Concluding Remarks

In the preceding pages I hope to have offered an alternative, however modest, to what I call the reactionary paradigm concerning the growing popularity of Sufism in medieval Egypt. According to this paradigm, the widespread popularity of Sufism after the sixth/twelfth century occurred as a reaction to the socio-political upheavals of the time and/or because of the inadequacy of certain forms of Islam to meet the religious needs of the populace. The latter explanation relies on anachronistic assumptions about religion and is simply untenable. If the former events played any role in the spread and popularisation of Sufism, they were not the cause ...

The Emergence of the Shādhilīya in Egypt

The Sufi order known as the Shādhilīya was one of the most popular Sufi movements of the Islamic Middle Ages, counting adherents across north Africa, Egypt and Greater Syria.1 The order’s eponymous ‘founder’, Abū l-Óasan al-Shādhilī (d. 656/1258), was born in the Maghrib but eventually settled in Alexandria in the 1240s with the explicit sanction of the Ayyubid regime. While al-Shādhilī and his cohort rejected overt state sponsorship, they did cultivate warm relations with Ayyubid and early Mamluk rulers, as well as many of Egypt’s most prominent ʿulamāʾ. These alliances permitted al-Shādhilī to intercede on behalf of his disciples and clients and to travel freely across Egypt to teach his form of Sufism– advantages he did not enjoy in his previous home in Tunis. Al-Shādhilī met with great success in Egypt, establishing a reputation as a powerful Sufi master and an ally of people across the socio-economic spectrum, attracting a large numbers of followers in the process. Indeed, within roughly fifty years of al-Shādhilī’s death, a nascent social movement tied to his name had emerged that persists to the present day in multiple branches and sub-orders. But how did this informal and localised teaching circle become a trans-regional voluntary association of Sufis who conceptualised themselves as a coherent social body tied together by the teachings of an eponymous master?

What is Popular about the Khānqāh?

After Saladin opened the Saʿīd al-Su ʿadāʾ Cairo was infused with many hundreds of juridical Sufis from the East. This immigration had a profound impact on the social and religious fabric of the city. Upon their arrival these individuals lived and worked in the very heart of urban Cairo, the bayn al-qa‚ rayn district. While the Sufis were obliged to spend portions of their day engaged in devotions within the walls of the khānqāh, they were not required to sequester themselves. They performed public rituals every evening, they paraded through the streets of Cairo every Friday, and they frequented the city’s many madrasas, mosques and teaching circles. Locals also came to the khānqāh to study with them on site. All these practices contributed to the popularisation of Sufism on a large scale in Cairo. But what exactly where these Sufis popularising?

Sufi Activists and Enforcers

The Sufis of Upper Egypt had a troubled relationship with the state and its representatives. As we have seen, Ayyubid and Mamluk military elites typically sought the support of the ʿulamāʾ– Including Sufis–as part of a broader strategy of legitimation and rule. This was true as much as of the Sufis at the Saʿīd al-Suʿadāʾ as of the nascent Shādhilīya, although the latter were less amenable to outright sponsorship. However, these state-funded efforts seem to have been restricted primarily to the urban centres of Cairo and Alexandria. Upper Egypt lacked state-sponsored organisations such as madrasas and khānqāhs during this period, and the Sufis and their allies in the region filled the ideological vacuum. Both Jean-Claude Garcin and Linda Northrup have pointed to the relative independence from the state of pious movements in Upper Egypt.1 It was this independence that allowed them to take on ‘the role of critics of [the state’s] moral behavior’.2 Indeed, part of what seems to have drawn the Sufis of Upper Egypt together and precipitated their particular articulation of Sufi authority was their dissatisfaction with and critique of the state’s inability to regulate the moral economy of the Íaʿīd. The resultant collectivity of Upper-Egyptian Sufis shared five interrelated qualities that clearly set them apart from other contemporary Sufi groups.

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.

Wonder-working Sufis

One of the more puzzling historical questions of this study is why no organised order linked to an Upper-Egyptian tarīqa developed during this period. Given the facts– that Sufism was well established there by the Mamluk period, that there were numerous Sufi masters who maintained ribā†s across the landscape, and that these masters enjoyed widespread fame and recognition– it is surprising that not a single initiatic lineage was institutionalised and organised around one of these masters. Some of the early circles in Qinā would seem to have been ripe for such a development, but in each case the collectivity of Sufis around a particular master ceased to exist in the first or second generation after his death. We find instead that the master’s charismatic authority was itself institutionalised rather than any socially reproducible doctrine or praxis (i.e. a †arīqa). In terms of Blumer’s symbolic interactionism, we might say that these Sufi masters became the objects of veneration and not emulation. Thus, instead of organised (informally or otherwise) collectivities linked to an eponymous †arīqa, localised shrine cults emerged at the physical site of interment. The fact that a Sufi’s tomb would become the object of regular veneration and visitation was certainly not unusual or unique to Upper Egypt; this happened with most Sufi masters across Egypt during this period. But the specific form of Upper-Egyptian Sufism in this period seems to have completely displaced or foreclosed the possibility of other potential social formations. The answer to why this should be the case is inextricably linked to the way in which the Sufis of Upper Egypt produced.

Introduction

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Al-Iskandarī’s Image of the Shādhilī Ṭarīqa

In the previous chapter I argued that Ibn ʿA†āʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī’s Hagiographical image of al-Shādhilī and al-Mursī precipitated the institutionalisation of a collective Shādhilī identity linked to an eponymous method, or †arīqa. In order to bolster his credentials and cement his status as the authorised spokesperson for and representative of the Shādhilī †arīqa in Egypt, al-Iskandarī publicised in speech and writing a specific image of the masters that became authoritative for the emergent Shādhilī collectivity. Importantly, al-Iskandarī’s construction both reflected and shaped the doctrines and practices of the nascent community. By textually standardising the doctrines and practices of the Shādhilī masters in line with communal expectations about the †arīqa, al-Iskandarī discursively mapped the identity of the collectivity onto the biographies of al-Shādhilī and al-Mursī, who thus functioned metonymically as the communal ideal.

The Regional Context of Upper-Egyptian Sufism

The first Sufis in Upper Egypt appear in the historical record at the end of the Fatimid period.1 By the early Mamluk era the region’s towns and villages boasted some of the most famous and enduring personalities of medieval Egyptian Sufism. But despite their prominence in medieval Arabic sources, these Sufis have received almost no attention in studies of Sufism or in Mamluk studies more broadly. There is no monograph in a European language on Upper-Egyptian Sufism. Apart from a few studies in Arabic there are only a handful of articles on the subject.2 This state of affairs is regrettable, although perhaps not surprising given that these Sufis left very little in the way of literature or enduring social formations. The most important source for Sufism in Upper Egypt during this period is Ibn Nūª al-Qū‚ī’s (d.708/1308) al-Waªīd fī sulūk ahl al-tawªīd (‘The Unique Guide Concerning the Comportment of the People of Unity’). This text is a large compendium of diverse biographical and doctrinal material, the publication of which is a major desideratum for the study of medieval Sufism.3 And as far as I know the existence of Sufi-related manuscripts at the shrines and mosques of Upper Egypt has not been explored. Thus, other than Denis Gril’s preliminary studies, without which my work here would have been impossible, the subject of Upper-Egyptian Sufism is mostly terra incognita.

The Sufis of the Khānqāh

In the previous chapter I argued that the Ayyubid and early Mamluk sultans’ interests in sponsoring Sufism at the Saʿīd al-Su ʿadāʾ were primarily two-fold: to support juridical Sufis in order to legitimise their own authority, and to accrue blessing and merit for themselves and their families. While the interests of the Sufis who lived at the khānqāh were certainly not synonymous with those of the military elites who sponsored them, they were nevertheless complementary. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine the sultans supporting and subsidising Sufis who did not in some way promote the interests of the state. Conversely, it would be highly unlikely that Sufis would agree to participate in the ideological programme of the khānqāh if doing so did not further their own goals or align with their conception of Sufi authority and duty.