Inner-Worldly Religiosity, Social Structuring and Fraternal Incorporation in a Time of Uncertainty: The Futuwwat-nāma of Najm al-Dīn Zarkūb of Tabriz

Abstract

Through a close and historically contextualised reading of the text, this article examines the discourse of inner-worldly religiosity, social structuring and fraternal incorporation in the heretofore little studied epitome of a longer (now lost) futuwwat-nāma composed by a seventh/thirteenth-century Sufi author from Il Khanid Tabriz, Abū Bakr Muammad b. Mawdūd āhirī Tabrīzī, better known as Najm al-Dīn Zarkūb. Arguing that the text reflects the presence of an increasingly ubiquitous pattern of social organisation associated with urban Muslim communities in the era following the Turco-Mongol invasions of the eastern and central lands of Islamdom, it proposes that the type of Sufi-futuwwa tradition valorised by the author contained elements ideally suited to fostering cohesion amongst individuals who, collectively, envisioned the social sodality formed thereby as a source of stability and order during a time of heightened uncertainty.