Journal of Sufi Studies最新文献

{"title":"Mysticism and Theosophy in the Service of the Regime: Azharite Scholars and the Challenges to Religion-State Relations under Mubarak","authors":"Elisheva Machlis","doi":"10.1163/22105956-bja10020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22105956-bja10020","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Challenged by Salafi Islam, Sufism managed to reassert itself in Egypt by acquiring new roles in society while emphasizing commitment to the Sharia. This article explores the role played by the religious organs of the state in promoting Sufism under President Hosni Mubarak, in the context of growing challenges to religion-state relations during this period. Focusing on the thought of ʿAlī Jumʿa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt (2003–2013), and the current Shaykh al-Azhar Aḥmad Muḥammad Aḥmad al-Ṭayyib, it also assesses the contribution of popular preachers, many of whom were graduates of al-Azhar, to this mystical discourse. The study aims to demonstrate that these popular preachers shared with the Azharite scholar some form of identification with theoretical mysticism, reflecting a broad inclination towards Sufism within Egyptian society.</p><p>The Shaykh al-Azhar and the Grand Mufti sought to prove the compatibility between spirituality with its esoteric and introspective basis and Islamic law with its more worldly and structured dimension, by incorporating a theosophical debate within an apologetic exchange with Western thought. While this encounter with mysticism did not represent a new phenomenon, the novelty was in its political direction, in which a Sufi-oriented worldview became a tool to strengthen the regime’s position in its struggle against Islamist movements. The regime’s growing dependence on its religious institutions to counter the challenge of political Islam enhanced the bargaining-position of al-Azhar and Dār al-Iftāʾ, providing them leverage to advance the path of Islam and mitigate the regime’s secular orientation. While many popular preachers backed moderate Islamism, the religious officials of al-Azhar and Dār al-Iftāʾ relied on mysticism to support a highly supervised state-sponsored Islam. The reliance on the spiritual path to support diverse political trends demonstrates the all-encompassing and dynamic nature of theoretical mysticism as it was infused with rationalism, new knowledge, politics and a Sharia-based worldview.</p>","PeriodicalId":37993,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sufi Studies","volume":"67 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138525122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the History of Sufism in Australia: A Manuscript from the Broken Hill Mosque","authors":"Abu Bakr Sirajuddin Cook, Rami Dawood","doi":"10.1163/22105956-bja10021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22105956-bja10021","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As scholarly interest in Australia’s cameleers has increased, there has been suggestions that some of these Muslim migrants were connected with Sufism. However, to date, there has been limited analysis and insufficient evidence to claim a strong connection between the cameleers and Sufism in Australia. This article attempts to rectify this by providing an analysis and translation of a handwritten manuscript found at Broken Hill’s historic cameleer mosque. The contents of this manuscript highlight a strong connection to the history of Sufism, tracing separate family and pedagogic genealogies back to ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166), the founder of the Qādiriyya Sufi order.</p>","PeriodicalId":37993,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sufi Studies","volume":"55 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138525102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sufism, Miracles and Oceanic Fatwas: The Beloved of North Jakarta","authors":"Teren Sevea","doi":"10.1163/22105956-bja10019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22105956-bja10019","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines stories, hagiographies, fatwas, and treatises related to the grave of a sayyid miracle worker (<em>keramat</em>) buried in North Jakarta. It is a product of research that began in 2008 when I first visited the Sufi shrine of the eminent keramat, Habib Hussein al-ʿAydarus (d. 1169/1756), in the village of Luar Batang. Herefrom, I enjoyed access to a series of documents, oral traditions and miracle stories, along with invaluable information via conversations with Sufi elders, devotees, and Habib Hussein’s kinsmen. This article begins by introducing the Luar Batang shrine and stories of the keramat’s apparitions that continue to be told in the village. It discusses a twenty-first century moment when the keramat was seen by some to resist urban redevelopment and collude with controversial Islamists and Sunni vigilantes. His apparitions and miracle stories reminded votaries of his immortal history of resisting colonialism, secularism, Islamophobia and ‘Christianisation’. From this contemporary moment, the article turns its attention towards hagiographies produced in twentieth-century Java by the <em>historians</em> of Sufi networks, before analysing fatwas on the keramat produced in the late nineteenth century by Islamic scholars (ulama) from Yemen, Mecca, Medina and Java concerning revenue, inheritance, and the legality of customs at the Luar Batang shrine. The article works backwards from a contemporary moment in order to introduce readers to the keramat, village and grave and his historical and peripatetic life in Gujarat, Hadramaut and Java, before highlighting how the shrine of a seemingly peripheral village in Jakarta has been a key concern for authorities across the Islamic world and an Indian Ocean-wide devotional community. Miracle stories and hagiographies praising the keramat as the exemplar of Sunnism and Shafiʿism, as well as fatwas defending the customs of his shrine as being inviolable ones, encourage us to discard the still-regnant academic divisions of Sharia/Custom and Sufis/Ulama. Together, they tell a story of miraculous narratives, devotional cultures, social memories and sacral places that are often pushed to the margins of religious studies but refuse to fade into oblivion.</p>","PeriodicalId":37993,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sufi Studies","volume":"25 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138525099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Treatise on Practical and Theoretical Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate","authors":"Ogunnaike Oludamini","doi":"10.1163/22105956-bja10017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22105956-bja10017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article presents an annotated translation of The Exposition of Devotions, a short text by Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Muṣtafā (1218–1280/1804–1864) about his spiritual master and maternal uncle, Muḥammad Sambo (1195–1242/1782–1826). Muḥammad Sambo was the son of ʿUthmān ibn Fūdī (also known as Usman dan Fodio), the founder of the Sokoto Caliphate, one of the largest pre-colonial polities on the African continent. While modern scholarship has tended to focus on the political, legal, social, and economic dimensions of the jihad movement that created the Sokoto Caliphate, this text provides a brief, but detailed account of the spiritual practices and discussions amongst Usman dan Fodio’s clan (the Fodiawa), demonstrating the centrality of the Akbarī tradition in technical discussions, as well as the unique developments of this tradition in thirteenth/nineteenth century West Africa. The work begins with an account of a dream of the then-deceased Muḥammad Sambo that occasioned its composition, and after a brief discussion of the status of dreams and their importance, gives an account of Sambo’s spiritual method and practices. The short treatise concludes with the author’s summary of Sambo’s responses to several technical and highly esoteric questions posed to him by the author, illustrating the profound mastery and unique perspectives developed on these topics by the Fodiawa. Combining oneirology, hagiography, practical and theoretical Sufism, this short treatise is an illuminating window into the spiritual and intellectual traditions of the founders of the Sokoto Caliphate.","PeriodicalId":37993,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sufi Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47811492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mullā Ṣadrā’s Arrivers in the Heart (al-Wāridāt al-Qalbiyya)","authors":"W. Chittick","doi":"10.1163/22105956-12341328","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22105956-12341328","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 It is increasingly difficult after Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) to differentiate the aims of the Sufis from those of the philosophers. Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1640) offers a fine example of a thinker who synthesized the Sufi and philosophical methodologies in his voluminous writings. In Arrivers in the Heart he combines the precision of philosophical reasoning with the recognition (maʿrifa) of God and self that was central to the concerns of the Sufi teachers. In forty “effusions” (fayḍ) of mostly rhymed prose, he provides epitomes of many of the themes that he addresses in his long books. These include the concept and reality of existence, the Divine Essence and Attributes, God’s omniscience, theodicy, eschatology, the worlds of the cosmos, spiritual psychology, divine and human love, disciplining the soul, and the nature of human perfection.","PeriodicalId":37993,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sufi Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48249371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fragments de gnose musulmane soviétique","authors":"S. Dudoignon","doi":"10.1163/22105956-12341331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22105956-12341331","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Décrit comme isolat de conservatisme, l’islam centrasiatique de l’ère soviétique témoigne, jusque dans ses traits d’archaïsme, de mutations profondes. Parmi elles : la valorisation, par une poésie gnostique persane ou türke de forme classique produite pendant le court XXe siècle, des Voies soufies comme lieu de résistance aux “idolâtries” du moment. Après la disparition des khānqāh (loges) dès la collectivisation, cette invocation est destinée à une audience réduite d’initiés. Elle rappelle l’utilité, en contexte répressif, du dhikr intérieur cher à la Naqshbandiyya. Réinterprétant le principe naqshbandī d’“ascèse en société”, elle insiste également, dans un esprit mujaddidī, sur l’importance de la figure du Guide pour l’approfondissement de l’engagement mystique. Son véhicule est une poésie de forme et de mètre classiques, conjuguant hermétisme et souci d’oralité. Demeurée manuscrite jusqu’au tournant du XXIe siècle, cette littérature est devenue vectrice de processus hagiographiques portés par des lignées sacrées et réseaux de disciples étroitement apparentés, présents sur de vastes territoires. Elle est illustrée ici par un choix de ghazals persans de Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Dawlat Īlākī (1881-1947), maître mujaddidī formé à Boukhara sous les derniers émirs. Actif jusqu’à sa mort dans la haute vallée du Qarategin, son enseignement s’est diffusé sur le territoire de la RSS des Tadjiks à la faveur des déplacements de population d’après la Seconde Guerre mondiale vers les plaines cotonnières du centre et du sud de la république, posant les bases d’une célébration de Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥīm comme saint national.","PeriodicalId":37993,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sufi Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48855063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Mughal Treatise on Essence and Existence","authors":"Shankar Nair","doi":"10.1163/22105956-bja10016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22105956-bja10016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article presents an annotated translation of The Equivalence between Giving and Receiving (al-Taswiya bayna al-ifāda wa-l-qabūl), a short Arabic treatise on essence (dhāt) and existence (wujūd) composed by the South Asian philosopher-Sufi Shaykh Muḥibb Allāh Ilāhābādī (996–1058/1587–1648). Although modern scholarship has habitually referred to Muḥibb Allāh as an ardent defender of the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (“unity of existence”) associated with the figure of Ibn al-ʿArabī, such generalized formulations fail to do justice to the uniqueness of Muḥibb Allāh’s intellectual contributions. Most authors who had set out to provide a philosophical defense of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachings – including the well-known likes of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī, ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī, Dāwud al-Qayṣarī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, Mullā Ṣadrā, and so on – had tended to prioritize a philosophically utilizable formulation of wujūd or “existence.” Muḥibb Allāh, in notable contrast, favors a presentation of the divine Reality in terms of “pure essence/quiddity” (dhāt/māhiyya maḥḍa), at times going to considerable lengths to uphold his alternative formulation. Such a strategy of argumentation is uncommon amongst philosophical defenders of Ibn al-ʿArabī, the distinctiveness of which is further enhanced by Muḥibb Allāh’s peculiar mode of disputation, which straddles the line between metaphysics and natural philosophy/physics. The Taswiya occasioned at least sixteen commentaries and refutations; this translation benefits from consulting the earliest of these, composed by Mullā Maḥmūd al-Jawnpūrī (d. 1062/1652) and Khwāja Khwurd (d. 1073/1663), as well as three later commentaries by Ḥabīb Allāh Paṭnaʾī (d. 1140/1728). Most significantly, this translation makes extensive use of Muḥibb Allāh’s own Persian auto-commentary, the Sharḥ-i taswiya, which is a critical aid for deciphering the author’s at times opaque manner of expression and argumentation.","PeriodicalId":37993,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sufi Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44320742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Le Traité de la rosace (Risāle-i gül-ābād) d’Ibrāhīm el-Eşrefī el-Qādirī, cheikh soufi ottoman du XIIe/XVIIIe siècle","authors":"Alexandre Papas","doi":"10.1163/22105956-12341329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22105956-12341329","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 La rose (gül en turc) est un symbole bien connu dans le soufisme, en particulier dans la poésie mystique. Métaphore de l’épineuse beauté divine que le rossignol adule, la fleur hérite d’interprétations supplémentaires dans les manuels confrériques, à partir notamment de hadiths apocryphes. L’un de ces écrits, le Traité de la rosace d’Ibrāhīm el-Eşrefī el-Qādirī, cheikh de la branche Eşrefiyye de la Qādiriyya ottomane, explique les significations symboliques de trois représentations de rose sous forme de rosaces cousues sur le couvre-chef porté par les soufis. L’article soutient que les lectures précédentes du traité ont peut-être manqué le véritable enjeu du texte. Pour les mystiques musulmans, par-delà la question du hadith, la rose est bien une métaphore de l’épanouissement du Prophète parmi les humains manifestant la présence de Dieu. Mais plus précisément, la traduction du traité révèle que son auteur envisage la rose comme un signe dont les sens cachés ne sont connus que de quelques maîtres soufis (tels quelques roses dans le désert) ayant reçu mission prophétique et faveur divine.","PeriodicalId":37993,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sufi Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45491969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: Sufi Texts in Translation","authors":"Amer Latif, Alexandre Papas, M. Rustom","doi":"10.1163/22105956-12341327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22105956-12341327","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This special issue of the Journal of Sufi Studies attempts to make the case that the act of translation is best seen as a recurrent activity necessitated by the various changes that inform the interpretation of Sufi texts on the one hand, and the languages and cultures that receive them on the other. The nine Sufi texts featured in this collection illustrate the diversity of genres and variety of languages in which they have been written, thereby pointing up the distinctive hermeneutic potentials of translation theory and practice when these texts are rendered by experts into modern European languages, particularly English and French.","PeriodicalId":37993,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sufi Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48646693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Les États spirituels de Muḥammad le Champion (Ḥālāt-i Pahlawān Muḥammad) de Mīr ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī","authors":"Marc Toutant","doi":"10.1163/22105956-bja10014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22105956-bja10014","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Dans le Ḥālāt-i Pahlawān Muḥammad (« Les États spirituels de Muḥammad Le Champion », 899/1493), le grand polygraphe timouride Mīr ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī (844-906/ 1441-1501) retrace la carrière d’un champion de lutte qui fut aussi un célèbre mystique. Nawāʾī avait rencontré le Champion lorsqu’il avait lui-même dû trouver refuge à Machhad au début des années 860/fin des années 1450 et les deux hommes restèrent ainsi de proches compagnons jusqu’à la mort de Pahlawān Muḥammad en 899/1493 à Niʿmatābād (une bourgade située dans les environs de Hérat). Bien qu’issu d’une famille d’éminents lutteurs, Pahlawān Muḥammad brillait aussi par ses talents de musicien, de poète, de médecin et d’astrologue. Le récit de Nawāʾī plonge alors son lecteur dans un univers qui se situe au croisement de ces diverses pratiques, depuis les soirées littéraires (majlis) qui réunissaient la haute société de la capitale timouride jusqu’aux activités charitables de l’hostellerie soufie (takiya) du Champion. Inscrit dans le genre hagiographique par son titre, le texte se distingue cependant des ḥalāt et manāqib traditionnels de plusieurs façons. La vie de l’athlète soufi est d’abord envisagée du point de vue des relations que ce dernier entretenait avec l’auteur. Nawāʾī est ainsi un acteur de premier plan dans cette biographie héroïque et le rôle qu’il tient l’incite à jouer avec les codes de l’hagiographie. N’hésitant pas à se mettre en scène dans un dialogue savoureux, il tourne en dérision sa propre crédulité face à ce qu’il est tenté d’interpréter au départ comme l’expression d’un pouvoir surnaturel du Champion et qui n’est en définitive que l’ultime témoignage de son tempérament et de ses mérites exceptionnels, autant de qualités qui constituent pour le poète naqshbandī la vraie nature de l’ethos soufi.","PeriodicalId":37993,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sufi Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44612021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}