Sufi Shaykh Research Articles

Masters of Dark Arts—Ibn ʿArabī’s Records on African Sorcery, Qaḍīb al-Bān and the Power Known as Himma

In 1195 AD, a celebrated Sufi scholar, poet and philosopher Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī quit Muslim Spain for Africa. There, he first became acquainted with ʿuzābīyyah, which he described as the dark arts rooted in the soul’s power over mind and matter. Ibn ʿArabī referred to this power as himma. The Sufi shaykh Qaḍīb al-Bān, as well as the North African sorcerers Ibn ʿArabī encountered, could use this power to maim and kill humans. They were also said to be capable of creating new life forms with himma. The present study examines the specific types of himma they used and determines the supposed loci of this power in the body and soul. It also describes the standard methods used in Akbarian circles and North Africa to make oneself worthy of himma and identifies advantages and disadvantages of using this power to turn dreams into reality.

Articulation of Sufi Path and Doctrines in the Poetry of Khwāja Muḥammad Zamān Naqshbandī of Luārī

Abstract Khwāja Muḥammad Zamān Luārvī (i.e., of Luārī or Lowārī) was a much-revered eighteenth-century Sufi shaykh (master) who spent his entire life in Luārī and Thatta in lower Sindh. Spiritually affiliated with the Naqshbandī Silsilah, he was also an eloquent Sufi poet. Though small in volume, his poetic compositions are highly symbolic and replete with complex Sufi philosophical and cosmological themes. This article identifies and analyzes the Sufi doctrines in his poetry by undertaking a poetic exegesis of his verses within a Sufi framework. It briefly introduces the life and poetry of the Khwāja, analyzes the articulation of Sufi doctrines in his poetic verses, and assesses his poetry’s characteristics.

An Introduction to the Intellectual Biography of ʿAbd al-Shakūr from the Banten Sultanate

ʿAbd al-Shakūr b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Bantanī was a prominent disciple of the renowned scholar Burhān al-Dīn Ibrāhīm b. Ḥasan al-Kūrānī. Despite his importance as a scholar and Sufi shaykh connected to the Shāṭṭārīyah order, ʿAbd al-Shakūr has received relatively little attention compared to other Jāwī students of al-Kūrānī. The research draws on a range of primary sources, including manuscripts copied by ʿAbd al-Shakūr himself or containing references to him, as well as secondary literature. Key findings include the establishment of ʿAbd al-Shakūr’s genealogical ties to the Banten royal family, his role as a scribe and disseminator of his teacher al-Kūrānī’s works, and his participation in the theological discourse of his time, particularly on the concept of waḥdat al-wujūd (the unity of existence). Additionally, the study explores ʿAbd al-Shakūr’s contribution to the spread of the Shāṭṭārīyah Sufi order in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago, tracing its transmission from al-Kūrānī through ʿAbd al-Shakūr to his son ʿAbd al-Muḥyī al-Dīn and other disciples. The discovery of manuscripts documenting the Shāṭṭārīyah lineage in Jasinga, Bogor, and Mindanao in the Philippines, further highlights ʿAbd al-Shakūr’s significance as a pivotal figure in the dissemination of this Sufi tradition within the region.

The Portrait of an Alla Franca Shaykh: Sufism, Modernity, and Class in Turkey

AbstractThis paper illustrates the heterogeneity of Islamic publics in early 20th-century Turkey by examining the life and thought of Ken'an Rifai, a Sufi shaykh and high-ranking bureaucrat in the Ottoman Ministry of Education. It argues that Shaykh Rifai endorsed state secularization reforms on religious grounds and shows how he reformulated Sufi Islam by imbricating Sufi ethics with other social imaginaries of the time through the lens of an upper-class bureaucrat. This paper contributes to Turkish studies by highlighting the previously overlooked role of elite Islamic groups who collaborated with the early republic. It also challenges the dominant paradigm of a binary opposition between the secular ruling elite and pious masses. Additionally, this paper offers insight into broader anthropological and historical Islamic studies by demonstrating the diverse ways Sufi traditions adapted to modern governance.

The Sufi Who Was a Sayyid: Muḥammad Ḥusaynī Gesūdarāz’s Assertions of Spiritual Authority

Abstract In the context of contested succession within a silsila (lineage) of sufis, this paper studies Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusaynī Gesūdarāz’s (d. 1422) recourse to a familial genealogy in order to claim the status of a pīr or sufi master, while attempting to entrench his legacy in Gulbarga where he emigrated to from Delhi after the incursions of Timur (d. 1405). As he arrived in the Deccan at the turn of the fifteenth century, Gesūdarāz used his kinship with the Prophet and particularly his identity of sayyid (a descendant of the Prophet through Ḥusayn) as a persuasive device, to set himself apart from other sufi shaykhs in the area who claimed an equivalent spiritual genealogy. The case of Gesūdarāz reveals a societal pattern wherein the identity of sayyid was gaining new traction, and relational ties were evoked not only as a means of establishing an identity as part of a community but also to supersede others who made the same claim. Kinship was a device through which Gesūdarāz staked his claim to authority, and it was also a mechanism that he and his family utilized to cement their hold on the Muslim community of Gulbarga.

The Spiritual Teachings of Zakariyyā Kāndhlavī (d. 1982) in Fażāʾil-i Durūd Sharīf

Abstract Although the influential transnational Deobandi missionary organisation Tablīghī Jamāʿat is scarcely portrayed in contemporary popular media as a “Sufi movement,” the elders of the trend – such as the late Zakariyyā Kāndhlavī (d. 1402/1982) – were staunch Sufi shaykhs. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that one of the core texts of the Tablīghī Jamāʿat – Kāndhlavī’s Fażāʾil-i ʿAmāl – is full of many distinctly Sufi concepts. In the following essay, I look into the spiritual themes found in that particular volume of Kāndhlavī’s aforementioned work which deals specifically with the virtuous act of sending blessings upon the Prophet. In doing so, we will see that the Tablīghī Jamāʿat – deeply rooted in Sufi thought as it is – is very far removed from the Wahhabism with which it is occasionally associated in popular Western imagination.

Printing a Transregional Ṭarīqa: Haji Imdadullah Makki (d. 1899) and Sufi Contestations from Thana Bhavan to Istanbul

Abstract This article analyzes the prominence of print in the Sufi ṭarīqa of Haji Imdadullah Muhajir Makki (d. 1899), a pre-eminent Indian Chishti-Sabri shaykh who settled in the Ottoman Hijaz after escaping North India in the aftermath of the 1857 mutiny. It explores the transregional contexts of the publication of Haji Imdadullah’s works, in the long journey of his manuscripts from Mecca to their lithographic printing in North India and their distribution through Ottoman disciples as far as Istanbul. In this study two main lines of inquiry are followed. First, how did Imdadullah participate intimately from Mecca in the editing and publication of Arabic, Urdu, and Persian books in British India, including his famed commentary and critical edition of the Masnavi-yi Maʿnavi of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273)? Second, the article follows the emergence of broader scholarly exchanges as a series of Istanbul-based Mevlevi shaykhs became invested in Imdadullah’s publications and even translated some from Persian to Ottoman Turkish. Ultimately, this article sheds light on how such Indian – Ottoman encounters in the Hijaz were catalyzed by a common investment in the Persianate disciplines of Sufi theology and classical Persian poetry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period typically seen as marking the shrinking and disintegration of the Persianate world. In so doing, the article highlights how modern Sufi discourse in Persian continued to facilitate intellectual exchange between Indian and Ottoman Sufi shaykhs through the Hijaz and formed an integral pillar of transregional Persianate print culture.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE DIVAN OF IBRAHIM HAKKI ERZURUMI

Ibrahim Hakkı Erzurumi is an important historical personality in Turkish literature and Sufi‟s History. The Sufi writer was born in Erzurum in 1703 in the beginning of the 18th century. He died in Siirt in 1780 about 80 years old. He was buried in Tillo that belongs to Siirt town in Turkey. Although his writings in poetry and prose around 15, he was often known by his writings entitled the Divan and Marifetname (Book of Gnosis). Because he was a Sufi, he grew up with a Sufi upbringing and wrote most of his works in this context. A great part of his poems were considered an important source to be sung in the religious and Sufi festivals. The Divan is a work of poems written by Ġbrahim Hakkı Erzurumi in 1755. Then, he continued writing about 366 poems with a religious and Sufi content. This volume has the title “Ilahi Nameh” Then, there are poems have the titles like vocabulary, Quatrains, Wasil Nameh, Band Nameh and Shukur Nameh. His poems that included in the Divan about 500 poems. The Divan, which dealt with several Sufi and religious instruction, focused on the form of religious education. Religious Education is transforming the religious subjects into the followers of that religion specially children. This can be applied also on adults. This method of teaching which can be made among teachers and students, teaches the basic principles of the religion which include worshipping, obedience, morality, and rituals. Every teacher and school have their own techniques and special concentration. The Islamic Sufi Shaykhs (Old men or Imams) in the first position among people who study the Sufi Interpretation to religion. Ġbrahim Hakkı Erzurumi depended on a religious Sufi teaching method in his poetic work entitled The Divan. This research paper starts with this detailed abstract. It is followed by a brief summary about the life of the great Turkish poet Ġbrahim Hakkı Erzurumi and his literary carrier alongside with the religious and Sufi aspect. There will be a detailed explanation for his work entitled The Divan. Then, there will be a study for the form of religious education in details. Finally, this research paper will be concluded with a study of the concept of religious Education in The Divan of Ġbrahim Hakkı Erzurumi.

19th Century Moroccan Sufism and the 2011 Syrian Revolution: The Legacy of Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Mas'ūd al-Fāsī

Abstract: In the context of the 2011 Syrian Revolution, numerous Syrian Sufi scholars emerged in opposition to the government of Bashar al-Assad. Among the most prominent of these was Shaykh Muḥammad al-Ya'qūbī (b. 1963). In his vocal opposition to the Syrian government, Shaykh al-Ya'qūbī framed the ongoing conflict in eschatological terms, and in doing so drew upon a long tradition of North African Shādhilī Sufi terminology and vocabularies of spiritual and political vicegerency ( khilāfa ). Specifically, this article argues that Shaykh al-Ya'qūbī drew heavily upon the works of the nineteenth-century Moroccan Sufi Shaykh Muḥammad al-Fāsī (d. 1870), whose thoughts on vicegerency and eschatology informed and animated al-Ya'qūbī's response to the conflict in Syria. To demonstrate al-Fāsī's pivotal role in the formation of the Syrian Revolution's spiritual politics, this article draws upon both intellectual history and original ethnographic fieldwork. It begins with a discussion of migration and mobility, detailing the significance of mobile diasporas in incubating Shādhilī Sufi traditions outside the Maghrib, and offers a corrective to current scholarship on the Shādhilī tradition in the Arab East. From there, it uses eschatology as an entry point into Shaykh Muḥammad al-Ya'qūbī's spiritual politics and those of Muḥammad al-Fāsī, upon which it relies. This article then proceeds to a deeper intellectual history of Shaykh al-Fāsī, specifically his mobilization of extant medieval North African spiritual vocabularies and his development of new ones. The article concludes by connecting these premodern North African spiritual trends to the Syrian Revolution by examining Shaykh Muḥammad al-Ya'qūbī's use of Moroccan Sufi vocabularies in his own engagement with the Syrian Revolution.

Al‐Azhar and the Salafis in Egypt: Contestation of two traditions

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Visiting a Sufi Shaykh: A Contemporary Experience of Religious Pilgrimage

Modern experience of spiritual search has mixed up all the colors of the religious domain. It is no longer a strict definition of what the term pilgrimage implies. There is a growing number of seemingly secular places visited by both members of traditional religious institutions and New Age movements. However, the Western culture of pilgrimage is still recognized as individual and not accepting religious elements as such. Using reliable sociological approaches and the ethnographical material, the present article challenges this assumption and seeks to create a more productive discussion on the topic. For this, it examines the Naqshbandi Haqqani Sufi community of Lefke (Cyprus), a place of pilgrimage for Muslims, non-Muslims, Europeans, Americans—all motivated by the goal of visiting a Sufi shaykh. The article analyzes the pilgrimage to Lefke by means of John Urry’s three bases of co-presence and illustrates how the Islamic vocabulary of pilgrimage has also changed in adaptation to the new realities of the post-secular world. As a result, it is argued that Sufism, with its historically proven ability to combine the individual and collective spheres of religious life, can provide a useful framework for understanding the contemporary pilgrimage phenomenon.

Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts (edited by Ousmane Oumar Kane)

Reviewed by: Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts ed. by Ousmane Oumar Kane Amiri Yasin Al-Hadid Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts OUSMANE OUMAR KANE, ED. James Currey/Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2021, 489 pages. Ousmane Oumar Kane, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity School and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, has edited a brilliant book entitled Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts. Professor Kane’s genealogy and scholarship can be traced back to early Qur’anic and Arabic instruction from his mother. His grandfather is the famous Sufi Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, founder of a Tijaniyya Tariqa in Senegal, West Africa, with a global following of millions. The central thesis of Professor Kane’s book is this: Islamic scholarship in Bilad al-Sudan (Land of the Blacks) was equal to that in other regions of the Ummah of Prophet (pbuh) such as Al-Azhar in Kemet (Egypt) and Medina in Saudi Arabia. The University of Sankore in Timbuktu, Mali, is an excellent example of universities in Bilad al-Sudan that were competitive with the aforementioned universities. As a matter of historical record, there was always a robust exchange of commodities, gold, salt, and ideas along the trade routes between the Maghreb (North Africa from Kemet to Morocco) and Bilad al-Sudan. The book rejects the false notion of an Islam noir of divinations, libation, and ancestral veneration in sub-Saharan Africa and authentic Al-Qur’an wa Sunnah Islam in centers of learning in other parts of the Muslim Ummah (p. 19). Western orientalists place North Africa in the Middle East because it is a part of the Arabic-speaking linguistic community and Mediterranean Greco-Roman history. On the other hand, sub-Saharan Africa is separated from its classical Kemetic (ancient Egypt) and Islamic heritage and marginalized as Bilad al-Sudan (Black Africa). This cultural and historical alienation is problematic for Muslim Africa because Islam and the Arabic language have created more religious unity and cultural harmony than political disunity and social conflict. In his Philosophy of History, Hegel asserted that sub-Saharan Africa had no history worthy of serious intellectual discourse (p. 2). This book is a cutting-edge project because it attempts to reconcile the dialectical tensions between Islamic Studies, African Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. These three disciplines or area studies have compartmentalized the canon, epistemology, and paradigm of Islam, [End Page 153] Arabic, African culture and civilization and marginalized the universality of Islamic thought and civilization in the African cultural context (p. 412). Islamic Scholarship in Africa is a major contribution to Professor Kane’s project of building a new discipline at Harvard centered on the intellectual history of Islamic scholarship in sub-Saharan Africa or Bilad al-Sudan. It is divided into four parts: “History, Movement and Islamic Scholarship,”; “Textuality, Orality and Islamic Scholarship”; “ Islamic Education”; “Ajami, Knowledge Transmission and Spirituality.” These subjects have intellectual implications for core curriculum development of the new discipline. Thematically, the edited volume is the outgrowth of a series of international conferences and workshops of scholars convened during the years 2017– 2019. In addition to the book overview introduction, each part has its own introduction that can serve as a road map to guide the reader through the scholarly landscape. Arabic religious and technical terms are used throughout the book; however, readers who are not familiar with all the Islamic terminology can refer to the glossary if definitions are needed. The book is accessible to scholars in the field as well as readers that are familiar or curious about the subject matter. There are 16 chapters arrayed across the four parts of the book. The 19 contributors included in the volume are erudite scholars in the Islamic sciences, Arabic, African languages indigenous to Bilad al-Sudan, and experts on their assigned topics. Each scholarly essay is worthy of an in-depth review; however, space will not permit this level of discussion. Therefore, representative samples will be selected from each of the four parts. The Hajj or Pilgrimage to Mecca of Mansa Musa in 1324 CE and El-Hajj...

Her Zaman Muhammed: Şeyh İbrâhîm Niyâs’ın Üç Risâlesi ve Şiirleri Özelinde Nebevî Hamde Dâir Vezinler

Contemporary poet and scholar Joshua Bennett recently wrote, “If black studies is indeed the rewriting of knowledge itself, an ongoing critique of so-called Western civilization—as Wynter and Robinson and others remind us—then poetry will be absolutely essential. Like the field of black studies more broadly, the teaching of black poetry is not simply additive nor is it a niche concern. Historically poetry is at the center of black social and intellectual life.” Of no literary or intellectual tradition is this more true than that of the Fayḍa Tijāniyya, inaugurated by the Senegalese Sufi Shaykh and scholar, Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (d. 1975). Described by its initiates as a “flood” of ma'rifa (divine knowledge) and wilāya (sanctity), the Fayḍa has also produced a veritable outpouring of Sufi literature in Arabic (as well as African and European languages) among its adherents, particularly Arabic poetry in praise of the prophet that both expresses and facilitates access to ma'rifa in a particularly effective manner. Through close readings of three short treatises and poems of Ibrahim Niasse, this paper attempts to outline Niasse’s prophetic poetics of spiritual realization: the closely-linked cosmology, epistemology, and anthropology converging on the Muhammadan Reality (al-ḥaqīqa al-Muḥammadiya) that animates and structures his literary oeuvre and shapes the spiritual, social, and intellectual lives of the members of the Fayḍa Tijāniyya. Building on earlier studies of the Tijānī tradition and Maghrebi/West African Sufism, this article concludes with an examination of the implications of this prophetic poetics for the conception of the “human,” and the intervention literature such as Niasse's has made and can make in contemporary debates surrounding the ethics of knowledge and the re-evaluation of the modern, “Western” category of the “human”.

A history of ‘Yan haƙiƙa, a revisionist Islamic group in northern Nigeria

Abstract‘Yan haƙiƙa are a Sufi group that has come to prominence in the second decade of the twenty-first century in northern Nigeria, with a significant following in Kano. Although members of the group perceive themselves to be bona fide followers of the path of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (Senegalese Islamic scholar and founder of Tijaniyya-Ibrahimiyya), they are considered by Sunni Muslims (both Salafis and Sufis) as a heretical faction. The basic ideology of this group is that Niasse Allah ne (Niasse is God); they also apotheosize their members. Their ideology stems from the concepts of Wahadat al-Wujud (oneness of being and unity of existence) and Tarbiyya (spiritual training), which is a method used by Sufi shaykhs to guide their disciples on the mystical journey to direct experiences of the Divine Essence – a method popularized by Tijaniyya-Ibrahimiyya. Initially, the group operated clandestinely, but in recent years its members have attracted public attention through Mawlid Baaye (celebrating the birthday of Niasse). During the celebration, they shower praises on Niasse and rank him above the Prophet Muhammad. Their comments generate violent reactions from Salafi and Sufi communities. While Salafis consider the creed of ‘Yan haƙiƙa as typical Sufi heresy, the Sufis not only disown them but also question their ‘Muslimness’. The emergence of ‘Yan haƙiƙa has changed the contours and composition of Tijaniyya in Kano because its defining ideology of deifying Niasse and its members contradict the teaching and doctrine of the mainstream Tijaniyya. This article unpacks the place of ‘Yan haƙiƙa in the highly contested and tense religious geography of Kano, exploring how its emergence complicates the category of ‘Muslim’ within mainstream Sunni Islam.

Problem of the Authorship of the ‘Ishq-name (“The Book of Love”) Poem Attributed to Sana’i from the Regard of Academic Oriental Studies and Modern Computer Technologies

One of the greatest Persian Sufi poets of the 12th century Sana’i (d. 535/1140 or 545/1150) is founder of the Sufi didactical mathnawi poem in Iran. His works exerted enormous influence upon many posterior authors in the Persian Sufi and secular poetry. But the problem of the authorship of Sana’i in regard to the short poems has been debated among the scientists during 20th century and right up to the nowadays. The paper covers the history of studying of the short poems attributed to Sana’i , special attention is devoted to ‘Ishq name (“The Book of Love”), one of the main Sufi writing in the Persian literature on the subject of Mystical Love. For the definition of the authorship of this poem the paper proposes the using of the latest computational methods in particular digital stylometry. The paper tries to answer the question, who is the author of ‘Ishq name poem: Sana’i or the Sufi shaykh and author of the 14th century ‘Izz al Din Mahmud Kashani (d. 735/1334–35).

Sufism, subjectivity and parapsychology: refashioning the dirbāsha ritual among Sufis in modern Iraq

Abstract This paper explores the ritual of the dirbāsha as an extraordinary miracle performance and its role as a bodily practice in the formation of modern Muslim subjectivities among the Qādiriyya-Kasnazāniyya Sufi communities in Iraq. During the climax of collective dhikr gatherings, male Sufi novices perform extraordinary and dangerous acts, perforating parts of their bodies with swords or long skewers without seriously injuring themselves. From the Sufi perspective, this ritual is, first of all, interpreted as the miracle of a Sufi shaykh and not of the performing Sufi novice since it is seen as an expression and proof of God’s power as transmitted through the shaykh. Moreover, it has been argued that the ritual is constitutive for the formation of the religious subjectivity of the performing Sufi novice since it allows the embodiment of mystical concepts as emotional, sensorial and existential realities. For the individual ritual experience to work, the social construction and constant reframing of these “miracles” needs to be taken into account as well, namely the ordinary ethics of the extraordinary which allow the miracles to be perceived as such. The present case of the Kasnazāniyya will show how Sufis combined their pious with a modern, critical and self-reflexive subjectivity and successfully managed to reframe this highly controversial practice – which is criticised by religious reformists and secularists alike – beyond its traditional ritual context with the modern science of parapsychology.

Sufi Authority in “Post-Modern” Muslim Societies

While the beginning of the 21st century demonstrated the emergence of various distinctive styles of Sufism, the existing studies of Sufi practice and discourse in various countries across the world illustrate how social modern forms and techniques are now among the conditions of possibility for a great many movements that are concerned to extend the Islamic tradition, traditions of practice and piety. Yet, modern scholarship represents relatively little known area of Sufi leadership tradition as well as the role of shaykh as a mediating agent in Muslim societies. Fulfilling this scientific gap, this paper is aimed at examining the ways in which we could better understand the role of Sufi shaykh and the production of their authorities in post-modern Muslim societies. In doing so, the paper gives ample emphasis on theoretical discussion about tradition in mystical Islam, and about the ways in which such tradition gives influence to the mediating role played by a Sufi shaykh in society, with a particular case study of the Naqshbandiyah tradition in West Sumatra, Indonesia. This paper reveals the important dimension of traditions of how Sufi shaykhs practice the ideal of Prophet as spiritual masters, within the regional form of Islam, or as mediating shaykhs today, that enable Muslims to pursue a spiritual path within the conflicting situations and pressure of modern life.

Koncept insan-i kamil v uchenii sufiev

The article discovers the meaning of one of the central concepts in the teaching of Sufi “insan- i kamil” - a perfect person. This is the last step of the path that dedicated himself to the search for Truth. The term “salik” is used in relation to the traveller. The degree of the perfect person, according to the Sufi world view, can be achieved only by the chosen one. The purpose of the article is discovered on the basis of written sources. Also chosen thoughts of Sufi shaykhs given in work by “Abd al-Husayn Zarrinkub” are used. In addition, samples of Sufi poetry, thoughts of Sufi saints about the hierarchy of saints that existed in the Muslim world were also attracted.

The Cyclical Time and Burūz (Projection) of the Saint: Thematic Connections in the Early Modern Islamic Landscape

Abstract This essay studies the concept of burūz, i.e. the spiritual projection of saints, as found in the Ṣoḥbetnāme (The Book of Companionship), a compilation of Oğlan Shaykh Ibrahim’s (d. 1655) oral discourses as recorded by his disciple, Ṣunʿullāh Gaybī (d. ca. 1676). Raised in the Balkans among a non-conformist Sufi milieu, Ibrahim Efendi operated as a prominent Sufi shaykh in the Ottoman capital for over fifty years. He was also a poet, and his instructions as recorded in the Ṣoḥbetnāme provide a rare view into a world that was defined by a consciousness of poetry and oral traditions. They also offer insight into the psyche and terminology that defined the mystico-messianic movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in various corners of the Islamic world. In this sense, the essay tries to foster a more detailed discussion of Turkish “heterodoxy” in connection with the broader Islamic world.

Arabic Literature of the North Caucasian Naqshbandiyya in the 19th Century

Abstract This article analyses the Sufi treatise al-Ādāb al-marḍiyya fī l-ṭarīqa al-naqshbandiyya written by the Daghestanian Naqshbandī shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn al-Ghāzīghumūqī (d. 1866/67), the Sufi master, companion and father-in-law of Imām Shāmil (d. 1871). After providing an outline of the life and activities of Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn I will examine the concepts, persons, and practices treated in his Ādāb which not only provide valuable insights regarding the mystical orientation of the Sufi shaykh, but the North Caucasian Naqshbandiyya during the anti-Russian jihād movement in the 19th century. My aim is to illustrate that this document indicates no or in a minor degree references to the Khālidiyya branch of the Naqshbandiyya. This leads me to the assumption that in the case of the Daghestanian Naqshbandiyya in the 19th century, we have a premature, i.e. not developed form of the Khālidiyya.