Institutionalized Sufism and Non-Institutionalized Sufism: A Reconsideration of the Groups of Sufi Saints of the Non-Ṭarīqa Type as Viewed through the Historical Documents of Medieval Maghreb

Abstract

Perhaps the most important innovation in the 12th and 13th century Islamic world was the institutionalization of Sufism. During the years 1150 and 1250, especially with the crisis in Islam caused by the invasion of the Mongols and the fall of the Abbasid Empire, communities of mystics that were heretofore loosely organized groups of disciples following individual spiritual masters were transformed into corporate and increasingly hierarchical entities. The Qādirīya, Rifāʻīya and Suhrawardīya that were born as a result of this later developed into international orders, that would influence the whole Muslim world. 1) At around the same period Maghreb society was also facing a crisis of Islam. This was caused by several key factors such as the recapturing of Muslim Spain by the Castilian and Aragonese armies, the progress of Reconquista in the Cordova, Seville, and Valencia regions, and the invasion of the city of Sale in Morocco by the Castilians. 2) According to the travel journals of Muḥammad al-ʻAbdarī al-Tilimsānī who set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca in the year 688/1289, pilgrims and caravans had to pay protection money to Arab nomads who were running amok in the outskirts of Tlemcen, in order to be assured a safe passage. Furthermore, the Mediterranean was swarming with Christian pirates, causing the port of Bijaya to fall into disuse [al-ʻAbdarī 1968: 9, 11, 26-27, 64]. In the Rif region in northern Morocco there were already Sufis who had received the teachings of al-Rifāʻī. Despite this, groups such as al-Ṭāʼifa al-Rifaʻīya or al-Ṭarīqa al-Rifāʻīya did not emerge in the Moroccan region. On the other hand, local religious orders such as al-Ṭāʼifa al-Ṣanhājīya and al-Ṭāʼifa al-Mājirīya had been formed in the Moroccan region. This raises several important issues for investigation. First, the coexistence of institutionalized and non-institutionalized Sufism and the comparison of the two models, second, the coexistence of international ṭarīqa model Sufism and local Sufism and the comparison of the two models, and finally what is most important, the actual process of the institutionalization of Sufi saints.