Thus Spake the Dervish explores the unfamiliar history of marginal Sufis, known as dervishes, in early modern and modern Central Asia over a period of 500 years. It draws on various sources (Persian chronicles and treatises, Turkic literature, Russian and French ethnography, the…
Thus Spake the Dervish explores the unfamiliar history of marginal Sufis, known as dervishes, in early modern and modern Central Asia over a period of 500 years. It draws on various sources (Persian chronicles and treatises, Turkic literature, Russian and French ethnography, the…
Abū Ṭāhir al-Samarqandī (fl. thirteenth/nineteenth century) is the author of a description of Samarqand entitled Samariyya , for which we have several manuscripts and editions (references in Afshār, ed., Qandiyya , 17; Zand) and at least three translations: into Chaghatay, in 18…
Khānaqāh (or khānqāh ) is a Persian word for the place where Muslim mystics gather. It was, and still is, used mainly in Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, western China, and the Indian subcontinent. Other terms were more common elsewhere, such as zāwiya in Arab lands, Africa, and…
Initiation in Ṣūfism (Islamic mysticism) is a physical and symbolic ritual by which a candidate for the spiritual path (ṭarīqa) becomes the disciple of a master. Comprising several key elements, which Islamic scriptural sources are called upon to support, initiation marks, synch…
ʿUbaydallāh Multānī (1804–88) was an influential Ṣūfī of the Chishtiyya order in South Panjāb (the Chishtiyya probably originated in Chisht, near Herat, towards the end of the sixth/twelfth century, and was introduced into India by Muʿīn al-Dīn Sijzī, d. 627/1230). He was born i…
Malang is a word used in the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan for a type of transgressive, if not antinomian, Ṣūfī (Papas, Dervish). The etymology of the word and the origin of the group are uncertain. Coming perhaps from Hindi or Persian and attested since at least about 100…
A fakir is a Muslim mystic who lives in poverty. The word used in most Western languages derives from the Arabic faqīr (pl. fuqarāʾ ), which means “poor, destitute”; faqr means “poverty.” Appearing twelve times in the Qurʾān and in several ḥadīth s, the word means, amongst other…
Antinomianism (ibāḥa, ibāḥiyya) is a term for religious tendencies considered permissive, extremist, or deviant. Originally a technical term in Islamic religious law, ibāḥa has been used by mediaeval heresiographers, both Sunnī and Shīʿī, to condemn these tendencies inside or ou…
Dervish is a general term for various types of marginal mystics. Its etymon is the Persian word darvīsh (lit. “poor, needy”), but it has commonly been used to denote practitioners of religious poverty. The mediaeval Ṣūfī tradition applied this word to a specific lifestyle, in wh…
Discussions of sanctity (walāya) in Persian and Turkish hagiography serve as teaching tools in Ṣūfī circles, to reach out to wide audiences and to call for devotion to holy men. The first hagiographies in Persian appeared in the fifth/eleventh century, and the earliest in Anatol…