Sufi Masters and the Creation of Saintly Spheres in Medieval Syria

Front matter

te World ica

The Medieval Islam

SUFI MASTERS AND THE CREATION OF SAINTLY SPHERES IN MEDIEVAL SYRIA

Chapter 6. CHARISMATIC MASTERS IN THEIR LOCAL SETTINGS

Putting Dowr: ROGtS este а catene epa ee ul a equi cages 19 Sustainment of Spiritual Leadership and Loyalty: The Shaykh

Expansion of Operation: The Shaykh, the Public Sphere, and the Local Community 5.5592 chen е and йа aaa spe е га 63

PART TWO: EMPLACEMENTS OF AUTHORITY AND HOLINESS vi CONTENTS Figures

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Late-twelfth-early-thirteenth-century frescoes in the historic

Carved decorated sarcophagus in the cemetery of al-Salihin, early twentieth century. „аана «ажалы edo балай ta 122

The tomb of ‘Aqil al-Manbijt in the agricultural hinterland ot Мапы). ise ee аа eee ee REUS алалы Шара 123

The mosque and shrine of Shaykh Arslan al-Dimashgi. (a) The entrance to the complex; (b) a view of the interior

The mausoleum of Ibn ‘Arabi in the Salihiyya. (a) The mosque minaret; (b) the sarcophagus in a glass burial

Тһе mosque of Shaykh “Ай! al-Manbiji in Cambridge, Ontario and in Мапбіў; eee ere eee 134 viii

Table

Table 1.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Khanqahs, zawiyas, and mid-fourteenth century ribats founded in Damascus up to the

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THIS BOOK REPRESENTS the end product of my research on the spatiality of Islamic sainthood and the commemoration of saintly figures in medieval Syria. I would like to take the opportunity here to thank at least some of my colleagues and friends for their generosity in sharing their work and insights and long-lasting friendship: Daniella Talmon-Heller, Chaim Nissim, Hatim Mahamid, Meir Hatina, my colleagues in the Department of History, Philosophy, and Judaic Studies at the Open University of Israel, and especially Sara Wolper and Paulo Pinto, who joined me as co-editors in a collective volume on saintly spheres and Islamic landscapes across time and place.

Portions of this book were presented at conferences, workshops, and seminars over the years. For these opportunities to share ideas and advance my research, I thank the hosts, organizers, and participants at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg in Bonn, Ben- Gurion University of the Negev, Edinburgh University, Harvard University, the Hebrew University Institute for Advanced Studies, and Waseda University in Tokyo.

This is also an opportunity to thank the lectors of Arc Humanities Press who gave me wise advice, and the editorial and production staff at the Press for their professional help and well-meaning attitude: the editors Danna Messer and Simon Forde, and Ruth Kennedy and Ed Robinson who worked tirelessly and expertly to prepare the book for print.

The Israel Science Foundation (ISF) generously supported my work with a research grant (no. 46/11) for the study of "In the footsteps of the Prophet: spiritual leadership in a medieval Islamic setting." This endowment enabled me to benefit from the help ofa devoted research assistant, Shaykh Khalid, to acquire copyright permissions to translate and cite large portions from the saintly vitas tapped for this book and reproduce figures. I am particularly indebted to Daniel Demeter for granting me permission to include several photos from his Syria Photo Guide as well as for the cover image.

Last but certainly not least, I thank my family: my husband Oved, my children, Noa, Daniel, and Omri, and my entire family for their ongoing support and belief in my goals.

A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION, NAMES,AND DATES

IN GENERAL, I have adopted the system of transliteration of Arabic words and names used by the new edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam (E13). For certain Arabic words and names that are commonly found in English texts or dictionaries and atlases, I have preferred the less technical form: for example, Sufi, not Sufi; Ayyubids, not Ayyübids; Baalbek, not Ba'albek. I have also frequently indicated the plural Arabic nouns simply by adding an "s" rather than giving the correct Arabic form (e.g. tariqas rather than turuq; zawiyas rather than zawaya).

For the sake of convenience and the accessibility of the book to a wide readership in the field of medieval history, dates are generally given according to the Western calendar, except for dates of birth and death for which I have used both the Islamic (AH) and Western systems of dating.

Introduction

THIS BOOK EXPLORES the lives of Sufi masters who functioned as embodiments of Islamic sainthood and left a lasting mark on the land. These figures lived in the ancient cities of Syria and their surrounding towns and villages during a formative period in the social history of Syrian Sufism and the spiritual tradition of Islam.' In the course of the twelfth century, the free-floating world of earlier spiritual wayfarers in the central Islamic lands was yielding to local groups that came together around particular Sufi masters, called shuyükh al-sufiyya in Arabic sources, and congregated in specifically Sufi structures, known mostly by the terms khdnqah (Рег), zawiya (Arab.), ribat (Arab.), and tekke (Tur.). Sufi masters diffused their spiritual methods (tariqas), put down local roots, gained leadership over small congregations of committed disciples and companions, and set forth to spread their teachings and diffuse their authority more broadly among the population. Gradually, the geographical and social horizons oftheir operation expanded. Their lodges proliferated, anchoring their presence in urban and rural environments, and eventually evolved into spiritual dominions.’

In this very period, an activist, community-oriented Sufi tradition in the form of piety that centred on Prophet Muhammad was moving to the centre of the public religious and social life in the great cities and the small provincial towns of the eastern and near-eastern Islamic lands. While joining hands with traditionalists and legalists of the established Sunni rites (the madhhabs) in a Sunnization movement that set forth to shape Islamic religious and social life in light of the prophetic legacy, prominent representatives of this tradition claimed to be the most qualified to recast the tradition of God's Messenger? Similarly, alongside their adaptation to the traditional modes of authorization in transmitting and disseminating the prophetic legacy, Sufi shaykhs

І In this book, I focus on the geographical area of Bilàd al-Shàm that stretches from Damascus in the south to the Euphrates to the north and east (see Fig. 1).

2 Forgeneraloverviews, see J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1-30; Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, Muslim Communities of Grace: Sufi Brotherhoods in Islamic Religious Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 80-86. See also Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 127-54, for the beginning of the spread of Sufism at the end of its formative period.

3 Historians have proposed that the terms Sunni "recasting" or "re-centering" more accurately describe what has been referred to as the “Sunni Revival.” For example, see Richard W. Bulliet, Islam: A View from the Edge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 101, 126-27, 146-48; and Jonathan P. Berkey, The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 189-202. For an in-depth discussion of the distinctiveness and superiority of Sufism in the writings of the formulators of the main Sufi tradition, see Erik S. Ohlander, Sufism in an Age of Transition: 'Umar al-Suhrawardi and the Rise of the Islamic Mystical Brotherhoods (Leiden: Brill, 2007), especially 140-48.

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Figure 1. Syria (Bilad al-Shàm) in the mid-thirteenth century. (Drawn by the author.)

devised their own ways of connecting to the prophetic sunna and cultivated their own forms and frameworks of constructing and diffusing authority. Operating outside the institutional and social channels through which jurists attempted to control religious knowledge and praxis, they extended their reach far beyond their inner circles.

In Bourdieusian terms, what came to be known as Sufism developed into a sub-field of cultural production within which those who monopolize the specific cultural capital devise strategies of sustaining and perpetuating their command.*

The elevation of the Sufi shaykh’s authority to new heights and the expansion of his sphere of domination went hand in hand with the spread of the so-called cult of saints that, from the twelfth century onward, became central to the religious experience of all Muslims. Various individuals with Sufi affiliations were celebrated by their contemporaries as holy men or “Friends of God” (awliya'? Allah), recognized as such during their lifetime or after their death. Not all of those considered God’s Friends and channels to Him in Sufi circles were necessarily accorded saintly status by the public, and the widespread veneration of saintly figures had little to do with Sufi theories of closeness to God. Indeed, a glance at the standard biographical compilations that cover the cultural and historical context at hand reveals a category of ascetic saints with no sign of the mystical quest and no evidence of Sufi doctrine in their biographies. In this regard, Megan Reid, studying the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods (from roughly 1170 to 1500 CE), provides abundant evidence of revered men and women from all social strata who emulated a distinct ascetic tradition that was modelled after early Islam’s devotees and owed no particular allegiance to Sufism. Anne-Marie Eddé, for her part, argues that ascetic saints and Sufis in Ayyubid Aleppo were two distinct categories of holy people.’ At the same time, antinomian ascetics whose names are normally excluded from compilations composed by religious scholars and devoted to models of piety and virtue were venerated as God's Friends in their groups and beyond them.’ Yet, by the close of the thirteenth century, the number of Sufi shaykhs revered as holy by their disciples and companions and by the broader community of devotees was clearly on the rise. This merging of the Sufi and popular spheres of sainthood, or between sainthood as metaphysical “closeness” to God (waldya) and sainthood as the manifestation of spiritual power on the mundane plane (wildya), found its most salient expression in pious visitation (ziydra) to the lodge of the shaykh, and later to his gravesite.? Ordinary

4 See especially Pierre Bourdieu, Questions de sociologie, 2nd ed. (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1984). 5 Megan Reid, Law and Piety in Medieval Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 6-35.

6 Anne-Marie Eddé, La Principauté ayyubide dAlep (579/1183-658/1260) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999), 412-22.

7 The most comprehensive study of these groups in medieval Islam is Ahmet T. Karamustafa, God's Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200-1500 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994).

8 Vincent Cornell was the first to distinguish between the two spheres of sainthood. See Vincent J. Cornell, Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 272-73. Throughout, | follow Cornell and other historians of Islamic societies in retaining the most commonly used “non-Islamic” rendering of waliand walaya—namely, “saint” and “sainthood,” as well as the cognate of “saintly.” Although Cornell relates to an explicitly Moroccan context, his use of the terms may be well applied to other contexts, too. Here the cognate “saintly”

believers flocked to the homes and the graves of holy men to seek their divine and mundane intercession, to be near them, and to partake in the rituals of the Sufis.? Some of the spaces and sites around the revered Sufi shaykhs developed as part of built environments, such as complexes of lodges, tombs, and shrines, whereas others were grounded in natural environments, such as caves and mountains. While some of these sites were permanent, others were fluid and shifting in nature, formed and revitalized wherever a saintly figure was (or was believed to be) present or buried, and left his mark on the land. Projecting the holy man’s religious authority and believed to be suffused with spiritual power and capable of producing blessings (baraka), the concrete places acquired enduring functional and symbolic meaning.

Such developments were never monolithic. Instead, they were shaped in a concrete spatial frame in accommodation with local religious and social life and specific political order.? In the context of the Syrian broader milieu, the rise of the Sufi shaykh holy man and the development of spaces that gave materiality to his presence and served as arenas of his baraka occurred in a historical setting marked by an overall religious vigour and a desire to re-sacralize the landscape for Islam, and in an environment rich in ancient holy places, Christian churches and monasteries.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under the reign of the Zangids, the Ayyubids, and the early Mamluks, who set forth to restore and solidify the presence of Sunni Islam and its control over the land after a long period of crusader dominance, hundreds of new religious buildings were constructed to teach the Islamic religious and legal sciences and to harness Sufism, and long-forgotten holy sites were “rediscovered” and renovated, revitalizing the Islamic identity and sacrality of the landscape. An is used to denote the sphere of religious charismatic authority and sanctity that surrounded the Sufi shaykh and Friend of God.

9 The most comprehensive work on the growth of the cult of Muslim saints in the Islamic medieval world is Josef W. Meri, The Cult of Saints among Muslims and Jews in Medieval Syria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). See also Josef W. Meri, “The Etiquette of Devotion in the Islamic Cult of Saints,” in The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown, ed. James Howard-Johnston and Paul A. Hayward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 263-86, for the development of visits to the graves of venerated holy persons into a fundamental aspect of Muslim spirituality. For a comprehensive study of the visitations of the tombs of the dead during the Mamluk period, see Christopher S. Taylor, In the Vicinity of the Righteous: Ziydra and the Veneration of Muslim Saints in Late Medieval Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 1999). While focusing on Egypt (1200-1500), Taylor provides insightful observations on the evolution of the phenomenon of ziyára and saint worship as a whole. See also his extensive bibliography on this field.

10 On the emergence of regional and local patterns in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt and Syria, see Boaz Shoshan, Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), chap. 1; Richard J. A. McGregor, Sanctity and Mysticism in Medieval Egypt: The Wafa Sufi Order and the Legacy of Ibn ‘Arabi (Albany: SUNY, 2004), chap. 3; Daphna Ephrat, Spiritual Wayfarers, Leaders in Piety: The Dissemination of Sufism in Medieval Palestine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), pt. 3; and Nathan Hofer, The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173-1325 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), pt. 3.

increasing number of mystics, ascetics, and holy men, collectively called “Sufis,” were drawn to the region during this period of excitement and renewal. Native-born and newcomers diffused their authority beyond small local congregations and were granted unprecedented moral and material support by the political rulers, in return for their ideological support, prayers, and blessings.

On the more popular level, the growing prominence of Sufi masters and holy men followed on the heels of a general quest for charismatic religious leaders who would stimulate religious fervour in their devotees and perform the role of patron saints. Such abilities, which emerged from the demonstration of the virtues of these figures and the enactment of their spiritual powers, were pivotal in a period marked by continuous threats from external and internal enemies (Crusaders, Mongols, and extreme Shi‘i sects). Equally significant was the quest for figures capable of exerting their influence on the rulers who recognized their local power and prestige and believed in their spiritual potency and miracles.

Unlike their contemporaries in Upper Egypt studied by Nathan Hofer, who valorized and embodied an utterly miraculous authority rooted almost entirely in prophetically inherited access to the world of the unseen (ghayb), the charismatic Sufi shaykhs in the Syrian milieu did not conform to a single mode of authority." Rather, they employed and enacted a variety of resources that were brought together on their road to sainthood. Nor was the scope of their activities confined to a specific environment. Some gained prominence in cities and mid-sized towns and villages, while others operated in both urban centres and rural areas. With the hinterlands of Syrian cities — particularly those surrounding Damascus, Aleppo, and Baalbek — connected to nearby towns and cities, and in the absence of a clear demarcation between urban and rural communities, Sufi shaykhs and God's Friends diffused their authority across the entire social canvas oflocal societies." A wave of their lodges swept up the entire region from the late twelfth century onwards and became centres of spiritual guidance and objects of visitation of men and women, seeking the saintly figures’ intersection with both the divine and mundane powers and partaking in the rituals of the Sufi community. Their graves, sanctified immediately after burial, expanded the horizons of a sacred landscape, ennobled with the tombs and memorials of biblical prophets, descendants, and companions of the Prophet Muhammad, and the martyrs of the Counter-Crusade.

What were the resources and mechanisms the revered shaykhs living in the medieval Syrian milieu employed to construct and maintain their spiritual and charismatic authority in Sufi congregations, and the ways by which they diffused their authority more broadly among the population and served as patron saints and leaders of local communities? How were they embedded within their localities and associated with the glorious history of the ancient Syrian cities and their holiness inscribed in a landscape of sacred sites? These questions lie at the heart this study, which places the local and

ІІ On which, see Hofer, The Popularisation of Sufism, 236-43.

12 For more on these characteristics, see Ira Lapidus, Muslim Cities in the Later Muslim Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 55-68.

regional context of the social history of Sufism and the embedment and emplacement of Islamic sainthood at the centre of its inquiry.

The book draws primarily on biographical and hagiographical accounts in Arabic that narrate the lives of Sufi masters and holy men." In particular, I scrutinize narratives preserved in hitherto-unexplored saintly vitas (manaqib, “virtues and feats”) of three Sufi shaykhs which are still in manuscript form (listed here in accordance with the dates of their composition). The first is Kitab manaqib al-Shaykh ‘Aqil al-Manbiji (who died in the first half of the twelfth century) of the town of Manbij, northeast of Aleppo. The second is the Manaqib al-Shaykh Abi Bakr ibn Qawam al-Balisi (d. 658/1258) of the town of Balis on the western bank of the Euphrates river. The third is Kitab Mandqib al-Shaykh ‘Abdallah а!-Үйпіпі (d. 617/1221), known as the "Lion of Syria" (asad al-Sham), of the village of Yünin near Baalbek in the Lebanon Valley.

The first and earliest saintly vita was composed by Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Umar, the grandson of Ibn Qawam al-Balisi and one of the most famous Damascene Sufi shaykhs of his epoch (d. 718/1318), who collated accounts related by his father as well as by disciples and companions who orbited around the shaykh, first in his hometown of Balis and later at the site of his burial place in the Damascene Salihiyya neighbourhood on the slope of Mt. Qasyün. While the composition of the vita attests to the author's dedication to the commemoration of his beloved grandfather, it could also have served to assert his family-based claim to spiritual authority in Sufi and scholarly circles in Damascus. Reflected in the vita, the significance accorded to family pedigree as a source of authority became increasingly apparent in Sufi writings, in particular hagiographies composed or reproduced in the early Ottoman period.'*

More than 200 years later, large portions of the vita by the grandson of the great shaykh of Balis were copied by Muhammad ibn Tülün (d. 955/1548), the famous religious scholar, historian, and author of late Mamluk and early Ottoman Damascus. Here, the reproduction of the accounts in the vita of the Sufi saint may be seen as a reflection of the author's general endeavour to reaffirm and perpetuate the merits of

13 These include accounts in Tabaqat al-awliyd’ ("classes of saints") by таг Siraj al-Din ibn Mullaqin (804/1401), a work which is rich in biographical accounts of earlier Sufi masters and lacks hagiographical flavor; al-Kawakib al-durriyya fi tarajim al-sada al-süfiyya by “Abd al-Ra'üf al-Munawi (d. 1031/1621) on the collective lives of generations of Sufis and holy figures from the first Islamic century to the author's time; and the modern work, Jami‘ кагатаѓ al-awliy@ by Yusuf ibn Isma‘il al-Nabhani, a comprehensive collection composed of various versions of hagiographical narratives preserved in written form. For details about works of this type composed in the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, see Eric Geoffroy, Le Soufisme en Egypte et en Syrie sous les derniers Mamelouks et les premiers Ottomans: Orientations spirituelles et enjeux culturels (Damascus: Institute Francais d’Etudes Arabes de Damas, 1995), 31-32.

14 On which, see Adam Sabra, “Household Sufism in Sixteenth-Century Egypt: The Rise of the Sada al-Bakriya,” in Sufism in the Ottoman Era, 16th-18th Century, ed. Rachida Chic and Catherine- Mayeur-Jaouen (Cairo: Institut Francais d'Archéologie Orientale, 2010), 101-18; Adam Sabra, "The Age of the Fathers: Gender and Spiritual Authority in the Writings of ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Sa‘rani,” Annales Islamologiques 47 (2013): 133-49.

the Salihiyya, created by its scholarly and spiritual climate and sacred aura, to which he dedicated one of his famous treatises."

The two other saintly vitas were compiled in the later Ottoman period, centuries after the lifetimes of the Sufi shaykhs they celebrate. The vita of Shaykh “Ад al-Manbiji was composed by a certain al-Hajj 'Uthmàn ibn al-Hajj Muhammad al-‘Urani al-Halabi (of Aleppo). It commences with praises of the shaykh, God, and the Prophet, and the colophon with the signature of the author dates its completion to Dhü al-Hijja 1063 (October 1653). Attributed to a certain Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ‘Uthman, the writing of the “The Book of the Virtues of Shaykh ‘Abdallah al-Yunini” was completed іп 1157/1744. The hagiography itself, which has a few marginal notes leading the reader through the sixty-eight folios of the manuscript, ends on folio 67b, between which and the colophon there is a story about the vengeance of a certain Shaykh Sa'id against a tyrant in Tabaristan. On the five folios after the colophon, a story about the Prophet appears.

There is no information about the transmission, recording, and preservation of the accounts in the vitas over a long period. Nor are there any references to the lives and works of their authors in contemporary or later sources, such as biographical anthologies from the late Ottoman period, that may allow us to reconstruct the social and scholarly milieu within which they composed the vitas, their audience, or their reception. Still, the authors’ motivations in taking up the pen to commemorate saints of a bygone era can be gleaned from the works themselves.

The author of the vita of Shaykh “Ай! al-Manbiji cannot be identified except for the reference to him by the name affix (nisba) that indicates Aleppo as his home city or place of origin. The first two pages of the vita are dedicated to the shaykh’s spiritual lineage, which leads to ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph and one of Islam’s most revered figures, and the work brims with praises of the “glorious town of Manbij” (Manbij al-mafkhara). From this, we may surmise that its author intended to perpetuate the memory of one of its most revered Sufi saints and to convey the splendour of the town and the region of Aleppo as a whole. Sometime later, the vita was reproduced by a certain Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn al-Shaykh 'Aqil. He traced his noble family lineage to Sahykh “Aqil al-Manbiji and testified in the marginalia (reading note) that he “scrutinized it [and found it correct]."

As to the vita of Shaykh ‘Abdallah al-Yünini, its author presents himself throughout the text as a disciple of a renowned Sufi legal scholar of Baalbek and notes that he assembled accounts about the virtues and feats of ‘Abdallah al-Yunini, his sons, and companions. Ahmad ibn Muhammad seems to have had a twofold goal. The first was to be linked to a lineage of celebrated shaykhs, biological and spiritual ancestors and models of virtue that extends back to ‘Abdallah al-Yunini, whereas the second was to perpetuate the historical heritage of his hometown as a centre of Islamic religious learning, piety, and spirituality, and as a locus of Islamic revivalism during

15 In this respect, Stephan Conerman notes the loyalty Ibn Tülün felt towards his hometown under its changing rulers in "Ibn Tülün (d. 955/1548): Life and Works," Mamluk Studies Review 8 (2004: 115-40.).

the Counter-Crusader period. Accounts that narrate the life and deeds of the revered shaykh within his historical context and bolster his image as a warrior-saint, found in works by thirteenth-century Syrian historians, were probably copied out by the author of ‘Abdallah al-Yünini's vita. Other accounts preserved in his hagiographical work may have been transmitted either in written forms that have not survived, or orally from generation to generation of biological and spiritual descendants. It is also from the vita of ‘Abdallah al-Yünini that another significant motivation for penning a hagiographical work comes to light: composing a work commemorating the life of a saint was seen as a pious act worthy of reward. At the very beginning of the vita, its author addresses the readers as follows:

Even if I dedicated my entire life [to the composition of this work], I could never be able to assemble and record all of the accounts about the virtues, feats, and mystical states (manaqib, kardmat, and ahwal) of the shaykh, his sons, and the shaykhs that followed him, may God bless them all. Even so, my wish is that God will reward me for my book on the Day of Judgement.'^

Indeed, as noted by historians of religious and intellectual life in the Ottoman period, the composition, copying, reproduction, and transmission of hagiographical works that commemorated the lives of Sufi saints were common scholarly pursuits and therefore were likely to have been highly valued in the milieus of the authors of the vitas." Moreover, despite the long time gap between the era of the Sufi saints and the lifetimes of the authors, the vitas, as well as other, later works, are valuable historical sources that can carry us back to the performative contexts on the ground of which the revered figures functioned in medieval Syria. This working hypothesis is based on several interrelated preliminary observations.

First, like other biographical and hagiographical works produced in the medieval and premodern Islamic world, the vitas studied for this book consist almost solely of first-hand accounts and self-testimonies transmitted by relatives, disciples, and intimate companions of the Sufi saints. The names of this first generation of informants and transmitters are given atthe beginning of each citation attributed to them, and reappear in the texts. Throughout, the extracts in the vitas demonstrate the authors’ diligence in recording the accounts transmitted in oral and written forms. This effort is lucidly expressed by the author of the vita of ‘Abdallah al-Yünini at the beginning of the work. Reflecting on his own reliability, Ahmad b. Muhammad remarked, "I trusted God while

16 Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad 'Uthman, Kitab Manaqib al-Shaykh ‘Abdallah al-Yunini, composed AH 1157/1744. MS 259. H, No. 711 in Garrett Collection, Princeton University, Islamic Manuscripts Collection, fols. 26a-b.

17 On which, see Thierry Zarcone, "L'Hagiographie dans le monde turc,” in Saints orientaux, ed. Denise Aigle (Paris: De Boccard, 1995), 55-68.

18 See, for instance, the discussion of the development and structure of the first hagiographical corpora in medieval Morocco in Halima Ferhat and Hamid Triki, "Hagiographie et religion au Maroc médiéval," Hespéris Tamuda 24 (1986): 17-51.

citing reliable books, and depended with full confidence on narratives trustworthy people relayed to me. Мау God forgive me for any mistake or inaccuracy.”

The second observation is that the sacred biographies of Sufi saints were not written outside somehow “beyond time.” Rather, as this study seeks to demonstrate, the accounts preserved in them were anchored in their historical contexts and relate to concrete situations that lent them their meaning. Disciples and intimates elaborated on the lives of their shaykhs and the close relationships they forged with them, as well as their interaction with the surrounding society. For all their idealized descriptions and literary topoi, the accounts they relayed provide testimonies that shed light on the functions of the shaykhs as formidable masters and as embodiments of Islamic sainthood, as well as on the role of the narrators in nourishing and perpetuating their memoirs for later generations of local communities of devotees. Similarly, the memories, narratives, and histories that emplaced the holiness of the shaykhs in specific localities must have played a central role in revitalizing the sacredness of their burial places. Historical and anthropological studies that explore the relational aspects of hagiographical and historical traditions and the construction and signification of Sufi tombs and shrines are central to my approach of using the accounts in the vitas for the study of the sacralization of the space surrounding the medieval Sufi saints.”°

Building on insights gained from studying the lives of saints in medieval Latin Christendom, I read the hagiographical narratives of the Sufi Friends of God on their own terms and in their entirety rather than trying to distinguish those portions considered to be reliable from the rest.” This holistic approach seems apt for Sufi biographical and bio-hagiographical literature, and especially for works devoted to individual holy lives that became common in the Near East and other parts of the Islamic world from around the thirteenth century onward. In addition to affording a wealth of information about the subject’s personal, public, and political life, they narrate the Sufi shaykh’s path to sainthood from youth to death and provide numerous examples of his saintly miracles.””

19 Ahmad ibn Muhammad, Kitab Мападір al-Shaykh ‘Abdallah al-Yünin, fol. 2b.

20 These include Nile Green’s pathbreaking study on the relationship between the written and oral traditions attached to Sufi masters and the spatial territories in which they lived, traveled, and lie buried: Nile Green, Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012); and Devin DeWeese, “Sacred Places and Public Narratives: The Shrine of Ahmad Yasavi in Hagiographical Traditions of the Yasavi 500 Order: 16th-17th Centuries,” Тһе Muslim World 90 (2000): 353-76.