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Heresy and Sufism in the Arabic-Islamic world, 1550–1750: Some preliminary observations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2010

Khaled El-Rouayheb
Khaled El-Rouayheb*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
*
kel@fas.harvard.edu
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Abstract

The present paper is an attempt to throw preliminary light on heretical Sufi groups in the Arabic-Islamic world in the early-modern period (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries). Previous scholarship on antinomian Sufism has tended to focus on earlier centuries and on Persian- and Turkish-speaking groups. Evidence suggests that there is also a history to be written of antinomian mystical groups in the Arabic-speaking world in later centuries. On the eve of modernity in the Arabic-speaking Middle East, groups and individuals existed who rejected or ignored the prevalent scholarly interpretation of Islam and challenged the authority of the class of religious scholars (ʿulamā'). A number of sources from the period, usually hostile and/or satirical, attest to the existence of such groups and allow us to reconstruct the overall contours of their outlook.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 73 , Issue 3 , October 2010 , pp. 357 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2010

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Footnotes

*

The present article was written while I was a recipient of an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Assistant Professors at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in 2008–09. I would like to thank both the Mellon Foundation and the IAS for their generous support. Thanks are also due to Harvard University for granting me a year's leave. I would also like to thank Professor Patricia Crone for kindly reading and annotating an early draft of the present article, and the anonymous referees of the Bulletin for additional suggestions and comments.

References

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2 Najm al-Dīn Ghazzī, , Luṭf al-samar wa qaṭf al-thamar min tarājim aʿyān al-ṭabaqa al-’ūlā min al-qarn al-ḥādī ʿashar, ed. al-Shaykh, M. (Iḥyā’ al-turāth al-ʿArabī, 55, 57. Damascus: Wizārat al-Thaqāfah wa al-Irshād al-Qawmī, 1981–82), 57: 698–707Google Scholar. Lutz Berger has an extended description and discussion of the case in his illuminating Gesellschaft und Individuum in Damaskus, 1550–1791 (Kultur, Recht und Politik in muslimischen Gesellschaften, 10. Würzburg: Ergon, 2007), 288–301. My overall understanding of the case coincides with Berger's, though we differ on a number of details.

3 Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba, , Ṭabaqāt al-shāfiʿiyya (Silsilah al-jadīdah min maṭbūʿāt Dāʿirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmānīyah, 5/j/7/1–5/j/7/4. Hyderabad Deccan: Maṭbaʿah Majlis Dāʿirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmānīyah, 1980), 4: 97–9Google Scholar.

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6 Būrīnī, Tarājim al-aʿyān min abnā’ al-zamān (MS. Vienna: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Mxt. 346), fol. 155r–v. This is reiterated in the later account of Muḥibbī (d. 1699), Khulāṣat al-athar fī aʿyān al-qarn al-ḥādī ʿashar (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Wahbīyah, 1284/1868), 4: 478–80.

7 Izutsu, T., Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 23–36Google Scholar, 110–15; Nicholson, R., Studies in Islamic Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), 97–103Google Scholar, 125–30.

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9 For example, Ḥiṣnī's statement that “The Devil plays with the Sufis of our time like children play with each other” was cited by the Syrian mystic and scholar ʿAlwān al-Ḥamawī (d. 1530); see Geoffroy, E., Le Soufisme en Egypte et en Syrie sous les derniers Mamelouks et les premiers Ottomans (Damascus: Institut français d'études arabes de Damas, 1995), 177Google Scholar. Berger sees Karakī's hostility to Ḥiṣnī as being due to the latter's opposition to anthropomorphism; see Gesellschaft und Individuum, 292.

10 Ghazzī, Luṭf al-samar, 2: 706. Berger, who also concludes that Yaḥyā al-Karakī was a mystic of sorts, does not note or discuss this reference to the Muṭāwiʿa.

11 Its existence has been noted by Tawfīq al-Ṭawīl, , al-Taṣawwuf fī Miṣr ibbān al-ʿaṣr al-ʿuthmānī (Cairo: n.p., 1946), 76, 85Google Scholar; Winter, M., Society and Religion in Early Ottoman Egypt: Studies in the Writings of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī (Studies in Islamic Culture and History. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Books, 1982), 80–2Google Scholar; Geoffroy, Le Soufisme en Egypte et en Syrie, 206, 340. Winter speculates that it could have been a heretical offshoot of the Aḥmadiyya order. Geoffroy presents this as a settled fact though he only cites Winter in its support.

12 See ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī, al-Anwār al-qudsiyya fī maʿrifat qawāʿid al-ṣūfiyya, ed. Surūr and al-Shāfiʿī (Cairo: al-Maktabah al-ʿIlmīyah, n.d.), 1: 47 (citing an unpublished work by Ghamrī); Abū al-Faṭḥ Muḥammad al-Dajjānī, , al-ʿIqd al-mufrad fī ḥukm al-amrad (MS. Princeton: Firestone Library, New Series, 1952)Google Scholar; Ṭawīl, al-Taṣawwuf fī Miṣr, 112, 176–7 (citing a fatwā by Ṣaʿīdī).

13 ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī, , Laṭā’if al-minan wa'l-akhlāq fi bayān wujūb al-taḥadduth bi-niʿmat Allāh ʿalā al-iṭlāq (Cairo: ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Aḥmad al-Ḥanafī, 1357/1938–9), 2: 18Google Scholar.

14 ʿAbd al-Ra’ūf al-Munāwī, , al-Kawākib al-durriyya fi ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya, ed. al-Jādir, M. A. (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1999), 3: 327–8Google Scholar, 430, 480, 484, 495, 496–7; 4: 99. The last of these entries is devoted to a man with the attributive “al-Abharī”, which suggests Iranian origin (Abhar is a town near Qazvin). However, the other entries clearly indicate that many members of the order were of Egyptian origin.

15 Ibid., 3: 440.

16 See Ṭawīl, al-Taṣawwuf fī Miṣr, 85, 176–7; and Dajjānī, al-ʿIqd al-mufrad, fols 6r–8r.

17 Manṣūr al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ ʿan matn al-Iqnāʿ, ed. Hilāl (Riyad: Maktabat al-Naṣr al-Ḥadīthah, n.d.), 6: 171.

18 al-Fāriskūrī, ʿUmar, al-Suyūf al-murhafa fī al-radd ʿalā zanādiqat al-mutaṣawwifa (MS. Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Wetzstein II, 1735)Google Scholar, fols 54–71. Copied in 1009/1601.

19 Ibid., fol. 55v.

20 Knysh, A., Ibn ʿArabī in the Later Islamic Tradition (SUNY Series in Islam. Albany: SUNY Press, 1999)Google Scholar. Despite its title, Knysh's work does not cover the period after the Ottoman conquest of the Arab East.

21 Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī, , al-Kawākib al-sā’ira fī aʿyān al-mi'a al-ʿāshira, ed. Jabbour, J. (American University of Beirut, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Publications, Oriental series, 18, 20, 29. Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Amīrkānīyah, 1945–58), 18: 203–4Google Scholar (on the opinion of Zakariyya al-Anṣārī); Ibn ʿĀbidīn, , Radd al-muḥtār ʿalā al-Durr al-mukhtār (Cairo: Būlāq: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Kubrā, 1272/1855–56), 3: 294Google Scholar (citing the opinion of Suyūṭī and Kemālpāşā-zāde); Winter, Society and Religion, 125–7.

22 Geoffroy, Le Soufisme en Egypte et en Syrie, 79–80.

23 Fāriskūrī, al-Suyūf al-murhafa, fol. 60v.

24 Ibid., fol. 64r.

25 Ibid., fol. 64r–v.

26 Ibid., fol. 65r.

27 Ibid., fol. 66v.

28 Ibid., fols 66v–67r.

29 Ibid., fol. 68r–v.

30 Ibid., fol. 68v.

31 Ibid., fol. 69r–v.

32 Ibid., fol. 69v.

33 Ibid., fol. 69v–70r. For the relevant discussion in Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, see Ibn ʿArabī, , Fuṣūs al-ḥikam, ed. ʿAfīfī, A. (Cairo: ʿIsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1946), 93–4Google Scholar.

34 See Winter, Society and Religion, especially 12–33.

35 ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī, , al-Mīzān al-dharriyya al-mubayyina li-ʿaqā’id al-firaq al-ʿaliyya, ed. Al-Mahdī, Naṣṣār, and Mazyadī, (Cairo: al-Dār al-Jawdīyah, 2007), 62–82Google Scholar. The passage quoted by Fāriskūrī starts on page 74.

36 Shaʿrānī, Laṭā’if, 2: 29.

37 Shaʿrānī had himself cited the existence of a Qalandarī lodge in Cairo in the time of Aḥmad al-Badawī (d. 1276), and that things apparently contrary to Islamic law were taking place there; see his Laṭā’if, 2: 18. See also Geoffroy, Le Soufisme en Egypte et en Syrie, 175–87.

38 See for example Shaʿrānī's work Tanbīh al-mughtarrīn awākhir al-qarn al-ʿāshir ʿalá mā khālafū fīhi salafahum al-ṭāhir (Cairo: Musṭafā al-Bābī al-Halabī, 1937).

39 Shaʿrānī, Laṭā’if, 2: 29.

40 ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī, , al-Insān al-kāmil fī maʿrifat al-awākhir wa'l-awā’il (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Azharīyah al-Miṣrīyah, 1328/1910–11), 74–5Google Scholar. The remarkable passage is discussed in R. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, 139–40.

41 Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ, 6: 170.

42 Munāwī, al-Kawākib al-durriyya, 2: 398–400.

43 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, , Inbā’ al-ghumr bi-abnā’ al-ʿumr, ed. Ḥ. Ḥabashī, (al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʿArabīyah al-Muttaḥidah. Al-Majlis al-Aʿlā lil-Shu’ūn al-Islāmīyah. Lajnat Iḥyā’ al-Turāth al-Islāmī, al-Kitāb 16. Cairo: n.p., 1971), 2: 308–9Google Scholar.

44 ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Shaʿrānī, , Lawāqiḥ al-anwār fī ṭabaqāt al-akhyār (Cairo: Sharikat Maktabat wa Maṭbaʿat Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1954), 2: 57Google Scholar.

45 Qāsim al-Khānī, al-Taḥqīq fī al-radd ʿalā al-zindīq (MS. Princeton: Firestone Library) Yahuda 3355: fols. 105–16 and Yahuda 4598.

46 Fāriskūrī, al-Suyūf al-murhafa, fol. 66v.

47 Khānī, al-Taḥqīq, fol. 107r [Yahuda 3355]; fol. 6v [Yahuda 4598].

48 al-Bakrī, Muṣṭafā, al-Suyūf al-ḥidād fī aʿnāq ahl al-zandaqa wa'l-ilḥād, ed. Mazyadī, A. F. (Cairo: Dār al-Āfāq al-ʿArabīyah, 2007)Google Scholar. For some reason, the title of the work, clearly indicated by the author in the preface, has been altered in the printed edition to al-Suyūf al-ḥidād fī aʿmāq … For the author, see de Jong, F., “Muṣtafā Kamāl al-Dīn al-Bakrī (1688–1749): revival and reform of the Khalwatiyya rradition?”, in Levtzion, N. and Voll, J. (eds), Eighteenth-Century Renewal and Revival in Islam (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 117–32Google Scholar.

49 Ibid., 25–6.

50 See his influential handbook, Sufial-Sayr wa'l-sulūk ilā malik al-mulūk, ed. al-Dīn, I. Shams (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyah, 2002), 102Google Scholar.

51 See Le Gall, D., A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandīs in the Ottoman World, 1450–1700 (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005)Google Scholar; and my “Opening the gate of verification: the forgotten Arabic-Islamic florescence of the seventeenth century”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 38, 2006, 263–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Bakrī, al-Suyūf al-ḥidād, 26.

53 Bakrī, al-Suyūf al-ḥidād, 44.

54 Ibid., 48. The formulation of the position is exploiting the similarity between the Arabic words for “prayer” (ṣalāt) and “connection” (ṣila), and the similarity between the name ʿArafāt and the verb “to know” (ʿarafa).

55 Ibid., 91.

56 Ibid., 105.

57 A classic study of this theme that focuses on the earlier Persian tradition is Ritter, H., Das Meer der Seele: Mensch, Welt, und Gott in den Geschichten des Fariddudin ʿAttar (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 434–503Google Scholar, translated into English as Ocean of the Soul: Men, World and God in the Stories of Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, trans. J. O'Kane, ed. B. Radtke (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 448–519. A shorter discussion that focuses on the later Arabic tradition is included in my Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 36–9, 95–110Google Scholar.

58 Bakrī, al-Suyūf al-ḥidād, 100.

59 Ibid., 80.

60 Ibid., 299.

61 Karamustafa, A., God's Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200–1550 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 52–6Google Scholar.

62 See Cook, M., Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 479–82Google Scholar.

63 al-Shirbīnī, Yūsuf, Hazz al-quḥūf fī sharḥ qaṣīd Abī Shādūf, ed. Davies, H. (Leuven: Peeters, 2005)Google Scholar.

64 Ibid., 177.

65 Ibid., 180–1.

66 Ibid., 195.

67 Bakrī, al-Suyūf al-murhafa, 33–4. The lines are from a poem by Ibn Ghānim al-Maqdisī (d. 1279) included in his Ḥall al-rumūz wa fatḥ al-kunūz. See the undated edition of the work printed in Tanta, Egypt by al-Maṭbaʿa al-Yūsufiyya (which falsely attributes the work to Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām (d. 1262)), 91. On Ibn Ghānīm and his works, see the editor's introduction to Ibn Ghānim al-Maqdisī, Dīwān, ed. M. ʿAbd al-Qādir (Publications de l'IFEAD, 190. Damascus: al-Maʿhad al-Faransī lil-Dirāsāt al-ʿArabīyah bi-Dimashq, 1993), esp. 44–5.

68 Shirbīnī, Hazz al-quḥūf, 164.

69 al-Ghamrī, Muḥammad, al-Ḥukm al-maḍbūṭ fi taḥrīm fi’l qawm Lūṭ (Cairo: Dār al-Ṣaḥābah lil-Turāth, 1988), 111–14Google Scholar.

70 Shirbīnī, Hazz al-quḥūf, 165.

71 Ibid., 180.

72 Ibid., 167–8.

73 Ibid., 166.

74 Ibid., 183–5, 196–8.

75 Ibid., 173–4.

76 Westermarck, E., Ritual and Belief in Morocco (London: Macmillan, 1926)Google Scholar, 1: 108.

77 Lane, E. W., Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London: J. Murray, 1860), 228Google Scholar. Leo Africanus reported an incident of this nature in sixteenth-century Egypt, see Dols, M., Majnūn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 413–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Shirbīnī, Hazz al-quḥūf, 168–71. Note that the line of verse by Jīlī is misattributed to “al-Jabullī” in the edited text (p. 169). The line in question is from the well-known ʿAyniyya of Jīlī; see Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, 143 (line 9).

79 Ibid., 198. The edited text has: jamāʿatun min al-fuqarā’ aw min ṭā’ifat al-mulḥidīn al-muḥallaqīn al-dhuqūn aw al-ṭā’ifa al-khawamis [sic]. The last words are grammatically corrupt, and there are several variants in the extant printings and manuscripts, some of which do not mention the “Khawāmis”.

80 Ibid., 171–3.

81 Buckingham, J. S., Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia (London: H. Colburn, 1829), 84Google Scholar.

82 Shirbīnī, Hazz al-quḥūf, 193–4.

83 Ibid., 194.

84 See Karamustafa, God's Unruly Friends, which deals with the Qalandariyya and related groups from the thirteenth century to the early sixteenth. On their shaving the beard, see p. 19.

85 For a study of non-mystical religious scepticism in earlier periods of Islamic history, see Stroumsa, S., Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rawāndī, Abū Bakr al-Rāzī and Their Impact on Islamic Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1999)Google Scholar.

86 Ghazzī, al-Kawākib al-sā’ira, 3: 176–7.

87 See ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī, , al-Wujūd al-ḥaqq, ed. B. ʿAlā’ al-Dīn, (Publications de l'IFEAD, 153. Damascus: Maʿhad al-ʿIlmī al-Faransī lil-Dirāsāt al-ʿArabīyah, 1995)Google Scholar; Winter, M., “A polemical treatise by ʿAbd al-Ġanī al-Nābulusī against a Turkish scholar on the religious status of the Dhimmīs”, Arabica 35, 1988, 92–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 See my Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800, 99–100.

89 Ibid., 100–4.

90 See Dols, Majnūn, 366–422; Geoffroy, Le Soufisme en Egypte et en Syrie, 309–33; Berger, Gesellschaft und Individuum, 306–20.