Prophetic Piety, Mysticism, and Authority in Premodern Arabic Devotional Literature: al-Jazuli's Dala'il al-Khayrat (15th Century)

Abstract

AbstractIn the Maghreb and the Mamluk sultanate during the 15th century, the production of books that encouraged devotion to the Prophet Muhammad—both commentaries on existing texts and new works—increased. This literary production was an expression of the intensification of the veneration of the Prophet that occurred under the influence of Sufis and the political elite. The Arabic devotional literature dedicated to the Prophet began to take shape during the 12th and 13th centuries with the rise of the great saintly sufi figures who laid claim to Prophetic descent and composed celebrated prayers and litanies of blessings upon the Prophet. This article looks at how such texts were critical in the diffusion to popular audiences of doctrinal concepts developed by sufis who placed the figure of the Prophet at the heart of spiritual life and the doctrine of sainthood (walāya). Specifically, it examines a well known but nevertheless understudied 15th-century Moroccan prayer book that is still in use today: Dala'il al-Khayrat (Proofs of Good Deeds). In studying this text, which is both emblematic and exceptional, my aim is to cast fresh light on the novel political, economic, and institutional conditions surrounding the international circulation of an Arabic literature of devotion to the Prophet during the early modern period, and to explore the religious and political implications of these circumstances for sufis of the time.