as the teacher-student relationship has spread through the institution of the school, the murshid-murīd was extended early on by the ribāṭ system, which allowed one shaykh to direct many murīds, and also provided an institutional framework for the receipt and administration of funds, often in the form of waqf, that freed the shaykh and murīds from the need to earn a living, allowing them to focus on religious and mystical activities. In many ways, the ribāṭ resembles the Christian monastery, but as an Islamic institution it was administratively autonomous, not tied to any larger ecclesiastic structures. Rulers attempted to enlist the ribāṭs in support of their own interests, mostly by means of patronage, but also through the office of the shaykh al-shuyūkh. The urban ribāṭ was later absorbed into the ṭarīqa system, but its rural tombbased counterpart, sometimes also called a ribāṭ, survived, growing in social importance as it provided educational, judicial, and even political services in areas of the Muslim world where the ʿulamāʾ were rarely present and the authority of the state was weak or absent. Muslim rulers and colonial states recognised the importance of the rural ribāṭ and its counterparts; when possible they incorporated ribāṭs into a patronage system which resembled that used with tribes, and occasionally subdued them by military force when other means failed. Modern states now provide the services that the rural ribāṭ and its counterparts once provided, but even so, rural Sufism based around tombs is still important in some areas.

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The brotherhood, of which there were two forms, was the other early organisational form Sufism used. Itinerant mendicant brotherhoods of the qalandar type became widespread. Shams-i Tabrīz (d. c. 645/1247) was evidently a Ṣūfī of this type, while Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī directed a lodge. Little is known of the internal organisation of the itinerant brotherhood, or of how rulers attempted to control them. Many were later absorbed into the ṭarīqa system, just as the urban ribāṭ was, but even in the nineteenth century, there were still itinerant mendicant Ṣūfīs; the Bektāşīs, now found especially in Albania, originated from this form of organisation. Brotherhoods were also associated with futuwwa, which were neither mendicant nor itinerant. They took a number of forms, sometimes military, sometimes as associations of craftsmen. These resembled the confraternities of mediaeval Europe except that, once again, they were free from ecclesiastical supervision and control. Muslim rulers often tried to control them or ally with them. In some ways, these brotherhoods were the forerunners of ṭarīqa Sufism, as they allowed ordinary Muslims to combine aspects of Sufism with their normal lives. Engagement in the ribāṭ of the qalandar-type brotherhood, by contrast, was a full-time affair. The futuwwa brotherhoods were repressed, but some of their rituals survived in imperial ceremonial. As an organisational form, the ṭarīqa was immensely successful; it spread throughout the Muslim world, incorporating and often replacing earlier forms of Ṣūfī organisations, and bringing Sufism to ordinary Muslims everywhere. If the ribāṭ resembles the Christian monastery and the futuwwa brotherhood resembles the mediaeval Catholic confraternity, the ṭarīqa has no obvious counterpart in European history. If any parallel other than Opus Dei is appropriate, it is the anachronistic one of the franchise. The extent to which ṭarīqa Sufism was the same as the mysticism of the ribāṭ varied from ṭarīqa to ṭarīqa. Most followers of well-established, mature ṭarīqas focused on the wird and the dhikr, not on aḥwāl (mystical states) and maqāmāt (mystical stations). Ṭarīqas led by notable shaykhs, however, focused on the mystical or esoteric development of its followers. Rulers attempted to control urban ṭarīqas, sometimes by appointing their shaykhs. In the modern period, rulers tried to institutionalise control over them, notably through the Egyptian Ṣūfī Majlis. In other countries, notably Turkey, modern states tried to eliminate the ṭarīqas altogether. These attempts have met with only limited success, as the ṭarīqa is a robust organisational form, especially when it is not dependent on state-controlled waqf. Even so, the ṭarīqas no longer occupy the prominent place they once did in Muslim societies, if only because many new organisations, from universities to newspapers, have ended the joint monopoly that Ṣūfīs and ʿulamāʾ held over public life

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for many centuries. Some ṭarīqas have modified their organisations somewhat, either by incorporating modern practices or by grafting modern organisations onto the ṭarīqa. Despite this, the organisational form of the ṭarīqa continues to reign supreme. Bibliography Algar, Hamid and André Raymond, Shadd, EI2. Arberry, A. J., Sufism. An account of the mystics of Islam, London 1950. Arendonk, C. van and W. A. Graham, Sharīf, EI2. Arnakis, G. G., Futuwwa traditions in the Ottoman Empire—Akhis, Bektashi dervishes, and craftsmen, JNES 12 (1953): 232–47. Bencheneb, M., al-Djazūlī, EI2. Black, Christopher F., The confraternity context, in Christopher F. Black and Pamela Gravestock (eds.), Early modern confraternities in Europe and the Americas. International and interdisciplinary perspectives (Aldershot 2006), 1–34. Bonner, Michael, Aristocratic violence and holy war. Studies in the jihad and the ArabByzantine frontier, New Haven 1996. Chabbi, Jacqueline, Khānḳāh, EI2. Chabbi, Jacqueline and Nasser Rabbat, Ribāṭ, EI2. Chih, Rachida and Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Le soufisme ottoman vu d’Égypte (XVIe–XVIIIe siècle), in Rachida Chih and Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen (eds.), Le soufisme à l’époque ottomane (Cairo 2010), 1–56. Chih, Rachida, The Khalwatiyya brotherhood in rural Upper Egypt and in Cairo, in Nicholas S. Hopkins (ed.), Upper Egypt. Identity and change (Cairo 2004), 157–68. Clayer, Nathalie, Saints and Sufis in post-communist Albania, in Masatoshi Kisaichi (ed.), Popular movements and democratization in the Islamic world (Abingdon 2006), 33–42. Crapanzano, Vincent, The Hamadsha, in Nikki R. Keddie (ed.), Scholars, saints, and Sufis. Muslim religious institutions in the Middle East since 1500 (Berkeley 1972), 327–48. Dağyeli, Jeanine Elif, “Gott Liebt das Handwerk.” Moral, Identität und religiöse Legitimierung in der mittelasiatischen Handwerks-risala, Wiesbaden 2011. De Jong, Fred, Ṭuruq and ṭuruq-linked institutions in 19th century Egypt, Leiden 1978. Dressler, Markus, Alevīs, EI3. Elsässer, Sebastian, Sufism and the Muslim Brotherhood. Ḥasan al-Bannā’s wird and the transformation of Sufi traditions in modern Islamic activism, OM 99 (2019): 280–305. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/22138617-12340221.

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Ephrat, Daphna and Hatim Mahamid, The creation of Sufi spheres in medieval Damascus (mid-6th/12th to mid–8th/14th centuries), JRAS 25 (2015): 189–208. Gellner, Ernest, Doctor and saint, in Nikki R. Keddie (ed.), Scholars, saints, and Sufis. Muslim religious institutions in the Middle East since 1500 (Berkeley 1972), 307–26. Gilmartin, David, Empire and Islam. Punjab and the making of Pakistan, London 1988. Gilsenan, Michael, Saint and Sufi in modern Egypt. An essay in the sociology of religion, Oxford 1973. Green, Nile, Sufism. A global history, Chichester 2012. Hodgson, Marshall, The venture of Islam, Chicago 1977. Hofer, Nathan, The origins and development of the office of the “Chief Sufi” in Egypt, 1173–1325, JSS 3 (2014): 1–37. Hofer, Nathan, The popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173–1325, Edinburgh 2015. Hoffman, Valerie J., Sufism, mystics, and saints in modern Egypt, Columbia, SC 1995. Hopkins, Nicholas S., Sufi organization in Rural Asyur. The Rifa’iyya in Musha, in Nicholas S. Hopkins (ed.), Upper Egypt. Identity and change (Cairo 2004), 141–55. Irwin, Robert, Futuwwa. Chivalry and gangsterism in medieval Cairo, Muqarnas 21 (2004): 161–70. Johansen, Julian, Sufism and Islamic reform in Egypt. The battle for Islamic tradition, Oxford 1996. Karamustafa, Ahmet T., Antinomian Sufis, in Lloyd Ridgeon (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Sufism (New York 2015), 101–24. Karamustafa, Ahmet T., Sufism. The formative period, Edinburgh 2007. Karrar, Ali Salih, The Sufi brotherhoods in the Sudan, London 1992. Keddie, Nikki, The revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993. Comparative considerations and relations to imperialism, Comparative Studies in Society and History 36 (1994): 463–87. Knysh, Alexander, Islamic mysticism. A short history, Leiden 2010. Lane, E. W., An account of the manners and customs of the modern Egyptians, London 1978. Le Gall, Dina, Recent thinking on Sufis and saints in the lives of Muslim societies, past and present, IJMES 42 (2010): 673–87. Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine, Ṭanṭā, EI2. McGregor, Richard J., Grave visitation/worship, EI3. Michon, Jean-Louis, Khirḳa, EI2. O’Fahey, Rex Sean and Bernd Radtke, Neo-Sufism reconsidered, Der Islam 70 (1993): 52–87. Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar, Ahi, EI3. Ohlander, Erik S., Sufism in an age of transition. Umar al-Suhrawardī and the rise of the Islamic mystical brotherhoods, Leiden 2008.

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Papas, Alexandre, Mystiques et vagabonds en islam. Portraits de trois soufis qalandar, Paris 2010. Papas, Alexandre, Soufisme et politique entre Chine, Tibet et Turkestan. Etude sur les Khwajas naqshbandis du Turkestan oriental, Paris 2005. al-Qushayri, Abu ʾl-Qasim, Al-Risala al-qushayriyya fī ʿilm al-tasawwuf, trans. Alexander D. Knysh, Reading 2007. Ridgeon, Lloyd, Futuwwa (in Ṣūfism), EI3. Rinn, Louis, Marabouts et Khouan. Étude sur l’Islam en Algérie, Algiers 1884. Robinson, Francis, Ulama, Sufis and Colonial Rule in North India and Indonesia, in C. A. Bayly and D. H. A. Kolff (eds.), Two colonial empires. Comparative essays on the history of India and Indonesia (Dordrecht 1986), 9–34. Şahinöz, Cemil, Die Nurculuk Bewegung. Entstehung, Organisation und Vernetzung, Istanbul 2009. Schimmel, Annemarie, Mystical dimensions of Islam, Chapel Hill, NC 1975. Sedgwick, Mark, Establishments and sects in the Islamic world, in Phillip Lucas and Thomas Robbins (eds.), New Religious Movements in the 21st Century. Legal, political, and social challenges in global perspective (New York 2004), 283–312. Sedgwick, Mark, Saints and sons. The making and remaking of the Rashidi Ahmadi Sufi order, 1799–2000, Leiden 2005. Sedgwick, Mark, Western Sufism. From the Abbasids to the new age, New York 2016. Taeschner, Franz, Futuwwa, eine gemeinschaftbildende Idee im mittelalterlichen Orient und ihre verschiedenen Erscheinungsformen, Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde 52 (1956): 122–58. Tor, Deborah G., Violent order. Religious warfare, chivalry, and the “Ayyār” phenomenon in the medieval Islamic world, Würzburg 2007. Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Sufi orders in Islam, Oxford 1971. Vajda, Georges, Idjāza, EI2. Walsh, Michael, Opus Dei. An investigation into the powerful secretive society within the Catholic Church, New York 1992. Warburg, Gabriel, Mahdism and Islamism in Sudan, IJMES 27 (1995): 219–36. Zarcone, Thierry, Bektaşiyye, EI3.

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Chapter 19

The First Communities Jean-Jacques Thibon The first Ṣūfīs adopted a particular way of life characterised by certain elements that distinguished them from other Muslims: wearing garments such as a patched frock (muraqqaʿa), rituals in which disciples wear the Ṣūfī cloak (lubs al-khirqa); seeking to access the divine by a path (ṭarīqa); utilising chains of initiation (silsila); and living in specific places (khānaqāh, ribāṭ, zāwiya). The first Ṣūfīs were divided over these various elements, a fact that is reflected in the Ṣūfī literature of the early centuries. 1 Origins There is a dearth of information on the beginnings of spiritual vocations in the first two centuries of Islam. It is especially difficult to ascertain whether the movement of asceticism and renunciation of the world (zuhd), which preceded the emergence of Sufism (Melchert, The transition, 51–70) led to the first groups that formed around emblematic figures such as al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728). The relations between those who taught and those who received instruction are still poorly known, as they depend on later sources. These relations are most commonly expressed in various terms based on the root ṣ-ḥ-b (ṣaḥiba, ṣuḥba), which denotes companionship and thus, the relations of masters to disciples; the content and governing rules of these relations, however, evolved over time (Gril, Compagnons, 35–41). In Iraq at the turn of the second/ eighth century there appeared around Basra and Kufa the first types of organisations that coalesced around figures that later Ṣūfīs claimed as their own, such as Mālik b. Dīnār (d. between 127/744–5 and 130/747–8) and ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd (d. c. 133/750), who may have founded the first centre of instruction for ascetics (duwayra) on the island of ʿAbbādān (Knysh, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd), and who therefore played a leading role in the subsequent history of Sufism. It seems that the activities of these early core groups were essentially related to education, to preaching activities, and sometimes to serving the poor and pious figures, women as well as men (Melchert, Before ṣūfiyyāt, 115–39). It is difficult to ascertain the origins of wearing particular garments as a distinguishing trait to indicate one’s belonging to a clearly defined social group.

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The ascetics of the second/eighth century wore simple clothing, often made of wool; on this issue, it is difficult not to recognise the influence of the Christian monks. Thus, the Damascene Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī (d. c. 215/830), who is said to have worn a coarse white tunic, regarded the wearing of wool as a sign of renunciation (al-Sīrjānī, § 232–3). The white woollen garment was arguably the most common one, and is often presented as the origin of the term ṣūfī, namely, those who wear a garment made of wool (ṣūf ), although this derivation is debated by Ṣūfīs themselves (for example, al-Kalābādhī, 21–6; and Anon., Adab al-muluk, 24–6). 2

Muraqqaʿa and Khirqa: Sources and Discussions

At a later stage, toward the middle of the second/eighth century, there appeared garments onto which pieces of fabric or used clothing were sewn. The terms muraqqaʿa (a garment made of pieces of fabric sewn together), mulawwanāt (multicoloured or variegated garments) (al-Sulamī, Bayān, 366) and khirqa (Meier, Abū Saʿīd, 356–60) (a piece of fabric, mystical cloak, patched frock) are synonymous, although the technical meaning of the khirqa appeared after the fourth/tenth century. Despite some nuances, these terms all refer to this piece of clothing, which was worn because of the material conditions of the earliest Ṣūfīs; eventually it became a distinctive garment of the Ṣūfīs, “[the] symbol of material and spiritual poverty of someone [travelling on] the path to God” (Gril, De la khirqa, 58). The scriptural justification for wearing a muraqqaʿa was related to the caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, who wore a loincloth patched with twelve pieces of fabric (and possibly another garment, a jubba, comprising thirteen pieces), according to al-Kharkūshī (Tahdhīb al-asrār, 228–9) when he stood on the pulpit in the mosque of Medina. There is also a story that portrays ʿĀʾisha mending a garment (raqqaʿa) with pieces of fabric (riqāʿa), and the Prophet encouraging her to continue to do so. Although it is difficult to verify historically, these reports at least show that these two figures represented models of frugality for the first generations of Muslims (al-Sīrjānī, § 231–2). According to certain traditions, the Prophet himself mended his clothing (or commended the use of clothing patched with pieces of fabric (riqāʿ), according to Ibn Ḥanbal, 6:106, 6:242 and 3:244) and encouraged his companions to wear woollen garments (al-Kharkūshī, 228; al-Maqdisī, 222–6). However, as ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234) acknowledged in his ʿAwārif al-maʿārif (The benefits of spiritual knowledge), the ritual of transmitting the khirqa was not practised in that way by the Prophet (Gril, De la khirqa, 59). Later, the following verse of the Qurʾān was invoked as a scriptural foundation: “However, the

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garment of piety is worth even more” (7:26) (see, for example, al-Kharkūshī, 229 and Ibn al-ʿArabī cited in Addas, 19). For Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. 161/777–8), a prominent Ṣūfī figure originally from Khurāsān, wearing a patched garment was ostentatious if done by choice, and, if done out of necessity, it amounted to a complaint about one’s material situation (al-Sīrjānī, § 235). The Damascene Aḥmad b. Abī l-Ḥawārī (d. 230/845 or 244/860) claimed to have worn it in his youth and to have earned his father’s disapproval, because the latter thought him incapable of living up to the stringent demands that wearing such a garment implied (al-Sīrjānī, § 233). Ḥātim al-Aṣamm (d. 237/851–2) was originally from Balkh; he and his disciples wore used garments, perhaps even rags, and he maintained that wearing the cloak (ʿabāʾ) was one of the signs of renunciation. His spiritual method was based on four types of death, the fourth one being the so-called “green death” that consisted of donning a garment made of rags (riqāʿ) sewn one on top of the other (Thibon, Les générations, 94, n. 2 and 97, n. 20; on this matter: Chodkiewicz, Les quatre morts, 35–57). This garment, known from the prophetic era, was a sort of coat of white or striped wool, sometimes made of camel hair and without sleeves; it became a distinguishing symbol for Iraqi Ṣūfīs. Another Khurāsānī, Abū Turāb al-Nakhshabī (d. 245/859), saw it as a form of disguised mendicancy, a warning to those who came to khānaqāhs as mendicants, not as genuine ascetics (al-Sīrjānī, § 237). In Basra, during the first half of the third/ninth century, the muraqqaʿa was criticised by al-Muḥāsibī (d. 243/857 in Baghdad) as a subterfuge, used in order to be recognised as a renunciant and solicit alms (al-Sarrāj, 248). Abū Ḥātim al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 260s/874–84), a transition figure between early Sufism and classical Baghdadi Sufism (Melchert, Basran origins, 234–40), cautioned the Ṣūfīs who wore it (al-Sīrjānī, § 235). Thus, adopting a specific garment became the subject of debates and disputes for a good part of the third/ninth century, although al-Junayd accepted it under certain conditions (i.e., the master had to order the disciple to don it: al-Sīrjānī, § 228). In addressing his entourage, al-Shiblī (d. 334/946) turned to poetry to convey the message that clothing does not make one a Ṣūfī (Böwering and Orfali (eds.), Sufi treatises, 105, § 514). Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Nūrī (d. 295/907), another Baghdadi, was the most severely critical of the deviations that had occurred in the past decades; he proclaimed: “The pieces of fabric were a veil covering pearls; they have now become piles of rubbish over corpses” (al-Sīrjānī, § 237). The wearing of the murāqqaʿa does not have a single, uniform meaning throughout the Middle Eastern area. In Khurāsān, it was associated with those who practise the code of chivalrous virtue ( futuwwa) and thus belonged to a trade guild or an urban movement seeking social justice, then it became a form of spirituality integrated by the Ṣūfīs (al-Qushayrī, “bāb al-futuwwa,”

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472–9; al-Sulamī, Kitāb al-futuwwa; on futuwwa and its links with Sufism, see Tor, 229–49). Yet not all of those who practised the futuwwa code wore this garment, at least in public; for example, Abū Ḥafṣ al-Ḥaddād, one of its most famous representatives (Deladrière, 77; al-Sulamī, Risālat, 108; al-Sarrāj, 194), did not wear the garment in public. Likewise, in Nīshāpūr, those in the Malāma movement, which was characterised by the blaming of the soul/self and the search for anonymity, rejected the slightest mark of distinction, including in their clothing. They believed that any kind of public exposure of one’s spiritual state was tantamount to ostentation (Deladrière, 66, 85; al-Sulamī, Risālat, 103, 113). By contrast, in the same geographical area, the Karrāmiyya, who were somewhat eccentric preachers in search of social visibility, wore barely tanned animal skins (Massignon, 260). During the fourth/tenth century, treatises were devoted to the wearing of specific garments, one treatise of which is the Kitāb lubs al-muraqqaʿāt by Ibn Khafīf (d. 371/982) (Sobieroj, Ibn Ḫafīf, 311, n. 26, cited by Karamustafa, 86), but these are no longer extant. More often than not, this subject and its accompanying discussions are found dispersed throughout the first manuals of Sufism. One of the first is the work of al-Kalābādhī (d. 380/990), who primarily mentions wearing a woollen garment (al-Kalābādhī, 22–5: where he discusses the origin of the term ṣūfī; on Abū Ḥātim accompanied by 320 disciples, all wearing woollen clothes on their way to the pilgrimage, see Abū Nuʿaym, 8:80). Al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988) does not discuss this matter at length; in his Lumaʿ, he says that clothing matters little as long as it corresponds to the spiritual moment (waqt) and is not based on a calculated choice or meant to be a sign of affectation (al-Sarrāj, 188). Al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) does not devote any space to this matter in his Risāla, but he does address it in another text. There, he says that it is preferable for the disciple to have the khirqa handed to him by the master, so that it is not a result of his personal choice (see ʿUyūn al-ajwiba fī funūn al-asʾila, in Sobieroj, Die Responsensammlung, 37, question 57). In the same place, he explains the reasons for wearing a specific blue garment— he says it is the colour of mourning, and white is preferable (Sobieroj, Die Responsensammlung, 36, question 56). Al-Kharkūshī (d. 407/1016) devotes a section to clothing in general and shows an interest in references to the prophetic era; however, he does not speak of any specific garment, and the term muraqqaʿāt appears only once (al-Kharkūshī, 228–35; 234 for the muraqqaʿāt). Throughout his works, al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) has interspersed several references or reflections on this matter, but he does not address it in a specific chapter or treatise. He states that wearing the khirqa is part of the adab of the Ṣūfīs (al-Sulamī, Jawāmiʿ, 40, § 100), but in his eyes, it is only justified by complete indigence. Influenced by the malāmatī orientation, al-Sulamī did not favour

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external manifestations of spirituality, although he did not condemn them either (Thibon, L’œuvre, 178). In another text, he gave a legal concession (rukhṣa) that it was acceptable to tear up the khirqa of those wearing it incorrectly (al-Sulamī, Dhikr ādāb al-ṣūfiyya, 36). It is not until the middle of the fifth/eleventh century that a treatise appeared granting this matter significant attention. We can draw a good deal of factual information on the subject from the Kitāb al-bayāḍ wa-l-sawād (The black and white) of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Sīrjānī (d. c. 470/1077), (al-Sīrjānī, ch. 16, 107–12) and Kashf al-maḥjūb (Uncovering the veiled) by al-Hujwīrī (d. between 465/1072 and 469/1077) (al-Hujwīrī, ch. 4, 45–57). According to Karamustafa, al-Hujwīrī purportedly wrote a treatise (now lost) titled Asrār al-khirqa wa-l-mulawannāt (Mysteries of patched and coloured cloaks) (Karamustafa, 86). In chapter 4 of the Kashf al-maḥjūb, titled “On the wearing of patched habits (muraqqaʿāt),” he denounces various acts of abuse committed by those wearing the muraqqaʿa, and those who are ‘fake’ Ṣūfīs, and he defines the various conditions that must be met before one can wear them, namely, a trial period of three years under the tutelage of a master, during which time the aspirant acquires the qualifications required for investiture (al-Hujwīrī, 54–5; he also mentions a blue-coloured garment worn especially by those who travel, 53). Abū l-Faḍl al-Maqdisī, a muḥaddith known by the name of Ibn al-Qaysarānī (d. 507/1113 in Baghdad), wrote Ṣafwat al-taṣawwuf (The finest of mystical knowledge); one of its sections is entitled “On the Sunna of wearing the khirqa handed over by the master,” thus indicating a rite of initiatory investiture. However, the few pages that deal with this issue are a compilation of disparate scriptural indices, without comments (al-Maqdisī, 222–6). It is difficult to determine at what point the khirqa or the muraqqaʿa took on a more elaborate meaning and became an essential element of a ritual; however, it was probably not before the fourth/tenth century (Michon refers to Massignon, and indicates the third/ninth century and al-Muḥāsibī and Ibn Ḥarb; however, we do not find any precise references in Massignon, 71). The original reference to the shroud and to renunciation of the world was subsequently enriched by an elaborate and detailed symbolism involving various aspects of the garment, especially, its colour (for colours and their meanings, see Anon., Adab al-muluk, 26–8), its texture, the size of the stitches, the length of the sleeves, the existence of a hem, a double collar, or embroidery, etc. (Böwering, Règles, 143–5 and n. 3 and 4). The khirqa—a patched cloak or a simple fabric or a cotton hat—gave rise to an elaborate initiation ritual, introducing the disciple to the path under the guidance of a master. It marks the beginnings of a companionship (ṣuḥba) meant to lead the student to spiritual realisation (Gril, De la khirqa, 58–9). However, this term is not limited to a univocal function: for

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example, al-Hujwīrī indicated that a trial period of three years should precede wearing a cloak; in this case it was an initiatory rite and not a rite of reception for a disciple who had already confirmed his initial commitment (Addas, 9–17). According to Chodkiewicz’s description, Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) considered it “an additional function,” in which the master transferred his spiritual states to this disciple to lead him to perfection (Chodkiewicz, Note, 50). It somehow complements other modalities such as the bayʿa (the pledge) of the initiatory pact and the talqīn al-dhikr (the transmission of an invocation formula), two modalities of initiatory incorporation whose scriptural foundations are more solid than those of the lubs al-khirqa and yet seldom highlighted in the sources of the first four centuries (Chodkiewicz, Note, 42–9; see al-Qushayrī, 737 [“bāb al-waṣiyya li-l-murīdīn”], where talqīn al-dhikr is mentioned; on the subsequent ritual, see Papas). It should be noted that Ibn al-ʿArabī was initially hostile to the lubs al-khirqa, as the western Muslims did not know this practice during his time. He changed his mind once he arrived in the East (Addas, 13–5). Finally, Shihāb al-Dīn ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234), in his ʿAwārif al-maʿārif, distinguished two types of khirqa, the first representing a complete commitment to the master and a connection of spiritual aspiration (khirqat al-irāda); the other connection of blessing (khirqat al-tabarruk) refers to one who seeks to benefit from the master’s baraka, without undertaking commitments assigned by the master (al-Suhrawardī, ch. 12, 99; on the khirqa in the Persian sources, see Ohlander). 3 From Isnād to Silsila Wearing a khirqa handed down by a master enables the disciple to benefit from the transfer of baraka the khirqa symbolises; in return, the disciple places himself under the master’s authority in order to make progress on the path. Yet what is this authority based on? The first manuals of Sufism or the works of Ṣūfī ṭabaqāt (successive generations) documented the relations of masters to disciples in order to establish the transmission of their teachings. Their authors, such as al-Sulamī or al-Qushayrī, were also traditionists (muḥaddithūn) (on the links between Sufism and the ḥadīth sciences, see Karamustafa, 87–91; Knysh Islamic mysticism, 125–30). The process of collecting the words of the masters and the teachings they documented involved employing methods that were similar, in every respect, to those of the traditionists; most notably, they mention the chain of transmitters. In fact, these isnāds had an additional value: they not only guaranteed the authenticity of the words transmitted, as with ḥadīth, but they also embodied a presence and conveyed the baraka of

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the initial speakers and the various successive transmitters. Al-Sulamī was one of the first Ṣūfī authors to formulate the characteristics of this spiritual isnād (Thibon, L’œuvre, 432–5). This new use of the isnād modified the perception of the chain of transmission of the muḥaddith, at least for Ṣūfīs. What was just an instrument of validation of the authenticity of the prophetic words became, for Ṣūfīs, the vehicle of the Prophet’s presence through successive generations, almost a sort of relic (Thibon, Transmission, 75–6). The isnād guaranteed the reliability and authenticity of the words of the Ṣūfīs of the first generations, but with the establishment of another kind of transmission, the isnād lost its importance. The new chain of transmission that was established validated the baraka of a Ṣūfī master and the totality of his teachings and was called the “path” (ṭarīq, ṭarīqa). Among the books of Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya (Generations of the Ṣūfīs), al-Sulamī was likely one of the first to note the different types of relationships that existed among the teachers he identified (Thibon Les générations, 18–27). At the time, the relationships between masters and disciples were often manifold and seemingly unlimited by constraints connected with conventional norms (ādāb) or particular behaviour between masters and disciples. In this work, as in others, the term ṣaḥiba plays an essential role in describing such relationships. In addition, during the two centuries in which the figures identified in the Ṭabaqāt lived, the content of this term evolved. For example, was there a transition from simple companionship that might be qualified as scholarly, to a master-disciple relationship? (Ibn ʿAbbād dated the transition from shaykh al-taʿlīm to shaykh al-tarbiya as being from the fifth/eleventh century; on this, see Meier, Khurāsān, 189–219 and Meier, Qušayrī’s Tartib, 93–8). Sometimes a lineage is sketched out, as when al-Sulamī said of Shaqīq al-Balkhī: “He was the master of Ḥātim al-Aṣamm, a disciple of Ibrāhīm b. Adham, and from him he took the spiritual path (akhadha ʿan-hu al-ṭarīqa)” (Thibon, Les générations, 74). The expression akhadha ʿan-hu al-ṭarīqa, which became normative in later Sufism, only appears twice in the text and in each case links only two figures. Furthermore, the term ṭarīqa or ṭarīq is ambiguous. At that point, in the fourth/ tenth century, the term did not yet designate a specific lineage, but a method of inner transformation experienced by a specific master in order to reach God. Al-Sulamī thus explains that Ibrāhīm al-Khawwāṣ followed the path of trusting in God (salaka ṭarīq al-tawakkul). Jaʿfar al-Khuldī (d. 348/959) was one of the first to identify an initiatory chain (silsila) that is cited by Ibn Nadīm, and proceeds from Junayd to Anas b. Mālik, and includes Sarī l-Saqaṭī < Maʿrūf al-Karkhī < Farqad al-Sabakhī < al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (Thibon, al-Khuldī, Jaʿfar; see also Trimingham, appendix A, 261–3 for the first silsilas). Al-Qushayrī cites his own master, Abū ʿAlī l-Daqqāq, who stated: “I took this path (ṭarīq) from al-Naṣrābādhī, who took it from al-Shiblī, Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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who took it from Junayd, who took it from Sarī (l-Saqaṭī), who took it from Maʿrūf al-Karkhī, who took it from Dāwūd al-Ṭāʾī, who had met the successors (tābiʿūn)” (al-Qushayrī, “bāb al-ṣuḥba,” 578–9; a path passing via al-Sulamī and al-Naṣrābādhī and going back to the first six imāms is given for Abū Saʿid b. Abī l-Khayr according to Monawwar, 49; Ibn Salāḥ al-Shahrazūrī, who was connected to the path of Qushayrī [khirqa qushayriyya] presents a chain that mentions Ḥabīb al-ʿAjamī, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, and ʿAlī after al-Ṭāʾī; see Chiabotti, 44–5). It should be noted that these first chains do not reach beyond the successors. It is only later that a link connects al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib; this link is common in the majority of brotherhoods, but is the subject of controversy and debate (see the critique formulated by Massignon, 128–34, whose views, because he addressed this question as a pioneer, lack nuance, as pointed out by Gril, De la khirqa, 60). For pedagogical reasons, al-Hujwīrī identified twelve branches into which Sufism is divided, two of which were excluded for their heterodoxy. Each branch was designated by the name of the figure considered to be their founder. The branches he highlighted are not the Ṣūfī lineages that appeared later, rather they are methods of education specific to each of the masters and the associated practices that their disciples transmitted (al-Ḥujwīrī, 176–260; trans. Mortazavi, 214–301). Ibn al-ʿArabī was one of the first Ṣūfīs to have dedicated a treatise to the initiatory affiliation that he acquired when he received a khirqa (Gril, De la khirqa, 60). With the development of the ṭuruq (pl. of ṭarīqa, initiatory paths or brotherhoods) this isnād was then transformed and took on the name of silsila, a kind of genealogical tree showing the filiation from the current master, more often than not going back to the Prophet, through all the spiritual figures that transmitted a particular path (see Alatas in this volume). It was not until the sixth/twelfth century that the first brotherhoods appeared; these continued to develop and have branched out until the present day. ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166), founder of the Qādiriyya brotherhood, marked that turning point (Knysh, Islamic mysticism, 179–95). Yet he was not the only one. Al-Ṣuhrawārdī benefited from the subsidies of caliph al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh (r. 575–622/1180–1225) who held him in high esteem and built for him a ribāṭ called al-Marzūbaniyya. In this way the caliph enhanced his social and spiritual standing in the eyes of his subjects (Knysh, Islamic mysticism, 195–207; Hartmann) and Sufism became a powerful social and political force (Ceyhan in this volume). 4

The Ṣūfī Centres: Khānaqāh, Ribāṭ, and Zāwiya

In order to deliver their teachings to their disciples, Ṣūfī masters needed places in which to meet (Ephrat and Pinto, Firouzeh, Hofer [Ṣūfī Outposts], all in this Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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volume). As with other Islamic sciences, mosques served as meeting places for these first circles, for example, the mosque of Shūnīziyya in Baghdad was a centre for Junayd (Karamustafa, 20). Private homes occasionally served for small groups of disciples, including women. But, in the early centuries of Sufism, there was no specific place devoted solely to the teaching of Sufism. Al-Sulamī’s duwayra, inherited from his grandfather (Thibon, L’œuvre, 96, 102), was noteworthy; it was a sort of convent, a private place that housed a library and hosted disciples or/and passing visitors. Under his successor it was designated as a khānaqāh (or khānegāh) (Monawwar, 213; Malamud). Among the terms used to refer to these institutions that brought together masters and disciples, it is among the oldest. The terms ribāṭ or zāwiya complete this glossary of Ṣūfī institutions that arose during the Saljūq period alongside madrasas (Chabbi). It is not always easy to distinguish their respective attributions. In sixth-/twelfth-century Baghdad, the term ribāṭ referred to establishments funded by worldly powers or pious donations (awqāf ); these were clearly part of the urban landscape (Van Renterghem, 1:115–22 mentions about thirty ribāṭs of varying size in Baghdad at the end of the sixth/twelfth century). In Nīshāpūr, the Persian Ṣūfī Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr (d. 440/1049) is said to have been the first to establish a ten-point code to regulate communal life in the khānqāh (Monawwar, 324–5). The titles of specific works that indicate that they address the rules of communal life appeared as early as the middle of the fourth/tenth century. These take up earlier directives that had not yet been formalised or codified. Indeed, several works by al-Sulamī deal with this matter (e.g., Ādāb al-ṣuḥba wa-ḥusn al-ʿishra, see J.-J. Thibon, L’œuvre, 259–83). 5 Conclusion The emergence of Sufism around the second half of the third/ninth century was followed in the next century by a phase of exploration of the various forms of spirituality, and its doctrines and practices were documented in written form. The fifth/eleventh to sixth/twelfth century constitute a pivotal phase, when the first institutionalisation took place, preceding the emergence of the brotherhoods. Around the figure of the spiritual master (shaykh), who acquired an indisputable authority and became indispensable for those in search of a spiritual ideal, practices, and codes that went beyond spiritual exercises and devotion were instituted (Van Renterghem, 1:108). A Ṣūfī identity was formed based on markers such as clothing, rituals, and places that made it possible to quickly recognise an individual as being a Ṣūfī. From then on, Sufism became

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a social component in cities, one that potentially represented the political and social aspirations of the populace or, alternatively, was used as an instrument in the hands of power. Bibliography

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Anonymous, Adab al-mulūk fī bayān ḥaqāʾiq al-taṣawwuf, ed. Bernd Radtke, Beirut and Stuttgart 1991. Ātes, Süleyman, Tisʿat kutub fī aḥwāl al-taṣawwuf wa-l-zuhd, Beirut 1993. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 6 vols., Beirut 1389/1969. al-Hujwīrī, ʿAlī, The Kashf al-maḥjūb, Eng. trans. Reynold A. Nicholson, Leiden and London 1911, French trans. Djamshid Mortazavi, as Somme spirituelle, Paris 1988. al-Iṣfahānī, Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ wa-ṭabaqāt al-aṣfiyāʾ, 10 vols., Cairo 1352–7/ 1932–8, repr. Beirut 1996. al-Kalābādhī, Abū Bakr, al-Taʿarruf li-madhhab ahl al-taṣawwuf, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd and ʿAbd al-Bāqī Surūr, Cairo 1380/1960. al-Kharkūshī, Abū Saʿd, Tahdhīb al-asrār fī uṣūl al-taṣawwuf, ed. Imām Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAlī, Beirut 2006. al-Maqdisī, Abū l-Faḍl, Ṣafwat al-taṣawwuf, ed. Ghāda al-Muqaddam, Beirut 1416/1995. al-Qushayrī, Abū l-Qāsim, al-Risāla al-qushayriyya, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd and Maḥmūd Ibn al-Sharīf, 2 vols., Cairo 1966, repr. 1972. al-Sarrāj, Abū Naṣr, al-Lumaʿ fī-l-taṣawwuf, ed. Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, London and Leiden 1914. al-Sīrjānī, Abū l-Ḥasan, Kitāb al-bayāḍ wa-l-sawād, ed. Bilal Orfali and Nadia Saab, as Sufism, black and white. A critical edition of Kitāb al-bayāḍ wa-l-sawād by Abū l-Ḥasan al-Sīrjānī (d. ca. 470/1077), Leiden and Boston 2012. al-Suhrawardī, Shihāb al-Dīn ʿUmar, ʿAwārif al-maʿārif, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd and Maḥmūd b. al-Sharīf, Cairo, repr. 2000. al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Bayān aḥwāl al-ṣūfiyya, in Süleyman Ateş (ed.), Sülemî’nin risaleleri (Ankara 1981), 131–40. al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Dhikr ādāb al-ṣūfiyya fī ityāni-him al-rukhaṣ, ed. N. Zeidan as Six opuscules mystiques inédits, 30–48, PhD dissertation, Paris 1974. al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Jawāmiʿ ādāb al-ṣūfiyya, ed. E. Kohlberg, Jerusalem 1976. al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Kitāb al-futuwwa, ed. Süleyman Ateş, as Tasavvufta fütüvvet, Ankara 1397/1977.

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al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Risālat al-Malāmatiyya, ed. Abū ʿAlāʾ al-ʿAfīfī, in al-Malāmatiyya wa-l-ṣūfiyya wa-ahl al-futuwwa, Cairo 1945. al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya, ed. Johannes Pedersen, Leiden 1960; ed. Nūr al-Dīn Shurayba, Cairo 1389/19692, 19531.

Studies

Addas, Claude, Ibn ʿArabī. Le livre de la filiation spirituelle. Présentation et traduction de l’arabe par C. Addas, ʿAyn al-ḥayât, Quadernodi Studi delle Tarîqa Naqshbandiyya 5 (1999): 5–44; repr. Marrakech 2000. Böwering, Gerhard, Règles et rituels soufis, in Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein (eds.), Les voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris 1996), 139–56. Böwering, Gerhard and Bilal Orfali, eds., Sufi treatises of Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), Beirut 2009. Chabbi, Jacqueline, Ribāṭ, EI2. Chiabotti, Francesco, Entre soufisme et savoir islamique. L’œuvre de ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qušayrī (376–465/986–1072), PhD dissertation, Aix-en-Provence 2014. Chodkiewicz, Michel, Les quatre morts du soufi, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 215/1 (1998): 35–57. Chodkiewicz, Michel, Note complémentaire sur les rites d’initiation dans les turuq, ʿAyn al-ḥayât, Quadernodi Studi delle Tarîqa Naqshbandiyya 5 (1999): 45–64. Deladrière, Roger, La Lucidité implacable, Paris 1991. Gril, Denis, Compagnons ou disciples? La ṣuḥba et ses exigences. L’exemple d’Ibrāhīm b. Adham d’après la Ḥilyat al-awliyā’, in Geneviève Gobillot and Jean-Jacques Thibon (eds.), Les Maîtres soufis et leurs disciples (Beirut 2012), 35–53. Gril, Denis, De la khirqa à la ṭarīqa. Continuité et évolution dans l’identification et la classification des voies, in Rachida Chih and Catherine Mayeur–Jaouen (eds.), Le soufisme à l’époque ottomane, XVIe–XVIIIe siècle/Sufism in the Ottoman era, 16th– 18th century (Cairo 2010), 57–81. Gril, Denis, Les débuts du soufisme, 27–43; La Voie, 87–103; Doctrine et pratiques, 121–38, in Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein (eds.), Les voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris 1996). Gramlich, Richard, Das Sendschreiben al-Qušayrīs über das Sufitum, Stuttgart 1989. Gramlich, Richard, Schlaglichter über das Sufitum. Abū Naṣr as-Sarrāǧs kitāb al-lumaʿ, Stuttgart 1990. Hartmann, Angelika, al-Suhrawardī, EI2. Karamustafa, Ahmet T., Sufism. The formative period, Edinburgh 2007. Knysh, Alexander D., Islamic mysticism. A short history, Leiden 2000. Knysh, Alexander D. (trans.), al-Qushayri’s epistle on Sufism, Reading 2007. Knysh, Alexander D., ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd, EI3. Malamud, Margaret, Sufi organizations and structures of authority in medieval Nishapur, IJMES 26/03 (1994): 427­­–42. Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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Massignon, Louis, Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane, Paris 19542, 19221. Meier, Fritz, Abū Saʿīd-i Abū l-Hayr (357–440/967–1049). Wirklichkeit und Legende, Tehran and Liège 1976. Meier, Fritz, Khurāsān and the end of classical Sufism, in Fritz Meier, Essays on Islamic piety and mysticism, trans. John O’Kane with Bernd Radtke (Boston and Leiden 1999), 189–219. Meier, Fritz, Qušayrī’s Tartīb al-sulūk, in Fritz Meier, Essays on Islamic piety and mysticism, trans. John O’Kane with Bernd Radke (Boston and Leiden 1999), 93–133. Melchert, Christopher, The transition from asceticism to mysticism at the middle of the 9th century C.E., SI 83 (1996): 51–70. Melchert, Christopher, Basran origins of classical Sufism, Der Islam 82 (2005): 221–40. Melchert, Christopher, Before ṣūfiyyāt. Female Muslim renunciants in the 8th and 9th centuries CE, JSS 5/2 (2016): 115–39. Melchert, Christopher, Asceticism, EI3. Michon, Jean-Louis, Khirqa, EI2. Monawwar, Mohammad Ebn E., Les Étapes mystiques du shaykh Abū Saʿīd, French trans. M. Achena, Paris 1974. Ohlander, Erik S., Ḵerqa, EIr. Papas, Alexandre, Initiation in Ṣūfism, EI3. Salinger, Gerard, Was the futūwa an oriental form of chivalry?, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 94 (1950): 481–93. Sobieroj, Florian, Die Responsensammlung über das Sufitum. Al-Qušairī’s ʿUyūn alaǧwiba fī funūn al-asʾila, Wiesbaden 2012. Sobieroj, Florian, Ibn Ḫafīf aš-Šīrāzī und seine Schrift zur Novizenerziehung (Kitāb al-Iqtiṣād). Biographische Studien, Edition und Übersetzung, Beirut 1998. Thibon, Jean-Jacques, Les générations des soufis, Leiden and Boston 2019. Thibon, Jean-Jacques, Transmission du hadith et modèle prophétique chez les premiers soufis, Archives de sciences sociales des religions 178/3 (2017): 71–87. Thibon, Jean-Jacques, al-Khuldī, Jaʿfar, EI3. Thibon, Jean-Jacques, L’œuvre d’Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (325/937–412/1021) et la formation du soufisme, Damascus 2009. Thibon, Jean-Jacques, Les voies des Hommes sincères parmi les soufis, introduction et traduction du texte de Sulamī Manāhij al-ṣādiqīn, La règle d’Abraham 34 (2012): 27–64. Tor, Deborah G., Violent order. Religious warfare, chivalry, and the ʿayyār phenomenon in the medieval Islamic world, Würzburg 2007. Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Sufi orders in Islam, London 1971. van Renterghem, Vanessa, Les élites bagdadiennes au temps des Seldjoukides. Étude d’histoire sociale, 2 vols., Beirut and Damascus 2015.

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Chapter 20

Ṣūfī Lineages and Families Ismail Fajrie Alatas Nasab and silsila are terms that denote kinds of genealogical relations, both of which are regarded by Ṣūfīs as authoritative channels for the transmission of spiritual knowledge across generations; thus, they serve as a foundation of Ṣūfī institutions and organisations. Nasab (Ar. pl. ansāb) refers to pedigree or bloodline and designates the lineal descent of a particular individual or tribe from an eponymous ancestor. Silsila (Ar. pl. salāsil), literally means “chain,” and is commonly used in Sufism and Ṣūfī orders, or ṭarīqa (Ar. pl. ṭuruq), to denote a continuous string of Ṣūfī initiation and transmission of spiritual knowledge. Silsila connects a Ṣūfī disciple to his/her master (shaykh or pīr), all the way to the founder of the ṭarīqa, and ultimately back to the Prophet Muḥammad. Both nasab and silsila are often presented graphically, in the form of a shajara, or genealogical tree, that maps an individual lineally to his predecessors, and—in certain cases—also laterally in relation to other individuals who share the same line of descent. In charting a genealogical connection to the Prophet or a Ṣūfī master, a silsila works like a nasab, although theoretically speaking, the silsila is accessible and attainable to any Muslim, while the nasab is exclusive. That is, one must be born into a nasab, but one can attach oneself to a Ṣūfī master over a protracted period and be initiated into the ṭarīqa and thereby enter into a silsila. This functional similarity may make a silsila a kind of rival of a nasab, particularly when both are understood as channels of spiritual blessings (baraka) and mystical powers constitutive of spiritual leadership, and thus define the logic of leadership succession in a Ṣūfī ṭarīqa. Nevertheless, nasab and silsila may also work together in augmenting the spiritual authority of Ṣūfī masters, forming family ṭarīqas, and establishing a hereditary succession of ṭarīqa leadership. 1

Nasab

Nasab is the fundamental organising principle of traditional Arab societies. It provides the historical validation of kinship and all the privileges and ethical responsibilities that this entails, including the determination of nobility. An individual’s relationship to a patrilineal ancestor is introduced either by the

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term ibn (son of) or, in the case of a woman, bint (daughter of). For example, D1 ibn C ibn B ibn A, or D2 bint C ibn B ibn A. While interest in kinship and genealogies among the Arabs predated Islam, nasab narratives were put into writing around the first/seventh century (Rosenthal). During the reign of the caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 13–23/634–44), nasab was inscribed to register tribal affiliations for military and tax purposes. By the third/ninth century, genealogical writings had become an integral part of Arab literary and historiographical traditions (Duri). During the same period, if not earlier, nasab was drawn in an arboreal form (mushajjar), thereby projecting a shajara (family tree), that graphically shows not only lineal descent from an ancestor but also lateral relations between descendants. The importance of nasab for the Arabs is due, among other reasons, to the prevalent ideology of aṣl (root) that posits nobility of origin as conferring moral qualities and distinction, such as excellence ( faḍīla), honor (sharaf), sincerity and honesty (ṣidq), and generosity (karam), all of which can be encapsulated by the term ḥasab (inherited merit) (Abu Lughod, 45; Marlow). The Qurʾān expounds egalitarian values and decouples ḥasab from nasab, and even stresses the primacy of ḥasab over nasab to highlight the attainability of moral excellence notwithstanding one’s pedigree. In practice, however, nasab remained a foundational evaluative category among Muslims who employed it to explain the noble qualities of an individual. Moreover, nasab has continued to play a central role in Islamic social organisations. The Quraysh, those who came from the same tribe as the Prophet Muḥammad, were given certain privileges—ranging from tax exemptions to entitlement to certain allowances—in the Medinan era, the ʿUmayyad, and the ʿAbbāsid empires, as well as in subsequent Islamic polities. The sayyids (Ar. pl. sāda), meaning those whose nasab can be traced back to the Prophet Muḥammad through his daughter, Fāṭima, in particular, have persisted in emphasising the centrality of prophetic genealogy as a prerequisite to the leadership of the Muslim community. This very issue, of course, lies at the centre of the Sunnī-Shīʿī division. Later, as I discuss below, some Ṣūfī ṭarīqas stress prophetic descent as a prerequisite for spiritual leadership of the order with the assumption that prophetic nasab facilitates the inheritance of prophetic ḥasab and blessings (baraka). 2

Silsila

If nasab denotes a blood relationship, silsila designates a spiritual genealogy, that is, a chain of transmission of spiritual knowledge and initiation that links

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a Ṣūfī master to the Prophet Muḥammad. Ṣūfī ideas and practices were initially developed in informal communities that revolved around particular “moral athletes” and spiritual mentors in first-/seventh- and second-/eighth-century Mesopotamia, Syria, and Khurāsān (Knysh, 1). Recent scholarship notes that early Ṣūfīs in Baghdad were part of the Qurʾānic, ḥadīth, and even legal scholarly circles. From such learned circles, these Ṣūfī masters borrowed discursive tools and symbolic forms, including the ijāza (diploma, certificate of authorization) and silsila (Green, 50) to structure their own knowledge practice. A silsila is modelled on the isnād, that is, a chain of the transmission of the Prophet’s words and deeds, used by ḥadīth scholars to verify the soundness and authenticity of a ḥadīth text (matn). Replicating the isnād, Ṣūfī masters introduced silsila to authenticate transmission of spiritual teachings and trace the line of initiatic descent, anchoring both to the prophetic past. Gradually, Ṣūfīs adopted available institutional frameworks such as ribāṭs (residences for Muslim warriors along the frontiers) (Fisher; Hofer [Ṣūfī Outposts] in this volume) and futuwwa (fraternities based on chivalry), that is, exclusive and esoteric societies of craftsmen and professionals in mediaeval Persian towns (Meier, 217; Afshari in this volume); they developed their own Ṣūfī institutions, like lodges and monasteries (khānaqāh). Initiates of these organisations wore the distinctive robe of their spiritual mentor as a form of identification, signaling their belonging to a silsila of knowledge and practice inherited from a Ṣūfī master (Geoffroy, 44–67). These organisations marked the emergence of Ṣūfī orders or ṭarīqas. Each ṭarīqa is known for its own silsila that traces the spiritual genealogy of a current head of the order to its eponymous founder and ultimately back to the Prophet. As a graphic form that asserts the ṭarīqa’s connection to the Prophet, a silsila works to legitimise the order as a proper mechanism for the transmission of prophetic teachings. In the context of a fully-organised ṭarīqa, a silsila took on another function beyond simply authenticating knowledge transmission, that of charting and defining the order’s leadership succession. The silsila has been a potent discursive tool and symbolic concept that held together adherents of a Ṣūfī ṭarīqa over the generations and geographical gaps that divided them from the eponymous founder of the order. While the silsila did not necessarily point to concrete bonds of connectivity, it nevertheless provided adherents of a ṭarīqa with a conceptual connection that allowed them to imagine themselves as belonging to an inherited religious tradition that ultimately goes back to the Prophet. As such, a silsila “offered a way for initiates to conceive themselves as being meaningfully connected to the teachings and power of a Prophet who had lived centuries ago” (Green, 87). Equally important

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figure 20.1 The silsila of the Ṭarīqa ʿAlawiyya belonging to the Ḥaḍramī scholar Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAṭṭās (d. 1929) of Pekalongan (Central Java, Indonesia) Photo by Ismail Fajrie Alatas

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is the way in which the silsila works to declare an eponymous founder of a ṭarīqa a deputy (khalīfa) of the Prophet who can impart prophetic teachings and guidance to the community. Such a form of authority became increasingly important for Muslims, particularly after the decline of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate and its collapse in the seventh/thirteenth century (Abun-Nasr, 82). 3

Tensions and Convergences

A silsila endows the disciples of a Ṣūfī master with a spiritual genealogy in addition to their own nasab. In doing so, it provides a tangible link to the Prophet, even when its possessor is not his descendant. Key to this is what can be termed as genealogical adoption. Being a disciple of a Ṣūfī master involves renouncing former ties and surrendering oneself to the master. In exchange for the disciple’s loyalty and attachment, the master adopts him as his spiritual child, providing him with support, protection, and a new spiritual genealogy (Hammoudi, 96–7). The silsila and nasab, however, often intersect, as tension emerges from the different ethical imperatives entailed by these genealogical relations. Having two parallel genealogies may invoke questions regarding the primary locus of the disciple’s ethical responsibility. What should the disciple do when the demands of the master conflict with those of the parents? Indeed, candid competition between a disciple’s parents and his Ṣūfī master is a trope that is discussed in many hagiographical texts (Bashir, 153). Nasab and silsila, however, are not always at odds, and the two kinds of genealogies may combine to strengthen one another. For instance, in the Maghrib from at least the late ninth/fifteenth century, the authority of an ideal Ṣūfī master was built not only on the basis of his knowledge and spiritual achievements but more importantly on the notion of his inherited spiritual powers and ḥasab that are transmitted through prophetic nasab. Such a trend has been described as Sharifian Sufism, a combination of the Sharifian Ḥasanid Shīʿism initially propagated in the Maghrib by the Idrīsid dynasty (r. 172–375/789–985) and Sufism (Cornell, 221–4). The combination of spiritual and genealogical descent from the Prophet projects an ideal religious leader as being a sayyid who imitates and actively propagates the Sunna, and is committed to societal reform. This form of religious authority, in turn, served as the philosophical basis of the notion of political sovereignty in Morocco. The combination of nasab and silsila also served as the basis for the emergence of hereditary sanctity, a textual and sociological phenomenon that proliferated across the Muslim world from the eighth/fourteenth century on, as piety was increasingly identified with the Prophet and his family. While not all

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of the Prophet’s descendants were considered saints, “it was from among them that most Muslim saints emerged” (Mayeur-Jaouen and Papas, 8). Indeed, as early as the fifth/eleventh century, hagiographical sources presented sayyid families as the privileged sites for the transmission of sanctity. Scholarly and saintly sayyid families, like the ʿAydarūs family of the Ḥaḍramawt and India, and the Wafāʾ family of Egypt, were perceived as the institutional loci and training grounds in and through which sanctity is passed on from father or uncles to sons or nephews (Peskes; McGregor). As late as the twentieth century, scions of saintly sayyid families in Java were still actively disseminating teachings that sayyids were born with congenital knowledge and spiritual potentialities that could be developed into sanctity through proper familial training and supervision from childhood (Alatas, They are the heirs, 146–7). We can also observe the merging of nasab and silsila in so-called family ṭarīqas, orders in which the nasab of the spiritual leader also functions as a silsila, and the transmission of spiritual knowledge and leadership is passed down within the family. In such a ṭarīqa, spiritual leadership is passed down hereditarily. Scholars have suggested that most large Ṣūfī communities initially began as lineage-based institutions (Trimingham, 14–6). Some have succeeded in becoming more open, while others have remained as family orders. A notable example of the first trend is the Qādiriyya ṭarīqa, attributed to the Baghdad-based scholar and public moralist ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166). In the eighth/fourteenth century, ʿAbd al-Qādir’s sons played active roles in propagating the ṭarīqa. Gradually, the ṭarīqa spread through “the personal initiative of Ṣūfī shaykhs in different lands who enhanced their religious standing by acting as representatives of the prestigious Qādiriyya without renouncing their independence as spiritual guides of their local communities” (Abun-Nasr, 96). While ʿAbd al-Qādir’s family remained one of the leading scholarly Sunnī families of Baghdad, the ṭarīqa itself gradually devolved and became decentralised. The Ṣūfī shaykhs in various Muslim lands who belonged to the Qādiriyya silsila had much latitude in determining the mystical teachings and practices, all of which were validated through the spiritual authority of ʿAbd al-Qādir. This dynamic, in turn, allowed the Qādiriyya to spread more widely than any other ṭarīqa. By the ninth/fifteenth century, the Qādiriyya had branches in the Middle East, the Maghrib, Iberia, the Indian subcontinent, the horn of Africa, and Mali, and by the tenth/sixteenth, it had reached China and present-day Indonesia. The landscape of the Qādiriyya can thus be characterised as a loose network made up by individual silsilas, some more visible than others, which operated independently, even as they claimed a common background and eponym. The case of the Qādiriyya shows that the decoupling of silsila and nasab may lead to the dramatic expansion of the ṭarīqa.

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An example of the second trend is the Ṭarīqat Sādat Banī ʿAlawī, commonly known as the ʿAlawiyya ṭarīqa (Alatas, ʿAlāwiyya). This order emerged in the seventh/thirteenth century among the Bā ʿAlawī sayyids of the Ḥaḍramawt, in southern Yemen and is attributed to Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Bā ʿAlawī (d. 653/1255), also known as al-faqīḥ al-muqaddam (the paramount jurist). This ṭarīqa combined two silsilas: that of the Prophet’s family (ahl al-bayt) handed down through the nasab, and that of the renowned Ṣūfī master of the Maghrib, Abū Madyan Shuʿayb (d. 589/1193 or 594/1198). Like other South Arabian Ṣūfī orders, the ʿAlawiyya ṭarīqa never became a fully institutionalized order. In the absence of developed infrastructures, nasab played a crucial role in securing transmission of knowledge and succession of leadership. As a result, most Bā ʿAlawī scholars did not formally initiate their Bā ʿAlawī children into the ʿAlawiyya ṭarīqa, as it was assumed that they are born into the ṭarīqa, just as they are born into the lineage. Thus, if a Bā ʿAlawī sayyid adopts another silsila, it may be seen as a betrayal of his nasab. While the ʿAlawiyya ṭarīqa never managed to become widespread like the Qādiriyya, it has, nevertheless, taken root in regions across the Indian Ocean, largely through the diasporic mobility of the Bā ʿAlawī sayyids (Ho). 4

Hereditary Succession and Ṣūfī Dynasties

Other ṭarīqas, most notably the Naqshbandiyya, have emphasised a nonhereditary mode of leadership succession. Descent from the Prophet or the founder of a ṭarīqa alone does not, in the view of the early Naqshbandī masters, constitute an adequate prerequisite for ṭarīqa leadership. A future leader ought to have reached a certain spiritual station (maqām) through the practice of spiritual wayfaring (sulūk). Only those who have achieved such stations are deemed to be credible Ṣūfī masters who can guide others. While this stance may be the founding principle of the Naqshbandiyya, as early as the eighth/ fourteenth century, Ṣūfī masters affiliated to this silsila had “split into numerous hereditary branches and formed several rival dynasties” (Papas, 38), generating internal debates over the appropriate logic of succession. The Juybārī family of Bukhara, for example, was a family of Naqshbandī masters that became an influential and well-endowed spiritual dynasty. The eldest son of the previous master became the head of the dynasty, while the younger brothers moved elsewhere (like India, where the Mughal rulers remained devoted to the Naqshbandiyya ṭarīqa) and established their own influence (Foltz). Not all masters accepted the principle of primogeniture in the logic of succession. In fact, primogeniture was a point of contention among

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Naqshbandī masters even when they accepted hereditary succession. Other Naqshbandī masters, like Khwāja ʿUbaydallāh Aḥrār (d. 895/1490), mixed the two methods of succession (hereditary and spiritual), by naming their sons and disciples as their successors. Thus, in reality, nasab played a vital, albeit contested, role in the logic of succession among early Naqshbandīs, notwithstanding the ṭarīqa’s original emphasis on the primacy of spiritual state over descent. Subsequent Naqshbandī circles produced not only silsila texts but also nasab texts that present various lineages established by the Ṣūfī masters. Significantly, prophetic descent became increasingly central to the Naqshbandī logic of succession. Alexandre Papas notes how such an evolution in the Naqshbandī circles was driven by the prospect of “probable loss of spirituality in their own ranks.” That is, “they were conscious of the usual danger of time, so they found a solution in the identification of initiation and heredity” (Papas, 46). At the same time, hereditary succession was perceived as a way to avoid interruption in the silsila, prevent the possibility of conflict between possible successors, and ensure the smooth transfer of spiritual and material possessions, from esoteric knowledge and secret formulas to lands and private libraries (Papas, 46–7). In this case, nasab worked to safeguard the durability and smooth expansion of the silsila. Some ṭarīqas have even transformed into political dynasties, the most famous case being the Ṣafavid order attributed to and named after Ṣafī l-Dīn al-Ardabīlī (735/1334). Ṣafī himself assumed the leadership of an already established Ṣūfī order from his father-in-law, and then eclipsed the latter, and the leadership of the order was passed on, hereditarily, to Ṣafī’s descendants. Gradually, the family order was transformed into a militant, politically active, and propertied religious organisation that was particularly popular among the nomadic Oghuz Turkic-speaking people in Asia Minor and Azerbaijan who pledged loyalty to the Ṣafavid house. Finally, under the leadership of Ṣafī’s descendant, Shāh Ismāʿīl (d. 930/1524), the Ṣafavid family combined the forces of religious devotees and the tribes to establish a powerful political dynasty. It then succeeded in becoming an empire, and ruled over Iran/Persia for more than two hundred years (Newman; Vikør in this volume). A more recent example of this dynamic is the Sanūsiyya ṭarīqa established by the Algerian-born Muḥammad b. ʿAlī l-Sanūsī (d. 1276/1859) in Libya. Al-Sanūsī was a disciple and successor of the Moroccan Ṣūfī master Aḥmad b. Idrīs al-Fāsī (d. 1253/1837), the founder of the Idrīsiyya ṭarīqa (Vikør; Evans-Pritchard). Actively preaching among the Bedouins of Cyrenaica, al-Sanūsī modified the teachings and organisational form of the ṭarīqa to suit the proclivities of the locals. Upon his death, the leadership of the order was

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passed down to his son Muḥammad al-Mahdī (d. 1320/1902), and subsequently to al-Mahdī’s brother’s son, Aḥmad al-Sharīf (d. 1352/1933). Al-Sharīf led several armed struggles against the French, the Italians, and the British before he was finally exiled from Libya in 1918. Upon his departure, al-Mahdī’s son, Muḥammad Idrīs (d. 1403/1983) became the leader of the order. In 1951, after the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on Libyan independence, Idrīs ascended the throne of the newly founded United Kingdom of Libya and remained as both a monarch and the supreme leader of the Sanūsiyya ṭarīqa until 1969, when he was deposed in the coup d’état led by Colonel Muʿammar al-Qadhdhāfī. Scholars have suggested that Ṣūfī ṭarīqas that developed “centralized systems of spiritual leadership were the ones that exercised a regulatory religious influence in rural tribal communities” (Abun-Nasr, 186). Both the Ṣafavid and the Sanūsī cases certainly attest to this observation. In both cases, the convergence of nasab and silsila worked to form spiritual dynasties. The supreme leadership of the order was passed down hereditarily, even though others, outside the hereditary line, may become disciples and deputies. Loyalty to the spiritual teachings passed down through a silsila become coterminous with loyalty to the house of the leader. This very dynamic equipped the ṭarīqa with the potential to become a political dynasty. 5 Conclusion Central to the teachings of most, if not all, Ṣūfī ṭarīqas is the belief that true spiritual knowledge ought to be communicated and imparted directly from the Ṣūfī masters, going back to the Prophet himself in an unbroken chain of authoritative and trustworthy transmitters. The importance of an unbroken chain of knowledge transmission means that there must be some discursive mechanism and attestation that would allow for its authentication, delineation, and presentation. Traditionally, genealogical forms, whether nasab or silsila, have performed this role. Theoretically, nasab and silsila point to two different genealogical relations that may indeed compete with each other. Nevertheless, it is more often the case that they are combined and used together to configure novel forms of spiritual authority; establish saintly families, family ṭarīqas, and spiritual/political dynasties; ensure a steady transmission of spiritual knowledge; and help smooth the transfer of the material resources of a Ṣūfī institution. These intersections of nasab and silsila, of which the variety and complexity are too immense adequately deal with in this short article, attest to the impact of the family institution upon Ṣūfī organisations.

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Bibliography Abu-Lughod, Lila, Veiled sentiments. Honor and poetry in a Bedouin society, Berkeley, CA 1986, repr. 2016. Abun-Nasr, Jamil M., Muslim communities of grace. The Sufi brotherhoods in Islamic religious life, New York 2007. Alatas, Ismail Fajrie, ʿAlāwiyya (in Ḥaḍramawt), EI3. Alatas, Ismail Fajrie, They are the heirs of the Prophet. Discourses on the ahl al-bayt and religious authority among the Bā ʿAlawī in modern Indonesia, in Chiara Formichi and R. Michael Feener (eds.), Shiʿism in Southeast Asia. ʿAlid piety and sectarian constructions (Oxford 2015), 139–64. Bashir, Shahzad, Sufi bodies. Religion and society in medieval Islam, New York 2011. Cornell, Vincent J., Realm of the saint. Power and authority in Moroccan Sufism, Austin 1998. Duri, A. A., The rise of historical writing among the Arabs, trans. Lawrence I. Conrad, Princeton 1983. Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Oxford 1949. Fisher, H. J., What’s in a Name? The Almoravids of the eleventh century in the western Sahara, Journal of Religion in Africa 22/4 (1992): 290–317. Foltz, Richard, The Central Asian Naqshbandi connections of the Mughal emperors, JIS 7/2 (1996): 229–39. Geoffroy, Eric, L’apparition des voies. Les khirqa primitives, in Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein (eds.), Les Voies d’Allah. Les ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui (Paris 1996), 44–54. Green, Nile, Sufism. A global history, Malden 2012. Hammoudi, Abdellah, Master and disciple. The cultural foundations of Moroccan authoritarianism, Chicago 1997. Ho, Engseng, The graves of Tarim. Genealogy and mobility across the Indian Ocean, Berkeley, CA 2006. Knysh, Alexander, Islamic mysticism. A short history, Leiden 2000. Marlow, Louise, Ḥasab o Nasab, EIr, XII/1, 23–24. Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine and Alexandre Papas, Introduction, in Catherine MayeurJaouen and Alexandre Papas (eds.), Family portraits with saints. Hagiography, sanctity, and family in the Muslim world (Berlin 2014), 7–25. McGregor, Richard J. A., Sanctity and mysticism in medieval Egypt. The Wafāʾ Sufi order and the legacy of Ibn ʿArabī, Albany, NY 2004. Meier, Fritz, Khurāsān and the end of classical Sufism, in Essays on Islamic piety and mysticism, trans. John O’Kane, Leiden 1999. Newman, Andrew J., Safavid Iran. Rebirth of a Persian empire, London 2009.

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Papas, Alexandre, Shaykh succession in the classical Naqshbandiyya. Spirituality, heredity and the question of body, Asian and African Area Studies 7/1 (2007): 36–49. Peskes, Esther, Sainthood as patrimony. ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAydarūs (d. 1461) and his descendants, in Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen and Alexandre Papas (eds.), Family portraits with saints. Hagiography, sanctity, and family in the Muslim world (Berlin 2014), 125–57. Rosenthal, Franz, Nasab, EI2. Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Sufi orders in Islam, Oxford 1971. Vikør, Knut S., Sufi and scholar on the desert edge. Muḥammad B. ʿAlī Al-Sanūsī and his brotherhood, Evanston 1995.

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Chapter 21

Established Ṣūfī Orders Semih Ceyhan During the Islamic Middle Period (i.e. the sixth/twelfth to the seventh/thirteenth centuries) Sufism gained continuity and took on a more disciplined, systematic institutional form based on the master-disciple relationship. From this period onwards, the institutionalisation of the Ṣūfī path (ṭarīqa) took place both internally and externally. Internally, the founding generation of masters gave the path a systematic identity by incorporating spiritual lineages (silsila), litanies (awrād), invocations (adhkār), the proper inward and outward attitudes (ādāb), and doctrinal rules (arkān). Externally, the Ṣūfī path became a pervasive social phenomenon as a result of endeavours by the founders to communicate the message not only to their own disciples but also to ordinary members of society and to those in political power, in an effort to solve individual and social problems. 1

Classifications of Ṣūfī Orders

In the late mediaeval period, the founding figure (pīr) of the ṭarīqa, seen as the embodiment of the theological concept of the “perfect human” (al-insān al-kāmil), was no longer merely a physical figure that satisfied the spiritual needs of the disciple. He was also recognised as the “path itself,” which enabled the connection between God, the universe, and man at a cosmic level. The idea of an eternal (qadīm) Muḥammadan path (al-ṭarīqa al-Muḥammadiyya) that reaches back to the Prophet Muḥammad through an uninterrupted chain of masters was embodied in the founding figures of Ṣūfī orders that remain in existence today. From the seventh/thirteenth century onwards, being initiated by a shaykh, learning the secret invocation formulas (talqīn al-dhikr), and embarking on a spiritual journey (al-sayr wa-l-sulūk), came to be understood as one and the same thing. The institution of the ṭarīqa did not lose its essence with the passing of the founding master; rather, it gained continuity through the master’s deputies (khulafāʾ). The diversification of Ṣūfī orders that ramified into sub-branches became possible through deputies that were dispatched to various places. Often, it was the families and descendants of the founding

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masters who played pivotal roles in the consolidation of the spiritual education (tarbiya) of the path (Alatas in this volume). Ṣūfī orders, which took shape around the charismatic authority and status of Ṣūfī shaykhs, assumed an active role in establishing the unity and coherence of the Islamic community by securing the support of Muslim scholars and Muslim principalities that emerged in the aftermath of the dissolution of the caliphate (Hodgson, 203–4). The Saljūqs in Iran and Anatolia, the Ayyūbids in greater Syria and Egypt, and the Mamlūks in Egypt provided political and economic support for the establishment of lodges and pious endowments (waqfs) to fund the maintenance of these sites. This support expedited the institutionalisation of the Ṣūfī orders and helped to expand the geographical spread of their networks (Knysh, 173; Ephrat and Pinto, Firouzeh, and Hofer [Endowments] in this volume). Established Ṣūfī orders led to a model of society in which people from a very early age learned to act with Muḥammad manners and courtesy, leading to the internalisation of the Prophet’s way of life (Sunna), and even those who were not affiliated with any Ṣūfī order eventually emulated the highly refined manners observed in every phase of life. These orders may also have been accepted by society at large because of the eclectic way in which the shaykhs internalised religious and worldly sciences; in addition, their intellectual and spiritual competence was not restricted by the limitations Muslim scholars faced, and this enabled them to more directly address the existential problems of individuals (Chih in this volume; Sedgwick in this volume). The main Ṣūfī orders that have survived over a long period took their names from the agnomens (kunya) or surnames (laqab) of the founding pīrs. Dozens of sub-branches stemmed from the main orders. In general, with regard to the teaching of spiritual discipline and virtues, the founders of sub-branches made only minor changes in the fundamental methods of the main order. The subbranches made some alterations due to historical or geographical contexts, but were called (in written sources and in oral traditions) by the name of the main order they originated from or as distinct ṭarīqas, without reference to the main order. A number of Ṣūfī orders far from the centre sometimes internalised local elements to such an extent that they came to appear as heterodox movements. In any case, all Ṣūfī orders of the early modern period represented themselves as unbroken lineages of spiritual masters that originated from the Prophet. With the exception of the Naqshbandiyya, whose lineage came from the first caliph Abū Bakr, the lineages of all institutionalised orders descended from the fourth caliph ʿAlī. Even though the Ottoman hagiographical compendium by Ḥulvī (d. 1064/1654), the Lemeẓāt, mentioned certain types of ṭarīqas that descended from the other two caliphs (namely, ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb and ʿUthmān

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b. ʿAffān), most orders that have survived to the present day have ʿAlawī lineages (that is, lineages whose main connection to the Prophet Muḥammad was ʿAlī) (Ḥulvī, 40, 46; Ḥarīrīzāde, I, fol. 8b; Wijdānī, 94). Ṣūfīs have sometimes classified themselves according to the educational methods they use and the formulas of invocation they assign to their disciples: vocal ritual repetition (dhikr/ṭarīq al-jahrī) and silent ritual repetition (dhikr/ ṭarīq al-khafī). Although the silent method was specific to the Naqshbandiyya, some ṭarīqas practiced both kinds of invocation. Ṣūfī orders that practiced a vocal type of dhikr differed among themselves as to which method to practice collectively, i.e. quʿūdī (sitting), qiyāmī (standing), or dawrānī (turning in concentric circles). Ṣūfī orders that undertake spiritual journeys by chanting the names of God were called “asmāʾī ” orders, whereas those that chant only the essential name of God (ism al-dhāt) were called “musammā” orders. The Naqshbandiyya and the Mawlawiyya/Mevleviyye are examples of musammā orders, while the Khalwatiyya and the Qādiriyya were asmāʾī orders. According to another classification, Ṣūfī orders differed on the basis of the main nature of their spiritual journeying, whether they were nafsānī (journeying within the self) or rūḥānī (journeying of the spirit). In rūḥānī journeying, all one’s efforts were concentrated on strengthening the spirit, through litanies and invocations, with the belief that this neutralised the nafs, which was considered the source of evil; by contrast, in nafsānī journeying, the traveller tried to pacify his nafs directly through riyāḍa (ascetic discipline) and mujāhada (spiritual struggle) (Aydınlı, 123–9, 154–7; Râsim Efendi, 274, 424; Inançer, Rituals). Ṣūfī authors often note that although Ṣūfī orders used different methods of education and discipline, the ultimate goal each aspired to was the same. 2

A Cartography of Ṣūfī Orders

The groups (ṭāʾifas) that congregated and organised around charismatic Ṣūfī masters in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Central Asia, Iran, Anatolia, and India (the geographical origins of the main Ṣūfī orders) from the sixth/twelfth to the nineteenth centuries developed common characteristics in terms of social and spiritual practices (Ohlander, 1). The main Ṣūfī orders that originated in the centuries in question encompassed a large part of the world through networks and sub-branches. We present below a tentative cartography of the main institutionalised Ṣūfī networks, according to their own terms and descriptions, that is, those of their founders and their saints, their successors and deputies, their main practical or doctrinal characteristics, and their most commonly used writings. This cartography is by no means complete and only aims

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to present a synthesis of Ṣūfīs’ own representation of Ṣūfī paths as described, for instance, in late mediaeval and early modern biographical surveys. 2.1 From Iraq: Qādiriyya, Rifāʿiyya, and Suhrawardiyya The first widespread, organised Ṣūfī order was the Baghdad-based Qādiriyya, which was named after ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166) (Buehler, Işın, and Zarcone (eds.)). The powerful sermons and lectures of al-Jīlānī, who established a madrasa and a ribāṭ (outpost) in Baghdad and who was revered by Ḥanbalī circles there, attracted a large number of people in a short time. Along with Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī (d. 578/1182), Aḥmad al-Badawī (d. 675/1276), and Ibrāhīm al-Dasūqī (d. 676/1278), al-Jīlānī was considered one of the four greatest poles (al-aqṭāb al-arbaʿa) by Ṣūfīs in the Middle East. The four great poles were seen as the inheritors of the four great prophets (Moses, Jesus, Abraham, and Muḥammad) (Sharnūbī, 43–8). Other orders asked for the spiritual assistance of these poles during their remembrance ceremonies. According to late Ṣūfī authors, the prediction of Tāj al-ʿĀrifīn Abū l-Wafāʾ al-Baghdādī (d. 501/1107), the founder of the Baghdad-based Wafāʾiyya order, about the saintly eminence of al-Jīlānī—an eminence that remained long after his death and in fact became perpetual—, came true. Late Ṣūfī authors argued that the saintly effusion of al-Jīlānī was the main element in the spread of the order over a large area throughout subsequent centuries (Rifʿat, 701). The spread of the Qādiriyya over a large geographical area was undoubtedly the result of the travels of al-Jīlānī’s biological descendants. Many Qādirī sub-branches can be traced to the founding master through his sons ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, and ʿAbd al-Jabbār (Wijdānī, 116). Before his death, al-Jīlānī appointed his son ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as the headmaster of the madrasa and the shaykh of the ribāṭ. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s role in the government (as minister of justice) during the time of the caliph al-Nāṣir (r. 575– 622/1180–1225) increased the power of the order. The Dāʾūdiyya branch, which spread to the greater Syria/Shām region, and the Ghawthiyya branch, which was widespread in India, can both be traced to ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, the ancestor of the Qādirī sharīfs in Baghdad, took the order to the Levant. The Fāriẓiyya branch, which is still widespread in Egypt, is also traced to ʿAbd alʿAzīz. The Qādirī sub-branches in Hama (Syria), India (the Gharībiyya), Central Asia, northern Iraq (the Khāliṣiyya), and the Balkans can be traced to the third son ʿAbd al-Razzāq. The spread of the order to Africa took place through the descendants of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd al-Qādir (d. 695/1295), who descended from another son of al-Jīlānī. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz founded the Qāsimiyya branch with its centre in Abyssinia. The Qādirī shaykhs Aḥmad al-Bakkāʾī (d. 910/1504) and later, Sīdī

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Mukhtār b. Aḥmad al-Kuntī (d. 1226/1811) spread the order in the western Sahara. Another son of the founding master, Ibrāhīm, was the ancestor of the Qādirī sharīfs in a number of cities in Morocco. The Qādiriyya reached Bengal through a Qādirī shaykh named Pīr Shāh Dawla (d. 942/1535 or 980/1573), and later spread in the region through Qumays al-Qādirī, a descendant of ʿAbd al-Razzāq. The order reached the Gujarat through Sayyid Jamāl Phatrī (d. 971/1564), a descendant of al-Jīlānī’s son ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. In Anatolia, the Qādiryya formed additional sub-branches: the Ashrafiyya in the ninth/ fifteenth century, the Rūmiyya in Istanbul in the eleventh/seventeenth century; the Rasmiyya in the twelfth/eighteenth century; and in the nineteenth century, the Khāliṣiyya, the Mushtāqiyya, and the Anwāriyya. The Qādiriyya adopted a vocalised remembrance, with its own particular rite of dawrān (a concentric circle of dervishes turning clockwise or counterclockwise). The short litanies (sing. ḥizb) recited by Ṣūfīs after each prayer were composed and instituted by al-Jīlānī himself. The Qādirīs performed the spiritual retreat (khalwa) like the Khalwatīs and also practiced the rābiṭa (tying the heart to the master) as in the Naqshbandiyya. In addition, remembrance and mawlid ceremonies were held every year at the tomb of al-Jīlānī in Baghdad, under green banners unfurled by groups of Qādirīs who came from around the world. The most widely read books by Ṣūfīs were those written by al-Jīlānī: al-Ghunya, al-Fatḥ al-rabbānī, and Futūḥ al-ghayb (Çakır; Azamat). The fact that Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī took a group of disciples from Manṣūr al-Baṭāʾiḥī (d. 540/1145) was seen as the reason for the early reorganisation of the Rifāʿiyya in Iraq (Popovic, part I). Manṣūr gave al-Rifāʿī the title “shaykh of the shaykhs” and settled him in the lodge at Umm ʿUbayda, declaring him the head of all the lodges that pledged allegiance to him. The ṭarīqa literature included a prominent story about the Prophet Muḥammad extending his hand from his tomb for Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī to kiss during his visit to Medina, all of this witnessed by a large crowd of visitors (al-Dīrīnī, 6–27). The first person to sit on the sheepskin of spiritual guidance (irshād) in the lodge (riwāq) of Umm ʿUbayda after al-Rifāʿī was his nephew and son-in-law ʿAlī b. ʿUthmān (d. 584/1188), then his other son-in-law ʿAbd al-Raḥīm (d. 604/1207) took on the duty, then his grandson from his first son-in-law Ibrāhīm al-Aʿzab (d. 609/1212) became the shaykh; thus the position of shaykh continued in the family. Through Abū l-Fatḥ al-Wāsiṭī (d. 632/1234), whom Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī had sent to Alexandria, the Rifāʿiyya became one of the earliest ṭarīqas to form in Egypt. In the time of ʿIzz al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Ṣayyād (d. 670/1271–2), also a descendant of al-Rifāʿī, the order spread in Iraq, Syria, Ḥijāz, Yemen, and Egypt, thereby making the Ṣayyādiyya the most widespread branch of the Rifāʿiyya. The founder of the Ḥarīriyya branch, ʿAlī l-Ḥarīrī (d. 620/1223), was a grandson

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of al-Rifāʿī through his daughter and is referred to in the sources as the founder of the Rifāʿiyya in Syria. The Rifāʿiyya order had sub-branches such as the Kayyāliyya (Aleppo), the Jandaliyya (Damascus), the Jamīliyya (Iraq), the ʿAṭāʾiyya (Jerusalem), and the Jabartiyya (Yemen). Certain acts are considered fundamental features of Rifāʿī rituals, these include holding fire with bare hands, walking into fire, cooling a piece of hot iron called a “rose” (Tk. gül) and licking it repeatedly, piercing various parts of the body with sharp tools such as swords, daggers, skewers etc., holding poisonous animals without being harmed, and chewing pieces of broken glass. It was maintained that these secrets of the order could be performed by anyone in the service of al-Rifāʿī, with the permission of the shaykh (Tahralı). The Baghdad-based Suhrawardiyya spread in the regions of Syria, Iran, China, Turkestan, Iraq, and especially India (Sobieroj). The order is usually ascribed to Abū Ḥafṣ Shihāb al-Dīn ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234), but some Ṣūfī authors suggested that the order began with Abū l-Najīb Suhrawardī (d. 563/1168) since he played a major role in the upbringing and education of Shihāb al-Dīn, who was his nephew as well as disciple (Jāmī, 417–8). Shihāb al-Dīn founded lodges in Damascus and Aleppo and spread the order over a vast area from Iran to Turkestan and to India through emissaries (deputies) he sent to those regions. The order remained active in Baghdad at the lodge of Ma‌ʾmūniyya through his son ʿImād al-Dīn Muḥammad Suhrawardī (d. 655/1257), who succeeded him, and then through ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, his grandson. The Suhrawardiyya spread into Iran through the efforts of Najīb al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Buzghush (d. 678/1280). One of Najīb al-Dīn’s successors, Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad, founded the Zayniyya in the ninth/fifteenth century. Zayn al-Dīn al-Khwāfī (d. 838/1435) established the ṭarīqa in Herat, and from there it spread to Khurāsān, Ḥijāz, Syria, Egypt, Anatolia, and Rumelia (Öngören, Tarihte). The Suhrawardiyya entered India through the deputies of the master. The teachings of the order were actively propagated in the Delhi region by Ḥamīd al-Dīn Nāgawrī (d. 673/1274) and Nūr al-Dīn Mubārak Ghaznawī (d. 632/1234), in the Bengal region by Jalāl al-Dīn Tabrīzī (d. 641–2/1244), and in Multan by Bahāʾ al-Dīn Zakariyyāʾ Multānī (d. 661/1262 [?]). In Kashmir in the ninth/fifteenth century, the Suhrawardī Ṣūfīs from the branch of Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Bukhārī/ Makhdūm-i Jahāniyān (d. 785/1384) were among those who kept Sufism alive. The lineage of Abū l-Najīb al-Suhrawardī was also called Shihābiyya in reference to al-Suhrawardī’s nephew Shihāb al-Dīn. When Abū l-Najīb died, his chief deputy Abū Rashīd Quṭb al-Dīn al-Abharī (d. 572/1177) succeeded him and the Abharī sub-order emerged. After al-Abharī, Awḥad al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (Awḥadiyya) continued the order through Rukn al-Dīn al-Sujāsī (d. 635/1238). After Rukn al-Dīn al-Sujāsī, the Zāhidiyya order emerged from Ibrāhīm Zāhid

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al-Jīlānī (d. 700/1301). Ibrāhīm Zāhid al-Jīlānī was known as the shaykh who established the method of spiritual journeying with the invocation of divine names, and thus his spiritual guidance became renowned in Iran and eastern Azerbaijan. From the Zāhidiyya order two other orders emerged: the Ṣafawiyya and the Khalwatiyya. In the seventh/thirteenth century during the Saljūq period, the Suhrawar­ diyya spread in Anatolia through Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī (d. 688/1289)—a deputy of Bahāʾ al-Dīn Zakariyyā—who had the disposition of a Qalandar (an antinomian dervish). In his Ādāb al-muridīn, Abū l-Najīb al-Suhrawardī explained the general rules that every disciple must comply with, and in the ʿAwārif al-maʿārif, Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī revealed the details of the fundamental principles of Sufism; these works did not belong exclusively to the Suhrawardī order, but were works referred to by all Ṣūfī orders teaching the basic manners (Öngören, Sühreverdiyye, 42–5). 2.2 From Syria: Saʿdiyya The Saʿdiyya was a major Ṣūfī order founded by Saʿd al-Dīn al-Jibāwī (seventh/ thirteenth to eighth/fourteenth century) (von Schlegell). He continued the tradition of the Shaybānī branch of the Rifāʿiyya (through his father Yūnus al-Shaybānī) in Jibā, a village in Syria. In order to better understand the distinctive characteristics that set the Saʿdiyya apart from the so-called Shaybāniyya, we need to look at a spiritual incident (narrated by biographers such as al-Muḥibbī, 1:35) that resulted in al-Jibāwī’s meeting with the Prophet and his “second birth.” During this incident, the Prophet put a date that he had blown over with his blessed breath into al-Jibāwī’s mouth. As a result of this prophetic blessing, al-Jibāwī prospered both spiritually and physically. This incident was institutionalised as a ritual enacted in Saʿdī remembrance gatherings. Although a large number of disciples pledged allegiance to al-Jibāwī during his travels to Iraq, Jerusalem, and India, the spread of the path mainly took place in the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries. Within two centuries, Saʿd al-Dīn al-Jibāwī’s tribe and ṭarīqa became widespread in Syrian cities such as Hama, Homs, and Aleppo and in towns such as Akka, Jenin, and Nablus (in modern Palestine). In later periods, the order spread even further to Egypt, into other areas of Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, and Rumelia. Turkish Ṣūfī sources (Vassaf, 1:427; Ḥarīrīzāde, II, fols. 129a–138a) indicate that, over time, the Saʿdiyya ramified into five different branches. The Taghli­ biyya (Shaybiyya) and Wafāʾiyya branches gained popularity in Damascus, the Sharrābiyya branch spread in and around Hama, the Salāmiyya in Istanbul, and the ʿĀjiziyya branch in the Balkans. With the exception of the Sharrābiyya and ʿĀjiziyya, all of the Saʿdī branches were founded by shaykhs who were

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descendants of al-Jibāwī. In its practices, the Saʿdiyya resembled the Rifāʿiyya. The dawsa was a ceremony for sick people who came to the lodge to find cures for their diseases. During the ceremony, the shaykh walked over the sick lying prone on the ground, or walked over them while astride a horse. The people who were healed during the dawsa regarded this as evidence of God’s existence and also as a miracle (karāma) of the shaykh (Yücer, 272). Some scholars have asserted that the Saʿdiyya had the features of a military organisation. In the zāwiyas established against the crusader onslaughts, a certain system of ranking was used on the battlefield as well as to allocate certain daily chores (Ghāzī, 1:148). The Saʿdiyya order engaged in a peculiar type of dhikr. When it started, the shaykh and the dervish stared each other in the eye, whereupon the dervish became completely immobile, as if he were inanimate. The shaykh would gaze upon him at the end of the ceremony, and the dervish “would come back to life” (İnançer, Sa’dilikte, 394). 2.3 From Egypt: Badawiyya and Dasūqiyya The order ascribed to Aḥmad al-Badawī, whose tomb is in the Egyptian city of Ṭanṭā, was primarily known as the Badawiyya or Aḥmadiyya (Kara). Its origins were attributed to the Rifāʿiyya through Shaykh Barrī, to the Shādhiliyya who were affiliated with Quṭb al-Qarāfī, ʿAbdallāh al-Maghribī, and Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī, to the Mashīshiyya and Ibn al-Mashīsh (d. 625/1227–8), and to the Qādiriyya through the Shādhiliyya. The arguments that the Badawiyya were related to the Rifāʿiyya continue, despite the fact that the Badawiyya was distinct in terms of its manners (ādāb) and rules (arkān). Narrations about the life of Aḥmad al-Badawī in Ṭanṭā relate that he used to sit on the roof (saṭḥ) of his home, stare at the sun, and cover his face with a double veil. With a single gaze, he perfected aspirants who came to become his disciples, and without needing to engage in asceticism and striving, they would become his representatives and be dispatched to various locations as shaykhs in their own right. In this respect, it would be more accurate to describe the Badawiyya as an order not based on spiritual companionship (ṣuḥba) but on the gaze (naẓar) of the shaykh and his spiritual impregnation of the disciple (talqīḥ). The final stage of the establishment of the order took place during the time of ʿAbd alʿĀl (d. 733/1332), the chief deputy of the master. After that the order ramified into four branches (the Kannāsiyya, Manāʾifiyya, Salāmiyya, and Marāziqa or Imbābiyya) known as the bayt al-kabīr; and at this time the mawlid ceremonies at Ṭanṭā began (Shaʿrānī, 258–64; ʿAbd al-Ṣamad, 44). The Dasūqiyya order is attributed to Ibrāhīm al-Dasūqī (d. 696/1296–7) who was born in Egypt (Le Chatelier, 190–4). Books of feats and miracles (manāqib-nāma) devoted to al-Dasūqī emphasise his mysterious side, such as

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his knowledge of Syriac, Hebrew, and ancient Egyptian languages. He was also credited with understanding the language of animals and birds and the occult sciences. Al-Jawhara al-muḍīʾah fī sulūk al-ṭālib wa-nuṣḥ al-barīya, attributed to Ibrāhīm al-Dasūqī, was the most commonly known source that introduced his path (Khalaf Allāh, 112–3). Abū l-Fatḥ al-Wāsiṭī, who spread the Rifāʿiyya in Egypt, was the grandfather of Ibrāhīm al-Dasūqī; in this regard, the Dasūqiyya had a link with the Rifāʿiyya. Some Ṣūfī scholars (e.g., al-Bakrī, 383) considered the Dasūqiyya a branch of the Badawiyya or the Shādhiliyya. The Dasūqiyya ṭarīqa spread more through its disciples than through al-Dasūqī’s family members and descendants. The members of the Dasūqiyya, who usually wore green garments, often chanted the divine name “Yā Dāʾim” during their congregational recitation (tilāwa) or remembrance ceremonies. The order ramified into four branches: the Shahāwiyya, named after Sayyid Muḥammad al-Shahāwī (d. 949/1542); the Sharnūbiyya, named after al-Sharnūbī (d. 994/1586); the ʿĀshūriyya, named after Ṣaliḥ ʿĀshūr al-Maghribī; and the Tāziyya from al-Tāzī (De Jong, Ṭuruq; Khalaf Allāh, 289–91). 2.4 From North Africa: Shādhiliyya and Tijāniyya The Shādhiliyya, founded in Ifrīqiyya, and the Tijāniyya, founded in Algeria, were the two most widespread orders in the Arab world and Africa. Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī (d. 656/1258), who went into retreat on Mount Zaghouan in the town of Shādhila in Ifrīqiyya on the instruction of his shaykh ʿAbd al-Salām b. Mashīsh, began serving as a shaykh in his mid-thirties, thereby laying the foundations of the Shādhiliyya (Geoffroy (ed.)). Al-Shādhilī left for Alexandria in 642/1244, a move that ultimately led the ṭarīqa to spread to larger segments of society. Alexandria, which was home to the graves of such famous Shādhilī saints as Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Mursī, who succeeded al-Shadhilī; Yāqūt al-ʿArshī, one of al-Mursī’s caliphs; and Makīn al-Dīn al-Asmar, a favourite disciple of al-Shādhilī, became the centre from where the Shādhiliyya spread throughout the Muslim world. Over time, the order spread primarily in the Maghrib and Syria, then in the Arab world, the Indian subcontinent, Malaysia, Indonesia, Africa, Anatolia, and the Balkans. The most renowned and influential Shādhilī shaykh in Istanbul was Muḥammad Ẓāfir al-Madanī (d. 1903). Sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd II had a zāwiya (the Ertuğrul Tekke Mosque) built for the shaykh in Istanbul (Güven, 405–14). The two most common branches of the Shādhiliyya are the Darqawiyya, whose members were well-known for the large-grained prayer beads they wore around their necks, and the ʿAlāwiyya, founded by Aḥmad al-ʿAlāwī (d. 1934) (De Jong, Materials; Lings, ch. 3–4). In his time, al-Shādhilī organised large gatherings on important occasions, especially to celebrate the birth

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of the Prophet (al-mawlid al-nabawī), and set up processions with huge banners and giant timpani-like drums. Masses of people attended these meetings (al-Munāwī, 127; Maḥmūd, 44–5). To date, members of the Shādhiliyya hold annual commemoration ceremonies called iḥtifāl. The most frequently recited texts in the order were al-Shādhilī’s Ḥizb al-baḥr, Ibn Mashīsh’s Ṣalawāt, and al-Jazūlī’s Dalāʾil al-khayrāt. Al-Ḥikam al-ʿAṭāʾiyya of al-Iskandarī (d. 709/1309) and Qawāʿid al-taṣawwuf of al-Zarrūq (d. 899/1494) were also commonly read works. With over a hundred sub-branches, the Shādhiliyya was one of the most widespread and non-centralised Ṣūfī orders. In the nineteenth century, the Sanūsiyya in Libya, the Yashruṭiyya in Palestine and the Būzīdiyya in Morocco were prominent sub-branches of the order. The Tijāniyya order, founded at the end of the twelfth/eighteenth century by Aḥmad al-Tijānī (d. 1230/1815), first spread to northwestern African cities, especially in Morocco and Algeria (Abun-Nasr). With greater influence and geographical prominence, as a result of its sub-branches, the order has been popular since its establishment. Al-Tijānī received permission (ijāza) to initiate people into both the Qādiriyya and Khalwatiyya orders, and according to the hagiographical tradition, experienced a magnificent spiritual unveiling (kashf), in which the Prophet directly authorised him to serve as master, whereupon he named the order Ṭarīqa al-Aḥmadiyya/Muḥammadiyya. For this reason, in the Tijānī sources, we find lineages connecting the founding master directly to the Prophet Muḥammad. Sīdī ʿAlī b. ʿĪsāʾ al-Ṭammāsī, Maḥmūd al-Manāʾī, Ibrāhīm al-Riyāḥī, Aḥmad al-Tijānī’s sons, Muḥammad al-Kabīr and Muḥammad al-Ṣaghīr, spread the order across North Africa; al-Ḥājj ʿUmar al-Fūtī, al-Ḥājj Mālik Siy and Ibrāhīm Niyās in Senegal and in a number of neighbouring countries; Muḥammad al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Mukhtār and Aḥmad b. Amīn al-Shinqīṭī in Mauritania. The litany of the order is two short ṣalāwats that were (allegedly) given to al-Tijānī directly by the Prophet. The fact that al-Tijānī was initiated directly by the Prophet led most Tijānīs to conclude that their ṭarīqa was superior to all others. Thinking that all aspects of law can be received from a saint who had attained perfect union with the Prophet, Tijānīs emphasised that such a friend of God does not need the imāms of the four schools of jurisprudence to derive rulings (al-Tashītī, 50). Yet, in contrast to these arguments, Tijānī shaykhs have long attached great importance to exoteric Islamic sciences and developed a literature of rebuttals against the criticisms leveled at the foundations of their ṭarīqa, especially in western Africa (Abun-Nasr, 142–5). From Central Asia and Iran: Kubrawiyya, Yasawiyya, Naqshbandiyya, and Khalwatiyya Between the sixth/twelfth and eighth/fourteenth centuries, four major orders exercised tremendous influence on the Islamisation of the regions 2.5

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heavily populated by Turks. These orders are the Kubrawiyya, the Yasawiyya, the Khwājagān Ṣūfīs and their continuation by the Naqshbandiyya, and the Khalwatiyya. It is noteworthy that these orders have been accepted by the common folk of the region as well as their rulers. Najm al-Dīn Kubrā (d. 617/1220), the founder of Kubrawiyya, served as master in a land ruled by the Khwārazm Shāhs (Algar, Kobraviya i and ii). Ṣūfī hagiographers claimed that Kubrā courageously faced the Mongols during their siege of Khwārazm in 618/1221 and was martyred (Khūrd, 528–9). Numerous important figures of the period, such as Majd al-Dīn Baghdādī, ʿAlī Lālā, Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥammūya, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Jīlī, Najm al-Dīn Dāya al-Rāzī, Sayf al-Dīn Bākharzī, and Bābā Kamāl Jandī, were all caliphs of Kubrā. Majd al-Dīn Baghdadī followed in the footsteps of his master in Khwārazm, whereas al-Jīlī, Ḥammūya, Dāya, and ʿAlī Lālā joined the group of religious scholars and men of letters who migrated westward before the Mongol invasion. Bākharzī and Jandī remained in Central Asia and endeavoured to integrate the new Mongolian rulers and non-Muslim Turkic tribes into the Islamic tradition. Najm al-Dīn Kubrā’s work, al-Uṣūl al-ʿashara can be described as the methodology of the Kubrawī order. In it, he considered his order al-ṭarīq al-shaṭṭār, the way of rapture; this consists of achieving union with God at the inception of the path, on the basis of volitional death (al-mawt al-irādī). This differs from the way of other paths, in which disciples achieve union with God at the end (Kübrā, 46–9). Following the first series of Kubrawī caliphs, the order was represented by ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Simnānī, ʿAlī Hamadānī, Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh, and ʿAbdallāh Barzishābādī. The Kubrawiyya spread to Iran, Central Asia, Khurāsān, Anatolia, India, and China. Through Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh, a caliph of Isḥāq Khuṭṭalānī (a successor of Hamadānī), the Shīʿī Nūrbakhshiyya branch emerged, and through another caliph, ʿAbdallāh Barzishābādī, the Shīʿī Dhahabiyya branch was formed. By the tenth/sixteenth century, the lineages of the Sunnī branches of the Kubrawiyya did not disappear, but weakened, whereas the Dhahabiyya and the Nūrbakhshiyya branches flourished (Gökbulut, 169–80). In the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries, the Yasawiyya (named after Aḥmad al-Yasawī, d. 562/1166 who was mistakenly considered by Naqshbandī sources to be a disciple of Yūsuf al-Hamadānī, d. 535/1140, a leading figure of Sufism in Central Asia) and the Khwājagān order (ascribed to ʿAbd al-Khāliq al-Ghijduwānī, a caliph of Yūsuf al-Hamadānī), was institutionalised (Zarcone, Yasawiyya). The path of al-Yasawī, known as the “pīr [master] of Turkestan,” first spread to Tashkent, the Seyhun region, Khwārazm, and Transoxiana thanks to the efforts of his deputies Saʿīd Atā and Ḥakīm Atā; it then spread to the Volga, Anatolia, and India (Nawāʾī). The Dīwān-i ḥikmat, which contains the aphorisms attributed al-Yasawī, was one of the most widely read works on Sufism in verse in modern times. The vocalised remembrance Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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rite peculiar to the Yasawiyya, performed collectively, was called dhikr-i arra (lit., “the invocation of the saw” in Persian). As the dhikr progresses, the words were no longer pronounced distinctly, thus becoming a rattle, which sounded like a saw. The order known as the Bakriyya was considered by Naqshbandī authors such as Üsküdārī (d. 1200/1786) to have begun with the first caliph Abū Bakr. It was traced to the time of Bāyazid al-Bisṭāmī, at which point it was referred to as Ṭayfūriyya (from Bāyazid’s name, Ṭayfūr), and this lasted to the time of Yūsuf al-Hamadānī. It was then known as the “Khwājagān path” until the time of Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband (d. 791/1389), after which it became the Naqshbandiyya (Üsküdārī, 28b). According to this Ṣūfī categorisation, Yūsuf al-Hamadānī must be considered the first name in the Khwājagan order. However, the more common view current among Naqshbandīs maintains that the real founder of the Khwājagān ṭarīqa was ʿAbd al-Khāliq al-Ghijduwānī (a deputy of al-Hamadānī) who was called the “head of the Khwājagān lineage” (sar-silsila-yi Khwājagān). The eight principles, known as kalimāt al-qudsiyya (“the holy words”), which determined the spiritual elements of the Khwājagān order and later that of the Naqshbandiyya, were established by al-Ghijduwānī; with three additional principles from Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband, the total rose to eleven. After al-Ghijduwānī, the Khwājagān ṭarīqa continued around Bukhara with ʿĀrif Rīwgarī, Maḥmūd Anjīr Faghnawī, ʿAlī Rāmitanī, Muḥammad Bābā Sammāsī, and Amīr Kulāl (Algar, Hâcegân, 431). The Naqshbandiyya has replaced almost all other orders, especially the Kubrawiyya and the Yasawiyya, in its native Central Asia, and has spread to nearly every region of the Islamic world except the Maghrib and sub-Saharan Africa. Although Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband left no written works behind, he left two prominent deputies: Muḥammad Pārsā (d. 822/1419–20) and ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (d. 802/1400). Pārsā concentrated his efforts on writing books and training students in the madrasa tradition, whereas the ṭarīqa was continued by ʿAṭṭār, who had two important caliphs: Niẓām al-Dīn Khāmūsh (d. 853/1449) and Yaʿqūb al-Charkhī (d. 851/1447). The founder of the Aḥrāriyya branch, ʿUbaydallāh Aḥrār (d. 895/1490), a deputy of al-Charkhī, was a key figure in the history of Sufism. Through Aḥrār’s caliph ʿAbdallāh Ilāhī Simāwī (d. 893/1487), the Aḥrāriyya reached Anatolia and Rumelia, thereby planting the seeds of the early Anatolian Naqshbandiyya. A sub-branch of the Aḥrāriyya known as Kāsāniyya or Dahbidiyya quickly spread to Central Asia and eastern Turkestan. This branch of the Naqshbandiyya, which adopted the vocalised invocation and music, was the most effective ṭarīqa in Central Asia from the tenth/sixteenth to the twelfth/eighteenth century. However, with the arrival in Central Asia of large numbers of shaykhs from the Mujaddidī branch of the Naqshbandiyya

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(in India), the Kāsāniyya lost its former influence. The Āfāqiyya branch, which emerged from the Kāsāniyya, was nonetheless very active in China and Tibet (Papas, parts 1–3). One of the most important phases in Naqshbandī history was the emergence of the Mujaddidiyya branch in the eleventh/seventeenth century. This sub-order was named after the spiritual title of its founder al-Sirhindī (d. 1034/1624), who was called “Mujaddid-i alf-i thānī” (The renewer of the second millennium). Its spread made the Naqshbandiyya one of the most active orders in India, with the Indian subcontinent becoming the third major centre of the ṭarīqa, after Central Asia and Anatolia. Giving a new interpretation to Sufism in his Maktūbāt (The epistles), al-Sirhindī exerted a long-ranging influence on modern Naqshbandīs. The Khālidiyya is the third largest branch in the history of the order; it began with Mawlānā Khālid al-Baghdādī (d. 1242/1827), whose tomb is in Damascus. In addition to Anatolia, this branch spread across Iraq, Syria, Ḥijāz, the north Caucasus (Dagestan, Chechnya) and Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia). The majority of Naqshbandīs in Turkey are from the Khālidī branch (Tosun, Nakşibendiyye). The Naqshbandiyya has two major invocations: the name of the sacred essence (ism al-dhāt) and the invocation of negation (nafy) and affirmation (ithbāt). Disciples were taught to concentrate on the five subtle points (al-laṭāʾif al-khamsa) in the lower and upper sections of the chest, the final one being between the eyebrows. After the invocations came a phase of introspective contemplation (murāqaba) on the meanings of certain Qurʾānic verses. Another element was the practice of concentrating on the image of one’s shaykh by trying to visualise his countenance. The Naqshbandiyya’s congregational remembrance ceremony is called khatm al-Khwājagān. Their invocation was often silent (Tosun, Nakşibendiyye [Âdâb ve Erkân]). Two post-mediaeval Ṣūfī orders are worth mentioning: the Ṣafawiyya and the Khalwatiyya. Named after Ṣafī l-Dīn al-Ardabīlī (d. 735/1334), a deputy of Ibrāhīm Zāhid al-Jīlānī (d. 700/1301), the Ṣafawiyya order spread over a large area that included Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Ḥijāz, Anatolia, and Rumelia (Mazzaoui, ch. 4). Reaching its zenith of power and influence during the time of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Ardabīlī (better known as Khwāja ʿAlī, a grandson Ṣafī l-Dīn), the ṭarīqa became more politically-motivated under the leadership of Shaykh Junayd b. Ibrāhīm Ṣafawī (d. 864/1460), a grandson of Khwāja ʿAlī. The Ṣafawī order began to incline towards Shīʿism, hoping to thereby gain a large following among Shīʿa-oriented tribes in Anatolia. In the beginning of the tenth/sixteenth century, the Ṣafawī order became Iran’s Ṣafavid state, which officially adopted Twelver Shīʿism as its religious denomination. Owing to the red turban that Shaykh Junayd wore, the heterodox groups in Anatolia affiliated

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with the Ṣafawiyya came to be called Qizilbāsh (lit., “red heads”) (Minorsky, 61; Yıldırım, Turkomans, 223–4). According to the literature of the order, ʿUmar al-Khalwatī (d. 800/1397) was the first master of the Khalwatiyya, and their centre was initially Azerbaijan (De Jong, Khalwatiyya). He came to be called Khalwatī because he frequently observed a spiritual retreat (khalwat) in a tree hollow. The second master was Yaḥyā al-Shirwānī (d. 870/1466), whose tomb was inside the Shirvānshāhlar Palace in Baku. Through al-Shirwānī’s caliphs, the order first spread to Anatolia, and from there to the Balkans, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Sudan, Abyssinia, and Southeast Asia. It was the most common ṭarīqa of Ottoman Anatolia. The Khalwatiyya ramified into four main branches: the Rūshaniyya (founded by Dede ʿUmar Rūshanī, d. 892/1487), the Jamāliyya (founded by Jamāl al-Dīn al-Khalwatī, d. 899/1494), the Aḥmadiyya (founded by Aḥmad Shams al-Dīn al-Marmarawī Yiğitbāshī, d. 910/1504) and the Shamsiyya (founded by Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad Sīvāsī, d. 1006/1597). From these four branches originated many sub-branches. The Ramaḍāniyya, a sub-branch of the Aḥmadiyya, was founded by Ramaḍān al-Dīn al-Makhfī (d. 1025/1616) and spread from Anatolia to the Balkans; the Shaʿbāniyya, a sub-branch of the Jamāliyya, was founded by Ḥājjī Shaʿbān Walī (d. 976/1568–9), then spread to Egypt through Muṣṭafā Kamāl al-Dīn al-Bakrī (d. 1162/1749). Many of the Khalwatī sub-branches in Egypt were extensions of the Bakriyya. The Khalwatiyya spread to Algeria through the sub-branch called the Raḥmāniyya. In the early twelfth/eighteenth century, a sub-branch of the Khalwatiyya called the Jerrāḥiyya was founded. Khalwatīs observed the spiritual retreat for the purification of the soul in accordance with a specific method and manner. The practice of retreat was based on the Prophet’s retreat into the cave of Ḥirāʾ before the first revelation. Disciples undertook spiritual travelling with seven divine names. There were seven major attributes of the self (nafs) that corresponded to the first seven divine names. The wird al-sattār (beginning with “Yā Sattār”) of Yaḥyā al-Shirwānī was read by all Khalwatīs. On certain days of the week, the congregation engaged in a remembrance ceremony called dawrān (a concentric movement turning clockwise or reverse) that was performed with music, and ḍarb-i asmāʾ (a forceful focus and a rapid movement of the head to the side of the heart while chanting the divine names). Senior members of the path have produced a vast body of literature that reflects Ibn al-ʿArabī’s idea of the “oneness of being” (Ceyhan). From Anatolia: Mawlawiyya, Bektāshiyya, Bayrāmiyya, and Jalwatiyya In seventh-/thirteenth-century Anatolia, the Mawlawiyya/Mevleviyye and the Bektāshiyya/Bektāşiyye were founded; in the ninth/fifteenth century the 2.6

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Bayrāmiyya/Bayrāmiyye emerged; and in the eleventh/seventeenth century the Jalwatiyya/Celvetiyye appeared as a continuation of the Bayrāmī lineage. The Mawlawiyya, centred in the province of Konya, took its name from Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī (d. 672/1273) (Yazıcı, Margoliouth, and De Jong). After his death, the order was represented by “çelebīs” (that is, shaykhs who were invariably descendants of Rūmī) and based in Konya. The Mawlawiyya expanded its geographical reach and thus influenced the more than one hundred mawlawī-khānas (lodges) in the important urban centres of the Ottoman Empire, such as Istanbul, Bursa, Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo, and regional centres such as Lebanon, the Balkans, and the Crimea (Küçük). According to the information given by the Ottoman biographer Thāqib Dede, the manners of the order (ādāb al-ṭarīqa), which was highly ritualised, were definitively instituted during the time of Pīr ʿĀdil Çelebī (d. 864/1460) (Thāqib Dede, 1:134), and the choreography of the famous whirling ceremony (samāʿ) took its final form during the time of Pīr Ḥusayn Çelebī (d. 1077/1666). Named after Ḥājjī Bektāsh Walī (d. c. 669/1270), the Bektāshiyya is related to the Wafāʾiyya that was founded in Baghdad by Abū l-Wafāʾ al-Baghdādī (d. 501/1107), and also to the Yasawiyya (Zarcone, Bektaşiyye). Owing to its pivotal role in the establishment of the Janissary Corps, the Bektāshiyya preserved its influence throughout Ottoman history. Bālim Sulṭān (d. 925/1519), who organised the order, may have incorporated certain non-Sunnī elements into the manners and pillars of the ṭarīqa (Rıfkı, 416–7; Yıldırım, Hacı Bektaş, 261–85). ʿAlī and the people of the Prophet’s household (ahl al-bayt) held a central position in the ṭarīqa, as did the twelve Imāms. All Bektāshī rites and rules were based on the well-known Ṣūfī formula of “four gateways and forty stations.” According to this formula, the servant of God (ʿabd) can only reach the truth (al-ḥaqq) by passing through the gateways of law (sharīʿa), path (ṭarīqa), gnosis (maʿrifa), and pure truth (ḥaqīqa) and then traversing the ten stations associated with each. Just as the Mawlawiyya had a central structure, Bektāshī lodges, particularly those in the Balkans, were strictly supervised by the Ḥājjī Bektāsh Āsitāne (head lodge) in Nevşehir. The ṭarīqa observed the practice of celibacy (tajarrud), which it took from the Qalandariyya movement. The Bektāshī remembrance was called āyīn-i jamʿ. With the abolition of the Janissary Corps by Maḥmūd II in the ninteenth century, the Bektāshiyya lost almost all of its former properties (Ocak). The Bayrāmiyya was the first Turkish order founded by a Ṣūfī born and raised in Anatolia, namely, Ḥājjī Bayrām Walī (d. 833/1429) (Clayer, Popovic, and Zarcone (eds.)). The ṭarīqa stemmed from the lineage of Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Aksarāyī, popularly known as Somuncu Bābā (d. 815/1412), who was one of the caliphs of the Ṣafavid shaykh Khwāja ʿAlī. The ṭarīqa was based in Ankara

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and after the death of its master, ramified into two branches: the Shamsiyya/ Şemsiyye, named after Aq Shams al-Dīn (d. 863/1459), and the Malāmiyya/ Melāmiyye, ascribed to Dede ʿUmar Sikkīnī (d. 880/1475), both were deputies of Ḥājjī Bayrām Walī. Ṣūfī sources state that Aq Shams al-Dīn, who participated in the conquest of Constantinople, wrote Meḥmed II a series of letters in which he exhorted the sultan to persistence and patience, thereby he made a significant contribution to the conquest. A number of Ḥamzavī shaykhs who followed the Bayrāmī-Malāmī path were closely scrutinised because of their heterodox beliefs (Şahin). In the first half of the eleventh/seventeenth century, the Jalwatiyya order was founded by ʿAzīz Maḥmūd Hüdāyī (d. 1038/1628–9) in Istanbul. In contrast to the Khalwatiyya practice of spiritual retreat, the Jalwatiyya adopted the principle of jalwa (being with God in society). The Bayrāmiyya became widespread in the Balkans through the Jalwatī/Celvetī branch. Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī Bursavī, the founder of the Ḥaqqiyya branch of the Jalwatiyya, was a prolific Ottoman Ṣūfī author (Yılmaz). 2.7 From India: Chishtiyya and Shaṭṭāriyya At the beginning of the seventh/thirteenth century, Muʿīn al-Dīn al-Chishtī (d. 633/1236; born in Chisht, Afghanistan) founded the Chishtī order in the city of Ajmer, India (Ernst and Lawrence, ch. 2–4). The order spread across the whole of the Indian subcontinent, and became one of the four most common orders in India (along with the Qādiriyya, the Naqshbandiyya, and the Suhrawardiyya). The Chishtiyya reached its peak during the time of Farīd al-Dīn Masʿūd ‘Ganj-i Shakar’ (d. 664/1265–6) and Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (d. 725/1325); it spread to the rural provinces of India by the disciples of Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ. In the first half of the eighth/fourteenth century, under Burhān al-Dīn al-Gharīb (d. 738/1337), the order reached the Deccan. The Chishtiyya developed in two branches, that is, the Niẓāmiyya and Ṣābiriyya, which Chishtī authors (quoted in Subhan, 227) perceived as spiritual variations based on saintly personalities (roughly, sociability or ṣuḥba for the former and reclusion or khalwa for the latter) rather than as competing factions. The prescribed set of manners and pillars of the order involved vocalised dhikr, introspective contemplation, and, above all, samāʿ (Nizāmī, 343–6). ʿAbdallāh Shaṭṭār (d. 890/1485), a Central Asian Ṣūfī of the ʿIshqiyya order who had moved to India and spread its teachings in Jawnpur, Bengal, Rajasthan, and Mandu established the Shaṭṭāriyya. He built a lodge in Mandu, in which he was buried. Disciples continued his activities of training and writing from Gujarat to south India, and as far as Medina and Indonesia (Rizvi, 2:151–73). The treatises penned by the leaders of the order, such as Shaṭṭār’s Laṭāʾif al-ghaybiyya (Subtleties of the unseen), Bahāʾ al-Dīn Shaṭṭārī’s (d. 921/1515)

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Risāla-yi Shaṭṭāriyya, and Muḥammad Ghawth (of Ghwāliyār) Shaṭṭārī’s (d. 970/1562–3) Gulzār-i abrār, represented the Shaṭṭāriyya as a path superior to the others, because its method, influenced by Yogic practices, offered the disciple a way to quickly harmonise his soul with God’s essence. To conclude, the establishment of Ṣūfī orders has been an ongoing topic of discussion among Muslim mystics themselves. Seeking to understand the development of their own institutions, Ṣūfī authors describe the evolution of spiritual paths (ṭuruq) according to two main processes. The first is territorial. As we have observed, in addition to the places of origins of the founding masters, e.g., Iraq, Syria, Egypt, etc., Ṣūfī paths were represented as branches that reached various regions through deputies and emissaries (khulafāʾ) who helped to establish the brotherhood in the daily life of their respective localities. This territorial process was eventually presented as the manifestation of the master’s saintly power (baraka), in the sense that the saint (walī) ruled over a province (wilāya). His baraka was active in a particular space both antemortem and post-mortem. The second process, from the Ṣūfī point of view, is iterative. In addition to a rather repetitive onomastic produced by eponyms and family names (for example, ʿAbd al-Qādir, Qādiriyya, al-Qādirī), Muslim mystics described the general dynamic of the ṭuruq in terms of chains of transmission (salāsil), repetitive tasks (litanies [awrād] and invocations [adhkār]), manners (ādāb) to practice and doctrinal rules (arkān), that is, concepts that suggested repetition with subtle variations in the formation of Ṣūfī orders. Bibliography

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Abun-Nasr, Jamil M., The Tijaniyya. A Sufi order in the modern world, London 1965. Algar, Hamid, Hâcegân, TDVIA 14 (Istanbul 1996), 431. Algar, Hamid, Kobraviya i. The eponym, EIr. Algar, Hamid, Kobraviya ii. The order, EIr. Azamat, N., Kādiriyye, TDVIA 24 (Istanbul 2001), 131–6. Baş, Derya Çakır, Bedeviyye, in Semih Ceyhan (ed.), Türkiye’de Tarikatlar (Istanbul 2018), 547–608. Buehler, Arthur, Ekrem Işın, and Thierry Zarcone, eds., Journal of the History of Sufism 1–2. The Qâdiriyya order (2000). Çakır, Adalet, Kādiriyye, in Semih Ceyhan (ed.), Türkiye’de Tarikatlar (Istanbul 2018), 159–220. Ceyhan, Semih, Halvetiyye, in Semih Ceyhan (ed.), Türkiye’de Tarikatlar (Istanbul 2018), 695–710. Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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Clayer, Nathalie, Alexandre Popovic, and Thierry Zarcone, eds., Melâmis-Bayrâmis. Etudes sur trois mouvements mystiques musulmans, Istanbul 1998. De Jong, Frederick, Khalwatiyya, EI2. De Jong, Frederick, Materials relative to the history of the Darqawa order and its branches, Arabica 26/2 (1979): 126–43. De Jong, Frederick, Ṭuruq and ṭuruq-linked institutions in nineteenth century Egypt. A historical study in organizational dimensions of Islamic mysticism, Leiden 1978. Ernst, Carl and Bruce Lawrence, Sufi martyrs of love. The Chishti order in South Asia and beyond, New York 2002. Geoffroy, Eric, ed., Une voie soufie dans le monde. La Shâdhiliyya, Paris 2005. Ghāzī, Muḥammad, al-Ṭarīqat al-Ṣaʿdiyya fī bilād al-Shām, vol. 1, Damascus 2003. Gökbulut, Süleyman, Necmeddîn-i Kübrâ. Hayatı, Eserleri, Görüşleri, Istanbul 2010. Güven, Mustafa Salim, Şazeliyye, in Semih Ceyhan (ed.), Türkiye’de Tarikatlar (Istanbul 2018), 373–443. Hodgson, Marshall, The venture of Islam. Vol. 2: Conscience and history in a world civilization, Chicago 1974. İnançer, Ö. T., Sa’dilikte zikir usûlü ve musiki, Dünden Bugüne İstanbul Ansiklopedisi vii (Istanbul 1994), 394. İnançer, Ö. T., Rituals and main principles of sufism during Ottoman Empire, in Ahmet Yaşar Ocak (ed.), Sufism and Sufis in Ottoman society (Ankara 2005), 125–70. Kara, Mustafa, Bedeviyye, TDVIA 5 (Istanbul 1992), 318–29. Khalaf Allāh, A., al-Sayyid Ibrāhīm al-Dasūqī. Min qādat al-fikr al-ṣūfī l-islām, Cairo 2012. Knysh, Alexander, Islamic mysticism. A short history, Leiden 2000. Küçük, Sezai, Mevleviyye, in Semih Ceyhan (ed.), Türkiye’de Tarikatlar (Istanbul 2018), 496–509, 517. le Chatelier, Alfred, Les Confréries musulmanes du Hedjaz, Paris 1887. Lings, Martin, A Sufi saint of the twentieth century. Shaykh Ahmad al-ʿAlawi, his spiritual heritage and legacy, London 1971. Maḥmūd, ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm, Qadiyya al-taṣawwuf. Al-madrasa al-Shadhiliyya, Cairo n.d. Mazzaoui, Michel M., The origins of the Ṣafawids. Šīʿism, Ṣūfism, and the ġulāt, Wiesbaden 1972. Nizāmī, Khāliq Aḥmad, Çiştiyye, TDVIA 8 (Istanbul 1993), 343–6. Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar, Bektaşiyye, in Semih Ceyhan (ed.), Türkiye’de Tarikatlar (Istanbul 2018), 462–4, 468–71. Ohlander, Erik S., Sufism in an age of transition. ʿUmar al-Suhrawardi and the rise of the Islamic mystical brotherhoods, Leiden 2008. Öngören, Reşat, Tarihte bir aydın tarikatı. Zeynîler, Istanbul 2003. Öngören, Reşat, Sühreverdiyye, TDVIA 38 (Istanbul 2010), 42–5. Papas, Alexandre, Soufisme et politique entre Chine, Tibet et Turkestan. Etude sur les Khwajas naqshbandis du Turkestan oriental, Paris 2005. Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

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Popovic, Alexandre, Un ordre de derviches en terre d’Europe. La Rifâ‘iyya, Lausanne 1993. Rifʿat Efendī, M., Nafḥa al-riyāẓ al-ʿāliye, in Mehmed Rif’at Efendi’nin Nefhatü’rRiyâzi’l-Aliye’sinde Abdulkâdir-i Geylânî ve Kâdirîlik, ed. Adalet Çakır, vol. 2, Istanbul 2012. Rizvi, Saiyid Athar Abbas, A history of Sufism in India, vol. 2, Delhi 2002. Şahin, Haşim, Bayramiyye, in Semih Ceyhan (ed.), Türkiye’de Tarikatlar (Istanbul 2018), 781–2, 797–822. Sobieroj, Florian, Suhrawardiyya, EI2. Subhan, John A., Sufism. Its saints and shrines, Lucknow 1960. Tahralı, Mustafa, Rifâiyye, in Semih Ceyhan (ed.), Türkiye’de Tarikatlar (Istanbul 2018), 285–312. Tosun, Necdet, Nakşibendiyye [Âdâb ve Erkân], TDVIA 32 (Istanbul 2006), 342–3. Tosun, Necdet, Nakşibendiyye, in Semih Ceyhan (ed.), Türkiye’de Tarikatlar (Istanbul 2018), 611–28. von Schlegell, Barbara, Saʿdiyya, EI2. Yazıcı, Tahsin, David S. Margoliouth, and Frederick De Jong, Mawlawiyya, EI2. Yıldırım, Rıza, Turkomans between two empires. The origin of the Qizilbash identity in Anatolia (1447–1514), PhD dissertation, Bilkent University, Ankara 2008. Yıldırım, Rıza, Hacı Bektaş Veli’den Balım Sultan’a Bektaşiliğin doğuşu, Istanbul 2019. Yılmaz, Hasan Kâmil, Celvetiyye, in Semih Ceyhan (ed.), Türkiye’de Tarikatlar (Istanbul 2018), 929–31. Yücer, Hür Mahmut, Sa’diyye, in Semih Ceyhan (ed.), Türkiye’de Tarikatlar (Istanbul 2018), 223–81. Zarcone, Thierry, Yasawiyya, EI2. Zarcone, Thierry, Bektaşiyye, EI3.

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Chapter 22

Cyber Sufism Stéphane A. Dudoignon Among the widely circulated misconceptions of Sufism is the idea that this ensemble of initiatory traditions is a form of social withdrawal that encourages people to turn their backs on social responsibilities and commitments in order to retreat into a private world of devotion (e.g., Algar). The expansion of Sufism in cyberspace from the mid-1990s onwards suggests that Ṣūfīs have been able to utilise increasingly multidirectional media for the reinvention of gnostic practices and sociability, while showing themselves intensely active on the sociocultural, educational, and even political levels—in Muslim-minority or majority societies, and against very diverse socioeconomic backdrops. Conversely, the internet’s very evolution, especially after the irruption of social media (that is, “social networks”) since the mid-2000s, has exerted, together with the continuing demographic changes during this period, a deep impact on the ongoing transformation of Sufism itself (on the significance of this historical moment for the Middle Eastern internet in general, see Gonzalez-Quijano, Communautés virtuelles, 196). Three different types of historical factors have favoured these phenomena. The first is socio-industrial; it is linked to the combination of labour migration with the redeployment, through emerging electronic media, of social networking in diasporic contexts, as well as the development of diasporic public spheres. In what follows, we see how several ṭuruq, including the most influential, have tried to adjust to these new global circumstances. The second type of factor springs from the very nature of the internet and web 2.0, as well as from the influence that both have exerted on the evolution of Sufism in two quite different geopolitical contexts—namely, before and after the Maghrib– Mashriq revolutions and upheavals of 2011 and thereafter. In retrospect, rapid changes in attitudes toward authority and in methods of mobilisation were obvious and undeniable. The third type of factor pertains to the unique interactions that developed in cyberspace between Ṣūfīs and the widening ranges of cultural and religious practice, Muslim or not. Here, emulation between Ṣūfīs and Salafīs—and, more generally, the proliferation of modern forms of proselytising (e.g., El Naggar)—highlight the need for panoramic approaches that take into account the sum total of the practitioners’ changing relationships to the media.

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Ultimately, the main question is, has the spread of the internet and of web 2.0 been as revolutionary, for the growth and dissemination of Sufism, and for the virtualisation of Islamic spirituality, as the diffusion of printed matter was during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see Sedgwick in this volume)? Once again, the medium is, in part at least, the message. It paves the way, this time, to a new religious public sphere that innovatively juxtaposes confessional issues with trade, entertainment, and professional life, multiplying horizontal relationships and promoting new hierarchies substituting webmasters for headmasters (cf. Campbell, 312; Hackett, 73; Eickelman and Anderson, 14–6). Commodification through the spread of the market principle of supply and demand also raises issues pertaining to the very meaning of initiation, membership, and hierarchy, as well as the place of e-Sufism within the context of the much-debated advent of “post-Islamism.” If confirmed, how will such trends, all highlighted by social science research since the mid-1990s, affect our global understanding of this multidimensional socio-technological change and its challenges, notably, to sociological categories such as community and virtual experience? 1

Socio-Industrial Legacies and Backdrops

The height of social reach was achieved by Ṣūfīs in the years following World War I. Since then, they faced a succession of challenges, from Muslim reformist critique to state regulation and the loss of socioeconomic power. Toward the middle of the twentieth century, the propagation of movable-type printing and the expansion of schooling to the masses had already generated an unprecedented pluralisation of religious authority and doctrine, emphasised by new media technologies and forms of association (e.g., Eickelman, Clash of cultures, 290–5). The influence of Sufism continued to decline, along with the social significance of early modern agro-pastoral landholdings on which its social force had long relied, and in spite of state support of certain ṭuruq in certain areas at certain times, against rapidly mushrooming Islamist organisations (e.g., Weismann; Sabra in this volume). Some Ṣūfī traditions, however, could be passed on, albeit in modern shapes and forms, or through commodification, e.g., by music recordings. In Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia, Ṣūfīs began to appeal to audiences in the ever-growing labour and trading diasporas, in new English, French, or Russian cultural idioms. And at the turn of the 2000s, with the exile of a number of leading shaykhs from their countries of origin, new forms of Sufism appeared, primarily in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation

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and Development) countries, though in ever closer interaction with the traditional abode of Islam (Green, 214–5). The enlargement of Sufism’s territoriality itself was largely prepared by the massive migrations, both rural/rural and rural/urban, which began in the last quarter of the twentieth century (even in such a polity as the USSR: cf. Shikhaliev). Among other features of this evolution, we can mention the increasing appeal to urban educated middle classes, stimulated by shaykhs henceforth equipped with science or medical degrees and/or allied with pious industrialists; and the blurring of boundaries between religious and academic discourses—the result of frequent partnerships between sacred lineages and university teachers for the redesigning and modernisation of traditions and saint cults of rural origin (e.g., Dudoignon, A surrogate aristocracy). 2

The Ṣūfī Tradition in the First Internet Revolution

The diffusion of the internet in the 1990s was instrumental in strengthening several features of this modernity. Early websites, in fact, used new ways of broadcasting information, thereby prolonging the letterpress revolution, with analogous effects on the further diversification of written production (e.g., Gonzalez-Quijano, La Renaissance Arabe; Chih, Mayeur-Jaouen and Seesemann, 13–6), and on the general evolution of spiritual authority (e.g., on Twelver Shīʿa marjaʿiyyat, Rosiny; on Alevi dedes, Sökefeld; Dressler). Innovation itself directly resulted from socio-demographic changes that had been in evidence for decades. Innovation was spurred on in the 2000s by new feelings of insecurity among children of first-generation migrants (e.g., Bunt and Cheruvallil-Contractor, on Sufism in Great Britain; Rytter, on South Asian Muslim practitioners in Denmark). Diaspora contexts proved decisive in the activities of Ṣūfī groups (either imported, deprived of a pre-existing migrant community, or those that involved actors raised in the West) (Green, 221; Piraino, 97–9). The spread of Sufism to the former colonial metropolises was aided by the internet, which came to fulfil three functions: it provided information regarding Sufism while also enhancing its visibility; it transcended distances between disciples and itinerant masters or marabouts operating from a sacred city such as Touba for Senegalese and Guinean Murīds/Mourides; and it offered a space where religious experiences could be reaffirmed, for example, by sharing rituals by video (cf. Milani and Possamai, Nimatullahiya; and Milani and Possamai, Sufism, on several branches of the Niʿmatullāhiyya between Iran and Australia; on the Mouride segment of the Tijāniyya between Francophone West Africa, western Europe, and Canada, see Traoré; Bondaz).

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A number of ṭuruq occasionally participate in the introduction of computer science and information technology into the “Third World”; this led to an increase in their size, and, after a century of gradual decline, their shaykhs and khalīfas acquired a new territoriality and recovered lost positions of influence. Displaying digital versions of the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth, undertaking digitalisations of Islamic literature for the public, these sites, sometimes unofficial and requiring account numbers, of such diverse Ṣūfī organisations as the Algerian-born ʿAlāwiyya, the cross-border Senegalese and Guinean Murīds/Mourides, the varied branches of the Iranian Niʿmatullāhiyya, and the Italian Aḥmadiyya Idrīsiyya Shādhiliyya, resorted to the internet to keep ranks closed. Such services as mailing lists, contact details of zāwiyas and of dargāhs worldwide, even Ṣūfī dating websites such as the one for the Naqshbandiyya Khālidiyya Ḥaqqāniyya, increased communitas (that is, a sense of belonging was deepened by confidential sharing or collective listening to the teachings or group chants of a shaykh seldom seen in public) as did access to charismatic counselling or to dream interpretation (by e-mail request). Discourses of cultural resistance against diverse hegemonies that varied according to the audiences targeted, have also helped fuel a sense of community, as the defence of Persian cultural legacy ( farhang) did among modern Niʿmatullāhīs (van den Bos, 62–5). The Moroccan-born Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya has also been a pioneer in the preservation and dissemination of tradition through globalisation. Since its reform by Shaykh Ḥamza (al-Budshīshī) (d. 2017) in the 1970s, it has become appealing to French-speaking educated urbanites, men and women, in France, Belgium, and Canada and has inspired the construction of a transnational Francophone community (Haddad, 204–6; Dominguez Diaz, 62–77). Some, however, in the universe of the ṭuruq, developed new relationships to the medium, and passed from Sufism online to online Sufism, as it were, helped by the boom of the social media from the mid-2000s onwards. 3 The Fuqarāʾ in Command? Web 2.0 and Its Irregular Impacts The first social media/networks appeared worldwide in 1997, followed in the early 2000s by web 2.0. The Wikipedia model revealed that users, rather than professional content producers, predominated over the medium. Indeed, cable TV in the 1960s and 1970s had already opened the way for expressions of non-mainstream voices, before passing to the control of larger companies. It was only around 2004, however, that one could observe the quick expansion of “peer-driven” platforms that relied on individual computer users to upload the bulk of their content, and on readers to filter the information conveyed. Half a

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decade later, a new generation of low-cost PCs flooded the international market, followed (since 2013) by the mass diffusion of 4G smartphone applications that opened the era of “micropreneur” activity (cf. Ryan, 181): developing digital skills was no longer only the preserve of rich countries and upper classes. What impact did this new turning point have on the role of the fuqarāʾ (ordinary Ṣūfīs) in the practice and diffusion of Sufism? Granted with a hermeneutic dimension of orality suitable to multiple interpretations and to contestation of authority and expression of alternative voices, web 2.0 has led to a fragmentation of the canon, which resulted in a challenge to the traditional figures of authority and in the development of mechanisms of confrontation (Varlik, 50–1, 60–1). Globalisation, however, proceeded diversely, sometimes paradoxically. Telling illustrations of this complex, sometimes unpredictable evolution are provided by three ṭuruq of diverse origin, all of which maintain a strong global presence, especially in cyberspace—viz., the Tijānī Murīds/Mourides, the Naqshbandiyya Ḥaqqāniyya, and certain branches of the Niʿmatullāhiyya. Among the Naqshbandīs and the Niʿmatullāhīs, the ṭarīqa itself has come to coexist with new non-initiatory trends, and today, traditionalist discourses are often associated with services available to wider audiences. In particular, during the 2010s, the Ḥaqqānīs’ web presence has grown, thanks to its many YouTube channels and Google groups, its presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and the development of iPhone applications (Piraino, 100–3). In addition, the relative youth of the disciples of the Ḥaqqāniyya, the authoritative role played by khalīfas in the Naqshbandiyya, and this organisation’s structural fluidity have allowed its murīds to develop blogs and websites of their own. Moreover, not content with disseminating knowledge, the Murīds/Mourides, the Ḥaqqāniyya and the Niʿmatullāhīs display online supernatural powers based on images endowed with the baraka of their respective quṭbs and reformers from the late nineteenth century, namely Shaykh Aḥmadu Bàmba Mbàkke, Shaykh Nazım Kıbrısı of Cyprus, and Shaykh Javād Nūrbakhsh. They have also used music and videos subtitled in several European languages (rather than written documents in the classical Islamic idiom) the former’s US sites offer the opportunity to take the bayʿa (oath of allegiance) online (Nielsen, Draper, and Yemelianova; Haddad; Milani and Possamai, The Nimatullahiya; Bondaz, 261–4; Piraino). 4

From Sufism Online to Online Sufism?

Making smartphone applications (especially on Facebook) “a place to live religion” (Piraino, 103), the Ḥaqqānīs and Niʿmatullāhīs have gone farther than most other ṭuruq, for which sharing by telephone emotions experienced in the

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framework of Ṣūfī sociability remains a disputable deed. Such an evolution has multiple implications for the future development of Sufism of course, but also of the internet itself, in its interactions with religion. In fact, as we have seen, Sufism online remained confined to a limited set of functions: providing basic information about and defending the ṭuruq (against growing anti-Ṣūfī currents); organising events; and facilitating master/adept contact. There was little space for individual initiative or prospects, save for the selective discovery of texts and participation in discussions about orthopraxy. Traditional ṭuruq, from this viewpoint, were making the most of the new industrial asset, as were certain madrasas, after half a century of parallel decline. After all, the internet contents of both institutions did not differ much from those given in the real world (including fundraising campaigns for Islamic aid organisations: e.g., Eickelman, Madrasas in Morocco, and on Deobandi madrasas in South and Southwest Asia: Zaman, 77–81; Dudoignon, Sunnis online, 48–52; on the Muslim Brotherhood movement: Gonzalez-Quijano, Communautés virtuelles, 204). For the ṭuruq, as for diverse madrasa networks, online communication has, in many instances, strengthened centralist tendencies (on murābiṭūn/ marabouts operating from Touba, in Senegal: Traoré, 65; and more generally Howell and van Bruinessen, 11–2). Online Sufism, however, as dispensed by the Naqshbandiyya Ḥaqqāniyya and by diverse branches of the Niʿmatullāhiyya, has opened different perspectives, because these traditions are especially open to diverse audiences (the Ḥaqqānīs are particularly lenient regarding the initiation process, the murīds’ observance and conduct, the definition of membership and, overall, the hierarchy, a fact that has, apparently threatened to lead to the dissolution of the ṭarīqa). Such tendencies have led, of course, to an extreme diversification of Ṣūfī practices and discourses, sometimes in one and the same tradition, with strong opposition between countries with old, structured, and hierarchised Muslim communities and those without (e.g., Haddad, 202, on the Ḥaqqāniyya and the Būdshīshiyya between Paris and Montreal). In the diaspora, high turnovers of disciples, growing numbers of syncretistic believers and the adoption—at least vis-à-vis some of the ṭarīqa’s audience—of a consumerist discourse on religion have transformed some Ṣūfī spiritual lineages into marketing brands. In this way, religion has evolved into a client/healer therapeutic relationship embodied, for instance, in “psychological Sufism” as practiced by the psychiatrist Javād Nūrbakhsh (on the “MacDonaldisation” of the online Niʿmatullāhiyya in the Australian context, cf. Milani and Possamai, The Nimatullahiya, esp. 61). De-Islamised, fusion Sufism, influenced by the post-1960s stress on spirituality, was a response to the eclecticism of the global religious marketplace. As a result, this “neo-Sufism” has become central in debates over the phenomena

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of post-Islamism and secular religion. However, from a top-down viewpoint at least, here we have dealt with what is, perhaps, a two-dimensional (or multidimensional) Sufism, one that characterises modern-day spiritual entrepreneurship on the one hand and, on the other hand, within the Ṣūfī tradition proper, a rapidly growing inventory of globalised, multi-audience ṭuruq. A distinctive feature brought about by the proliferation of hybrid forums is the further blurring of boundaries between religious officialdom, the universe of the ṭuruq, the academy, the media and the public—the internet being sometimes perceived as an instrument of verification and approval. 5

Some Conclusions

Participants and internet audiences in the old and new worlds of Islam, especially those of generations X and Y (born with the internet and with social media), show an increasingly eclectic, flexible, and practical relationship to belief, knowledge, and belonging in the context of electronic taṣawwuf as well as in their overall participation in other spiritual e-sociability. The global challenge that this phenomenon represents for the long-term viability of the ṭuruq requires a truly multidisciplinary study of Sufism as the distinct site of varied online communities. It cannot be dealt with simply through the institutional and content analyses that still prevail in the field. A combination of global social science approaches is necessary to comprehend not only the religious uses of this multidimensional technological revolution, but also the religious perceptions of this new medium, with particular attention to audience/viewer usage and practice. The internet per se subverts such categories as “minority religious groups,” while also questioning the distinction between public and private, central and marginal, orthodox and heterodox, religious and secular, and confirming the more general ambivalence of the phenomenon of religion (Hackett, 73). The flexibility of the information conveyed via web 2.0 has resulted in a form of return to orality and in a new stage of exegetic competition, one that simultaneously accentuates the symbolic significance of orthopraxy (e.g., Ryan, 138–9). In spiritual life as in the political sphere during the 2010s, new technologies of communication have exerted a concurrently liberating effect in documentation, coordination, and mobilisation. In this context, the flexible affiliations of e-Sufism allow for the creation of a wide public sphere that can, eventually, escape the logics of both the state and marketplace (Gonzalez-Quijano, Arabités numériques, 95–6; Dagnaud, 57). In the meantime, we can state that Sufism has survived against all odds, managing to “preserve much of its charm” (Weismann, 280), and maintaining

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a viable stake in the global religious market by adjusting to new technologies and organisational formats. After cable TV and cellular telephony in the last third of the twentieth century, cyberspace has widely continued the task of preserving religious rituals and traditions. Enabled by web 2.0, with an oral character suitable to contest authority and to express alternative voices, the internet, simultaneously, has been strengthening the masters’ control over their pupils by means of an inner normalisation that may stifle, sometimes, initiatives (Gonzalez-Quijano, Communautés virtuelles, 203). The internet, at the same time, was operating as a sacred space and as a vector of new or reinforced sacred territorialities (as we have seen, through the development of identities specifically Persian, for part of the Niʿmatullāhiyya, or Francophone for certain Būdshīshīs and Ḥaqqānīs; see also Hermansen; Werbner). In a parallel development, social media have, since the mid-2000s, facilitated connection to wider, more amorphous communities to discuss matters seen as out of place in wider society, in a quest for mentors and justification of the orthopraxy of their chosen lifestyles. If the development of cyber Sufism remains as unpredictable as that of the internet as a whole, and if the individual has tended to become its primary agent, it is in complex interaction, sometimes even in increasing competition with a typology of more traditional and traditionalist institutional actors. Bibliography Algar, Hamid, Sufism. Principles and practice, Oneonta, NY 2015. Bondaz, Julien, Images culturelles et écrans mourides. Deux cas de controverse iconographique et religieuse sur Internet, in F. Duteil–Ogata et al. (eds.), Le religieux sur Internet (Paris 2015), 261–74. Bos, Matthijs van den, Elements of neo-traditional Sufism in Iran, in M. van Bruinessen and J. D. Howell (eds.), Sufism and the ‘modern’ in Islam (London and New York 2007), 61–75. Bunt, Gary R., [email protected]: “British Muslim” identities in cyberspace, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 10/3 (1999): 353–62. Campbell, Heidi, Making place for religion in internet studies, Information Society 21 (2002): 309–15. Cheruvallil-Contractor, Sariya, Online Sufism—young British Muslims, their internet “selves” and virtual reality, in R. Geaves & Th. Gabriel (eds.), Sufism in Britain (London 2015), 161–76.

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Chih, Rachida, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, and Rüdiger Seesemann, The nineteenth century: A Sufi century?, in R. Chih, C. Mayeur-Jaouen, and R. Seesemann (eds.), Sufi literary production and printing in the nineteenth century (Würzburg 2015), 3–24. Dagnaud, Monique, Le modèle californien. Comment l’esprit collaboratif change le monde, Paris 2016. Dominguez Diaz, Marta, Women in Sufism. Female religiosities in a transnational order, London and New York 2014. Dressler, Marku, The modern Dede. Changing parameters for religious authority in contemporary Turkish Alevism, in G. Krämer and S. Schmidtke (eds.), Speaking for Islam. Religious authorities in Muslim societies (Leiden 2006), 269–94. Dudoignon, Stéphane A., Sunnis online. The Sunni confessional internet in Iran, AS 63/1 (2009): 29–66. Dudoignon, Stéphane A., A surrogate aristocracy? Sufi adab, modernity, rurality and civilisation in ex-Soviet Central Asia, in C. Mayeur-Jaouen and L. Patrizi (eds.), Adab and modernity. A ‘civilisation process’? (Leiden 2019), 527–51. Eickelman, Dale F., Clash of cultures? Intellectuals, their public, and Islam, in S. A. Dudoignon, H. Komatsu, and Y. Kosugi (eds.), Intellectuals in the modern Islamic world. Transmission, transformation, communication (London and New York 2006), 289–304. Eickelman, Dale F., Madrasas in Morocco. Their vanishing public role, in R. W. Hefner and M. Q. Zaman (eds.), Schooling Islam. The politics and culture of modern Muslim education (Princeton 2007), 131–48. Eickelman, Dale F. and Jon W. Anderson, Redefining Muslim publics, in D. F. Eickelman and J. W. Anderson (eds.), New media in the Muslim world. The emerging public sphere (Bloomington, IN 2003), 11–18. El Naggar, Shaimaa, The impact of digitalization on the religious sphere: Televangelism as an example, Journal of Islam and Muslim societies 4/2 (2014): 189–211. Gonzalez-Quijano, Yves, La Renaissance arabe au XIXe siècle: médiums, médiations, médiateurs, in B. Hallaq and H. Toelle (eds.), Histoire de la littérature arabe moderne, 1: 1800–1945 (Arles 2007), 71–113. Gonzalez-Quijano, Yves, Communautés virtuelles de la toile arabe. Une nouvelle fabrique du social, in Y. Gonzalez-Quijano and T. Guaaybess (eds.), Les Arabes parlent aux Arabes. La révolution de l’information dans le monde arabe (Arles 2009), 193–208. Gonzalez-Quijano, Yves, Arabités numériques. Le printemps du Web arabe, Arles 2012. Green, Nile, Sufism. A global history, Chichester 2012. Hackett, Rosalind I. J., Religion and the internet, Diogenes 53/3 (2006): 67–76. Haddad, Mouloud, Zawiya réelle, zawiya virtuelle. Soufisme, francophonie et nouvelles technologies au Québec, Globe: Revue internationale d’études québecqoises 11/1 (2008): 197–208.

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Hermansen, Marcia, Global Sufism. “Theirs” and “Ours,” in M. Dressler, R. Geaves, and G. Klinkhammer (eds.), Sufis in western societies. Global networking and locality (London 2009), 26–45. Howell, Julia Day and Martin van Bruinessen, Introduction, in M. van Bruinessen and J. D. Howell (eds.), Sufism and the ‘modern’ in Islam (London and New York 2007), 3–18. Milani, Milad and Adam Possamai, The Nimatullahiya and Naqshbandiya Sufi orders on the internet. The cyber-construction of tradition and the McDonaldisation of spirituality, Journal of the academic study of religion 26/1 (2013): 51–75. Milani, Milad and Adam Possamai, Sufism, spirituality and consumerism. The case study of the Nimatullahiya and Naqshbandiya Sufi orders in Australia, Contemporary Islam 10/1 (2016): 67–85. Nielsen, Jorgen S., Mustafa Draper, and Galina Yemelianova, Transnational Sufism. The Haqqaniyya, in J. Malik and J. Hinnels (eds.), Sufism in the west (London and New York 2006), 103–14. Piraino, Francesco, Between real and virtual communities. Sufism in western societies and the Naqshbandi Haqqani case, Social compass 63/1 (2016): 93–108. Rosiny, Stephan, Internet et la marja’iyya. l’autorité religieuse au défi des nouveaux médias, Maghreb–Machrek 178 (2004): 59–74. Ryan, Johnny, A history of the internet and the digital future, London 2013. Rytter, Mikkel, Transnational Sufism from below. Charismatic counselling and the quest for well-being, South Asian Diaspora 6/1 (2014): 105–9. Shikhaliev, Shamil, Downward mobility and spiritual life. The development of Sufism in the context of migration in Dagestan, 1940s–2000s, in S. A. Dudoignon and C. Noack (eds.), Allah’s Kolkhozes. Migration, de-Stalinisation, privatisation and the new Muslim congregations in the Soviet realm (1950s–2000s) (Berlin 2014), 398–420. Sökefeld, Martin, Alevism online. Re-imagining a community in virtual space, Diaspora: a journal of transnational studies 11/1 (2002): 5–38. Traoré, Diahara, Entre profane et sacré. Usages d’Internet et islam dans deux communautés musulmanes ouest-africaines à Montréal, Anthropologica 54/1 (2002): 61–9. Varlik, Selami, Le discours islamique sur Internet. Oralité de l’écriture et fragmentation de l’autorité, in F. Duteil–Ogata et al. (eds.), Le religieux sur Internet (Paris 2015), 49–64. Weismann, Itzchak, Sufism in the age of globalisation, in L. Ridgeon (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Sufism (New York 2014), 257–81. Werbner, Pnina, Transnational and regional cults, in L. Ridgeon (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Sufism (New York 2014), 282–300. Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, Tradition and authority in Deobandi madrasas of South Asia, in R. W. Hefner and M. Q. Zaman (eds.), Schooling Islam. The politics and culture of modern Muslim education (Princeton 2007), 61–86.

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Index Page numbers in bold refer to illustrations ʿAbbādān 106, 161, 175–176, 362–363 ʿAbbās i, Ṣafavid ruler 86, 324 ʿAbbāsid dynasty and futuwwa brotherhoods 353 see also under specific rulers ʿAbd al-ʿĀl 392 ʿAbd al-Ghanī l-Nābulusī 233 ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Muḥaddith Dihlavī 263 ʿAbd al-Khāliq Ghijduwānī 297 ʿAbd al-Qādir ii 87 ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī (Abdelkader) 256, 276–277, 318, 326–327 ʿAbd al-Quddūs Gangohī 263 ʿAbd al-Raḥīm 389 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī 43, 243, 268, 307 ʿAbd al-Razzāq 388, 389 ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (son of al-Jīlānī) 388, 389 ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd 362 abdāl (apotropaic saints) 272, 273 ʿAbdallāh Aqtash 98 ʿAbdallāh Ḥajjām 90 Abdelkader (ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī) 256, 276–277, 318, 326–327 Abdelqadir (né Dallas, Ian) 180 ʿAbdullāhī (brother of ʿUthmān Dan Fodio)  324–325 Abraham (biblical figure) 89, 97–98, 388 Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī 37 Abū ʿAlī l-Fārmadhī 303–304 Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī 42–43, 339 Abū Bakr, caliph 278, 307, 386, 396 Abū l-Ḥasan Pūshangī 91 Abū Ḥātim al-ʿAṭṭār 364, 365 Abū Madyan al-Shuʿayb (Sidi Boumediene)  120, 149, 258, 296, 380 Abū Manṣūr al-Maghribī 199 Abū l-Najīb Suhrawardī 193, 390 Abū al-Nūr Islamic Center (Damascus) 280 Abū Rashīd Quṭb al-Dīn al-Abharī 390 Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr clairvoyance of 303, 311 influence of 260 khānqāh of 202, 300 as mediator 205 rules of conduct of 63, 106–107, 177, 370

shrine of 118, 121, 339 silsila for 369 on wealth 222 Abū Saʿīd, Timūrid prince 308–309 Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī 363 Abū ʿUthmān al-Ḥīrī 199 Abū l-Anwār al-Sādāt 36, 220 Abū l-Fatḥ al-Wāsiṭī 389, 393 Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Abī Bakr al-Harawī 148 Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī, Marīnid sultan 120 Abū l-Ḥasan Bustī 260 Abū l-Wafāʾ al-Baghdādī 399 Acre, siege of 316 ādāb (rules of conduct). see rules of conduct Ādāb al-murīdīn (Abū Najīb) 193 ādāb al-murīdīn (rules of conduct for seekers of the path) 116–117 ādāb al-shurb (etiquette of drinking) 201 ādāb al-ṣuḥba (ādāb of companionship)  190 ādāb al-ẓāhira (ādāb of exterior manners)  193 Adam (biblical figure) 89, 98 ʿādāt (customs) 328 advice literature 267–268, 307–309 Āfāq, Khwāja Hidāyatallāh 270–271, 322–324, 351 Aflākī 94–95 Africa. see North Africa; West Africa Afshari, Mehran 14, 89–99 agriculture 40, 50, 51, 121–122, 242–243, 247, 282, 349 ʿahd (pact) 195–196, 204, 208, 211, 297, 308, 337 ahl al-ḥadīth (traditionists) 62 ahl al-ṣuffa (“people of the porch”) 28, 29, 116 Aḥmad (son/successor of ʿUmar b. Saʿīd Tall)  326 Aḥmad b. al-Mubārak al-Lamaṭī 272 Aḥmad al-Badawī 44, 340, 388, 392 Aḥmad al-Bakkāʾī 388 Aḥmad Bamba. see Aḥmadu Bàmba Mbàkke Aḥmad Barelwī 151, 256, 276–277, 278 Aḥmad al-Dardīr 220 Aḥmad Ḥammadī 223–224 Aḥmad Kāsānī Dahbidī 19, 194, 268, 309 Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

416 Aḥmad Khān Sial 87 Aḥmad Khiḍruwiyya 91 Aḥmad Rūmī 98 Aḥmad Samʿānī 7 Aḥmad al-Sharīf 275, 328, 382 Aḥmad Yasawī 121, 165, 241–242, 395 Aḥmad-i Jām on Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr 260 political involvement of 261 on sanctity 265 shrine of 121, 158, 159, 163, 166 Aḥmadiyya. see Badawiyya Aḥmadiyya Idrīsiyya Shādhiliyya 408 Aḥmadu Bàmba Mbàkke 50–51, 229, 282–283, 319, 409 Aḥrār, Khwāja ʿUbaydallāh agricultural enterprise of 121–122, 242–243 political influence of 127, 262, 324 protection system of 39, 121–122, 206 and succession 381 supernatural powers of 309, 311 mention of 398 ʿĀʾisha 363 Ajmer 107–108, 127, 148–149, 158, 168, 400 Akbar, Mughal emperor 127–128, 149, 310 (akbar) jihād (greater jihād) 117, 257, 315, 320 akhadha ʿan-hu al-ṭarīqa 368 akhawāt (sisters) 170 akhī associations 37–38, 208, 231, 343 see also futuwwa brotherhoods akhīs (brothers). see futuwwa brotherhoods Akhlāq matbūliyya (al-Shaʿrānī) 205 Akhlāq-i muḥsinī (Kāshifī) 267–268 Akkoyunlu (Āq Qoyūnlū) 270, 312, 324 AKP (Justice and Development Party; Turkey)  47 akrama (to treat with reverence, to honor) 219 al-Aksarāyī, Ḥamīd al-Dīn (Somuncu Bābā) 399 ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī 84 Alatas, Ismail Fajrie 21, 374–382 al-ʿAlāwī, Aḥmad 138, 393 ʿAlawī dynasty 34, 153, 340 ʿAlawī lineages 386–387 ʿAlawiyya 138, 377, 380, 393, 408 Albania 234, 281–282, 342, 355, 358

Index Aleppo 111, 111, 112, 130, 132, 148, 232, 241, 344, 390–391, 399 Algeria anti-colonial resistance/jihād in  20, 277–278, 318, 326–327 French colonial rule in 2, 67, 131 French opposition to Sufism in 354–355 rehabilitation of Ṣūfī institutions in 69, 285 ṭarīqa admitting women in 349 ṭarīqa officials in 348 worship of saints in 152 see also under specific dynasties, regions/ cities, Ṣūfī orders ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib 41–42, 96, 145, 307, 348, 369, 386–387 Alī b. ʿUthmān 389 ʿAlids, cult of 147 Alī l-Khawwāṣ 198, 267 Alī l-Riḍā 41–42 al-ʿAllāmī, Taqī l-Dīn 266 Almohad dynasty 259 Almoravid dynasty 259 alms (ṣadaqa) 81, 218, 219, 271 alms tax (zakāt) 58, 167, 218, 219, 271 altruism legal regulation of 218 pre-Islamic notions of 219 profits to benefactors of 218 in Sufism 14, 17, 91, 218–225 terminology used for 219 see also alms; alms tax; donations; waqfs Amasya 244, 245 ʿAmīlī, Bahāʾ al-Dīn 83 al-Amīn 92 Amīr Khusraw 127 amīr al-muʾminīn 277, 278, 325, 326, 327, 329 amīrs (senior local governors) 38–39, 114 ʿāmma (common believers) 189 Anatolia futuwwa brotherhoods in 14, 37, 38, 93–95, 208, 343 rural Sufism in 18, 242–248 Ṣūfī institutions in political influence of 129 shrine complexes in 119, 124–125 tekkes in 114–115, 159 and urbanisation 228, 231, 232

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Index Ṣūfī orders from 398–400 see also under specific dynasties, cities, Ṣūfī orders Anavatan Partisi (Motherland Party) 281 Anawati, Georges Chehata 6 al-Andalūs 115, 175, 178 Anṣārī l-Harawī, ʿAbdallāh 17, 42, 43, 81, 121, 165, 209, 260, 297 Anṣār/Mahdiyya 201, 283 antinomian Sufism 30, 37, 227, 260, 341 al-Anwār al-qudsiyya fī maʿrifat qawāʿid alṣūfiyya (al-Shaʿrānī) 194, 197–198 apotropaic saints (abdāl) 272, 273 Āq Qoyūnlū (Akkoyunlu) 270, 312, 324 Aq Shams al-Dīn 265, 400 Āqāsī, Mīrzā Ḥājjī 312 ʿaqd (contracts) 336–337 Arab Socialist Renaissance Party (Ḥizb al-Baʿth al- ʿArabī l-Ishtirākī) 279–280 Arabic language 17, 92–94, 95–96, 99 Arberry, Arthur John 2–3, 5, 345 arbitration. see mediation/arbitration architecture, of Ṣūfī lodges 162–166 Ardabil 126, 166, 229, 269 Arghūn, Īlkhānid ruler 306, 307 Arslān-bāb (Bābā) 241 al-ʿArūsī, Aḥmad 220 asceticism (zuhd) 10, 13, 19, 28–29, 92, 201, 225, 294, 300, 316, 337, 341, 362–363 (aṣghar) jihād (lesser jihād) 117, 257, 315 aṣḥāb al-balad (masters of the city) 272 aṣḥāb al-nawba (people of the turn) 272 ʿAshīra Muḥammadiyya (Muḥammadan Clan) 356 ashrāf (noble descendants of the Prophet)  278, 350 asmāʾī orders 387 Asrār al-tawḥīd fī maqāmāt al-shaykh Abū Saʿīd (Muḥammad b. Munawwar) 107 assemblies (majlis) 19, 204, 299–300 āstānas, use of term 157–158 Atatürk, Muṣṭafā Kemāl 134, 152, 355 ʿAṭṭār, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn 396 authority imitatio Muḥammadi 269, 274 Sharifian model of 268, 269 of Ṣūfī saints 267–273 ʿAwārif al-maʿārif (al-Suhrawardī) 116–117, 192, 193, 196, 208, 363, 367, 391

417 awliyāʾ Allāh (friends of God) 117, 189–190 Awrād al-aḥbāb wa-fuṣuṣ al-ādāb (Yaḥyā Bākharzī) 193 Awrangabad 82, 86, 158, 168 Awrangzeb, Mughal emperor 168, 317 al-ʿAydarūs family 379 ʿAyn Māḍī 133, 327 ʿAynī, Ṣadr al-Dīn 99 ʿayyār (class of warriors) 91–92 Ayyub Khan, Muhammad 284 Ayyūbid dynasty patronage of Ṣūfī activities by 13, 32, 64, 85, 108, 161, 266, 386 relations between Ṣūfīs and sultans of  266 see also under specific rulers Aʿẓam Shāh 168 Azerbaijan 126, 270, 323, 381, 391, 397, 398 Bā ʿAlawī 380 Bābā, Sīdī 203 Bābā Farīd 340, 355 Bābā Ilyās Khurāsānī 243, 244, 245, 259–260 Bābā Isḥāq 259–260 Bābā Kamāl Jandī 395 Bābā Palangpūsh 82, 86, 221, 317 Baba Selim Kaliçani 281–282 Bābā Ṭāhir ʿUryān 260 Bābā Tükles 242 Bābāʾī revolt 246, 249, 259–260 Bābāʾīs 259–260 Babakhanov family 279 Bābur, Abū l-Qāsim, Timūrid prince  308–309 Bābur, Mughal ruler 263 Badawiyya (Aḥmadiyya) 392, 393 Badr al-Dīn (Bedreddīn) 249 Baghdad 14, 37, 62–63, 64–65, 69, 83, 84, 92, 107, 116, 122, 132, 133, 148, 149, 158, 175–177, 190–193, 227, 241, 256, 257, 276, 292, 294, 295, 299, 300, 304, 336, 337, 344, 345, 347, 353, 364, 366, 370, 376, 379, 388–90, 399 al-Baghdādī, Mawlānā Khālid 133, 194–195, 397 Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband 83, 153, 163, 164, 262, 297, 396 Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad 297, 305, 310, 311

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418 Bahāʾ al-Dīn Zakariyyāʾ Multānī 390, 391 Bākharzī, Sayf al-Dīn 262, 395 Bākharzī, Yaḥyā 193 l-Bakrī, ʿAlī 278 al-Bakrī, Muḥammad 36, 47, 278 al-Bakrī, Muṣṭafā 194 Bakriyya 36, 396, 398 Bālim Sulṭān 399 Balkans. see under specific countries/regions Balkh 42–43, 256, 294, 364 al-Balkhī, Shaqīq 257, 368 Balyānī, Amīn al-Dīn 85, 261 Bamba, Amadu 179, 209 banning of Ṣūfī activities in Albania 355 in China 136, 355 in Malaysia 69 in Saudi Arabia 151, 355 in Turkey 46, 48–49, 135, 152, 210, 234 in USSR 136, 152, 279, 355 see also state control Bāqī bi-Llāh 126–127 Baqīʿ cemetery 151 baraka (blessings) 16, 17, 21, 59, 83–86, 117–119, 128, 129, 137, 150, 161, 187, 188, 190, 203, 211, 284, 339, 367–368, 374, 375, 401, 409 baraka bureaucracy 19, 256, 279–285 Bardhi, Baba Reshat 281–282 basant festival (spring festival) 87 al-Bashīr, ʿUmar 283 Basra 176, 241, 293, 362, 364 bathhouse workers 97, 99 bayʿa (oath of allegiance) 196, 204, 297, 326 337, 348–349, 367, 409 Baybars i, Mamlūk sultan 353 Baybars ii al-Jāshnikīr, Mamlūk sultan 32, 221–222, 338 Bāyezīd ii, Ottoman sultan 228, 265 Bayrāmiyya/Bayrāmiyye 22, 399–400 Baysunghur, Timūrid prince 42 Bayt al-Ḥikma 63 bazm (royal banquets) 299, 300, 311 Bedreddīn (Badr al-Dīn) 249 begging (suʾāl) 13, 29, 82, 89, 90, 167, 212, 222–223 begging bowls (kashkūls) 341, 342 Begtimur, Armanid ruler 304 behaviour, rules of. see rules of conduct

Index Bektaş Veli, Hacı (Bektāsh, Ḥājjī) 35, 41, 122, 124, 125, 153, 243, 399 Bektāshiyya/Bektāşiyye abolition of 35, 342 and akhī associations 208 establishment of 398 founder of. see Bektaş Veli, Hacı and Janissaries 35, 265, 317–318, 342, 399 organisational structure of 342 political influence of 35 re-establishment of 281–282 relations between sultans and 265 and Sayyid Ghāzī’s shrine 125 spiritual practices of 399 spread of 22, 123, 232 Ben Badis/Bin Bādīs 152 Bengal 40, 67, 389, 390, 400 Berke Khān 262 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali 284 Bible 337 Bidar 163, 163, 168 Bishr b. Ḥārith al-Ḥāfī 89 al-Bisṭāmī, Abū Yazīd 190, 297, 396 Black, Christopher 343 blessings (baraka) 16, 17, 21, 59, 83–86, 117–119, 128, 129, 137, 150, 161, 187, 188, 190, 203, 211, 284, 339, 367–368, 374, 375, 401, 409 Boko Haram 320 Bosnia-Herzegovina 15, 67, 69, 135, 228–229 Bouteflika, Abdelaziz 285 Braudel, Fernand 12 brothers (ikhwān) 94, 170 see also disciples/students/followers Brown, Peter 189, 206 al-Budshīshī, Shaykh Ḥamza 408 Bukhara 35, 99, 153, 163, 164, 193, 242, 380, 396 Burhān al-Dīn Gharīb 82, 85, 264, 400 butchers 85, 96–98 Cairo khānqāhs in 32, 33, 36, 85, 108, 232, 235, 266, 342, 399 as religious centre 149, 347, 353 shrine complexes in 41, 83, 120 veneration of Ṣūfī masters in 119, 220, 272 zāwiyas in 158, 194 cash waqf 62 Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

Index Catholic Church 346 Caucasus 9, 19, 131, 277, 278, 316, 319–320, 327–328, 397 Çelebī, Pīr ʿĀdil 399 Çelebī, Pīr Ḥusayn 399 censorship (ḥisba) 258 Central Asia anti-colonial resistance in 131, 317 relations between Ṣūfīs and sultans in 42, 65, 147, 255, 261–262, 267–268, 306 rural Sufism in 121, 241–243, 246 Ṣūfī orders from 394–398 see also under specific countries/cities, dynasties, Ṣūfī orders centralisation, of Ṣūfī activities. see state control Ceyhan, Semih 21–22, 385–401 Chaghatayids 261 see also under specific rulers chains (silsilas). see silsilas chains of transmission (isnāds) 348, 367–368, 376 Chardin, Jean 1–2 charity. see donations al-Charkhī, Yaʿqūb 396 chief attendants (naqīb al-nuqabāʾ) 200 chief shaykhs (shaykh al-shuyūkh) 32, 64, 108, 266, 353, 357 chiefs (nuqabāʾ) 200–201, 273 Chih, Rachida 16–17, 187–212, 235 Chihil majlis (al-Simnānī) 307 China 5, 135, 136, 233, 270, 346, 351, 355, 376, 390, 395, 397 see also under specific regions, Ṣūfī orders Chishtī, Mawdūd 265 al-Chishtī, Muʿīn al-Dīn 108, 122, 127, 148–149, 158, 299, 400 Chishtī Ṣābirīs 209, 284 Chishtiyya branches of 400 establishment of 66, 107–108, 400 founder of. see Chishtī, Muʿīn al-Dīn political influence of 263–264 shrines of 148–149, 168 spread of 126–127, 400 views of, on donations 82 mention of 276 Chittick, William 7–8 chivalry (futuwwa). see futuwwa

419 Chodkiewicz, Michel 189 Choudhury, Rishad 233 circle (daaira) 235 cities Ṣūfī institutions in impact of cities on 232–236 impact on cities of 228–230 impact on social fabric of 230–232 Sufism in 227 see also rural areas clairvoyance (firāsa) 198, 255, 263, 311 classifications, of Ṣūfī orders 385–387 Clayer, Nathalie 6, 17–18, 227–236 cloak. see khirqa clothing of ascetics 362–363 of futuwwa brotherhoods 94–95, 343 khirqa 21, 263, 298, 337, 339, 363–366 mending of 363 muraqqaʿa 363–366 of Ṣūfīs 364–366 treatises on 365–366 codes. see rules of conduct coffee consumption 18, 232–233 colonialism Ṣūfī response to in general 273, 318–319 in Algeria 277–278, 318, 326–327 in Caucasus 277, 319, 327–328 in Central Asia 317 in India 276 in Libya 275, 328, 382 in Mali 274, 325 against Ottoman Empire 275 in Senegal 282–283 and Sufism 67–68, 131, 134, 194, 256, 273–279 common believers (ʿāmma) 189 Companions (ṣaḥāba) 116, 187 companionship (ṣuḥba/ṣuḥbat) 17, 170, 188, 190, 192, 196, 204, 208, 362, 366, 392, 400 conduct, rules of. see rules of conduct Les confréries musulmanes du Hedjaz (Le Chatelier) 2 Les confréries religieuses musulmanes (Depont & Coppolani) 2, 273 conversions to Islam 86, 146, 149, 242, 261, 262 to Sufism 138, 209, 309 Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

420

Index

death commemorations (ʿurs) 44, 86, 149, 170, 200, 339, 355 decline in Ṣūfī lodges 130–132, 345 in Sufism 3, 195, 233–234, 406, 408, 410 deconstruction, concept of 2 dede (grandfather). see Ṣūfī masters Dede Garkın 243, 244, 245 Dedeköy 244 Delhi 82, 84, 86, 126–127, 132, 133, 168, 169, 263, 276, 390 Democratic Unionist Party (al-Ḥizb al-Ittiḥādi al-Dīmūqrāṭī) 356 Deobandi 16, 151, 410 Depont, Octave 2 deputies (muqaddam) 20, 187, 210, 347–350 dergāh (central shrine) 35, 137–138 Derrida, Jacques 2 dershanes (classrooms) 356 Dhakhīrat al-mulūk (Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī)  267 dhikr ceremonies (ḥaḍra) 170, 200, 210, 348, 351, 352, 354 dhikr/ ṭarīq al-khafī (silent ritual repetition)  daaira (circle) 235 387 al-Dabbāgh, Abd al-ʿAzīz 272 Dhū l-Nūn al-Miṣrī 147, 190 al-Dāghestānī, ʿAbdallāh 138 digitalisation 408 dahiras (religious societies) 51–52 Dingiray 325 Dallas, Ian (Abdelqadir) 180 disciple-master relationship Damascus 43, 64, 65, 86, 109–110, 132, 133, in general 187, 191, 195–199, 336 138, 150, 159, 178, 204, 232, 241, 266, 272, based on Qurʾān and Sunna 196–197 276, 277, 280, 300, 304, 338, 342, 345, and love and trust of master 202–203 353, 390, 391, 397, 399 reciprocity in 204 Damāwandī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Naṣr Allāh  and rules of conduct. see rules of conduct 312 and serving the master 199–204 l-Daqqāq, Abū ʿAlī 89, 197, 368–369 and shaykhs’ attitude 198 daras (estates) 51 al-Sulamī on 368 dargāh (shrine complexes). see Ṣūfī disciples/students/followers (murīds) 207 shrine complexes in general 348–349 Darqawiyya 180, 393 relationships of darvīsh (beggar), use of term 341 with master. see disciple-master Darwīsh Āhū-pūsh 260 relationship al-Dasūqī, Ibrāhīm 388, 392, 393 with other disciples 205, 208 Dasūqiyya 392–393 dispensations (rukhṣa/rukhaṣ) 193, 366 Data Darbar (Lahore) 44–46 dīwān al-awliyāʾ (council of the saints) 256, Dātā Ganj Bakhsh (al-Hujwīrī). see al-Hujwīrī 272, 278–279, 297–298 Dāʾūdiyya branch 388 dīwān al-ṣāliḥūn (council of godly men)  Dāya al-Rāzī, Najm al-Dīn 267, 395 272–273 Ḍayfa Khātūm 112 Dīwān al-Waqf al-Sunnī (Iraq) 69 De Jong, Frederick 6, 47 Cook, David 19–20, 315–320 Cooley, Charles Horton 11 Coppolani, Xavier 2 Corbin, Henry 4 Cornell, Vincent 37, 39 Coşan, Esat 281 council of godly men (dīwān al-ṣāliḥūn)  272–273 council of the saints (dīwān al-awliyāʾ) 256, 272, 278–279, 297–298 countryside. see rural areas court advisers Ṣūfīs as in early period 303–306 in modern period 312 in post-Mongol period 306–312, 344–345 see also under specific Ṣūfī masters craftsman. see merchants/craftsman crusades/crusaders 108, 316 cult of saints. see Ṣūfī saints customs (ʿādāt) 328

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Index Dīwān-i ḥikmat (al-Yasawī) 241, 395 Diyanet (Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs) 49, 50 donations (futūḥ/fatḥ) by artisan guilds 86 from non-Muslims 86–87 as part of rituals 82 refusal vs. acceptance of 81–83 for Ṣūfī lodges 35, 85, 167 for Ṣūfī shrines 85 Dudoignon, Stéphane A. 22, 405–412 Dungan revolt 317 al-Dūrī, ʿIzzat Ibrāhīm 69 Durkheim, Emile 11–12 Durocher, Maxime 228 duty to rebel 258 duwayra (small house). see Ṣūfī lodges education system, of Gülen movement 50 Egypt relations between Ṣūfīs and sultans in  19, 38, 266, 311 rural saints in 44, 240 Ṣūfī activities in forming of associations 235 state control of 47–48, 135, 153, 233, 278–279, 354 Ṣūfī institutions in khānqāhs in 108–110 and political legitimisation 153 ribāṭs in 178–179, 345 zāwiyas in 114, 194, 202–203, 206, 207 Ṣūfī orders from 392–393 waqfs system in 13, 68 see also under dynasties, regions/cities, Ṣūfī orders elite of the elite (khāṣṣat al-khāṣṣa) 189 enraptured by God (majdhūb) 31, 211–212 Ephrat, Daphna 15, 105–139 Erbakan, Necmettin 281 Ernst, Carl 8–9 Eşrefoğlū ʿAbdallāh Rūmī 124 Europe, Sufism in 50, 70, 138, 209, 234, 256, 280, 406, 407 see also under specific countries Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī Kāshifī 308 Faqīh Rūḥ al-Dīn Rāmgardī 85 faqīr (impoverished) 221

421 al-Farāhīdī, al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad 174 Farīd al-Dīn Ganj-i Shakar 82, 87, 263, 400 Faridi, Shahidullah 284 Fāriẓiyya 388 Fatehpur Sikri 128, 168, 169 Fawāʾid al-fuʾād (Ḥasan Dihlavī) 263 felt hats (tājs) 341, 342 Fez 39, 133, 172, 258, 268, 269, 272 finances of Ṣūfī institutions in general 351–352 alms tax (zakāt) 167 begging 167 donations 35, 85, 167 patronage. see patronage waqfs 31–34, 35, 63–64, 119–120, 167, 221–222, 338, 352 firāsa (clairvoyance) 198, 255, 263, 311 Firdawsī 297 Firouzeh, Peyvand 15–16, 157–170 Firozabad 168 followers. see disciples/students/followers France colonialism of in general 2, 318–319 in Algeria 277–278 in Senegal 282–283, 326 in Sengambia 50–51 see also colonialism, Ṣūfī response to Sufism in 137, 408 fraternity (ukhuwwa) 208, 212 see also futuwwa brotherhoods friends of God (awliyāʾ Allāh) 17, 117, 189–190 frontier spirit 147, 174 Fuḍayl b. ʿIyāḍ 316 Fulani jihād 318, 324 Fulani people 274, 318, 324 fuqarāʾ (poor or ordinary Ṣūfīs) 59, 114, 191, 408–409 Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (Ibn al-ʿArabī) 81 futūḥ/fatḥ (donations). see donations Futuvvat nāma (Najm al-Dīn Zarkūb) 96 futuwwa (chivalry) books of 38, 95–98 brotherhoods/fraternities. see futuwwa brotherhoods definition of 91 origins of 91–92

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422 futuwwa (chivalry) (cont.) progenitors of 96 Sufism and in general 14, 37–38 and asceticism 92 introduction into 90–91, 219 and social urban fabric 231 three levels of 219–220, 223 futuwwa brotherhoods in general 342–343, 358 and ʿAbbāsid dynasty 353 in Anatolia 13, 94–95, 208, 343 clothing of 94–95, 343 conditions for acceptance into 92 and crusaders 316 hierarchies within 92–93 initiations into 93–94, 343 in Iran 95, 343 persons excluded from 96–97 repression of 343 and Sufism 316 terms of address within 94 treatises on 38, 95–98, 343 see also akhī associations futuwwat-nāma (treatises on futuwwa) 38, 95–98, 343 Gaborieau, Marc 6 Gabriel, Angel 98 Gambia, religious groups in. see under specific religious groups gardens (rawḍa) 235 Gardet, Louis 6 Garkınī ṭarīqa 243 Gauharshād, Timūrid queen 42 Gāzurgāh 121, 163, 165 Geertz, Clifford 83–84 gender segregation 50 Geoffroy, Eric 8 ghawth (poles). see quṭb/aqṭāb Ghawthiyya branch 388 al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad 13, 18, 28, 29, 107, 170, 177, 201, 255–259, 267 Ghāzān Khān 261 Ghāzī Khusrev Beg 229 Ghāzī Muḥammad 277 Ghaznawī, Nūr al-Dīn Mubārak 390 ghazw (raids) 315 see also jihād

Index al-Ghazwānī, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh  40, 269 al-Ghijduwānī, ʿAbd al-Khāliq 297, 395, 396 Ghulām ʿAlī 133 Gīsū Darāz, Sayyid Muḥammad 168 globalisation, of Sufism 50–53, 137, 209, 234, 407, 409 God, complete trust in 82, 89–90, 224 Green, Nile 9, 43 Gril, Denis 197 Guardamar 175 Guénon, René 4 guilds in Bukhara 99 donations by 86 patronage of 85–86 treatise on 98–99 see also futuwwa; futuwwa brotherhoods; merchants/craftsman Gulbarga 168 Gülen, Fethullah 50, 137 Gülen movement 50, 137 Gulzār-i abrār (Shaṭṭārī) 401 ḥabs/ḥubūs/aḥbās (pious endowments). see waqfs al-Ḥaddād, Abū Ḥafṣ 89, 190, 191, 294–295, 365 ḥadīths 3, 7, 63, 64, 89, 132, 133, 146, 175, 191, 192, 199, 202, 229, 256, 257, 259, 267, 284, 293, 296, 315, 337, 348, 367, 376, 408 see also isnāds Ḥaḍramawt 379, 380 ḥaḍras (dhikr ceremonies) 170, 200, 210, 348, 351, 352, 354 al-Ḥāfiẓ, Muḥammad 209 Ḥafṣid dynasty 38, 116 Haji Jalaluddin 280 Ḥājjī Bayrām Walī 399, 400 Ḥājjī Bektāsh. see Bektaş Veli, Hacı Ḥakīm Ātā (Sulaymān Bāqirghānī) 242, 395 al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī 147, 189–190, 191, 256 Hamadānī, Sayyid ʿAlī 95, 267, 395 al-Hamadānī, Yūsuf 241, 395, 396 Ḥamdūn Qaṣṣār 89, 90 Hamès, Constant 234 Ḥāmidiyya Shādhiliyya 356 Hammoudi, Abdallah 198–199, 203

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Index Ḥamza, Shaykh 203 Ḥamza(t) Bek 277 al-Ḥanafī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad 40, 297, 311–312 Ḥarāfīsh 30 al-Harawī, ʿAbdallāh 219–220, 223 l-Ḥarīrī, ʿAlī 389 Ḥarīriyya 389 Hart, Kimberly 49 Hārūn al-Rashīd, Abbāsid caliph 316 al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī 362, 368, 369 Ḥasan Dihlavī 263 Ḥasan Jurī 86 Ḥasan Pasha 220 Ḥātim al-Aṣamm 364, 368 Haṭṭin, Battle of 316 Hausa people 318, 325 l-Ḥawārī, Aḥmad b. Abī 364 hayba (reverential fear) 198 Ḥaydar 269 Ḥaydariyya 30, 86, 212, 245–246 health care 247–248 Heidemann, Stefan 64 The heritage of Sufism (Lewisohn) 5 hermitage (ṣawmāʿa) 31, 157 al-Ḥifnāwī, Muḥammad 220 hijra (migration) 274–276, 318, 319 ḥimāyat (protection) system 39, 121–122 Hinduism 263 ḥisba (censorship) 258 Historiography (Knysh) 1 Ḥizb al-Baʿth al- ʿArabī l-Ishtirākī (Arab Socialist Renaissance Party) 279–280 al-Ḥizb al-Ittiḥādi al-Dīmūqrāṭī (Democratic Unionist Party) 356 Hoexter, Mariam 60, 61 Hofer, Nathan 11–12, 14, 16, 58–70, 174–180, 345 hospices 15, 64, 105, 106, 108, 150, 174, 176, 177, 179, 221 hospitality, at Ṣūfī lodges 194, 199, 202, 204, 206, 210, 231, 247 Hospitaller knights 316 Hüdāyī, ʿAzīz Maḥmūd 400 al-Hujwīrī (Dātā Ganj Bakhsh) on begging 223 on branches of Sufism 369 on clothing 366, 367 on al-Nūrī 224

423 shrine of 44 mention of 265 Hülegü, Mongol ruler 65, 261 Ḥulvī/Ḥulwī 386 Humāyūn, Mughal emperor 128, 168 Ḥusayn Bāyqarā, Timūrid ruler 42, 43, 121, 165, 262 Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī 94 Ḥusnāʾ 221 Ḥusniyya 341–342 Hussein, Saddam 68–69, 285 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Muḥammad 41, 132, 150–151, 355 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī l-Dīn on adab 296 books of 297 on donations 81 shrine of 43, 150 on silsilas 369 transmission of teachings of 231 Ibn al-ʿArīf 259 Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī 266, 345, 394 Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Abū l-ʿAbbās 212 Ibn Barrajān 259 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 37–38, 94, 114, 343 Ibn al-Fāriḍ 297 Ibn Ḥamdīn 258 Ibn Ḥanbal 363 Ibn Idrīs, Aḥmad 195, 274 Ibn al-Jawzī 29, 83 Ibn Jubayr 300 Ibn Karrām 161, 177 Ibn Kathīr 316 Ibn Khafīf 176, 365 Ibn al-Miʿmār 92–94, 95, 96 Ibn al-Mubārak 90, 175, 257, 296, 316 Ibn Munawwar 90, 118 Ibn Nadīm 368 Ibn Qasī 259 Ibn al-Qaysarānī (al-Maqdisī, Abū l-Faḍl)  366 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 29, 41 Ibn Qunfudh, Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn 220 Ibn Taymiyya 29, 41, 150 Ibrāhīm al-Aʿzab 389 Ibrāhīm b. Adham as ascetic-cum-warrior 106, 338 on earning living 90

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424 Ibrāhīm b. Adham (cont.) legend of 256–257, 294 on muraqqaʿa 364 title of 297 mention of 316 Ibrāhīm al-Dasūqī 388, 392, 393 Ibrāhīm Zāhid al-Jīlānī 390–391, 397 Idrīs (biblical figure) 98 Idrīs, Muḥammad 275, 329, 382 Idrīs al-Fāsī, Aḥmad b. 133, 274, 381 Idrīsid dynasty 269, 275, 378–379 Idrīsiyya 381 Ifrīqiyya 82, 115, 116, 147, 178, 194, 257, 393 see also under specific dynasties; under specific Ṣūfī orders Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (al-Ghazālī) 28, 258 ijāza (licences) 347–348, 376, 394 ikhwān (brothers) 94, 170 see also disciples/students/followers Ikhwān al-Muslimūn (Muslim Brotherhood)  46, 48, 152, 280, 355, 357 ʿilāj rūḥānī (spiritual healing) 203 Ilkhānid dynasty 165, 261, 306–307 see also under specific rulers illiteracy 240, 247 Īltutmish, Shams al-Dīn 263 ʿImād al-Dīn ʿUmar 266 imarets (soup kitchens) 32, 33, 35, 38, 228 imitatio Muḥammadi 269, 274 impoverished (faqīr) 221 India anti-colonial resistance/jihād in 276– 277, 278, 317 British opposition to Sufism in 354–355 relations between Ṣūfīs and sultans in 263–265 Ṣūfī institutions in khānqāhs in 107–108, 126, 127 political influence of 129 shrine complexes in 127, 129 Ṣūfī orders from/in in general 126–127 overview 400–401 political influence of 263–264 see also under specific dynasties, regions/ cities, Ṣūfī orders Indonesia 19, 47, 148, 195, 234, 235, 256, 280–281, 379, 393, 397, 400 initiatory mantle (khirqa). see khirqa

Index Īnjū dynasty 261 institutionalisation, of Sufism 66, 116, 192–193, 224–325 institutions, sociological theory of 11 see also Ṣūfī institutions insurrections/revolts 246, 248–249, 259–260, 275, 327–328 see also jihād Internal Rules for the Sufi orders (al-lāʾiḥa al-dākhiliyya lil-ṭuruq al-ṣūfiyya) 279 internet, Sufism and 407–412 Introduction au soufisme (Geoffroy) 8 An introduction to the history of Ṣūfism (Arberry) 5 Iqbāl, Jāvīd 45 Iqbāl, Muḥammad 45 Iran futuwwa brotherhoods in 95, 343 relations between Ṣūfīs and sultans in 261 Ṣūfī institutions in 121, 126, 229 Ṣūfī orders from 394–398 Ṣūfī temporal sovereignty in 269–270 see also under specific dynasties, regions/ cities, Ṣūfī orders Iraq Ṣūfī orders from 388–391 waqfs system in 68–69 see also under specific dynasties, regions/ cities, Ṣūfī orders ʿIrāqī, Fakhr al-Dīn 165, 391 ʿIsā Beg 229 ʿĪsāwiyya 346, 347 Isfahan 83, 241, 305 al-Iṣfahānī, Abū Nuʿaym 19, 296 Īshān Mengli 261 ishanate 271 Ishānism 151 Iskender, ʿAlī Dede 228 İskenderpaşa Mosque 48 Islam conversions to 146, 242, 261 mysticism in. see Islamic mysticism reform in 3–4, 151, 324–326 ribāṭ-style 180 spread of 67, 146, 211, 229, 240–242, 257, 264–265 two-tier model of 37 Islamic law 218, 277

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Index Islamic Law and Society (journal) 60 Islamic mysticism definitions of 335 organisation of in general 335–336 as debasement 335 disciple-master relationship. see disciple-master relationship futuwwa brotherhoods. see futuwwa brotherhoods itinerant brotherhoods 341–342, 358 lodges. see Ṣūfī lodges orders. see Ṣūfī orders/networks/paths studies on 335 Islamic mysticism: A short history (Knysh)  9–10 Islamic Society of North America (isna)  69–70 Islamisation 67, 146, 211, 229, 240–242, 257, 264–265 see also jihād Ismāʿīl, Khedive 354 Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī Bursavī 400 Ismāʿīl i, Ṣafavid ruler 126, 312, 324, 381 Ismāʿīl al-Inbābī 119 Ismāʿīl Khān 270, 271 Ismāʿīl Rūmī 124 isnāds (chains of transmission) 348, 367–368, 376 ʿiṣyān (rebellion). see insurrections/revolts Italy, colonialism of 275, 328–329, 382 īthār (preferring the other). see selflessness itinerant brotherhoods 20, 30, 211, 341–344, 358 al-Jabanyānī, Abū Isḥāq 257 Jadidism 151 al-Jaghbūb 229 Jahānabādī, Shāh Kalīm Allāh 82 Jahangir, Mughal emperor 310 Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Bukhārī 390 Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Mawlānā 2, 122, 124, 125, 137, 153, 166, 167, 170, 231, 265, 297, 305, 344, 358, 399 Jalwatiyya/Celvetiyye 22, 399, 400 Jamāl Phatrī, Sayyid 389 Jāmī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 43, 243, 268, 307 Jamʿiyyat al-ʿUlamāʾ al-Muslimīn (Ulamāʾ Association) 152

425 Janissary Corps (elite Ottoman troops) 19, 35, 265, 317–318, 342, 399 Javād Nūrbakhsh, Shaykh 7, 409, 410 Javānmard Qaṣṣāb 97­­­–99 javānmardī (chivalry). see futuwwa Jawāmiʿ ādāb al-ṣūfiyya (al-Sulamī) 192 al-Jawhara al-muḍīʾah fī sulūk al-ṭālib wanuṣḥ al-barīya (Ibrāhīm al-Dasūqī) 393 Jaysh Rijāl al-Ṭarīqa al-Naqshbandiyya (Men of the Army of the Naqshbandiyya) 320 al-Jazūlī, Muḥammad 40, 116, 268–269, 346, 394 Jazūliyya Shādhiliyya 18, 149, 178, 247, 256, 268–269, 346, 347 Jerusalem 18, 108, 109, 110, 232, 342, 390, 391 al-Jibāwī, Saʿd al-Dīn 391 Jibrīl b. ʿUmar 274 jihād of Abdelkader (Algeria) 277–278, 318, 326–327 of Aḥmad Barelwī (India) 276–277, 278 of Aḥmad al-Sharīf (Libya) 275, 328, 382 against crusaders 316 of Dan Fodio (Nigeria) 273–274, 318, 324–325 lesser vs. greater 257, 315 of Shāmil (Caucasus) 277, 278, 319–320, 327–328 Sufism and 257, 317–320 of Tall (Mali and Senegal) 274, 319, 325–326 types of 315–316 use of term 315 see also frontier spirit; insurrections/ revolts al-Jīlānī, ʿAbd al-Qādir 122, 158, 298 books of 389 Dan Fodio’s vision of 318 saintly eminence of 388 shrine of 69, 347, 389 worship of 148 mention of 369, 379 al-Jīlī, Jamāl al-Dīn 395 Jinnah, Ali 284 Job, biblical figure 98 Jong, Frederick de 6, 47 The Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 60 journeying (rūḥānī) 387

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426 al-Junayd, Abū l-Qāsim on Abū Ḥafṣ al-Ḥaddād 191, 294–295 and disciple-master relationship 316 eight rules of 177 on political life 256 on serving kings 310–311 mention of 37 Junayd b. Ibrāhīm Ṣafawī 269, 324, 397 jurisdiction (wilāya) 265 Juybārī family 380 Jūzjānī, Minhāj-i Sirāj 263 Kabbani, Hisham 138 Ḳāḍīzādelī movement 62 al-Kalābādhī, Abū Bakr 365 Kamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 261 Karamustafa, Ahmet 37, 227 Karrāmiyya 31, 63, 106, 161, 177, 191, 365 Kart dynasty 261 Kāsānī Dahbidī, Aḥmad (Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam) 19, 194, 268, 309 Kashf al-maḥjūb (al-Hujwīrī) 44, 366 Kashgar 271, 323, 351 al-Kāshifī, ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn al-Wāʿiẓ 262, 267–268 Kāshifī Sabzawārī 96 kashkūls (begging bowls) 341, 342 Kasnazān, ʿAbd al-Karīm Shāhī 285 Kasnazāniyya 284–285 Kay Khusraw ii, Saljūq sultan 243 Kayqubād i, Saljūq ruler 243, 305 Kazakhstan 121, 165, 241–242 al-Kāzarūnī, Abū Isḥāq 176, 191, 257, 261 al-Kāzarūnī, Bahāʾ al-Dīn 119 khādim (superintendents) 20, 170, 199–200, 203, 339, 340, 347 Khāksārs 99, 317 al-khalʿa (robe of honour) 298 khalīfa (divine lieutenancy on earth) 297, 311 Khalīl Būrghāzī 96 Khalīlullāh, Shāh 162–163, 163, 168 khalwa/khalwat (seclusion) 230, 328, 389, 398 al-Khalwatī, ʿUmar 398 Khalwatiyya/Halvetiyye as asmāʾī order 387 branches of 398 chiefs of 200–201

Index establishment of 398 founder of. see al-Khalwatī, ʿUmar organisation of 36 relations between sultans and 130, 265–266 rules of conduct of 201 spiritual practices of 398, 400 spread of 123, 194, 312, 394, 398 superintendents of 200 mention of 86, 194 Khāmūsh, Niẓām al-Dīn 396 Khan, Hussain Ahmad 14, 81–87 Khan, Nusrat Fateh Ali 47 Khānqāh al-Farāfra 111, 112 Khānqāh al-Farāfra (Aleppo) 111, 112 khānqāhs/khānaqāhs (Ṣūfī lodges) in Egypt 108–110 establishment of 106, 338 feeding of poor by 33 finances of. see finances functions of 112–113 in India 107–108, 126, 127 institutional structure of 113 practice of majlis in 299 prayer practices at 32–33 rules of conduct for. see rules of conduct spread of 107–112 use of term 157–158, 370 see also Ṣūfī lodges (in general) al-Kharkūshī, Abu Saʿd (or Saʿīd) ʿAbd alMalik b. Muḥammad 294, 363, 365 al-Kharrāz, Abū Saʿīd 89, 208, 225 khāṣṣa (spiritual elite) 189 Khatmiyya 133, 283, 356 al-Khawwāṣ, Ibrāhīm 368 Khazīnī 268 khidma (service) 17, 188, 199–204, 206, 210, 222, 224, 296 Khiḍr, Qurʾānic figure 146, 348 khilaʿ (robe of honour) 337 khilāfa (Prophet’s legacy) 297 khirqa (initiatory mantle transmitted from master to disciple) 21, 263, 298, 337, 339, 343, 363–369 Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich 136 khulafāʾ (master’s deputies) 21, 200, 385, 401 Khuldabad 168, 229, 264 al-Khuldī, Jaʿfar 368

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Index Khurāsān 106–107, 339 Khusraw ii, shah of Iran 243 al-Khwāfī, Zayn al-Dīn 390 khwāja, use of term 297 Khwāja ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī 17, 42, 81, 121, 165, 209, 260, 297 Khwāja Āfāq 270, 271, 322, 323, 329, 351 Khwāja ʿAlī 269, 397, 399 khwājagān 91, 242, 262, 297, 322, 395, 396 Khwājagān path 396 Khwājas/Khojas 129–130, 262, 322, 351 Khwārazm Shāh, Alāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad  304 Kīmiyā-yi saʿādat (al-Ghazālī) 258, 267 al-Kirmānī, Awḥad al-Dīn 390 Kirmānī, Shāh Shujāʿ 91 Kırşehir 95, 122, 124, 125 Kitāb adab al-mulūk fī bayān ḥaqāʾiq altaṣawwuf (anon.) 295–296 Kitāb ādāb al-ṣuḥba (al-Sulamī) 192, 294 Kitāb al-bayāḍ wa-l-sawād (al-Sīrjānī) 366 Kitāb al-futuwwa (Ibn al-Miʿmār) 92–94, 95 Kitāb al-futuwwa (al-Sulamī) 90–91, 219 Kitāb al-jihād (ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak) 257 Kitāb khalʿ al-naʿlayn (Ibn Qasī) 259 Kitāb lubs al-muraqqaʿāt ( Ibn Khafīf) 365 Kitāb al-tadbirāt al-ilāhiyya fī iṣlāḥ almamlaka al-insāniyya (Ibn al-ʿArabī)  297 Kitāb tahdhīb al-asrār (al-Kharkūshī) 294 Kızılbāş/Qizilbāsh 270, 323–324, 342, 398 Knysh, Alexander 9–10 Köksal, M. Fatih 96 kolkhoz system 279 Komuniteti Bektashian Kryegjyshata Botërore Bektashiane (Bektashi Community–World Bektashi Chief Grandfather Centre) 281–282 Konya 35, 122, 124, 125, 153, 166, 167, 170, 232, 265, 347, 399 Kosovo 135–136, 282 Kotku, Mehmed Zahid 49, 281 Kubrā, Najm al-Dīn 262, 395 Kubrawiyya 66, 395, 396 Kufa 241, 362 Kuftārū, Aḥmad 280 al-Kuntī, Sīdī Mukhtār b. Aḥmad 389 Kurdistan 19, 256, 275–276, 284

427 Lacombe, Olivier 6 Lahore 44–46, 87 al-lāʾiḥa al-dākhiliyya lil-ṭuruq al-ṣūfiyya (Internal Rules for the Sufi orders) 279 Lālā, ʿAlī 395 al-Lamaṭī, Aḥmad b. al-Mubārak 272 Lane, E. W. 342 law, Ḥanbalī school of 29, 307 Le Chatelier, Alfred 2 Lemeẓāt (Ḥulvī) 386 Lewisohn, Leonard 5 Libya anti-colonial resistance/jihād in 20, 275, 328, 382 unification of 329, 382 see also under specific dynasties, regions/ cities, Ṣūfī orders licences (ijāza) 347–348, 376, 394 Little Senegal (New York City) 52 lodge-tomb complexes. see Ṣūfī shrine complexes al-Lumaʿ fī l-taṣawwuf (al-Sarrāj) 190–191, 365 Māʾ al-ʿAynayn 319 Mā rawā-hu al-asāṭīn fī ʿada al-majīʾ ilā l-salāṭīn (al-Suyūṭī) 267 Macedonia 135, 282 Madagh 209–210 al-Madanī, Muḥammad Ẓāfir 393 Maʿdhūriyya 341–342 madrasas and internet 410 state patronage of 165, 177 and Ṣūfī lodges 107, 109, 112, 113, 122, 158, 163, 165, 230, 370 use of term 158 waqfs for 31, 45, 63–64 Maghrib 14, 16, 18, 37, 38, 65, 115, 133, 145, 147, 149, 178, 179, 204, 232, 249, 255, 258, 269, 274, 326, 378–380, 393, 396, 405 see also North Africa Māhān 166 Maḥāsin al-majālis (Ibn al-ʿArīf) 259 Mahdism 178, 248–249, 258, 274 Mahdiyya. see Anṣār/Mahdiyya Maḥmūd ii, Ottoman sultan 35, 68, 276, 399

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428 Majd al-Dīn Baghdādī 395 majdhūb (enraptured by God) 31, 211–212 majlis (assemblies) 19, 204, 299–300 al-Majlis al-Āʿlā lil-Ṭuruq al-Ṣūfiyya (Supreme council of Sufi orders) 135, 354 Majlis al-Qawmī lil-Dhikr wa-l-Dhākirīn (National assembly of remembrance and those who remember) 283 Majlis al-Ṣūfī (Sufi Council) 21, 354, 358 Maktūbāt (al-Sirhindī) 397 Malāmatiyya/Melāmīs 90–91, 227, 233, 341, 365 Malaysia 69, 393, 397 Maldives 67 Malfūẓāt-i Naqshbandiyya 82, 317 Mali 46, 153, 229, 235, 274, 325, 379 Mālik b. Dīnār 362 Malik Ḥusayn 262 Malik Zayn al-Dīn 264 Mamlūk dynasty 16, 30, 33, 38, 62, 65, 111, 112, 148, 165, 240, 266, 292, 311, 345, 353, 386 see also under specific rulers al-Maʾmūn, Abbāsid caliph 62–63, 92, 293 Manāqib al-ʿārifīn (Aflākī) 94–95 Manbaʿ al-abḥār fī riyāḍ al-abrār (Khazīnī) 268 Manṣūr al-Baṭāʾiḥī 389 Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj 303 Mantaz 120 maqāms. see Ṣūfī shrine complexes; Ṣūfī shrines Maqdīsh, Maḥmūd 273 al-Maqdisī, Abū l-Faḍl (Ibn al-Qaysarānī)  366 maraboutism (miuridizm) 149, 278 Marabouts et khouan (Rinn) 2 Maratha rulers/nobility 86 Marīnid dynasty 38, 65, 116, 147, 249, 268–269 see also under specific rulers marriage 51, 52, 190, 197, 338–339, 350, 352 Marsy, François-Marie de 2 Maryamiyya 138 Mashhad 42, 146 mashhads 146 Masjid Touba (New York City) 52 Maṣmūda Berbers 178 Massignon, Louis 5

Index master’s deputies (khulafāʾ) 21, 200, 385, 401 Mathnavī-yi maʿnavī (Rūmī) 2, 230–231 Mauritania 51, 209, 229, 234, 319, 394 mausoleums. see Ṣūfī shrines Mauss, Marcel 264 Maussian gift obligations 264 Mawlānā Khālid al-Baghdādī 275, 276 Mawlānā Nāṣirī Siwāsī 95, 96–97 Mawlawiyya/Mevleviyye establishment of 123, 398 as musammā order 387 relations between sultans and 130, 265 spiritual practices of 399 spread of 22, 347, 399 tekkes of 66, 137, 158 Mawlāy Idrīs 272 Mawlāy Sulaymān, Moroccan sultan 133 mawlids (saints’ birthdays) 44, 47, 60, 119, 148, 187, 207, 210, 220, 339, 351, 352, 389, 392, 394 Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine 16, 145–153, 205 al-Mayūrqī, Abū Bakr 259 mazārs (shrines). see Ṣūfī shrines McGregor, Richard 17, 218–225 meals, preparing and serving of 201–202 Mecca 15, 28, 42, 43, 60, 108, 117, 132–133, 149, 176, 178, 219, 274, 325 Meclis-i Meşāyiḥ (Council of Shaykhs) 354 mediation/arbitration 39, 84, 190, 205–206, 262, 311–312, 340 Medina 28, 116, 151, 219, 277, 283, 363, 389, 400 Meḥmed ʿAlī, Ottoman governor 36, 47 Meḥmed ii, Ottoman sultan 42, 66, 400 Meier, Fritz 10 merchants/craftsman futuwwa and 37–38, 91–95 see also guilds metaphors of royalty in general 292–293 in Christianity 293 in Islam 293 in Judaism 293 in Sufism and adab 294–298 and royal banquets 299–300, 311 Mevlānā. see Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn Mevlana Museum 170

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Index Mevleviyye/Mevlevī central authority of 347 endowments made to 35 naming of 344 new organisational forms within 356 mention of 319 migration (hijra) 274–276, 318, 319 Mīhana/Mīhna (Khurasan) 191, 339 Milli Selamet Partisi (National Salvation Party) 281 Ministry of Awqāf in Egypt 47–48, 278–279 in Pakistan 44–45 al-Mīrghanī, Abdallāh al-Maḥjūb 133 al-Mīrghānī, Muḥammad ʿUthmān 283 Mīrghaniyya 133 mirrors for princes 267–268, 309 Mirṣād al-ʿibād min al-mabdaʾ ilā l-maʿād (Dāya al-Rāzī) 267 miuridizm (maraboutism) 149, 278 “Le modèle prophétique du maître spirituel en islam” (Gril) 197 modernity, and Sufism 134–136 see also new media Molé, Marijan 6 monastic orders 346 Morocco intertribal arbitration by shaykhs in 205 revival of Sufism in 138 Ṣūfī institutions in political influence of 18, 129, 133, 134, 205, 209, 355 and political legitimisation 38, 69, 153 ribāṭs in 39, 64, 115, 147 shrine complexes in 118–119 zāwiyas in 17, 40, 65, 115–116 Ṣūfī shaykhs as local rulers in 34, 129, 340 Ṣūfī temporal sovereignty in 268–269 waqfs system in 69, 355 see also under specific dynasties, regions/ cities, Ṣūfī orders al-Mubārak, ʿAbdallāh b. 90, 175, 257, 296, 316 Mughal Empire 40, 122, 127–129, 131, 149, 317 see also under specific rulers Muḥammad, Prophet cult of relics of 150 descendants of 350, 375, 379, 380

429 mending of clothes by 363 see also ḥadīths Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ḥasan 319 Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha 278, 354 Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh 283 Muḥammad b. ʿAlī l-Idrīsī 275 Muḥammad b. Munawwar 107 Muḥammad b. Wāsiʿ 296 Muḥammad Bashārā 60 Muḥammad Bello 274, 325 Muḥammad al-Ḥājjī 340 Muḥammad al-Ḥanafī 40, 297, 311 Muḥammad al-Mahdī 275, 382 Muḥammad Mallāwah 263–264 Muḥammad Tughluq 83–84 Muḥammad Yār 86–87 Muḥammadan way (al-ṭarīqa al-muḥammadiyya) 268, 269, 271, 274 Muḥammadiyya Shādhiliyya 46, 356 al-Muḥāsibī 364 muḥibb (admirers) 20, 348–349 Muḥriz b. Khalaf 257–258 Muḥyī l-Dīn 326 Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī 108, 122, 127, 148–149, 158, 299, 400 Mujaddidiyya 66, 127, 133, 276, 396–397 founder of. see Sirhindī, Aḥmad al-mulūkiyya al-ṣūfiyya (the royalty of Ṣūfīs)  295 Munya bt. Maymūn 118–119 muqaddams (deputies) 20, 187, 210, 347–350 al-Muqaddasī 146, 161 al-Murābiṭ 178, 258–259 murābiṭūn (pious warriors) 62, 149, 175, 180, 340, 410 Murād i, Ottoman sultan 35 muraqqaʿa (patched frock) 21, 337, 363–366 murīd (disciple). see disciples/students/ followers Murīdiyya establishment of 50–51 estates of 51 founder of. see Aḥmadu Bàmba Mbàkke hospices of 179 political influence of 282–283 religious societies of 51–52 spread of 51 and urbanisation 229

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430 Murīdiyya (cont.) in USA 52–53 use of internet by 408, 409 and Wolof ethnic group 209 murīds (disciples, students) 20, 93, 170, 195, 196, 209, 259, 278, 322, 328, 329, 335–337, 348–349, 357, 409, 410 murīdūn revolt 259–260 al-Mursī, Abū l-ʿAbbās 266, 393 musammā orders 387 Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwān al-Muslimūn)  46, 48, 152, 280, 355, 357 Muṣṭafā al-Bakrī 194 Musta’in Romly 280–281 al-Mustanṣir ii, Abbāsid caliph 353 muṭahharan (ritual purity) 197 mutashābihūn (imitators) 344 mutaṭawwiʿa (volunteer fighters) 338–339 mutṭawiʿūn (volunteers) 316 Muwāḥḥid dynasty 120, 147, 259 Mystical dimensions of Islam (Schimmel)  4–5 mysticism. see Islamic mysticism The mystics of Islam (Nicholson) 2 Mystique musulmane (Anawati & Gardet) 6 Les mystiques musulmans (Molé) 6 myths 98, 245, 348 Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ 280 nafsānī journeying 387 Nāgawrī, Ḥamīd al-Dīn 390 Nahdlatul Ulama (Awakening of Scholars)  280–281 Naʾīn, Ṣafāʾ al-Salṭanah ʿAlī Khān 312 nait (North American Islamic Trust)  69–70 Najīb al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Buzghush (d. 678/1280)  390 Najm al-Dīn Rāzī 198, 395 Najm al-Dīn Zarkūb 94, 95, 96 al-Nakhshabī, Abū Turāb 364 naqīb al-nuqabāʾ (chief attendants) 200 Naqshband, Bahāʾ al-Dīn 83, 153, 163, 164, 262, 297, 396 Naqshbandiyya banning of 48–49 branches of 396–397 establishment of 396 founder of. see Naqshband, Bahāʾ al-Dīn and jihād 317

Index lineage of 386 and modernity 134–135 as musammā order 387 political influence of 35, 262, 308–309 protection system of 121–122, 206, 242–243 rural Sufism of 242–243 spiritual practices of 397 spread of 123–124, 126–127, 242, 263, 396–397 succession in 380–381 and al-Yasawī’s legacy 241 see also Khwājas/Khojas; under specific branches Naqshbandiyya Āfāqiyya 270–271, 397 Naqshbandiyya Haqqaniyya 138 Naqshbandiyya Isḥāqiyya 270 Naqshbandiyya Khālidiyya 133, 194–195, 275, 277, 319, 347, 397 Naqshbandiyya Khālidiyya Ḥaqqāniyya  408, 409 Naqshbandiyya Kuftāriyya 280 Naqshbandiyya Mujaddidiyya 66, 127, 133, 276, 396–397 nasab (hereditary lineage) definitions of 374–375 importance of 375 vs. silsilas 378–381 use of term 374 al-Naṣīḥa al-kāfiya (Zarrūq) 268 Naṣīḥat al-mulūk (al-Ghazālī) 267 al-Nāṣir al-Dīn Allāh, ʿAbbāsid caliph 192, 304 Nāṣir al-Dīn Awrān/Evren 94–95 al-Nāṣir Faraj b. Barqūq 311 al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh, ʿAbbāsid caliph 38, 92, 95, 192, 345, 353, 369 al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn 32 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein 4 al-Naṣrabādhī 197, 368, 369 National assembly of remembrance and those who remember (Majlis al-Qawmī lil-Dhikr wa-l-Dhākirīn) 283 nationalisation, of Ṣūfī actvities. see state control nationalism, and Sufism 284 Nawrūz Rūmī 98 Nazım Kıbrısı, Shaykh 7, 138, 409 Neoplatonism 2, 28, 223 neo-Sufism 69, 271, 410–411 Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

Index neo-tarikats 49 New Age religiosity/spirituality 138, 234 new media Sufism and in general 47, 49, 405–406 internet 407–412 social media/networks 408–409 and social-industrial legacies 406–407 new technologies, Sufism and 132 Niasse, Ibrāhīm 282 Nicholson, Reynold Alleyne 2 Nigeria 229, 273–274, 283, 318, 320, 324–325 see also under specific Ṣūfī orders Niʿmatullāh Walī, Shāh 163, 166, 168, 170 Niʿmatullāhiyya 5, 22, 86, 170, 407–410, 412 Nīshāpūr 37, 42, 64, 89, 147, 176, 190–192, 241, 365, 370 al-Nishāpūrī, Abū Ḥafṣ al-Ḥaddād 90, 190, 191, 264, 295, 365 Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ 82, 83–84, 85, 127–128, 168, 169, 199, 264, 400 Niẓām al-Dīn Maḥmūd 261 Niẓām al-Mulk 165, 260, 292, 303–304 Niẓāmī Bākharzī 307 nomadic societies 27, 130, 229, 239–243, 245–246, 318 non-conformism 248–249 non-Muslims, donations by 86–87 North Africa ribāṭs in 31, 147, 178 Ṣūfī orders from 393–394 see also under specific dynasties, countries/ cities, Ṣūfī orders North American Islamic Trust (nait)  69–70 Nouakchott 234 Nubia 147 nudhūr (donations). see donations nuqabāʾ (chiefs) 200–201, 273 Nūr al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī 120 Nūr al-Dīn Zāde 265–266 Nūr al-Dīn Zangī 64, 111, 266 Nūrbakhsh, Javād 7, 410 al-Nūrī, Abū l-Ḥusayn 17, 223, 224, 364 Nur/Nurcu (light) movement 21, 48, 134–135, 137, 234, 356 Nursi, Said 48, 50, 134–135, 234, 356

431 oath of allegiance (bayʿa) 196, 204, 297, 326, 327, 337, 348–349, 367, 409 O’Brien, Cruise 51 Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar 18, 239–249 Ohlander, Erik 346 Opus Dei 346 oral cultures 243, 245 Les ordres mystiques dans l’islam (eds. Popovic & Veinstein) 6–7 Orientalist/Orientalism 1–2, 4, 261 Otmān Bābā 265 Ottoman dynasty and futuwwa 38, 85 and futuwwa brotherhoods 343 and Janissaries/Bektāshiyya 19, 35, 316, 319, 342, 399 relations between Ṣūfīs and sultans in 265–266 and Ṣūfī activities patronage of 123–124, 125–126, 150, 228, 229, 248 state control of 36, 130–131, 233, 278, 354 waqfs system in 33, 47, 58, 62, 68, 353 Özal, Korkut 281 Özal, Turgut 281 Özbek Khān 242 pact (ʿahd) 195–196, 204, 208, 211, 297, 308, 337 Pakistan 8, 14, 19, 44–45, 69, 137, 153, 195, 200, 209, 256, 284, 320 Papas, Alexandre 1–22, 18–19, 225, 234, 255–286, 381 Pārsā, Muḥammad 396 Partai Politik Tarekat Islam 280 Patrizi, Luca 19, 292–301 patronage of artisan guilds 85–86 of madrasas 165 of relics 69 of Ṣūfī activities in general 42–43, 64–65, 167–168, 353 by ʿAbbāsid dynasty 345, 369 by Ayyūbid dynasty 32, 85, 108, 266 of Mamlūk dynasty 30 by Mughal Empire 127–128 by Ottoman dynasty 123–124, 125–126, 150, 228

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432 patronage (cont.) by ruling elite 113 by Saljūq dynasty 38–39, 64, 107, 167–168 by Timūrid dynasty 42–43, 121 sytem of, of Naqshbandiyya 121–122, 206 Paul, Jürgen 39 peanut farming 50, 51, 282 people of the turn (aṣḥāb al-nawba) 272 Persatuan Tarbiyah Islamiyah (Union for Islamic Education) 280 Persian language 14, 17, 30, 95–99, 220, 221, 263, 297 pilgrimages (siyāḥa) 208 see also Ṣūfī shrine complexes Pinto, Paulo 15, 105–139 pious endowments. see waqfs pious warriors (murābiṭūn) 62, 149, 175, 340 pīr (founding figure). see Ṣūfī masters; under specific Ṣūfī orders Pīr Maʿbar Kʾhandāʾit 264 Pīr Shāh Dawla 389 poles (quṭb) 193, 272, 298, 388, 409 political influence of Ṣūfī masters 129–130, 187, 193–194, 262, 303–312, 322 of Ṣūfī orders 30, 34–36, 129–130, 262, 263–264, 270, 282–283, 308–309 political legitimisation Ṣūfī masters and 260, 262 Ṣūfī shrines used for 153 waqfs used for 59, 64, 136 poor, the 13, 17, 29, 30, 32, 33, 40, 45, 51, 59, 105, 107, 115, 125, 157, 162, 170, 191, 202, 208, 220–221, 224, 235, 240, 349, 362 Popovic, Alexandre 6–7 poverty/wealth 13, 27, 28–30 printing 18, 134, 233, 406 protection (ḥimāyat) system 39, 121–122 proto-Ṣūfīs 316, 336, 362–363 psychological Sufism 410 al-Qādir, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd 388 Qādiriyya Būdshīshiyya 17, 200, 203, 209–210, 408, 410 Qādiriyya/Qādiriyye as asmāʾī order 387 central authority of 347 establishment of 387

Index founder of. see al-Jīlānī, ʿAbd al-Qādir and jihād 325 naming of 344 spiritual practices of 389 spread of 124, 126, 379, 388–389 succession in 379 mention of 276, 277, 280, 319, 326 see also under specifc branches Qājār, Muḥammad, Shāh of Persia 312 Qājār, Nāṣir al-Dīn, Shāh of Persia 312 qalandar (uncouth), use of term 341 Qalandars Karamustafa on 37 and patronage 30 popularity of 342 and Saljūq dynasty 260 support for 245–246 way of life of 20, 30, 96, 212, 341–342, 358, 399 Qarakhānid dynasty 241 Qaramānids 124 Qaṣīda al-rāʾiyya (Abū Madyan al-Shuʿayb) 296 Qāytbāy, Mamlūk sultan 149 al-Qināʾī, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm 178–179 qiyām (revolt). see insurrections/revolts Qizilbāsh/Kızılbāş 270, 323–324, 342, 398 qubbas. see Ṣūfī shrine complexes al-Qubruṣī, Nāẓim 7, 138, 409 Qurʾān 2:263–64 219 2:271 219 2:274 219 3:104 258, 316 3:110 316 7:26 363–364 8:11 309 10:62–5 189 12:53 315 25:12 266 25:52 315 35:32 189 49:1–5 196 53:33 197 59:9 224 106 201 112 201 digital versions of 408 on selflessness 219 Quraysh 375 Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

Index al-Qushayrī, Abū l-Qāsim books by 81, 91, 192, 195, 197, 316, 336, 365 on clothing 365 as court advisers 303–304 on l-Daqqāq 197 on l-Daqqāq 368–369 on royalty of Ṣūfīs 296 teaching of Sufism by 17, 64, 107 quṭb/aqṭāb (poles) 193, 272, 298, 388, 409 Qutlugh Khān 264 Rabbani, Wahid Bakhsh Sial 284 Raḍwān, Shaykh 206, 207 Rāghib, Yūsuf 148 Ragrāga 147 Ramla 176 Ranjit Singh, maharaja 86–87 Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ 293–294 Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt (al-Kāshifī) 262 rawḍa (gardens) 235 rebel, duty to 258 rebellions. see insurrections/revolts Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) 281 reform in Islam 3–4, 151, 324–326 Sufism and 47, 132–133, 233, 351, 354 see also bureaucratisation; institutionalisation religious practices. see spiritual practices religious societies (dahiras) 51–52 retirement (ʿuzla) 223 reverential fear (hayba) 198 revolts. see insurrections/revolts Ribāṭ al-Baghdādiyya (Cairo) 33 Ribāt al-Maʾmūniyya (Bagdad) 304 Ribāṭ Nakūr (Nakūr) 115 Ribāṭ Shākir (of Maṣmūda Berbers) 118–119, 178 Ribāṭ Tīṭ-n-Fiṭr (of Ṣanhāja Berbers) 178 Ribāṭ Zawjat Ināl 221 ribāṭs ([Ṣūfī] outposts) at ʿAbbādān 106, 175 in Baghdad 177 early history of 175–177 in Egypt 178–179 establishment of 106, 147, 338 functions of 113 at Guardamar 175

433 in the Maghrib 178–179 in Morocco 115 in Ramla 176 rules of conduct for. see rules of conduct spread of 177–179 in sub-Saharan Africa 179 al-Suhrawardī on 117 use of term 157–158, 174–175, 338, 370 in West Africa 179–180 for women 33–34, 221, 349 see also Ṣūfī lodges al-Rifāʿī, Aḥmad 388, 389 Rifāʿiyya establishment of 389 lack of central authority of 347 spiritual practices of 390 spread of 22, 130, 210, 389–390, 392–393 mention of 86, 319 Rinn, Louis 2 Risāla (al-Qushayrī) 81, 192, 195, 197, 316, 365 Risāla-yi ādāb al-ṣiddīqīn (Kāsānī Dahbidī)  194 Risāla-yi tanbīh al-salaṭīn (Kāsānī Dahbidī) 309 Risale-i nur külliyatı (Nursi) 134–135 ritual purity (muṭahharan) 197 rituals of Badawiyya (Aḥmadiyya) 205 donations as part of 82 at Ṣūfī shrines in general 149 criticism on 151 see also Ṣūfī festivals rosaries (tasbīhs) 341 Ross, Eric 229 royal banquets 299–300, 311 rūḥānī (journeying) 387 rukhṣa/rukhaṣ (dispensations) 193, 366 Rukn al-Dīn, Shaykh 83–84 Rukn al-Dīn al-Sujāsī 390 rules of conduct (ādāb) in general 106–107, 177, 187–188 based on Qurʾān and Sunna 196–197 codification of 192 importance of 190–192 and metaphor of royalty 294–298 for novices 116–117 Rūmī, Eşrefoğlū ʿAbdallāh 124

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434 Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn (Mevlānā) poetry of 137, 230–231 on relationship Ṣūfīs and rulers 305–306 shrine of 125, 153, 166, 167 tekke of 170, 358 mention of 2, 122, 124, 265, 297, 344, 399 rural areas illiteracy in 240 Ṣūfī institutions in, functions of  246–248 Sufism in in general 39–40, 239–241 Naqshbandiyya 242–243 and nomadic tribes 243, 245–246 non-conformist dimension of 248–249 sources on 240 Wafāʾiyya 243 Yasawiyya 241–242 see also cities Russia 4, 131, 151, 273, 277, 319, 327, 406 see also Soviet Union Sabra, Adam 13–14, 27–53 al-Sabtī, Abū l-ʿAbbās 224 Sabzevar 86 ṣadaqa (alms) 81, 218, 219 Saʿdī dynasty 34 Saʿdiyya 391–392 Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Ardabīlī 269, 323 Ṣadr al-Dīn Ibrāhīm Ḥammūya 261 Ṣadr al-Dīn Shāh 87 SADUM (Spiritual Directory of the Muslims of Central Asia) 279 Ṣafavid dynasty founding of 34, 126 relations between Ṣūfīs and 269–270 repression of futuwwa brotherhoods by 343 and Ṣafaviyya 323–324, 381 see also under specific rulers Ṣafaviyya establishment of 126 founder of. see Ṣafī l-Dīn al-Ardabīlī leadership of 269 and Ṣafavid dynasty 323–324, 381 spread of 397 temporal sovereignty of 269–270

Index Ṣafī l-Dīn al-Ardabīlī 126, 166, 229, 269, 323, 381, 397 Ṣafwat al-taṣawwuf (al-Maqdisī) 366 ṣaḥāba (Companions) 116, 187 sāḥas (zāwiyas in Upper Egypt) 202–203, 206 Said, Kurdish Khālidī Shaykh 48 Saʿīd al-Suʿadāʾ/Ṣalāḥiyya (Cairo) 32, 85, 108, 266 saints’ birthdays (mawlids) 44, 47, 60, 119, 148, 187, 207, 210, 220, 339, 351, 352, 389, 392, 394 Saladin. see Ṣalāh al-Dīn b. Yūsuf, Ayyūbid ruler Salafism/Salafīs 41, 46–47, 69, 150, 153, 195, 320, 405 Salafiyya 132, 134 Ṣalāh al-Dīn b. Yūsuf, Ayyūbid ruler founding of khānqāhs by 32, 85, 108, 266 khānqāh in commemoration of 111, 111, 112, 112 ‘Ṣalāḥiyya’ (Jerusalem) 108, 109, 110 al-Salāḥiyya Saʿīd al-Suʿadāʾ 85 Salāmān va Absāl (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī)  268 Ṣāliḥ, Ibrāhīm 283–284 Salīm Chishtī 128, 169 Sālimiyya 176 Saljūq dynasty and Qalandars 260 relations between Ṣūfīs and sultans in 243, 246, 260, 265, 305 state patronage of Sufism by 15, 32, 38–39, 64, 107, 113–114, 165, 167–168 see also under specific rulers Salmān al-Fārsī 96, 97 al-Samanūdī 196 sanctity (walāya) 19, 117, 118, 147, 189, 198, 206, 227, 256, 265, 268, 271, 272, 292, 379 Ṣanhāja Berbers 178 al-Sanhūtī, Yāsīn b. Ibrāhīm 306 Sanjar b. Malikshāh, Saljūq sultan 260 al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī 67, 206, 275, 348, 381 Sanūsiyya 20, 67, 209, 229, 275, 319, 328–329, 381–382, 394 founder of. see al-Sanūsī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī saqqāʾ (water-carriers) 201, 347–348

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Index Sarajevo 228–229, 234 Sarbidarān movement 86 Ṣārı Ṣaltūq 228 Sarī l-Saqaṭī 89, 175, 368 Sarmast, Ṣūfī 264 al-Sarrāj, Abū Naṣr 28, 190–191, 208, 222, 365 Saryazdī, Dhū l-Riyāsatayn Qāḍī Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar 312 Sassanid dynasty 293, 300 Saudi Arabia 46, 151, 355 ṣawmāʿa (hermitage) 31, 157 Sayf al-Dīn Bākharzī 262, 395 al-Ṣayyād, ʿIzz al-Dīn Aḥmad 389 Ṣayyādiyya 389 al-Sayyid al-Badawī 44, 340, 388, 392 Sayyid Ghāzī (al-Baṭṭāl) 124–125 Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Bukhārī 84 Sayyid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Kamāl al-Dīn b. ʿAjlān 86 sayyids (descendants of the Prophet) 350, 375, 379, 380 Schimmel, Annemarie 4–5, 345 Schuon, Frithjof 138 seclusion (khalwa) 230, 328, 389, 398, 400 secularisation 47, 50, 134, 151–152, 195, 355 Sedgwick, Mark 4, 20–21, 335–359 selflessness (īthār) acts of 218 moral value of 219 terminolgy used for 219 three levels of 219–220, 223–225 transformative possibilities of 222 see also altruism; futuwwa Selim i, Ottoman sultan 43 Senegal 14, 50–53, 179, 209, 229, 235, 248, 256, 282–283, 319, 325–326, 394, 407, 408, 410 see also under specific Ṣūfī orders service (khidma) 17, 188, 199–204, 206, 210, 222, 224, 296 shadd (girdle belt) 93, 343, 353 al-Shādhilī, Abū l-Ḥasan 13, 29–30, 222, 344, 345, 351, 392, 393 Shādhiliyya branches of 346–347, 393–394 establishment of 393, 408 founding of Saʿdī dynasty by 34 grades of muḥibb 349 leader of. see al-Shādhilī, Abū l-Ḥasan

435 long existence of 351 naming of 344 political influence of 30 relations between sultans and 266 spiritual practices of 394 spread of 66, 116, 149, 345, 393 and trade 29–30 see also under specific branches Shāh Ismāʿīl 34, 269–270, 381 Shāh Maḥmūd 82 Shāh Musāfir 82, 84, 86 Shāh Wālī Allāh 86 Shāhrukh, Timūrid ruler 42, 121 Shambhala guide to Sufism (Ernst) 8–9 Shāmil, Imām 19, 256, 277, 278, 319–320, 327–328 Shams-i Tabrīz 358 Shaqīq al-Balkhī 257, 368 Sharaf al-Dīn Maḥmūd Shāh, Īnjū ruler 261 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb books by 17, 194, 197–198, 205, 308 on al-Junayd 310–311 on khirqa 298 on mediation 205 on people of the turn 272 on reverential fear 197–198 on sainthood 296 supernatural powers of shaykhs 311 zāwiya of 194 al-Sharīf, ʿAbdallāh 205–206 Sharifian Sufism 21, 378–379 Shaṭṭār, ʿAbdallāh 400 Shaṭṭārī, Muḥammad Ghawthī 401 Shaṭṭāriyya 312, 400–401 Shawqiyya 341–342 Shaykh Saʿīd 275 shaykh al-shuyūkh (chief shaykhs) 32, 64, 108, 266, 353, 357 Shaykh Ẓahīr 98 al-Shiblī 190, 257, 364, 368 Shihābiyya. see Suhrawardiyya Shīʿism 4, 8, 32, 34, 41, 96, 121, 126, 147, 257, 268, 323, 324, 342, 348, 378, 397 al-Shirwānī, Yaḥyā 398 shrine firms 43–44 see also Ṣūfī shrine complexes; Ṣūfī shrines Sidi Boumediene (Abū Madyan al-Shuʿayb)  120, 149, 258, 296, 380 Sīdī Shākir 118–119 Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

436 Sikandar Lodī 264 Sikh Empire 340 silent ritual repetition (dhikr/ ṭarīq al-khafī)  387 silsilas (spiritual lineage) in general 21, 308, 312, 348 of ʿAlawiyya 377 definitions of 375–376 importance of 376, 378 isnāds as model for 367–369, 376 as link to Prophet 378 vs. nasab 378–381 as spiritual genealogy 242, 378 use of term 374 al-Simnānī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla 19, 306–307 al-Sirhindī, Aḥmad 127, 276, 397 al-Sīrjānī, Abū l-Ḥasan 366 sisters (akhawāt) 170 Skender-Vakuf 228 smartphone applications 409 social media/networks 408–409 Ṣofyalı Bālī Efendī 265–266 Sokoto Caliphate 179, 274, 324–325 soldiers. see ʿayyār Somuncu Bābā (al-Aksarāyī, Ḥamīd al-Dīn)  399 soup kitchens (imarets) 32, 33, 35, 38, 207, 228 Soviet Union. see Russia Soviet Union (USSR) Ṣūfī activities in banning of 136, 152, 279, 355 state control of 279–280 see also Russia Spiritual Directory of the Muslims of Central Asia (SADUM) 279 spiritual elite (khāṣṣa) 189 spiritual healing (ʿilāj rūḥānī) 203 spiritual lineage (silsilas). see silsilas spiritual practices of Ṣūfī orders 32–33, 299, 387, 389, 390, 391, 394, 395–396, 398, 399 see also Ṣūfī festivals spring festival (basant festival) 87 Srinagar 158 state control of Ṣūfī activities in general 46–47, 352–354, 358 in Egypt 47–48, 135, 233, 278–279, 354

Index by Ottoman Empire 130–131, 233 in Pakistan 44–45, 284 in Syria 135 in USSR 279–280 see also banning of waqfs 45, 68–69 Strothmann, Linus 44 students. see disciples/students/followers suʾāl (begging) 13, 29, 82, 89, 90, 167, 212, 222–223 sub-Saharan Africa 16, 67, 178, 179, 229, 230, 396 succession 21, 34, 231, 350–351, 374, 380–382 Sudan 133, 256, 274, 275, 283–284, 352, 356, 398 Sufi Council (Majlis al-Ṣūfī) 354, 358 Ṣūfī dynasties. see Ṣūfī sultanates/caliphates Sufi essays (Nasr) 4 Ṣūfī festivals 44, 86, 87, 119, 148, 149, 339, 355, 389, 392 Ṣūfī hagiographies 39–40, 306 Ṣūfī households 36, 44 Ṣūfī institutions bureaucratisation of 256, 279–285 definitions of 11, 13 impact of cities on 232–236 Knysh on 10 lodges. see Ṣūfī lodges longue durée approach to 12 mystical dimensions of 12–13 shrines. see Ṣūfī shrine complexes; Ṣūfī shrines state control of. see state control and urbanisation 152, 228–230 waqfiyya of 60 Ṣūfī lineages ʿAlawī 386–387 heads of. see Ṣūfī masters of Naqshbandiyya 386 nasab in. see nasab silsilas in. see silsilas Ṣūfī lodges (in general) in general 105, 157, 338, 357 architecture of 162–163 in Baghdad 64–65 closing of 135–136 decline in 345 early history of 159, 161 functions of

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Index in general 66–67 as centres for worship of saints. see Ṣūfī shrine complexes; Ṣūfī shrines as centres of agriculture 242, 243, 246 education/proselytising 230–231, 248 as foci for regional cults 128 health care 247–248 hospitality/food dispensation 199, 202, 205, 207, 247 securing of roads/mountain passes 247 and sociability 230–232 Ṣūfī bodies in 161–162 in urbanisation 228–230 incorporation of, into Ṣūfī networks 345 institutionalisation of. see institutionalisation life at 170 and madrasas 165 permanent residents at 199–200 political dominion and 128–129 in rural areas 345 spread of 65, 192, 193–194 state control of. see state control terminology used for 31, 157–159, 178 waqfiyya of 170 see also khānqāhs/khānaqāhs; ribāṭs; zāwiyas; under specific lodges Ṣūfī manuals 188, 190–193, 194 Ṣūfī masters (shaykhs/pīrs) in general 170 advice literature of 267–268, 308, 309 assets of 36 backgrounds of 349 non-conformist 248–249 officials of 199–200 political influence of 129–130, 187, 193–194, 262, 303–312, 322 relationships of with disciples. see disciple-master relationship with sultans 260–273, 303–312 roles of in general 204–205 as defender of the poor 220 education/proselytising 261–262 feeding of the poor 220–221 as kingmakers 168, 262

437 as local rulers 322–330, 340 see also under specific shaykhs-sultans as mediators 39, 84, 190, 205–206, 262, 311–312, 340 as patron saint of guilds 208 and political legitimisation 260, 262 sacred character of 196 as saints. see Ṣūfī saints and succession. see succession supernatural powers of 198, 255, 263, 303, 309, 311 titles of 36, 278, 329 veneration of. see Ṣūfī saints visiting of 209–210 see also under specific shaykhs The Sufi orders in Islam (Trimingham) 3, 335 Ṣūfī orders/networks/paths (ṭarīqas) banning of. see banning becoming voluntary associations 234 vs. Catholic monastic orders 346 classifications of 387 continuity of 385–386 and cult of saints. see Ṣūfī saints educational methods of 387 emergence of 345–346, 376 finances of. see finances founding figures of. see under specific orders heads of. see Ṣūfī masters incorporation of lodges into 345 influence on society of 386 institutionalisation of. see institutionalisation and internet 408–411 and Janissaries 35, 265, 317–318, 342, 399 life cycle of 351 lineages of. see Ṣūfī lineages as marketing brands 410 membership of 348–349 naming of 34, 344, 347, 386 officials of 199–202, 347–348 orders and suborders 346–347 see also under specific orders and suborders organisation of 36, 44, 356–357 part-time participation in 344 political influence of. see political influence

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438 Ṣūfī orders/networks/paths (ṭarīqas) (cont.) recruitment for 209 silsilas of. see silsilas spiritual practices of 32–33, 299, 387, 389, 390, 391, 394, 395–396, 398, 399 spread of 122, 194–195 succession in. see succession support for 386 transnational 50–53 tribal affiliations of 208–209, 350–351 see also under specific Ṣūfī orders Ṣūfī poetry 47 Ṣūfī saints (walī/awliyāʾ) authority of 267–273 concept of 227 and council of godly men 272–273 cult of in general 41, 117–120, 147–148 criticism on 150–152 modernisation of 407 Moroccan 37, 39 from ribāṭ system 344 see also Ṣūfī shrine complexes; Ṣūfī shrines; under specific saints Ṣūfī Sarmast 264 Ṣūfī shrine complexes (dargāhs) in general 105 in Anatolia 124–125 buildings contained in 120 in Cairo 120 development of 118, 120, 339 finances of. see finances in India 127, 129 in Iran 121, 126 in Morocco 118–119 in rural areas 340 use of term 157–158, 300 see also shrine firms; Ṣūfī shrines Ṣūfī shrines celebration of festivals at 44 definitions of 145 desecration of, by Salafīs 46 early history of 146–147 expansion of 147–150 festivals at 44, 86, 87, 148, 339 finances of. see finances guidebooks about 148 patronage of. see patronage and political legitimisation 153 rediscovering of 42–43

Index rituals at 149, 151 and royal funerary sites 168 state control of. see state control terms used for 145–146 and urbanisation 152 visiting of in general 41, 117–118, 339 criticism on 41–42, 150 for health reasons 339 by women 339 see also shrine firms; Ṣūfī shrine complexes; under specific shrines Sufi studies dichotomy in 2, 3–4, 7 growth in 1 historical development of before 1990s 1–6 from 1990s onwards 6–10 Ṣūfī sultanates/caliphates 322–330 in general 322, 329–330 and anti-colonial resistance 326–328 Khwājas/Khojas 322–323 Ṣafavid dynasty. see Ṣafavid dynasty Sanūsī Kingdom 328–329, 381–382 Sokoto Caliphate 179, 324–325 Tukulor Empire 274, 325–326 Ṣūfīs clothing of 364 coffee consumption of 232–233 as court advisers. see court advisers insurrections led by. see insurrections/ revolts and jihād. see jihād as missionaries 39, 67 occupations of 83 and patronage. see patronage relationships of with Hindus 263–264 with sultans 260–266 roles of in general 190 as mediators. see mediation/ arbitration and settling of uninhabited lands 40, 66–67, 246 as warriors 264, 276–277 and urban social fabric 230–232 use of new media by 47, 49 and working vs. relying on God 83, 89–90 see also Sufism Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

Index Sufism altruism in 218–225 antinomian 30, 37 and asceticism 28–29, 92, 225, 336, 341, 362–363 in Baghdad 227 banning of. see banning beginnings of 37, 316, 336, 362–363 charismatic form of 225–226 and colonial powers. see colonialism conversions to 138, 209 and court etiquette 299–300 criticism on 150–152 as cultural heritage 137 in cyberspace. see new media decline in 3, 195, 233–234, 406 festivals in. see festivals and futuwwa. see futuwwa and futuwwa brotherhoods. see futuwwa brotherhoods gender practices in 349 globalisation of 50–53, 137, 209, 234, 407, 409 hierarchies in relation to God in 189 influences on waqfs of 59–60 institutionalisation of. see institutionalisation institutions. see Ṣūfī institutions itinerant brotherhoods in 341–342 and jihād 317–320 and modernity 134–136 see also new media and nationalism 284 and new technologies 132 nomadic societies and 243, 245–246 non-doctrinal dimensions of 7 orders. see Ṣūfī orders/networks/paths origin story of 28 patronage of. see patronage and pious warriors 175 political influence of. see political influence and poverty/wealth 27, 28–30 and reform. see reform reliquary 69 revival of 136–137, 209 rule-based 177 in rural areas. see rural areas saintly rulership in 256, 267–273 and Salafism 46–47, 69, 320

439 and societies/geographies 37–40 studies on 61 and Sunnī culture 191 terminology of. see terminology in urban areas. see cities waqfs influences on 61–62 see also Ṣūfī institutions; Ṣūfī lineages; Ṣūfī lodges; Ṣūfī masters; Ṣūfī orders/ networks/paths; Ṣūfī saints; Ṣūfī shrine complexes; Ṣūfī shrines; Ṣūfī sultanates/caliphates; Ṣūfīs Sufism: A beginner’s guide 7 Sufism: A global history 9 Sufism: A new history of Islamic mysticism (Knysh) 9–10 Sufism: An account of the mystics of Islam (Arberry) 2–3 Suharto 280 Suhayl Sharwānī 98 ṣuḥba/ṣuḥbat (companionship) 17, 170, 188, 190, 192, 196, 204, 208, 362, 366, 392, 400 al-Suhrawardī, Abū l-Najīb 116, 177, 193, 222, 344–345, 390 al-Suhrawardī, ʿUmar on begging 222 books by 95, 116–117, 192, 193, 196, 343, 363, 367 on clothing 367 as court adviser 304, 344–345 on khirqa 363 and patronage 345, 369 on ribāṭs 117, 175 ribāṭs of 192–193, 369 on rules of conduct 196 spreading of futuwwa by 38 on Ṣūfī masters 196 on ṣuḥba and ukhuwwa 208 on superintendents 200 Suhrawardiyya establishment of 390 khānaqāh of 85 leader of. see al-Suhrawardī, Abū l-Najīb naming of 344 spiritual practices of 391 spread of 66, 126–127, 345, 390–391 suicide bombings 46 al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān on adab 191–192, 294 on altruism 219 books by 91, 192, 368 Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

440 al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (cont.) on clothing 365 duwayra of 176, 370 on al-Ḥaddād 190 on Ibrāhīm b. Adham 256–257 on master-disciple relationships 368 teaching of Sufism by 64 on visiting shrines 148 al-Sulamī, Izz al-Dīn b. ʿAbd al-Salām 297 Sulaymān Bāqirghānī (Ḥakīm Ātā) 242, 395 Sulaymāniyya 49–50, 285 Süleymān i, Ottoman sultan 125 sulṭān, use of term 297 Sulṭān Walad 98, 265, 297 sultans, relationships with Ṣūfī masters 260–273, 303–312 Summer, William Graham 11 Sunayd b. Dāwūd al-Miṣṣīṣī 296 Sunnī Islam 39, 108, 115, 148, 191, 265, 268, 307, 317, 341, 342 superintendents (khādim) 20, 170, 199–200, 203, 339, 340, 347 supernatural powers online display of 409 of Ṣūfī masters 198, 255, 263, 303, 309, 311 Supreme Council of Sufi Networks (Egypt)  48 Supreme council of Sufi orders (al-Majlis al-Āʿlā lil-Ṭuruq al-Ṣūfiyya) 135, 354 al-Suyūṭī 267 Sy, Muṣṭafā 282 Sy, Tidjane 282 Syria Ṣūfī activities in, state control of 93, 135, 136, 149, 319, 397, 398, 401 Ṣūfī institutions in in general 14, 15, 108, 113, 136, 165, 177 bureaucratisation of 256, 279–280 Ṣūfī orders from 391–392 waqf policy in 64 waqfs system in 68 Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya (Anṣārī) 81 Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya (al-Sulamī) 368 Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī (Jūzjānī) 263 table manners 202 Tabrīzī, Jalāl al-Dīn 390 Taflīqa, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Bū 285 Ṭāhir Dhū l-Yamīnayn 92, 188

Index Tāj al-ʿĀrifīn Abū l-Wafāʾ al-Baghdādī 388 Tajammuʿ al-Waḥda al-Waṭaniyya al-ʿIrāqī (Coalition of the Iraqi National Unity) 285 Tajikistan 136, 279 tājs (felt hats) 341, 342 takiyyas 158, 159 ṭalibés (disciples, students) 51, 325, 329 see also disciples/students/followers Tall, ʿUmar b. Saʿīd 274, 319, 325–326 Tamerlane. see Tīmūr, Timūrid ruler Ṭanṭā 20, 44, 340, 392 Tarim Basin 130, 270–271, 323, 351 ṭarīqa (Ṣūfī orders). see Ṣūfī orders/networks/ paths al-ṭarīqa al-muḥammadiyya (Muḥammadan way) 268, 269, 271, 274 tasbīhs (rosaries) 341 Tāshufīn ibn ʿAlī, Almoravid sultan 258–259 taṣrīf, taṣarruf (supernatural powers). see supernatural powers tawakkul (complete trust in God) 82, 89–90, 224 al-Tawfīq 278 Tāybād 163, 164 al-Ṭayyib, Muḥammad 202–203 Tegüder Aḥmad 261 tekkes/tekiyye/tekye (Ṣūfī lodges) in Anatolia 114–115 in Bosnia-Herzegovina 135 of Hacı Bektaş 35 use of term 157–159, 338 Templar knights 316 terminology used for address 94, 170 altruism/selflessness 219 Ṣūfī lodges 31, 157–159, 174–175, 178, 338, 370 Ṣūfī shrines 145–146 temporal power 297–298, 311 see also metaphors of royalty Thāqib Dede 399 Thibon, Jean-Jacques 21, 362–371 Threshold Society 356 Tidhkārbāy Khātūn 33 al-Tijānī, Aḥmad 133, 194–195, 274, 284, 394 Tijāniyya apolitical stance of 327 establishment of 133, 194–195, 394 Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

Index founder of. see al-Tijānī, Aḥmad political influence of 67, 283 spread of 325, 330, 394, 409 and tribal affiliations 209 and urbanisation 229, 235 mention of 274 Tīmūr, Timūrid ruler (Tamerlane) 121, 166, 241, 262 Timūrid dynasty 42–43, 121 see also specific rulers al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥakīm 147, 189–190, 191, 256 Touba 51–52, 229, 282, 407, 410 Traditionalism 4, 138 trans-imperial mobility 233 Triaud, Jean-Louis 229 tribal saints 246 Trimingham, John Spencer 3–4, 206, 335 Tughril iii, Saljūq sultan 304 al-Tuhāmī, Shaykh Yāsīn 47 Tukulor Empire 274, 325–326 Tunisia 38, 133, 134, 152, 153, 193–194, 257 see also under specific regions, Ṣūfī orders al-Turābī, Ḥasan 283 Turbat-i Jām 121, 159, 160, 163, 166 Turkestan (city) 121, 165, 166, 241 Turkestan (region) 18, 129–130, 256, 270, 271, 309, 390, 395, 396 Turkey Islamic bourgoisie in 48 revolt against Kemalis regime in 275 rural Sufism in 241–242 Ṣūfī activities in banning of 46, 48–49, 135, 152, 210, 234, 355, 358 forming of associations 234 Ṣūfī institutions in bureaucratisation of 21, 256, 281 tekkes in 123, 135, 152, 153, 241 Sufi studies in 1 see also under specific dynasties, regions/ cities, Ṣūfī orders Turkish language 37, 96, 99, 232, 269, 297, 323 Turkmen 34, 245–246, 260, 269, 270, 285 ṭuruq (pl. of ṭarīqa). see Ṣūfī orders/ networks/paths al-Tustarī, Sahl 176, 197, 258 ʿUbaydallāh b. Maḥmūd 309 ʿUbbād 120

441 ukhuwwa (fraternity) 208, 212 ʿulamāʾ (religious scholars) 59, 151, 232, 261, 336–340, 344, 347, 349, 350, 352–358 Ulamāʾ Association (Jamʿiyyat al-ʿUlamāʾ al-Muslimīn) 152 Ulema-Madžlis 135 ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb 363 Ungaria, Georgius de 124 United Kingdom (uk) 137, 180, 276, 328 United States of America (usa) 52–53, 69–70, 138, 356 urban areas. see cities urbanisation 52, 66, 145, 146, 151, 152, 228–230 ʿurs (death commemorations) 44, 86, 149, 170, 200, 339, 355 ʿUthmān Dan Fodio (ʿUthmān b. Fodiye) 20, 273–274, 318–319, 324–325 Uways al-Qaranī 148, 348 uwaysī (mode of transmission) 148 ʿUyūn al-ajwiba fī funūn al-asʾila (al-Qushayrī) 365 Uzbekistan 19, 99, 136, 147, 153, 242, 256, 279 ʿuzla (retirement) 223 Uzun Ḥasan Āq Qoyunlū 165, 324 vaqf/vakıf (pious endowments). see waqfs Vazīr al-Dīn, Shaykh 263–264 Veinstein, Gilles 6–7 Vikør, Knut 20, 322–330 visiting (ziyāra) of masters 209–210 of shrines in general 41, 117–118, 145, 339 criticism on 41–42, 150–151 by women 339 see also Ṣūfī saints vocal ritual repetition (dhikr/ṭarīq al-jahrī)  387 Les voies d’Allah (eds. Popovic & Veinstein)  6–7 Wade, Abdoulaye 283 Wafāʾ family 379 Wafāʾiyya 36, 221, 243, 399 Wahhābī movement 132, 151 walāya (metaphysical closeness to God)  189–190 walāya (sanctity) 19, 117, 118, 147, 189, 198, 206, 227, 256, 265 Alexandre Papas - 978-90-04-39260-1 Downloaded from Brill.com12/25/2020 08:32:56PM via University of Cambridge

442 walī/awliyāʾ (saints), use of term 311 see also Ṣūfī saints waqf irṣādī 62 waqf mushtarak 65 Waqf Ordinance (Pakistan; 1979) 45–46 waqf trustee (mutawallī/nāẓir) 58 waqfiyya/waqf-nāma (endowment deeds) definition of 58 of Ṣūfī institutions 60 waqfs (pious endowments) in general 27 banning of 68 colonial authorities and 68 definition of 58 development of 58 influence on Sufism of 59–60 management of 60 revival of 70 state control of 45, 68–69 studies on 60–61 types of 58 uses of for political legitimisation 59, 64, 136 for public services 64 for Ṣūfī institutions 31–34, 35, 63–64, 119–120, 150, 167, 221–222, 338, 352 in support of jihād 62–63 for transmission of knowledge 63–64 widespread use of 58–59 see also waqfs warfare and proto-Ṣūfīs 19, 174, 316 see also ʿayyār; futuwwa; Janissary Corps; jihād Wāṣiliyya 341–342 al-Wāsiṭī, Abū l-Fatḥ 389, 393 water-carriers (saqqāʾ) 201, 347–348 Wazīrat al-Awqāf (Ministry of religious endowments) 135 wealth/poverty 13, 27, 28–30 web 2.0 408–409 Weber, Max 11 Werbner, Pnina 225 West Africa 20, 51, 67, 179–180, 195, 274, 318, 319, 324, 325, 327, 330, 407 see also under specific countries/cities, dynasties, Ṣūfī orders wilāya (jurisdiction) 265 Wolof people 51, 209

Index Wolper, Ethel Sara 228 women and gender segregation 50 as muqaddams 349 ribāṭs for 33–34, 221, 349 visiting of shrines and lodges by 118–119, 128, 177, 193, 203, 339 Xidaotang 233 al-Yasawī, Khwāja Aḥmad 121, 165, 241–242, 395 Yasawiyya establishment of 395 founder of. see al-Yasawī, Khwāja Aḥmad rural Sufism of 18, 241–242 spiritual practices of 395–396 spread of 268, 395 support for 245–246 Yavari, Neguin 19, 303–312 Yavuz, Hakan 48 Yugoslavia 135, 234 Yūsuf u Zulaykhā (Jāmī) 243 zakāt (alms tax) 58, 167, 218, 219, 271, 338 Zarcone, Thierry 6 Zarrūq, Aḥmad 268, 394 Zauqi, Muhammad 284 zāwiyas (Ṣūfī lodges) in Egypt 114, 202–203, 206, 207 finances of. see finances functions of 113–114, 194 in Libya 275 in Maghrib 149 in Morocco 115–116 in Tunisia 193–194 use of term 157–159, 338 Zayn al-Dīn Abū Bakr Tāybādī 163, 164 Zayn al-Dīn, Malik 264 Zayn al-Dīn Shīrāzī 168 Zayn al-Dīn Yūsuf 120 Zaynab (wife of Sultan Ināl) 221 Zia ul-Haq, Muhammad 284 Zindapir 137 ziyāra (visiting). see visiting zuhd (asceticism) 10, 13, 19, 28–29, 92, 175, 201, 225, 294, 300, 316, 337, 341, 362–363 zuhhād (wandering renunciants) 18, 62, 255

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