Shi'i Islam and Sufism

Classical Views and Modern Perspectives

Denis Hermann, Mathieu Terrier, Denis Hermann, Mathieu Terrier

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780755602315
• eBook ISBN: 9780755602308
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies Offering new perspectives on the relationship between Shi'is and Sufis in modern and pre-modern times, this book challenges the supposed opposition between these two esoteric traditions in Islam by exploring what could be called "Shi'i Sufism" and "Sufi-oriented Shi'ism" at various points in history. The chapters are based on new research in textual studies as well as fieldwork from a broad geographical areas including the Indian subcontinent, Anatolia and Iran. Covering a long period stretching from the early post-Mongol centuries, throughout the entire Safawid era (906–1134/1501–1722) and beyond, it is concerned not only with the sphere of the religious scholars but also with different strata of society. The first part of the volume looks at the diversity of the discourse on Sufism among the Shi'i " ulama" in the run up to and during the Safawid period. The second part focuses on the social and intellectual history of the most popular Shi'i Sufi order in Iran, the Ni'mat Allahiyya. The third part examines the relationship between Shi'ism and Sufism in the little-explored literary traditions of the Alevi-Bektashi and the Khaksariyya Sufi order. With contributions from leading scholars in Shi'ism and Sufism Studies, the book is the first to reveal the mutual influences and connections between Shi'ism and Sufism, which until now have been little explored.

PART ONE

ALTERNATIVES TO ANTI-SUFI DISCOURSE IN PRE-MODERN AND MODERN SHI‘I LITERATURE

1

The Defence of Sufism among Twelver Shi‘i Scholars of Early Modern and Modern Times: Topics and Arguments

Mathieu Terrier

Introduction

From the pre-modern era to the present day, the Twelver Shi‘i or Imami world has been concerned with what one might call the ‘Sufi question’, a question rife with doctrinal, but also socio-political, issues: should Sufism be accepted as an essential dimension of the ‘genuine’ Twelver Shi‘i religion, or must it be rejected for being a ‘condemnable innovation’ (bid‘a) and/or an excrescence of Sunni Islam? It is currently said that during the reign of the Safawids in Iran (906–1134/1501–1722), the lawyers and theologians hostile to Sufism eventually prevailed and ultimately succeeded in wiping out most of the Sufi brotherhoods from their original birthplace.¹ However what is less known is that during the same period, within the Imami ‘ulamā’ community itself, an alternative discourse persevered which was apologist and concordist, promoting rapprochement, or even union, between Sufism and Twelver Shi‘ism. This discourse made the reinstatement of Sufism in 18th-century Iran theoretically possible, although it was actually established by an outside decision.² A series of interrelated works, from the pre-modern period to the modern era, which established this pro-Shi‘i Sufi discourse as an authentic intellectual and literary tradition, has been transmitted to the present day in certain Sufi circles and is still considered authoritative by certain historians and thinkers.³

Without claiming to be exhaustive, the present essay will introduce four great works and their authors as the main milestones of this parallel tradition, which I will refer to as the ‘tradition of reconciliation’, a tradition revitalised century after century, from the Ilkhanate era to the end of the Safawid dynasty. These four works are Jāmi‘ al-asrār wa manba‘ al-anwār (The Sum of Secrets and the Source of Lights) by Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī (d. after 786/1385);⁴ Kitāb al-Mujlī mir’at al-munjī fī’l-kalām wa’l-ḥikmatayn wa’l-taṣawwuf (Polishing the Mirror of the Saviour: About Theology, the Twin Wisdoms and Sufism) by Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsā’ī (d. after 906/1500–1);⁵ Majālis al-mu’minīn (Sessions of the Believers) by Nūr Allāh Shūshtarī (d. 1019/1610);⁶ and Maḥbūb al-qulūb (The Beloved of the Hearts) by Quṭb al-Dīn Ashkiwarī (d. between 1088/1677 and 1095/1684).⁷ Although other works could have been considered from writers such as Ḥāfiẓ Rajab Bursī (d. 813/1411) or Shams al-Dīn Lāhījī (d. 918/1512), to name but two,⁸ which state in an implicit manner such a rapprochement, these four works are particularly noteworthy in that they assume explicitly the ecumenist position, are linked by close intertextual relationships, the most recent substantially plagiarising the preceding ones, and thus lend themselves to the analysis of subtle variations within a unique and single discourse. In order to shed light on both the common purpose of these four works and some distinctive features of each of them, I have chosen to set out the main topics and arguments of these texts rather than give a linear and chronological description.

After a brief presentation of the four authors and their works, a threefold argumentation will thus be analysed: first a (mytho-)historical argumentation, showing the links of the original Sufi masters to the Shi‘i imams; then a conceptual argumentation, systematising the relationships between sharī‘a (religious law), ṭarīqa (spiritual path) and ḥaqīqa (essential reality or truth); finally a linguistic and ‘phenomenological’ argumentation, showing the analogy between specific locutions pronounced respectively by Shi‘i imams and Sufis.

The Tradition of Reconciliation and its Representatives

Ḥaydar b. ‘Alī b. Ḥusayn al-Ḥusaynī al-Āmulī, known as Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī, born in 719/1320,⁹ and died after 787/1385,¹⁰ can be considered the founder of this tradition of reconciliation between Shi‘ism and Sufism.¹¹ Coming from a large family of sayyids from Āmul, in the province of Tabaristan, he belonged to a subset of the Iranian population already converted to Twelver Shi‘ism before the Safawid era, and he served as minister to Prince Fakhr al-Dawla Ḥasan b. Shāh Kay-Khusraw b. Yazdgird, who was assassinated in 750/1349.¹² According to his short autobiography, which recalls al-Ghazālī’s al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl in its apologetic tendency,¹³ Ḥaydar Āmulī relinquished his mundane career probably one year before this event, and at the age of thirty, donned the Sufi cloak (khirqa), took the road to Mecca in the company of a Sufi master called Nūr al-Dīn Ṭihrānī, and from here returned to the Shi‘i sacred places (‘aṭābāt) of Iraq.¹⁴ During this Iranian period he may have composed his theological treatise Anwār al-ḥaqīqa wa aṭwār al-ṭarīqa wa asrār al-sharī‘a (The Lights of Truth, the Stations of the Path and the Mysteries of the Revealed Law), devoted to the conceptual triad studied in the third part of this essay.¹⁵ In Iraq, he was the pupil of Fakhr al-Muḥaqqiqīn al-Ḥillī (d. 771/1370), the son of al-‘Allāma al-Ḥillī (d. 726/1326), from whom he was granted an ijāza (a permission from the teacher to teach books studied with him) in 761/1360–61, something which afforded him considerable legitimacy as a Shi‘i scholar. Apparently under the command of Fakhr al-Muḥaqqiqīn, he wrote in 769/1367–8 a polemic and sectarian epistle entitled Raf‘ al-munāza‘a wa’l-khilāf (The Resolution of Quarrel and Dispute) in order to justify, according to Shi‘i tenets, the passive attitude of Imam ‘Alī during the reigns of the three first caliphs.¹⁶ Ḥaydar Āmulī composed most of his works during his Iraqi period, the most important of which are Jāmi‘ al-asrār wa manba‘ al-anwār, which Henry Corbin dates around 752/1351; his commentary of the Qur’an, or more exactly, his treatise about Qur’anic tafsīr and ta’wīl (respectively ‘exoteric’ and ‘esoteric’ interpretation of the Qur’an), al-Muḥīṭ al-a‘ẓam wa’l-baḥr al-khiḍamm fī ta’wīl kitā...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Transliteration and Dates
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART ONE: ALTERNATIVES TO ANTI-SUFI DISCOURSE IN PRE-MODERN AND MODERN SHI‘I LITERATURE
• 1. The Defence of Sufism among Twelver Shi‘i Scholars of Early Modern and Modern Times: Topics and Arguments
• 2. The Limits of ‘Orthodoxy’? Notes on the Anti-Abū Muslim Polemic of Early 11th/17th-Century Iran
• PART TWO: THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF A SHI‘I SUFI BROTHERHOOD: THE NI‘MAT ALLĀHIYYA
• 3. Between the Spiritual and Material: The Ni‘mat Allāhī Order’s Institutionalisation and Architectural Patronage in the 9th/15th Century
• 4. The mujaddid and the majdhūb: Shāh ‘Alī Riḍā (d. 1215/1801) and the Different Narratives of the Ni‘mat Allāhī Renewal
• 5. The Institutionalisation of Ni‘mat Allāhī Sufism during the Pahlavi Era: A Study of the Establishment of the Ḥusayniyya of Amīr Sulaymānī as a waqf in Tehran
• 6. Text and Contest: Theories of Secrecy, taqiyya and Archiving Practices in 20th- and 21st-Century Ni‘mat Allāhī Sufism
• PART THREE: RELATIONS BETWEEN SHI‘ISM AND SUFISM IN OTHER SUFI LITERARY TRADITIONS
• 7. Sufism and Shi‘ism in South Asia: shahādat and the Evidence of the Sindhi marthiya
• 8. Red Sulphur, the Great Remedy and the Supreme Name: Faith in the Twelve Imams and Shi‘i Aspects of Alevi-Bektashi Piety
• 9. The Khāksār Shi‘i Sufi Order: An Updated Introduction
• 10. ‘Ajam Sufis and Shi‘i Spirituality in 19th-Century Iran
• 11. Two Khāksār Treatises of the 19th Century: The Fourteen Families (Chahārdah khānawādah) and The Booklet of Poverty (Risāla-yi faqīriyya
• Index
• Copyright