Routledge Handbook on Sufism

Lloyd Ridgeon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351706476
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This is a chronological history of the Sufi tradition, divided in to three sections, early, middle and modern periods. The book comprises 35 independent chapters with easily identifiable themes and/or geographical threads, all written by recognised experts in the field.

The volume outlines the origins and early developments of Sufism by assessing the formative thinkers and practitioners and investigating specific pietistic themes. The middle period contains an examination of the emergence of the Sufi Orders and illustrates the diversity of the tradition. This middle period also analyses the fate of Sufism during the time of the Gunpowder Empires. Finally, the end period includes representative surveys of Sufism in several countries, both in the West and in traditional "Islamic" regions.

This comprehensive and up-to-date collection of studies provides a guide to the Sufi tradition. The Handbook is a valuable resource for students and researchers with an interest in religion, Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Studies.

PART ONE
The early period

1
The origins of Sufism

Lloyd Ridgeon

Introduction

For historians of early Sufism it is instructive that many of the Sufi Orders (sing. ṭarīqa / pl. ṭurūq) that appeared by the end of the thirteenth century traced their spiritual lineage (silsila) from the prophet Muḥammad to the celebrated teacher and master Junayd of Baghdad (d. 910), to demonstrate the authentic and legitimate nature of their teachings and practices. Junayd is represented as a major link for the Sufi Orders; he is often located at the pinnacle of a stem before the various branches grew and subsequently developed in their own colourful, specific ways of expressing devotion and piety.¹ While there is sufficient primary material to demonstrate the importance of Junayd for the doctrinal and practical proliferation of the movement that became known as Sufism, it is unfortunate that its history prior to the era of “the peacock of the poor” (ṭāwūs al-fuqarā) as he is known, is less than clear. It does seem to be the case, however, that there was more than a single stem from which the later Sufis derived inspiration. But because the roots of what became recognised as the Sufi movement by the late ninth and early tenth century in and around Baghdad are muddied and unclear, subsequent generations of Sufis from the eleventh century onwards composed manuals that included sections that sought to illuminate the opaque origins of the movement, thereby legitimising both rituals and teachings that were disputed. A good example of the Sufis’ need to justify their worldview is found in Sulamī (d. 1021), who claimed in the introduction to his Jawāmi‘ Ādāb al-Ṣūfiyya (“Collection of Sufi Rules of Conduct”) that he wrote the work, so that those who criticise the Sufis could actually know something about their way of life and customs.² And Qushayrī (d. 1072) despaired of the state of Sufism in his own lifetime, due to the misappropriation of the tradition by charlatans, who thereby instigated further opposition to Sufism. “One should not give their [the Sufis’] opponents a cause to condemn them, since in this country, the suffering of this path at the hands of its opponents and accusers has been particularly severe.”³

This introduction to the first section of this volume joins the search for Sufi origins. There is no innovative theory in this chapter, rather, it simply seeks to question the ideas and assumptions regarding the origins of the movement that have been offered by both Sufis themselves and modern Western observers, revealing the preconceived notions and conclusions held by many within these groups. As such, the chapter seeks to highlight the dangers of accepting at face value these agenda-loaded theories, and it holds that the horizontal levels in which individuals and movements are embedded at any historical moment disclose valuable details related to the development of Sufism. The vertical search for origins has been entwined with all manner of deliberate deviations and obfuscations.

The chapter contains three main sections. First, the chapter commences by examining the emic philological and historical explanations of the movement that were offered by Hujwīrī, writing in the eleventh century, who was one of the first Sufis to take up the “origins” argument. Hujwīrī’s philological attempts are representative of one method to discover the origins of the term, and other Sufis gave semantic definitions of the movement, linking it with the “piety” of previous generations and in some cases with individuals whose lifestyles and beliefs are difficult to identify as “Sufi.” As such these associations reveal more about the Sufis of the time than they do about the origins of the movement. The second section of the chapter traces etic views of nineteenth-century Western scholars who embarked on a similar investigation of Sufi roots, but for the purpose of demonstrating the derivative nature of Sufism, which suggested its “inauthentic” quality. After the first awkward steps of these Orientalists (who have been termed “externalists” – seeking to locate the origins of Sufism outside of the Islamic tradition,⁴ and who were steeped in the “Aryan” prejudices of the times), European scholars of the second half of the twentieth century have tended to accept the Sufis’ claim that the movement was fundamentally inspired by reflection upon Islamic sacred texts. Having sampled the “origins” theories of both the early Sufis and later Western scholars, the third section turns to the arguments offered to explain a possible shift from asceticism and renunciation to what has been termed “mysticism.” Examples are given of the kinds of Qur’ānic verses that were suggestive of a more intimate relationship between God and humans.

Sufi philological and historical explanations

In the eleventh century, the celebrated author of one of the most comprehensive Persian manuals of Sufism, ‘Alī Hujwīrī (d. 1071) reported an oft-cited maxim of Abū’l-Ḥasan Fūshanja (d. 958–959) that “today Sufism is a name without a reality, but formerly it was a reality without a name.”⁵ This saying holds many layers of significance. It may serve not only as an implicit criticism of the charlatans who associated with the movement for various kinds of benefits that could be accrued, but it also points into history when Sufism supposedly enjoyed a utopian, golden period. The search for origins is frequently an attempt to capture an ideal, when the “pristine” teachings were within reach. Of course the community of the Prophet served as the ultimate “imagined ummah” for all Muslims, but with the sealing of prophethood on Muḥammad’s death, the Sufis of Hujwīrī’s age looked to the next best models, that is, the succeeding generations, when the memory of a sacred society that enjoyed an intimate communication with the Divine was still fresh in the memory. In order to capture the essence of that early community Sufis had recourse to three main methods. The first focussed on a lexical analysis of the term Sufi itself, the name that had no reality, or meaning. Sufis such as Fūshanja were well aware that it was a futile attempt to search the Qur’ān from cover to cover, as the word “ṣūfī” or “taṣawwuf” (Sufism) does not appear in sacred scripture. Hujwīrī’s Kashf al-Maḥjūb included a section in which he speculated on four possible reasons why the term gained currency.⁶ The first reflected the similarity of the word Sufi (ṣūfī) with the Arabic term for wool, or ṣūf, the connection being that the Sufis typically wore a gown or garment made of wool,⁷ which as coarse and scratchy, leads to connections with asceticism, and distinguished the cloak from the more expensive cotton or silk varieties.⁸ Hujwīrī’s second reason connects the word “Sufism” to the idiom “first rank” (ṣaff-i awwal), which brings to mind the believers hurrying to be in the first row of believers at congregational prayers. And then a connection is made with the aṣḥāb-i Ṣuffa (or the People of the Veranda – those who lived in close proximity to the Prophet – in his mosque – and were scrupulous and pious in performing devotions). And Hujwīrī finally spoke of ṣafā, or purity, since the Sufis “have purged their morals and conduct” from anything inappropriate.⁹

These emic discussions about the lexical origins of the word “Sufi” clearly reveal the concerns of eleventh-century Sufis, and may not help us understand how the term was understood in the eight to ninth centuries. Later Sufis were conscious of this, and therefore a second method to understand the term, a semantic investigation by ascetics and early Sufis, focussed on the realities of their specific kinds of devotion. The sayings of early “Sufis” foregrounded practice and ethics through edifying and pithy statements that could easily be memorised.¹⁰ For example, Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 896) said, “Sufism is to eat little, and to take rest with God, and to flee from men.”¹¹ And Sarī Saqaṭī (the maternal uncle of Junayd, the subject of Chapter 3) who died in 867 is reported by the aforementioned Qushayrī as saying the quickest path to Paradise was, “Don’t take anything from anyone, don’t seek anything from anyone and don’t possess anything which you would give to anyone.”¹² The third method to identify the origins of Sufism was historical, and probably borrowed heavily from the semantic investigations mentioned above, typified in the claim of Junayd that “We derived Sufism not from disputation, but from hunger and abandonment of the world and the breaking of familiar ties and the renunciation of what men account good.”¹³ Junayd’s claim points to belief in a close connection between the Sufism of his time and certain devotional practices, such as renunciation and repentance (tawba),¹⁴ which was evident among those pious individuals before the recognisable social movement that became Sufism. The terms used for these renunciants were zuhhād, nussāk and ‘ubbād.¹⁵ Later Sufis pointed out that the first person to be called a “ṣūfī” was one Abū Ḥāshim (d. 767–768) in Syria who had a khānaqāh (convent).¹⁶ But later Sufi writers consistently made associations of such early individuals with renunciation, fear of God and trust in God (tawakkul), and “they underwent austerities, devoted extraordinary amounts of time to Qur’ānic recitation and prayer, and generally cultivated a solemn attitude towards life.”¹⁷ Descriptions of anything “mystical,” a term liberally applied by modern scholars to Sufism without much thought as to its meaning, is notably absent. An associated ahistorical method was to link the pre-Islamic prophets with the tradition, thus suggesting its perennial nature. In this respect it is worth recalling Suhrawardī (d. 1234) who h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Transliteration
• Preface
• Part One: The early period
• Part Two: The middle period
• Part Three: The modern period
• Index