Purifying Sufism: Observations on the Marginalization and Exclusion of Undesirable and Rejected Elements in the Earlier Middle Period (late fourth/tenth to mid-seventh/thirteenth centuries)

Abstract

This article offers observations on the process of differentiation and purification within premodern Sufism during a seminal period in the institutionalization of the Sufi ṭarīqa as a Path to God and as a community of followers. Drawing on manuals and narratives by prominent articulators and representatives of the emerging mainstream Sufi tradition, the article highlights the discursive and actual mechanisms they employed to delineate the borderlines of affiliation with the communities of the genuine Sufis, disentangle the solid-core from lay affiliates, and exclude undesirable elements wrongly associated with Sufism. The construction of higher barriers between mainstream Sufism and its margins is closely tied to the spread of popular forms of Sufism and a new kind of antinomianism that gained popularity in the public sphere, beginning in the late sixth/twelfth century. The final part of the article considers the involvement of the political rulers of the time in the inner dynamics of Sufism. My main conclusion is that by patronizing mainstream Sufis and supporting arbiters of true religion in the public sphere, the ruling elite of military lords in the Arab Near East played a significant role in marginalizing the undesirable and rejected elements and in strengthening the mainstream Sunni camp against its rivals.