Tag: Ottoman Religious History

Sharing a Pipe with the Shaykh

On By JonathanIn HistoryLeave a comment
Abu Daood, Shaikh of the Coptic Quarter, in Cairo
A watercolor portrait, by the European artist Carl Haag, of a shaykh in Cairo, one Abū Dawūd; not a sufi shaykh alas (rather a shaykh in charge of an urban quarter, the Coptic one in this case), but displaying both 19th century dress and more importantly for the story below the sizeable nature of tobacco pipes! Painted in 1886 but based on observations from Haag’s 1858-9 visit to Cairo (V&A SD.462)

Apologies for the long delay in posting new material here- as is often the case many other things have intervened, the good and the bad as it were, and the several translations and short essays I had hoped to present here have been pushed back. Much of my ‘free’ time has been taken up teaching a course on modern Islam, which has entailed a great deal of secondary literature reading on my part given that my scholarly training focused pretty much exclusively on the pre-19th century world, with the exception of my recent work as a post-doctoral researcher examining issues in modern Arabic script book history. One of the happy benefits of my recent pivots towards the modern world has been getting to extend my exploration of saints and sainthood in the Islamicate world forward in time, particularly into the 19th century. Far from being marginalized by the developments of modernity, saints and sainthood remained- and in fact remain- vital forces in Islamicate history, in some cases becoming even more salient than in previous centuries. Movements such as the late 19th century Mahdiyya in the Sudan or the emergence of various millenarian and apocalyptic new religious movements like the Aḥmadiyya or the Bābīs are only really explicable within a framework of saints and sainthood.

That said, the saintly subject of the short story I’ve translated here did not herald any grand political movements or religious transformations, but rather can be seen as carrying forward older traditions of sufism and sainthood into the 19th century. We’ve encountered Shaykh Muḥammad al-Jisr (1792-1845) before (see this post for an introduction), and will be meeting him again in these digital pages no doubt, as his hagiography, penned by his scholarly son, is a wonderful source for exploring the transition of Islamic sainthood to the modern world. The story I’ve selected for today, set at some point during the 1830s (the period in which Mehmed ‘Alī’s forces occupied Ottoman Syria) reveals more in the way of continuity than change- while the 19th century would see many reformist and outright puritanical movements either begin outright or emerge into prominence from 18th century origins, here we see Shaykh Muḥammad continuing in a vein of saintly behavior exemplified by the late 17th to early 18th century ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī and others, including the unproblematic use of tobacco. It is also a lovely reminder of the aural presence of sufi ritual: in a world with considerably less noise pollution, and much more oriented around foot-traffic, nocturnal sufi practices such as vocal dhikr had no small aural footprint, attracting passerby such as the young man in our story, even if, as in the story, their reactions could vary in appropriateness!

16.7-27-1967-Stjerneformet-cuerda-seca-flise

‘Shaykh Muḥammad Abū Khalīl Efendī Abāẓa the well known and trusted, whose recognition in the Syrian and Egyptian lands is such that he requires no introduction, said to me: ‘I was in Cyprus during the days of the Egyptian government’s dominion in the land of Syria. I was in the bloom of my youth and the mirth of my youthful inclinations and was not yet following the ṭarīqa, nor did I have an inkling of the spiritual states of its sons. One night I came upon the dhikr circle which your father led with his brethren in Cyprus, and it happened that all while I watched them seeing the effects of the dhikr upon the sons of the path caused me to secretly laugh. When the shaykh completed the dhikr he called to me and sat me down next to him, treating me kindly, then offering me his tobacco pipe from which he had been smoking, which I then returned to him [after smoking]. After the session concluded I returned to my lodgings and lay down on my bed, but it happened that every time I fell asleep I found that pope that the shaykh had offered me that night striking me upon my face! So I would awake with a start, then go back to sleep—and again find it striking me upon my face and I would awake, and so my entire night passed until morning dawned. I was most distressed due to lack of sleep and intensity of fear such that I worried I’d lose my mind! So I went ot the shaykh, God be merciful to him, and as soon as he saw me he started laughing. I bent down and kissed his hand and said to him, ‘Yā sayyidī, what sin is it that I did that caused you to act in such a way with me?’ He replied, ‘What is it I did to you?’ So I related to him the story of the pipe in the night, and he said to me, ‘What does that concern me? I didn’t do anything to you other than offering you my pipe!’

I began seeking his intercession, saying, ‘Yā sayyidī, I’m afraid I’m going to lose my mind! I desire your forgiveness!’ At that he said, ‘My son, for what? You stopped by our dhikr circle last night and began to laugh—we are dervish folk and you are a lordly man, it is most befitting to you that you mock and laugh at us.’ I replied, ‘Yā sayyidī, I did not intend to laugh at you, God forbid from that! But the state and levity of my youth are not hidden from you, so I hope you will forgive me!’ At that the shaykh, my God be merciful to him, was pleased with me, and so I set out on the Khalwatiyya ṭarīqa and so continued on from there.’

Ḥusayn al-Jisr, Kitāb nuzhat al-fikr fī manāqib mawlānā al-ʻārif billāh taʻālá quṭb zamānih wa-ghawth awānih al-Shaykh Muḥammad al-Jisr (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʻah al-Adabīyah, 1888), 99-100.

Shaykh Muḥammad al-Jisr and the Snake in the Wall

On By JonathanIn History, Islam, Ottoman2 Comments

Egyptian characters, etc. Snake charmer, Cairo 2
A snake charmer at work in early 20th century Cairo, photographed by a photographer from the American Colony in Jerusalem; this is the sort of performer, increasingly associated with ‘the Orient’ in the 19th century, that Ḥusayn al-Jisr wished to differentiate his father from (Library of Congress LC-M32- 994 [P&P])
As anyone who has followed my work here and elsewhere will be aware, until recently my scholarly research was focused all but exclusively on the early modern and medieval worlds, with a rough cut-off date of 1800 beyond which my expertise thins out considerably. Over the last couple of years since completing my PhD and assuming a post-doctoral research position my interests and research responsibilities have diversified considerably (a diversification which comes with its own risks, I might note), running backwards and forwards in time from the periods with which I am most familiar and comfortable. On the one hand I have taken up a much greater interest in the study of deep time and possible ways of integrating perspectives from paleontology, geology, climatology, archeology, and paleoanthropology into the kinds of historical study and teaching I do located within the ‘shallow’ past. Running in the other direction, on the other hand, I have become much more involved in nineteenth and twentieth century topics, some quite new to me, such as the history of technology and communication, others continuations of my long-standing interests such as saints and sainthood.

I learned about the subject of this week’s essay and translation (and who will certainly figure in future posts over the next month or so) by way of Marwa Elshakry’s book Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950, an exploration of the complex and often quite surprising ways in which Ottoman and post-Ottoman Arab thinkers dealt with the emergence and elaboration of Darwinian evolutionary theory and the permutations that engagement underwent vis-a-vis other concerns and political developments. Shaykh Muḥammad al-Jisr’s son, Ḥusayn al-Jisr, was one of the many thinkers, Muslim, Christian, and otherwise, who grappled with evolution and other aspects of the biological sciences, threading a path that was at once critical and open to scientific insights while also remaining very committed to ‘traditional’ Islam (though in ways that would have been unfamiliar even to his own father in the decades prior), remaining largely critical of evolutionary theory but suggesting that given sufficient proof nothing in Islam prevented acceptance of evolutionary theory provided God was understood to be the first and final cause- materialism was Ḥusayn al-Jisr’s primary foe.

Ḥusayn al-Jisr’s position on evolutionary theory in relation to theology is actually related to the work of his translated here, a hagiography, written in 1888, of his father Shaykh Muḥammad al-Jisr (1792-1845), a Khalwatī teaching shakyh and widely acclaimed saint active in Syria and Palestine (though due to political instability he also spent time in Cyprus and Constantinople). Ḥusayn’s account of his father- who died shortly after Ḥusayn’s birth- is striking for the way in which the author engages in extensive epistemological and other routes of analysis and digression, with much of the introduction devoted to tracing Ḥusayn’s own journey from relative skepticism about his father’s sanctity to embracing it, based on the accumulation and weighing of oral and written evidence, including from non-Muslims. These traces of modernity, as it were, continue throughout, even as the world of sanctity and sainthood revealed is not very far from that of early modernity- it is the framing and the tone that has changed, though certainly not into a voice of disenchantment or skepticism. As such it is a good example of the complex ways Muslims and others have constructed their own ‘modernities’ not necessarily along the lines of a neat trajectory of ‘secularism’ and ‘disenchantment that have so often been seen by many as normative and either automatic or only avoidable by ‘relapsing’ into some form of reaction and obscurantism.

I have selected the following short story mostly because it’s memorable and in the voice of the shaykh’s sister, but also because it captures part of Shaykh Muḥammad’s own saintly charisma- his connections with axial saints of the past, including Aḥmad al-Rifā’ī, and his interventions in everyday life- as well as possible objections that were more likely to arise in the modernizing milieus of the late nineteenth century, with Ḥusayn al-Jisr confronting such objections directly with an explicitness unusual within the genre. We will see other interactions of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ in future installations from this saint’s life, so stay tuned!

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‘And from what the aforementioned sister of the shaykh related to me about him: she said: “After the incident I told you about before, among the things that happened to me in that house is that there came to us from Beirut a covered basket of zucchinis, and when I opened the basket up to take the zucchinis out, a snake that had been hidden within came out and slithered into a hole in the house. I was very frightened and resolved to flee the house, but when I came into the presence of the shaykh, your father, I related the story to him and revealed my fear. He said to me, ‘Don’t be afraid!’ Then he came and stood in front of the hole into which the snake had entered and said, ‘Yā Sayyidī Aḥmad! Yā Rifā’ī! My sister is afraid of snakes!’ In that very moment I had barely blinked when the snake came out of the hole and the shaykh killed it, and my heart was calmed thereby.”

This happening points to the administrative power (taṣarruf) of the shaykh and his close relationship with the venerable Shaykh al-Rifā’ī, God sanctify his inner secret. If it is said that the snake charmers do the like of this deed, we say, yes, but the action of the snake charmers is of the nature of a trick, but that which is related here is the action of a man from among the people of piety and sanctity, who sought the aid of a spiritual axis (quṭb) from among the spiritual axes of the age, one would not deny his virtue save one who is utterly effaced of vision. The one who knows what the learned in religion have written about the distinction between prophetic sign (al-mu’jiza) and saintly miracle (al-karāma) and between bewitchment and the art of persuasion, with all being things outside of the ordinary, such foolish doubt will not trouble his heart.’

Ḥusayn al-Jisr, Kitāb nuzhat al-fikr fī manāqib mawlānā al-ʻārif billāh taʻālá quṭb zamānih wa-ghawth awānih al-Shaykh Muḥammad al-Jisr (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʻah al-Adabīyah, 1888), 82, translated by Jonathan Parkes Allen, August, 2021.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The Cow, the Wolf, and the Talking Rocks

On By JonathanIn Culture, History, Islam, Ottoman, Ottoman TurkishLeave a comment
A shaykh in the countryside, cattle busily engaged in agriculture and not pursued by wolves, as depicted in 1487 in a manuscript of ‘Aṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr, produced in Herat a few years before the Safavid conquest (Met. 63.210.49)

The hagiography of the Anatolian Muslim saint Ḥācım Sulṭān (first introduced here) captures various snapshots of a major transitional period in the region’s history, in which over the course of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century the frontier polities that had proliferated in the post-Mongol period were being incorporated into the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire. Ottoman expansion took place in a world in which nomadic and semi-nomadic Turkic-speakers had spread widely in Anatolia and further west into the Balkans, part of a general cultural and social flux marked by the disappearance of the Byzantine Empire and an increasingly complex and diverse articulation of Islam in town and countryside. Given that Ḥācım Sulṭān’s hagiography dates from somewhere in the fifteenth century- almost certainly after the incorporation of Germiyan, the polity in which much of the action occurs, into the Ottoman realm- we can usefully read it as a window into some of the realities and cultural attitudes typical of the start of the Ottoman period. The Ottoman polity itself is not mentioned, nor is any other higher-level polity. Instead, authority operates at the very local level, invested in strongmen in towns, in town and village qāḍīs- such as the one in the following story- and in the sometimes competing, sometimes cooperating saintly dervishes wandering the countryside or dwelling in saints’ shrines.

The story excerpted and translated here is set in a village, to which the saint has come for a time (the central story arc of the first third or so of the hagiography is Ḥācım Sulṭān’s quest for the designated place of his future āstāne and shrine). He tends, with the helps of his miraculous black bull companion, the village herds, occupying a rather ambiguous position: he is referred to here and at other points in the story as being a ‘dīvāne,’ a polyvalent word literally meaning ‘crazy’ but also connotative of a wandering dervish. The characters in this story use it in a decidedly negative way, pointing to a reality that Ḥācım Sulṭān’s hagiography does not try to obscure: not everyone accepted his sainthood, and the towns and countryside of earliest modern Anatolia had many claimants to sanctity, not all of whom received universal acclaim. It is also worth noting that here and in many other stories in this vilāyetnāme women feature prominently, both as supporters of the saint and as members of a sometimes skeptical audience in need of convincing.

Finally, alongside depictions of everyday life in the countryside- putting cattle out to pasture, the threat of wolves, and the like- we also see a local qāḍī, or judge, at work. The question of who appointed him and from whence he draws his salary is of no interest to our narrative; what counts is his responsiveness to the villagers’ request for an investigation and his willingness to accept Ḥācım Sulṭān’s proofs of sainthood. Already in this period we get the sense that the norms of Islamic jurisprudence were known to some degree even deep in the countryside, an important foundation for the effectiveness of the Ottoman scholarly-legal bureaucracy and hierarchy already being formed.

Nomads tending to their cattle, from the c. 1400 Divān of the poetry of the Jalāyirid ruler Sulṭān Aḥmad Jalāyir (d. 1410). (Freer and Sackler F1932.34)

Another vilāyet of Ḥācım Sulṭān: there was a little elderly woman who had a single cow (ınek). She would bring the cow out to pasture. Then one day Sulṭān Ḥācım said to her, ‘Mother, by God’s command a wolf is going to eat this cow! Do not pasture her.’ But the woman did not listen. She put the cow out to pasture. Now [Ḥācım Sulṭān] gathered all the cattle [of the village] gathered together and moved them along, but this poor woman’s cow separated from the rest of the cattle and went to another place. With God’s permission a wolf came forth and ate the cow up. Evening fell. All of the animals returned to their homes, but the woman’s cow did not come. For a while they searched but did not find [it]. Finally, the woman’s sons were at a loss. Then about it they said, ‘That crazy one (dīvāne) has palmed off this cow! At any rate let’s go and find him.’ So they went and asked Ḥācım Sulṭān, ‘What did you do with our cow?’ He replied, ‘Your cow was eaten by a wolf in such-and-such a place in the vicinity of such-and-such.’ To which they replied, ‘Surely you are talking nonsense! Come, let us go to the qāḍī and you give [him] answer.’ Ḥācım Sulṭān replied, ‘Let us go!’

So from there they went to the qāḍī. The sons complained to the qāḍī, saying, ‘Efendi, this crazy one watched over our cattle—or, rather, he himself didn’t, his big black bull did. Now, ask this careless one what he did with our cow!’ So the qāḍī asked, ‘Crazy one, what did you do with these young men’s cow? Let us see how things stand.’ Ḥācım Sulṭān replied, ‘I warned this aged mother that she ought not put the cow out to pasture as with God’s permission as a wolf would eat [it]. She did not listen, added [the cow] to the grazing herd, and the wolf ate [it].’ Continue reading “The Cow, the Wolf, and the Talking Rocks” →

Ḥācım Sulṭān, the Questing Dervish, and the Troublesome Nomads

On By JonathanIn Culture, East & West, History, Islam, Ottoman, Ottoman Turkish2 Comments

Fourtheenth Century Anatolian Carpet
Surviving traces of late medieval nomadic material culture are, unsurprisingly, few and far between, but this probably fourteenth century carpet of probable western Anatolian Turkman origin is an exception. The fronted animal motifs are reminiscent of Inner Asian nomadic art of much earlier times down to the present; however, the survival of this rug, by way of trade to, apparently, Tibet, as well as the presence of very similar rugs in Western European paintings from the fourteenth and fifteenth century points to the fact that these Anatolian tribes were already connected to emergent global networks through which people, practices, objects, and non-human organisms moved. For another example of this style of rug, see the even further-flung in final destination ‘Marby rug.’ (Met. 1990.61)

Hailing from the world of late medieval and very early modern Anatolia are a group of hagiographic texts, often titled vilāyetnāmes (roughly, ‘sainthood-books’), which deal with a wide range of holy people loosely tied together through similarities of practice, discourse, and claimed lineage. Many of these saints, who are often collectively referred to as the Abdāl-i Rūm, are today associated with the Bektashis and Alevis, though until the modern period they were widely venerated, including by ‘respectable’ Sunni Ottoman Muslims. Ḥācı Bektāş Velī is by far the best known of these saints, the majority of whom are described in the hagiography as hailing from Khorasan in Inner Asia. In what follows below I have translated a selection from the vilāyetnāme of one of these saints, the (probably) 14th century Ḥācım Sulṭān, whose hagiography was written down in the fifteenth century, with the earliest copy hailing from the sixteenth. As such, it is a wonderful snapshot of what rural Islam looked like in western Anatolia during this transitional period in which the late medieval beyliks were being progressively incorporated into the expansive Ottoman Empire. It is one in which wandering saints are common, as well as cases of opposition to those saints, and contestation over the meaning of sainthood and who ought to wield it. It is a world in which nomadic peoples remain prominent, with the saints themselves effectively nomadic much of the time.

Before reading the story it is helpful to know what precedes it: in the opening pages of the vilāyetnāme we learn how Ḥācım Sulṭān was sent to Anatolia (that is, Rūm) along with Ḥācı Bektāş Velī by the famed Central Asian saint Aḥmet Yesevī. The two saints spent some time in Mecca and Medina before coming to Anatolia, where they first met with the saints already resident in Rūm, displaying their own saintly credentials before setting off to build up their base of followers. Ḥācım Sulṭān split off from his more famous companion (and the hagiography clearly builds upon the relationship to legitimize Ḥācım Sulṭān), traveling towards the territory of Germiyān in southwestern Anatolia. He herds cattle, deals with opponents, miraculously manipulates rocks, and so forth, all the while seeking out a place called Ṣūsuz (that is, ‘waterless’) which he has been told in a dream-vision is the place he must set up his headquarters, as it were. When he finally comes to Ṣūsūz (located south of the town of Uşak) he finds that a group of Aq Qoyunlū Turkman nomads are already using the area as their summer pasture, setting up a clash between the wandering dervish and the resident Turkmans. In the meantime, it should be mentioned, a miraculous black bull enters his service and attracts wonder everywhere he goes.

The story I’ve selected and translated here describes a new character entering Ḥācım Sulṭān’s fold, a dervish from far-off Khurāsān, a tale which is followed by one describing the resolution of the conflict between saint and nomads. Late medieval Anatolia was already a place intimately connected with other parts of Eurasia, whether through trade- as the above carpet suggests- or through the circulation of nomads, wandering dervishes, and the like, often coming, ultimately, from Inner Asia. It is not implausible that the outbreak of death in the nomadic camp as described below can be interpreted in light of the circulation of epidemic disease across Eurasia, an issue that remains very much acute in our own world.

This hagiography, like others of its sort, was written in a form of Turkish intermediate between late West Oghuz and the emergent Ottoman literary form, with what appear to be sixteenth century interjections here and there explaining words that had become obscure. These hagiographies were assembled out of oral reports and stories, something that frequently comes across in the written text, and reflect the intermingling and cross-fertilization of standard Islamic practices and ideas, elements of Persianate sufism, and local Anatolian motifs and traditions. As such, the meanings and significances of these stories are not always obvious, coming as they do from religious and cultural worlds that feel far distant from our own in many ways. I hope that my translation has retained some of that strangeness.

Folio from a Divan (Collected poems) by Sultan Ahmad Jalayir (d.1410); verso- Nomad camp; recto- text
Filling the margins of this c. 1400 Divān of the poetry of the Jalāyirid ruler Sulṭān Aḥmad Jalāyir (d. 1410) are depictions of an encampment of either Turkman or Mongol nomads. While probably produced in Iraq or Iran, this ink drawing gives a good idea of what the Turkman community described in Ḥācım Sulṭān’s vilāyetnāme might have looked like. (Freer and Sackler F1932.34)

There was a pure-hearted, worshipful, ascetic dervish saint in the lands of Khurāsān, whose name was Burhān, and who was a lover of the Folk of the illustrious House, and was in heart and soul a lover of the Friends of God. His heart was filled with passionate love (muḥabbet-i ‘aşıḳ). He constantly prayed, ‘O God of the worlds, make me to obtain to the skirt of one of the children of the Messenger!’ He consigned his heart to the divine unicity of God, exalted is He. One night while performing tesbīḥ, ‘ibādet, and zikr, he fell asleep. In his dream he saw that he had come to the lands of Rūm, where he saw that the saints of Rūm had all gathered together in one place, performing acts of worship and conversing about divine matters together. This dervish came up to them, and they offered him a place, so he sat down and saw that their khalīfe was one of luminous face and such that in seeing him one’s heart was struck with passionate divine love. This their khalīfe was Ḥācım Sulṭān. He said, ‘Welcome, my friend and loyal one, Dervīş Burhān!’ Hearing this answer [Burhān] arose and kissed Sulṭān Ḥācım’s hands and knees, saying, ‘You are my şeyh and my saint!’ Then the venerable Sulṭān Ḥācım said, ‘Yā Burhān! If you wish to be with us, come to Rūm, to the region of Germiyān, and you will find us.’ In that moment Dervīş Burhān awoke and found himself still in his room in Khurāsān. Immediately he arose and Dervīş Burhān became mad with love (divāne), passionate love encompassing him. Asking no one [for direction] he set off in the direction of the qibla. Will not anyone overtaken with divine passionate love (‘aşıḳ-i ilāhī) become divāne? Will not such a one vigorously search out for his şeyh? Not even the crossing of a great stony mountain phased Dervīş Burhān’s mind. In accordance with the saying ‘For the lover Baghdad is not too far away,’ day by day he traveled on the way, and in time one day he reached Rūm. Divine attraction towards the saints of God befell his heart (evlīyā’-i Allāhiñ cezbesi ḳelbiñe duşdi). One day he reached the region of Germiyān and said to himself, ‘Now, how shall I find his exalted side?’ It came to his mind that ‘Having taken me from Khurāsān shall I not reach his feet?’

Then by God’s decree he came to the graveyard (gūristān). He saw that some of the nomad households had made their summer pasturing grounds in the wild country there. Finding someone he asked, ‘What is this place?’ This person answered, ‘This place is Germiyān and is our summer pasture. Upon that hill there is a dervish like you who spends forty days neither eating nor drinking. He continually tells us, “In this place I am going to build my āstāne [lit. threshhold, but also indicating a sufi lodge or a shrine].” He refuses to go to any other place.’ Dervīş Burhān replied, ‘Now where is this dervish?’ The person answered, ‘He’s on that hill.’ So Dervīş Burhān set out towards him, which was known to Sulṭān Ḥācım. He rose from his place and went forward by three steps. Dervīş Burhān beheld the beauty (cemāl) of Sulṭān Ḥācım, so that his heart was illumined and he knew that he was the person he was seeking and whom he had seen in his dream. He walked towards him. He greeted him. Ḥācim Sulṭān reverently returned his greeting, saying ‘Welcome Dervīş Burhān,’ and he [Burhān] kissed his hands and feet, and in mutual love for one another they busied themselves with remembrance (zikr) of God. [Dervīş Burhān] reverently served Ḥācim Sulṭān. Continue reading “Ḥācım Sulṭān, the Questing Dervish, and the Troublesome Nomads” →

A Cultural Entrepreneur in Late Eighteenth Century Cairo

On By JonathanIn Arabic, Culture, History, Islam, OttomanLeave a comment

Wakala Oda Basha
The Wakālat Oda Başa, built in 1673 by an Ottoman Chief White Eunuch and now, so far as I can determine, no longer extant, but depicted here as it existed in the 1830s, displaying the spatial configuration and use of an Ottoman wakāla (also voweled wikāla) akin to that in the biographical entry below, with vendors active on the ground floor, storage directly above. (Pascal Coste, Architecture arabe; ou, Monuments du Kaire, mesurés et dessinés, de 1818 à 1826, Typ. de Firmin Didot frères et compagnie, 1839: Volume II plate XLIV.)

The following short biography is taken from the famed chronicle- which is also a biographical dictionary- of the Ottoman Egyptian scholar al-Jabartī (1753-1825), best-known for his accounts of the French invasion and occupation of Egypt under Napoleon. His chronicle contains numerous fascinating slices of every-day life in the late eighteenth century, such as this entry concerning a person of middling estate (which he made up for, as we will see, in other types of ‘capital’):

Ismā’īl Efendī ibn Khalīl… known as al-Ẓuhūrī al-Miṣrī al-Ḥanafī al-Muktib died. He was a good person, satisfied with his lot in life, who earned his living through book-copying and fineness of calligraphy which he had improved in and reached perfection under the tutelage of ‘Alī Aḥmad Efendī al-Shukrī. He wrote with his fine handwriting numerous books (kutub), copies of al-Saba’a al-munjiyyāt [seven selected Qu’ran suras with reputed prophylactic power], Dalā’il al-khayrāt, and full copies of the Qur’an. He also had a storehouse wherein he sold coffee beans, located in the caravanersai of greens (wikālat al-baql) close to the Khalīlī Khan. He was also very knowledgeable in the science of music, melody, the playing of the ‘ūd, and the composition of poetry, having composed madā’iḥ, qaṣā’id, and muwashshaḥāt.[1] He died, God be merciful to him, in 1211/1796.[2]

The picture that emerges from this brief life is of a man who deliberately cultivated a wide range of skills and forms of cultural expertise, while also participating in the flourishing marketplace of goods and commodities. His enterprises were such that they could overlap: selling coffee beans at the scale suggested here would have only occupied so much time, Ismā’īl otherwise working at what al-Jabartī presents as his primary trade, that of a copyist. Despite sporadic in-roads of moveable print in the eighteenth century Ottoman world, manuscript production remained dominant, with men like Ismā’īl turning out often prodigious numbers of texts for an expanded market compared to earlier periods. His specified repertoire consists of works that households with few other texts might very well have owned, either for reading and recitation or simply for their role as potent conveyors of baraka (and, secondarily perhaps, markers of cultural prestige). It is striking that, like several other copyists profiled by al-Jabartī, the Dalā’il al-khayrāt is given as part of Ismā’īl’s calling card, a text of such popularity that it could form a stable item all of its own regardless of individual customer commissions. Continue reading “A Cultural Entrepreneur in Late Eighteenth Century Cairo” →

Imām al-Layth, the Debtor, the Parakeet, and the Ruler

On By JonathanIn Arabic, History, Islam, OttomanLeave a comment

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The minaret and street entrance to the shrine-mosque of Imām al-Layth, as it existed c. 1920 when it was photographed by Sir K.A.C. Creswell (V&A 1573-1921)

During his various journeys,ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (1641-1731) visited many, many shrines of saints and prophets, some known throughout the world, others of only local purchase. In his accounts of his journeys he makes much of these visits, recording them in sometimes great detail and with his own poetic contributions. Very often he reports local accounts of the holy person venerated in the shrine, providing precious insights into the ‘oral hagiography’ and local practices of saintly veneration and saintly space that prevailed in the late seventeenth century around the Ottoman world.

One of the many holy tombs al-Nābulusī visited in the course of his extended stay in Cairo during the pilgrimage journey recounted in his al-Ḥaqīqa wa-al-majāz fī riḥlat bilād al-Shām wa-Miṣr wa-al-Ḥijāz was that of Imām al-Layth ibn Saʿd (713-791), a major figure in the early elaboration of Islamic jurisprudence. Rather like his ‘neighbor’ Imām al-Shāfiʿī, by al-Nābulusī’s time Imām al-Layth was regarded as much, if not more, as a wonder-working saint than as a scholar of jurisprudence, as the story I’ve translated here suggests.

While the central point of the story is pretty straightforward- and rather charming- certain details stand out for thinking about how Ottoman Muslims experienced the built space of such shrines. First, it should be noted, as al-Nābulusī does in introducing this structure a bit before the translated passage, and as can be seen in the photographs, reproduced here, taken by K.A.C. Creswell in the late 1910s, the shrine sat pretty much continuous with the surrounding houses, marked off by its dome (qubba, see below) and relatively low but ornate minaret, both of late Mamluk provenance. The line between house and shrine could be blurred in other ways: the man in the story practices the venerable rite of ‘incubation,’ sleeping in a holy place so as to receive a vision or answer to a prayer. If the shrine was seen as a sort of ‘home’ for the entombed saint, incubation was equivalent to a guest spending the night.

The fact that al-Nābulusī heard this story, perhaps from a neighbor to the shrine, indicates that the space remained ‘alive’ to local residents and devotees, as did the saint himself, even to the point of attracting an additional element to his name (at least among his local devotees). It’s a good reminder that whatever the intentions of the original founders of the tomb (which certainly predates the ‘modern’ late Mamluk construction visible now to us) or of later patrons and builders, those intentions might have only partially been respected or even recognized by later participants in the sanctified space.

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The qubba- dome- and rooftop of the shrine, fairly typical of mausoleum architecture during the Mamluk period (V&A 1571-1921)

The reason for his being given the kunya [1] of Abū al-Makārim [that is, ‘Father of Noble Deeds’] among the people of Cairo is what was told us in the following manner, namely that there was a man with many debts. He set out sincerely for a pious visit to [Imām al-Layth], and recited the Fātiḥa for him and supplicated God, asking for relief from his debt. He slept here in the shrine and saw [Imām al-Layth] in a dream. He said to the man: ‘When you arise from your dream take hold of and possess what you see upon my tomb!’

When the man arose from his sleep, he saw upon his tomb the bird known as parrot (babbaghā’) or parakeet (durra), and it could recite in the manner of an expert reciter the Qur’an in all its seven recitations! [2] So he took hold of it, and soon the people had heard of it, to the point that word of it reached the ruler of Cairo, and he commanded that the man be brought to his presence so that he might take the bird from him. When he came into the ruler’s presence the ruler bought it from him, and with the money the man was able to repay all of his debts.

Continue reading “Imām al-Layth, the Debtor, the Parakeet, and the Ruler” →

The Bey, the Meczûb, and a Cure for Beardlessness

On By JonathanIn Arabic, Culture, History, Islam, Ottoman, Ottoman TurkishLeave a comment

Sultan Murad III (r1574-1595) on Horseback (painting recto text verso) illustrated folio from a manuscript of the Javahir al-Gharaib Tarjomat Bahr al-Ajaib (Gems of Marvels- A Translation of the Sea of Wonders) of Jennabi (Cennabi)
(Fig. 1) Bearded and beardless soldiers and attendants surround Sultan Murad III (r.1574-1595) in this miniature from a translation into Ottoman Turkish of al-Jannābī’s Baḥr al-‘ajā’ib (Harvard Art Museum 1985.219.3.2)

As I’ve discussed on these pages many times before, Ottoman hagiography (like other bodies of hagiography from around the world) can be read in ways that get at much more than just ‘religious’ history narrowly conceived. Attitudes towards political dynamics, concepts of gender, relationships among various social groups, and many more aspects of life can all be discerned in these sorts of texts. One way of getting at underlying social and cultural realities is to read multiple accounts of the same holy person, when this is possible (and obviously in many cases it isn’t, or while there may be multiple accounts one is an original which the others simply copy and paste).

I’ve selected two renderings, both from the sixteenth century, of the same story in a saint’s life. One of the stories was written by an otherwise obscure person named Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî (fl. mid-16th century) in the small town of Göynük, located roughly halfway between Istanbul and Ankara; the other version was composed in Ottoman Constantinople (or, possibly, Bursa or Edirne) by one of the most famous Islamic scholars of the period, Ahmed Taşköprüzâde (1495-1561). Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî wrote in an almost colloquial register of Ottoman Turkish, while most of Taşköprüzâde’s literary production, including the one excerpted here, was in Arabic, long one of the two ‘international’ languages of the Islamicate world (though it would soon be translated and expanded upon in Ottoman Turkish). As such, to oversimplify somewhat, the one can safely be taken as representing a ‘provincial’ perspective, oriented around a particular holy person and his family and disciples, while Taşköprüzâde represents a more decidedly ‘imperial’ or ‘central’ view of things. Where Taşköprüzâde was a part of the scholarly-legal hierarchy, the so-called ‘ilmiye system, Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî was not, instead living and thinking at some distance from the imperial center and its rarefied world of sultans, viziers, grand medreses, and the like.

These differences are very much on view in these two stories, to which we will now turn, reviewing what they reveal afterwards. First, it should be noted that the main subject of Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî’s menâkıb is Nûru’l-Hüdâ’s father, Akşemseddîn (see this post for more on him). Out of his numerous sons, Nûru’l-Hüdâ is explicitly described as a saint, albeit of the meczûb variety (on which see this post), one whose divinely bestowed powers could go toe-to-toe with his father’s. Taşköprüzâde’s version of the story comes from his al-Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmāniyya fī ʿulamāʾ al-dawlat al-ʿUthmāniyya, a ‘biographical dictionary’ of prominent scholars, culture-producers, doctors, shaykhs, and saints of the Ottoman lands from the origins of the dynasty up to Taşköprüzâde’s own day. While the story takes place in the fifteenth century, the underlying social and cultural dynamics that our authors bring to it speak more, arguably, of the sixteenth century. Here is Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî’s version:

‘There was a bey known as Kataroǧlu who was beardless (köse). He didn’t have any beard at all. One day he said to [the meczûb saint] Nûru’l-Hüdâ: “With saintly intention (himmet) cause me to have a beard!” So Nûru’l-Hüdâ looked Kataroǧlu in the face. He spit. In the places where the spit landed on Kataroǧlu beard began to sprout. The next morning Kataroǧlu arose and looked in the mirror. In the places the spit had touched beard had grown, and in a few days he had a full, black beard! He brought [the saint] a golden kaftan, and clothed Nûru’l-Hüdâ in it. Suddenly a dog appeared in their midst, and Nûru’l-Hüdâ rose and clothed the dog in the kaftan.’ [1]

And here is Taşköprüzâde’s version:

‘The shaykh had a young son named Nūr al-Hudā, a son who was a majdhūb, his intellect overtaken [by God]. At the time there was a great amīr known as Ibn ‘Aṭṭār, who was satin-skinned, not a hair on his face. He came before the shaykh while on his way to Sultan Muhammad Khan [Mehmed II]. While he was with the shaykh, that majdhūb came in and laughed, saying, “Is this a man? No, he’s a woman!” The shaykh was angry at this, but the amīr implored the shaykh that he not rebuke his son for saying such. Then the amīr said to the aforementioned majdhūb, “Pray for me so that my beard will grow!” So the majdhūb took a great deal of spit from his mouth and rubbed it on the amīr’s face. His beard began to grow, right up to his entry into Constantinople, and when he came before the sultan, the sultan said to his viziers, “Ask him from whence came this beard?” So he related what had happened, and the sultan marveled at it, and endowed upon that young man numerous waqfs, which remain in the control of the sons of the shaykh to this day.’ [2]

Ottoman Kaftan Fragment
(Fig. 2) A fragment of a particularly rich 16th century kaftan woven from silk and metallic thread, with a gold background, perhaps visually similar to the one described in Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî’s version of the story. (Met. 52.20.23a, b)

First, certain shared components are immediately visible: in both versions the Ottoman official- described as a bey or an amīr, roughly equivalent terms in Turkish and Arabic respectively- suffers from a degree of social stigma, it is implied, due to his lack of a beard. Having a beard, or even the first traces of a beard, was a key marker in this world of transitioning from the ambiguously gendered stage of ‘beardless youth’ to an adult man; the total absence of facial hair, if voluntary, could signal subordination (as in the case of eunuchs particularly) or social deviance and rejectionism (as in the case of radical dervishes). Thus the bey’s lack of beard is not simply a matter of style or personal pride, but could be seen as something approaching a disability. The joke the meczûb tells in Taşköprüzâde’s rendering pointedly gets at this gendered social reality.

The ‘cure,’ described in similar- though not quite the same- ways in both accounts, points to the close linkage between the body, the body’s products, and the transmission of sanctity and saintly power in the Islamicate world (and elsewhere). The exchange of saliva between saint and devotee has many parallels elsewhere in medieval and early modern Islamic hagiography (though I do not know of another instance in which spit cures beardlessness!). That the bey wants Nûru’l-Hüdâ to spit on him (or, in Taşköprüzâde’s somewhat more ‘refined’ version, rub on him) indicates his recognition of the meczûb’s sanctity, and signals to the reader Nûru’l-Hüdâ’s status as a saint.

Where the two accounts diverge is in how they implicitly frame the relationship between Nûru’l-Hüdâ (and his father), on the one hand, and Ottoman central power, on the other. In the first, ‘provincial’ rendering, while Nûru’l-Hüdâ cures the bey’s lack of beard, he does so in a way that signals the relative equality prevailing between the two- he spits right in the bey’s face, an effective way to transmit some sacred saliva, but otherwise a rather degrading action. Taşköprüzâde presents the transmission as having been carried out in a less confrontational manner. When it comes to recompense, Taşköprüzâde suggests that not only did the sultan himself reward Nûru’l-Hüdâ’s family, the family retained the reward, right down to the present, thereby tying themselves into the Ottoman center and implicitly subordinating themselves to the Ottoman dynasty. The framing of the story itself subordinates the ‘local’ saints to the central imperial context, with much of the action taking place in the presence of the sultan, not in the presence of the saint.

Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî’s version runs in exactly the opposite direction: not only does Nûru’l-Hüdâ reject the sumptuous kaftan bestowed upon him (see fig. 2 for an example), but he instead clothes a dog with it (the dog, it is implied, appearing providentially in just that moment). This act of rejection is not just a manifestation of conventional ideas of asceticism and distance from rulers. In Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî’s time, a very real struggle was taking place over who was to control the use and distribution of sanctity, over who was to occupy the ‘top spot’ in the hierarchy of saints. The Ottoman dynasty and many of its elite sought to organize, channel, and outright control the many holy people scattered across their domains, with the sultans themselves as saints presiding over the empire. Saints and their supporters, especially hagiographers, resisted these attempts. Neither ‘side’ rejected the legitimacy of the other outright: sultans and beys respected the saints of the land, and the saints, for the most part, supported the right of the House of Osman to rule. What was at issue was the nature of their relationship, and the degree to which saints should be subordinate to sultans and other members of the Ottoman elite.  Dressing a passing dog in a kaftan (itself symbolically linked to the sultan’s household) is in the story a way of signaling the superiority of the saints and that while beys and sultans needed them, the saints did not themselves need beys and sultans. The historical reality was no doubt, in fact, somewhere in between the two visions these contrasting hagiographic accounts present.

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[1] Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî, Akşemseddin hazretleri ve yakın çevresi: Menâkıb-ı Âkşemseddîn, edited by Metin Çelik  (İstanbul: Ark, 2016), 98.

[2] Ahmed Taşköprüzâde, al-Shaqāʼq al-Nuʻmānīya fī ʻulmāʼ al-Dawla al-ʻUthmānīya (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-‘Arabī, 1975), 141-142.

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The Jinn-Cat and the Şeyh

On By JonathanIn Islam, Ottoman, Ottoman TurkishLeave a comment

The following curious little story comes from the sixteenth century menâkıb of the early Ottoman sufi saint Şeyh Akşemseddîn (1390–1459), written by one Göynüklü Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî, and discussed previously on this site here. The account below comes in a sequence of tales of the Şeyh’s relationship with the jinn, mysterious beings that are in some ways half-way between humans and angels. Like several other of the tales in the sequence, this story has as its ‘moral’ the need for regulation of relationships between jinn and humans, not their absolute suspension. The jinn-turned-cat feature here is not a malevolent character, but rather genuinely wants to be in the presence of the saint. The strange voice without the door is rather obscure to me- does it represent another strange being, perhaps, attracted by the presence of the jinn-cat? Some details are left up to the reader’s imagination, reflecting, no doubt, the originally oral context in which these accounts were developed and in which they circulated before Emîr Hüseyin put them to paper, preserving them for much later audiences.

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A (presumably non-jinn) cat at the feet of a shaykh, from a magnificent 16th century Safavid composition, attributed to Mir Sayyid ‘Ali, depicting a city at night- note the burning wall lamp in the top right. Detail from Harvard Art Museum 1958.76.

There was a jinn who loved the Şeyh. Unbeknownst to the Şeyh, the jinn took on the form of a cat, and was constantly in the Şeyh’s house, never leaving. One night the Şeyh went to sleep. The cat curled up beside the hearth. The Şeyh was sleeping soundly when from outside the front door there came a great and powerful strange voice. The cat stood up, and answered from behind the door. The one outside said, ‘I am very hungry! Give me something to eat—let me eat, open the door and I’ll come in!’

But the cat replied: ‘The Şeyh’s door is locked with the bismillah, so the door cannot be opened to give you food.’ However, the Şeyh had earlier cooked some köfte kebab, which [the cat] put through a slot in the door, saying, ‘Eat some of this!’ So it happened. The Şeyh saw it but made no sound and went back to sleep. Morning came. After finishing his prayers, he called out to the cat relating what had happened in the night. The cat twitched, then came [to the Şeyh]. The Şeyh said: ‘It’s difficult for a human and a jinn to always be in one place together. So go now, and come sometimes.’ So the jinn came from time to time, paying Akşemsüddin a pious visit (ziyâret iderdi).

Emîr Hüseyin Enîsî, Akşemseddin hazretleri ve yakın çevresi: Menâkıb-ı Âkşemseddîn, edited by Metin Çelik  (İstanbul: Ark, 2016), 66. Translated by Jonathan Parkes Allen, 2019.

Ottoman Velvet

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Saints and the Crossing of Confessional Boundaries in the Ottoman and Safavid Worlds: Part i.

On By JonathanIn Armenian, Culture, History, Islam, Orthodoxy, Ottoman, Ottoman Turkish2 Comments

Ottoman Armenian
An Ottoman Armenian Christian resident of Istanbul, probably relatively well off enough to warrant his inclusion in a c. 1657‒58 costume collection book (The Rålamb book of costume, Rål. 8:o nr 10)

The two accounts that I’ve selected for this and an upcoming installment come from two milieus that at first glance might seem very different but upon a closer look reveal some striking similarities, similarities that reflect shared ways of seeing the world and ways of relating to people of different religious and confessional traditions, even in an early modern world marked by frequent conflicts and debates over confessional boundaries. The first story comes from an Ottoman Turkish source we’ve explored here previously, the menâkıb (saint’s life) of Hasan Ünsî, an eighteenth century Muslim saint of Istanbul, while the second installment, originally composed in grabar (‘classical’) Armenian, will be an excerpt from the life of Vardapet Poghōs, a seventeenth century Armenian Orthodox saint whose career took place in the northwest corner of the Safavid domains, in what is now Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran.

Here is the account from Hasan Ünsî’s menâkıb, with my commentary following:

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‘Near the door of the exalted tekke there lived a Christian doctor, named Mikel, who was skillful and wise in the knowledge of medicine. It was his custom that if a sick person came to him and his treatment was not effective or treatment was not even possible, he would say to the patient, “The cure for this illness is inside this tekke, so go to the tekke, and find the Şeyh therein. His name is Hasan Efendi—go to him, he can treat this illness. Its cure will come from the Şeyh, so that you’ll have no need of other than him.” So saying he would send the sick person to the venerable Şeyh. This Mikel was consistent in this practice.

‘One day this poor one [Ibrahim Hâs] had gathered along with the other dervishes before the candle-like beauty of the venerable Şeyh, deriving abundant benefit from the sight of the saint. We saw that two people had come within the door. One had nothing upon his head but a wrapped around piece of cloth. He came up to the venerable Şeyh, kissed his blessed hand, and sat down. The venerable Şeyh said to him, “Have you come from afar?” He replied, “We are from afar.” The man whose head was wrapped in a piece of cloth came before the Şeyh, lifted the piece of cloth from his head and showed his head to the venerable Şeyh. As he turned we all saw that his head was entirely in boils (çıbanlar). Each one was jagged like the shell of a hazelnut and very red, without numerous individuals boils—they were about thirty in number, but each boil was very bad—we take refuge in God! This person said, “My Sultan, thus with this sickness I have been tried. I cannot put anything on my head. I have sought someone to treat it in both Istanbul and Galata, but no physician understands this sickness, and they give no answer. Despite expending many akças I have neither cure nor respite. The physicians of this city are incapable of treating me! Finally, near this tekke’s door there is a physician to whom I came and showed the boils on my head, and he said to me that ‘We have no means of treating this illness. But the doctor for this illness is the şeyh of this tekke, who is named Hasan Efendi. The cure for this is there.’ Saying this he sent me to your side. Will you give me an electuary, or give me a pill? Or perhaps you will give me some other treatment—whatever you say, let it be upon my head! I remain without a cure!”

The venerable Şeyh smiled and said, “Mikel has given you a good report; but you did not quite understand if you seek from us an electuary or pill.” Having said this, he said to the man, “Come before me!” He came before him and uncovered his head. The venerable Şeyh said to him, “Bend your head towards me!” He bent his head, and the venerable Şeyh spit into his hands and placed them on the boils of the man’s head, and then for one time gently hit them. He then said, “This is our pill, electuary, and şerbet! Go now, and henceforward you will be well, whether you believe or don’t believe.’ The venerable Şeyh said no invocation, read no prayers, nor said the Fatiha over him. Then the man kissed the venerable Şeyh’s blessed hand and left. Two days later that person came to the venerable Şeyh and we saw that the boils had gone, he was well, and was wearing a quilted turban (kavuk). He had brought many gifts and much praise. Afterwards he came face-to-face with the venerable Şeyh with his gift, but the Şeyh strongly enjoined him not to tell anyone, but [the story] was circulated among the poor ones [the dervishes].

İbrahim Hâs, Hasan Ünsî Halvetî ve Menâkıbnâmesi, edited by Mustafâ Tatcı (Bağcılar, İstanbul: Kırkambar Kitaplığı, 2013, 2013), 314-317. Translated by Jonathan Parkes Allen, 2018.

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What might we make of this story? It gets at, I think, an important feature of religious life in not just the Ottoman world but much of the rest of early modern Eurasia: the potential power of sanctity, as invested in a holy person, place, or object, had a decided ecumenical quality. There is no sense here that either Mikel of Hasan Ünsî were rejecting their confessional affiliations, or even questioning the validity of their respective faiths. But we do get the sense of a shared economy of sanctity among them, and among the unfortunate patient and the various onlookers. The story does not end, note, in anyone’s conversion (unlike any number of medieval Islamic saints’ lives), and Şeyh Hasan is explicitly described as not using overtly Islamic methods in treating the man (whom we are given to understand, I think, to be non-Muslim himself, though this is not made explicit). Mikel the Christian doctor does not become Muslim, either, and we get the sense that Şeyh Hasan quite appreciates the referrals he receives from him. The saint’s power has an open quality, at least towards ‘ordinary’ people- elsewhere the saint is shown restricting access to himself when he is sought out by more powerful and wealthier people with ties to the Ottoman ruling elite. Continue reading “Saints and the Crossing of Confessional Boundaries in the Ottoman and Safavid Worlds: Part i.” →

Dervish Muḥarram Finds Himself in Strange Straits

On By JonathanIn Arabic, History, Islam, OttomanLeave a comment

Portrait of a Sufi Deccan
While not an Ottoman production, this illustration of a sufi in contemplation (presumably), which comes from the 17th century Deccan, provides a good approximation of dervish dress and deportment in many parts of the Islamic world during this period. (Met. 57.51.22)

It was related to me than when [Muḥarram al-Rūmī’s] shaykh instructed him in the Third Name [1], he began hearing all of the existent things speak to him, even when he needed to urinate—but he heard every place in which he sat in order to relieve his need speaking to him in an eloquent tongue, so he went from there to another place, but found it to be just the same, so instead he held back his urine to the point that he was close to perishing. He turned to his shaykh through his spiritual energy (himma) and beheld him with his eyes, even though there was a great spatial distance between them [2]. His shaykh said to him, ‘Yā Muḥarram! Do what you need to do and don’t be in anguish!’

ʻAbd al-Raʼūf ibn Tāj al-ʻĀrifīn al-Munāwī, al-Kawākib al-durrīyah fī tarājim al-sādah al-Ṣūfīyah: ṭabaqāt al-Ṣūfīyah, (Bayrūt, Lubnān: Dār Ṣādir, 1999), iv: 512-513. Translation by Jonathan Parkes Allen, 2018.

Sofra close up

[1] Muḥarram al-Rūmī (who lived in the late 16th into early 17th century in Ottoman Cairo; ‘Rūmī’ indicates Anatolian origin) was a Khalwatī (Tur. Halvetî) dervish, a ṭarīqa in which disciples were taught seven successive divine names, each with particular forms of dhikr, spiritual stations, and powers associated with them. The third name mentioned here is ‘Hū‘ (‘He’).

[2] I have translated himma here as ‘spiritual energy,’ an approximation at best, since it also has the idea of ‘intention, will, and zeal,’ all of which contribute to this technical usage found in sufism. Continue reading “Dervish Muḥarram Finds Himself in Strange Straits” →