The Spiritual Culture of Food: Eating Customs in Early Sufism

Abstract

Studying food culture in early Sufism has been paid little scholarly attention, though it is able to afford us a way of reconstructing one of the pillars of early Sufi practice. This paper examines two aspects of Sufi food culture—individual and communal ‘food fashions’ with a special focus on 4th/10th-century Sufism. The exploration of early Sufi social relations is closely bound up with the food culture and eating manners of early Sufis. This profoundly social activity played a large role in forming and transforming collective Sufi identity. Al-Makkī's Qūt al-qulūb gains a special reference being the most important textbook on eating customs in the period under investigation.