It was within this unstable and violent environment that Sufism began making inroads. As early as the twelfth century, Sufis had been working among the Turks of Transoxiana. The most revered of these was Ahmad Yasavi (d. 1166). Yasavi met with considerable success due to his technique of setting religious and moral education to music, using the lute as an accompaniment. From the mid-thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries, several other Sufi-led movements appeared among both peasant and nomadic communities from Transoxiana into rural Anatolia. There, shaykhs served the functions mentioned earlier: They were healers, mediators, and religious guides, and they resisted the oppression and exploitation of the poor by the household states.
Given the insecurity and oppression that characterized the era, it is understandable that the doctrines that flourished in the Sufi communities stressed deliverance and rewards. Popular religious figures included those of the Mahdi, who would come at the end of time to create a just order; the Qutb, the figure in Sufi circles who served as the axis for the world and a haven for oppressed peoples; and ‘Ali, Muhammad’s closest companion, cousin, and son-in-law, whose combination of religious piety and martial valor provided a role model for serious young men. ‘Ali was particularly popular among Sufis of this era, and many of the newly emerging Sufi orders constructed silsilas, or spiritual genealogies, that traced their teachings back to him. For some groups, ‘Ali became as prominent as Muhammad, although the groups seem not to have viewed themselves as Shi‘ite. Unlike the urban Sunni and Shi‘ite scholars, distinctions such as “Sunni” and “Shi‘ite” do not seem to have been important to them.
Of the many Sufi groups that emerged at this time among the primarily Turkish-speaking peoples, four are particularly worthy of notice because of their subsequent historical importance. The Naqshbandi order, attributed to Baha al-Din Naqshband (1318–1398) of Bukhara, later became highly influential in Central Asia and India. One of its distinguishing characteristics was the teaching of a “silent dhikr”: Whereas most orders practiced a communal, vocal dhikr. the silent dhikr enabled an individual to engage in it mentally and thus under practically any circumstance and at any time. The order arose in the highly sophisticated atmosphere of Bukhara, and despite its subsequent dissemination among the rural population of the Ottoman realm, Central Asia, and India, it was always characterized by a careful attention to normative ritual and doctrine.
By contrast, several groups that emerged at this time exhibited syncretistic qualities that reflected their origins in the multireligious and multiethnic rural area between central Anatolia and Azerbaijan. After the battle of Kose Dagh in 1243, when Batu defeated the Sultanate of Rum, the region’s cities went into decline. With Hulagu’s creation of the Il-khanate in 1259, the region was inundated by Turkish and Mongol immigrants. The influence of the Shari‘a-minded ulama was no longer as strong as it had been. In contrast to the strict adherence to the Shari‘a practiced by the Naqshbandi order and the rural shaykhs of Morocco, Sufi leaders of eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan tended to stress the universal aspects of Islam in their preaching. They relaxed their ritual requirements, making it easier for shamanistic Turks and local Christian peasants alike to make the transition into their communities.
One example of this trend was the career of Hajji Bektash. Scholars have traditionally thought that Bektash lived until 1337, but recent research suggests that he died in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. He was a learned Sufi shaykh who emphasized the importance of the mystical way and taught his followers that the details of the Shari‘a, including the daily prayers, were not important. As a result, his original movement is regarded as an example of Sufi deviancy. Over the next two centuries, as the Bektashi movement developed in the melting pot of Anatolia and Azerbaijan, it acquired many doctrines and practices that, had it not been so secretive, would almost certainly have caused it to be ostracized or even persecuted. Nevertheless, it became highly popular all across Anatolia and eventually in the Balkans.
Similarities between the mature Bektashi order and the Nusayri sect are striking. Its members considered many elements of Islamic ritual and worship, such as performance of the salat and observing the fast during the month of Ramadan, to be unimportant. Bektashis did not attend mosques, but rather held a communal weekly prayer in a private home. Ostensibly Sunni, the Bektashis revered the Twelve Shi‘ite Imams, but scandalized the Twelver Shi‘ites by their extremist practice of worshiping ‘Ali as the center of a trinity of ‘Ali, Muhammad, and “God.” They denied the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and taught instead that souls are reincarnated into other bodies. They initiated new members with a reception of wine, bread, and cheese, a practice that seems to have been borrowed from a heretical Christian group of Anatolia called the Paulicians.
The Bektashis were usually found in towns and cities, and they were tightly organized under their leader. The Alevi (the Turkish spelling of “Alawi”) movement was closely related to it and seems to have been the result of a schism in the historical development of Hajji Bektash’s group. The Alevis tended to be rural, located in central and eastern Anatolia, and less educated than their urban counterparts. Their practices and doctrines were almost identical to those of the Bektashis, however. Because they were scattered among farming villages and nomadic tribes, they were not as cohesive as the Bektashis, who looked down upon them for their rustic ways. Of the other Sufi groups that emerged at this time, one stands out for its role in creating an empire. Shaykh Safi al-Din (1252–1334) created a Sufi community in Ardabil, near the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea. In acknowledgment of his founding role, his organization has come to be known as the Safavid movement. During the fourteenth century, the order developed schools and residences in Ardabil and expanded its missionary activities among the Turkish-speaking populations of Anatolia and Azerbaijan. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Safavids and Alevis shared a wide range of doctrines and practices and were almost indistinguishable. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Safavids caught the attention of the world when they created an empire in what is now Iran.
Conclusion
By the end of the fourteenth century, the majority of the population from Morocco to eastern Iran were Muslim. Numerous new clusters of Muslims were beginning to form all around the Indian Ocean and south of the Sahara Desert. Their mosques, Shari’a courts, schools, and fraternal organizations provided networks of support that proved to be decisive for surviving crises. In the areas that the Mongols captured, those institutions proved to be strong enough to survive the severest of challenges, confirming the work of centuries of laborious effort on the part of pious scholars and activists. Individual Muslims were able to maintain their identities and ways of life precisely because the major Islamic institutions were independent of government control. The destruction of a given regime, therefore, did not entail the destruction of the judicial, educational, or religious traditions of the society in question. In areas recently settled by Muslims, their institutions served to buttress their faith and to attract new converts.
Muslim societies survived the era of Mongol hegemony, from 1260 to 1405. They were more conservative and cautious at the end of it than they had been at the beginning, but they also had more reason to be confident that, having survived the fourteenth century, they could survive anything. In fact, Islam was about to enter upon a period of dynamic expansion into Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, when a group of Muslim states were among the superpowers of the world.
FURTHER READING
Intellectual Life in the Fourteenth Century
Dunn, Ross E. The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986.
Ibn Khaldun. The Muqaddimah: an Introduction to History. Tr. Franz Rosenthal, Vol. 3 2d ed. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967.
Kennedy, E.S. and Imad Ghanem, eds. The Life & Work of Ibn al-Shātir. Aleppo, Syria: The University of Aleppo, 1976
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Laoust, Henri. “Ibn Taymiyya,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition. III. Edited by Bernard Lewis, et al. Leiden: E.J. Brill; London: Luzac & Co., 1971.
Mahdi, Muhsin. Ibn Khaldūn’s Philosophy of History. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1957.
Saliba, George. A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam. New York University Studies in Near Eastern Civilization. New York and London: New York University Press, 1994.
Law
Hallaq, Wael B. “Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?”, IJMES, Vol. 16, No. 1 (March 1984), pp. 3–41.
Imber, Colin. Ebu’s-Su‘ud: The Islamic Legal Tradition. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Stewart, Devin J. Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System. Salt Lake City, Utah: The University of Utah Press, 1998.
The Varieties of Religious Expression
Cornell, Vincent J. Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1998.
Karamustafa, Ahmet T. “Early Sufism in Eastern Anatolia.” In Classical Persian Sufism: From its Origins to Rumi, ed. Leonard Lewisohn, pp. 175–198. London and New York: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi Publications, 1993.
Karamustafa, Ahmet T. God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200–1550. Salt Lake City, Utah: The University of Utah Press, 1994.
Knysh, Alexander. Islamic Mysticism: A Short History. Leiden, Boston, Koln: Brill, 2000.
Moosa, Matti. Extremist Shiites: The Ghulāt Sects. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1988.
Glossary
‘abd: Arabic term meaning “slave” or “servant.” In conjunction with the name of God or one of his attributes, the word is a component of many Muslim names: ‘Abd Allah (or ‘Abdullah) ‘Abd al-Rahman, ‘Abd al-Karim, etc. (It is worth noting that “Abdul” (“‘Abd al-”) is not a name, despite popular representations of it in English; it must be followed by the name of God or one of his attributes.)
abu: Arabic term meaning “father.” Many Arab men often consider it a point of pride to be called the father of their firstborn son. Hence, Abu Hasan is a nickname for someone who was born with a name such as Mahmud until his son Hasan was born, at which time he became known as Abu Hasan.
A.H.: Abbreviation of the Latin phrase anno hejirae, referring to the dating system based on the Islamic calendar. Muslims decided to use the year of the Hijra (622 C.E.) to begin their calendar and to use a lunar, rather than a solar, calculation, resulting in a calendar of 354 days rather than 365/6 days. As a result, it gains a year on the Gregorian calendar approximately every thirty-three years. Thus, the year A.H. 100 did not correspond, as one might think, with 722 C.E., but rather extended from August 718 through July 719.
ahl: Arabic term meaning “family,” “household,” or “people.” Ahl al-kitab means “People of the Book,” referring to the Jews and Christians; Ahl al-sunna are those who follow the Prophet’s example.
Alid: Lineal descendant of ‘Ali.
amir: Arabic term connoting “military commander” or “ruler.” The caliph’s title was frequently amir al-mu’minin, or “commander of the faithful.”
Anatolia: Asia Minor, or the section of western Asia that juts westward between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. Anatolia comprises the bulk of modern Turkey.
Andalus: Muslim-occupied portion of the Iberian Peninsula. Its frontier with the Christian kingdoms to the north fluctuated over time.
Ashura: Islamic holy day, observed on the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar. Muhammad had designated Ashura to be a day of voluntary fasting, but it became most celebrated when Husayn, the elder son of ‘Ali by Fatima, was killed at Karbala. Because of this tragedy, Ashura became the major religious day of the year among Shi‘ites. Many of them dedicate the first ten days of the month to fasting, reading from the Qur’an, prayers, and reenactments of the martyrdom. Many Sunnis also observe Ashura, but on a more subdued note, and normally only on the tenth day.
baraka Arabic term for the spiritual power of a holy man. It can be “tapped” by a supplicant whether the holy man is living or dead.
baqa’: Arabic term used by Sufis to suggest the “survival” of personal identify in the material world during the mystical experience; is paired with fana’.
batin: Arabic term for the inner, hidden, or esoteric meaning of a text. Contrasts with zahir.
bayt: Arabic term for “house.” Often used metaphorically, as in Bayt al-Hikma (“house of wisdom”), the institute created by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun (813–833) to translate scientific and philosophical texts into Arabic.
bid‘a: Arabic term for “innovation.” In religious usage, the term came to imply “heresy,” since nothing should be added to Islam that is not found in the Qur’an or Hadith.
Central Asia: The inland part of Asia. The term usually designates the region from the Caspian Sea in the west to northwestern China and Mongolia in the east, and from southern Siberia in the north to northern Iran and Afghanistan in the south.
Cyrenaica: Area of Libya lying east of the Gulf of Sidra.
dar: Arabic term meaning “abode” or “dwelling.” Often used metaphorically, as in Dar al-Hikma (“Abode of Wisdom”), the institute of higher learning in the Fatimid caliphate; Dar al-Islam, the term used for the lands under Muslim rule; and Dar al-Kufr (“Abode of Unbelief”) and Dar al-Harb (“Abode of War”), terms used for the lands not yet under Muslim rule.
dervish: Turkish variant of Persian “darvish,” literally meaning “poor” (faqir in Arabic). Sometimes used as a synonym for “Sufi,” sometimes used to designate a wandering, mendicant spiritualist.
devshirme: Turkish term for the levy of young Christian boys that was begun in the late fourteenth century to staff the infantry and higher civil administration in the Ottoman realm.
dhikr: Arabic term for “recollection” or memory, sometimes rendered zikr. The term is used for Sufi devotional practices intended to accentuate the awareness of the presence of God. In later Sufi history, the various tariqas were differentiated in part by their distinctive dhikrs.
dhimmi: Arabic term for a free non-Muslim subject living in a Muslim country who, in return for paying a head tax, was granted protection and safety.
fana’: Arabic term used by Sufis to express the “passing away” or “annihilation” of personal identity during the mystical experience; is paired with baqa’.
fatwa: Arabic term for a ruling made by a very high government-appointed authority on the Shari‘a (mufti) on a point of Islamic law; became important in the Muslim empires that emerged in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Fertile Crescent: A term popularized by the American archaeologist James Henry Breasted for the crescent-shaped area that extends from the Persian Gulf up almost to the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and then westward through Syria to the Mediterranean and southward to southern Palestine. Sometimes the Nile valley of Egypt is included as a further extension of the area.
fiqh: Arabic term for Islamic jurisprudence, or the method of determining the Shari‘a. The jurist who follows the method is called a faqih.
ghazi: Arabic term for “raider” (Turkicized as gazi). After the Arab conquests and the frontiers with the Dar al-Harb were relatively stabilized, the term connoted a “warrior for the faith” who raided non-Muslim territories, particularly in Anatolia. In this sense, it was usually synonymous with mujahid, “one who engages in jihad.”
Ghadir Khumm: Shi‘ite festival instituted by the Buyids in the tenth century. It derives its name from the Pool (ghadir) of Khumm, located between Mecca and Medina, where Shi‘ites believe that Muhammad formally designated ‘Ali to be his successor as spiritual and political leader of the Umma.
ghulat: Arabic term meaning “exaggerators,” or “those who go beyond the proper bounds.” Usually applied to certain Shi‘
ites who have claimed a divine status for ‘Ali, believed in metempsychosis, and engaged in rituals that seemed to other Muslims to violate Islamic norms.
hadith: Arabic term for a “report” of something that takes place. When applied to a saying or action of the Prophet and his companions, it became a “tradition” that was passed down from generation to generation. The Hadith became a source of religious authority second only to the Qur’an.
hajj: Annual pilgrimage to Mecca. One of the Five Pillars of Islam, it is to be performed at least once in a lifetime if possible, during the month of Dhu al-Hijja. It is distinguished from ‘umra, which is a pilgrimage to Mecca at any other time of the year.
Hanafi: Referring to the madhhab attributed to Abu Hanifa (699–767).
Hanbali: Referring to the madhhab attributed to Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780–855).
Hijra: Muhammad’s trek from Mecca to Medina in 622. This marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar.
Iberian Peninsula: European peninsula comprising the modern countries of Spain and Portugal.
ibn: Arabic term for “son.” Just as Arab men often are known to their friends as the “Father of So-and-So,” their sons are often known as the “Son of So-and-So” rather than by their personal name. Many famous figures in Muslim history are known this way: Ibn Sina, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Battuta, etc. Often abbreviated, as in Ahmad b. Hanbal.
Ifriqiya: Area roughly corresponding to present-day Tunisia and eastern Algeria.
ijaza: Arabic term indicating an authorization or license to teach a certain book on the grounds that the recipient of the ijaza has shown that he or she fully understands it.
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