Abstract This article analyzes two contemporary Sufi teachers’ interpretations of corporeality within their respective methodologies of spiritual development. The Ṣūfī Ṭabīb, the leader of the Uzbek Nūrsafardiyya, develops a narrative of a direct correlation between the empowerment of the body and the individual capacity of spiritual growth and insight. Aḥmad Dabbāgh, shaykh of the Ṭarīqa Muḥammadiyya, a Moroccan–Pakistani–British Sufi group, emphasizes the importance of disciplining the senses and organs in order to achieve bodily and mental purification. For this purpose, he presents a program for regulating and refining human behavior. Both Sufis’ approaches are derived from their exegeses of the Qur’an, systematically enacted through bodily practices, and aim at the purification of the self ( nafs ). Through the co-occurring harmonization of the organic with the subtle bodies ( laṭāʾif ), the Ṣūfī Ṭabīb and shaykh Aḥmad Dabbāgh strive to attain closeness to God.
Abstract The Maqāmāt-i Shaykh Ẓiyāʾ al-Dīn Ḥātimī is a unique and little studied Persian Sufi hagiography, partially extant in two manuscripts in Istanbul and Rampur. The text describes both the life and deeds of its subject, a Sufi Sheikh based in a village in Khurasan in the lead up to the Mongol Conquests, and the difficulties faced by his followers when the death of their leader coincided with a deteriorating political situation. Touching on themes varying from property inheritance to female leadership and from symbiosis with Turkish groups to Alid marriage alliances, this article will reconcile the text with the wider situation of the period. It considers the Maqāmāt critically as a representative of the hagiographic genre, questioning the reliability of its transmission of historical information and exploring the circumstances of its authorship.
Abstract This study analyses Qurʾan 2:30–34 in the early Sufi commentaries of the Sunni tradition. The commentaries of al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī are analysed. The study concludes that these early Sufi commentaries break with the exoteric tradition in emphasising the guilt of the angels, thereby proving the outward superiority of Adam. A deeper focus on the inner dimension of worship that is the hallmark of Sufi commentaries makes it more difficult to absolve the angels of wrongdoing. Al-Sulamī is far more explicit in his denunciation of the angels and is less concerned with assuaging the exotericists. Al-Qushayrī, by contrast, goes to great lengths to appease them in order to present a ‘sober’ portrait of the Sufi tradition even though he expresses many of the same ideas and notions as his predecessor. This aim is also achieved by promulgating the deterministic Ashʿarite outlook thereby displaying its essential complementarity with the Sufi tradition.
Abstract This article proposes that Latin-Christian conceptions of sanctity, together with awareness of Louis IX ’s proto-saintly reputation, may have contributed to the emergence of novel Muslim conceptions of sainthood and miracles in the Eastern Mediterranean in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It does so by examining the invention and successive reinventions of the renowned jurist Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām as a Sufi saint from the late Ayyubid period to the present day. The article traces the historiographical transformation of his persona from a Shāfiʿī-Ashʿarī jurist and chief judge into a miracle-working walī through biographical dictionaries, hagiographies, mystical treatises and pilgrimage guides. It argues that this process reflected changing political, ideological and social concerns, including the institutionalisation of the Shādhilī ṭarīqa , debates between Shāfiʿī-Ashʿarī rationalists and Ḥanbalī traditionalists, and later appropriations of Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s memory. Particular attention is devoted to al-Subkī’s influential construction of Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s sainthood, especially his account of the miracle of commanding the wind against Louis IX ’s crusading army at al-Manṣūra and his reference to the Christian rite of the ceremonial washing of the feet of the poor.
Abstract Respiration holds a central place in Sufism as both a locus of metaphysical reflection and a medium of spiritual practice. This study offers a source-based examination of breath ( nafas ) in Islamic mysticism, focusing on early Sufi texts up to the fifth/eleventh century. Often overshadowed by later systematic theories, these early teachings reveal a varied yet coherent “breathscape” rooted in Qur’anic imagery, ascetic discipline, and the lived experience of remembrance, while laying the foundations for subsequent Sufi elaborations. Recovering these strands – from vigilant breath-keeping to the breathlessness of union – allows for a revised genealogy of Sufi breath and highlights the importance of engaging the broadest range of early sources to trace the continuity and gradual evolution of these reflections within the tradition.
