The Popularisation of Shādhilī Sufism

In the previous two chapters I characterised the early Shādhilī collectivity as a textual community that traced its unique Sufi identity to the †arīqa of Abū l-Óasan al-Shādhilī. After the deaths of al-Shādhilī and Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Mursī this †arīqa was disseminated in Egypt primarily through Ibn ʿA†āʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī’s discursive construction across several different texts, especially La†āʾif al-minan, and through his public preaching. It was the subsequent repetition and collective performance of that †arīqa that institutionalised the eponymous identity of al-Shādhilī and constituted the institutionalised social field from which the Shādhilī †āʾifa developed. In Chapter 3 I argued that it was largely the efforts of the state– the rulers and the Sufis of the khānqāh– which brought their form of Sufism to the urban populace of Cairo. It was principally in public spaces that they collectively produced and popularised a culture of Sufism accessible across multiple strata of society. Key to my understanding of the processes of popularisation is this notion of mass or large-scale cultural production, which is necessarily collective and happens at multiple social sites. Therefore, given the widespread popularity of the Shādhilī †arīqa and subsequent †āʾifa, we must ask a similar question.