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The Controversy of Shaykh Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī and Handsome, Moon-Faced Youths: A Case Study of Shāhid-Bāzī in Medieval Sufism
Abstract
The ability to witness the divine in creation has been one of the features that has often distinguished Suf?is from non-Suf?is. One of the most controversial manifestations of this was shahidbazi ("playing the witness"), which was a practice of gazing at the form of young males in order to witness the inner, divine presence. Since medieval times a Persian Suf?i by the name of Aw?ad al-Din Kirmani has been most commonly associated with shahid-bazi (especially during the sama-or the ritual of Suf?i music and dance). The controversy relating to Kirmani seems to have focused on the homoerotic nature of shahid-bazi, yet a close examination of the texts reveal that the criticisms about Kirmani relate to a wide range of Suf?i practices and doctrines. An investigation of the contexts of these criticisms indicate that thirteenth-fourteenth-century Suf?ism was diverse and fluid, and that the systematisation of Suf?ism into brotherhoods (?ariqa) which was taking place in Kirmani's lifetime had not resulted in a bland conformity of faith and practice. .
... С одной стороны, описание еретических практик и верований могло бы понравиться османской аудитории, вовлечённой в растущее соперничество с преимущественно шиитским Сафавидским Ираном 15 . С другой стороны, внутренняя обеспокоенность растущим влиянием шиитских общин, таких как кизилбаши или хуруфиты на территории Османской империи, возможно, также повлияла на потребность в информации об инакомыслии, которую мог бы предоставить текст Фустат ал-'адала [28, p. 245-73; 29, p. 483-90; 30, p. [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. ...
... О Кирмани см. также:[49].32 Билал Хабаши, или Билал б. ...
The particularities in the political development of medieval Anatolia after the arrival of the Seljuq Turks in the eleventh century resulted in a singular scenario in which a long but steady process of Islamization transformed medieval Anatolia with the majority Christian population into a mostly Muslim territory by the end of the fifteenth century. However, this process of conflict and accommodation affected not only the different religions present in the peninsula but also those confessions that coexisted and competed with each another within each of these religions. The religious diversity of the 13 th to 15 th cent. Anatolia has also reflected its textual production. Several significant works on kalam and fiqh , in addition to a variety of Sufi texts, were produced during this period. These works often deal with dogma, practices or traditions of their religious confession. But, generally, they do not offer much information on other religious confessions. The manuscript held at the Bibliothèque National de France (Supplément Turc 1120) contains a work which has been identified by Osman Turan as the Fustat al-‘adala and attributed to a certain Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Khatib. The uniqueness of this work is that a part of it is occupied with describing the different ‘heresies’ that were present in Anatolia at the time when the author lived, which appears to be during the lifetime of the last Seljuq Sultan of Rum, Ghiyath al-din Mas‘ud (d. 1308 AD). This introduction will look at this manuscript from both a codicological and thematic perspective. On the one hand, I will discuss certain aspects related to the production of the codex, its authorship and potential patronage. While on the other, the section on heresies contained in the text will be examined to explore what this work can tell us about the religious environment of medieval Anatolia.
... 1237 or 38), and Fakhr al-Din 'Iraqi (d. 1289) demonstrate (Ridgeon 2012). In Sufi seances (sama's), "moonfaced youths" (Pers. ...
For theologians, to conceive of God in terms of light has some undeniable advantages, allowing a middle-of-the road position between the two extremes of thinking about God in terms of a purely disembodied, unfathomable, unsensible being, and of crediting Him with a body, possibly even a human(oid) body. This paper first reviews the reasons why God, in early medieval Islam, was never fully theorized in terms of light. It then proceeds to discuss light-related narratives in two major, late-medieval compilations of hadiths about the afterlife, by al-Suyuti (Ash’ari, Egypt, d. 1505) and al-Majlisi (Persia, d. 1699), suggesting that eschatology was the area in which God’s light continued to shine in Islam, and the backdoor through which a theology of light, in the thought of al-Suhrawardi (Syria, d. 1191) and his followers, made a triumphant re-entry into Islamic thought.
... Both works mention that Sāwī spent some time in Baghdad before moving to Damascus to live under the spiritual tutelage of Shaykh ʿUthmān-i Rūmī, about whom we have little information. 59 Both works tell us that one day Sāwī retreated to the grave of Bilāl Ḥabashī 60 (d. c. 16-17/638-21/642) in order to meditate in isolation, where he was visited by a young ascetic who would be responsible for his adoption of Qalandar practices and beliefs. ...
The papers in this volume derive from a workshop held at the Orient-Institut Istanbul on 12-13 September 2014.
This paper examines the expression of homoerotic desire towards young boys and its metaphysical reflection, the shāhid-bāzī / naẓar-bāzī tradition, within Azeri Turkic Ṣūfī poetry. It comparatively analyses elements of this tradition alongside the contemplation of ephebe in Greek tradition. The shāhid-bāzī traces its roots back to the controversial prophetic saying known as ḥadīth al-ru’yah . Its precursors offer a wide range of images within the historical and religious-mythological contexts of Greek, Arabic, and Persian traditions. The paper argues that while the male beloved derived main metaphors from these traditions, Ḥurūfism, as an ideological undercurrent in Azeri poetry, added specific lettrist and calligraphic features to this depiction. The male beloved in Azeri poetry has been classified into several types, including Christian and Zoroastrian boys, Turkish warriors, cup-bearers, schoolboys, and adult beloveds. This paper explores the appearance and clothing of the male beloved, his primary metaphors, and explains the use of female epithets in the depiction of male beauty.
Sufism, the mystical or aesthetic doctrine in Islam, has occupied a very specific place in the Islamic tradition, with its own history, literature and devotional practices. Its development began in the seventh century and spread throughout the Islamic world. The Cambridge Companion to Sufism traces its evolution from the formative period to the present, addressing specific themes along the way within the context of the times. In a section discussing the early period, the devotional practices of the earliest Sufis are considered. The section on the medieval period, when Sufism was at its height, examines Sufi doctrines, different forms of mysticism and the antinomian expressions of Sufism. The section on the modern period explains the controversies that surrounded Sufism, the changes that took place in the colonial period and how Sufism transformed into a transnational movement in the twentieth century. This inimitable volume sheds light on a multifaceted and alternative aspect of Islamic history and religion.
Sufism, the mystical or aesthetic doctrine in Islam, has occupied a very specific place in the Islamic tradition, with its own history, literature and devotional practices. Its development began in the seventh century and spread throughout the Islamic world. The Cambridge Companion to Sufism traces its evolution from the formative period to the present, addressing specific themes along the way within the context of the times. In a section discussing the early period, the devotional practices of the earliest Sufis are considered. The section on the medieval period, when Sufism was at its height, examines Sufi doctrines, different forms of mysticism and the antinomian expressions of Sufism. The section on the modern period explains the controversies that surrounded Sufism, the changes that took place in the colonial period and how Sufism transformed into a transnational movement in the twentieth century. This inimitable volume sheds light on a multifaceted and alternative aspect of Islamic history and religion.
This article presents two hitherto unstudied compilations of verses from the Bustān of Saʿdī. Both circulated in the Persianate world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The article provides an analysis of the compilations’ content as well as their relation to the complete Bustān. By highlighting certain stories and themes at the expense of others, and by ordering these passages in a way that differs from the complete Bustān, each compilation transforms Saʿdī’s text into a shorter, more homogenous composition, with distinct formal, thematic, and generic qualities. The shorter compilation presents a series of aphorisms, forming a mirror for princes. The longer one offers a selection of stories and lessons and emphasizes mystical themes, including aspects of Sufi erotic theology. This article also investigates the manuscript copies of these compilations, revealing their use and transmission in Iran, Turkey, and Central Asia between 1470 and 1550.
Sufism, the mystical or aesthetic doctrine in Islam, has occupied a very specific place in the Islamic tradition, with its own history, literature and devotional practices. Its development began in the seventh century and spread throughout the Islamic world. The Cambridge Companion to Sufism traces its evolution from the formative period to the present, addressing specific themes along the way within the context of the times. In a section discussing the early period, the devotional practices of the earliest Sufis are considered. The section on the medieval period, when Sufism was at its height, examines Sufi doctrines, different forms of mysticism and the antinomian expressions of Sufism. The section on the modern period explains the controversies that surrounded Sufism, the changes that took place in the colonial period and how Sufism transformed into a transnational movement in the twentieth century. This inimitable volume sheds light on a multifaceted and alternative aspect of Islamic history and religion.
Rawḍat al-murīdīn of Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad Ibn al-Ḥusayn Ibn Yazdānyār al-Hamadhānī is a distinguished Sufi manual of the early fifth/eleventh century. Though an early Sufi textbook, this work is relatively unknown when compared with other Sufi textbooks written prior to and after it. This article draws on Williams’ edition from 1957 in addition to two manuscripts held in Princeton and Istanbul, in order to examine this early Sufi work and to appraise its contribution to the development of early Sufism. Rawḍat al-murīdīn presents us a unique formula of taṣawwuf that differs essentially from the famous manuals of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries which concerned themselves with Sufi rules of conduct. There is strong evidence to suggest that its author, if not formally a member of Karrāmiyya, was a pro -Karrāmī writer who operated in a historical context where the renunciatory-Karrāmī mode of piety was widely condemned. Unlike the early character of Abū Bakr Ibn Yazdānyār, who lived in the fourth/tenth century and was generally known as an opponent of ecstatic Sufism, the author of Rawḍa seeks to present a comprehensive umbrella of Sufism under which the teachings of al-Junayd co-exist side by side with those of al-Ḥallāj.
Sufism, the mystical or aesthetic doctrine in Islam, has occupied a very specific place in the Islamic tradition, with its own history, literature and devotional practices. Its development began in the seventh century and spread throughout the Islamic world. The Cambridge Companion to Sufism traces its evolution from the formative period to the present, addressing specific themes along the way within the context of the times. In a section discussing the early period, the devotional practices of the earliest Sufis are considered. The section on the medieval period, when Sufism was at its height, examines Sufi doctrines, different forms of mysticism and the antinomian expressions of Sufism. The section on the modern period explains the controversies that surrounded Sufism, the changes that took place in the colonial period and how Sufism transformed into a transnational movement in the twentieth century. This inimitable volume sheds light on a multifaceted and alternative aspect of Islamic history and religion.
Modern treatments of Sufi love theory have had a pronounced tendency to disembody and “straighten” Sufi eroticism in various ways. Focusing primarily on a series of anecdotes from the hagiography of the thirteenth-century Persian poet and profligate Sufi lover, Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī, the author argues that the centrality of bodies and embodied textual performances of Sufi love theory in Sufi hagiographic works not only militates against efforts to reduce this form of desire to a disembodied or philosophical love of “beautiful forms,” but it also helps us to re-embody a particular type of beloved: a same-sex beloved who often gets obscured and metaphorized out of corporeal existence in much modern scholarship. Medieval Sufi eroticism, the author concludes, should not be viewed as a rejection of the body and sexuality, but rather an effort to harness the considerable affective potency inherent in these phenomena for spiritual ends.
Cambridge Core - Islam - Sufism and Early Islamic Piety - by Arin Salamah-Qudsi
Sufism, the mystical or aesthetic doctrine in Islam, has occupied a very specific place in the Islamic tradition, with its own history, literature and devotional practices. Its development began in the seventh century and spread throughout the Islamic world. The Cambridge Companion to Sufism traces its evolution from the formative period to the present, addressing specific themes along the way within the context of the times. In a section discussing the early period, the devotional practices of the earliest Sufis are considered. The section on the medieval period, when Sufism was at its height, examines Sufi doctrines, different forms of mysticism and the antinomian expressions of Sufism. The section on the modern period explains the controversies that surrounded Sufism, the changes that took place in the colonial period and how Sufism transformed into a transnational movement in the twentieth century. This inimitable volume sheds light on a multifaceted and alternative aspect of Islamic history and religion.
Sufism, the mystical or aesthetic doctrine in Islam, has occupied a very specific place in the Islamic tradition, with its own history, literature and devotional practices. Its development began in the seventh century and spread throughout the Islamic world. The Cambridge Companion to Sufism traces its evolution from the formative period to the present, addressing specific themes along the way within the context of the times. In a section discussing the early period, the devotional practices of the earliest Sufis are considered. The section on the medieval period, when Sufism was at its height, examines Sufi doctrines, different forms of mysticism and the antinomian expressions of Sufism. The section on the modern period explains the controversies that surrounded Sufism, the changes that took place in the colonial period and how Sufism transformed into a transnational movement in the twentieth century. This inimitable volume sheds light on a multifaceted and alternative aspect of Islamic history and religion.
Sufism, the mystical or aesthetic doctrine in Islam, has occupied a very specific place in the Islamic tradition, with its own history, literature and devotional practices. Its development began in the seventh century and spread throughout the Islamic world. The Cambridge Companion to Sufism traces its evolution from the formative period to the present, addressing specific themes along the way within the context of the times. In a section discussing the early period, the devotional practices of the earliest Sufis are considered. The section on the medieval period, when Sufism was at its height, examines Sufi doctrines, different forms of mysticism and the antinomian expressions of Sufism. The section on the modern period explains the controversies that surrounded Sufism, the changes that took place in the colonial period and how Sufism transformed into a transnational movement in the twentieth century. This inimitable volume sheds light on a multifaceted and alternative aspect of Islamic history and religion.
Sufism, the mystical or aesthetic doctrine in Islam, has occupied a very specific place in the Islamic tradition, with its own history, literature and devotional practices. Its development began in the seventh century and spread throughout the Islamic world. The Cambridge Companion to Sufism traces its evolution from the formative period to the present, addressing specific themes along the way within the context of the times. In a section discussing the early period, the devotional practices of the earliest Sufis are considered. The section on the medieval period, when Sufism was at its height, examines Sufi doctrines, different forms of mysticism and the antinomian expressions of Sufism. The section on the modern period explains the controversies that surrounded Sufism, the changes that took place in the colonial period and how Sufism transformed into a transnational movement in the twentieth century. This inimitable volume sheds light on a multifaceted and alternative aspect of Islamic history and religion.
This chapter raises the question of what constitutes the "West". For the purposes of this article the "West" will be understood as a geographic entity consisting of Europe and North America, but with an awareness that the term implies some kind of cultural terrain containing commonality, and in its construction standing distinct from the "East". Sufism’s origins in Islam place its study firmly in the terrain of Western constructions of the "East", but this chapter will show that Sufism exists in the in-between spaces and always in transition. In parts of Europe, especially Britain and Germany, Sufism should be understood in the context of Romantic orientalist reconstructions of Islam and an appropriation of Sufism as a form of universal mysticism which removed the tradition from its Islamic roots. In the USA this reconstruction has led Marcia Hermansen to categorize various Sufi movements as "theirs" and "ours". However, in addition to nineteenth and early twentieth-century Romantic interest in mysticism, Sufism also needs to be understood in the context of post-colonial Muslim migrations into Western Europe, the presence of indigenous Muslim communities in Eastern Europe left behind by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and finally Western conversion to Islam.
Sufism is widely defined as Islamic mysticism, particularly the form that took shape around the Baghdadi master al-Junayd (d. 298/911?). In the early eleventh century CE, biographers worked out a spiritual lineage for Sufism going back to the Companions of the Prophet. The immediate forbears of the Sufis they identified as eighth- and ninth-century renunciants known as zuhhād, nussāk, or ‘ubbād (the most important extant biographical dictionaries are those of al-Sulamī and Abū Nu’aym). They underwent austerities, devoted extraordinary amounts of time to Qur’ānic recitation and prayer, and generally cultivated a solemn attitude towards life. Some spoke of thinking often and steadily of God, but the ideas of mutual love and mystical union were yet to come. A few wore wool, but express references to Sūfīyah before the later ninth century usually have to do with marginal, disreputable figures not identified as forbears by the later Sufi biographers. Modern research has largely confirmed that Sufism grew out of this earlier, ascetic tradition. By a process not yet convincingly mapped in detail, there arose in the mid-ninth century a mystical trend, identified in Iraq with persons called Sufis. They talked of reciprocal love between themselves and God, and found that God addressed them through things of the world. This aroused opposition from pious Sunni circles determined to protect divine transcendence, and in 264/877-8, a Sufi inquisition was instituted in Baghdad. Some Sufis were arrested, although released without punishment, while others went into exile. By the end of the century, something like classical Sufism had developed in Baghdad, from where it would spread and absorb other pious movements over the next two centuries. This chapter traces its emergence, as understood by twentieth-century scholarship, out of the earlier ascetical or renunciant tradition.
There is a significant obstacle to writing a history of early Sufi women: women are substantially missing from the major sources. The texts that have come to define the history, practice, and thought of Sufism from the early period onward contain few female figures. Some reports of pious and Sufi women survived orally and in written form over the intervening centuries in collections of biographical notices of noted individuals, such as Abū ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Sulamī‘s (d. 402/1012) Dhikr al-niswa al-muta’abbidāt as-Sūfiyyāt, and Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī‘s (d. 597/1200) Sifāt al-Safwa, as well as Muhammad Ibn Sa’d’s (d. 230/845) Tabaqāt al-kubrā. Despite likely access to such resources, however, major Sufi manuals and treatises such as Abū Tālib al-Makkī‘s (d. 386/996) Qūt al-qulūb, Abū Bakr al-Kalabādhi’s (d. ca. 380/990) Ta’arruf, Abū Nasr al-Sarrāj’s (d. 378/988) Kitāb al-luma’, Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī‘s (d. 465/1072) al-Risāla, and Abū al-Hassan al-Hujwīrī‘s (d. 470/1077) Kashf al-mahjūb only mention by name the near-legendary Rabī‘a al-‘Adawiyya (Basra, d. 185/801) and a few other pious and Sufi women. While a number of women do appear in these texts, they are most often anonymous, and moreover are depicted as supporting players in accounts of more famous men. In al-Sulamī and Ibn al-Jawzī‘s works, a few of these men are depicted making an effort to transmit women’s knowledge with women at the centre of the accounts. Individual women are mentioned in some early Sufi texts, such as al-Hakīm al-Tirmidhī‘s (d. 320/910) account of his wife’s extraordinary spiritual station. Certainly, men’s names have been dropped from the sources. But the sheer number of extant reports of men compared to women in the formative literature means that women are read as marginal to the development, transmission, and preservation of Sufi practices, knowledge, and teaching.
Sufism, the mystical or aesthetic doctrine in Islam, has occupied a very specific place in the Islamic tradition, with its own history, literature and devotional practices. Its development began in the seventh century and spread throughout the Islamic world. The Cambridge Companion to Sufism traces its evolution from the formative period to the present, addressing specific themes along the way within the context of the times. In a section discussing the early period, the devotional practices of the earliest Sufis are considered. The section on the medieval period, when Sufism was at its height, examines Sufi doctrines, different forms of mysticism and the antinomian expressions of Sufism. The section on the modern period explains the controversies that surrounded Sufism, the changes that took place in the colonial period and how Sufism transformed into a transnational movement in the twentieth century. This inimitable volume sheds light on a multifaceted and alternative aspect of Islamic history and religion.
The Quest for the Red Sulphur (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society
- See Claude Addas
See Claude Addas, The Quest for the Red Sulphur (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993), 229.
110
The Ocean of the Soul, trans Prolegomenon to the study of Ḥāfijiẓ
- Hellmut Ritter
- O ' John
- Kane
13 Hellmut Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, trans. John O'Kane (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 448–519; Leonard Lewisohn " Prolegomenon to the study of Ḥāfijiẓ, " in Hafijiz and the Religion of Love in Classical
Persian Poetry, ed. idem (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 43–55. In Persian see Syrus Shamisa, Shāhidbāzī dar adabiyāt-i fārsī (Tehran: Firdaws, 1381/2002).
s story about the ecstatic statements of Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī, who asked his followers to stab him with knives should he repeat his statement (The Mathnawī of Jalālu'ddīn Rūmī
- See For
- Rūmī
See for example Rūmī's story about the ecstatic statements of Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī, who asked
his followers to stab him with knives should he repeat his statement (The Mathnawī of Jalālu'ddīn
Rūmī, translated by R.A. Nicholson [London: Luzac, 1925–40], 4:388–90).
-ʿUrwa is a reference to another of Simnānī's treatises. For more on Simnānī and Ibn ʿArabī see Hermann Landolt Simnānī on waḥdat al-wujūd
- Ibid
Ibid., 192; [al ]-ʿUrwa is a reference to another of Simnānī's treatises. For more on Simnānī
and Ibn ʿArabī see Hermann Landolt, " Simnānī on waḥdat al-wujūd, " in Wisdom of Persia, ed.
Tehran: La branche de Téhéran de l'institut des études islamiques de l
- H Landolt
- M Mohaghegh
H. Landolt and M. Mohaghegh (Tehran: La branche de Téhéran de l'institut des études islamiques
de l'Université McGill, 1971), 91–112.
109
Simnānī's treatises. For more on Simnānī and Ibn ʿArabī see Hermann Landolt
- Ibid
Ibid., 192; [al ]-ʿUrwa is a reference to another of Simnānī's treatises. For more on Simnānī
and Ibn ʿArabī see Hermann Landolt, "Simnānī on waḥdat al-wujūd," in Wisdom of Persia, ed.
H. Landolt and M. Mohaghegh (Tehran: La branche de Téhéran de l'institut des études islamiques
de l'Université McGill, 1971), 91-112.
The Quest for the Red Sulphur
- Claude See
- Addas
See Claude Addas, The Quest for the Red Sulphur (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993), 229.
The issue is complicated by the fact that Ibn ʿArabī had been a vehement opponent of shāhid-bāzī in his Kitāb al-amr al-muḥkam written in 601/1205. With regard to the practice of samāʿ he remarked
- Red Addas
- Sulphur
Addas, Red Sulphur, 229. The issue is complicated by the fact that Ibn ʿArabī had been a
vehement opponent of shāhid-bāzī in his Kitāb al-amr al-muḥkam written in 601/1205. With
regard to the practice of samāʿ he remarked, "As for the use of a 'witness,' in other words a young
beardless man, this is the most serious of pitfalls and the most immoral form of wickedness," see
ibid., 163-4. Perhaps he changed his mind over time, for certainly he must have been aware of
Kirmānī's self-professed shāhid-bāzī, or perhaps, he considered Kirmānī to have other qualities
that would compensate when raising his son-in-law.