Thus Spake the Dervish: Sufism, Language, and the Religious Margins in Central Asia, 1400-1900 9789004398504

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Figures
Introduction
1 A Manifesto: The Qalandarnāma, by Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī
2 In Search of the Margins
Chapter 1
In the Streets of Herat
1 A Presentation of the ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī’s Maḥbūb al-qulūb
2 Musicians, Singers, Storytellers
3 Ruffians, Bohemians, Paupers
4 Real and False Dervishes
5 Other Sources: Names and Words
Chapter 2
Outside the Madrasas of Bukhara
1 About the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, by Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm
2 The Head of the Dervish
3 The Trunk and the Arms
4 The Lower Body
5 From Lexis to Relics
Chapter 3
In the Ruins of Aksu
1 Kharābātī, a People’s Poet
2 To Peasants, Artisans, Doctors and the Powerful
3 The Call to Renunciation
4 On the Paradox of Language
Chapter 4
In the Depths of the Grottoes of Central Asia
1 Silences in Khotan 
2 Whispers in Tashkent and Samarkand 
3 Graffiti in Manguistaou 
4 Legends in Fergana and Pamir
Chapter 5
On the Road with Cantors and Itinerants
1 The maddāḥ in Uzbekistan and Xinjiang
2 Abdāl tili, the Language of Outsiders
3 Argot and Mystical Language
Conclusion: Dervishes Yesterday and Today
Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Places

Citation preview



Thus Spake the Dervish

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_001

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Studies on Sufism Edited by Rachida Chih Erik S. Ohlander Florian Sobieroj

VOLUME 4

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sufi





Thus Spake the Dervish Sufism, Language, and the Religious Margins in Central Asia, 1400–1900 By

Alexandre Papas Translated by

Caroline Kraabel

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Cover illustration: Road from Faizabad to Mazar-e Sharif. Ethnographic views, religion and ritual. Dervish with sheep. Josephine Powell Photograph, 1959-1961. Courtesy of Special Collections, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University, W282976_1. The original French edition of this book, Ainsi parlait le derviche, was published by Editions du Cerf (Paris, France). Published with the support of the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Papas, Alexandre, author. Title: Thus spake the dervish : Sufism, language, and the religious margins in Central Asia, 1400-1900 / by Alexandre Papas ; translated by Caroline Kraabel. Other titles: Ainsi parlait le dervice. English Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2019. | Series: Studies on Sufism, 2468-0087 ; VOLUME 4 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019018991 (print) | LCCN 2019022248 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004398504 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Dervishes--Asia, Central--History. | Mysticism--Islam--Asia, Central. Classification: LCC BP188.8.A783 P3713 2019 (print) | LCC BP188.8.A783 (ebook) | DDC 297.409581/0903--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018991 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022248 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2468-0087 isbn 978-90-04-39850-4 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-40202-7 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Contents

Contents

Acknowledgements VII List of Figures VIII IX



Introduction 1 1 A Manifesto: The Qalandarnāma, by Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī 11 2 In Search of the Margins 16

1

In the Streets of Herat  28 1 A Presentation of the ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī’s Maḥbūb al-qulūb  28 2 Musicians, Singers, Storytellers 33 3 Ruffians, Bohemians, Paupers  38 4 Real and False Dervishes  42 5 Other Sources: Names and Words 48

2 Outside the Madrasas of Bukhara 59 1 About the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, by Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm 59 2 The Head of the Dervish 61 3 The Trunk and the Arms 71 4 The Lower Body 88 5 From Lexis to Relics  97 3 In the Ruins of Aksu 104 1 Kharābātī, a People’s Poet 104 2 To Peasants, Artisans, Doctors and the Powerful  120 3 The Call to Renunciation 128 4 On the Paradox of Language  139 4 In the Depths of the Grottoes of Central Asia  144 1 Silences in Khotan  144 2 Whispers in Tashkent and Samarkand  153 3 Graffiti in Manguistaou  163 4 Legends in Fergana and Pamir 174 5 On the Road with Cantors and Itinerants 183 1 The maddāḥ in Uzbekistan and Xinjiang  183

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Contents

2 Abdāl tili, the Language of Outsiders 195 3 Argot and Mystical Language 200

Conclusion: Dervishes Yesterday and Today 206

Bibliography 211 Index of Names 223 Index of Places 228 226

Contents Acknowledgements

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Acknowledgements Many friends and colleagues have contributed in one way or another to the writing of this book. I’d like to offer my heartfelt thanks to Mehran Afshari, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Michel Bovin, Rachida Chih, Nathalie Clayer, Stéphane Dudoignon, Arienne M. Dwyer, Aftandil Erkinov, Jürgen Wasim Frembgen, Nile Green, Masami Hamada, Thibaut d’Hubert, Sergei Khachaturian, Caroline Kraabel, Pierre Lory, Yana Pak, Anne Papas, Margot Papas, Ryoko Sekiguchi, Marc Toutant, Sara Yontan, Thierry Zarcone.

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Figures

Figures

Figures 1 2

Hookah smokers in Bukhara, 1911 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 17 Ecstatic dance of the dervishes (Ḥāfiẓ, Dīwān, MS Metropolitan Museum, Herat, ca. 1480, attributed to the painter Bihzād) 49 3 Visit of Alexander, in the guise of Sulṭān Bāyqarā, to a saint in his grotto (Niẓāmī, Khamsa, MS British Museum Or. 6810, 1490–99, attributed to the painter Bihzād) 58 4 Grottoes of Kashgaria (Scientific Mission in Upper Asia, 1890–1895, vol. 1, p. 39) 145 5 Shrine of Kuhmārī (Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, vol. 1, p. 165) 146 6 Grottoes of Kuhmārī (Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, vol. 3, p. 161) 147 7 Shrine of Kuhmārī (Ancient Khotan, vol. 1, p. 186) 148 8,9 Entrance and interior of the grotto in 2008 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 149 10 Cell for spiritual concentration in 2008 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 151 11 Shrine of Zayn al-Dīn Bābā in Tashkent in 2007 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 154 12 Cell adjoining the shrine, with the entrance on the right, in 2007 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 157 13 The interior of the cell with a dervish’s staff as a relic, in 2007 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 157 14 Shrine of Danyāl in Samarkand in 2013 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 160 15 Uzbek pilgrims at the entrance in 2013 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 160 16 Cenotaph of Danyāl in 2013 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 161 17 Doors at the entrance to the grotto of Danyāl in 2013 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 161 18 Interior of the grotto of Danyāl in 2013 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 162 19 Entrance of the shrine of Shopan Ata in 2016 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 166 20 Entrance of the main grotto in 2016 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 166 21 Collective yurt for pilgrims in 2016 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 167

Figures 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

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Shrine of Shaqpaq Ata in 2016 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 170 Central chamber of the grotto (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 170 Ritual for receiving the influx of the saint (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 171 Walkway leading to the shrine of Beket Ata in 2016 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 172 Entrance of the grotto in 2016 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 173 Dīwāna in Keriya (Ruins of Desert Cathay, 1912, vol. 2, p. 639) 193 Dervishes of Kashgar (Anonymous, ‘Nasha sredneaziatskaia granitsa. Kashgar’, Niva, 15, 1879. ) 194

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Introduction Introduction

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Introduction In his 1978 chapter on people who live in the margins of society1, long since accorded classic status, Jean-Claude Schmitt observed that a sort of ‘Copernican Revolution’ was taking effect in history-writing. Historians could no longer present a dynastic, elite or clerical scenario, in which the centres of power took up all of the social space, while claiming that any other details or points of view were hidden, their interstices, intervals and angles swallowed up in the darkness of (lack of) sources. As a result, Western Europe between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries began to present a new face, especially as concerns religion. Evidence perhaps of the ‘permanence throughout occidental history of a desire for transgression and wildness in life’, faith’s outsiders appear across the centuries: heterodox tendencies were absorbed by new religious orders during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but thereafter heresies came flooding back and people continued to sing the praises of God’s holy fools. In spite of the inquisition’s immolations and the two yellow crosses that former heretics were forced to wear, groups such as the Brethren of the Free Spirit openly despised the laws of the Church. It was not until the sixteenth century that the irremediable decline of the ideal of voluntary poverty, as exemplified by the Beguines, became evident. During the very early modern period the Fool is finally imprisoned, while ‘the time of sects begins’: churches multiplied on the margins of a society that now doubted more often than it believed. The medievalist concluded his chapter by bringing up the question of sources: ‘How can we hear the voices of the past’s outsiders, since they were, by definition, stifled by the powerful, who discussed the outsiders but never allowed them to speak for themselves?’ In order to get around this obstacle, historians of the medieval and early modern period in the west searched carefully within the ‘official’ papers produced by repressive institutions to document their actions: registers of inquisition, legal archives, polemical works…. Here they were able to find traces of the people who had been absent from history, and to use these to fashion new indicators of social transformations. The Copernican revolution never took place in the historiography of the Muslim world, though it did carry in its wake a few pioneering works in French and English that presented an initial analysis of it. Here we must understand marginality in the strict sense, as precarious social position and as a rupture 1 Jean-Claude Schmitt, “L’histoire des marginaux,” in La Nouvelle histoire, ed. Jacques Le Goff (Paris: Complexe, 1978, republished 1988), 277–305.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_002

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Introduction

with an established order, both inscribed over the long duration. We cannot confuse the truly marginal with the poor, migrants, lone women, prostitutes (male or female), Jews or other religious minorities, for example2: these groups are often excluded completely or considered pariahs, rather than being seen as being genuinely on the margins. Opening the drama during the first centuries of Islam in the East3, particularly in the cities of Syria and Upper Mesopotamia after the tenth century, we find a people’s organisation called aḥdāth. This was a militia of fighting men (some of whom were of modest extraction), which was as likely to disturb public order as to keep it. A second, more violent and more spontaneous group then hits the chronicles, the ʿayyār (pl. ʿayyārān/ʿayyārūn). Described in the sources as ‘an ugly crowd, thieves’ (awbāsh), ‘thugs’ (rind), the ʿayyār were implicated in many insurrectional incidents – notably in Baghdad between the ninth and eleventh centuries whenever there was a need to eliminate a governor, officer or chief of police. Their reputation was ambiguous and their way of life unclear: for some they were vandals and looters while others would say they stole from the rich to give to the poor. The ʿayyār skulked through marshlands and seedy suburbs or were seated at the palace tables. In the oases of Iran and Central Asia, popular uprisings were led or encouraged by ʿayyārān right up to the modern period. These bad boys came overwhelmingly from the lower strata of society, the poor neighbourhoods or the urban periphery, and sometimes from prisons. Their immediate aims were pillage and the redistribution of wealth. Some of these insurgents, a few of whom might also be from the salaried or notable classes, would at times pass over to the side of order, shifting from the margins to the centres of power. During the same period the world of con-men and traffickers is less equivocal.4 The bandit-poets of the highways (ṣaʿālīk, pl. ṣuʿlūk) resembled French poet-criminal François Villon. Each of them inhabited his own zone in Arabia or Persia, and they are difficult to identify except through their own verses, 2 A few Muslim minorities in India represent borderline cases of confessional marginality, but their situation is due to a process of acculturation or of social segregation, rather than to a deliberate perturbation. See M.K.A. Siddiqui, ed., Marginal Muslim Communities in India (New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 2004), 10, 22, 74–75, 145–46, 149, 225, 257, 351–52, 388–90, 399–400, 426, 439–40, 488. 3 Claude Cahen, “Mouvements populaires et autonomisme urbain dans l’Asie musulmane du Moyen Âge 1,” Arabica 5/3 (1958): 225–50; id., “Mouvements populaires et autonomisme urbain dans l’Asie musulmane du Moyen Âge 2,” Arabica 6/1 (1959): 25–56; id., “Mouvements populaires et autonomisme urbain dans l’Asie musulmane du Moyen Âge 3,” Arabica 6/3 (1959): 233–65. 4 Clifford Edmund Bosworth, The Mediaeval Islamic Underground. The Banū Sāsān in Arabic Society and Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1976).

Introduction

3

which intersperse tales of their adventures with passages of lyrical flight. The Banū Sāsān (a generic name for all sorts of beggars) are better-documented, following in the path of the legendary disinherited king of Persia, Shaykh Sāsān. The polymath al-Jāḥiẓ, who had already died by 255/868, made up a very colourful list of the different types of hustlers, among the eloquent examples of which one finds the kāghānī, who plays the role of a man possessed so well that he foams at the mouth, inspiring pity for his incurability in those who give him money, and the mustaʿriḍ, who takes on the respectable air of a gentleman in difficulty, sits down (miserably) next to his mark and discreetly asks for a few coins.5 These Banū Sāsān are described in odes (qaṣīda) composed in Arabic by authors from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, who were themselves close to the margins of society, being at once long-term travellers, sometime spies for the sultan, or amateurs of erotic (taghazzul) or obscene (mujūn) literature. These authors detailed the categories and techniques of beggars, and certain sexual practices, while also providing a glossary of the slang of their underworld milieu. The urban centres of Iraq, Syria and Iran now unveil a very different face from the one that Muslim chroniclers usually present: as he leaves his home, the citizen cannot avoid deformed beggars and false invalids; in the bazaar he must protect his pockets and beware as much of the self-declared dentist as of the fortune-teller; at the doors of the mosque the kneeling men wearing homespun wool and stretching out an open hand are not all ascetic saints … this is a familiar crowd, but one that’s always a bit apart, with its own language and codes that are deliberately distinct from those of their ‘dupes’ (khushnī, pl. akhshān). There are also texts, unanimously critical, evoking a less well-known marginal group that arose in Egypt and Syria from the end of the Ayyubid Dynasty to the time of the first Mamluks: the ḥarfūsh (pl. ḥarāfīsh).6 This word means vagabond, scum, person of the lowest class, and was used in Arabic to speak of people who were ‘vulgar, voracious, common, crazy’, in their behaviour or in their speech. The term also covers a social reality that finally faded away at the beginning of the fifteenth century, that of the urban underclass who were organised into groups, alternatives to the guilds of beggars. These groups existed in Cairo, Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, and were regularly implicated in acts of violence, street fights, and sometimes even in public protests. Historians of Muslim societies during the medieval, pre-modern and modern periods have also examined the problem of drug-taking, specifically the 5 al-Jāhiz, Le Livre des avares, trans. Charles Pellat (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1951), 65, 73–75. 6 William Brinner, “The Significance of the Harāfīsh and their ‘Sultan’,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 6/2 (1963): 190–215.

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Introduction

consumption of hashish.7 Without entering into too many details of a long and complex story, we can mention a few social aspects of the marginality of addicts. Hashish (also called banj/bang), which was cheaper than alcohol, was used across all of the Muslim East, particularly in the lower strata of society, as indicated by the slang names that were employed by different social groups to name it: the ‘sweetie’ (sukkarī) of the grave-diggers, the ‘girlfriend’ (ʿashīra) of the lamp-lighters, etc. The consumption of hashish was condemned very early on by Muslim jurists (with the exception of some Hanafite authorities); they said it harmed the spirit and the body, rendered users anti-social and gave rise to a perverse counter-culture in cities. During the thirteenth century there was apparently a ‘house of hashish’ in Baghdad; in fifteenth-century Cairo addicts lived in the ill-famed quarters of Ard al-Tabbālah and Bāb al-Lūq. In spite of its negative image, hashish and its spiritual virtues continued to be defended, as in India, until very late, notably in the Book of Infusions of Cannabis (Bangāb nāma) by Maḥmūd Baḥrī (d. 1130/1718), a solitary and rebellious mystic. Nevertheless, times did change, and with them ways of thinking. If one is to believe colonial power and Muslim modernists of India and Egypt (the two countries that seem to have been the most affected by mass dependency on hashish at the end of the nineteenth century), this drug makes its mostly lower-class users not only confused and asocial, but also pathologically dangerous. The definition of this newly dangerous class, despite its origins in the discreet interstices of the big cities (especially in the cafés, which were later replaced by clandestine establishments the ornate calligraphy of whose shop-fronts might conceal the word kif), leads to the marginalisation of all those who are implicated, sometimes without their knowledge, in the trafficking of hashish: peasants, transporters, informers, customs-men etc. Worse, since, according to certain doctors, the taking of hashish led to lunacy, it became urgently necessary to imprison addicts. The asylums of Bombay and Cairo were thus quickly filled. It is evident, anthropologists agree, that in spite of repression the consumption of cannabis continued into the twentieth century in Tunisia, Turkey,

7 Franz Rosenthal, The Herb. Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society (Leiden: Brill, 1971); Ibn Taymiyya, Le Haschich et l’extase, texts translated from Arabic, presented and annotated by Yahya Michot (Beirut: Al-Bouraq, 2001); Farid U. Alakbarov, “Medicinal Properties of Cannabis According to Medieval Manuscripts of Azerbaijan,” Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics 1/2 (2001): 3–14; Liat Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt, 1880–1939: From Local Ban to League of Nations Diplomacy,” Middle Eastern Studies 47/3 (2011): 443–60; Nile Green, “Breaking the Begging Bowl: Morals, Drugs, and Madness in the Fate of the Muslim faqīr,” South Asian History and Culture 5/2 (2014): 226–45.

Introduction

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Egypt, India and Central Asia, especially among working people.8 Most often smoked in a pipe (a calumet or hookah from the 1600s), hemp created a masculine, private and marginal sociability (as opposed to creating an entire social group on the margins) that freed people to speak their minds and express their humour and high spirits. Lunatics, whom we have mentioned above, were an important social reality. However, for our purposes we will not take all mentally ill people into account: only those who troubled public order, whether they were then interned or allowed to remain free, really concern us as a marginal group.9 If this category is still a little difficult to delineate, we may agree that, for example, patients suffering from melancholy (waswās) or epilepsy (ṣarʿ) are not included in it, whereas people with severe delirium, the furiosi (sabārī), and the wise fools (ʿuqalāʾ al-majānīn) should be considered to belong to the group with which we are concerned. The historiography of madness in the world of Islam has shown that internment in hospital (māristān) came about as early as the ninth century in Cairo. Establishments in twelfth and thirteenth century Baghdad and Damascus sometimes tied or chained up the most agitated residents, but without isolating them from the other patients. This was also the golden age of Arabic and Persian medicine, which ended at about the time of the nosographic encyclopaedia of Ismāʿīl Jurjānī (d. 531/1137) and during which the psyche (nafs) that was deprived of reason benefited from meticulous examination. Later, however, gloomy cells were constructed for people who were considered dangerous, as in Fez during the fifteenth century. Marginalisation did not always mean exclusion: the asylums were located in cities and visits were possible. According to the Ottoman traveller Evliyā Çelebī (d. 1095/1684), numerous Cairo hospitals closed for lack of public funds over the following centuries, and the Sufi lodges took over the task of looking after the insane. In Istanbul, where 8 Mahmoud Sami-Ali, Le Haschich en Egypte. Essai d’anthropologie psychanalytique (Paris: Dunod, 1971, republished 2013); Gunnar Jarring, Stimulants among the Turks of Eastern Turkestan (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1993); Kamal Chaouachi, Le Narguilé. Anthropologie d’un mode d’usage des drogues douces (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997). 9 Michael W. Dols, Majnūn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Katia Zakharia, “Le statut du fou dans le Kitāb ‘uqalā’ al-mağānīn d’al-Nīsābūrī: Les modalités d’une exclusion,” Bulletin d’études orientales 49 (1997): 269–88; Abdelhamid Larguèche, Les Ombres de Tunis. Pauvres, marginaux et minorités aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles (Paris: Arcantères, 2000); Eugene Rogan, “Madness and Marginality: The Advent of the Psychiatric Asylum in Egypt and Lebanon,” in Outside in. On the Margins of the Modern Middle East, ed. Eugene Rogan (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 104–25; Bertrand Thierry de Crussol des Espesse, La psychiatrie médiévale persane. La maladie mentale dans la tradition médicale persane (Paris: Springer, 2010).

6

Introduction

there was a guild of psychiatrists, just one of the five hospitals specialised in mental illness. Thus it is clear that many mentally ill people evaded detention and lived on the margins of society, confined within the family, in a Sufi community, or simply on the street. As for the ‘Great Confinement’ described by Michel Foucault, it did not come about in this part of the world until the middle of the nineteenth century, once colonial psychiatry had taken root, especially in Tunisia but also elsewhere, such as in Lebanon. In fact, insanity (junūn, walah), as violent as it might be, enjoyed a lastingly ambiguous status in medieval and modern Muslim societies. On the one hand it was disapproved of, but it was also subject to divine blessings that allowed the possessed man or woman access to wisdom and sometimes to holiness. Nevertheless, these men and women were definitely marginalised and mistreated, kept apart in cemeteries or ruins at a distance from civic life, as shown by a careful historical reading of Nīsābūrī’s (d. 406/1016) biographical collection, the Kitāb ʿuqalāʾ al-majānīn (the Book of Wise Fools). A more classically literary reading of this text, through stereotypical figures such as Uways Qaranī (d. ca. 37/657) and Bahlūl10, tends rather to underline the power of the subjects’ anti-conformism and mystical flights, as expressed in aphorisms, ardent preaching and elegiac poetry that drew big crowds. Criminals, vagabonds, drug addicts and the mentally ill continually appear as a sort of filigree across the entire corpus, without many observable changes brought about by time and cultural differences. Of course Muslim society still evolved, but here as elsewhere an alternative point of view resisted the ­changes wrought by different epochs and said no to new values. Another point relating to the elements that lived on by the sidelines as events progressed, and one that is striking for the historian of protracted time (temporalité lente), is the omnipresence of a particular type of individual, a sort of tutelary spectre and the principal subject of this book: the dervish. As early as the eleventh century, Sufis from the Khorasan region had idealised the ʿayyārūn, ṣaʿālīk and ḥarāfīsh in order to make their code of honour into a spiritual model, the futuwwa.11 This absorption of social marginality by Sufi institutions should not distract us from the fact that, in a parallel countermovement, much rougher Sufi mystics also themselves frequented these shady milieux, so that the groups mixed rather than simply providing inspiration for each other. They occupied the same spaces, shared the same vision and used 10 11

Abū al-Qāsim Nīsābūrī, Kitāb ʿuqalāʾ al-majānīn, ed. ʿUmar al-Asʿad (Beirut: Dār al-nafāʾis, 1987), 94–99, 139–60. Lloyd Ridgeon, Morals and Mysticism in Persian Sufism. A History of Sufi-futuwwat in Iran (London-New York: Routledge, 2010).

Introduction

7

the same language. And how does the historian distinguish differences among the rogue, the needy beggar and the ascetic? While on the one hand the Banū Sāsān were excluded from the pacified futuwwa during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, on the other, far from the romanticism of ‘chivalry’, dervishes exposed the hidden, religious face of the counter-culture. In this regard it is significant that Arab scholars credited the mystic Quṭb al-Dīn Ḥaydar, of whom we will speak again, with having (unfortunately, according to them) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries discovered the psychotropic virtues of hashish, suggesting that he thus became the patron saint of smokers of the weed. These smokers counted among their number many dervishes who found it amusing to nickname this experience ‘the visit of the green Khidr’ (ziyārat al-Khiḍr al-akhḍar), in reference to the apparitions of the initiatory prophet al-Khidr, often mentioned in Sufi literature. Equally significant here, in ad­ dition to the mystical folly that entitles the dervish to the Persian appellation dīwāna or bīhūsh (lit. ‘unconscious’), is the porous outlook that regularly equates the simple of spirit with seekers after truth. As Émile ­Dermenghem  wrote, ‘The Sufis of this period [fourteenth century] were not averse to questioning the patients in asylums, in order to find the rare jewels in the gangue of their incoherent discourse. Ibn al-Qouçâb tells us that “In the Mâristân [hospital], a boy who was very severely ill cried out to wake the dead, and stirred our interest. ‘Look at them’, he said, ‘embroidered clothes, perfumed bodies. They have made of lies a merchandise; taken folly for a career. They have completely renounced science, they are no longer men among men.’ We asked him, ‘Dost thou know science?’ ‘Perfectly. My science is considerable. You may question me.’ ‘Who is generous?’ ‘The one who provides subsistence for you when you do not merit even the ration of a single day.’ ‘Who among men has the least gratitude?’ ‘The one who has avoided an affliction, seen that affliction fall upon another and yet not understood this as a warning to flee futilities.’ He was breaking our hearts, and we asked him still further questions: ‘What qualities are the most to be appreciated?’ ‘The opposite of what YOU are!’ He began to weep, saying, ‘O my God, if you will not return my reason to me, at least take the chains from my hands that I may give a slap to each of these people!’”’12 As an incarnation of social and religious marginality in the Muslim world, particularly in the Turko-Persian regions, the figure of the dervish is unclassifiable. Popular etymology expresses this well, by linking the first syllable of the word darwīsh to dar (the door), while diverse explanations have been proposed for the syllable wīsh, such as pīsh (before, in front; thus dar-pīsh, before the door), wīz (from the verb āwīkhtan, to hang, to suspend; thus dar-wīz, 12

Émile Dermenghem, Vies des saints musulmans (Algiers: Baconnier, 1943), 299.

8

Introduction

suspended from the door) and yūza (beggar; thus dar-yūza, the one who begs at the door).13 The same idea returns again and again: ‘dervish’ designates the individuals or the groups that remain in front of the door as beggars, who are at the edges of society, simultaneously included and excluded, who, standing on the mystical threshold, are knocking on the door of the absolute or of God. In the absence of a linguistic argument, folk etymology provides a vernacular and endogenous translation of a materially, socially, and symbolically inscribed socio-religious reality. For the historian, the difficult task remains that of unearthing parts of this reality, one that Sufi writings (including treatises, manuals and biographies) tend to pass over in silence. One must turn away from the well-known names and texts, avoid the light and, to perceive the spirituality of society’s dregs, look rather into the shadows for the small masters and the anonymous practitioners. Before looking specifically at Central Asia, we would do well to remember that the wider Turko-Persian Muslim world also played host to many forms of religious marginality and transgression. It is impossible for us to be exhaustive on this topic, which is beyond the remit of the current volume, but we can note that Iran was the starting point of a number of strong personalities, whose words made a big impact. The tradition of the shaṭḥ or ‘ecstatic speech’, a sort of intemperate exclamation that put the mystical experience into words, was carried on by such emminent figures as Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī (d. 261/875 or 234/848), who declared ‘Glory be to Me! How great is My Dignity!’, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hama­ dānī (d. 526/1131) and Rūzbihān Baqlī (d. 606/1209). Their words, formulated within a state of ecstasy but nevertheless in an intellectually rigourous way, must not be understood in the literal sense, and even less as nihilistic manifestations; rather, they express the limits of legalism and the paradoxical nature of gnosis. However, after the sixth/twelfth century, mystical Persian poetry had reduced these cries to literary topoi.14 Yet it is literature, specifically hagiographical and poetic literature, that teaches us the most about the Qalandariyya, a protean dervish movement whose members proclaimed their founder to have been Jamāl al-Dīn Sawī, said to have lived in Iran during the seventh/ 13

14

Alexandre Papas, “Dervish,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., BrillOnline. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi informs me of an interesting etymology that circulated among Ishrāqī Zoroastrians in seventeenth century India: the words darvīsh and dāriyūsh were said to be prolongations of a common root. The second of these words, coming from the Achaemenid sovereigns, related to the ancient Persian dārāyāvūsh, ‘the possessor of the supreme good’, that is, immortality. By antithesis, darvīsh would designate the person who, because of his poverty, would be the richest. Carl W. Ernst, Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985).

Introduction

9

thirteenth century. Thanks to the publication of his hagiography and other little-known texts, it is possible to find out about a tradition that was inspired by the futuwwa that we have just mentioned, but also by the Malāmatiyya, the ‘path of blame’, which required its followers to avoid all public manifestation of piety while constantly blaming themselves for these very failings. Elsewhere one discovers details of very transgressive habits among the Qalandars, such as the consumption of psychotropic drugs, the adoption of a repulsive physical appearance, etc.15 Finally, this broad-brush portrait would be incomplete with­ out a mention of the ‘nefarious’ practice called (in Persian) shāhidbāzī or nazarbāzī (gazing at beautiful faces). Reading the hagiography of Awḥad alDīn Kirmānī (d. 636/1238), or the poetry of Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī (d. 688/1289), we learn that the contemplation of beautiful male or female features was undertaken with the aim of seizing divine beauty as manifested through God’s most sublime creatures. However, this controversial practice, which sometimes took place during private dance shows, contained the same ambiguities and possibilities for moral drift – and consequences – as any sensual passion.16 Anatolia was less studied, unfortunately, but it was also fertile territory for the transgressive currents of mystical Islam. What first strikes the observer is the diversity of these currents. In the wake of Iranian masters, Qalandars, Ḥaydarīs, Jāmīs, and Shamsīs travelled across Anatolia and Roumelia from the eighth/fourteenth century to the tenth/sixteenth. There were also groups of Turkish origin, among them the Abdāl-ı Rūm, the Torlaqīs and the Bektāshīs. Opposed to the institutionalisation of Sufism (that is, the enrichment and increasing hold on power of the Sufi brotherhoods), these dervishes rejected any compromise relating to the acquisition of money and power. An event that illustrates the extent of this atmosphere of protest, though it must not acquire an exaggerated importance : the attempted assassination of Sultan Bayezid II by a dervish in 897/1492.17 On a deeper level, an attentive reading of dervish writings has revealed that these popular groups also included members of the politico-military elite in their ranks: young educated men capable of putting 15 16

17

Khaṭīb-i Fārsī, Qalandarnāma-yi Khaṭīb-i Fārsī, yā, Sīrat-i Jamāl al-Dīn Sāvujī, ed. Ḥamīd Zarrīnkub (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Tūs, 1362/1983); Muḥammad Riḍā Shafīʿī-Kadkanī, Qalandariyya dar tārīkh: digardīsīhā-yi yak īdiʼuluzhī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Sukhan, 1386/2007). Ève Feuillebois-Pierunek, A la croisée des voies célestes. Faxr al-Din ʿErâqi: poésie mystique et expression poétique en Perse Médiévale (Tehran: Institut français de recherche en Iran, 2002); Lloyd Ridgeon, Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī and the Controversy of the Sufi Gaze (London: Routledge, 2017). Ahmet T. Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200–1550 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994); Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, Osmanlı imparatorluğunda marjinal sufîlîk. Kalenderîler (XIV–XVII. yüzyıllar) (Istanbul: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1999).

10

Introduction

into writing the beliefs of heterodox dervishes. This undermines any too-simple division between the popular and the elite, belief and doctrine, despite the undeniable existence of social and religious differences. The famous Kaygusuz/Qayghusuz Abdāl, a local governor’s son who lived during the second half of the fourteenth and the first quarter of the fifteenth century, was a member of the Abdāl-ı Rūm, described as a voracious and drug-addicted beggar. Kaygusuz proferred ecstatic speeches in Turkish, called şaṭḥiyye; these reformulated the speculative teachings of Sufism in a language that was popular and accessible to the masses.18 The research cited above, though fundamental, does not venture to explore any further to the east than Khorasan, restricting itself to the TurkoPersian world. What’s more, it rarely pursues its analysis beyond about 1550, which might persuade some readers that marginal mystics disappeared with the institutionalisation of Sufism, or even that this institutionalisation was in part motivated by a need to regulate those Sufi practices and beliefs that paid little attention to norms. Might pre-modern and modern Muslim societies have ceased giving birth or sustenance to movements that contested these norms? Central Asian Sufism demonstrates that this was not the case, and invites historians of other areas to leave the beaten track in order to uncover the socio-religious traces of transgression or at least of marginality. The shaṭḥ, Qalandariyya, shāhidbāzī and other alternative forms are found in the region under study here, alongside practices that are measurably less intellectualised and more socially incarnated than these. In an earlier volume we followed in the footsteps of mystical vagabonds in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whose writings recount their pranks, passages and pilgrimages between eastern Turkestan and Istanbul.19 It is true that, generation by generation, the evolution of these dervishes tended towards a progressive return to the law and the norm. Nevertheless, it was evident that even when the power of Sufi institutions in the regions was at its height (and thus at a relatively late date), some individuals, and even some groups, continued to lead a religious life on the margins of the society of the day, based on poverty (faqr), celibacy (tajrīd or tajarrud, lit. detachment, disengagement) and wandering (siyāḥa). The present work starts where the medievalists leave off, expanding the space and time under investigation without dwelling on episodes that are already wellknown (such as the attempt by a dervish to stab the sovereign Shāhrukh in 18 19

Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı, Kaygusuz Abdal, Hatayi, Kul Himmet (Istanbul: Varlık Yayınevi, 1953); Zeynep Oktay Uslu, “L’Homme Parfait dans le Bektachisme et l’Alévisme: Le Kitāb-ı Maġlaṭa de Ḳayġusuz Abdāl,” PhD diss., Paris, EPHE, 2017. Alexandre Papas, Mystiques et vagabonds en islam. Portraits de trois soufis qalandar (Paris: Cerf, 2010).

Introduction

11

830/1427)20, and without limiting itself to the more spectacular manifestations of antinomianism – to do this would exclude the more subtle deviations and discreet aspects of difference – undertaking a close examination of the way of life and means of expression of dervishes. This form of history ‘from below’, based on the lives of authentically marginal people from whom we have not, by definition, yet heard (despite the fact that their words offer doctrinal teachings) casts a new light, one that reveals the tensions that existed within Sufi milieux between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries and the existence and cohabitation in Central Asian Islam of forms of mysticism that were not only diverse but divergent. 1

A Manifesto: The Qalandarnāma, by Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī

Let us return to late medieval Central Asia to discover a simple text that illustrates the spiritual path of the dervishes. As we have seen, among the marginal groups that have been most clearly identified are the Qalandars. However, the name Qalandar, of obscure origin, appears as early as the fifth/eleventh century. Much less frequently cited than the Qalandarnāma, or book of the Qalandar dervish, attributed to Herat’s well-known scholar ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī (d. 481/1089), in which a Sufi interrupts a study session in a madrasa, berates the pretentions of scholarship and convinces the young Ansārī to throw away his books and embrace the path of total renunciation by joining the madmen in the asylum21, the text of the same name by Amīr Sādāt Ḥusayn Harawī nevertheless repays attention.22 Its author (d. 718/1318) was born in Ghuziv, near Herat. As an adolescent, he encountered a group of Jawlaqī dervishes, whom he followed as far as India. Other versions of the story relate that it was his 20 21

22

Beatrice Forbes Manz, Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 241. ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī, Rasāʾil-i jāmiʿ-i ʿārif-i qarn-i chahārum-i hijrī Khwāja ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī, ed. Waḥīd Dastgirdī (Tehran: Kitābfurūshī-yi Furūghī, 1347/1968), 92–99. It is interesting to note that the collective memory of Sufis has preserved an image of a reclusive Anṣārī because of two cells for spiritual retreat (chilla khāna) situated in the mausoleum of Gāzurgāh, if one is to believe Serge de Beaurecueil and Rawān Farhādī, Sarguzasht-i Pīr-i Hirāt Khwāja ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī Harawī (Kabul: Bīhaqī Kitāb Khparawulo Muʾassisa, 1355/1976), Fig. 18 and 19. Text published in a facsimile version and transcribed in Saadettin Kocatürk, “İran’da islamiyetten sonraki yüzyıllarda fikir akımlarına toplu bir bakış ve ‘Kalenderiye tarikatı’ ile ilgili bir risāle,” Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 28/3–4 (1970): 215–31. Amīr Ḥusayn is identified neither by Saadettin Kocatürk nor by Ahmet Yaşar Ocak in his excellent Osmanlı imparatorluğunda marjinal sufîlîk, xxxvii and 144.

12

Introduction

father who took him to India. There, in Multan, he was initiated into the Suhrawardiyya, becoming representative of this gnostic school of thought, on the subject of which he produced several works.23 His tomb became a holy place. Although the Qalandarnāma to which we refer does not figure in his bibliography, it was incontestably his work. As well as representing a written trace of the long tradition of dervishes in Herat, this brief mathnawī (poem in rhyming couplets) suggests that dervishes were speaking up to announce their arrival, and as a preamble to a celebration of antinomianism in the name of devotional love. This translation of the Persian original conserves the rhyme scheme. 1 5 9 15 21

We, the authentic Qalandars, bring The scent of religion to our lodgings24 Unbound by right and wrong acts in this world, Free from heaven and hell and all that’s beyond Not wanting fame, careless of reputation Not at peace nor at war with God’s creation Owning nothing, no wealth or treasure, no gold, Having no self-belief; folk leave us cold. The habit we wear is all that we own Unlike most, we don’t make ourselves at home He who confesses his sins goes astray Merely denying genuine prayer Homeless and solitary, we explore From the ends of the earth to distant shores25 We practice celibacy, renunciation Patience, unity, consent, resignation For we have received the gift of His grace God’s mandate on earth brings us to His grace We are the gems from a beautiful mine In eternal flame we are butterflies Be! And we existed, at God’s command26, For us He created the sky and the land

23

There is a detailed bibliography and list of works in Lewisohn, “Haravī, Amīr Ḥusaynī,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., BrillOnline. ‘Lodgings’ translates the term langar, place of residence frequented by Central Asian dervishes. ‘From the ends of the earth to distant shores’ translates the expression zi qāf tā qāf, literally ‘from Mount Qaf to Mount Qaf’, from one end to the other. A reference to the Quran 36:82.

24 25 26

Introduction

13

25 29 35 39 45 49 55 59

The Sufi’s heavenly cloak is ours, As are our garments from earthly bazaars We are sultans on His glorious throne, We are dervishes before God’s great home We are oppressed, downtrodden, failed attempts To worldly folk we are beneath contempt We may, outwardly, be falling apart But shining inside there is light in our hearts Although compared to you we have nothing In our own world we are sultans or kings We are falcons, adrift on the breath of God We live in a place beyond this world As whales, we swim in angelical oceans On mystical mountains we’re leopards in motion Master delinquents in pious quarters, We are God’s madmen in His own quarters There are one hundred thousand of us and more, Yet we number only four hundred and forty-four27 God gave us his Kaʿba to have as our home He lives in our hearts and makes them His own Each time God’s divine light opens our eyes It shows us the secrets of earth and of skies The tables of God are preserved in our hearts God’s enigmas are spoken in our hearts Divine knowledge is expressed in our speech There is nothing excessive in our speech We don’t put religion in secular hands We do not pray to fulfil our own plans The truth we covet and the truth alone What someone needs we’d take from no one Censors do not inspire distress in us For our natures are pure in holiness We lack not for pleasure, joy or wine Carried by ecstasy we dance, sing and rhyme We admire young lovers, adore good wine28 We are good people, whatever our line

27

The numeral 444 is a symbolic one, but also indicates the minority status of the dervishes during the period in which this was written. Translating the expression shāhidbāzī.

28

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Introduction

65 69 75 79 85 89 95

Connected to young love, and glasses of wine Yes, this is who we are, and that is fine! If we try our luck at a game of chance In one roll worlds now and to come are chanced If our spirits are livened by drinking good wine The world and his brother are pardoned this time When we display a little drunkenness We are moving through life in happiness We raise our voices to heaven’s great dome And say ‘hey hu’29 to the stars in their home Self-denial that’s false we do not adopt We would not betray the creatures of God Fraud, tricks and ruses are beyond our remit Subterfuge, concealment are not our habit We march on ahead, straight down our own path Alongside the Abdāls, along the same path In our school dishonesty has no place Just as, for us, existence has no place Why should death make us suffer, or dying, Since we know our fate: in light to be flying Poverty is our dearest companion Love is what drives us to our reunion When reason30, alas, becomes our ally Then rosaries and prayers form our reply Horseback on love, we ride and are free Of reason and its inconsistency In the world of love there’s no joy or pain No sorrow or pleasure is there to be gained Since for us intention has no intention All pain is a joy for our attention Since we are not shamed by our poverty We couldn’t care less about notoriety By ourselves we ignite the bright flame, so That in ourselves all, on fire, may glow We cause trouble for no one, the proof’s That our voices only speak the truth Here today on this earth so wide open,

29 30

‘Hey hu’ denotes Sufi repetition (dhikr). ‘Reason’ here translates the term ʿaql.

Introduction

99 105 109

15

Beneath the dome of infinite heaven No one else subsists here where we are, from Ourselves to God the path is a short one Because this world is fragile and perishes, And God’s existence is unchanging riches We are close friends of all the saints We serve the master of all the saints The sun, the sky, glory and elevation Shihāb31, the people’s sage of religion Sultan, leader of all the Qalandars Who protected the path of the Qalandars May his purity live forever, past time’s end So may he live, eternally our friend

This vigorous manifesto by Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī brings together the fundamental ideas of the dervishes, whether by referring to Shihāb al-Dīn alSuhrawardī, the protector of the dervishes (in the sense that, according to the dervishes, he left the door open for a sort of wild mysticism that was already being domesticated and institutionalised elsewhere), or in the approach to the Abdāl, a poorly-identified and heterodox group of mystics, evidently secretive, to whom we shall return.32 Both of these names were regularly invoked by Central Asian dervishes when they were referring to themselves. Doctrinally, three types of idea appear. The way of life of the Qalandars was characterised by idle wanderings, by vagabondage (‘… homeless and solitary, we explore/ From the ends of the earth to distant shores…’) in the service of a permanent adoration of God that takes the name of love and is expressed in devotional acts (‘Carried by ecstasy we dance, sing and rhyme…’), deliberately risking the disapproval of the more carefully conscientious (‘… Not wanting fame, careless of reputation…’). Our author also cultivates the ambivalence that is at the heart of Qalandarī thought. He speaks in registers that are simultaneously physical and symbolic in order to show that the poverty of the dervish is at once spiritual and temporal (‘… owning nothing, no wealth or treasure, no gold/ having no 31

32

This refers to Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234), master of the master of Amīr Ḥusayn, founder of the Suhrawardiyya, originating in Iraq but mostly developed in India. See Florian Sobieroj, “Suhrawardiyya,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., BrillOnline. For various mentions of Abdāl, see Christiane Tortel, L’Ascète et le bouffon. Qalandars, vrais et faux renonçants en islam (Paris: Actes Sud, 2009), passim. This book (pp. 265–268) also contains the translation of a brief anonymous Qalandarī treatise, said to be by Suhrawardī.

16

Introduction

self-belief…’). He openly admits to the vices or risky behaviours practiced by the mystics (‘… We admire young lovers, adore good wine…’; ‘… If we try our luck at a game of chance/ In one roll worlds now and to come are chanced…’), without reducing these to mere poetic tropes, and without excluding the possibility of a radical liberation from social and religious conventions. He doesn’t hesitate to answer the usual accusations brought against dervishes by turning the argument around (‘… Self-denial that’s false we do not adopt…’; ‘… Fraud, tricks and ruses are beyond our remit…’), suggesting that the ambivalence of the unstable dervish is better than the hypocrisy of the comfortably established Sufi. Those whom we expected to be imposters are not. Finally, through all of its couplets the Qalandarnāma expresses an antinomian ‘philosophy’ that claims to be above the law in the name of a superior comprehension of the law.33 Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī is saying exactly this when he rejects life here on earth and also the afterlife (‘… Unbound by right and wrong acts in this world, / Free from heaven and hell and all that’s beyond…’). The privileged relationship that the dervish has with God frees him from the rules of mankind (‘… For we have received the gift of His grace/ God’s mandate on earth brings us to His grace…’). The antinomianism of the Qalandars is also a mysticism of language in which their inspired flights use rhetorical devices sparingly, and limit their voluble effusions (‘… Divine knowledge is expressed in our speech/ There is nothing excessive in our speech…’): short verses, apothegms, abbreviated writings. We have briefly introduced these themes here, and they recur throughout the rest of this work. In order to get beyond the medieval manifesto and attempt to find the social realities behind these discourses we must seek additional and later sources. 2

In Search of the Margins

Dervishes, who were among the outsiders of Islam, reappear incessantly in its history until their almost complete eradication in the contemporary period. In spite of this final coup de grâce, which came at the end of centuries of repression, some believers continued to choose a mode of religious life that differed from that of the masses. It is therefore necessary to avoid any interpretation that reduces the history of the Islamic world to a series of broad phenomena. To seek here and there to uncover faint traces of the outsiders, tiny fissures 33

See Alexandre Papas, “Antinomianism (ibāḥa),” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., BrillOnline.

Introduction

17

Figure 1 Hookah smokers in Bukhara, 1911

that are barely perceptible, in times that have long passed, would be the path of a different historiography, because although the conversion of populations, the expansion of the Sufi lineages, and the dominance of modernist and reformist ideologies were all incontestably important events, none of them ever completely precluded the possibility of alternative approaches, no matter how fragmentary, or rarely adopted. This permanent desire for transgression, which has too often been assumed to exist only in occidental society, has thus always been present throughout the Islamic world. Equally, one must beware of a history of Muslim spirituality in which the doxa equates jurists (fuqahāʾ) with mystics (fuqarāʾ). True, it is historically false systematically to set erudition and the erudite in opposition to Sufism, as was attempted by an Islamology that is now widely called into question. Often these two groups were in fact identical, and the circles they moved in were the same. Nevertheless, one must

18

Introduction

remember that the most radical of the Muslim mystics denied any legitimacy either to the fuqahāʾ or to the fuqarāʾ; to forget this would be to imagine that Islamic fervour had avoided its most profound contradictions. This study concentrates on a particular region within the Muslim world, without attempting to cover it in its entirety. In any case, Central Asia is not easily forced into static geographical boundaries. Let us just imagine a common Turko-Persian space stretching from Khorasan to today’s Xinjiang and taking in the southern Kazakh steppe, the great historical oases – Bukhara, Samarkand – and the Kirghiz mountains. As we have seen, one part of this vast area held numerous dervishes as early as the thirteenth century. Rather than Central Asia being the only part of the dār al-islām to have tolerated, willingly or not, this radical form of mysticism, in this region we see a demonstration of the form’s astonishing capacity for resilience right up until the end of the modern period. Is this due to the progressive relegation of this vast region to the periphery of the Islamic lands after the religious, cultural and intellectual flowering that had occurred there over several centuries, notably at its apogee under the Timurid dynasty? There is no definite reply to such a question (which may in any case be too vague). What remains is a state of affairs that this book will try to describe by exploring the protracted duration, without pretending to be exhaustive. The sources begin to speak relatively freely on the subject of marginal people just towards the end of the Timurid period, and continue to do so until the dawn of the twentieth century. Once again it must be emphasised that we are not undertaking a thesis on five hundred years of Central Asian history. Our only ambition is to re-read a few forgotten pages from within the mass of sources that overall tend to, or intend to, mask or set to one side the existence of real or presumed Muslim heterodoxies, and thereby divert the attention of historians away from these. What is offered here is more to do with an opening of spirit or outlook, rather than with winning a contest of erudition. The study of Central Asian Islam offers two broad historiographic visions, which can be described as Sovietological and post-Sovietological, or, in a wider sense, orientalist and post-orientalist.34 The first thesis, which was well-developed in Russian ethnology from the 1960s to the 1990s and is still upheld by some today, holds that practices as diverse and widespread as the cults of saints, initiatic rituals, and Sufi spiritual exercises betray the presence of lasting traces of their pre-Islamic foundations, blending animism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, etc. In reaction to this initial idea a second thesis has evolved, which has principally been defended among 34

Alexandre Papas, “L’histoire et les sciences sociales à l’épreuve de l’Asie centrale. A propos d’un récent numéro des Annales,” Turcica 37 (2005): 365–75.

Introduction

19

historians during recent decades; this reaffirms the depth of the Islamisation of Central Asia and interprets religious practices and doctrines in strictly Islamic terms. Rather than coming down on one side or the other in a debate that would, in any case, limit us to a broad, generalising historicism or else consign us to a Quixotic quest for origins that have been known to be illusory since the work of Marc Bloch, let us instead attempt to pierce some holes in the barriers and see our way more clearly. The aspects of dervishes and antinomianism that we have briefly looked at remind us that in its socio-religious realisation Islam is full of accumulated unevenness, ambivalence and anomalies. These other manifestations tell us as much about a society or societies as does a majoritarian spirituality. Regardless of the source or name under which we find them, they constitute Sunni, Hanafite, and Sufi Islam’s internal alterity. What, after all, would be the scientific point in deciding whether a specific act of healing, for example, had its source in shamanism or in Islamic exorcism? The question is rather to understand how, in concrete terms, the cure is brought about: what are the actual techniques employed? Who are the actors? What is it that the texts are describing? How does the approach evolve over time? We want to know what this reveals of the essentials of a history of health-care. Distancing ourselves from the vain polemics on the exact original nature of collective practices, let us recall that the historian’s work consists of formulating the anthropological problems facing societies in contingent situations – here we have the human body, we have illness; there we have religious order and disorder – so that in fact nothing actually works as expected, or as it’s ‘supposed’ to work, and what appears to be the machinery of social events and structures is hindered or reset.35 Instead of taking soundings for improbable geneses, it strikes us as more stimulating to seek the synchronic margins that are inscribed in territories, societies and language.36 We will look at five examples in five successive periods, each with its own sources. Our first instance of marginality is situated in Herat, called ‘the pearl of the Khorasan’.37 During the medieval period, the Khorasan was much bigger than 35

36 37

In the field of Turkish studies, I find these two collectively written volumes exemplary in this regard: Gilles Veinstein, ed., Les Ottomans et la mort. Permanences et mutations (Leiden: Brill, 1996); François Georgeon and Frédéric Hitzel, eds., Les Ottomans et le temps (Leiden: Brill, 2012). We will use the term ‘language’ to mean types of language, specifically sociolects, and also languages such as those, of Turkic and Persian origin, used in Central Asia. Terry Allen, Timurid Herat (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1983); Rafi Samizay, “Herat: Pearl of Khurasan,” Environmental Design 1–2 (1989): 86–93; Maria Szuppe, Entre Timourides, Uzbeks et Safavides. Questions d’histoire politique et sociale de Hérat dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle (Paris: Association pour l’avancement des études iraniennes, 1992).

20

Introduction

today’s province in the Republic of Iran, and its inhabitants enjoyed a very fertile cultural and religious life, as much in the fields of jurisprudence and literature as in theology and mysticism. Heterodoxies were, as we have seen, particularly vigorous in this place and at this time. Herat had been Timurid since its conquest by Tamerlane in 782/1380, and its medieval splendour, which had previously been diminished by the Mongols, was rediscovered under the reign of Sulṭān Ḥusayn Bāyqarā (r. 874–912/1469–1506), a cultivated sovereign and patron of the arts. Herat was a fortified quadrilateral accessed through five great portals and divided into four (literal) quarters forming a cross around the chahārsū(q), or central crossroads. Herat brought together within its protective walls political and military power, the religious elite, landowners, shopkeepers, and artisans. Outside of the walls, the aristocracy had villas and vast holdings of land. Islam was omnipresent via the great mosque, the madrasas, the Sufi lodges, the mausoleums, and the dozens of holy places for prayer. The taking of the town by the Uzbeks and then by the Savafids in the sixteenth century complicated things between Sunni majority and Shiite minority, and turned class relations upside-down, especially for the elite and the city notables, but the social fabric itself changed little. Chronicles and biographical dictionaries shed light on many aspects of this history, but concentrate almost exclusively on the military, political, intellectual, artistic or religious elites. In order to help us divine what lies beneath Herat’s blue glinting roofs, our ‘fixer’, to use a journalist’s term, will be the counsellor of Bāyqarā himself, ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī (d. 906/1501).38 Super-rich patron of the arts and writer of all sorts of texts, both in Turkish and in Persian, he composed a unique description of Herati society during the second half of the fifteenth century (which also applies to some of the following century), called The Beloved of Hearts (Maḥbūb al-qulūb). Without anticipating the next chapter, we can say that numerous passages in this work are devoted to marginal people, notably those who haunt the town’s streets and invoke or implore God aloud. Other sources complement this text and allow us to sketch a social and religious picture that differs in important respects from that presented by classical historiography. The way things actually happen gives the lie to the seemingly perfect political organisation reflected in the Timurid urbanisation of Herat (as far as the ideals of the sovereigns and viziers who undertook this urbanisation are concerned, anyway, evoking as they do Norbert Elias’s description of the architectural

38

On Nawāʾī, we can now read Marc Toutant, Un Empire de mots. Pouvoir, culture et soufisme à l’époque des derniers Timourides au miroir de la Khamsa de Mīr ‘Alī Shīr Nawā’ī (Leuven: Peeters, 2016).

Introduction

21

r­ epresentation of royal power)39, allowing a few fissures to develop in their facade. Finally, different words and facts appear, revealing the sound of the different drum (or minaret) that some people were marching to, as well as much about language that is exclusive to dervishes. A second case of marginality takes us to the heart of the Māwarāʾ al-nahr, the ‘territory beyond the river [Oxus or Amu Darya]’ in the region of Bukhara. The city retained its plan, comprising citadel, town centre and outskirts, from its Samanid glory-days, but also its reputation as a scholarly city.40 The great families of ulamas and the high madrasas remained its most distinguishing feature while the political role of the town declined under the Timurids. In the hands of the Uzbek Shaybanid and Janid dynasts, Bukhara became the capital again. It was during this period that militant Sunnism dominated, encouraged by shaykhs from the Naqshbandiyya Sufi order, whose influence on the khans was decisive. Hostility towards Shiism, even though it often served as a mere political pretext, remained marked, and had a strong influence on Bukhara’s religious and political life at least until ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 1055/1645–1091/1680), whose reign was considered by local chroniclers as the final great period of their history. However, a recently discovered text dedicated to this sovereign has introduced a more nuanced thesis to replace that of unilateral domination by Naqshbandī Sunnism. Outside of the madrasas a society of more or less educated dervishes evolved, leaving written traces from the seventeenth century. In an earlier work (mentioned above), we established the existence in Central Asia of Qalandarī dervishes who were affiliated to the Naqshbandiyya, using their own writings as sources. Instead of a simple dichotomy between a brotherhood with a particularly established reputation for orthodoxy and Sufi groups taxed with heterodoxy, or even with crypto-Shiism, there is a porous boundary here that allows passage for the mystics, who seem to wander from one side to the other both literally and figuratively, although not without tension or conflict. Among these mystics was a Sufi called Nidāʾī (d. 1174/1760) who had received as part of his initiation four items of regalia considered specific to Sufis (a cloak, a hat, a staff and a begging bowl). These were given him by a certain Bābā Mullā Imān Balkhī, himself a caliph (khalīfa) of the Qalandarī master, Bābā Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ʿĀqibat bi-Khayr. Heretofore we had known that this last-named was from Balkh, in the north of today’s Afghanistan, where he 39 40

Norbert Elias, La Société de cour, trans. Pierre Kamnitzer and Jeanne Etoré (Paris: Flammarion, 1985), 256–57. Clifford E. Bosworth, “Bukhara,” in Historic Cities of the Islamic World, ed. Clifford E. Bosworth (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 58–62; Yuri Bregel, “Bukhara iv. Khanate of Bukhara and Khorasan,” Encyclopedia Iranica, online.

22

Introduction

founded a ‘monastery’ (takiyya), and that he supported several caliphs to represent and propagate his movement in India and Central Asia. In the southern part of Central Asia the contours of a society of wandering dervishes were visible around Bābā Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm and a few other Sufi masters. Nidāʾī declares at the end of his Risāla-yi ḥaqqiyya or Treatise on divine truth, completed in 1165/1752, that a part of his work is just a re-telling of a much denser treatise by master Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm.41 We now have access to the actual treatise written by this master, under the title of The ways of the path (Ādāb al-ṭarīq), edited by the Iranian scholar Mehran Afshari.42 At the intersection between the Naqshbandiyya and the Qalandariyya, or, to be more precise, identical with the boundary between these two paths, the teaching of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm concerns itself exclusively with that which seems most superficial: the physical attire and appearance of the dervish and its origin stories, or the symbolic objects around him and the multitude of terms, legends and significations that are associated with these. It is clear to us that marginality, both socio-religious and doctrinal, characterises the milieu that our author claims as his own. The third halt on our journey finds us in eastern Turkestan, in Aksu. During the eighteenth century the region was called Altishahr, the ‘Six Towns’: Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Kucha, Turfan and Aksu. Later called ‘the city of the holy warriors (ghāziyān)’, Aksu doesn’t appear in the texts by this Turkish name until the fourteenth century.43 A legend recounts that it got its name, which means ‘sweet water’ or ‘mountain water’ after a Muslim saint miraculously freshened its bitter waters. Although Aksu acquired a certain commercial importance in the fifteenth century as a node in the routes between China, Siberia, Central Asia, and northern India, and also as a notable exporter of rice and felt, the city remained in the shadows compared to the great oases of Kashgar and Yarkand, and so did any writings concerning it. There were 6,000 houses in eighteenth-century Aksu, along with a bazaar, six caravanserails and five madrasas, all surrounded by a wall with four gates cut into it. What was it like? Doubtless it already resembled Fernand Grenard’s description, dating from his explorations in the 1890s: ‘The shops (doukkàn), which lie pressed together, are made of a stone-work terrace about two and a half feet high and six or seven 41 42 43

Alexandre Papas, Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, 25–28, 238. Bābā Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī bi nām-i Ādāb al-ṭarīq, ed. Mehran Afshari (Tehran: Chashma, 1346/2016). Bertold Spuler, “Aḳ Ṣu,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., BrillOnline; Ho-Dong Kim, “Muslim Saints in the 14th to the 16th Centuries of Eastern Turkestan,” International Journal of Central Asian Studies 1 (1996): 285–322; Alexandre Papas, Soufisme et politique entre Chine, Tibet et Turkestan oriental (Paris: J. Maisonneuve, 2005).

Introduction

23

feet wide, attached either to an isolated wall or to another house, and covered by a roof supported on posts. (…) Once a week, merchants set up their stalls beneath these modest and unrefined shelters, piling up their textiles, their spices and their hardware and then, sitting on their heels as is the way in this country, they await their clients. People arrive from the neighbouring areas to do their shopping and sell their crops, foodstuffs and animals, and there is great animation for the entire day, with much noise: conversation and discussion, animal noises, the supplications of beggars, declamation from the wandering readers, and musical instruments squeaking and creaking. Then, once the sun has set, each person goes home to his or her penates, everything returns to silence, the stalls are empty and the bazaar is deserted again until the following week. (…) The streets are narrow and tortuous, but well-lit because the houses are not tall. They are unpaved and thus very dusty, but since it ­never rains they are in better condition than houses in Chinese cities (…) The houses are made of sun-dried clay or cob bricks, whose distribution is arranged according to uniform principles.’44 At one time the regional capital of the Khanate of the eastern Chaghatayids, Aksu had more impact on history through two very different facts or events, one isolated in time and the other continuous, although, as we shall see, from the point of view of the actors of the period these events were not unlinked. The first event was the earthquake that devastated the town in 1716. Although it remains impossible to find out much more about this major event, one cannot help seeing connections between this earthquake and the title and tone adopted by the author who will serve as our mouthpiece for religious marginality in our third chapter. Again, we will avoid anticipating explanations that will follow, instead just mentioning that the mystical poet Kharābātī (d. 1143/1730?) was, like his own home-town and unlike Nawāʾī, just a secondary actor – yet it is precisely this subordinate role that makes him so fascinating. The word kharābāt means literally ‘the ruins, the devastation’, and such a pseudonym inevitably leads one to conjecture that our author took on the name of the actual disaster that he had mutely witnessed. Evidently, this is pure speculation, and weakened by other possible explanations, about which we will speak later, but it is reinforced by the discourse of Kharābātī, whose radical pessimism flirts with free thought – in some ways after the fashion of, say, Omar Khayyam (d. ca. 517/1123) – and seems to recognise the fragility of all things. The second fact that characterises the history of Aksu is to do with Sufi Islam in eastern Turkestan over the long duration. Hagiographies reveal that the town was built in the fourteenth century with the help of a Sufi community 44

Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 2:94–96.

24

Introduction

on the site of the ancient town of Ardabil (homonymic with the Iranian town), which had been swallowed up by the sands. Later, its regent Muḥammad Khān (r. 1000–1018/1591–1609) followed the teaching of the Naqshbandī master Isḥāq Khwāja (d. 1008/1599), for whom he built a Sufi lodge. Isḥāqī ‘vicars’ followed the shaykh and carried on his religious and political aims. When their rivals (also Naqshbandīs but members of the branch founded by Āfāq Khwāja, who died in 1105/1694) took power in the Altishahr, Aksu passed into the hands of the Āfāqīs. At the end of the seventeenth century, the Isḥāqīs retook the town and remained in power until the 1740s. The vengeful verses of Kharābātī must be seen in the light of this second fact, that is, political Sufism in the region. His writings are very close to dervishism, speaking up against all politicisation of mysticism, as though renunciation, only, could follow a permanent destruction brought about as much by the ravages of history as by earthquakes or the ontological absurdity of the world. A fourth marginal space is situated in the grottoes. One sometimes forgets that once the oases, the steppes and the desert are left behind, Central Asia, especially in the southern regions, contains high mountainous landscapes, too. It was here that, at the end of the nineteenth century, archaeologists uncovered extraordinary material and textual vestiges of Manicheanism or Buddhism, vestiges that had been forgotten during a thousand years of Islamisation.45 These treasures, still being studied today, eclipsed a more modest and less spectacular reality whose vitality was nevertheless obvious to observers of Islam during the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. The grottoes had become sacred spaces for Islamic cults, or for Sufi ascetic practices. While in the foreground most of Central Asia was being progressively colonised from opposite directions, either by the Russian Empire or the Sino-Manchu Empire, and Islam, including Sufi Islam, was undergoing an institutional and intellectual crisis, in the background anonymous people were hiding and practicing in caves, safe from political vicissitudes. The body of knowledge upon which we draw is for the most part the work of archaeologists and ethnographers, complemented by our own field notes from the past fifteen years. Given the diversity of sources used for this chapter, three brief biographical notices of scholars whose work we have used should suffice to give an idea of the nature of our sources. Our first source is the duo of whom we spoke above. Jules-Léon Dutreuil de Rhins (d. 1894) and Fernand Grenard (d. 1942) led an expedition to the 45

For a captivating re-telling of this archaeological gold-rush, see Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia (London: Murray, 1980).

Introduction

25

southern part of Central Asia between 1891 and 1893, before going on to Tibet.46 It was there, unfortunately, that Dutreuil de Rhins lost his life during an attack by brigands. After having begun his career in the Navy, navigating the waters around the Annam and the Congo, he had studied the geography of Central Asia and Tibet intensively and was able to convince the French Ministry of Public Instruction and the Academy of Inscriptions and Letters to finance his expedition. The team then crossed Transoxiana, Fergana and all of Kashgaria, as far as Khotan and Niya. Thanks to the work of the orientalist and former student of the School of Oriental Languages, Fernand Grenard, who was also very interested in the borderlands between Central Asia and Tibet and who later became a diplomat in the Ottoman Empire and in Russia, the results of this expedition were nothing less than multidisciplinary. They covered geology, botany, meteorology and economics, but also geography, history, linguistics, ethnography, etc.; their work became the first encyclopaedia of Xinjiang. Thanks to the encyclopaedic outlook of these scholars, many unusual and original aspects of Central Asian Islam spring from their pages, pages that seek to embrace it in its entirety. Our second scholarly source comes to us from Samarkand.47 Little is known of Abū Ṭāhir Samarqandī (d. 1874). He was the son of Abū Saʿīd, supreme qadi of the city and himself the son of a qadi and scholar, Mīr ʿAbd al-Ḥayy (d. 1243/1827). As the issue of this great lineage, Abū Ṭāhir rose with ease to the summit of the regional judiciary and became governor of Karmana (today’s Navoiy in Uzbekistan). He wrote a single work, entitled Samariyya, during the 1830s or 1840s. This consists of nine chapters describing the city of Samarkand and its outskirts in Tadjik-inflected Persian; he focusses particularly on religious institutions. Moved by the loss of various monuments after earthquakes and conflicts, he decided to create a record of such structures, which he saw as a spiritual patrimony rich in divine signs. In his search for information about mosques, madrasas and especially shrines, this native of Samarkand did not hesitate to use oral sources, and he was as meticulous in identifying the names of specific places as in relating the lives of saints. For our purposes here, however, we refer only to one brief chapter of his work, relevant because it elucidates the Islamic and mystical history of the sacred grottoes. Finally, Nikolai Kisliakov (d. 1973) represents a third type of informant.48 ­Little-known outside the circles of Central Asia specialists, he merits particular 46 47 48

Svetlana Gorshenina, Exporateurs en Asie centrale. Voyageurs et aventuriers de Marco Polo à Ella Maillart (Paris: Olizane, 2003), 211–15. Alexandre Papas, “al-Samarqandī, Abū Ṭāhir,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., BrillOnline. Here I am summing up V.N. Kisliakov and A.M. Reshetov, “Krupnyi sovetskii etnograf i muzeeved Nikolai Andreevich Kisliakov (k 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia),” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 5 (2002): 108–20.

26

Introduction

attention. As a young man, in spite of his noble Saint Petersburg antecedents, he sided with the 1917 revolution and became an instructor at the Red Army School in Moscow until his demobilisation in 1925. Two years later he began his undergraduate career back in his home-town, specialising in Iranian studies in the ethnology department. In 1930 he was named administrative chief of public instruction for Karategin, in Tajikistan, as part of the Soviet programme responsible for sending young students to far-flung provinces. Strongly in favour of Communism and against the Basmatchi armed uprising undertaken by Central Asian activists, the Comrade instructor was an ardent defender of the Sovietisation campaigns but nevertheless familiarised himself with the Tajik language and society. Kisliakov returned to Saint Petersburg to finish his studies in the winter of 1931–32 and then went back on a mission to Pamir until July 1933. After having defended his thesis, he divided his time between field work in Tajikistan and his job at the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography of his home university. At the end of the war he was employed at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, where he was able to travel in the region and improve his knowledge of Iranian culture. He returned to Russia as an acknowledged and powerful expert, taking on numerous responsibilities: at the University, at the Ethnographic Museum, and with the Stalin-era Soviet programme for collectivisation and development. Much of his work dealt with questions of marriage, of family and of parental relationships in the societies of southern Central Asia. In spite of his perfect fidelity to the principles of Soviet science, which at the time was in search of primary forms of communism in so-called feudal social organisations, Kisliakov left some very interesting field notes on religious phenomena, particularly one innovative but forgotten article about a grotto in Pamir. The last chapter of this book, with its slightly romantic title, wanders the pathways of Central Asia. Avoiding the major axes of commerce’s winners and the exchanges that have for so long attracted the historians of globalisation, we take the small unfrequented byways of the losers, of travellers, minor artistes and all sorts of beggars. Although colonial administration was being reinforced, as much on the Russian as on the Chinese side, in a way that was preparing the ground for the establishment of the socialist states of mass control that would soon follow, yet there were some surviving elements of society that the mounting bureaucracy had trouble identifying. We have used a few archives that express this sentiment. In the Governor-Generalship of Turkestan, from which was born first the autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkestan in 1918 and then the Soviet Socialist Republic of Uzbekistan in 1924, as in the province of Xinjiang (‘the new frontier’), which was created in 1884 by the Qing before being integrated first into the Republic of China in 1912 and then

Introduction

27

into the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the same evasive social milieu existed, marked out as different by its very nature, ungraspable by institutions. Maddāḥ, lūlī, dīwāna, dārbāz, abdāl and others: these different itinerant subgroupings, some of whom were already mentioned as early as Nawāʾī, shared a common space for public activities related (to varying extents) to the world of live spectacle. They also shared a single religious culture, linked to dervishism, that surfaced only in the sea of their words, that is, in the words of their songs or their argotic languages. As in the preceding chapters, we will draw on ethnographical research (alongside some linguistic enquiries), much of which, especially in Uzbekistan, is very recent. The main aim of the research to which we refer was to collect memories from a past that has now vanished. The Russian ethnologist Anna Troitskaia (d. 1980) was a pioneer in this domain.49 Let us recall that she was born in Tashkent in 1899, but studied first at the Medical Institute of Saint Petersburg and then, until 1923, at the Oriental Institute in Tashkent, where she learned Persian, Tajik and Uzbek while participating in the population census in the capital and in Samarkand. It is conceivable that this human inventory was part of what later led her to pay such close attention to unidentified social groupings. Although Troitskaia settled in Saint Petersburg, she continued her Central Asian ethnological research on two fronts: in the constitution of a corpus of archives and in the pursuit of field expeditions. It was while she was posted in Tashkent during the Second World War that she undertook her precious enquiries into dervishes and cantors, and the rest of her career was divided between the Institutes of Ethnology and of Orientalism. From these five case studies we will draw a few rapid conclusions, trying to perceive a comparatist perspective that could engage with other parts of today’s Muslim world. 49

Russian-language biography available on the website of the National Library of Russia (Saint Petersburg): .

28

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

In the Streets of Herat 1

A Presentation of the ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī’s Maḥbūb al-qulūb

Although it is well known among philologists, Nawāʾī’s book has not been much read by historians.1 The Maḥbūb al-qulūb – in French L’Aimé des cœurs (The beloved of hearts), or L’Aimé de tous (The beloved by all), or even The beloved of the people (Le Populaire), according to the Lazard dictionary – was written in 906/1501 and is a text on ethics and morals. Adopting the tone of a wise old man who has seen it all, the author describes the lives and activities of people in the different strata of his society at the time in which he lives. He writes in rhyming prose and a quite complicated Eastern Turkish, interspersed with verses in Turkish or Persian. Numerous manuscripts of this text are known to exist; at least 26 are recorded worldwide.2 Dated 961/1554 and created in Mecca by a certain Mūsā al-Samarqandī, the oldest manuscript copy is preserved at the French National Library, shelved under Supplément Turc 747. The Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul holds another of Mūsā al-Samarqandī’s manuscript copies, dating from 966/1558. The Soviet orientalist Andrei Kononov was unaware of the existence of the Paris manuscript when he was preparing his edition of this text, for which he referred to eight manuscripts from Saint Petersburg (of which some were shelved under V. 2095, V. 283, V. 2378, S. 139, and V. 266. A particularly important example did not have a shelving reference; it was copied in 1004/1595 by ʿAlī Fayḍī in the Mazandaran), as well as referring to a manuscript from Tashkent (IVAN Uz 3324 and 697). This text seems also to have travelled to Cairo in a copy made as early as 960/1560. The table of contents of the Maḥbūb al-qulūb reads as follows:

1 I use and refer to the following edition: ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, ed. Andrei N. Kononov (Moscow: Nauka, 1948), and sometimes have recourse to: Kazuyuki Kubo, “Navāī (Mīru Arīshīru) no shakaikan Maḥbūb al-qulūb dai isshō nihongo yaku,” Memoirs of the Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University 47 (2008): 183–295; this latter text gives the most faithful transliteration, as well as a translation into Japanese of the introduction to the first part of the book. I also verify my findings by referring to ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb (Istanbul: Maṭbaʿa-yı ʿāmire, 1289/1872). 2 Zuhal Kargı Ölmez, Mahbūbü’l-kulūb (inceleme-metin-sözlük) (Ankara: Hacettepe Üniversitesi, 1993), 9–16.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_003

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Introduction (muqaddima) First part: On the nature of the ways of being, activities and words of people (khalāʾiq aḥwāl wa afʿāl wa aqwālïnïng kayfīyatïda) Ch. 1: On just sultans (ʿādil salāṭīn dhikridä) Ch. 2: On the very Muslim bey (islām panāh bek dhikridä) Ch. 3: On the improper governor (nāmunāsib nāʾib dhikridä) Ch. 4: On the tyrannical, ignorant and vicious king (ẓālim wa jāhil wa fāsiq pādishāh dhikridä) Ch. 5: On viziers (wuzarā dhikridä) Ch. 6: On incompetent chancellors (nāqābil ṣadrlar dhikridä) Ch. 7: On cowards who play at being brave (fāsiq wa bad maʿāsh bahādurluq lāfīn urghanlar dhikridä) Ch. 8: On the company of chamberlains (yasawul gurūhï dhikridä) Ch. 9: On officers (yasaghlïq wa qara cherik dhikridä) Ch. 10: On the resemblance of the King to his people (shāh ulusï özigä mushābih bolur dhikridä) Ch. 11: On the shaykh al-Islam (shaykh al-islām dhikridä) Ch. 12: On the qadis (quḍāt dhikridä) Ch. 13: On the muftis who are jurisconsults (muftī faqīhlar dhikridä) Ch. 14: On professors (mudarrislar dhikridä) Ch. 15: On doctors (iṭibbāʾ dhikridä) Ch. 16: On the melodious birds in the garden of verse [poets] (naẓm gulistānïnïng khūsh naghma qushlarï dhikridä) Ch. 17: On scribes (kātiblar dhikridä) Ch. 18: On schoolmasters (dabīristān ahlï dhikridä) Ch. 19: On imams (imāmlar dhikridä) Ch. 20: On readers of the Quran (muqrīlar dhikridä) Ch. 21: On reciters of the Quran (ḥūffāẓ dhikridä) Ch. 22: On the singer and the musician (muṭrib wa mughannī dhikridä) Ch. 23: On the storytellers (qiṣṣasāz wa qiṣṣakhwān dhikridä) Ch. 24: On the preachers of sermons (nasīḥat ahlï wāʿiẓlar dhikridä) Ch. 25: On the astrologer (ahl-i nujūm dhikridä) Ch. 26: On the merchants (tijārat ahlï dhikridä) Ch. 27: On the shopkeepers of the town (shahrdā alïp satquchïlar dhikridä) Ch. 28: On the retailers in the bazaar (bāzār kāsiblarï dhikridä) Ch. 29: On all the skilful artisans (sāʾir-i hunarwar-i ṣanʿatpardāz dikhridä) Ch. 30: On the chief of police, the jailers, and the agents of the night (shaḥna wa zindanīlar wa ʿasaslar dhikridä)

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Chapter 1

Ch. 31: On the peasants (dihqānlïq dhikridä) Ch. 32: On thieves and good-for-nothings (yatīm wa la⁠ʾīmlar dhikridä) Ch. 33: On strangers and the destitute (gharīb wa bī nawālar dhikridä) Ch. 34: On the insistent beggars (mubrim gadālar dhikridä) Ch. 35: On the falconer and the hunter (qushchï wa ṣayyād dhikridä) Ch. 36: On the servant who receives an education and becomes deceitful (tarbiyat tapïp ḥarām namaklïq qïlghan nöker dhikridä) Ch. 37: On the quality of husbands, and on wives (katkhudālïgh ṣifatï wa khātūnlar dhikridä) Ch. 38: On the hypocritical shaykhs (riyāʾī mashāʾikhlar dhikridä) Ch. 39: On the dissolute (kharābāt ahlï dhikridä) Ch. 40: On the dervishes (darwīshlar dhikridä) Second part: On the nature of praiseworthy acts and blameworthy inclinations (ḥamīda afʿāl wa dhamīma khiṣāl khāṣiyatïda) Ch. 1: On repentance (tawba dhikridä) Ch. 2: On asceticism (zuhd dhikridä) Ch. 3: On confidence in God (tawakkul dhikridä) Ch. 4: On contentment (qanāʿat dhikridä) Ch. 5: On patience (ṣabr dhikridä) Ch. 6: On humility (tawāḍuʿ dhikridä) Ch. 7: On [Sufi] repetition (dhikr sharḥidä) Ch. 8: On attention to God (tawajjuh dhikridä) Ch. 9: On consenting to God (riḍā dhikridä) Ch. 10: On love (ʿishq dhikridä) Third part: Anthology of various morals and sentences (mutafarriqa fawāʾīd wa imthāl ṣūratï) In 1866, the French orientalist and diplomat François Alphonse Belin made a partial translation (which is not without its omissions and approximations because of the state of scholarship at the time) of this text, including its introduction and some extracts from the second and third parts, but nothing or almost nothing from the first part.3 It is difficult to avoid interpreting his choice of sections to translate otherwise than as a deliberate setting aside of the social realities of medieval Herat. Only exemplary good morals seem to interest 3 François Alphonse Belin, “Moralistes orientaux. Caractères, maximes et pensées de Mir Ali Chir Névâii,” Journal asiatique 7 (1866): 523–52; id., “Moralistes orientaux. Caractères, maximes et pensées de Mir Ali Chir Névâii,” Journal asiatique 8 (1866): 126–54.

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this holder of high office in Constantinople. It is true that Nawāʾī writes as a pious moralist in his final work, released as a last call to his contemporaries. His gesture recalls another, performed a century later by an equally prolific author of varied texts, the functionary and historian Muṣṭafā ʿAlī, of Gallipoli (d. 1008/1600), who at the end of his life composed the Mevāʾid al-nefāʾis fī qavāʾid al-mecālis (The tables of tactful manners concerning the rules of assemblies).4 Here we shall translate the second part of Nawāʾī’s introduction, trying to conserve its concrete aspect, which is more present than it may initially seem to be. We also attempt to preserve some of the rhythm of this rhyming prose of which our author is a real master5: ‘Poor wretch that I am, from my most tender youth to my ripest old age, so long have I seen so much come to pass, such events and trials; I have faced so many experiences of every kind, among good folk and among bad; at times I wept as my fate grew worse, at times I rejoiced at honours. Ode: I have been weighed down by fate at times, At times taken advantage of destiny I have known great heat and great cold frequently Have tasted sweetness and bitterness equally At the time of my misfortunes, I would sit on the threshold of the madrasas and warm my heart by the light of the scholars. In the mosques, I would touch my forehead to the spot where pious folk placed their feet, and it bled from the force of my genuflections. At times I made the effort to refill the ewers of the people of the Sufi lodges; at times I carried the pitcher for the drinkers of mystical wine. I was revealed to be vulgar among the vulgar people, trivial among those who were trivial. In the back alleys of love I behaved impurely, and I lost myself among the 4 Muṣṭafā ʿAlī, The Ottoman Gentleman of the Sixteenth Century: Mustafa Āli’s Mevāʾidüʾn-Nefāʾis fī Ḳavāʾidʾil-Mecālis ‘Tables of Delicacies Concerning the Rules of Social Gatherings’, annotated translation by Douglas S. Brookes (Cambridge: The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations-Harvard University, 2003). Marginal people are mentioned in chapters 17 (drug addicts), 25 (pleasure-seekers and hedonists), 49 (drunkards), 69 (dervishes), 71 (frequenters of cafés), 73 (frequenters of alcohol shops), 74 (consumers of fermented millet), 75 (parasites and lazy people), 89 (Sufi opium addicts). 5 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 4–8 (257–60). The first part, in accordance with classical tradition, tells of Creation and the Revelation.

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murderesses who kill men. I suffered a hail of blows when I went into the district of the lunatics, and children threw stones at me there. On another occasion I was forced to flee abroad to escape oppression at the hands of my townspeople. I found repose at the tops of mountains, refuge in the heart of the desert. I then resolved to return to my own land and there hid myself away in the obscurity of a cloister (zāwiya). In my exile I was weakened, among strangers I was corrupted. Among my own I was able to smile and be joyous again. Quatrain: I was burdened with sorrows by fate Even my joys were driven by fate My will, too, was directed by fate Every change brought about by fate In the happy days when I was in charge of the kingdom’s public order, I sat on the throne of the emirate and heard plaintiffs’ cases; I became a counsellor to the king himself and appeared before the people; I then took my place in the palace, welcomed with sweet honours noblemen and sharifs; I arranged joyous banquets and rejoiced there to hear the singers and cup-bearers. I intervened in the conflicts of sultans and reestablished harmony between them. I fought on the battlefields and I suffered the slander of the ignorant. I joined the people of charity and built all sorts of edifices with the aim of thus creating hostels (ribāṭ) that might please poor travellers (musāfir). Verses: Many ideas came into my consciousness While I was in charge of high functions This introduction is meant to act as a reminder: I have followed many roads and met many people. I have known good as I have known bad actions, I have tested good nature and evil nature. In my own throat have I tasted good’s sweetness and evil’s bitterness; in my own heart have I felt the balm of the good man and the blow of the vile one. Yet today many of my friends who lack experience have no conscience of good and evil. Fragment: What does the one who has not tasted honey and wine know Of the sweetness of union, the bitterness of disunion Only by walking can the worthless traveller learn Of the softness of the dunes and the hardness of the ascent

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It was therefore my duty to awaken the consciousness of each friend on the subject of manners within the various social classes (ṭabaqa), that they might hasten to approach the good people and stop frequenting the harmful ones, divulging to no-one their secrets, avoiding becoming victims of any diabolical ruse; and that they might then inspire friendship among people of every class, and profit from my experience. Since it is for love of them that I have written this book, I have called it The beloved by all. It is composed of three parts (...) I hope that readers will profit from consulting it with attention, and that in return they will say a prayer for the repose of my soul.’ In this eloquent introduction, Nawāʾī, who was then 60 years old, looks back on his life, not forgetting to allude to some of the events that marked him: his exile from 850/1447, his obtention of the title of emir in 876/1472, etc. Even though his ultimate intention was to write a moral treatise founded on the values of Sufi piety that are enumerated in the second part of his book, the poet tends to emphasise the qualities that legitimise him as an honest man, that is, his experience of life. Inscribed in the body itself, as the reader is unceasingly reminded by metaphors relating to sweet or bitter tastes, and by references to limbs, organs and postures, this experience will be useful in the composition of a social survival manual for close friends. Readers who are aware of Nawāʾī’s taste for descriptions of reality, and for concrete examples, will not be surprised, therefore, to find in these initial proposals a profound sense of space as a counterpart to biographical time. Alternating between peaks and troughs, the life he describes to us passes through the city and the country, through streets and whole neighbourhoods, sometimes moving into the heart of power, knowledge and faith, mixing in public and private spheres. Social space is the principal subject of the Maḥbūb al-qulūb, at least in the first part of the text; it expresses a fairly explicit class hierarchy and yet is exhaustive enough, unlike other sources, to include the most far-flung fringes of Herati society (in the table of contents these, including dervishes, are placed, mischievously, at the end of the list of society’s estates). 2

Musicians, Singers, Storytellers

Though they are, of course, not dervishes, the singers (or musicians) and the storytellers, described respectively in chapters 22 and 23 nevertheless come close. They resemble dervishes not only in occupying an equivocal place in Timurid culture, but also because they move in the same circles and meet

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in the same sensory experiences. Certainly courtly music was well-established and appreciated, as indicated in miniatures and classical sources such as the Book of Babur or the Badāʾiʿ al-waqāʾiʿ by the chronicler Wāṣifī, for the first decades of the sixteenth century.6 What Nawāʾī is talking about is at once more general and less consensual, although even in descriptions by Babur (d. 937/1530) many lyrical séances evolve into memorable drinking bouts.7 Beyond the courts or the traditional soirées held by aesthetes (majlis), these other musical contexts bring together people with diverse artistic profiles, having much in common with the Sufi adepts of devotional love, and being generally hostile to all sobriety both literally and figuratively. Might the bards of contemporary Khorasan be their distant descendants? The term bakhshi, by which they are known in Iran, does not figure in our source, but the question is nevertheless a tempting one. Nawāʾī begins by reminding his readers that among ‘sensitive and spiritual people (hāl ū dard ahlï) who devote their souls to a musician of joy or a singer of sorrow, hearing them perform a sweet soft song or melody (mulāʾim), if they give their entire attention to the singer or musician the listeners no longer suffer, and their hearts and spirits are strengthened by the very beauty of the voice or the sound – a good singer can as easily fan the flames of suffering as those of exaltation; when the artiste strums a heart-rending song (dardmandānarāq) with his plectrum, his pain sows pain in the listener’s heart. The ardent singer who tears a sweet piece of music from his throat inflames the heart of the sensitive man; the soft and smooth musician who has talent and intelligence will melt the hardest heart. As for musical accompaniment to reciting, how this may disturb the equanimity of our hearts!’8 There is no need to dwell on these almost normative premises, intended to define in an almost physical way what the artiste and his public should be. We merely note our author’s insistence on 6 A number of portraits of artistes and musical scenes can be found in Zayn al-Dīn Maḥmūd Wāṣifī, Badāʾiʿ al-waqāʾiʿ, ed. Alexandre N. Boldyrev (Tehran: Intishārāt-i bunyād-i farhang-i īrān, 1350/1972), 1:19–20 (Qāsim ʿAlī qānūnī), 1:20 (Sayyid Aḥmad ghijakī), 1:20–21 (Muḥibb Allāh balabānī), 1:21 (Ḥasan ʿūdī, Ḥusayn Kūchak nāʾī and several singers), 1:22 (a private concert), 1:22–23 (the dancer Maqṣūd ʿAlī raqqās), 1:81–82 (a musical session), 1:118–19 (the singers Mawlānā Khwāja gūyanda and Amīr Khalīl khwānanda), 1:296 (the singer Mawlānā Qizili), 1:312 (a musical soirée), 1:405 (list of names of singers and musicians), 1:436–38 (Ḥāfiẓ Qazaq qānūnī); 2:36–38 (a musical session), 2:193 (list of instruments), 2:219 and 2:399–400 (the ­science of music). 7 The best translation into a western language is still: Le Livre de Babur. Mémoires de Zahiruddin Muḥammad Babur de 1494 à 1529, trans. Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont (Paris: Publications Orientalistes de France, 1980), 207 (support from Nawāʾī for musicians), 217 (portraits of musicians) and 225–28 (drunkenness). 8 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 35 (277).

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crediting music with definite effects on spiritual people, an insistence that in fact betrays a mistrust that Nawāʾī shares with ulamas and Sufis – a mistrust of musicians and the religious or moral byways along which their art can lead the listener. It is for this reason that Nawāʾī is careful to specify: ‘For the person who follows the mystical path (ahl-i sulūk), one of the most dangerous stages is the one during which he will know both perfection and imperfection. At this point the mystic may reach his goal in a single breath, or he may lose all that has been acquired over many years for the sake of a single glass of wine. [The fact remains that] it was during a spiritual concert (samāʿ) that Shiblī and Nūrī attained the goal of the mystical path.’9 This warning echoes repeated debates within Sufism on the rights and wrongs of the samāʿ. Without always sharing a single point of view, Naqshbandī theoreticians nevertheless agree that listening to music or song presents the danger of distracting the mystic instead of initiating him. This may be because of an inappropriate use of music by the performer, or because the spiritual training of the listener is insufficient.10 Nawāʾī refers to the same risk. Although he does not reject the samāʿ himself, he does remind his readers that only great Sufis such as Abū Bakr Shiblī (d. 334/946) or Abū al-Ḥusayn Nūrī (d. 295/907) – two often-cited spiritual reference points in polemics referring to spiritual audition – can get the most out of this sensitive experience. The following section of the text reveals that Nawāʾī is wary of musicians. They appear as imperious corruptors, complicit in the worst excesses and preying above all on the devout. ‘Most men of God who, attracted by the sound of the organ (arghanūn), enter the tavern (dayr), end up paying the waiter (mughbachcha) with the currency of Islam. In the drinking-place (maykhāna), even for the man who abstains from alcohol, well, the voice of the flute (nay) will make him drink (literally ‘will give him cause for shame’) with its attractive song. Even if a man avoids the call of wine, when the viol (gījak) lamentingly implores him to drink, when the bandore (tanbūr) incites him to shamelessness with its noise, when the harp (chang) dries up his throat with its plaints and by its very language the oud again calls on him to drink; while the lute (rabāb) prostrates itself and begs him to drink and the vielle (qobuz) seizes his ears and fills them with music that draws him towards pleasure; and when the 9 10

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 35–36 (278). For a dense discussion of this subject by a Naqshbandī shaykh, see the Treatise on audition (Risāla-yi samāʿiyya), by Aḥmad Kāsānī (d. 949/1542), studied in my article, “Creating a Sufi Soundscape: Recitation (dhikr) and Spiritual Audition (samā‘) according to Ahmad Kāsānī Dahbidī (d. 1542),” Performing Islam, special issue ‘Islamic Soundscapes of China’ (ed. R. Harris) 3/1–2 (2015): 23–41.

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qanun and the rattle (chaghāna) make their voices heard, with the handsome cup-bearer stooping to serve, and the wine flowing in streams, those who try not to drink no longer know abstinence and no longer listen to reason.’11 The passage deliberately plays on two levels, literal and figurative. Regular clients of alcohol-soaked dives, dervishes constituted part of the audience for organists, flutists, chorus singers and other musicians. The very well-informed picture that Nawāʾī paints demonstrates the decline into which numerous believers fell when they came into contact with the marginal people of the spectacle. Here it is no longer a question of samāʿ in the sense of a concert of devotional songs, although underlying Nawāʾī’s description here is another, describing the avowedly perilous mystical intoxication that may overtake the pious listener. He concludes in sibylline fashion, ‘Although all this experience of love would shame the poor in God (faqr ahlï), the breath of the flute and the oil of the wine fan the flames of his love. The Arabic camels speed their rhythmical steps in the desert and groan like thunderclouds. This is a mistaken thought, common among men, and it is impossible for them to avoid this catastrophe.’12 By this Nawāʾī means to say that it is a fatal error to seek mystical love among the musicians and singers. ‘As for the rest of this social group (ṭāʾifa), people who drown their sorrows in amusements, they are in fact nothing but a bunch of low beggars (gadā). There are the singer (aytquchï) and the musician (chalghuchï), earning a living from their moans. As long as the master gratifies them with a reward, they remain his servants. For them it’s pure profit to continue spending time with him, and so all orders are well received! But when the banquet is less luxurious, then their work becomes haphazard. When they benefit greatly, their hearts are full of thee, but if they are so rewarded for years, in the end they don’t even thank thee for thy favours; if they don’t get enough, they have no gratitude at all, and even when they receive a great deal, they are hardly grateful.’13 Here our author incriminates artistes who are in service with the aristocratic families of Herat, always on the lookout for feasts and celebrations of various sorts so that they might earn their bread. Nawāʾī’s undiscriminating diatribes against these people, whom he reduces to the condition of scroungers, betray not so much the moral reality as the out-of-kilter situation of this part of the population, ill-seen, unaccepted, always suspect, and reputed to care more for money than for the arts. He drives home his point:

11 12 13

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 36 (278). ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 36–37 (278). ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 37 (278).

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‘Most of them are impious and vice-ridden, with twisted and rude (durusht­ gūy) attitudes. Their gestures resemble detuned instruments and their way of talking is dressed up in a false and misplaced gravity. They lack all feeling of loyalty (wafā), to such an extent that adepts of loyalty suffer among them. The singer is indeed as disloyal as the shame-faced beggar (kungur). Even if thou shouldst protect them for years, letting them live beneath thy roof, and givest them nothing on just one single occasion, they will treat thee as a perfect stranger. They are women (shāhid), who trick people by taking the appearance of men, intriguers who hide behind affable facades to corrupt households. The nobility sees them as charmers using voice and music, for the common folk they are thieves carrying drums and banners. Ode: May no one suffer this din For its cry sends hope flying When it returns, the noise of the drum Drives away this bird so uncommon’14 If one is to believe the last lines of chapter 22, there’s decidedly little to admire among these second-rate artistes. Referring less to artistic patronage, which is often described in historiography despite its affecting only those at the top of the heap, than to acts of charity, Nawāʾī underlines the coarseness of behaviour and language that, according to him, characterises musicians, who are comparable to charlatans. We are close to the world of the streets, with their noises, their cries of jugglers – these may pull the wool over the eyes of polite society in Herat for a short time, but (Nawāʾī tells us) the good sense of the common people means they are not taken in. More serious than the moral fault or the abuse of trust, and shocking for our poet, is the depravation of language, echoing hollowly and rendered trivial. Chapter 23 confirms this impression: ‘The tellers of tales (qiṣṣasāz, qiṣṣakhwān) are good-for-nothings (bīkār) who recount ridiculous stories. They consume opium (maʿjūnnāk) or hashish (bangī) and try to draw a big crowd for their declamations. They’re constantly clapping their hands and speaking in loud gruff voices that frighten away the bird of decency and reason. They have the gestures of madmen and the words of drunkards. [The storytellers] sell camel-dung and call it sweetmeats and those among the crowd who believe them buy it and eat. Verse:

14

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 37–38 (279).

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They who buy neither elixir nor sweetmeats [the storytellers] Because of their noise the bazaar never knows peace’15 Not situated in the taverns, or in the backyards of the homes of the ruling ­classes, the qiṣṣakhwān occupy an improbable space between the street and the bazaar. Nawāʾī often exaggerates, but what he tells us is more realistic than it seems, whether he’s on the subject of drugs, dirty tricks, or raucous voices. He is speaking of small bands of street artistes, part jugglers (in the medieval sense) and part petty criminals, who skim the foam from the urban marketplaces, and in the description of whose activities the Maḥbūb al-qulūb delights. Once again, the poet deplores the empty, chaotic and rackety language of those who are in fact charged with taking on the burden of words. 3

Ruffians, Bohemians, Paupers

The reader of The beloved by all continues his descent into social hell in chapters 32, 33 and 34. Eternally forgotten by history, society’s rejects are no more dervishes than are musicians, singers and storytellers. Nevertheless, these people approach religious marginality in that dervishes seek among them, in a shared urban or peri-urban space, a source of inspiration and perhaps even a model of behaviour. On the subject of the yatīm – which should be translated as ‘crook’, ‘hoodlum’, ‘street urchin’, and not as ‘orphan’ – Nawāʾī explains that these people are ‘a rabble of scoundrels (awbāsh bilä ardhāl), whose lives and habits are not worthy of Muslims. Their natures are devoid of humanity; their characteristics draw on the vocabulary of savagery (sabuʿiyyat) even more than on that of animality (haywāniyyat). When the hoodlum starts his knife-play, he becomes an enraged dog and his knife turns into fangs. Sober he’s a mad mastiff, and when he’s drunk even the packs of wild dogs flee from him. [With] his hands, as a hyena would when sharpening his claws, he learns the technique (literally ‘learns a poem like a creed’) for the day when he will kill. Then he runs people through, whether they’re good or bad, and like the scorpion poisons those whom he stings. Among these men there is neither faith nor reason, nor shame nor dignity. Their work is dirty and inspires no trust; they act without pride and without fear. These ruffians inhabit the depths of the town (shahr tahï), crawling like reptiles. It is not only a necessity but also a duty to beware of them. Verse: 15

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 38 (279).

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The thing about them is that they wrong us The Prophet said: ‘kill beasts who harm us!’16 Chapter 32 continues to speak of the delinquents of Herat. One learns that they haunt its dark alleys and form a sort of mob of thieves, discreet but active, adept at armed attacks. Besides the final injunction to exterminate them, a sign of the elderly Nawāʾī’s disappointed vigour as he swings his walking-stick around his head, it is the violence of the language that is striking here. Reflecting like a mirror the brutality of the acts described, it unpityingly accuses people who have lost the right to call themselves believers and are excluded from humanity itself. Reptiles, scorpions, hyenas, dogs – insults rain down on them. Here it is troubling to note that this same vocabulary is applied to dervishes from the quills of the heresiographers and orthodox Sufis, although Nawāʾī is in two minds about this, as we will see. In some ways this language is not without relevance, since the marginal mystics deliberately lay claim to animal wildness, especially through the figure of the dog. The theme is too vast to attend to in detail here.17 Let us simply bear in mind that this canine figure offers a model for a humble piety bolstered by various behaviours, the sense of which is to define the mystic as God’s dog. The next chapter, 33, treats of strangers and the destitute (gharīb wa bī nawālar). In fact, the author is referring here to gypsies, as is made clear in the text from the beginning: ‘Most gypsies (jat wa lūlī) earn a living as jesters (muzhik) and follow simple rules. When they stand on their heads (muʿallaq urmaq) their baseness (khāksārlïgh) is fully revealed; when they raise their faces back up it’s their perfidiousness that becomes visible. On their arrogant faces [one can see] the camel releasing its dung; on their monkeys’ leashes [hangs] their humanity. It is from the very fact of being human (kishilik) that they are trying to flee by capering so; they open the door of reprobation themselves when they make a mockery of goodness.’18 Here again, playing with his habitual verve on metaphors of bodies and giving vent to a certain scatology, Nawāʾī does not hesitate to equate a human group with animals in order, finally, to exclude them from the human world. Nevertheless, behind these diatribes one discovers the little-known world of the gypsies of Herat. Acrobats and animal-tamers, of dubious origin, are perceived as foreign to the city. A tenacious tradition 16 17 18

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 48 (285–86). For more details, please see my study, “Dog of God: Animality and Wildness among Dervishes,” in Islamic Alternatives. Non-Mainstream Religion in Persianate Societies, ed. Shahrokh Raei (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2017), 121–38. ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 48–49 (286).

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considers them to be suspect beings denuded of all morality. What follows reaffirms this: ‘They eat what they have earned that very day. They don’t worry about the morrow. They don’t even complain about not having received what they’d asked for. Their homeland is any wretched ruins (khwārlïq wayrānasï); their houses are shabby hovels (khāksārlïgh kāshānasï). From sunrise their men and women disperse to find their pittances, boys and girls spread out across the streets of the town. Then each one brings back what she or he has earned and all assemble in a single place. They will not sleep as long as they have not consumed what they have earned. They don’t even know the question, “what shall we eat tomorrow?” What they will do on the morrow will be the same as what they did today; if such work could be worthy of a man it would be work indeed. This baseness is better than the pride that thinks itself human, this error is preferable to the illusion that such a life is good. Verse: A man, if he is a man, does not call himself a man He works and never says that he does the work of a man’19 Relegated to what were effectively the squats of the period, often ruins in which shelters were improvised, the gypsies were described almost as ‘noble savages’ – although the notion is of course a much later, occidental, usage – living from day to day without real worries but also without futures. However, Nawāʾī specifies that they are organised into bands of acrobats or mendicants, busy all day and coming together in the evening to share their booty. These activities inspire extreme contempt in our scholar, who sees in them a fresh sign of the inhuman state, from the enactment of which, as he writes in these few lines, the gypsies would not know how to desist. Dervishes are nowhere mentioned, in spite of the fact that they may also find themselves stumbling in rags through devastated neighbourhoods, coming together into mendicant cohorts and freeing themselves from the weight of all responsibilities. This may be a fairly vague analogy, beyond which it is difficult to go, but these common points can only awaken our desire to know more. We will return to a part of this problem when we discuss argotic languages. Chapter 34, the insistent beggars (mubrim gadālar): ‘Most indigent people have neither honour nor modesty. They wander around all day harassing people with their demands and marking out those whom they will burgle at night. They have no gratitude to people who do them favours; they never excuse themselves to those who grace them with their aid. Even when they’ve eaten, 19

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 49 (286).

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they’re like starving people, their stomachs are never filled; the same when they have drunk, it’s as though they had dropsy, their thirst is never quenched. Their wooden bowls (kachkūl) are full of chimeras like those of drug addicts (bangī) and their sacks (khārīṭa) contain visions that are multi-coloured like the spirits of false Sufis. Each patch that they’ve sewn [to their rags] could only be detached by the washer of cadavers; of all the money they’ve buried in the ground it would be impossible to dig up the least piastre. Their eyes are the ‘a’ of avidity and the ‘c’ of cupidity (‘the ‫ ﺺ‬of hirṣ and the ‫ ﻊ‬of ṭamaʿ’); it would be a dishonour to their souls and hearts to have to do without these two! Among them those who call themselves Qalandar shall be cursed, deprived of their humanity and attacked by Satan and his demons. They are so distant from humanity and Muslim identity (musulmānlïq) that hogs and bears would be more entitled to a place among men. Having arrived at the margins (karāna) of humanity through the metamorphoses in their appearance (shikl ṭaghryīri), they clothe themselves with an animal skin turned inside out (pūstīn ewürä), carrying this mark of animality and savagery. Whatever their appearance, be they tall or small, these horrible beggars make the pure of heart feel sick, as [would] perverse thoughts (fāsid). Quatrain: We cannot give them an order as we would to a man Nor as we would to a believer, a Muslim or a man Harmful natures, that we must rebuff, cannot know Of receiving orders that are meant for men’s souls’20 Beggars find no more favour in the eyes of Nawāʾī than do street thugs or gypsies – he sees through them right away: predatory wanderers during the day, thieves at night, faithless and lawless, for him indigent beggars are certainly part of the dangerous classes of Herati society. Balanced between gluttony and œdema, the bodies of the destitute say everything about their monstrous condition, cut off from all possibility of humanity. What strikes us as more interesting is the comparison with the dervishes. Both groups live in destitution, with only a few small coins, their begging bowls (the famous kachkūl or kashkūl), their flat purses and the pelt (pūstīn) that serves as a coat, a rug, a blanket. Here again, what our emir perceives as evidence of a bestial savagery can also be seen to signify pious humility among the antinomian mystics who admire animal innocence. In addition, the text explicitly cites the religious and anthropological marginality that Muslim antinomianism seeks out, regardless of the author’s disapproval. Finally, we must not forget the mention of hashish 20

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 50–51 (287).

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(bang) whose psychotropic virtues are used in various ways by the dervishes, as we have seen in our introduction. It is clear that for Nawāʾī there is a strict distinction between beggars and real Sufis. The first group apes the second in order to extract additional alms. They resemble the many false Sufis that seem to swarm in Herat, and of whom the next part of the text will speak again; these beggars do not hesitate to call themselves Qalandars. They are, alas, a mere caricature of the Qalandar, to such an extent that the name Qalandar itself is from this point on (at the beginning of the sixteenth century) an insult that the poet never again uses in this text to refer to those whom he recognises as authentic ascetics. In fact, this was already a familiar problem: the first treatises of Sufism already complained of false mystics and sought normative criteria in order to discriminate between real and false Sufis. The Maḥbūb al-qulūb expresses the same disquiet, but continues to believe in the existence of sincere dervishes. For the historian of the marginal, on the other hand, to differentiate among things that cannot be told apart has no sense, since it is precisely in ambiguity that the dervish is situated – somewhere between misfortunate and mystagogue. It is therefore a question less of uncovering a mystical truth than a sociological reality. What is more relevant for our purposes is that the problem of appellation brings us back to the question of names that popular language corrupts, according to Nawāʾī, who concludes by declaring that beggars, as perverse beings par excellence, understand nothing of what men, believers or Muslims say to them. This is the case not only for orders (ḥukm), and for law, but even for the understanding of the contents of the law. Where is the good in addressing people who misappropriate even words themselves? 4

Real and False Dervishes

The final chapters of the social study of Herat are devoted to dervishes: the kind who appear dervish-like or those who genuinely are so. Hypocritical shaykhs, the bêtes noires of the Sufi poet, are reputed ‘to take great care of their appearances (jilwa namāyï). Like vulgar copper that is covered with gold leaf, their exteriors are beautiful, but their interiors are ugly. Their bodies (ṣūratï) are like those of the dervishes, but their spirits (maʿnīsi) are profoundly perfidious. Their ornaments (ārāstalïghï) are well-anchored, but their prodigious accomplishments (karāmātï) are pure illusion.’21 Nawāʾī is attacking charlatans who pass themselves off as mystics. He remains faithful to the provisions put 21

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 59 (293).

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into place from the beginning of his text, interpreting bodies and acts to unveil their symbolic meaning. The next part of the text specifies what these ornaments are: ‘Their turbans are the weight of authority, and each hair on their heads is a perverse idea; the frock on their shoulders is entirely parti-coloured, and their coats hide their vices, in which each thread turns the wheel of cunning; their tooth-picks sharpen the teeth of greediness; in their comb-purses they conceal the instrument that mocks people to their faces (rīshkhand ālatï); they tell their beads as one would play at dice, and stretch their prayers out to impress their audience (literally ‘so that people see them’); The [poor] hat they happen to wear (kulāh-i dawlat) happens to be a turban of good fortune (dawlatmandgha dastār), and the hat’s longest ribbons (ʿilāqa) are as fine as the fox’s neckfur; their untimely exclamations (maḥallsïz ṣayḥa) are as hard to put up with as those of hens who cackle at all hours; they are so negligent that their litanies resemble the crane-like cries uttered by the drunkards at banquets.’22 Nawāʾī mocks the accoutrements so characteristic of these dervishes who are too beautiful to be real, and purposely distorts the symbolic meanings that are, in theory, attached to these too-perfect garments; in the second chapter of this book we will discuss similar subjects in depth. Here spiritual virtue is compared and opposed to vice, cupidity, imposture, etc. In addition, by borrowing from the register of the animal kingdom, the text again insists on the harm that false shaykhs do to language itself – the very language of the Sufis who praise and psalmodise – which here is reduced to drunken squalling. But there is worse to come: ‘All that they recount is but ruse, all that they do is from selfish motives only. All their dreams are invented and awake all that they say is only lies. Their concerts (samāʿ) are not according to regulations, their ecstasies disregard all definition. They are as over-fussy (pīch dar pīch) in appearance as they are completely useless at interiority, from their heads to their feet. This perverse nature and all this decoration present such a contrast to the essence of virtuous men. Alas, alas! Such shamefulness, such shamefulness! It is poignant to observe that they even have disciples and that these serve them blindly. [These false shaykhs] do good business (dukkānï yürütüp), with a head for sales (tadbīr bilä), keeping hold of their troops through fraud, to such an extent that Satan himself is speechless and demons are disgusted. Quatrain: What ruses, deceit and falseness in the name of poverty Like a sultanate sitting on straw employing his majesty 22

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 60 (293).

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If the king thinks he’s a dervish and the false dervish thinks he’s a king Both are wrong, both lack integrity, so it’s not surprising’23 Chapter 38 comes to a close in bitterness. Nawāʾī sees the charlatans of Sufism as mere hoaxers, often comical. The contemporary historian may concede them the benefit of the doubt and certainly notices the sinuous courses followed by dervishes, leading them to the frontiers of Islam in the very name, usurped or not, of Islam itself. There is a certain arrogant grace, an insolence even, in playing at piety and overplaying faith. The words of the hypocrite shaykhs may ring false, but they still leave their mark on the faithful of Herat who are always on the lookout for new signs. Their music and their ecstatic dances seem outrageous and yet it is this very excess that defines Muslim antinomianism. Their accoutrements are absurd, but does this not drive home the ridiculousness of social appearances? The regrets that our old observer expresses are proportional to the popular success enjoyed by his salesmen of the mystical. If the final poem dwells with anxiety on the reversal of roles that results from a confusion between saintliness and sovereignty, it also betrays the existence of a tendency in society to subvert political and religious norms. We are approaching the situation in which there is a little Carnival every day. The next chapter, 39, deals with the dissolute (kharābāt ahlï, rind-i kharābātī), on the subject of whom our author writes that ‘they spend their time drinking wine; the desire for drink makes bubbles in their heads and like the bottle near the glass they rest their heads. At the tavern (dayr), in any corner where he spots a little party (bazm) [the alcoholic] slips in on the pretext of serving people, encouraging them to drink more so that he can polish off what’s left in their glasses (literally ‘takes the turban of pride from their heads and throws it down at the feet of the bartender’). Frequenting the places where alcohol is sold, he loses all his worldly goods; dependent on alcohol he has nothing left. When he takes the glass in his hand every young waiter in a tavern (mughbachcha) seems even more magnificent than Jamshīd the king, so [the drinker] venerates him like an idol and prostrates himself at the feet of the bartender (dayr pīri). His collar the drunkard tears off with joy; his heart is wounded by the sharp tips of love. At the tavern he begs unceasingly for his wine and holds a potsherd in his hand. In the stinking alleyways (ruswālïgh kūyïda) he walks barefoot and bare-headed, beaten as high as his brow by nasty drunkards.’24 This gripping portrait of the average alcoholic in Herat during the fifteenth or sixteenth century reveals a sombre face of society that the historical sources 23 24

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 60–61 (293). ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 61 (294).

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habitually prefer to forget. But what bothers Nawāʾī, who is little inclined to pity, is not so much the physical or social descent that he has just so minutely described as the drunkard’s general attitude that is contrary to laws and especially to good Islamic mores, thus presenting a model that’s counter to that of the Sufi gentleman. ‘To trample (pāmāl qïlur) on his own being, in gathering places he takes a place on the doormat (saff-i niʿāl). He doesn’t bother to put his turban on or to cover his neck with a mantle (ridāʾ). His soul is so lowly, so near the earth (tofraqqa hamdast), that when it rises up even the sky becomes low. His heart is not saddened by the current mood (zamān nawāyï); the blows of destiny cause no pain to his spirit. He fears neither life nor death (wujūd ū ʿadam); in the order of his aspirations (himmatï alïda) being and nothingness come to the same thing. He takes pleasure in weeping tears as bitter as the jar of wine, and rejoices in sinking downward like the flow of wine. In the wine-shop he never looks healthy, he never thinks of the state of the world or his times, he couldn’t care less (ishi yoq) about the good or evil of his times. One could persuade oneself that no such individual could possibly exist anywhere in the world!’25 Nawāʾī refers implicitly to Sufis several times in this passage: the turban, the mantle … and especially the threshold where one removes one’s shoes, as in the mosque he evokes in his autobiography. Here it becomes a doormat to be trampled over, with a person squatting on it whose potentially great soul is reduced to its basest instincts. This himmat, so prized by the Persian moralia, especially by the Sufis, represents a cardinal virtue, naming the elevation of spirit that the pious Muslim who follows any initiatic path must aspire to. It’s just the other way around for the inveterate drunkard who, in the same way as his actions matter to him only in their literal sense, understands only the literal meaning of taverns and wine, with no inkling of their mystical interpretation. Everything happens as if the debased man had abolished metaphor in order to preserve only the cold dry contents of his own destruction. One would almost think he was an antinomian! Finally, our author reproaches the drinker for his sovereign indifference both to the zeitgeist that presides in his day and to the promised life beyond, and this contrasts markedly with the man of the world that the Sufi must to some extent remain as he waits anxiously for the Last Judgement. It is therefore religion that is at stake in this chapter, even more than morality, and what follows underlines this: ‘The obscurantism of the materialists (dahr ahlï ẓulmï) tries to tell us that this is a correct way of life, and even invokes God’s mercy. [They think that] existence is annihilated in the earth of their tavern and hope that God’s grace will 25

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 61–62 (294).

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grant them eternal subsistence (wujūd maykadasï tofraghïda fānī umīdi ḥaqq karamïdïn baqā-yi jāwidānï). [Thus] happiness and good fortune would accrue to wrong-doers; kings would sigh for not having the same chances. Quatrain: The ruffian who drinks unceasingly of non-existence Neither on earthly life nor on heaven feels dependence He blunts himself day and night, relying on God’s power He overdoes things even more than the false renouncer Let us nevertheless hope that it is to the unfortunate (nāmurādlar) that God grants the fortune of annihilation, the opportunity of repentance and eternal subsistence itself.’26 The end of this chapter is therefore a doctrinal discussion, as allusive as it is determinative. According to Nawāʾī, the partisans of materialism (ahl-i dahr, dahriyya) identify bodily drunkenness with drunkenness of the spirit. There is nothing metaphorical about debauchery if it once finds its justification in the annihilation of the self and the hope for divine pardon, regardless of lifestyle. Approaching antinomianism, from the point of view of orthodoxy and the heresiographers, materialism is reputed to assign all human life to the here and now, which leads rapidly to a hedonistic morality; worse than the false Sufi of the preceding chapter, dahrī can signify ‘he who “denies the Lord”, creation, reward and punishment, all religion and all law, who listens only to his own desires and sees evil only in what constrains him; he knows not the difference between men and cattle or even wild animals.’27 If ‘mystical’ and ‘ethyl’ are a single entity according to the materialists, suggests Nawāʾī, there is no longer any morality or faith. Values are inverted and there is no meaning to God’s action. These arguments also act as a transition, leading to the final social group to be highlighted in the Maḥbūb al-qulūb: dervishes. Chapter 40 begins with a definition: ‘The dervish is the one who meditates on consent to God (riḍā andīsh). Even if one hundred needles were to pierce him from inside, outwardly he would remain perfectly calm.’28 It is therefore a general attitude that defines the mystic, who masters himself and is promised to God’s divine will, never straying or showing off. ‘The dervish must be like this: he puts into practice the path of sincerity (ṣidq) and of annihilation (fanā), and shows himself exactly as he is; with severe exercises he attenuates 26 27 28

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 62 (294). Ignaz Goldziher and Anne-Marie Goichon, “Dahriyya,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., BrillOnline. ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 62 (295).

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the coarseness of self-love (anāniyyat) and, thanks to enormous efforts, escapes the violence of his personality (nafsāniyyat); thus he steps onto the path of poverty, crosses the valley of separation from existence and reaches the peaceful and contemplative home of annihilation of self. To his own spirit, thus elevated, it seems (himmatï naẓarïgha) that he has no being outside of God, and even that there is only nothingness aside from absolute existence. Not only does his interior conform to his exterior, he is in fact more pure than this; his interiority (bāṭin) is not merely equal to his exteriority (ẓāhir), it is even more luminous. If one can see from his appearance that he is dissimulating in order to hide his essence, his intentions will not be accomplished.’29 These explicitly normative passages prescribe rather than describing. This is a point of view that’s the opposite as much of antinomian conceptions as of the historic figure of the dervish as depicted in the manifesto of Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī and in the preceding developments, devoted to so-called false dervishes, of the Maḥbūb al-qulūb. Here Nawāʾī is indulging in the (after all) classical exercise of explaining the concept of ṭarīqat (the path), which the reader must understand as a spiritual journey from inside oneself to beyond the self, and towards God. Having alluded to the spiritual baseness of the drunkard (read: the antinomian dervish), he then reintroduces the himmat in its real sense: the elevated moral and religious viewpoint of the Sufi. According to this logic, from the false we can distinguish the genuine mystic by his intellectual rigour, which affects even his body, his behaviour and his way of life. Thus this rhetorical question: ‘How could interior clarity be opposed to external obscurity? The habit of the dervish is torn, as treasure is concealed within waste; the mystic (ṣafā ahlï) wears rags like king Feridun who hides his treasure among ruins. Among spiritual beings (maʿnī ahlï) the truth is kept hidden, superficial people (ṣūrat ahlï) make an exhibition of the truth (daʿwī), but to exhibit oneself makes no sense, in truth.’30 Here Nawāʾī certainly allows for the possibility of a savage-looking mystic, but not for the idea that such a mystic would be antinomian. ‘Great men (erenlär) conceal their own spiritual states and invert (bāz-gunā) their actions into behaviour that is blameable; they destroy the foundations of appearance and build up the foundations of essence. Whatever their fate, they side with consent, tolerate the insults and reproaches of society (ʿālam ahlï). They manage without food and drink; in consent to God they accept suffering and vexation. Their home is the lodge of consent and submission (riḍā ū taslīm zāwiyasï); their resting-place is the desert of poverty and of annihilation (faqr 29 30

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 62–63 (295). ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 63 (295).

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ū fanā bādiyasï). Civility and modesty form their golden rule; for friends as for enemies they bear only good thoughts. It is through these qualities and rules that one becomes a dervish. Quatrain: Lord! May the bird of annihilation be prepared May he be caught by my net, not prepared May God put me on the path of destitution And send me to the lodge of annihilation’31 For Nawāʾī, the ‘blameable’ form adopted by the dervish is not that of the marginal person, but rather that of the ascetic. The society that despises him is not the conformist majority but the profane world in general, excluded from the spiritual elite. This text echoes the hierarchies of the Sufis as established by Nawāʾī’s friend and mentor, Jāmī, in one of his writings.32 As for the dervishes, what Nawāʾī defines in the above lines in no way corresponds to the marginal dervishes with whom we are dealing here, and has more to do with Sufi saints (eren) – ascetic, submissive and consenting – who are entirely oriented towards legalism and orthodoxy. At the very heart of this debate lies the notion of fanā or annihilation. For our Timurid scholar it is essential to disassociate this notion from any practical or social significance or context, that is to say, from all the life choices (causes of marginalisation) mentioned in chapters 38 and 39. Promoted as an intellectual discipline to purge the ego and no longer conceived in terms of socio-religious nihilism, the fanā re-establishes the dervish at the very centre of the Muslim city. It is for this reason that Nawāʾī does not attribute any specific space to the dervish, unless we count the space of public transparency, where civility and proper sentiments stand side by side. 5

Other Sources: Names and Words

In spite of the very definite opinions expressed in the Maḥbūb al-qulūb, Nawāʾī was more fascinated by religious marginality than was any other observer of Timurid Herat. Wāṣifī, who wrote his personal memoirs a few decades later in the 1530s, spends little time on this subject. He nevertheless evokes the presence of wise fools (ʿuqalāʾ al-majānīn) by mentioning Mawlānā Darwīsh 31 32

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 63–64 (295). For more on this point, see Alexandre Papas, “Individual Sanctity and Islamization in the ṭabaqāt Books of Jāmī, Nawāʾī, Lāmiʿī, and Some Others,” in Jāmī in Regional Contexts: The Reception of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī’s Works in the Islamicate World, ca. 9th/15th-14th/20th, eds. Thibaut d’Hubert and Alexandre Papas (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 378–423.

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Figure 2 Ecstatic dance of the dervishes

Dīwāna-yi Shamʿrīz (‘the lamplighter’) along with a few anecdotes about him that were recounted to divert the court of the Uzbek khan ʿUbayd Allāh (r. 940–946/1534–1539)33: One day the dervish set himself up in the central crossroads (chahārsūq) of the town. A crowd gathered around him. He raised his voice and cried: ‘Ho, bunch of ignoramuses! Why aren’t you praising God for having brought you into this happy era? In olden times pious men were masters of the mystical arts, like Junayd Baghdādī (d. 297/910), Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī, Aḥmad Jāmī 33

Zayn al-Dīn Maḥmūd Wāṣifī, Badāʾiʿ al-waqāʾiʿ, 1:249–52.

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(d. 536/1141) and ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī (d. 481/1089). Today, who are the pious men? Palang Tabarrānī, Ḥusāmī Maddāḥ, Ashraf Astarābādī and Zangīcha Tūnī – the worst heretics, notoriously bad, sinister, faithless, stupid and ignorant!’ This happened at the time of the Savafid regime, and this last list of names (which are unknown) alludes to Shiites and their cantors.34 Elsewhere the dervish searches the ground around him but fails to find dung from any Uzbek horses; here his implicit reference is to the defeat of the Uzbeks at the hands of the Savafids. Beyond these specifics, it is the very character of Darwīsh Dīwāna that attracts attention, because his provocations so recall one of the primary functions of marginal people. Reputed for his witty sayings (nukāt-i shīrīn rangīn), the wise fool attracts hordes of people to such populated spots as the bridge of Mālān, not far from Herat, where he is said to have told a story so funny it made the laughing ʿUbayd Allāh Khān roll on the ground (az khanda bar zamīn ghaltīdand). Another tale sees Darwīsh Dīwāna liberating himself from vengeful Shiite extremists by making them burst out laughing in a sort of momentary complicity among heterodox believers. Less anecdotal is a pilgrimage guide by Aṣīl al-Dīn (d. 883/1479), written in 864/1459, which includes almost twenty biographies of marginal dervishes among its 209 biographical notices. These have heretofore been overlooked by historians of Islam under the Timurids.35 Shaykh Sayf al-Dīn Turk was an enraptured Sufi (majdhūb) who had formerly been under the spiritual direction of Quṭb al-Dīn Ḥaydar, the twelfththirteenth century mystic whom we have already mentioned.36 Beloved by all the inhabitants of Herat, who forgave him his ecstatic excesses, he wore the habit of the Malāmatī, the ‘men of blame’. Initially he lived near a mausoleum in the Khiyābān quarter, but there he was constantly disturbed by the coming and going of the public. Finally he settled in Gāzurgāh, north of Herat, where the remains of the saint ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī are preserved and where he practiced his devotions. He had some disciples. Among the enraptured can also be numbered Akhī Muḥammad and Akhī Maḥmūd, both disciples of a certain 34 35

36

Jean Calmard, “Les rituels shiites et le pouvoir. L’imposition du shiisme safavide: eulogies et malédictions coraniques,” in Etudes Safavides, ed. Jean Calmard (Paris-Tehran: Institut français de recherche en Iran, 1993), 130–31. Sayyid Aṣīl al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh Wāʿiẓ, Maqṣad al-iqbāl-i sulṭāniyya wa marṣad al-āmāl-i khāqāniyya, ed. Māyil Hirawī (Tehran: Pazhūhishgāh-i ʿulūm-i insānī wa muṭāliʿāt-i farhangī, 1386/2007). This book contains a second guide, composed in the eighteenth century, which supplements the first with 94 additional notices. Here, on p. 105, one may find the name of the dervish Mawlānā Ghiyāth al-Dīn Shamʿrīz, who was buried near the Naqshbandī shaykh Saʿd al-Dīn Kāshgharī (d. 860/1456). Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 41.

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Bābā Sangū (d. 786/1385), to whom we shall return.37 The first of these men is buried beside a madrasa in Khiyābān, the second on the Mukhtār hill north of Herat. All of the people who make pious visits to their tombs tell them their most intimate secrets. Outside one of the gates of the town fifteenth century pilgrims could find the holy remains of Malāmatī Pīr Fakhr Thānī, of the lunatic (majnūn) Bābā Qanbar and of the enraptured dervish Mawlānā Ḥājjī Abdāl.38 They probably lived during the Kart period (643–791/1245–1389), like the majdhūb Bābā Ḥidā39 and possibly Pīr Turk.40 Our ‘prosopographer’ is naturally more laconic when describing the more recent dervishes, that is to say those who had died during the first half of the fifteenth century. On the subject of Bābā Arslān, God’s madman (dīwāna), a great Sufi shaykh advised Aṣīl al-Dīn himself to pay him a visit in town each week, in order to witness his wonders; Pīr Sih Sad Sāla, who died in 823/1420 after having lived more than 300 years (according to popular legend), spent most of his time among the gazelles in the mountains or the desert.41 Town dervishes or country dervishes, this handful of marginal men did not saturate Herat’s market in spirituality, which was mostly taken up by the Sufi orders and masters, but they added a great deal of colour to the scene. Most of them were majdhūb: after having studied the hadith and jurisprudence with the great scholars, Zayn alʿĀbidīn joined the ranks of the ecstatics and ended his 120-year life (!) on the hillside where he lived; Bābā Zakaryā, for his part, lived in the street in Khiyābān.42 A former soldier and man of violence, Bābā Ḥasan Turk was punished once, in Tus (Iran), and when he returned to Herat he gave his horse, his weapon and his personal effects to the dervishes of the Injīl quarter, near the ramparts. He put on the skin of an animal (pūstīn) and settled in Khiyābān’s cemetery. His gift of second sight drew Turks as well as Tajiks to the town to consult him.43 Bābā Khamīrgar (the baker’s man) also lived in this cemetery. As for Bābā Jamāl, he had started out as a schoolmaster. After a mystical crisis he began taking care of cleaning the canals, in summer as well as in winter. He would speak the letters of the alphabet aloud, as well as a few surahs of the Quran, and stood upright (qiyām) at the end of his prayers, rather than at the beginning as is customary. His few followers supported him by inviting him into their homes, and sometimes Bābā Jamāl would ask what his host was 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 47. Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 59–60. Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 62. Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 67. Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 74. Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 84. Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 85–86.

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d­ oing disturbing him there! Then he would jump up and furiously leave the house, without thanking anyone. This story is slightly reminiscent of Nawāʾī’s descriptions of artistes and beggars, whom he reproaches for their lack of grati­ tude to their benefactors. Summer and winter, rain or snow – we read – Pīr Surkh manned his stall on the outskirts of Herat, on the road leading towards Sāq Salmān village; his feet were black and blue as a result.44 He prayed and performed his ablutions and never asked anyone for anything. Those who knew of his state helped him with food, but the dervish would accept and eat it only when he had no doubt about the donor’s intentions. Presented as a Malāmatī, Bābā Gīlānī first settled in the boiler room of a hammam opposite one of the gates of Herat, and later lived in a lodge (takiyya) near the Zubaydā park, around which he planted crops on several pieces of land, making agricultural fields of them.45 Malāmatīs and Qalandars served him constantly, city-dwellers came to see him and a big cauldron of food circulated among them at all times. In this text one also finds the name of Sayyid Ghiyāth al-Dīn (d. 862/1457), who was said to have a penetrating gaze, to speak decisively and to pierce mysteries.46 Finally we have the raving Bābā Kūkī, who died in 864/1459 and whose body rests in Khiyābān. He was known for his sarcastic sallies (sukhanān-i talkh).47 The text tells us that one day he even threw a stone at a minister of Babur, but escaped the caning that he was threatened with because the vizier had in the meantime been dismissed. The urban legends collected by that scrupulous memorialist Aṣīl al-Dīn (if we remember to make allowances for exaggerations the unlikeliness of which is matched only, for the believer, by their evident truthfulness) indisputably, if disconcertingly for modern eyes, testify to the religious realities of his time. Such dervishes were flesh and blood men, who really existed. What they actually said and did is of secondary importance, because all that counts is what they represent. It’s therefore not a question of separating the good historic wheat from the hagiographic chaff, but rather of understanding the general feelings of the population regarding Islamic marginality. The Maqṣad al-iqbāl concerns itself with distinguishing between the true and the false dervish, following the example of the pious society of which it is the memorial product and with which it shares a common preoccupation: if God so chooses, then sainthood can exist among madmen and ruffians. However, the attribution of 44 45 46 47

Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 86–87. Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 87–88. Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 89. Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 93.

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saintliness to these dervishes varies much more than with ‘conventional’ saints, and resists settling into a consensus. Someone might be venerated at one time and not in the following period; someone else might be saluted by some people and not by others. Consequently, one must understand marginality as, on the one hand, antinomianism – being at odds with or apart from the law – and on the other as precariousness, with acceptance into society constantly being called into question. Another of Nawāʾī’s writings, the great hagiographical dictionary Nasāʾim al-maḥabba composed in 901/1495, or just over three decades after the Maqṣad al-iqbāl, reveals that the prolific author is more fascinated by dervishes than is Aṣīl al-Dīn, but especially differs in his choices of subjects – either because some names were forgotten or because certain dervishes had lost their auras of holiness. As Nawāʾī’s dictionary covers a very large geographical area, we will present only the Khorasanian cases here.48 The mystic Bābā Sangū, who is mentioned only in passing by Aṣīl al-Dīn, because he was not Herati, got more attention in the Nasāʾim al-maḥabba49: this majdhūb lived in the small town of Andkhoy in the north of today’s Afghanistan. A story that was well known at the time relates that Bābā Sangū threw a piece of fresh meat at the feet of Tamerlane as he was preparing to conquer Khorasan. To the emir, the gesture seemed to augur well, signifying that God would deliver the province to him like the remains of this animal. Nawāʾī adds that Bābā Sangū’s tomb in Andkhoy also contains the body of his successor, Bābā Jān Bābā, and of this latter’s own successor, Bābā Ibrāhīm, and that there is a Sufi lodge nearby where dervishes live. A companion to this preceding biographical notice presents Mawlānā Muḥyī, also from Andkhoy (d. 865/1460)50: as a child, while crossing the bazaar with his imam father, they encountered Bābā Sangū. The dervish took the little boy’s hand, accompanied him to the sweetshop, and offered him some halva. Later, the young Muḥyī always remembered: ‘The sweetness of that halva has never left my spirit’. He went to Samarkand to study and devoted his life to spiritual exercises, reading the entire Quran each day. He and his disciples had a Sufi

48 49

50

For more details, biographies and a comparison with other hagiographical dictionaries, notably the Nafaḥāt al-uns, by Jāmī, I refer the reader to Alexandre Papas, “Individual Sanctity and Islamization.” ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba min shamāʾim al-futuwwa, ed. Hamidxon Islomii (Tashkent: Movarounnahr, 2011), 334. The anecdote that follows is often cited by historians of the Timurids, starting with Vassili V. Barthold, Four Studies on the History of Central Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1958), 2:20. The orientalist reduces Bābā Sangū to the status of an idiot and misses the antinomian aspect of his character completely. ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 341–42.

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lodge. His only clothing was a large woolen shawl (probably similar to the ‘patu’ worn in today’s Afghanistan) and a piece of cloth worn as a tunic. As with his defence of radical piety and Sufi asceticism, formulated in the Maḥbūb al-qulūb and the introduction to the Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, Nawāʾī does not exclude their most radical forms when he speaks of names or of life stories, any more than he excludes them from a moral discussion. The madman Bābā Kūkī, already mentioned by Aṣīl al-Dīn, was the object of stories transmitted to Nawāʾī by his (Nawāʾī’s) own father.51 The tribulations of Bābā Ḥasan Turk are also mentioned in the Nasāʾīm al-maḥabba, but these are more provocative in nature.52 The scene takes place one winter: lost in a state of ecstatic unconsciousness the majdhūb is completely naked when he leaves his lodge. Freezing, he spots the smoke from the hammam. The guard refuses to let him enter and Bābā Ḥasan accidentally kills him. When a relative of the victim brings the murderer before Shāhrukh, that he might be judged, the dervish says to the khan: ‘Thou hast killed so many people, myself I have killed only one!’ The relative eventually accepts pecuniary compensation and withdraws his complaint. The important thing is not whether one believes this story or not, it is rather the formula that has been put together here – the verbal farce that catches hold of the reader. Nawāʾī cites many spectacular cases that are not mentioned by Aṣīl al-Dīn. For example, Mawlānā Shams al-Dīn Maʿdābādī spent thirty years inside a mosque (possibly in Torbat-i Jām), never going outside except to perform his ablutions and fulfil his bodily needs. He was in the habit of lying down on an old rush mat with a brick for a pillow. Following the Prophet’s example, he broke his own thirty-two teeth.53 A fourteenth century poet called Darwīsh Manṣūr fasted almost permanently, while the mystical madman Bābā Jalīl was said to manage without food, or even drink, for most of the time.54 Another majdhūb, Bābā ʿAlī Pāy Ḥiṣārī, lived to the east of Herat under the reign of Shāhrukh; as a sign of penitence after the execution, in a sort of bad conscience on the part of a village community, of a man of religion who had been accused of fanaticism, he stopped speaking altogether.55 It is fascinating to observe that Nawāʾī personally knew and even frequented several of these marginal people. The demented (tilbe) Baluchi, Bābā Shihāb, 51 52 53 54 55

ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 350. ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 353–54. ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 349. The fact of pulling one’s own teeth refers to Uways Qaranī who was said to have uprooted 32 of his teeth in honour of the Prophet, and who lost two teeth in the battle of Uḥud. ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 343, 354. ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 352.

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was a poverty-stricken man who was ceaselessly tormented by children who often threw stones at him.56 He maintained some sort of relations with Nawāʾī and visited him on occasion. One day, ‘attacking his own ego’ (as the text tells us), wearing filthy clothes, he sat down near Nawāʾī, who heard him pronounce the following verses: ‘I sit where my path takes me/ I do not sit where my place may be’. One fine day he disappeared and no one knew whether he was alive or dead. A sayyid (descendant of the Prophet) from Anatolia (Rūm) called Bābā Sarïgh Pūlād was also close to Nawāʾī.57 Plunged into a permanent state of fanā, this dervish wore only a woolen cape and refused to accept any food from people. If they continued to insist, he took only the smallest portion. He was killed somewhere on the road to Mecca and it is not known where his body lies. A final name is that of Bābā Pīrī58: this ecstatic majdhūb occupied the same decrepit spot for nearly forty years, never leaving it. Living more or less on the street, he had the unfortunate habit of insulting passers-by. Nawāʾī admits that he was himself afraid to approach him. On one occasion, in reply to a friend who asked the poet why he always avoided the street where Bābā Pīrī lived, Nawāʾī explained that he didn’t want to have to listen to obscenities. His friend urged him to go there anyway, because the dervish had a reputation for supernatural powers. When Nawāʾī finally nerved himself to pass in front of the misanthrope, he saw that against all expectations Bābā Pīrī was engaged in prayer. Bābā Pīrī’s tomb can be found near the bridge over the Injīl canal. Rather than just continuing to add biographical notices to the pile, let us retain two lessons from this series: in spite of the warnings and discriminations formulated by Nawāʾī in The beloved of all, the examples offered in other ­sources, of dervishes promoted to the ranks of sainthood, allow for a certain ambiguity because of the extent to which their practices, choices and ways of life seem to resemble those of antinomianism. The border between spirituality and deviancy thus remains fairly indistinct. Whatever the state of legitimacy of one or other of these men, the fact remains that a historiographic window has been opened on the little-known world of Herat during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Behind the big names, so to speak59, seethes an off-centre social life that mixes Sufism and subversion, the traces of which would be lost over the coming centuries. It seems, in effect, that at the dawn of modernity the dervishes little by little disappeared from the urban landscape, moving from the margins to the outside, to exist alongside other excluded groups, of 56 57 58 59

ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 354. ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 354. ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 353. For the first half of the fifteenth century see, for example, the personalities presented in Beatrice Forbes Manz, Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran, 228–38.

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which the final incarnation would be none other than the ‘growing army of addicts’ in the outskirts of Herat mentioned in a recent New York Times article.60 Another possible incarnation might be represented, less dramatically, by the Afghan Shaykh Mohammadi pedlars who claimed descent from saint Ruḥānī Bābā, in spite of their social decline, and who used a secret language, the ādūrgarī, at least until the 1970s. The Malang shaykh himself would have lived three or four hundred years ago.61 Let us declare that other sources will certainly allow us to learn more, and that we will also learn more details about chronology (while acknowledging its summary nature). In addition and above all, if we look again at the number of references to speech, to language and to words in these texts, we see that the dervish adopts a paradoxical linguistic regime. While the Maḥbūb al-qulūb hears only a depravation of a language, that is reduced to a tissue of coarseness, a loss of meaning when all content is drowned out within grunts and groans, a degradation that makes word mean their opposites, maybe even an end to metaphor forever, our other sources, including the Nasāʾīm al-maḥabba, discern language that has been liberated. Whatever the distinctions established among the speakers – and we have observed that these distinctions are incompatible with a historian’s vision of facts as remaining indifferent to normative stakes – the dervish is primarily the one who laughs and makes others laugh. Jokes and practical jokes, sarcasm, provocations … there is something of the buffoon in this personage who seems to say aloud in a tone of raw truth the things that everyone is thinking – could one see the resemblance with, for example, Ortis, the Muslim jester who became a Cordelier at the court of François I? What’s more, marginal people demonstrate economy of speech, opposed to eloquence, lyricism, erudition and everything that would constitute the refined ways of speaking of the honest man, rejecting refined speech in favour of clever quips and sound-bites, (some) prayers, scattered verses, and even the merest letters of the alphabet, and so inclining inexorably to mutism. However, it is striking to read, in the third chapter of the Maḥbūb al-qulūb entitled ‘Anthology of various morals and sentences’, several observations on language that do not entirely do away with doubts about dervishes’ use of language. The first of these says that ‘for the men of the fanā, to speak much is deplorable and to listen much is desirable; listening fills men’s hearts, speaking empties them; the speaker is such that he is a listener as much as a speaker; to say too much is to be wrong often; to eat too much is to fall often; too much food sickens the body, 60 61

Azam Ahmed, “That Other Big Afghan Crisis, the Growing Army of Addicts,” The New York Times, 2 November 2013. . Asta Olesen, Afghan Craftsmen. The Culture of Three Itinerant Communities (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), 131–44.

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too much discourse sickens the soul; excessive speech comes from pride in words, excessive eating comes from submission to the ego; these defects are excessive among mankind and cause him to make an idol of himself (khūd parastlïq).’62 Evidently, Nawāʾī, like the good moralist that he is, exhorts the Sufis to moderate their language as they temper their appetites. Nevertheless, nothing forbids us from recognising in these lines of his an intuition, about mystical language defining itself as the opposite of a poetic language trapped in its own rhetorical artifice.63 The poet (for he is a poet) uses the very metrical and rhythmical ruses of poetic eloquence in order to denounce poetic eloquence and promote a language for ascetics, not so different from that of the most radical dervishes. One certainly reads in the Maḥbūb that ‘in the heart, acid words are like wounds, bitter words like poisoned arrows. The heart does not heal from a word-scar, no balm can cure this pain; as the cutting word wounds the heart, so the soft word can bring it peace; sweet words will sooth savages and incantations call serpents forth from their lairs (…) A language without meaning is for a people who honour nothing; he who constantly gabbles (harzigūy) is like a dog that barks all night; slander wounds hearts but strikes its author’.64 This moralisation is not content merely to police language, it also recalls what is essentially at stake in a series of allusive phrases: ‘The agreeable tongue is better if it works with the heart (…) Man by his language distinguishes himself from the animals, and from his brothers, too (…) The worthy language of Hamadānī made a Messiah of him, but the too-quick tongue of Ḥallāj made him worthy of the pillory.’65 There follow some thoughts about lies and the necessity of telling the truth66, summed up in a single phrase: ‘The liar is not a man, to tell lies would not be the way of saints’.67 Finally, the reader may appreciate this last discreet provocation: ‘In the words of the drunkard all is not senselessness, in the nonsense of the madman all is not unreason.’68 Proper to humans, language, according to Nawāʾī, also distinguishes the mystic from other men in that it binds together his entire vocation with no possible evasion, as evinced by ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī and Manṣūr Ḥallāj (d. 309/922), both tortured to death for having blasphemed. 62 63

64 65 66 67 68

ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 101. I have also attempted to uphold this hypothesis using another text by Nawāʾī, the Muḥākamat al-lughatayn or Trial of the two languages, in my article “La Makhfî ‘ilm ou Science secrète de ‘Alī Shîr Nawâ’î : le projet d’une langue mystique naqshbandî,” Journal d’histoire du soufisme 3 (2002): 229–55. ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 125–26. ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 126. ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 126–27. ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 162. ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 141.

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Figure 3 Visit of Alexander, in the guise of Sulṭān Bāyqarā, to a saint in his grotto

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Outside the Madrasas of Bukhara 1

About the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, by Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm

The manners of the path remained a little-known text for a long time, in spite of the existence of several manuscript copies.1 Located more than twenty years ago by Iranian researchers Mehran Afshari and Naser al-Din Shah Hosayni, there was a copy of this text in the personal collection of Sayyed Muhammad Sadeq Tabataba’i (d. 1961), the tenth president of Iran’s National Consultative Assembly; this copy was given to the Assembly library, where it was shelved under 1055. This copy has a mistake in the title (it was called Arbāb al-ṭarīq, The masters of the path), and contains numerous errors and gaps, which helps to explain why it was impossible to edit it for many years. Mehran Afshari found a second copy, dated 1238/1822, in the Library of the Institute of Orientalism, Saint Petersburg. Unlike the Tehran manuscript, this one was copied by a scribe who did not use Central Asian spellings and dialects. There are also substantial differences between the two versions. Four other copies are held in the Library of the Tajikistan Institute of Orientalism in Dushanbe; these were produced between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Because of a lack of cooperation on the part of the Tajik institutions, these copies were not used for the critical edition published in 2016. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm composed his treatise in Tajik Persian in 1083/1672 during the reign of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, the khan of Bukhara, to whom he addresses his praises in its introduction. The author was evidently not an erudite scholar, or at least this is the impression given by his use of language, adopting an accessible register and making frequent grammatical errors. Thus we are certainly dealing with someone from a milieu of relatively educated dervishes, rather than one of the Sufi scholars who had followed the whole curriculum of the madrasa. If we are to believe what is written in the incipit2, Ḥājjī ʿAbd alRaḥīm wrote his treatise at the demand ‘of a group of men who were madmen (dīwānagān wa āzādagān), disheveled and agitated, neglecting their appearance and very thirsty’; these men wanted to know more about the founding saints and their spirituality, having endless discussions about the paths of the great masters. So ‘each of the people in this group addressed himself to me, 1 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 133–37. 2 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 144–46.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_004

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Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, a humble character if there ever was one. They demanded that I write a substantial text on the Qalandarī path and method, the robing (khirqa-pūshī), deliverance (āzādagī) and manners (ādāb) of this spiritual tradition, so that all of these could be recalled to the memories of the current members of the ascetic school. But I was perfectly incapable of composing a work in this domain, since myself I follow God’s terrible path with faltering steps only. As my friends pressed me hard, I implored great men for help, that a few beneficial words and learned extracts from texts written for novices might be set down, so that those who so far during their existences have renounced rules, falsely worn the precious habits of sainthood and followed the trail of ignorance should be touched by these arguments and through listening to the words of Sufi saints rediscover their desire to reach God. They will avoid improper actions and acquaintances, devote themselves to renunciation of the world and to deliverance (tark-i dunyā wa āzādagī) as long as they truly wear the habits and commit no perverse acts (fāsid). For as the verse says, “God loves not corruption” (Quran 2:205). They will commit no sins if they do not find themselves in the flock with those who “are like cattle; nay, rather they are further astray” (Quran, 7:179).’ Aside from the usual pose, of an author who is solicited to write by his entourage, one discovers in this extract the need and demand for the Qalandarī path’s authenticity, defined as a rupture with the world and founded on a number of traditional sources, written and oral. The treatise is composed of twelve thematic chapters: 1. The hat (kulāh) 2. The hair (mū-yi sar) 3. The cloak (dalq wa khirqa) 4. The belt (kamar) 5. The staff (ʿaṣā) 6. The begging bowl (kachkūl/kashkūl) 7. The calabash (kadū-maṭbakh) 8. The napkin (sufra) 9. The service (khādimī) 10. The animal hide (takhta-pūst) 11. The broom (jārūb) 12. The parts of poverty (aqsām-i faqr) The author does not furnish an explanation for the fact that he includes twelve chapters and it would be wrong to see this as a veiled reference to the twelve Imāms of Twelver Shiism. On the other hand, the introduction briefly reminds the reader that the paraphernalia of the dervish contains eleven elements – the first eleven chapters – each of which has four faces or aspects (rukn),

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making a total of 44, which are to be detailed in the Ādāb al-ṭarīq. The precise numeration in which the numeral four plays a constant role is less important than the general principle governing the logic of the treatise. Throughout this work, and according to a conceptual tradition that is well established among the Qalandars, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm is working both in and between the physical and symbolic registers. As a result, he mentions the Arabic formula that the dervishes would speak when wearing or making this or that piece of their equipment. This very concrete incursion into the ritualised world of the Qalandars shows the point to which words flood the religious environment of our ascetes. Nothing escapes the naming process and the hidden meanings of words. More generally, into this treatise are woven metaphors of making and of investiture as representations of the history of dervishes. In other words, the act of making and wearing the Sufi equipment also recalls to memory the stages of the advent of the Qalandariyya, one piece at a time, one part at a time, like a patchwork, as manifested in the cloak made of disparate scraps that every mystical beggar wears, but also in his various utensils. Each fragment corresponds either to a tutelary figure, to a prophetic legend or to a speculative teaching. The attire thus functions simultaneously in a concrete and in a conceptual way; in practical terms the scraps are the vestments of the dervishes, but they are also a doctrinal account of the ‘history’ of the Qalandars. Finally, if the body of the dervish forms the substrate of this material culture full of multiple meanings, it also occupies the background of Ḥājjī ʿAbd alRaḥīm’s book, in a physically descending order. The very structure of the Manners of the path goes from top to bottom, from the head to the feet via the trunk and arms, as if it was based on an intuitive observation of the Sufi body while also displaying an attitude of voluntary abasement as a sign of the dervishes’ humility. Our own chapter will, in its turn, follow this structure, bringing together the utensils in succession on three physical levels. For the twelfth section, which recapitulates the preceding ones and re-memorialises the mythological past of the dervishes, we will reserve a different sort of approach. The reader should therefore avoid expecting a historical anthropology of Bukhara’s Qalandars, and look instead for a doctrinal ‘ideal type’ of Central Asian dervishes in the seventeenth century. 2

The Head of the Dervish

2.1 The Hat Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm devotes his first chapter to the hat, starting with an esoteric (and not linguistic) etymology for the Persian term kulāh. Originally, he

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explains, this was kull-i āh, composed of the word kull (totality, universe) plus āh, which corresponds to hastī (existence). The doubling (tashdīd) of the letter ‘l’ signifies the pride (nakhwat) inherent in believing in the existence of the universe, a pride that remains anchored in the believer’s head. As long as this belief, ‘materialised’ by the double letter, is not removed from the head, it will not be worthy to wear the hat; he who aspires to wear the Sufi headgear must renounce it to be able to put it on.3 Qalandarī terminology takes its teachings right into the details of the letters. Having said this, this is not the esoteric science of letters as found elsewhere in the Sufi tradition. Here it is rather the origins of the words that interest our author, because they simultaneously recount and incarnate the genesis of the spiritual path of the Qalandars. The legendary history of the dervishes is inscribed on their very bodies, almost like a tattoo, but recounted by their apparatus. A rhetorical question follows: How many hats are there? The equally rhetorical response is four, based on a scheme that is constantly repeated throughout the treatise. This play of questions and responses comes, along with the quadruple paradigm, from the oral teaching methods of Qalandarī circles, desirous of cultivating their disciples’ memories. Let us decipher this response in detail. The first hat is named amr (order, commandment) for the following reason4: when Adam had to leave paradise and found himself in the world, he had no help in his misfortune except the divine essence. Conscious of his errors, he addressed this supplication to God: ‘Lord! We have wronged ourselves, and if Thou dost not forgive us, and have mercy upon us, we shall surely be among the lost’ (Quran 7:23). God forgave him, then gave him the order (amr) to wear the hat, to drink the syrup of divine unity and thenceforth to act in the world. In other words, added to the original sin was the fault of having sought aid elsewhere than from God. It is thus God himself who created the first dervish object, an Adamic hat the aim of which is to remove from the wearer’s body the illusory belief in any salvation outside of God. The text specifies that the hat is symbolically made of four renunciatory objects (tark), each of which leads to elimination by a different faculty (daraja, lit. degree). The hat leads one to renounce forbidding (muḥarramāt) thanks to reason (ʿaql); to renounce simple knowledge (dānish) thanks to love (ʿishq); to renounce obscure and human veiling (ḥijābāt-i ẓalmānī wa basharī) thanks to light; and to renounce creatures (maṣnūʿāt), that is to say, all worldly things and qualities, thanks to the spirit (rūḥ). Lastly, the reader is reminded that putting on the hat of the 3 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 149. 4 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 149–50.

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order (kulāh-i amr) accompanies the wearing of the cloak of joy (khilʿat-i saʿādat). The second hat is that of vision (rūʾyat). It was worn by Noah and consists of four renunciatory objects, each of which leads to elimination by a different faculty5: renunciation of creation (khalq), that is to say, avoiding vile men; renunciation of moods (khulq), meaning abstention from all dispersion of the spirit; renunciation of the mantle (dalq), meaning avoiding the wearing of elegant clothing; renunciation of foolishness (khurq)6, that is to say, avoiding taking advantage of false miracles, in order not to remain lost. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm then gives details of the four faculties. The first is vision of friendship (rūʾyat-i āshnāʾī) that novices obtain thanks to exoteric and esoteric love and service (khidmat) together with their companions (musāḥibat-i aṣḥāb). This designates the life that the young dervishes live as part of a community. This vision can also be called ‘the vision of the novice’ (rūʾyat-i ṭālib). The second faculty is the science of the word (ʿilm-i qāl) for, according to a Sufi formula, ‘The word is the instrument of the spiritual state’ (qāl ālat al-ḥāl). Here we are dealing with Sufi teachings. We read that it manifests itself among the people of science (arbāb-i faḍāʾil wa ʿuqūl). It can also be called ‘the vision of the combatant’ (rūʾyat-i mujāhid). The third faculty is vision of resolution (rūʾyat-i irādat). This is obtained when a link (rābiṭa) is established with the spiritual master, who then gazes on his disciple while the portrait (nigāristān) of the master illuminates the disciple. The fourth faculty is vision of contemplation (rūʾyat-i mushāhida), which arrives when the sun, full of different lights, rises in the sky of the divine truths. The text does not explain the logical relationships between the four things to be renounced and the four faculties. Whatever this logic may be, and without making assumptions about a drive to be systematic that is often absent in the speculations of the Qalandariyya, let us simply understand that the wearing of the second hat symbolises theoretical and practical progress by the disciple along the course of his initiation. The third hat is that of generosity (sakhā). Worn by Abraham, it also consists of four renunciatory objects and mobilises four faculties.7 Renunciation of envy (bukhl) means that one should put distance between oneself and the cause of envy, which is one of the attributes of harmful action (dhamīma); one does this in order not to be among the enemies of God. Renunciation of favours (minnat) means that one should not be resentful towards anyone, and 5 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 150–51. 6 The edition studied indicates tark-i khirqa (renunciation of the cloak) but I believe that what was meant was tark-i khurq (renunciation of foolishness). This interpretation makes more sense specifically and contextually. 7 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 151–52.

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one should avoid favouritism. Renunciation of hypocrisy (dūrangī) means that one must remove from one’s head (az sar bar dārad) all hypocritical thoughts, which are attributes of the brainless. Renunciation of pride (nakhwat), for ‘pride is one of the attributes of wrong actions’ (al-nakhwat min ṣifāt aldhamāʾīm). The faculties are as follows: science (ʿilm), for the bonnet is suitable for whoever has knowledge and is active; the spiritual path (ṭarīqat), for whoever keeps vigil over the path may wear the hat, as in the well-known Sufi formula, ‘ṭarīqat resides entirely in good manners’ (al-ṭarīqa kullu-hu ādāb); the grace of God (faḍl allāh), for whoever is devoid of the graces of God cannot wear the hat; gnosis (maʿrifat), for this hat is suitable for gnostics (ʿārifān). Essentially, this third bonnet symbolises the ethical demands on the dervish. These ethics, which conform completely with Sufi tradition, nonetheless have a certain specificity: according to Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, ‘the wearing of the hat is lawful (ḥalāl) for any dervish who has the gift of generosity and applies universal conciliation (ṣulḥ-i kull). [He] accepts the believer and does not reject the unbeliever (mūʾmin rā maqbūl wa mushrik rā mardūd nakunad)’.8 Perhaps because they favoured religious tolerance and the welcoming of miscreants, the Qalandars, at least on this issue, occupied a marginal position in Central Asian Sufism during early modernity, which was very influenced by militant Sunnism at this time. The fourth hat is called ‘gift’ (ʿaṭā), a reference to the gift of its benefits; it was worn by Muḥammad. This hat consists of four renunciatory objects and no fewer than seven faculties.9 The Adāb al-ṭarīq enjoins the wearer to renounce the world, as in the hadith ‘The renunciation of the world is the source of all devotions’ (tark al-dunyā min kull ʿibādat); to renounce agitation of the ego (nafs-i bī tāb), which forms a veil between ourselves and God; to renounce ­paradise, for the mystic who encounters God does not care about paradise; to renounce existence (wujūd), the four walls of which are non-existent. Besides the recourse to a forged hadith, what seems remarkable in this section is the radical nature of the two latter calls, against existence and paradise, which echo the principles of Sufi antinomianism.10 We shall pass over the seven faculties to look at the ritual description, since the fourth hat inherits from the 8

9 10

A symptomatic fact – the manuscript copies diverge here, saying either mardūd bukunad (rejects) or mardūd nakunad (does not reject). Nevertheless, the intended meaning is clear since it strengthens the call for universal conciliation; it also appears a second time in the text on p. 207, followed by the verse ‘Look not with contempt on any infidel/ Hope remains, he may return among Muslim people’ (hīch kāfir rā bi khwārī manigarīd / dar musulmān gastanish bāshad umīd) Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 152–53. See Alexandre Papas, “Antinomianism (ibāḥa).”

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three that precede it while also being the hat that has come down to the Sufis: ‘O novice, know that in the path of the Khwājagān (Naqshbandī), at the moment when they put on the hat they speak the sacred words “the summit of the summit” (al-rās biʾl-rās). The Khwājagān are the beginning of the paths and the holy word is the beginning of words. The ʿIshqiyya speaks the tawḥīd (there is only one God) and the novice in the path of Jahriyya11 pronounces the Fatiha surah because it is at the beginning of the Quran. The novice of the Kubrawiyya pronounces the tawḥīd that empties out thoughts. In the Qādiriyya path, one recites the prayer “O God, peace be upon Muḥammad and on his family by the number of each atom multiplied by a thousand”, because this is the first of their initiatic formulae (talqīn).’ If Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm assigns the first place to the Khwājagān, ancestors of the Naqshbandī Sufis and providers of inspiration for the Central Asian Qalandars, he also mentions the rituals of other Sufi brotherhoods. However, it is always the language of rituals, the content of what is recited during their execution, that interests our author and never their mode of operation. The chapter devoted to the hat ends with a linguistic focus on the doctrinal foundations of the Qalandariyya.12 If putting on the hat removes desire and greed from the wearer’s head, that is, makes them poor, then it becomes necessary to understand properly what is meant by poverty (faqr). The text gives a response with three elements, semantic, phonic and etymological. First, practicing poverty means ‘raising and lowering the head, advancing and retreating, reaching out and pulling back with the hand, closing and opening the eyes, offering and taking back one’s heart’, all expressions that are at once literal, signifying the concrete gestures of the mendicant, and metaphorical, representing spiritual progress: advancing on the path of will and retreating on the way of ignorance, reaching out one’s hand to men of good heart and pulling it back to restrain the dog of ego, closing one’s eyes to the vices of men while opening them to one’s own vices, etc. The phonic aspect of poverty, that is to say the voice, obeys this order: ‘Do not twist your tongue with perverted words, do not contaminate your mouth with senseless verbiage (parīshān). The Qalandar is he who not only avoids the way of non-sense, he also avoids pronouncing it.’ Therefore Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, unlike Nawāʾī, does not prize non-sense. He adds his etymology, saying that the word faqr (poverty) has three letters: ‘f’ for fatḥ (victory), because when the novice steps outside of himself sincerely, God, who opens doors, offers him victory over himself as in the verse, ‘help from God and a nigh victory’ (Quran 61:13); ‘q’ for qāl (word) because ‘the science of 11 12

In fact this refers to the Yasawiyya; see the section on the cloak. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 153–54.

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the word is one part, and the science of the spiritual state is the totality, [or exists in order to reach] the totality, there is no way to avoid one part, for (as in the proverb), “the metaphor is a bridge towards truth” (al-majāz qantaratuʾlḥaqīqat), the proof of this being that the word is the instrument (ālat) of the spiritual state.’ Finally there is the letter ‘r’, for riyāḍat (mortification, austerities), because ‘the poor man (faqīr) is the one who seizes the sabre of austerity with the hand of contentment (qanāʿat), decapitates the concupiscent soul and is content with all that may befall.’ So the Qalandars’ fundamental lesson of poverty is entirely contained in the word faqr, which itself defines an ascesis of the language, methodically impoverished and deprived of its diversions, its digressions and its non-religious uses. At the end of the chapter the author includes a brief epilogue on the destinies of the different prophetic hats.13 Adam’s hat was transmitted to his son, Seth, then to Idrīs. It was on his head when he went to paradise. The hat of Noah disappeared during the flood. Abraham’s hat passed to Isaac, then to Jacob, Jethro, Moses and Jesus; when Jesus ascended to heaven the hat also ascended. Finally, the Prophet’s hat became a part of the vestments of poverty and came down to Abū Bakr. Thus, only the Muḥammadan hat ‘survived’. 2.2 The Hair Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm’s second chapter is devoted to the dervish’s hair (mū-yi sar)14, immediately relaying the following specifics: to leave one’s hair to grow from the ears to the shoulders is in agreement with the Sunna (the rule, the practice) of the Prophet; to have it longer than that is illicit (ḥarām), and to shave it off also conforms to the Sunna, but only for those who are well advanced (muntahī) on the spiritual path, not for beginners (mubtadī). We know that dervishes were characterised by their hair, whether it was long and disordered, shaved or shorn; notably, this was expressed in the Qalandarī initiatic ritual of the quadruple tonsure (chahār ḍarb), during which the hair, eyebrows, moustache and beard were cut off. No longer practiced today, the aim of the chahār ḍarb was to render the body repulsive in order to control desire and sexual inclinations; symbolically the ritual signified a renaissance in a body returned to the appearance of childhood and its innocence.15 However, this 13 14 15

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 155. This chapter was translated into English by Lloyd Ridgeon as an appendix to his article, “Shaggy or shaved? The Symbolism of Hair among Persian Qalandar Sufis,” Iran and the Caucasus 14 (2010): 256–64. My translation diverges from this in places. See the article by L. Ridgeon, as well as Abū Ṭālib Mīr ʿĀbidīnī and Mihrān Afshārī, Āyīn-i qalandarī. Mushtamal bar chahār risāla dar bāb-i qalandarī, khāksārī, firqa-yi ʿajam wa sukhanwarī (Tehran: Farārawān, 1374/1995), 35, 54, 56.

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ritual is not mentioned in our text – perhaps we may deduce from this that the practice had never, or no longer, existed among Qalandars in the region of Bukhara, or that of the Māwarāʾ al-nahr. On the contrary, our author is preoccupied with the growing of hair. Allowing one’s hair to grow, we learn, is the method and the choice for the Abdāliyya, an already mentioned type of dervish that is difficult to classify, and to which we shall return in chapter five; here we consider them as a group of ecstatic dervishes.16 The people of the Abdāliyya who ‘have been plunged into the ocean of mystical intuition and struck down by the blade of majestic unicity with God’ may allow their hair to grow. The ones who may not allow their hair to grow are ‘those who “are like cattle” (Quran 7:179), who are attached to earthly foodstuffs, who in spite of this discuss the methods of the stages and spiritual states of the shaykh, who speak of spiritual mastery and pose as dervishes, who are counted among the liars and are called to become “further astray” (Quran 7:179), as the Quranic verse says. In other words, allowing his hair to grow is good for the man who pays no attention to his own hair.’ The argument is clear: as with the tonsure, hair-growing is not suitable for everyone, it is right only for a category of mystics who have the radical experience of union with God and have no awareness of the hair on their heads or even of their physical appearances in general. As for the false dervishes, they inspire the greatest wariness, because they discredit authentic men of God. In fact, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm continues, ‘let it be known that among the stages of this spiritual school there is one called the stage of the abdāl. This is the stage of the rapture (jadhb) and of madness (junūn). How many titularies of this stage are there, and what are their spiritual states? They are defined as ‘the enraptured man who travels’ (majdhūb-i sālik), ‘the travelling man who is enraptured’ (sālik-i majdhūb), or the one who ‘is enraptured and does not travel’ (majdhūb-i ghayr-i sālik).17 Before exploring this typology, let us note the definition of these abdāl dervishes as enraptured in God, madmen in God whose heads bear long hair. The enraptured man who travels is the one whom God calls to Himself, whose rapture is commanded by God.18 Free of worldly preoccupations, he can set out on his spiritual voyage with perfect awareness of the Quranic precept of ḥisba ‘commanding that which is proper and forbidding that which is blameable’ (Quran 3:104 and others). Although he is enraptured in God, this dervish knows his obligations and responsibilities as a Muslim. This is why he 16 17 18

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 157. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 157–58. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 158.

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is permitted to allow his hair to grow – as a consequence of having gone beyond the Sunna, though the text does not explicitly announce this – he has lost his will (bī ikhtiyār), but only to the point at which he places himself at the service of a spiritual master who can guide him in his voyage. Once he has set out on the path, he is forbidden to keep his hair and must shave it off, on the basis of the verse ‘God has indeed fulfilled the vision He vouchsafed to His Messenger truly: “You shall enter the Holy Mosque, if God wills, in security, your heads shaved, your hair cut short, not fearing”’ (Quran 48:27), as emphasised by the exegetes of the Sufi path. In the same way as pilgrims on the Hajj shave their heads before reaching their sacred destination, the novice must prepare himself for the encounter with his master, who is like the Kaʿba. Thus it is in a state of ritual purity, guaranteed by his tonsure, that the dervish must start out, called by God but guided by a mentor, to begin his initiation. In the second case, the travelling man who is enraptured has already begun his spiritual voyage and arrived at the moment when, thanks to his many austerities and devotions, he is seized by divine rapture, as though ‘the soldiers of mystical love caught his soul’s collar and dragged it through the streets and bazaars’.19 This dervish, having reached this stage, is unaware that his hair is growing. In this case as well, long hair is permitted because he is in an ecstatic state. As for the dervish who is enraptured and does not travel, he has attained the stage of mystical love ‘from the beginning unto the end’; at this stage he is endowed with a majesty ‘that could with a simple glance transform the world into a garden’, that is to say, his ecstasy is such that he sees the divine everywhere.20 In the same way as this experience occurs involuntarily, he is hirsute (zhūlīda) without knowing it. This, then, is ‘the sign of mystical love, which casts a shadow on his head’ A dervish who is in a state of beatitude could not be denied his disheveled head of hair. There remains a fourth, subsidiary case, that of the ‘traveller who is not enraptured’. This category includes the ascetes (zuhhād), the servants (ʿubbād) and the abstinents (muttaqiyān). According to the Qalandariyya, for which ‘commanding that which is proper and forbidding that which is blameable’ is important, to abandon the practice of the Prophet is a grave sin. Going beyond the Sunna is therefore only possible under strict conditions. The path of these sinners consists of practicing additional devotions, beyond the five prayers, using especially the supererogatory prayers and others that are recited with a rosary and are considered compulsory – the long hair fulfils the same function 19 20

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 158–59. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 159.

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of being supplementary to requirements. The Qalandars consider that it’s incorrect to abandon the precepts of the Prophet, so they prefer not to make it obligatory to allow the hair to grow; in the absence of an ecstatic state there should be no long hair for dervishes. In conclusion, ‘it is evident that to allow one’s hair to grow is appropriate for lovers and gnostics, but not proper for ascetes and servants’. Now the definition of the problem is displaced towards the ecstatic experience, for this represents the touchstone in hair theory. According to the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, there are two types of enrapturement (jadhb), one by fire (nārī) and one by light (nūrī). The first of these consumes the soul, the second illuminates faith; the first affects the ‘enraptured man who does not travel’ (majdhūb-i ghayr-i sālik) while the second touches the ‘enraptured man who travels’ (majdhūb-i sālik). Each of these two types of enrapturement can also be subdivided into two. Enrapturement by fire can be either majestic (jalālī) or essential (dhātī).21 Rapture by fire is said to be majestic when it comes from mystical love. Each time the lover is absorbed in the thought of God, his beloved, he imagines that every voice or call that comes forth is addressed to him by God. This is the meaning of the romantic episode during which Majnūn immediately followed Leylī’s female camel: Leylī had called her dog, Ram, to her side, but Majnūn imagined she was calling to him (Majnūn) under the name Ram, and he went to her side. In other words, rapture by fire of the majestic type comes from the amorous passion that the mystic is living through. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm adds, ‘O dervish, if you claim to be an abdāl you must wrap around yourself the belt of perseverance in devotion, and never turn away from submission to the order of what is proper, and beware of the interdictions that have been suppressed. If you apply this advice, God will be your lover as Leylī was the lover of Majnūn.’ We shall discuss the belt in the next section, but let us take note of this new recurrence of the allusion to the precept ‘commanding that which is proper and forbidding that which is blameable’, in order to help us frame the mystical experience in its potential excesses. As for the second, essential, sort of enrapturement by fire, the text explains that Satan (Iblīs) was created by the essence of fire, and that his task, from the very start of the novice’s spiritual quest, is to mislead and betray him with various perverse temptations: ‘For example, there may appear [to dervishes] strange colours and shapes, such as seas of fire, lush green gardens, assemblies of shaykhs bringing good news from the other world. When they see these colours corrupted air blows across their palates, they begin to speak of their 21

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 159–60.

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mystical inspirations and imagine that they are speaking of their enrapturement and spiritual drunkenness. The first stage of the dervish is that of the Satans, as we have just explained. O dervish, the spiritual schools that remain at this stage must be avoided in order not to contract their defilement.’ As we can observe, there is danger in the ecstatic moment, the danger of erroneous enrapturement and Satanic illusion – these could mislead Sufis into believing that they have reached their goals. Here the false dervishes are again denounced for their mistake, and for their disastrous inclination to talk about it. The other type of enrapturement, by light, is produced either by the light of majesty (nūr-i jalālī) or by the light of beauty (nūr-i jamālī).22 ‘From the first comes love and from the second come theophanies of the vision (rūʾyat) of perfection. The light of majesty produces spiritual combat (mujāhida), spiritual strife (mujādila), and religious fervour (shawq) and savour (dhawq). The light of beauty produces contemplation (mushāhida), relation (munāṣibat), quietude (sukūniyat) and proximity (qurbat). Whoever appears in the light of majesty is at the stage of love, and whoever appears in the light of beauty is at the degree of gnosis. Know that the adept of poverty (faqr) benefits from both of these qualities, being at much the lover as the beloved. It is no secret that the difference between the light of majesty and the light of beauty is that the former is metaphorical whereas the latter is real.’ To sum up, the ecstatic experience of illumination, which is at once physical and metaphysical, corporeal and spiritual, goes further than does enrapturement by consummation; this enrapturement is accessible only to dervishes, the poor in God, who as a result then enjoy the right to allow their hair its full freedom. The conclusion of the chapter warns readers that ‘on the path of spirituality a bristle (sar-mū) is a veil, so what would that make of a hair (mū-yi sar)! For in truth this path is narrower than a hair, and to render proper service to the master is sharper [narrower] than the sabre.’ Faithful to his methods and caught up in his wordplay Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm uses hair to create an allegory for the initiatory path of the dervish that is at once narrow, fragile and firm, though our author doesn’t allow his allegory to be swallowed up in the abstraction of an image, but keeps to the surface of the body and of the very history of dervishism. Thus he adds that four great Sufis of the past had allowed their hair to grow: Barāq Abdāl, Shāh Naqshband, Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Qalandar and Pādishāh Ḥusayn Qalandar. The first of these names may refer to Barāq Bābā (d. 707/1307), a Turkmen dervish and crypto-shaman from Anatolia; the second is the eponymous founder of the Naqshbandiyya, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband (d. 791/1389); the fourth may be Laʿl Shāhbāz Qalandar (d. ca. 661/1262 or 22

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 161.

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673/1274), an antinomian Sufi from India. The third-named individual remains difficult to identify. We then learn that most Sufi masters of this type allowed their hair to grow at the beginning of their spiritual quests and later, once they had set out on their initiatic journeys, shaved it off. Whether this historic reminder is true or not is unimportant for our purposes; rather it serves to underline the prudence that novices would have been well advised to observe on the subject of their hair. A final linguistic digression closes this chapter23: ‘If one is asked what is the root (aṣl) of hair, one should reply that it is good and courteous manners (adab). If one is asked what is the tip (farʿ) of the hair, one should reply that it is service (khidmat). And the base (bun) of the hair is sincerity (ṣidq).’ The three words echo the general values shared by Sufis, here represented by the parts of the hair, implying that whatever the state of a person’s hair, (shaved, short or long), capillary symbolism does have an importance. The three initial letters of these words spell akh(a)ṣ, which means ‘the most particular’, but since the text does not specifically mention this fact, we may not presume further. The fact remains that this attention paid to the parts of the object under discussion reappears in the following chapters, as if no detail could be allowed to escape the speculative lexicomania of the Qalandarī author. 3

The Trunk and the Arms

3.1 The Cloak The tattered clothing worn by seekers after truth, which bears the general name of dalq, consists of two items, the cloak (khirqa) and the shroud (kafan), each of which possesses specific characteristics.24 The cloak has sleeves and a collar where the shroud does not; there is also the patched garment (zhanda), a short-sleeved garment that wraps around (mudawwar) the body like a shirt (pīrāhan). In the past the Sufi authorities also called this a kurta (kurdaqa), and this was worn by most of the masters, such as Junayd, Bahlūl Dānā (second/ eighth century), Maʿrūf Karkhī (d. ca. 199–204/815–820) and Manṣūr Ḥallāj. Before he begins a detailed exploration of these types of clothing, it is important to our author to explain the habits of Muslim mystics in general.25 Whether worn by prophets and saints or by novices, these habits allow the wearer to practice austerities secretly, without attracting punishment or opprobrium. In 23 24 25

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 161–62. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 163. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 163–64.

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other words, the cloak hides an intense spiritual life, which can be summed up by the terms ‘destitution’ (tajrīd) and ‘isolation’ (tafrīd). According to the treatise, destitution consist of freeing one’s existence (wujūd) from worldly ties (ʿalāʾiqāt) in order to consecrate it to devotional acts, and emptying one’s heart (qalb) of everything except the essence of the absolute (wājib al-wujūd). Isolation also means freedoms from the shackles of worldly things (ʿawāʾiq). The Sufi apparel demarcates a precise line between existence in society and the spiritual life, a limit reinforced, as we shall see, by a tangled web of warps, threads and joins, rendering material the wearer’s separation from the social body. Concerning the cloak Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm tells us that the collar alone consists of seven joins (paywand) and four seams (bakhya). ‘The first join is ­consent (riḍā), which means that the dervish consents to everything that comes to him from God. The second is fidelity (wafā), for if thou art faithful, thou art human (mardī) and if thou art unfaithful thou art inhuman (bī dardī). The third join is subsistence (baqā): when thou movest from consent to fidelity, thou attainest subsistence. The fourth is purity (ṣafā): when thou arrivest at the stage of subsistence, thou attainest purity [of heart] (…) The fifth join is annihilation (fanā), which means renunciation of human existence (…) The sixth join is the quarrel (mujādila), in the sense that on the path of the quest for God one must fight to stay on the right track, and each time thou fallest back by one step, thou stayest behind. The seventh join is contemplation (mushāhida) for all that thou seest in the 18,000 worlds [whether it be] beautiful or ugly, thou doth see its spiritual nature.’26 These seven joins in the collar symbolise seven stages (which are not so much progressive as inter-cut with each other) along the initiatic path, a path that here is represented as a complex form of tacking – in technical millinery terms this is the joining of two pieces of fabric by temporary stitching before making the definitive seams. Such is the precise metaphor from the textile arts for the Sufi path, made visible in the nearly circular collar at the top of the dervish’s trunk. The four seams of the collar are the law (sharīʿat), the path (ṭarīqat), the truth (ḥaqīqat) and gnosis (maʿrifat). Disconcertingly, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm says no more about these, preferring to underline that to take up and wear the Sufi cloak is to adopt a lineage of Sufi masters (silsila), and that each of these constructs its habit with a specific number of seams.27 As he had done previously and would subsequently do again, here he studies the practices of five brotherhoods. The eponymous master of the Qādiriyya, ʿAbd al-Qādir Gīlānī 26 27

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 164–65. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 166–67.

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(d. 561/1166), is said to have taught that the novice should make his cloak with thirty-five seams, of which thirty correspond to the thirty days of the month of Ramadan and five to the five prayers; the devotional justification of the Ramadan fast is that it muzzles the animal self and fulfils the spiritual self, while the daily prayers tear the mystic away from the world of creatures so he can reach God. The Khwājagān were said to make their cloaks with 1001 seams representing – according to masters making up part of the silsila of the Khwājagān such as Imām Jaʿfar Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī and Abū al-Ḥasan Kharaqānī (d. 425/1034) – the 1001 names of God, which will thus be attached, in every sense of the verb, to the Sufi. For the ʿIshqiyya the cloak must be put together with 444 seams, since the masters Nuʿmān Miṣrī28, Aḥmad Badawī (d. 674/1276) and Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) all agree that the human skeleton is composed of 444 parts. The follower of the Jahriyya must make his cloak with 360 seams, because for Khwāja Aḥmad Yasawī (d. 562/1166), Sayyid Ata (eighth/fourteenth century), ʿAbd al-Khalīl Ata29, and other authorities, human existence is made of 360 veins. Finally, for adepts of the Kubrawiyya, 99 seams must be sewn in the cloak, since great masters such as Mawlānā Rūmī (d. 672/1273), Najm al-Dīn Kubrā (d. 618/1221), Maṣlaḥat al-Dīn Khujandī (eighth/fourteenth century)30, and others, had taught that these correspond to the 99 names of God. It is impossible to verify the details of what Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm tells us. However, there is nothing to stop us accepting that there were symbolic numbers of seams in the garments of Qalandarī dervishes, at least in theory and probably also in practice. In this regard, again demonstrating his affinity with the concrete dimensions of Sufi religious life, our author cites the words spoken by Sufis when sewing their cloaks. The Khwājagān pronounce the verse ‘Help from God and a nigh victor. Give thou good tidings to the believers!’ (Quran 61:13); the ʿIshqiyya novice says ‘God is sufficient for us, an excellent Guardian is He’ (Quran 3:173) and ‘an excellent Protector, an excellent Helper’ (Quran 22:78); in the Jahriyya, the spoken formula contains ‘no associate has 28 29 30

I have not succeeded in identifying this shaykh. This may refer to the Yasawī shaykh Khalīl Ata, who lived during the eighth/fourteenth century. The Qalandarī author does not burden himself with rigour in scholarly identification of the Sufi orders, as seen in his mentioning the mystical poet Rūmī and the Sufi shaykh Khujandī among the authorities of the Kubrawiyya when in fact the first of these men was linked to it only through his father, who was Kubrā’s disciple, and the second may have had some contact with Kubrā, but was not part of his spiritual lineage. However, elsewhere Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm is meticulous: ‘On the subject of the mantle, the cloak and the patched garment, certain – nay, even many – masters consider them to be synonymous. However, I doubt (tardīd) this because the treatises on certain ancient names teach us that there are many differences between these garments.’ (p. 108).

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He!’ (Quran 6:163); as for the Kubrawī, they say ‘We indeed created Man in the fairest stature’ (Quran 95:4).31 As the work on the cloak progresses, additional citations are made. The Khwājagān utter the profession of faith (shahāda); the members of the ʿIshqiyya say ‘Allah is great’ a single time; those of the Jahriyya say ‘Glory to Allah’ once, and followers of the Kubrawiyya say ‘Praises to God’ once. The Qādiriyya use the words ‘O the living, the eternal, the lord of majesty and of generosity’. Among the Qalandars, the shahāda is recited when the top (sar) of their cloak is sewn; for the collar it is ‘Great glory, great holiness’; reaching the waist (miyān) they say ‘We adore you and you alone’; for the skirts (dāman) the phrase is ‘Every soul shall taste of death’ (Quran 29:57).32 As well as the ritual formulas, each sewn piece of the cloak has a symbolic meaning, too: the top represents resolve in following the master; the middle means service to the master; the skirts are devotion; the sleeves (āstīn) stand for austerities (riyāḍat). And the six other parts (pāra) of the cloak symbolise love, religious savour, the gift, faithfulness, following the path, and poverty.33 The patched garment and the shroud remain, of which Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm wrote at the beginning of his chapter that they constitute part of the torn habit of the dervish, and have their own different characteristics. The tatters worn by the prophets such as Ṣāliḥ, Isaac and Lot are short, because ‘this is a habit for a man, and the shorter the man’s habit is, the better the omen’. This enigmatic phrase may have to do with the rules of ritual purity, and is followed by the less mysterious observation that the sleeves are also short, in order to ‘shorten the mark of the hand on the world’, in the sense that the Sufi’s actions should draw back inwards, aiming for interiority, as illustrated by the story of Najm al-Kubrā who, when his son asked him for a grape, put his hand on his own heart to give him the fruits of the garden of paradise. Finally, being ‘washed by the tatters’ (zhanda shustan) means to wash oneself in the waters of the law, of the path and of truth while fasting and performing Sufi repetition (dhikr) until a state of purity is reached, because ‘the water of the law removes stains, the water of the path keeps vain thoughts at bay and the water of truth takes away polytheism (…)’.34 In a sort of inversion of the pure and the impure that is habitual in Qalandarī antinomianism, the tatters cleanse the body and the spirit of the dervish, removing physical and spiritual impurities. The shroud has no sleeves, collar or fringe (farāwīz). It is reserved for the dervish who is ‘annihilated’ in God (ahl-i fanā), the mystic who has become 31 32 33 34

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 167. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 168. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 167–69. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 169–70.

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like a corpse insofar as ‘he who walks on the spiritual path and puts on this garment must imagine himself dead and perceive all the qualities of death in [the actions of] his own life, such as eating, drinking, taking, etc. For the novice completely annihilates his will (ikhtiyār) within that of his master until he removes this habit. Once the novice has arrived at the point of being called without will (bī ikhtiyārī) and imagines that he is indeed dead, then the accomplished master removes all carnal dimensions from the life of the novice with the water of repentance and forgiveness (istighfār).’35 Here the text repeats a classical adage of Sufism, attributed to the Iranian shaykh, Tustarī (d. 293/896), which teaches that the aspirant is in the hands of his master as the cadaver in the hands of the washer of corpses. Less classical is the stance that affirms that there are shrouds that are quite real and could be worn by dervishes anxious to give the adage a tangible significance. The Ābāb al-ṭarīq ends its meticulous analysis of the Sufi cloak, its characteristics and its construction by discussing the knot (ʿaqd) and the piece of fabric (ruqʿa). Here the evocation of knots relates to the Bektāshiyya, an Anatolian Sufi brotherhood with a notable tendency to antinomianism, close to the Qalandariyya in its medieval origins and including some extremist Shiite elements from the sixteenth century. This reference is an additional sign of the religious tolerance of the Bukhara Qalandars in the confessional atmosphere of the times. In any case, we learn that to sew his habit a Bektāshī ties a knot at one end of the thread and then sews four stitches before making another knot (at the other end of the thread), so that the stitches cannot become undone. These four stitches symbolise the four stages that are the law, the path, the truth and gnosis (as with the collar of the Qalandars). It is important that at each stage of stitching the single thread not be lost or broken; this would indicate the consecutive failure of the stages of spiritual progress.36 In other words, the knots in the thread ensure that both the garment and the mystical journey cohere, and that even the small gesture of knotting a thread has an initiatic dimension. In a contrasting approach, the people of the Qādiriyya do not make knots in their thread because, in the same way as the Sufi has been vowed to the annihilation of his self in God, according to the verse ‘All things perish, except His Face’ (Quran 28:88), the Sufi’s habit is condemned to destruction. Thus it is actually preferable for the garment to become threadbare and disintegrate. As for the masters of the Qalandariyya, such as Amīr Sādāt Ḥusayn Harawī, author of the poetic manifesto cited in the introduction to the present volume, they limit themselves to teaching that it is the cloak of human 35 36

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 170. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 171.

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existence, with its 360 seams or veins (going along with the thinking of the Jahriyya), that must be torn up by the dervish. They appear not to have any rules about the knotting of the threads, but just to advise the wearing away of the cloak (that represents the human body) until it is annihilated. Mentioning a mythical scene sometimes evoked by Sufis, Ḥājjī ʿAbd alRaḥīm writes that one day the Prophet Muḥammad fell into ecstasy (wajd) and his mantle (ridāʾ) fell from his shoulders. Fragments of this mantle (ridāʾ) fell from his shoulders and he shared them out among his companions, who then sewed these pieces of cloth to their own clothing. The tradition of the patched garment (muraqqaʿ) among the Qalandars originated from this, and our author assures us it continued to be cultivated in his own time, when dervishes knew ecstasy and tore their clothing, reducing it to scraps. Aside from the legitimacy conferred through this association with the Prophet, which is intended to justify the sometimes spectacular attitudes of dervishes, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm explains that this tearing of clothing is designed to produce 73 scraps of fabric, which must then be brought back together to make the patched garment. One thus obtains an external habit consisting of 73 pieces and patches, in order to clothe one’s interior with 73 sciences. More concretely, the beginner, in tatters, will serve for two years and three months, until he is able to grasp and profit from the lesson (talqīn) of this habit. The novice will know he has acquired this lesson, ‘First, by the fact of seeing the Prophet in reality, and second, by the fact of seeing him during every second of attention, until the patches are received from His own hand’.37 There is no comment on the significance of the number 73. As well as being legitimised by the Prophet, the patchwork cloak promises that, once a specific amount of time has elapsed, there will be an encounter with the Prophet Himself. 3.2 The Belt There are three founding belts, each originating with a prophet, namely Adam, Solomon and Muḥammad. ‘The first is the belt of the emirate (imārat) because Adam was put in charge of the emirate; the second is that of the caliphate (khilāfat), because it is a royal belt; the third is that of poverty (faqr) and of intercession (shafāʿat).’38 Like the hat, the belt relies on an esoteric prophetology that, as we will see, is essentially narrative in nature, assimilable to the genre of mirabilia, and devoid of speculative developments.

37 38

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 172. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 173.

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The first principles of Adam’s belt became apparent when he arrived from paradise.39 He took a fig leaf to cover his nakedness and used grapevine to make a belt, which he later confided to his son Seth, who transmitted it to Noah; it then passed to Abraham and Ishmael and finally to ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, Muḥammad’s grandfather. One day, when the Prophet was only seven years old, he found a chest in his grandfather’s house and suddenly the belt came out of the chest and wrapped itself firmly around Muḥammad’s waist. As for Solomon, he did not receive his belt until he was 40 years old.40 He was still in the service of his father, King David on the day when the archangel Gabriel appeared to David to tell him that God had named Solomon as his messenger. When he learned of this, Solomon feared that he would not be able to fulfil such a mission, and that God might expect repayment on the Day of Judgement. Gabriel reassured him, telling him that he, Solomon, would obtain mastery of the world, and that God would not take any repayment from him. Solomon accepted the mission from God, and Gabriel then put around his waist a divine belt decorated with rubies, emeralds and pearls. As soon as Solomon was wearing the precious belt all creatures submitted to him and he ruled as sultan over them. When Solomon was on the verge of death, he was revisited by the angel, who revealed to him that the belt would be transmitted to Muḥammad.41 Solomon asked his vizier Āṣaf b. Barakhyā to protect the relic, and assembled all the most marvellous species of bird, among them a crow, who flew away to hide the relic on the mountain of serpents (kūh-i mārān) in Kashmir. When Solomon died, discord broke out among the creatures. A demon captured the crow and threatened to kill it unless it revealed the location of the belt.42 Having obtained three days’ grace, the crow encountered a hoopoe, to whom he told his sad tale. The hoopoe quickly went to warn Āṣaf b. Barakhyā. When the crow and the demon arrived at the mountain in question, the crow was forced to indicate the location of the belt by pecking at the soil.43 Just as the demon was about to roll away a stone, his body froze and Gabriel threw him to the ground. The angel punished the crow: since that time these birds are obliged to clean the ground with their beaks. Gabriel hid the belt elsewhere, in a grotto on the mountain of the garden (kūh-i bustān), where it remained for 1,250 years until the birth of Muḥammad. 39 40 41 42 43

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 173–74. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 174–75. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 176. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 177. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 178.

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A jinn called Samlākhayl learned that the Prophet was going to be born; he went to find the belt and then to offer his services to the young Muḥammad, having first protected him from an attack by the Qurayshites, orchestrated by a demon who had possessed one of their idols. The jinn gave the belt to Muḥammad, and as soon as he had put it on, the angel Gabriel appeared and offered him the key of the world, permitting him access to all the treasures of the earth.44 But the Prophet declared that he would renounce them because he had chosen poverty. The belt reinforced his power – unbelievers became believers and worshippers of idols abandoned their practices. Later, this belt was transmitted to ʿAbbās (son of ʿAlī, martyred at Kerbala, d. 61/680), then to his descendants until it passed to a certain caliph Abū Sufyān, who one day let the belt fall into the river Tigris, where a fish swallowed it!45 After the belt of the emirate and the belt of the caliphate comes the belt of poverty. The story of this belt pictures the prophet Ṣāliḥ demanding of the angel Gabriel that God open the gates of paradise, that he might see there the beauty of creation.46 God granted his request, and Ṣāliḥ was taken to paradise. There, at the foot of the divine throne, he saw a chest that shone in the light, in which was a belt made of seven cords (band).47 God told him that it belonged to his protégé Muḥammad, and that this man was the seal of the Prophets, ‘O Ṣāliḥ, know that although I sent Adam before him [Muḥammad], He is the architect of his kingdom; Seth is one of the chamberlains in the palace of His great vizierate; Idrīs is one of the tent-makers of His State; Noah is the torch-carrier of the palace of His truths; Lot is one of the vagabond madmen in the streets of His message; Hūd is the herald of the government of His quintessence; Abraham is the cook of the interior of His generosity; Ishmael is the martyr of the arrow of His love; Joseph is the friend of the assemblies of His joy; David is the singer of His palace; Solomon is one of the commanders in the combat of His splendour; Moses is the preacher of the lodge of His truth; Jesus is one of the recluses on the path of His spiritual road (…) I have made of you the guardian of the cell of attachment to Him.’ Ṣāliḥ expressed his gratitude and accepted his mission. One tale recounts that on the night that Muḥammad ascended to heaven (miʿrāj) he got as far as the sixth heaven, where the archangel Michael put the belt around his waist at God’s command, without revealing its secrets.48 And the archangel Raphael did not divulge anything to the Prophet Muḥammad when he acceded to his divine throne. Then 44 45 46 47 48

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 179. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 180. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 180–81. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 181–82. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 182.

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God explained that this was the belt of prophecy, of intercession and of poverty, ‘intercession means the forgiveness of sins. O Muḥammad, when the day of the last judgement is here, put on this belt and practise intercession for the men of yesterday and today (…)’ What conclusions can we draw from these tales? Here again, the desire for Prophetic legitimacy is not the whole story. It’s true that as with the hat of the dervish, described in the first section of the text, the belt is transmitted along a chain that converges on the Prophet, confirming his status as Seal while the object itself acquires first a divine and then a Muḥammadan ancestry. As for later transmissions, they would provide relics held by various Sufis, as the end of the treatise reveals (but let us avoid anticipating our story). The framing of this tale of the dervish’s equipment contains just below its surface some hints at a specific position: the belt of the emirate was inside a chest that was held in the heart of the family, in an intermediary space between the telluric world of the mountain and the grotto, a grotto such as the one protecting the belt of the caliphate, and the celestial plane where the belt of poverty and intercession was held. The accidental, almost comical, loss of the second belt illustrates indifference to the caliphate and the earthly world, even if, as we will see in the fourth chapter of the present volume, grottoes, and even snakes, are important to dervishes. For the time being, only two of the three belts still exist according to the proper symbolic values. A definite primacy is ascribed to the third belt. The next section of the text is devoted to a lengthy discussion of the symbolic meanings of the seven cords that make up the belt of poverty. This ­symbolism represents the spiritual progress of the dervish. The first cord stands for the law (sharīʿat), defined as ascesis (zuhd), piety (taqwā), distinction between the licit and the illicit (tafrīq), the refusal of lies and demand for sincerity (salb wa ījāb).49 The second cord represents the path (ṭarīqat), defined as certainty in knowledge and the vision of God (yaqīn), submission to the spiritual master (mutābiʿat), lengthy combat for the truth and for union with God (mujāhida), increasing contemplation of God in all things (mushāhida).50 The third cord symbolises truth (ḥaqīqat), defined as the common objective of singers, those who know and those who see God.51 The fourth cord means prophecy (nubuwwat), defied as the esoteric degree reached by a saint.52 The fifth cord stands for intercession (shafāʿat), defined as the dervish’s faculty for the obtention of mercy for others, and for the protection of his disciple.53 The 49 50 51 52 53

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 182–83. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 183–84. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 185. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 185–86. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 186.

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sixth cord ­signifies love (ʿishq), defined as hesitation in God’s love (taraddud), adulation in this love (tamalluq), loving stupefaction (taḥayyur), access to divine love (taqarrub).54 The seventh cord symbolises poverty (faqr), defined as the ­science of the mystical secrets (ʿilm), the zeal of the soul in search of God (ghayrat), the vision of divine perfection (rūʾyat), identity with the object of the mystical quest (ʿayniyat).55 In terms of ritual, the reader learns that one must sing when knotting the belt. The words to be uttered are ‘O the vigorous one, O the defender, O the ally’. When untying the belt one must pronounce the following prayer: ‘O my God, O the one who opens doors, O the maker of the possible’. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm completes his evocation of the belt with a few lines on the cummerbund (alif-i namad), a woolen scarf worn tied around the waist.56 Its mythical origins go back to the prophet Abraham: in the place of Ishmael, God sent Abraham a ram to be sacrificed, and the prophet made a belt (a cummerbund) of its skin for Agar, Ishmael’s mother. The cummerbund was transmitted to Isaac, then to Jacob and on down the line to Muḥammad. On the day of departure for the battle of Tabūk, ʿAlī complained of a pain in his lower back, so Muḥammad gave him the gift of half of his cummerbund. As soon as ʿAlī tied it around his waist, his pain disappeared. Our treatise affirms that the tying of the scarf (alif-i namad bandī) of the dervish dates from this period. According to another story, at the time of Jihad against the infidels the Prophet gave ʿAlī his authorisation to do battle, and knotted the belt around his waist. For our author, this justifies the Qalandars’ girding of the belt (kamar bastigī) – in which the master sets the novice on his spiritual path by tying a belt around his waist – as having been practiced by the Prophet. As well as confirming that the cummerbund was not the sole preserve of the Mevlevi Sufis (the ‘whirling dervishes’) of the Near East, as is sometimes thought, these lines slip in an allusion to the prophylactic, or even magical, function of the dervishes’ attire.57

54 55 56 57

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 186. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 187. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 188. From the Persian kamarband, the term ‘cummerbund’ was introduced to English from British India and thence into French. For more data, see Thierry Zarcone, “Anthropology of Tariqa Rituals: About the Initiatic Belt (shadd, kamar) in the Reception Ceremony,” Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Areas Studies 2/1 (2008): 57–68; or the same author’s “L’habit de symboles des derviches tourneurs,” Journal of the History of Sufism 6 (2014): 47–76.

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3.3 The Staff On continuing to read the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, and therefore on continuing to observe the entire body of the dervish from top to bottom, one comes next to the arms and hands. Here we learn that it was precisely the height of the body that posed a problem for the first man and ancestor of Muslim mystics: ‘Know that on the day when Adam left paradise his head was high enough to hear the songs of the angels. One day he confided in God that his height disturbed him. So God commanded, “O Gabriel, take away the wings between Adam’s two shoulders”. Which was done by Gabriel, and he reduced Adam’s size. After that, his strength diminished. Then God ordered Gabriel, “Go to Paradise and find a staff that I, by my omnipotence, have cut from a branch of Ṭūbā [tree of paradise], bring it [to Adam] and give it to him that he may recover his strength.” Which was done by Gabriel. When Adam seized the staff, he wept and lamented; Eve asked him why he was crying. Adam said, “I weep because this staff belongs to Muḥammad. Ah, if I was part of his pious community, I would act according to his rules (sunnathā).”’58 The next part of the tale tells how the staff that was predestined for the Prophet finally reached him – another case of convergence and legitimising by the Prophet. The staff ‘of Adam went to Seth then to Noah then to Abraham then ultimately to Shuʿayb then to Moses, it was by him that its [the staff’s] prodigies were drawn forth. In fact, God has said in the Quran (20:17–18) “What is that, Moses, thou hast in thy right hand?” “Why, it is my staff,” said Moses. “I lean upon it, and with it I beat down leaves to feed my sheep; other uses also I find in it” (…) After Moses, it passed via intermediaries to Jaʿd b. Aṣfar and then to ʿĀṣim b. Habhāb. When the latter was dying, he gave an order to send the staff to Mount Ḥijāz. ʿĀṣim went to the mountain and placed the staff in a secure spot until the time of Jesus. When Jesus was returned to life, he was ordered to go to Mount Ḥijāz where the staff of Moses was preserved, and to ask the mountain to give him the staff. The mountain did so, and Jesus kept the staff for a certain time. He passed it on to Shaykh Abū al-Fatḥ Rāhib and told him, “If you see the Muḥammadan light on anyone’s forehead, give the staff to that person.” Abū al-Fatḥ carried on until he gave the staff to ʿAbd Manāf, telling him, “In your tribe there will appear a Prophet for the end of times and his name is Muḥammad.” ʿAbd Manāf replied “I have read this in the Gospels (injīl), which confirm what you say.” The staff stayed with him for a time, and after him came to Hāshim, then to ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib [Muḥammad’s grandfather] and then to Bībī Umm Hānī until the time when Muḥammad went to Medina. At that point the staff had been confided to one of Muḥammad’s 58

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 191.

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servants, Zayd Aʿrābī, that he might give it to Muḥammad. When this was done, Muḥammad took the staff in his hand, and the staff saluted him on God’s orders, told him its history and said, “I desired to approach your beauty; thanks to God that today I have been honoured to embrace your hand.”’59 For Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, this odyssey of the staff from hand to hand refers to the dervish’s spiritual progress, which goes from stage to stage towards God – from hardship to hardship but also from support to support. One notes that the intermediary between Jesus and ʿAbd Manāf the Qurayshite was called Rāhib, which means ‘(Christian) monk’. Can one see in this a metaphorical allusion to transmission via a mythical Christian monasticism? This question must remain open. The notion that the staff was predestined refers, of course, to the Prophetic vocation of the Sufi object, as has been said. A more original vision of this notion is revealed when the staff takes on a life of its own and calls for personification (which will be confirmed in the following chapter of the Qalandarnāma), the goal of which is literally to flesh out the symbolic content of the object. Here, in a final concession to the concrete description of Sufi religious life, the end of this chapter teaches ‘what must be pronounced when taking up the staff; the response is: “O guide of those who are in error, show us the straight path.” Taking up the staff is the Sunna of the Prophet, and has many effects.’60 This ritual re-states the magical nature of the dervish regalia and its ‘many effects’. 3.4 The Begging Bowl Another utensil that is carried in the dervish’s hand, the begging bowl (kachkūl) also calls on a mythical past. The treatise reports that on the day when ʿĀysha was due to marry Muḥammad, she needed a jug (kāsa-yi ābkhūrī); ‘at this moment God addressed his archangel, “O Gabriel, go to paradise, there is a bowl (qadaḥ) that I have carved from a root of the tree Ṭūbā, take it and give it to Muḥammad, he has no jug.” And Gabriel did so, saying, “O Muḥammad, your God salutes you, he has said that you should take this bowl and drink water with it, for it is the bowl of poverty (qadaḥ-i faqr).” The Prophet praised God, blessed the bowl and drank water with it. He rendered grace unto God. It is since this time that one renders grace unto God after having drunk, this is the Sunna.’61 In addition it is said that the Prophet carried a begging bowl at his waist on the day he departed for the battle of Badr. It fell and broke; he added 59 60 61

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 192–93. I have been unable to identify the bearers of these four names: Jaʿd b. Aṣfar, ʿĀṣim b. Habhāb, Shaykh Abū al-Fatḥ Rāhib and Zayd Aʿrābī. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 193. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 195.

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iron to it and was able to drink water from it. These two tales rehearse the Prophetic vocation of the begging bowl and recount its material composition of wood and iron, but we shall see that it is not only the Prophet who serves as a source of legitimacy. More than any other utensil, the begging bowl is the mark of the mystical mendicant. The Manners of the path reminds readers that the word kachkūl comes from ancient Persian, and that the term kishtī (boat) is also used because the shape of the begging bowl recalls that of a ship.62 Both of these words also mean ‘jug’, but the Qalandars prefer kachkūl. ‘O dervish, know that kachkūl belongs both to the language of dishes and to the vocabulary of Sufis. It designates something that is proper for various licit foods, and great masters say that kachkūl means the heart of progress along the path, which is washed clean of all contamination, and is full of knowledge, practice, favour, love and gnosis.’63 Thus, dervishes explicitly retain the literal as well as the figurative meaning of the word. They use the begging bowl for begging (daryūza kardan) and consider this activity compliant with the Sunna on the basis of the following tale: a man one day approaches Muḥammad, who is sitting at the mosque. He salutes him and says, ‘O Prophet, I am weak and poor and I have a family to feed.’ He was dying. The Prophet ordered ʿAlī to go and beg among the companions, which he did, with the help of the begging bowl. He gave everything he’d collected to the unfortunate man. Since this event, assistance (pāymardī) is the term used.64 This story introduces the Prophet’s son-in-law, ʿAlī, as a supplementary source of legitimacy, and as a model whose behaviour is to be imitated by the dervishes. Here we see, added to the well-known principle of imitatio Muḥammadi, the much less explored idea of imitatio Ali. The chapter’s epilogue reaffirms this by relating that at the time of ʿAlī’s marriage to the Prophet’s daughter Bībī Fāṭima, the Prophet eventually offered as a gift to ʿAlī the same bowl he had previously loaned him for begging.65 As a result, ʿAlī is assured of receiving the transmission of the distinctive object of God’s beggar. Begging has two parts, exoteric and esoteric, which is to say that here again we find a literal and a figurative meaning. Exoteric begging designates in ‘the disciple on the path of poverty the fact of holding the begging bowl in his hand, going from stall to stall, house to house, crying out, “it is God’s will!” Having thus begged, he returns to his lodge (takiyyagāh) and prays in order to distance misfortune from the generous and obtain their happiness. The great spiritual 62 63 64 65

For more on this, see Michel Boivin, “La force symbolique du soufisme : l’exemple de la sébile (kishtî),” Journal of the History of Sufism 6 (2014): 77–84. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 196. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 196–97. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 199.

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masters [of yesteryear] did the same thing, and lived as beggars. Esoteric [begging] is the seeker after God who holds the begging bowl of his heart in the hand of the unbridled quest; he begs for truths among the hearts of gnostics who are approaching the spiritual stage of proximity [to God].’66 In this passage we find incontestable proof of the upholding of both senses of seeking alms. Poverty, the faqr that institutionalised Sufis have tended to interpret as an intellectual or esoterist comprehension – a purely spiritual begging – is a concept that the Qalandars have tried to maintain without differentiation: there can be no poverty on the spiritual plane without material begging. The example of the first Sufi masters imposes the duty on later dervishes of returning to the radical sources of Muslim mysticism by living as mystical beggars, on the margins, rather than as religious notables or settled scholars. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm certainly underlines that the esoteric aspect must never be forgotten, but that nevertheless one should understand this as being at once an exterior demand and an internal battle. It is necessary to beg ‘at the doors of the gnostics and not from base individuals’, by confiding themselves to the spiritual masters in order to learn from them, but equally to learn by begging, not on their own behalves but for others (bi wāsiṭa-yi dīgarī) as ʿAlī did, and even by begging in opposition to the self. For ‘the [final] goal of the assistance (pāymardī) is the torment of the ego (āzār-i nafs) (…) to beg is to wage Jihad against the dog of the ego. This is why the group [of dervishes] goes out to beg – we say we are going into battle (ghazā); this word means Jihad against the concupiscent ego that is the novice’s enemy.’67 Returning to the actual begging bowl, the text resorts to personification. The utensil is represented as a human body. The eye of the begging bowl symbolises the dervish’s contemplation because other men do not see correctly; the nose stands for the sense of smell (dar yāftan-i būy) distinguishing the odours of holiness from those that are harmful; the mouth means the repetition (dhikr) practised by adepts of poverty; the chest harbours the ‘home of grace’ (manzil-i fayḍ) in the sense that the esoteric begging bowl receives divine grace; the leg represents the fact of turning away from the path that does not lead to truth, as well as that of returning to the truthful path.68 Ultimately, the author concludes, ‘know that this entire discussion is for thou who art a novice on the path of poverty. All these symbols (chīz-i kināyat) have to do with human existence – otherwise, the precise elements that have been evoked would not be present in the wooden bowl. The bowl is nothing but an object. We offer 66 67 68

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 197. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 197–98. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 198.

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thee all these examples that thou mayest leave sensuality (nafsāniyat) behind and open thy eyes to these examples until thou becomest one with the mystics. O dervish, if it is thy desire to torment the ego through begging thy ablutions must be renewed, thy exoteric and esoteric bowl held out, thy vow of abstinence made (niyat-i imsāk), thy steps observed (naẓar bar qadam), thy consciousness retained in the breath (hūsh dar dam), thy assurance of constant repetition and meditation completely sustained. If thou reachest not this stage, thou must speak incantations in God’s name, “O Nourisher, O Living One, O Eternal One, O Magnificent One, O Generous One.” Thou must go into the street or the bazaar and beg, remaining determined until thou seest the [divine] signs.’69 This passage invites several remarks. Symbols here exist only through objects, used by the dervishes, that are quite real. In other (better) words, these objects show that the physical world itself cannot be reduced to its appearance alone, and that anything in it may be a carrier signifying the divine presence. One must, then, beg as much in reality as one begs symbolically. It is only by being confronted with the material nature of the world that the dervish can hope eventually to acquire the spiritual knowledge he needs to surpass it. The mention here of Naqshbandī teachings such as attention to one’s steps (naẓar bar qadam) and consciousness of one’s breath (hūsh dar dam) is not surprising, these concepts having been profoundly integrated into the Central Asian Qalandariyya at this period. Nevertheless, their incorporation along with practices of abstinence and alms-seeking shows the extent to which these spiritual techniques are conceptualised in relation to the body and to the daily actions of existence, without ever resorting to or being content with an exclusively intellectual or introspective experience.70 3.5 The Calabash As the final element of the arm of the dervish, often held at waist-height, the calabash (kadū-maṭbakh) serves as a flask. The Ādāb al-ṭarīq weaves a long and marvellous tale about it.71 The essence of the calabash is in the seed of the gourd (kadūī). When Jonah emerged from the whale’s mouth he was naked and the heat of the sun struck him hard; at this moment, God ordered the angel Gabriel to bring a gourd-seed from paradise and put it down on the seashore. In a single hour it grew into a tree and cast shade over Jonah, who then thanked God. Jonah kept the tree with him, as well as the young gourd-vine. When the 69 70 71

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 198–99. For more on this, see A. Papas, Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, 213–26. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 201–2.

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vine began to grow, Jonah noticed that the gourds were ripening; he picked them and kept them. The angel Gabriel appeared and cut the gourds in half, so Jonah made a sort of cup out of two half-gourds, and kept another one. A voice from the next world exclaimed, ‘O Jonah, don’t waste that gourd, for someone will come and demand it of thee.’ Elsewhere at the same time there lived a devout man called Farzūq, to whom an angelic voice spoke, enjoining him to seek out Jonah, take the gourd and use it to give water to the people living near Jerusalem. When Jonah saw this man coming, he knew he was coming for the gourd. Gabriel appeared, holding a thin cord in his hand, which he attached to the four sides of the gourd and gave to Jonah, who offered the gourd to Farzūq. Farzūq left for Jerusalem immediately, distributing water to the people. This devout man hid the gourd in a grotto at the foot of Mount Ṭāʾif, where it stayed for some time. One day, a certain ʿAlqama-yi ʿĀd, a member of the Thamūd tribe, was grazing sheep at the foot of this mountain. One sheep’s foot sank into the ground. When ʿAlqama wanted to extract the animal’s leg from the hole, a tablet appeared, with a few lines inscribed thereon. Try as he might, ʿAlqama couldn’t read them. He took the tablet to a scholar called Marzāq, according to whom it was written that this was the gourd of Jonah, which had many properties. Hearing this, ʿAlqama rushed back to the grotto, found the gourd there, and enjoyed limitless wealth. The principle function of this long tale is to assign a divine, angelic and prophetic origin to the dervish’s calabash. Here as elsewhere the grotto, a marginal space if ever there was one, is part of the mystery surrounding the object – a mystery that is only intensified by the advent of the undecipherable tablet. A second narrative follows, focussing more on the purpose or use of the calabash, to which we have already briefly alluded in the earlier part of the story; that is, the distribution of water.72 After ʿAlqama there are forty intermediaries for the calabash, until ʿAbd Manāf who, according to the chapter on that subject, had also received the staff. One day, ʿAbd Manāf led his flock into the valley of Baṭḥā where there was a spring with a fresh green tree growing next to it. ʿAbd Manāf passed by this spot. He saw a man sitting there and asked him his name and family origins. The man replied that he was called George (Jirjīs), and invited him to take the gourd he had in his possession. ʿAbd Manāf questioned him about his background. George recounted, ‘One day, on Mount Saʿdāniya, I met a disciple of Jesus, who gave me this gourd, said he was close to death, and told me it had belonged to Jonah. I was meant to take it, go to the banks of a certain spring and give the gourd to ʿAbd Manāf, chief of the Qurayshites, from which tribe Muḥammad will be born.’ The narrative 72

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 202–3.

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continues, telling us that the gourd passed from ʿAbd Manāf to Hāshim, then to ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, then to Bībī Umm Hānī, then to ʿAbbās, then to Muḥammad, and then to Abū Dhar, who received the order from Muḥammad to use it to give water to his men during battle. It was at this time that the Prophet gave the name maṭbakh (pot, receptacle) to the gourd because he used it to hold the dishes he distributed to his people. During the war of Uḥud, this gourd, which had become as hard as steel, was split in two. On the Prophet’s orders, Abū Dhar covered it with an animal skin and the calabash retained this form among mystics; ‘It is one of the obligations of poverty to give water. No merit is equal to the merit of giving water.’ Along with the importance of the mythical transmission of the utensil to Muḥammad (here again, notably, passed on by a Christian), the value of the implement’s usefulness preoccupies our author. By distributing water to the spiritual combatants, the dervish’s calabash ensures that alms can be redistributed. Going beyond the sociological principle of gift and counter-gift, the giving of water (āb dādan) by the Qalandars renews ties with a sort of religious merit (thawāb) that, according to this text, goes back to Adam, Abraham, Moses – on the basis of the verse ‘And when Moses sought water for his people, so We said, “strike with thy staff the rock”’ (Quran 2:60) – and, finally, to Muḥammad.73 As an epilogue to this chapter the Ādāb al-ṭarīq undertakes a brief material and symbolic analysis of this object, an approach that until this point has been virtually absent from this chapter.74 The gourd is supported by four ties, each of which represents a Sufi practice: service (khidmat) rendered to people both noble and common; the miracle (karāmat) that our author claims has already been explained in the chapter on the hat, although this is not the case (!); the attention (naẓarāt), which allows one to recognise God in all that one sees; and gnosis (maʿrifat), which can be either mental (dhahanī) or direct (mustaqīm) – the first of these leads the intellect into the realm of the earthly imaginary while the second takes the spirit to the cosmological spheres. This section on the calabash completes the description of the dervish’s trunk and arms, this upper part of the body and vessel of gnosis. 73

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It is interesting to observe that a ritual of water distribution (saqqāʾī) is still practised in today’s Iran during the month of muḥarram. Its origins go back to the initiatic rituals of the medieval futuwwa and to those of the Qalandarī and Ḥaydarī dervishes of the Savafid era. See Mojtaba Zarvani and Mohammad Mashhadi, “The Rite of Water-Carrier: From Circles of Sufis to the Rituals of Muharram,” Journal of Shi‘a Islamic Studies 4/1 (2011): 23– 46. In addition, later pages of the present work mention two Qalandarī dervishes named Saqqā (water-carrier). Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 203–4.

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The Lower Body

4.1 The Napkin The auscultation of the dervish ends at the bottom of the body, finding the napkin or sufra at knee-level. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm immediately specifies an ancient Persian origin for sufra, although this is in fact incorrect. As before there are not one but four fundamental napkins, each with its tutelary prophet. The first napkin is that of Abraham.75 Legend tells us that at the moment when Abraham sacrificed Ishmael God put a ram (qūchqār) in Ishmael’s place. The skin of this animal was tanned and made into a napkin. Since that time, it is known as the napkin of Abraham, and has four corners, each also pertaining to an aspect of prophetic tutelage. The first corner is called Adam’s, because when Adam wanted God to show him his (Adam’s) children, God told him to close his exoteric eyes and open his esoteric eyes. Adam did so, and saw all the prophets and their attributes. He noticed among them a man who had spread the napkin of generosity (khwān-i karāmat), which brought abundance to the nobility as to the people. When Abraham saw Adam, he invited him to be seated, and Adam sat on the first corner of the cloth. The second corner is attributed to Noah, the third to Ishmael and the fourth to Abraham. Here the text does not furnish any explanation, preferring to concentrate on the Muḥam­ madan destiny of the object: After Abraham, the napkin was transmitted to Ishmael; then to Qedar, son of Ishmael; then to Ḥamal, son of Qedar; then to Nabt, son of Ḥamal; then to Hamaysaʿ, son of Nabt; then to Udad, then to Udd, to ʿAdnān, and to Maʿadd. After twelve intermediaries it passed to ʿAbd Manāf, then to Hāshim and to ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. It was at the time of his marriage to Khadīja that Muḥammad had to recover the napkin, which was hidden on the mountain of Abū Qays. Muḥammad sat on the fourth corner, that of Abraham, because it held the source of the Prophetic Message. From this legend, let us retain the idea of a transmission that is evidently not historically accurate, nor even continuous, but rather is tangled and moves forwards and backwards. The metaphor of weaving, previously used in the section on the cloak, presents the initiatic path as a web of criss-crossing prophetic inheritances. The second napkin is Joseph’s.76 It is said that Joseph freed himself from servitude and set himself on the throne of the sultanate. He made the napkin with palm fibres (līf-i khurmā); it had seven corners. The first of these symbolised patience, because Joseph had remained patient in spite of the torments 75 76

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 205–6. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 206–7.

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inflicted by his jealous brothers and the suffering of Zulaykha. The second corner symbolised deliverance, the key to which is patience. The third represents forgiveness and the fourth magnanimity, like that of Joseph towards his brothers. The fifth corner corresponds to the face (laqā), for when Egypt was cursed with scarcity, God showed men the beauty of his face to free them from want. The sixth corner of Joseph’s napkin refers to the symbol (pl. rumūz) by which one distinguishes God from all other beings. Finally, the seventh corner symbolises ‘attention (naẓar) because when there are miracles [performed by whomever], thou seest the same [God]. Accept the believer and do not reject the unbeliever’. Aside from the now customary symbolic descriptions, what strikes the reader is the repetition of this formula for religious openness. The sufra reaffirms the Qalandarī principle of tolerance. The third napkin is attributed to Jesus.77 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm reports that the infant Jesus cried out from his cradle, ‘O unbelievers, do not heap calumny on my mother who is chaste, I am a prophet and the spirit of God is my attribute’. They replied, ‘If Jesus is really a prophet, let the decorated napkin (sufrayi pur māʾida) appear from the invisible world, that we may declare our faith in his message.’ The archangel Gabriel brought the cloth to Jesus. Some of the pagans made a profession of faith. This napkin, pursues our author, was made from the bark of the tree of Ṭūbā, and from it came nourishment, in particular two foodstuffs said to be specific to Jesus: milk and honey. Milk leads to purity while honey leads to gentleness. Like Abraham’s napkin, this one had four corners: compassion, generosity, humility and spiritual guidance. The Christ-related heritage in this napkin therefore consists of certain moral and pastoral values crossed with magical prodigality. The Ādāb al-ṭarīq has more to say on the subject of the fourth and final napkin, that of Muḥammad.78 It comprises four animal skins: the first is that of the sheep served to the Prophet in a companion’s home; the second is that of the gazelle that praised the Prophet; the third that of the goat that an elderly woman killed to serve to the Prophet; the fourth that of the cow offered by the companion Jābir Anṣārī as a sacrifice to the Prophet. The complexity in the composition of the Prophetic sufra was, according to the legend, perpetuated when the four well-guided caliphs shared the napkin out among themselves, dividing it into its four constituent skins, each associating the types of animal skin mentioned above with particular moral values: sincerity for Abū Bakr, justice for ʿUmar, modesty for ʿUthmān, goodness for ʿAlī. What’s more, the Prophet’s napkin has 24 buckles (ḥalqa), grouped into six categories: the law, the 77 78

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 207–8. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 208–9.

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path, the truth, gnosis, the path of the meeting with God (sulūk-i mulāqāt), the knowledge of God and of what is other than God. Each buckle within these categories corresponds to a Sufi action. The law brings together the following buckles: persisting in the quest to know the mourning of the world and the honour of the beyond; bringing together knowledge and practice; persevering in practice; avoiding pride in one’s practice. The buckles of the path group are: finding the perfect master; serving him; being opposed to the ego; not wanting to punish the enemy. The four buckles of truth are: to direct oneself to God; to hide the divine secrets; to rid oneself of artifice; to neglect everything that is empty of God. And the list, in its intentional fastidiousness, continues. These buckles complete the representation of the initiatic path as a tangled web. The complexity of the road that the Sufi must follow is unceasingly recalled to him by the humblest of his possessions. Simple as it may seem, the napkin contains a series of signs inherited from the prophets, signs that address the dervish each time he eats or takes a break. The next chapter gives less abstract explanations. 4.2 The Service Linked to the napkin, the service that the dervish renders each day stems not only from a gesture of the Prophet’s but also from the principles of humility and altruism that govern all the acts of his Sufi successors. There is a founding myth at the origin of this service.79 On the night that Muḥammad made his celestial journey (miʿrāj) he saw a domed edifice between the sky and the land. He questioned the angel Gabriel, who told him that this edifice was called the temple (duwār) and that the ‘men of the invisible’ (rijāl al-ghayb), or saintly spirits, were within. Muḥammad wanted to know more, so Gabriel enjoined him to go to the door of the temple. When the Prophet put his hand on the door, a voice from within asked ‘Who is it?’ The Prophet said, ‘It is I (manam), Muḥammad, I am on a celestial voyage.’ The voice responded, ‘This is not the place for egotism (manī).’ Ḥājjī ʿAbd alRaḥīm’s commentary says that the Prophet was obliged to continue on his way because egotism was still part of his life and he was still affected by pride. Later, Muḥammad came back to the door of the temple, but to the voice that asked him the same question he said, ‘the chief of the tribe is at their service (sayyid al-qawm khādimu-hum)’. The door opened. Here intervenes another commentary from our author on the hadith that would become a Sufi adage: pride shuts off the vision of the dervish, one must free oneself from pride in order that the door of the invisible may begin to open. Muḥammad passed in through the 79

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 213–15.

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door and saw forty individuals (chilil tan) there, all seated. One of them rose and prostrated himself. Muḥammad asked why they did not all prostrate themselves, and they replied, ‘O Prophet, we are all submitting to you, for we forty men are all one man.’ Then one of them cut his hand with a knife and blood flowed from each man’s hand. Another drop of blood came from the ceiling, and when Muḥammad asked about this they replied that it was the blood of one of their party who’d gone out to beg. When he heard this, the Prophet undid his turban, which wrapped around his head (pīch) 39 times, and shared it out between the 39 individuals present. A bit later, Salmān Fārisī arrived – the companion of the Prophet, said to have been the first Persian to convert to Islam and, as it happened, the fortieth member of the chihil tan. He had a bunch of grapes in his hand, which he gave to the Prophet. The forty reminded the Prophet of what he had said, ‘the chief of the tribe is at their service’, suggesting that he ought to share out the grapes. Using the grapes and some water from Kawthar, the river of paradise, the Prophet made grape juice, which he shared with the forty. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm concludes that the Prophet’s service dates from this episode. The sharing out of the grapes and the turban are the basis for the practice of service among Sufis. Often conceived as service rendered to the master by disciple and to the disciple by the master, both being united in service to God, among the Qalandars service is understood differently. From the Prophetic model they retain the sharing of goods, or of alms, and focus more precisely on commensality, sharing nourishment together both literally and spiritually. This transition from Muḥammad’s gesture to a tradition of service among dervishes passed via Salmān Fārisī, the ‘archetype of the initiated adept’.80 Our Qalandarī author puts forward the hypothesis, drawing on unspecified hadiths, that the celestial temple in the story corresponds to the mosque in Quba, not far from Medina, and the forty individuals are the people of the bench (aṣḥāb al-ṣuffa or ahl al-ṣuffa). Muḥammad b. Abū Bakr, the Caliph’s son (d. 38/658) relates, ‘I was in the service of the Prophet, one of the companions brought a dish of dates. The Prophet ordered Salmān Fārisī to distribute them to the aṣḥāb and to say, on presenting each date, “in the name of God, the merciful the compassionate”. And Salmān Fārisī did so. On the Prophet’s orders, the remaining dates were shared with the spouses of the aṣḥāb. Then the Prophet turned to Salmān and declared, ‘O Salmān, congratulations! You have become the servant of Muḥammad.’ Thus, adds Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, the first person to

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I borrow this expression from Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi.

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be admitted to the lineage of the Khwājagān by the caliph Abū Bakr was Salmān Fārisī, who served for eighteen years.81 In line with other Sufi authors, our Qalandar attributes the origins of the men of Sufism (ahl al-taṣawwuf) to the ahl al-ṣuffa. We are not concerned here with the (improbable) historicity of the beginnings of Muslim mysticism. What matters for this text is elsewhere: on the one hand, the transmission of the notion of service must be aligned with the lineages of the Sufi masters, especially those belonging to the Naqshbandī Khwājagān, which was followed, at least nominally, by the Central Asian Qalandariyya. They are the ones, more than any others, who passed down the practice of khidmat/khādimī. On the other hand, this is a practice that brings the values of altruism to the fore in the commensual ritual. The collective and ritualised meal puts the altruistic ideal into day-to-day practice without denying its esoteric significance. How does the service of dervishes play out? ‘When the pot is placed on the hearth, begin by washing [the hands] three times and say this verse three times: “And you devour the inheritance greedily, and you love wealth with an ardent love” (Quran 89:19–20). Know that the purity of the pot signifies purity of heart and that when the servant puts the pot on [the hearth], lights the fire and pours water into it, it is good to cook the meal until the water boils, so that the meal may be boiled and become good to eat. The pot that is the heart must pass from the world of the lower earth of negation to the hearth of the higher world of proof [it is necessary that] it be washed in the water of mortification and heated in the fire of ardour – for if there is no fire, the meal remains raw – thus it will boil through contemplation and quarrel when the dish of gnosis is cooked (…) Another servant receives instruction from the master while he cooks the dish. When [this servant] obtains [the master’s] permission, he brings the tub and the pitcher. After having cleaned and spread the tablecloth and taken the pot off [the fire] he asks for the blessing, “My God, bless the dish of the poor”. When he serves the dish to the spiritual guide, he says, “Praises to God who guided the two worlds with a holy mouthful”. When he serves the dish to other people, the guardian (ḥafīẓ) says, “Let us not be unequal, may none [of you] be wronged” (…) While the tablecloth for the feast is removed, one chants this prayer, on the importance of which the Prophet insisted: “Praises to He who has nourished me from this dish and allowed me to nourish [others] in my turn.”’82 This immersion in everyday religious life shows the readers the exact reality of the manners (ādāb) of dervishes, while underlining that everything they do 81 82

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 217–18. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 215–16.

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has a hidden esoteric aspect. Washing, cooking, distributing and eating food; these actions are indistinguishably corporeal and spiritual, public and private, material and ritual. As elsewhere in this text, a very speculative etymology is cited to confirm the mystical meaning: in the word khādim, the letter ‘kh’ contains the word khiyāl (imagination), the letter ‘a/i’ the word istiqāmat (perseverance), the letter ‘d’ the word dūtā (bent), for the servant bends at the waist, and the letter ‘m’ contains the word murād (meaning), for one understands the meaning of service once one is worthy to perform it.83 This etymology, and the interpretation that seeks to recommend humility, altruism and service to God, finds a final support in the sayings of several Naqshbandī authorities, such as the eponymous master himself, Bahāʾ al-Dīn (d. 791/1389), or Aḥmad Kāsānī (d. 949/1542) alias Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam, who was a well-known figure in Central Asian Sufism.84 4.3 The Animal Hide Down at the dervish’s ground-level we find the takhta-pūst, an animal hide on which one sits. The beginning of this chapter of the Ādāb al-ṭarīq immediately specifies that ‘to sit on the animal hide is the Sunna of the Prophet, [then] the Four Caliphs and the shaykhs of the spiritual path sat down on it as well. Know that to sit on the animal’s hide symbolises the fact of sitting on the carpet [of spiritual authority] (sajjāda) and that this is the initiatic stage of the advanced masters (muntahiyān).’85 Thus the animal hide appears as an accoutrement of the master or even of the saintly man, who as such sits in authority over other dervishes. As with the other objects, the animal hide has mythical origins attributed to it. One day, the caliph ʿUthmān wanted to serve a meal to the Prophet, and he had a sheep. The Prophet said to him, ‘On the occasion of this meal for me, sacrifice your sheep today, so that tomorrow at the last judgement I may praise to all the banquet in Muḥammad’s honour.’ ʿUthmān sacrificed the sheep and tanned its skin, bringing it to the Prophet. The Prophet made a rug from the skin, on which he practised his devotions. In another anecdote, the Prophet once prayed on a goat-skin, and on other occasions on a gazelle- or rabbit-skin. The companions gathered the four hides to make a prayer rug. When this rug of animal hide was finished, the Prophet sat in the middle of it while the Four Caliphs took up their posts on the four corners.86 This myth regarding the use 83 84 85 86

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 216. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 217. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 219. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 219–20.

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of hides from different animals authorised the dervishes to manufacture differing takhta-pūst, although they were most often made from sheepskin. On a deeper level this myth illustrates the transmission of the relic to the caliphs, and then to the Sufi masters, an exoteric as well as an esoteric transmission since each extremity of the animal hide has its assigned prophet and caliph, as well as a spiritual value. The first corner teaches patience, is linked to the prophet Job and to Abū Bakr; the second is marked by consent and is linked to the prophet Ishmael and to ʿUmar; The third corner symbolises modesty and is linked to Yaḥyā and to ʿUthmān; finally, the fourth corner represents generosity and is linked to Moses and ʿAlī. This being the case, the takhta-pūshs of later dervish masters necessarily also signify these things, with which the adepts must be familiar: ‘for all these dervishes who are ignorant of the principles attached to the fact of sitting on the animal hide, it’s as if they were sitting on the skin of a pig’. And the explanation does not end there. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm adds that the object has five faculties: ascetic poverty, devotional love, the experience of unity with God, the progress of the spirit in the knowledge of God, and gnosis as supreme knowledge.87 As with other paraphernalia of the dervish, this simple hide reminds him of the stages on the path he must follow. After the staff and the begging bowl, the animal hide in its turn inspires a personification whose rhetorical power lies in the way it fleshes out the item of the master’s regalia while serving as a reminder of the disciple’s proper place. The animal’s face on its hide symbolises devotion because it is precisely the devotions enacted by the disciple that make him a disciple; the skin of the chest refers to knowledge, the acquisition of which is necessary in order to perform the devotions correctly; the feet on the animal hide refer to the love that must serve as a foundation for the intellect.88 To make things flesh again, restore them to their bodies: these ambitions also act as a reminder that the gestural aspect of devotion has a bottom, centre and top, representing, in order, the degrees of: ‘respect for existence’ (to which the Qalandars are very attached, as our author underlines); ‘accomplishment of religion’; and ‘expression of mystical love’. It is clear that for the dervishes such regalia as the animal hide cannot be reduced merely to a manifestation of the shaykh’s spiritual authority. These items are devotional tools above all. ‘Know, finally, that the animal hide is a throne, that is to say that the decorum (zīnat) of kings is the throne of the sultanate, which is made of stone and wood for the repose of the existence of the king [while] the decorum of dervishes is the throne of devotion, which is made of animal hide for the repose of the spirit.’ 87 88

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 220. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 221.

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The chapter ends with two anecdotes intended to remind the dervishes of the necessity for devotion: as a defence against the neglect of ritual and quite apart from any magical acts or events.89 The first story tells of an animal hide that was offered to the shaykh Aḥmad Jurjānī. He put it down in a corner of his sanctuary (maʿbad) without a second thought. Several days passed. A voice spoke from the hide, ‘My God, a tyrant is holding me prisoner.’ When the shaykh heard the voice, he asked the hide who this tyrant was. It replied, ‘You, who do not pray upon me!’ From this, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm draws the following lesson, ‘Know then that the hide is not meant for sleeping on, but for piercing the heart of the stone of devotion.’ The second anecdote reports that one day Shaykh Masʿūd Jabalī placed his sheepskin on water, and prayed on it! When he took it off the water’s surface it was still dry. Shaykh Ḥasan Baṣrī (d. 110/728) was there at the water’s edge and witnessed this miracle, but smiled in an ironic fashion. He said to Masʿūd Jabalī, ‘O shaykh, know that remaining unconsumed by fire, flying in the air and avoiding drowning in water are in no way acts of valour, for being unconsumed by fire is the power of the salamander, flight in the air is the power of the fly, and avoiding drowning in water is the power of the twig, but accepting to enter in to the confidence [of God] is giving one’s heart. Walk on the water and you are but a twig, float in the air and you are but a fly. Do without these two [miracles]. Give your heart to become someone.’ 4.4 The Broom Sign par excellence of humility, and the final degree of the bottom of the body, the broom that the dervish sweeps with is not an innocuous object. Nevertheless, this treatise touches only lightly on its origins, limiting itself to the declaration that the archangel Gabriel manufactured the broom and brought it to earth, God having created it for the purposes of cleaning the earth. At a very early date, the first Sufi masters included its use among the services (khidmat) that a dervish must render.90 In Qalandarī mysticism, sweeping with the broom amounts to ‘[for] the gnostic, opening the eyes of his heart and observing the particles of the universe, for in each particle the light of the sun and the beauty of God are abundant’. He affirms that ‘it is clear that [regarding] each plant, animal and man, the Creator of things has not made them without qualities. Each blade of grass coming out of the earth says “unique, unequalled” (…) and within each leaf grows the guardian of praise for divine favours.’91 The mystical 89 90 91

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 222. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 223. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 223–24.

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experience promising what one might call observation while sweeping is described in these terms: ‘When, thanks to the great number of his austerities, the enslaved mystic obtains unity, and when, thanks to the product of his spiritual efforts, he acquires gnosis, for every species that he looks at his ardent desire (ishtīyaq) orients him helplessly towards God. The one who arrives at this stage will hear [raised] from each blade of grass a voice testifying to the unicity [of God].’92 As with other spiritual exercises, sweeping overturns the dervish’s vision of the world. Capable of reading a sign of God in each mote of worldly dust, with a broom in his hand the Qalandar claims, not without mischief, to have the same experience as the great mystics. On the practical front our author underlines that the broom is good for young dervishes (kūchak-abdalān), apprentices in the rapture of God, for it is service that initially seems to them the most accessible and achievable task until they realise its esoteric significance and hidden spiritual virtues, gaining a more adequate understanding under their superior’s direction of the Sufi concept of service. Every task accomplished in the lodge (khānaqāh) has, in fact, a double meaning, interior and exterior. ‘If thou desirest to enter the lodge, come in from the right and go out by the left, in the same way as the psalmodists (dhākirān) say the letter lā, which is negation [of God], on the right and express affirmation [of God] on the left, which is the heart (…) Mawlānā [Rūmī (d. 672/1273)] said that the vestibule of the house of human existence is the heart and that the house of the Lord is also the heart. Each sin committed by the one who is in servitude to God throws a veil over the face of his heart. Then the mystic must, with the broom of the lā that is negation, wash the carnal dust (khāshāk-i nafsānī) from the heart until the heart is touched with divine grace.’93 Going in and out of the Sufi lodge, sweeping it, etc. are actions that, like begging, have a double meaning. The broom not only cleans the lodge, but teaches, as an article of the dervish’s paraphernalia, the purgation of sensual or intellectual dross from the spirit: ‘Know that the broom signifies the tongue (lisān) and the earth signifies the human conscience (ḍamīr). The tongue, which is the broom that sweeps away dust, must enter with the hand of resolution into the harem of the heart and there deploy the napkin of repetition of “there is no God but God”, meeting the home of theophanies of the incomparable essence.’94 As esoteric as it may be, the analysis of the broom does not neglect the ritual rules that accompany the actual sweeping. While the novice is cleaning, he 92 93 94

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 224. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 224–25. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 225.

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must say, ‘I seek refuge near God against the accursed Satan, that “surely God forgives sins altogether; surely He is the All-forgiving, He is the All-compassionate” (Quran 39:53).’ After having swept, he must pronounce the following formula: ‘I seek refuge near God against the accursed Satan, “My Lord, lead me in with a just ingoing, and lead me out with a just ongoing; grant me authority from Thee, to help me” (Quran 17:80).’95 Sweeping the ground also means imploring God to purge one’s sins; entering and leaving the lodge also means ­affirming one’s submission to divine justice. To underline the reality and ordinariness of the task, of which the Prophet himself is supposed to have said, ‘whoever takes care to clean their house will receive many favours’, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm recounts, in addition to the ritual formulas, two brief anecdotes. In the first, Muḥammad b. Abū Bakr relates, ‘One day I was in Mecca, where there was a madman plunged in mystical rapture who was sweeping the sacred sanctuary. Sometimes he laughed and sometimes he cried. I asked him why he was behaving in this way. He replied, “I laugh at the one who is ignorant of the merits of this service, I weep because I’m afraid that God may judge me unworthy of this service and take it away from me.”’ The second anecdote is from Kaʿb al-Aḥbār (d. ca. 32/652), a Yemeni rabbi who converted to Islam. According to him, the Prophet’s daughter Bībī Fāṭima stipulated that each devotee who spent forty days sweeping the mosque or the cemetery of Medina would rapidly attain his spiritual goal.96 The religious value of the act of sweeping thus lies in its posture of humility before God and dust. 5

From Lexis to Relics

The twelfth chapter of the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, by recapitulating the eleven preceding chapters, restates the steps in the transmission of the dervishes’ entire attire and gives the reader the final key to understanding the treatise as a whole. Everything begins with the Prophet, who is the insurmountable model for the dervish, or even history’s first dervish; what follows stems from the Four Caliphs and the companions of the Prophet. The fundamental principle of poverty, contained as we have seen in the word faqr and its etymology, has its material existence through the attire of poverty (libās-i faqr). However, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm affirms that the Prophet had two other habits: the habit of razzia or raiding (libās-i ghazā) and the habit of law (libās-i sulūk-i sharʿ); he wore the first of these in times of war and the second when he was practising the five 95 96

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 225–26. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 226.

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prayers of going to the mosque. As for his habit of poverty, Muḥammad put it on at night to practice the hidden cult, that is, the Sufi spiritual exercises. When he was on the threshold of death, he asked for his habit of poverty, which comprised a hat, a belt, three cloaks and a shirt (pīrāhan).97 For the Qalandars, who use this to justify their spiritual choice of poverty above combat or the law, the Prophet preferred the attire of the dervish to that of the combatant or the man of law at the critical moment when he was offering his most precious legacy. What became of these elements of Muḥammad’s habit? The Prophet confided the hat and one cloak to caliph Abū Bakr, and the shirt to caliph ʿUmar. In addition, he told ʿUmar and ʿAlī to find Uways Qaranī, a disciple of Muḥammad’s who was supposed to have communicated with him by telepathy and brought forth the initiatic mode called uwaysī; this man gave ʿAlī a cloak. Adam’s belt of grapevines was transmitted to the companion ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf. The staff and the napkin of Abraham, which went with it, were transmitted to caliph ʿUthmān. Each of these relics had a different destiny. When Abū Bakr became caliph, he gave the hat and the patched cloak to his son Muḥammad. Once Abū Bakr had died, Muḥammad put the hat on the head of Salmān Fārisī. Then the hat was transmitted successively to Qāsim b. Muḥammad, Imām Jaʿfar Ṣādiq, Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī, Abū al-Ḥasan Kharaqānī, Abū al-Qāsim Gurgānī (d. 450/1058 or 469/1077), Aḥmad Fārmadī (d. 476/1084), Abū Yūsuf Hamadānī (d. 535/1140), ʿAbd al-Khāliq Ghijduwānī (d. 574/1179 or 617/1220), Khwāja ʿĀrif Riwgarī (d. 657/1259), Maḥmūd Anjīr Faghnawī (d. 670/1272 or 710/1310), ʿAlī Rāmitanī (d. 716/1316 or 721/1321), Bābā Sammāsī (d. ca. 734–6/1334–6 or 755/1354), Amīr Kulāl (d. ca. 771–2/1370), Shāh Naqshband, Yaʿqūb Charkhī (d. 851/1447), Khwāja Aḥrār (d. 895/1490), Muḥammad Qāḍī (d. 921/1516), Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam, Mawlānā Khurd ʿAzīzān (Tāshkandī) (d. 977/1570), Mullā Aka Shiburghānī (d. 1005/1597) and Mullā Pāyanda Muḥammad Aqṣī (or Akhsiketī) (d. 1010/1601). Then the hat was divided between four caliphs: Mawlānā Mastī, Mawlānā Ṣāliḥ Tarkībī, Muḥammad Darwīsh Ghijduwānī and Abū Saʿīd Andikānī (or Andijānī). The text is not clear about what happened to this cloak, because it does not go further back than Abū Yūsuf Hamadānī and does not specify if the cloak and hat stayed together, or whether the cloak was lost without leaving a trace for the Sufi memorialists. From Hamadānī the cloak was passed successively to Aḥmad Yasawī, Ḥakīm Ata (sixth/twelfth century), Zangī Ata (seventh/thirteenth century), Ṣadr Ata (eighth/fourteenth century), ʿAbd al-Khalīl Ata, Shaykh Khudā(y)dād

97

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 227.

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(d. 939/1532), Bābā Turkesh, ʿAbd al-Shukūr and ʿAbd al-Quddūs98. Then the cloak was sent to the Khwarezm region; the reader is not told to whom.99 That the contemporary historian should entertain strong doubts about this reconstitution and its impossible continuity is unimportant. All reliquaries slip through the fingers of modern historicity. What is striking in our author is his concern for memory. From his viewpoint as from that of his readers, the attire of the dervish does not consist only of symbolic garments, and if there are plenty of symbols, myths and esoteric teachings in this text, yet they appear only because of a panoply of objects, real for the readers, that actually exist across time. The material culture of the dervishes says all there is to say about their history and their system of thought. What’s more, although several of the personages mentioned in these spiritual genealogies are difficult to identify, it remains the case that they define the contours of a Sufi milieu that is, temporally and spatially, relatively close to Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm. The brotherhood affiliations and the nisba (names with geographical origins) place this milieu at the confluence of the Naqshbandiyya and the Yasawiyya, in Fergana, the Māwarāʾ al-nahr and Khwarezm. Let us return to this chapter where we left off. The napkin of Abraham that had been left to Abū Bakr was then passed to ʿUmar then to ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Ḥasan, Ḥusayn, Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, Muḥammad Bāqir, Imām Jaʿfar Ṣādiq, Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī, Aḥmad Khadruyya, Abū al-Fattāḥ Daqqāq, ʿAbd Allāh Ṣaffār, Nuʿmān Mānūrī, Shaykh Sulaymān, Shaykh Burhān, Ḥamīd Walad and Shaykh Muẓaffar. At this final stage it remained.100 Apart from Khadruyya Balkhī (third/ninth century), a Khorasan Malāmatī101, the identification of the bearers of these names is not currently possible. The problem is additionally complicated by the appearance of another passage revealing a second chain of transmission for the napkin without any indication of whether this relates to a part of the napkin, passed on via different transmitters, or the same entire napkin, passed via an alternative transmission. In any case, one reads in this second passage that after Imām Jaʿfar Ṣādiq the napkin went in turn to Mūsā Kāẓim, Imām ʿAlī Mūsā Riḍā, Yūsuf Saqatī, Yūsuf Ashʿarī, Muḥammad Jurjānī (d. 816/1413), Niẓām al-Dīn Khāmūsh (d. 826/1423?), Khwāja Aḥrār, Muḥammad Qāḍī and 98

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This could be a disciple of Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband, according to the Anīs al-ṭālibīn wa ʿuddat al-sālikīn by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn ibn Mubārak Bukhārī (eighth/fourteenth century), as cited by Mehran Afshari in Bābā Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 290, but this identification would be detrimental to the chronology as presented. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 228. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 228–29. According to, among other sources, Hujwīrī, The Kashf al-mahjùb, the oldest Persian treatise on Sufism, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (Leiden: Brill, 1911), 119–21.

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Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam. In this version, after the last-mentioned of these men died the napkin (or piece of the napkin) was divided into four parts: One part went to Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1034/1625) in India; one was given to the lineage (khāndān) of ʿAbd al-Shahīd – one of Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam’s grandsons ­­­– another piece ended up in Herat via the lineage of the descendants of the scholar Niẓām al-Dīn Harawī (eighth/fourteenth century), and a final piece went to Tashkent in the lineage of Shaykh Khāwand Tahūr (d. 755/1354).102 According to the author of The Manners of the path, the relic seems at some point to have been dispersed between India, the Māwarāʾ al-nahr and the Khorasan, among Sufi families with Naqshbandī affiliations. Once again, we needn’t seek historical exactitude. Instead let us retain, without being able to be more precise, this reference to India, which as we noted above was, during the seventeenth century, a region in which Central Asian Qalandars, especially the caliphs of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm himself, were particularly active. The treatise is less prolix on the subject of the staff that accompanied the napkin of Abraham: after ʿUthmān, it went to a certain Kalbī. When Kalbī died, the staff disappeared. According to tradition, the staff passed to the Prophet’s uncle, ʿAbbās (d. 193/809) and thence to his descendants until it reached Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 193/809), the fifth Abbasid caliph. We also learn that until this epoch any sick person who called on the staff was given it and thus healed. When Imām-i Aʿẓam (a name given to the jurist Abū Ḥanīfa, who died in about 150/767) fell ill he also called on the staff; it was given to him and he returned to health. Thereafter, ‘thanks to this staff he manifested numerous perfections and spiritual states and his name floated above the world like a banner’.103 So here, too, our text limits itself to underlining the magical character of the object, as in section five of the text, devoted to the staff. This twelfth chapter deals more substantially with the shirt of the Prophet. ʿUmar received it, and then ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar (d. 73/693), then the companion Zayd b. Arqam (d. ca. 68/688), Bahāʾ al-Dīn Mashriqī, Abū Yazīd Simnānī, Bahlūl Kāmlāʾī, Ḥamīd Rūdbārī, Abū ʿAlī Rūdbārī (third/tenth century), Fattāḥ Khwārizmī, Abū alQāsim Balkhī, ʿAbd al-Qahhār Shahrisabzī, ʿAbd al-Jabbār ʿIshqī, Shaykh Ṣādiq, Khwāja Qāsim, ʿAbd Allāh Buzurg, Khwāja Jawānmard, Khwāja Isḥāq, and finally ʿAbd Allāh Kūchakī.104 Although it is frustrating for the historian to be unable to identify at least a dozen names in this genealogy, the nisbas and the search for some continuity, illusory as it may be, confirm Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm’s desire to put together a historical reconstruction of the Sufi reliquary. 102 103 104

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 230. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 229–30 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 229.

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Having noted this, it’s not surprising to read, on the subject of the belt (not Adam’s belt, which was mentioned at the start of the chapter), the following: ‘Know that the Prophet’s belt was transmitted to ʿAlī, it was made of wool from the she-camel of the prophet Ṣāliḥ. It was then transmitted to Imām Jaʿfar Ṣādiq [from] whom the [subsequent] stages have been described, then to ʿAbd al-Qādir (Gīlānī), Aḥmad Badawī (d. 674/1276), Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), Qāsim Tabrīzī (d. 837/1433), Darwīsh Bahrām Saqqā (d. 970/1562), Sayyid Awtad al-Dīn Khwārizmī, Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Khwārizmī, Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh Khwārizmī, Sayyid Qāsim Khwārizmī and Sayyid Marjān Muḥammad Qalandar. I was in his service and saw this belt, which he wore knotted around his waist.’105 It’s relatively unimportant that these lineages are forged in order to bring some prestige to the spiritual pedigree of the Qalandars, as is clearly the case here where our author includes the names of the great figures of classical Sufism. What interests us here is the final phrase, which expresses our author’s evident faith in the existence of the relics; other sources relate that Marjān Muḥammad Qalandar was indeed the master of Bābā Qul Mazīd, master of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm.106 Another interesting point is the mention of a large number of sayyids from the Khwarezm region. The next part of the twelfth chapter comes back to the cloak. There were two additional Prophetic relics. One of these cloaks was confided to ʿAlī and was then transmitted to Imām Riḍā, Maʿrūf Karkhī, Abū al-Qāsim Jurjānī107, Shaykh Bahrām Ṭabasī, Najm al-Dīn Kubrā and Shāh Qāsim Anwār (Qāsim Tabrīzī), in whose shrine it was supposed to remain.108 The second cloak was given by the Prophet to Uways Qaranī in the invisible world. After the death of the Prophet, ʿUmar and ʿAlī took this cloak with them to Yemen, where Yemeni chiefs came to meet them. ʿUmar and ʿAlī questioned them on the subject of Uways, telling them of the well-known cloak that was intended for him. Initially, the chiefs said that no one in Yemen was worthy to receive the cloak of the Prophet. Nevertheless, one of them told the travellers that there was a man enraptured in God (dīwāna) in the village of Qaran, who was a camel herder. They went to the village, found Uways and gave him the cloak. He accepted it, then deposited it in a corner of the ruins (kharāba) in which he lived. Then the cloak was transmitted to Ḥasan Baṣrī and then to Ḥabīb ʿAjamī (d. 156/772). After this latter the text tells us there were eight intermediaries before the cloak passed to Ḥamīd ʿIshqī, ʿAbd al-Qāyyūm, ʿAbd al-Ṣamad and finally to 105 106 107 108

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 230. See Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, 232–34. Maybe this is Abū al-Qāsim Gurgānī (d. 450/1058), for more information on whom see notably Hujwīrī, The Kashf al-mahjùb, 169–70. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 230.

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Shaykh Mubram. The text tells us that this cloak is preserved in the latter’s inn (langar).109 Many of these names are unknown to us, and it’s likely that Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm is equally in the dark about some of them, because his memorial quest seems to crumble as the chapter wears on. So the tale of the transmission of the relics finishes with three indications that are as brief as they are fragmentary: ‘The prayer rug of the Prophet was put into his tomb at his request. When Imām Ḥusayn was martyred, the begging bowl was broken; it still retains the marks of this. The calabash was also broken during the time of the companion Abū Dhar, who lived in the mosque of Quba. When Adham Saqqā advanced in the Sufi path he acquired a calabash to which he attached four thongs, [with it] he distributed water to people or else used it to hold food of which he gave abundantly to the worthy (ahl-i istiḥqāq). From that time to this, the calabash spread among the dervishes (fuqarāʾ).’110 It is less important, from our point of view, that the Adham Saqqā mentioned above was part of the genealogical lineages of the Indian and Central Asian Qalandars111 than that here our author indicates that Adham Saqqā modelled his own calabash on the Prophet’s. Here is the crux of this insistence on the importance of the relics: as the life, the acts, the values and the sayings of the Prophet form a model for dervishes to follow, so his utensils must also be reproduced. This lesson had already been formulated: against an overly intellectual Sufism the Qalandariyya extols a total mysticism in which there can be no spirituality without materiality. Where most of the scholarly authorities of Sufism – for example, Nawāʾī, whom we studied in our first chapter – see the heterodox or marginal dervishes as having gone astray, accusing them of exhibitionism if not of faking, the Qalandars perceive here a radical salvation. Not to carry replicas of the holy relics would mean never having cut oneself off from society, from its comforts and conventions. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm concludes his treatise by declaring that he felt he had a duty to make known any and all speculations (tāʾammul) relating to each detail of the objects, and, for each word, to make known any and all etymological meanings (taḥammul). His goal was not literary or poetical, he did not aim for ‘the ornament of words’ (ārāyish-i alfāẓ), but to provide an explanation (bayān) of such objects as the hat, the cloak, etc. Confident of the precepts of the great mystics of the past and of his own progress on the Qalandarī path, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm believes that he has explained, in the gnostic mode or system of 109 110 111

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 231. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 231–32. Simon Digby, Sufis and Soldiers in Awrangzeb’s Deccan: Malfúzát-i Naqshbandiyya (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 54.

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thought of the prophets and saints, the part played by teaching (taʿlīm), parables (tamthīl), and the metaphorical (takniya), as well as the part played by allusion (talmīḥ) and metonymy (talwīḥ).112 In an approach that is consistent with his argumentation throughout the Manners of the path, and is the opposite of an aesthetic of language, the Qalandarī master describes his way of working as a denial of any separation between the lexicon and the relic, between the dervish’s words and his objects; this because they are intrinsically tied together by the linguistic operations of metaphor and metonymy. In their understanding of Sufi gnosis as a system of figures and rhetorical relationships, it seems to us that the Central Asian dervishes occupy a marginal space in the doctrinal universe of the region during this period.113 112 113

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 232. In this regard it is symptomatic that the Risāla-yi ḥaqqiyya of Nidāʾī, a reader and disciple of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, only repeats a few of the ‘material’ parts of the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, and shows a clear preference for the doctrinal explanations. Anyone would think that Nidāʾī was performing a re-alignment of the text towards the traditional teachings of the Naqshbandiyya and away from Qalandarī principles, as a way of reinforcing Sufi orthodoxy, as I proposed in Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, chapter 3, to call a return to the Law.

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Chapter 3

In the Ruins of Aksu 1

Kharābātī, a People’s Poet1

Although he is unknown in the west, even among most Central Asia specialists – except for a few lines by the German orientalist Martin Hartmann mentioning Chirabati (sic)2 – from the vantage point of today Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh Kharābātī looks like an enlightened intellectual of Xinjiang and an early hero for the Uyghurs, who at that time were seeking morality and social justice. In a book written in 2003 under the name Abbas Muniyaz, the thinking of Kharābātī the poet is gradually revealed in the pages of a fiction that is a work of imagination more than of history, and that presents to the reader the poet’s ideas about the struggle against obscurantism.3 Abbas Muniyaz, who is a teacher in an Aksu high school, explains in two short articles that although Kharābātī was influenced by mystical poetry that was laden with esoterism, he was an ardent defender of knowledge (ilim in Uyghur) of all sorts, and of those who transmitted it (scholars and professors).4 Although this contemporary reading of Kharābātī legitimately reflects recent debates among the Xinjiang intelligentsia, who are on the alert to distinguish any early signs of modern humanism (insanpärwärlik), it finds few echoes in Kharābātī’s work itself, or at least in the sole text to have survived, a mathnawī. I shall therefore present a different reading, more artful and perhaps darker, based on careful attention to verses drawn from the thousands of distichs that make up this vast poem. Kharābātī is thought to have been born in 1638 in the village of Choghtal, part of the town of Egärchi, five kilometres south of Aksu. Almost nothing is known of his life. There was an anonymous biography called Ḥājjī Kharābātī Tadhkirasī that appears to have been lost; testimony collected from a descendant, Nuranjan, in 1980, affirmed that the young man, from a family of ulamas, 1 This sub-chapter is a revised and modified version of my article, “Kharābātī (1638–1730), un poète populaire du Turkestan oriental,” Cahiers d’Asie centrale 24 (2015): 127–44. 2 Martin Hartmann, “Die osttürkischen Handschriften der Sammlung Hartmann,” in Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin 7/2 (Berlin, Georg Reimer, 1904), 4, 15, 21. 3 Abbas Muniyaz, Riyazätkar ädib: Kharabati (Urumqi: Shinjang Khälq Näshriyati, 2003). 4 Abbas Muniyaz, “Khabarati näziridä ilim wä alim,” Shinjang ijtimayi pänlär munbri 2 (2010): 31–38; id., “Kharabati näziridiki qährimanliq,” Shinjang ijtimayi pänlär munbri 4 (2010): 38–45.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_005

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studied in Aksu, then Bukhara, and then returned to the region of his birth to provide instruction as both an imam and a teacher (mudarris).5 This scholar is said to have made the pilgrimage to Mecca and returned home safely, before dying in 1730 at the age of 92 years. His body was laid to rest in a shrine in Choghtal, the village of his birth, next to a mosque and a madrasa and also, it seems, to a Sufi lodge (khānaqāh), which today no longer exists. All of these edifices were financed by a waqf that was ended in 1953, after the Chinese agrarian reforms, as were the other pious foundations of Xinjiang.6 Nevertheless, pedagogical and especially religious (or even initiatic) activities continue to be pursued in these places to this day. As far as we know, Kharābātī was the author of a single work, a mathnawī consisting of almost thirteen thousand verses in Chagatay Turkish, and using the ʿarūḍ metre. Apart from a very abridged and sometimes incorrect Uyghur edition published in Urumqi in 1985–6 by Eziz Sabit and based on a lithograph from Tashkent dated 1330/1911–12, which was edited by a certain Mullā Mīr Makhdūm ibn Mullā Shāh Yūnus, we also have one apparently complete manuscript at our disposal, comprising 211 folios; this is held in the Gunnar Jarring Collection at the University of Lund, shelved under Prov. 90. This book, Jāmiʿ-i Kharābātī, was composed (taṣnīf) in 1145–1146/1732–1734, that is, very soon after the poet’s death, by Mullā Muḥammad Sayyid Khān; it was copied (doubtless during the nineteenth century) by Mullā Hāshim in Chafūrchāq. The names of the compiler and copyist, as well of that of the place, remain difficult to identify exactly.7 There are at least ten manuscripts of the text at the Institute of Orientalism in Tashkent, shelved under IVAN Uz 219, 1407, 3794/I, 5938/ II, 7504, 7181/I, 7736/I, 11271, 11867, 12070. Four more manuscripts have been discovered at the Bureau of Ancient Texts (qädimki äsärlär ishkhanisi), in the province of Khotan, by Hörmätjan Fikrät, a philologist at the University of Xinjiang. This scholar prepared a new edition of the work in 2011 and wrote several articles that stand out from the other publications devoted to Kharābātī8 in that they re-introduce a Sufi reading of the text, one that for a long time was obscured. 5 According to the introduction by Eziz Sabit, written in 1982 and appearing in Kharābātī, Mäsniwi Kharabati, ed. Eziz Sabit (Kashgar: Qäshqär Uyghur Näshriyati, 1985). 6 Rahilä Dawut, Uyghur mazarliri (Urumqi: Shinjang Khälq Näshriyati, 2001), 174–75; Alexandre Papas, “Les tombeaux de saints musulmans au Xinjiang: culte, réforme, histoire,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 142 (2008): 47–62. 7 Gunnar Jarring transcribes this as Chapūrchāq and thinks that it is a neighbourhood in Kashgar. 8 Eziz Atawulla Sartekin, Uyghurchä näshr qilinghan äsärlär katalogi (tarikh-mädäniyät qismi) (Urumqi: Shinjang Universiteti Näshriyati, 2004), 664–65, gives a detailed list that I have reproduced in my article in the Cahiers d’Asie centrale.

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Detailed, profuse, disconcerting, recalling a Jacques Prévert inventory, the structure of the Mathnawī-yi Kharābātī is presented as follows9: Incipit (ff. 1b–2a) Eight invocations (munājāt) (ff. 2a–6a) Praises of the Prophet (naʿt) (ff. 6a–7b) Invocations (munājāt) (ff. 7b–8b) On repentants and seekers after truth (ahl-i tawba wa ahl-i taḥqīqlar bayānï) (ff. 8b–9a) Advice for Turks and Tajiks (naṣīḥat-i turk wa tājik) (ff. 9a–10b) On the spirit, on the virtuous, and on guides (dar bayān-i ʿaql wa muttaqī wa rāhbarān) (ff. 10b–11a) On cruelty (dar bayān-i dil āzārī) (ff. 11a–b) On goodness (dar bayān-i yakhshïlïq) (ff. 11b–13a) On joy and on pain (dar bayān-i shād wa gham) (ff. 13a–b) On the beyond (naṣīḥat-i ʿuqbā) (ff. 13b–14b) On the pious and the hypocrites (dar bayān-i ṣāliḥ wa munāfiq) (ff. 14b– 15a) On the benefits of supplication (khāṣiyat-i istighfār) (ff. 15a–16a) On the fact of taking one’s heart back from the world (bu faṣlda köngilni dunyādïn yïghmaq) (ff. 16a–b) On the benefits of eating little (bu faṣlda kam yemekning khāṣiyatï) (ff. 16b–17b) On the fact of accepting destiny and enduring misfortune (bu faṣlda qazāgha bolup balāgha ṣabr qïlmaqnï aytur) (ff. 17b–18b) On the mark of the believer (bu faṣlda ishārat-i ahl-i īmānnï ayturlar) (ff. 18b–19b) On good and evil (naṣīḥat-i nīk wa badnï ayturlar) (ff. 19b–20b) On the patient and the impatient ones (dar bayān-i ṣabr wa bīṣabrlarnï ayturlar) (ff. 20b–21b) On the company of superficial people (ahl-i dunyālar ṣuḥbatï bayānïda) (ff. 21b–22a) On service to the master and to those who are close to God (dar bayān-i khidhmat-i pīr wa hamsāya-yi ḥaqqï) (ff. 22a–23b)

9 The numbering of the folios corresponds to the manuscript at Prov. 90, Lund University Library, Jarring Collection, hereafter notated as Kharābātī, Mathnawī. I have corrected the most evident of the fairly numerous omissions and spelling mistakes inserted by the copyist.

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On the link between the virtue of impotencies and purification (dar bayān-i waṣl-i faḍīlat-i ʿajiza wa tahārat) (ff. 23b–24a) On attention and on the path of God (dar bayān-i āgāhlïq wa rāh-i ḥaqq) (ff. 24a–25a) On the virtue of the five prayers (dar bayān-i faḍīlat-i besh waqt namāz) (ff. 25a–b) On the indecency that lies in speaking much (bu faṣlda köp sözlämäkning qabīḥlïqï) (ff. 25b–26a) On the fact of seeking God (dar bayān-i ḥaqq ṭalab bolmaqnï aytur) (ff. 26a–b) On the virtue of what is legal (dar bayān-i faḍīlat-i sharʿīnï ayturlar) (ff. 26b–27a) On the virtue of fasting and prayer (dar bayān-i faḍīlat-i rūza wa namāz) (ff. 27b–28a) On the competent doctor (dar bayān-i ṭabīb-i ḥādhiqni ayturlar) (f. 28a) On the fact of setting out on the path of God (dar bayān-i rāh-i ḥaqq kirmek) (ff. 28b–29a) On the book of advice for the lord (dar bayān-i pand-i ṣāḥib kitāb) (ff. 29a–30a) On divine precepts (dar bayān-i farāʾiḍhānï ayturlar) (ff. 30a–b) On vain possessions and on obedience (dar bayān-i maghrūr māl wa ṭāʿat) (ff. 30b–31b) On the virtue of the ulamas (dar bayān-i faḍīlat-i ʿulamānï ayturlar) (ff. 31a–32b) On the fact of coveting and of borrowing from a ‘nouveau-riche’ (dar bayān-i ṭamʿ qïlmaq wa yangi bāydïn qarḍ almaq) (ff. 32b–34a) Advice for the learned (bu faṣlda naṣīḥat-i ahl-i dānālarnï ayturlar) (ff. 34a–b) On just sovereigns and unjust sovereigns (bu faṣlda pādishāh-i ʿādil wa pādishāh-i ẓālimni aytur) (ff. 34b–35a) On the order and the prohibition (dar bayān-i amr wa nahīnï ayturlar) (ff. 35b–36b) On the succession of times (dar bayān-i tajdīd-i dawr) (ff. 36b–37a) On the duty of the peasant (dar bayān-i niyat-i dihqān) (ff. 37a–38a) On the condition of the artisan (dar bayān-i aḥwāl-i kāsib) (ff. 38a–b) On the knowledge of mankind (dar bayān-i ādam shināslïq) (ff. 38b– 39b) On the fact of abstaining from good and evil actions (bu faṣlda yakhshï wa yaman ishlärdin parhīz qïlmaqnï ayturlar) (ff. 39b–40b)

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On the benefits of the morning (bu faṣlda khāṣiyat-i ṣubḥnï ayturlar) (ff. 41b–42b) On the satisfaction of spirits (dar bayān-i rāḍī shudan-i arwāḥlarnï ayturlar) (ff. 42b–43a) On the journey of the companion (dar bayān-i rāh-i hamrāhnï ayturlar) (ff. 43a–44a) On the fact of finding a guide (bu faṣlda bir rāhbarnï tapmaqnï ayturlar) (ff. 44b–45b) On the fact of being liberated from society and being close to God (bu faṣlda jamʿiyatdïn khālī bolup ḥaqqgha yaʿqīn bolmaqnï aytur) (ff. 45b– 46b) On the spiritual states of the shaykh (aḥwāl-i shaykhni aytur) (ff. 46b– 47b) On the quest for God (bu faṣlda ḥaqq ṭalablïqlarnï aytur) (ff. 47b–48b) On the spiritual states of the Sufis (dar bayān-i aḥwāl-i ṣūfīlar) (ff. 48b– 49b) On the harmful ego (dar bayān-i nafs-i bad ayturlar) (ff. 49b–51a) On hajjis (dar bayān-i ḥājjīlarnïng bayānï) (ff. 51a–b) On the fact of managing without attachment (bu faṣlda taʿalluqdïn kechmäkni ayturlar) (ff. 51b–53a) On presumptuous knowledge (dar bayān-i ʿilm-i gharūrnï ayturlar) (ff. 53a–54a) On those who rely on perfidious people (bu faṣlda bīwafālardïn umīd qïlghanlarnï ayturlar) (ff. 54a–55a) On the fact of travelling for most souls (bu faṣlda jumla zi jānlar safar qïlmaqnï ayturlar) (ff. 55a–56b) On the perfect master (dar bayān-i pīr-i kāmil) (ff. 56b–58b) On the minor ego and the major ego (dar bayān-i nafs-i ṣaghīr wa kabīr) (ff. 58b–60a) On the condition of the tomb (dar bayān-i aḥwāl-i qabr) (ff. 60a–61a) On the good and the bad times (dar bayān-i nīk wa bad dawrānnï aytur) (ff. 61b–62b) On the knowledge of all things by oneself (bu faṣlda barcha sheyni özidin yakhshï bilmäk) (ff. 62b–64b) On the drunkenness of the judge and of the mufti (dar bayān-i mastlïq-i qāḍī wa muftī) (ff. 64b–70a) On the traveller of strangeness (dar bayān-i musāfir-i gharībnï aytur) (ff. 70a–74a) On the virtue of love (dar bayān-i faḍīlat-i ʿishq) (ff. 74a–75a)

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On the fact of finding no solution to death (bu faṣlda ölümgä chāra tapmaslïqnï aytur) (ff. 75a–77a) On Khidr (dar bayān-i khwāja-yi Khiḍr ʿalayhi al-salām) (ff. 77a–79a) On the blow of fate (dar bayān-i sar zanish-i dunyā) (ff. 79a–80b) On familial duty (dar bayān-i ṣila-yi raḥim) (ff. 80b–81b) Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 81b–83a) Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 83a–84b) On the involuntary servant (dar bayān-i bī ikhtiyār banda) (ff. 85a–86b) On the riff-raff (dar bayān-i körügär) (ff. 86b–87a) Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 87a–88a) On those who put their trust in superficial people (bu faṣlda ahl-i dunyāgha wa ʿumrgha iʿtimād qïlghanlarnï aytur) (ff. 88a–90b) On vain religious knowledge and on knowledge of the spiritual states (bu faṣlda maghrūr ʿilm-i qāl wa ʿilm-i ḥālnï ayturlar) (ff. 90b–92b) On inactive ulamas (bu faṣlda ʿulamā-yi bī ʿamallarnï ayturlar) (ff. 92b– 93a) On the poet (bu faṣlda shāʿirning bayānï) (ff. 93a–94b) On the guides of caravans (bu faṣlda kārwānlarnï ötkänlärni aytur) (ff. 94b–96a) On the perfidious world (bu faṣlda jahān-i bīwafānï ayturlar) (ff. 96a–98a) Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (f. 98a) On love (bu faṣlda ʿishqnï ayturlar) (ff. 98a–100a) On asceticism and on piety (bu faṣlda zuhd wa taqwānï ayturlar) (ff. 100a– 102a) On the world that is deceptive and full of knaves (bu faṣlda dunyā-yi makkār wa pur ʿayyārnï ayturlar) (ff. 102a–104a) On the people of the tale-tellers (bu faṣlda khalq-i ghammāzlarnï ayturlar) (ff. 104a–107a) On the sinner’s fear (bu faṣlda khawf dar jānī ayturlar) (ff. 107a–108b) On the devil who is full of tricks (bu faṣlda iblīs-i pur talbīsnï aytur) (ff. 108b–111a) On backgammon, chess and all the members (bu faṣlda nard wa shatranj wa jamīʿ-i aʿḍānï aytur) (ff. 111a–113b) On the fast-talking and greedy shaykh (bu faṣlda dīn purūsh wa dunyā ṭalab shaykhni aytur) (ff. 113b–114b) Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 114b–116b) On he whose prayer is granted (bu faṣlda mustajāb-i duʿānï ayturlar) (ff. 116b–118a) Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 118a–120a)

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On the fact of denying faith in anger (bu faṣlda khashmlïqda īmānnï yoq qïlmaqnï aytur) (ff. 120a–122b) On the manner of thinking the world (bu faṣlda andīsha-yi dunyā kayfiyatïnï aytur) (ff. 122b–126b) On hell and on heaven (bu faṣlda dūzakh wa bihishtni ayturlar) (ff. 126b– 129a) Oraison (munājāt) (ff. 129a–131a) On spiritual states that come from obscurity (bu faṣlda qaradaghï aḥwāl­ larnïng bayānï) (ff. 131a–133a) Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 133a–134a) On the law, on the path, and on truth (bu faṣlda sharīʿat wa ṭarīqat wa ḥaqīqatnï ayturlar) (ff. 134a–135b) On the fact of being admitted to the intercession of the Prophet (bu faṣlda shafāʿat-i rasūl Allāhgha maqbūl bolmaqnï aytur) (ff. 135b–137a) On the benefits of the ‘in the name of God’ (bu faṣlda bismillāhnïng khāṣiyatlarï bayānïnï aytur) (ff. 137a–140a) On the manner of good and bad actions (bu faṣlda yakhshï wa yaman ishlärning kayfiyatïnï aytur) (ff. 140a–141b) On the struggle against one’s own ego (bu faṣlda öz nafs birlä jang qïlmaqnï ayturlar) (ff. 141b–142b) On the spiritual state of those who give donations to grievers (bu faṣlda isqaṭīlarnïng aḥwāllarnï ayturlar) (ff. 142b–151b) On the fact of one’s life passing quickly (bu faṣlda ʿumrnï chust birlä ötkärmäkni aytur) (ff. 151b–153b) On the arithmetic of body and soul (bu faṣlda ḥisāb-i tan wa jānnï ayturlar) (ff. 153b–157b) On the gnosis of gnostics (bu faṣlda ʿāriflär maʿrifatïnïng bayānïnï aytur) (ff. 157b–160b) On the gnosis of subsistance (bu faṣlda maʿrifat-i rizqni ayturlar) (ff. 160b–163a) On the virtue of hospitality (bu faṣlda faḍīlat-i mihmān aytïp durlar) (ff. 163a–165a) On children and on thieves (bu faṣlda ṭifllär wa oghrïlarnï ayturlar) (ff. 165a–168a) On fine ignorant fellows (bu faṣlda ʿishqbāz-i nādānlarnï ayturlar) (ff. 168a–173b) On the beautiful voice (dar bayān-i āwāz-i khūshnïng bayānï) (ff. 173b– 174a) Invocation (munājāt) (ff. 174a–b)

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On the five prayers (bu faṣlda besh waqt namāznïng bayānïnï aytur) (ff. 174b–176b) On servants intimate with God who go to paradise (bu faṣlda ḥaqq taʿālāgha yaqīn bandalar jannatgha barmaqnïng bayānï) (ff. 177a–180b) On the dhikr of idiots and of intelligent people (bu faṣlda aḥmaq wa dānālarnïng dhikrini bayān qïldïlar) (ff. 180b–185a) On the commandment (bu faṣlda sarwarlïqnïng bayānï aytur) (ff. 185a– 190a) On the complete spirit and the incomplete spirit (bu faṣlda ʿaql-i kull wa ʿaql-i juzwīnï aytur) (ff. 190a–194a) On the ego gifted with love (bu faṣlda ʿishq birlä nafsnï ayturlarnïng bayānï) (ff. 194a–197a) On the fact of opening one’s eyes and seeking a guide (bu faṣlda köz achïp bir rāhbarnï izlämäkni aytur) (ff. 197a–201a) On being drunk on the wine of love (bu faṣlda may-i maḥabbatnïng mastlïqnï ayturlar) (ff. 201a–207a) On the perfidiousness of the world (bu faṣlda dunyānïng bīwafālïqïnï ayturlar) (ff. 207a–b) On the date in conclusion (bu faṣlda khātimada tārīkhnïng bayānïnï qïlïpdurlar) (ff. 207b–210b) To start with, let us read the incipit and three chapters from the beginning of the mathnawī, setting aside the prayers, the praises for the Prophet and a few other passages. Kharābātī begins with an invocation10: State your praises: O perfect God You, of the pure men who have suffered so Creator, I have seen your un-countable creation There is nothing that could equal you Your essence is beyond imagination Your heavens are beyond reason From the elements you made mankind Some like demons, others born of a siren The sky without a tent, ground with no tapes You have built these two worlds without haste 10

Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 1b–2a.

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You have equipped the sky with stars To light up the night and say ‘behold’ To the earth you bring plenty And the earth made men happy ‘Whatever the being that breathes We have never reduced what it receives’ You have given your gifts to all souls Lavished meat on all human souls Lord, night and day are the same for you Forgiving your servant is easy for you The bird of the soul will fly to paradise The tongue will begin to sing your praises You made mankind to look handsome You made the spirit man’s companion You have laid bait to trap mankind You have tamed the ego of mankind You gave to mankind a place in the world And joy in the delights of the world The soul became a lure, in the end And man came into the world just then The world was a place of grief for man, Night and day, pain, violence and abuse afflict man He remained always in this grieving world For three hundred years mourned his distance from God Providence, your decree was thus O Creator, your decision was thus For reasonable people the world is pain

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For the unreasonable the world is fine The world will be a dungeon for the reasonable man There a scourge will befall the reasonable man Kharābātī, from today your body in torment Will crumble in suffering and bewilderment What is most striking in these introductory verses is the simplicity, of style as of language. The poet of Aksu composes verses that are stripped of complex imagery or syntactical virtuosity. His vocabulary is, in the final analysis, limited; it is probably quite close to the eastern Turkish that was spoken in the oases of Kashgaria and elsewhere, with the support of a few Persianisms. Rather than deducing from these characteristics a lack of literary quality, we should perceive origins, and intentions, that are essentially popular: Kharābātī, the village imam, gets straight to the point.11 In addition, while one finds here the classic ritornello of the tragic cycle, following creation with separation and the despair it evokes in God’s creatures, hopeless of ever being reunited, there is also a consistent and profound sentiment of unalterable pessimism. This is confirmed in the succeeding text, in the chapter called ‘Advice for Turks and Tajiks’ (naṣīḥat-i turk wa tājik)12: This advice is for the descendants, all of them Arabs, Turks, Tajiks, all of them Just think for a moment, senseless men The world was never your true friend All who leave it long for it All who remain suffer for it Up against the world, pride won’t last long Believe me, by the end you will not be so strong 11

12

In Älanur Yusup, “‘Kulliyat mäsnawi Kharabati’ wä uning ilham mänbäsi ‘hädis’tä ipadilängän ijtimayi äkhlaqi qarashlar toghrisida’,” Bulaq 6 (2010): 76–92, there is a (very accurate) mention of the frequent references by Kharābātī to this or that hadith. Unfortunately, the author attributes to the scholarship of a humanist intellectual a cast of mind that, in fact, arises merely from the traditional education of an imam. Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 9a–10b.

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Don’t expect a promise from this rotting world Don’t take heart’s evil and make it good Don’t bring your heart to this world without faith Don’t banish from your heart religion and faith Let not falseness give joy to you Waste not the faith that lives in you He who gives and then carries his heart to the world Will, to no one’s surprise, go to hell Rejoice not in the world’s good things Freedom from torment lies in renouncing Never be heedless in the world for one minute Make your devotion promptly, be not sluggish in it Heedlessness engulfs the whole world It will drown mankind, come the end of the world Old people can never be young again Contrition means nothing if it comes at the end Don’t let your mind wander, day or night Don’t forget death for a single minute Unhook the heart that hangs from the world And free yourself from pain here and in the beyond O brother, the world is not to be trusted Give it your heart and you’ll be disappointed This world oppresses a hundred thousand souls It is the mother of every revolt Never forget God, day or night Forget the world, each day, each night This world is the cause of all ways of hating

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Give it your heart and know the darkness of hurting (…) Kharābātī, don’t embrace the world Don’t ever forget death Here the term āl does not primarily mean the dynasty or the family, but rather human groups in general, diverse Arab, Turkish or Tajik lineages whose ethnic identity is not mentioned. The author is addressing peoples and individuals, broadcasting his advice to the anonymous crowd and aiming far beyond the princely public for whom the naṣīḥa, the mirror of princes, is generally written.13 Is what he is offering really ‘advice’ in the strictest sense? The reader is in fact discovering repetitive maxims, quasi-aphorisms that seem to be intended rather to be listened to than to be read; they are easy to remember and their meaning is clear. Anaphora works to underline what the author proposes and to help memorise it. Kharābātī insists on the fact that one must forget the world and think only of God. There is an elementary mysticism trying to appear here, in spite of the crepuscular predispositions evident in the text. The following parts of the mathnawī, in particular the chapters on cruelty (dil āzārī) and on goodness (yakhshïlïq), may have something of the appearance of moral teachings, but here again at first glance the real matter is mystical. Here is what is said on the subject of cruelty14: Those who seek to cause harm Have undoubtedly renounced God Who makes hearts suffer, in his heart will suffer The lord of hell will make him suffer He who insults the impoverished God will undoubtedly curse him He who harms the innocent orphan Feels the wrath of earth, heaven and the divine throne 13

14

See, for example, Alexandre Papas, “Islamic Brotherhoods in Sixteenth Century Central Asia: the Dervish, the Sultan, and the Sufi Mirror for Princes,” in Faith’s Boundaries: Laity and Clergy in Early Modern Confraternities, eds. Nicola Terpstra, Adriano Prosperi and Stefania Pastoria (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 209–31. Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 11a–b.

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Do not cause pain for anyone else Do not strike back at yourself He who renounces his own life Will suffer forever among the beasts For he has caused such pain, and has no faith left For this man’s sickness no remedy is left The good man who commits evil acts Digs a chasm right across his path Don’t do what’s bad, do what is good Do not make your bad case worse O friend, whoever breaks your heart Will have to make his excuses to God O son, do not impose suffering on the living Or you will never encounter heaven (…) Myself, how shall I make hearts rejoice? With which heart’s pain shall I mourn? Kharābātī’s injunctions are aimed at everyone, bad people as well as good, unknown people as well as those close to him. These pleas to avoid spreading evil or injustice certainly do recall the standard exhortations to morality and threats of divine punishment for those who ignore them, but they also point an accusing finger at the ordinary cruelty of society, and do so in the name of the mystical ambition that must animate each individual. This poet, disguised as a judge, now demands justice and goodness15: If you want to be delivered, O friend, Good in this world you must spread If someone is habitually liberal 15

Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 11b–13a.

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He will be respected by other people For those who don’t see the finality of each action Seeing does not mean paying attention Make a servant of yourself, O brother, Bow yourself down with ardour If someone does good or bad works What he has sown he will harvest Whoever rebels puts the king to pillage And will be chased away from his village All acts of a being encounter frustration Let him give himself to adoration (…) Don’t throw stones at the child or the madman Don’t give away your secret to bad men First, pay the creature-debt Then obey God’s precept Old or young, swallow your anger He is saved who swallows his anger The one who turns his face from God His breath will turn against him (…) To become a dervish, your efforts must be multiplied To become wounded, your repentance must be multiplied He whose behaviour in the lodge is right Is crowned by God, this is no surprise To those who disobey among men Closed is the door of repose and esteem

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He who gives his heart elsewhere than to God Marks his own face with a curse in code (…) He who disobeys the ego, brave is he A sultan among creatures in the next world will he be Renouncing ego, at peace will he be Among both worlds’ creatures a beggar is he Can one appease the lusted-after ego? Can the heart be protected from its ego? Every man who is content in God Submits to the Prophet Muḥammad Ask and ask again, ask more Ask everything of God, ask more The careless man lives all his life without knowing But you must pray to God night and morning Myself, how shall I make hearts rejoice? With which heart’s pain shall I mourn? The order to behave properly has, paradoxically, no effectiveness until the consciousness of the nullity of all actions has been awakened, so that the very meaning of the ‘proper’ actions loses any validity. There is therefore no real moral content here; absolute disillusion leads directly to devotion. Kharābātī never hesitates in his verdict: each human creature is condemned to the mystical life, to becoming a dervish, to renouncing the world, if he is to have any hope of eventually returning to his Creator. At heart he has no need to claim the support of any authority, of a brotherhood, a genealogy, since none of these institutions is cited in this text. All that survives of the vast enterprise of purgation is the dialogue between the poet and his listeners (regardless of the speechlessness of the latter and the doubts of the former). Of what form of Sufism does this mathnawī speak? Hörmätjan Fikrät has shown that the collection uses all of the mystical allegories of classical poetry (love, the lover, wine, drunkenness, etc.), as well as the Sufi technical vo-

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cabulary (the battle against the ego, spiritual states, the dhikr, etc.).16 We are certainly dealing with a Sufi text, written by an author so well versed in Sufism that some called Kharābātī ‘the child of Mawlānā Rūmī’ (farzand-i Mawlānā Rūmī), even though there is no real comparison between the two mathnawī. We must also mention a commentary (sharḥ) on Kharābātī’s mathnawī, which forms the first part of a manuscript of this very mathnawī, as copied in 1304–1305/1906–1907 and preserved in Tashkent (shelved under IVAN Uz 5938).17 This commentary, entitled Turkī-yi Kharābātī (Kharābātī’s Turkish) but also Risāla-yi dar ḥaqīqat-i faqr (Treatise on the truth of poverty) strives to explain the concept of poverty (faqr). It also makes allusions to Kharābātī’s proximity to the Naqshbandiyya Sufi path in verses that repeat some of the eleven Naqshbandī teachings, such as ‘the attention paid to steps’ (naẓar bar qadam) and ‘the journey to the homeland’ (safar dar waṭan); this is a system of references that is already found in ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī.18 However, although in the case of ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī the affiliation to the largest ṭarīqat of Central Asia is certain, the ‘brotherhood’ identity of Kharābātī is perplexing, since we can find no existing trace of any affiliation. It seems that in the real world and far from any Sufi brotherhoods, and even from any informal but well-defined groups – and consequently also far from the specialist representations of Muslim mysticism that reduces them to modalities of affiliation, succession and lineage­– Kharā­ bātī’s Sufism springs from a socio-religious current made up of relatively marginal, though popular, figures, whose principle teachings focus on radical renunciation and even on existential wandering. This current in Sufi thinking, which took the medieval name of Qalandariyya, was certainly strong in eastern Turkestan during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition to these contextual details, we must add two indicators: first, our poet’s chosen pen-name comes from the term kharābāt, meaning, as we have seen, the ruin, but also the tavern, the brothel. This word is part of the preferred vocabulary of the Central Asian Qalandars, following the Persian mystical poets of the middle ages. Second, the manuscript of the above-mentioned mathnawī includes a treatise on spiritual poverty, corresponding to the genre of faqrnāma, or book 16

17 18

Hörmätjan Fikrät, “Harobotii va uning ‘masnavii Harobotii’ asari,” Imom al-Buhoriy sabo­qlari 2–3 (2003): 115–16; id., “Rumii va Harobotii,” O’zbek tili va adabiyoti 5 (2003): 46–49; id., “Mäsnäwi Khärabati’diki täsäwwupi obraz wä timsalar,” Bulaq 2 (2007): 49–58; id., “Mäsnäwi Khärabati’din,” Bulaq 4 (2007): 5–30; id., Khärabati wä uning ädäbi mirasi (Urumqi: Shinjang Universiteti Näshriyati, 2011). This last item is a book presenting a synthesis of the preceding articles and much complementary material, the second part of which is a version of the mathnawī, unfortunately without a listing of the original chapters. Hörmätjan Fikrät, “‘Shärhi Khärabati’ häqqidä däsläpki mulahizä,” Bulaq 6 (2009): 79–82. Marc Toutant, Un Empire de mots, passim.

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of poverty, that was very popular among Indian and Central Asian Qalandars. These different indications lead one to believe that Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh Kharābātī belonged to this current of Sufism, even though he did not wander and apparently remained sedentary. A paradoxical figure, this dervish imam of Choghtal was as radical as he was close to the community, as vindictive as he was accessible to the faithful – in sum, he was a person on the margins. 2

To Peasants, Artisans, Doctors and the Powerful

In the absence of any mention by our author of the earthquake that destroyed Aksu in 1716 it is nonetheless plausible to follow the thread of the theme of devastation in his work, in order to understand what Kharābātī is saying about the society and times he lives in, and the world that surrounds him. In order to make a comparison, one may put these descriptions side-by-side with those in a contemporary document composed in Ottoman Istanbul, the Risāle-yi gharībe, or treatise of curiosities.19 Here, in the context of imperial decline and popular anger, the anonymous author presents an image of a decadent capital, reeling off a long sequence of short sentences that mock different social groups – religious figures, judges, the military, civil servants, merchants, etc. The verses that follow throughout our third chapter are more than poems: they are predications, and less comical than those in the Ottoman anthology, often fiery and sometimes somber.20 Let us begin with a generalising section, called ‘On the knowledge of mankind’21: Know the human condition, O seer of mankind Without hesitation measure all its many kinds Some have a heart that’s a dense treasure Some have a heart that’s a heavy sorrow Some have a heart like a bird Some have a heart like a reptile 19 20

21

Lāṭifī, Eloge d’Istanbul, suivi de Traité de l’invective (anonyme), trans. Stéphane Yerasimos (Paris: Sindbad, 2001), 145–79. A comparable passage of oral and written predication can be observed, for example, in the life and several of the works of Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī (d. 910/1505), although Kharābātī probably did not compose the order of his mathnawī himself. See Jean Calmard, “Les rituels shiites et le pouvoir. L’imposition du shiisme safavide,” 131. Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 38b–39b.

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Some have a heart that’s a running horse Some have a heart that’s a running bull Some have a heart that’s a beautiful palace Some have a heart like the moon’s halo Some have a heart like a rose garden Some have a heart like a furnace Some have a heart like a ruin Some have a heart like a butterfly Some have perfume for a heart Some have a foul stench for a heart Some have a heart that’s fairest of all Some have a heart that’s darkest of all Some have a heart like running water Some have a heart like stagnant water Some have a heart that’s as light as day Some have a heart that’s as dark as night Some have beauty for a heart Some have a home for a heart Some have a heart like a drinking den Some have a heart like a temple full of idols Some have a heart like a tomb Some have a heart like a bazaar (…) When he is exposing the human condition (khalqnïng ḥālï) to his listeners, Kharābātī divides it into two contrasting tendencies, with the heart acting as a synecdoche for personalities. If at first glance the anthropology of our dervish looks dully Manichean, an interpretation of his metaphors allows us to refine our reading. Thus the ‘dense treasure’ is the force of the soul; the ‘bird’

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is enthusiasm; the ‘running horse’ is impetuousness; the (night) ‘butterfly’ (parwāna) is versatility; the ‘stagnant water’ is indolence; the ‘bazaar’ is vain agitation; the ‘drinking den’ symbolises mystical emotiveness; the ‘temple full of idols’ (obviously) represents the propensity to idolatry. Finally, ruin or desolation (wayrāna) signifies consciousness of infinitude. These pairs are there to remind one, because of the ambivalence of their metaphorical meanings, that precisely complementary couplings of verses are not quite what they seem, and that human nature, whatever it amounts to, must be examined critically. Other sections of the text are explicitly social. One of these speaks ‘on the duty of the peasant’22: Peasant, do your duty, sow the food Sowing it, drought’s avoided, duty’s good If the peasant is true to his good intentions Crops will never fail, peace upon him! If he sows the crops with bad intentions There won’t be a harvest, drought will come Ill-will reduces wealth, Thus, only the few will eat Peasant, give bread aplenty, without reluctance An open door means refuge without reluctance If you give bread without reluctance You shall be freed from the fires of hell, amen! See that peasant hypocrite giving his bread On Judgement Day he shall be black with shame This peasant has always known evil intent Corrupt, his life with bad people spent If the peasant follows this advice Each grain will give eleven harvests 22

Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 37a–38a.

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(…) To high folk and low: put discord behind you For discordant people heaven is denied too If he renounces discord he’s admitted From then on, his place in heaven’s given The dishonest plotter is despised in both worlds Intriguers are ignored by God May he repent his faults, this grateful man He will be freed from hell, this meek man (…) Here Kharābātī reminds the peasants who make up the overwhelming majority of the population of his times of their duty to labour with good intentions; he makes the very abundance of the earth depend on their generosity of spirit, which is a sort of rural piety without which drought and famine would ensue.23 Towards the end of the chapter, he makes his proposals more general when he declares his fear that high and low (the elite and the masses, khāṣṣ ū ʿām) are just a bunch of intriguers (fitnachï). His thinking runs along the same lines when he speaks ‘On the condition of the artisan’24: (…) Know religion and display your skill Give yourself to God, give all for Him Does the artisan’s heart rejoice in God? God will make him prosper in both worlds It’s good to make your art within the law Your work will come alive and be sought out 23

24

This link between piety and the abundance of the harvest is also found in the manuals (risāla) of agrarian corporations in Central Asia, at least since the nineteenth century. See Jeanine Elif Dağyeli, ‘Gott liebt das Handwerk’. Moral, Identität und religiöse Legitimierung in der mittelasiatischen Handwerks-risāla (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2011), 125. Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 38a–b.

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The man who never stays long in any place Will suffer in his heart if he does stay In wandering every person finds some joy The heart becomes akin to a rainbow The wanderer’s every step will polish his heart If he had to stop somewhere he’d suffer Whoever travels has a sweeter scent Like running water also smells so sweet If this water stagnates it is foul He who’s stuck for long is foul as well He who remains at home remains in suffering He who remains abroad remains in health (…) Even more than he is defending religious law and devotion, Kharābātī seems here to be promoting the artisan’s initiatic wanderings, without which these men would be condemned to incompetence and decrepitude. One must, in addition, understand the individual or collective travelling of the artisans in two concrete senses: as the migratory expression of their livelihoods, and as pilgrimages to the shrines of their patron saints.25 There is another social category exposed to Kharābātī’s critical eye, that of the ‘competent doctor’26: Not all doctors are to be trusted, O sufferer He will kill you with his cure The wise doctor is the one with the right potion The medical tyrant is the one who offers poison Understand that you must not need a doctor Eat little, speak rarely, sleep little 25 26

Jeanine Elif Dağyeli, ‘Gott liebt das Handwerk’, 90–94, 198; also Asta Olesen, Afghan Craftsmen, 68–70 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, f. 28a.

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Whoever has a strange habit of breath Incessant malediction coats his head If one breathes too oddly, faith escapes Then souls can get lost among those of no faith O my people, don’t you breathe too strangely If someone does, don’t approach him too closely There is no grace for one who breathes strangely He will stay in hell perpetually If a person says strange things No wonder God reproaches him! This astrologer is the village’s idiot The fortune-teller is its lunatic Ah, prudence, prudence, prudence! If he breathes oddly, avoid him He who breathes strangely is a sinner Know this, he is an imposter If he breathes oddly, hit him on the head Do not pour your mercy on his head The careless man lives and knows nothing Day or night, avoid strange breathing Myself, how shall I make hearts rejoice? With which heart’s pain shall I mourn? Although Kharābātī is wary of doctors, the incompetent among whom he identifies with astrologers (munajjim) and pseudo-diviners (literally ‘scapuli­mancy’, daluchï), he reserves his greatest mistrust for people whose illness makes them breathe strangely (ghaybdin dam urmaq) – they terrify him. Caught between his belief in a malediction that ‘coats (yaghïlur) [the] head’ and his fear of contagion, the dervish limits himself to prescribing a hygiene that is very close to

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asceticism. Closer to what we expect but no less acerbic is the chapter entitled ‘On just sovereigns and unjust sovereigns’27: O king, ask after your people Render justice with affection Be attentive to the condition of the people Be a just shah in both worlds Oppress too much and lose your power Laugh too much and lose your honour O king, think lofty and humble thoughts Do not lead your kingdom to loss The just shah is a boon to the city The unjust shah is a sorrow for the city The just shah brings benefits to the city The unjust shah brings sorrows to the city The just shah serves the law The unjust shah serves chaos O king, be resolute in the law Don’t inflict suffering in both worlds O king, be a shah but be virtuous In this world be also pious For the king there is nothing better than justice For the king so many actions are requisite O king, do not spend your life in ignorance, Life in this world gives you no second chance (…) 27

Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 34b–35a.

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Faithful to the traditional discourse of Persian moralia, Kharābātī celebrates the virtues that a sovereign needs. But he adopts a tone that sounds more like a non-negotiable injunction than a gentle moral lesson. And his preaching becomes even more aggressive when the subject is ‘the fast-talking and greedy shaykh’28: O son, keep your distance from smooth talkers Avoid braggarts and smooth talkers These fast talkers are dishonest folk They will end up like wild boars There was once a saint in his time among folk He understood not the profit or loss of God His name was Balʿam Bāʿūr His reputation was forever ruined On his back this shaykh wore beautiful clothes He was never able to be free from his ego He said supererogatory prayers for the folk But they never obtained the mercy of God He resolved the problems that people had By asking after the desires of each man Moses agreed to lay siege to this town With his tribe he marched on this town The townspeople then informed this shaykh They gave gold and silver to this shaykh From that moment, Balʿam Bāʿūr rejoiced He hid the townsfolk from Moses From that moment Balʿam set God’s anger afoot As though struck by a curse, he was cast out 28

Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 113a–114b.

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He who out of self-interest prays Will be turned into Christian or Guebre that day Those who out of self-interest pray Will immediately be reduced to a dog’s estate (…) Kharābātī resembles Nawāʾī in this respect, that he scorns false spiritual masters, corrupt saints, too-beautiful preachers. Attacks on such targets, even if they have near-classic status in Sufi literature overall, take place here in the heart of the historical period that was classified as the golden age of saints; Kharābātī’s unusually hostile attitude gives us a good idea of the provocative verbal violence of our Aksu dervish, observer of a deliquescent world. The legend of Balʿam Baʿūr may allude to some saint of the period, with the aim of discrediting him: featuring in the old testament and then mentioned in the Quran (7:175–6) and taken up by Sufi tradition, Balʿam was accorded signs from God but then turned away and pursued the path of Satan, losing his status to the extent that he was as low as a base dog. His guilt functions as a negative symbol, of ignorance and of the triumph of worldly things over religious virtue.29 3

The Call to Renunciation

Kharābātī proffers the same message to all of these human natures, all of these social classes, a message whose mystical and ascetic contents we have already seen above. This message could be summed up as an expression of a single ideal, of renunciation, touched by a frank contempt for the world (contemptus mundi), a doctrine studied by Robert Bultot30 and which Islam has also considered. The chapter ‘On the fact of one’s life passing quickly’31 contains the following precepts: O grandfather, understand well these words Don’t waste your life in this world 29 30 31

Faramarz Haj Manouchehri and Mushegh Asatryan, “Balʿam Bāʿūr,” Encyclopaedia Islamica, BrillOnline. Robert Bultot, La Doctrine du mépris du monde, en Occident, de Saint Ambroise à Innocent III, le XIe siècle (Leuven: Nauwelaerts, 1963). Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 151b–153b.

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Live your life fast, like a bolt of lightning You will not slide into ignorance and not caring Life goes by as fast as a lightning bolt Whoever doesn’t know this is just a dolt Each morning is the rising sun’s moment All speak their repentance at this very moment, The sun attains its perfection at midday From then on it sets stage by stage And everyone stops repenting This is why night and day are vanishing O brother, understand aright these words! You ought never to pass your days in work You ought never to pass your life without obeying God You ought never to face death without repentance If the old man shows zeal in obedience His urge to rebel will disappear at that moment All the world is busy with a task Some accept and some refuse their task Those who disobey insult God Their mouths will fill up with stones and clods Understand this advice if you are aging! You live long, give yourself to praying! If you are aging, choose spiritual retreat Don’t debase yourself in the crowd, among people Old men are indecent in the throng And the people weigh on them in the throng Old man, may you honour the masters of old! May retreat become your secret home!

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If in your life you reach the age of ten Then begin to submit to God If in your life you reach the age of twenty Then begin to know God O brother, if you reach the age of thirty Prostrate yourself continually Whoever suddenly attains forty years Repent and turn away from ignorance If a man’s years pass the number of fifty Distance yourself from the world of ‘me’ If someone’s life arrives at sixty years This person abstains from life’s pleasures O brother, if you reach the age of seventy While weeping, sigh copiously If one becomes old, one must have aspirations One must be worthy of God and submission (…) If by aspiration a king is never moved The beggar and his aspiration are worth more He who is without aspiration remains impure Every hair on his body stands for lack of faith (…) Young or old, unceasingly seek aspiration! High aspiration is a mark of satisfaction High aspiration is the attribute of ʿAlī This is why he became the Lion of God

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In the town of Khaybar lived a beggar who could not see He begged for bread from ʿAlī ʿAlī’s aspiration was set free Forty golden camels to the beggar gave he (…) The poet’s pessimism expresses the existence of human life as a brief moment, essentially without any more content than a single day. Since a life without lasting worship is not worth more than a single day, Kharābātī goes so far as to disqualify any profane activity, as typified by the peasant’s labour in the field (kisht kār); this is a reference to the earlier social subject, peasants. What follows is a list of man’s ages that assigns meaning to each only through devotion; the summit of these life stages is old age. At this point it is time to retire from the world (khalwat) and venerate the spiritual masters (pīr). The second part of this section introduces the concept of aspiration, of the spiritual ideal (himmat), a notion that we have already seen several times. What is particularly notable here, to our eyes, is the reference to ʿAlī and to his model of sharing and abnegation, which are equally highly praised in Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm’s Qalandarnāma. The following description of life is part of a chapter on death called ‘On the fact of travelling for most souls’32: With a single end travel the world over On such journeys there are many dangers Son, take not the path with no destination Don’t become weary, promptly perform your devotions (…) O brother, there is no solution to death All souls are mutilated, afraid of death There is no remedy for the one sick with dying This is death, without poison or killing There is no treatment for the pain that is death Whether your body’s hot or cold, regardless 32

Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 55a–56b.

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If death’s soldier approaches a person No matter what, that man will see no one Kings and beggars cannot escape this soldier Kings and beggars are equals against this soldier (…) O heedless one, take care of your heart Go as far as cooking your chest and your heart O heedless one, if you act right only for today Your satisfactions will disappear on judgement day O heedless one, if you take advantage of today You will be uttering your regrets on the last day (…) O heedless one, what remains of Aaron (Hārūn) here? O heedless one, what remains of Korah (Qārūn) here? O heedless one, what remains of Moses (Mūsā) here? O heedless one, what remains of Jesus (ʿĪsā) here? O heedless one, what remains of Enoch (Idrīs) here? O heedless one, what remains of George (Jirjīs) here? O heedless one, what remains of Abraham (Ibrāhīm) here? O heedless one, what remains of Ishmael (Ismāʿīl) here? O heedless one, what remains of Saleh (Ṣāliḥ) here? O heedless one, what remains of Jonah (Yūnus) here? (…) Unsurprisingly, Kharābātī continues as before, using an efficient and unornamented eloquence to erase any glimmer of hope in the face of death. The originality of this passage lies in the author’s use of pre-Islamic prophets in his examples – prophets who themselves have not escaped their final death knell. It is in the recollection of this perspective, one that allows for no possible

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escape, that four additional chapters should be read, the first of which carries the strange title of ‘On the fact of coveting and of borrowing from a ‘nouveauriche’33: (…) Be not constantly coveting Know that your goal has no ending Don’t go into debt to the parvenu Understand these words, it’s a duty for you You shall not touch the bread of another Nor become emotional over mere provender This is just carrion, your are a fly on it There is nothing left but to renounce it For he who begins taking another man’s bread Debt and misfortune will rain down on his head The one who spends all day playing with his child Will end up by being set aside Among those with neither continence nor modesty We can also be certain they have no belief Adopt proper behaviours with each person Never reveal a secret to any person (…) Give each individual a proper greeting Hell will be denied you, come the ending For he who fills his mouth with bad words Satan has inspired his words 33

Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 32b–34a.

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You must call on the friend of God That he may become thy guide Whoever fears divine power In all creatures will inspire fear (…) The text departs quite quickly from the double problem of borrowing and debt, in spite of the probably very topical nature of these issues, and concentrates instead on covetousness and the broader daily attitude to be taken towards other people. The preaching of Kharābātī, (good dervish that he is) strikes his listeners with provocations. One must also note that bread (nān) is a recurring theme in his mathnawī, seen previously in the section on peasants and that on the himmat of ʿAlī. Bread appears anew in the chapter ‘On the patient and the impatient ones’34: All those who promptly carry out God’s order Know for certain that he is the world’s master For every misfortune patience is the cure He who has none is just a fire-worshipper Whatever happens, God’s decree you must accept Punishment will come for he who cannot accept For he who sins, sorrow will strike him For he who complains, judgement will strike him For all those who complain to God Curses shall rain down on their heads O poor man, take not the bread of the destitute He who takes their bread shall become destitute Do not become settled in the web of the spider Keep this in your heart, it’s advice to remember 34

Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 20b–21b.

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Spend just what you earn This is the qadi’s order The one who delays in obeying divine orders Know that he is a dullard (…) All those who can renounce sexual wishes Are capable of putting an end to their passions All those who chose desire In both worlds will be despised Trust not any nor every man Despair not over your isolation from man Have trust only in God Set yourself free from all the world (…) Rend your chests, O my people Purify your hearts with zeal Each man’s pride, which is immense Finally just means abasement in both worlds He who knows His greatness knows no obstacle My God, among the creatures, sets him no obstacle Whoever speaks with piety On him my God will doubtless have pity Seat yourself with the pious ones Ask for grace like the pious ones Pious people keep their distance from the impious Reasonable people stay away from deceivers

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The conversation of the impious breeds impiety Conversation with good sense breeds sincerity The people that obeys God gains learning The people that disobeys Him becomes overweening For he who flees from tyrants, My God, do not condemn him to hell’s fires He who serves much knows good fortune He who refuses to serve knows misfortune If one gives oneself to servitude, God grants high station He makes of this ascete a man of Islam (…) Kharābātī’s inherent asceticism is at once material, sexual and relational. In other words, the marginal poet urges his readers to become affiliated to the margins of society themselves, through poverty, abstinence (ideally through celibacy), and isolation (or at least keeping exclusively to the company of ascetes). The same concern is expressed in the section ‘On the company of superficial people’35: Do not desire from superficial people their companionship He who rubs against them will want more of their companionship If any person becomes devoted to them He shall be excluded from among God’s friends Whoever perseveres in his respect of the law No torment in either world will he know (…) His few acts will become prodigies thanks to God He will receive good omens by the grace of God 35

Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 21b–22a.

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You must above all be decent Then generous, devout and benevolent It is by maintaining probity alongside sincerity That you avoid betraying this probity If each person has this awareness of morals It’s because God, even before eternity, worked miracles God is qadi for the two worlds Only believers receive the consent of God Building on good actions a man becomes a believer Then in both worlds he may prosper This man may weep for God’s pity But God turns away from crybabies Whosoever longs to resist By God will soon be cursed God turns away from moneylenders As he turns away from drinkers The futility of all our actions regardless, ‘The best of all men’ [the Prophet] has commanded us The heedless one lives life knowing nothing Don’t be futile, night, day or morning Myself, how shall I make hearts rejoice? With which heart’s pain shall I mourn? Here, note especially the mention of moneylenders or usurers (sūdkhūr), as well as of drinkers (khamrkhūr), among the unsuitable companions, even if, ultimately, all heedless figures are condemned. Kharābātī’s incitement to renunciation reaches its final peak with a more concrete call that refers, not to general behaviour, but to the body – he speaks ‘On the benefits of eating little’36: 36

Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 16b–17b.

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Spend your days without sleep Don’t spend them in absurdity Sleep only at the beginning and the end By your ego be not imprisoned Don’t trouble yourself to feed your ego to excess Vice will take you over if you do this He who eats too much doesn’t become somebody Because his labours are too shoddy For those who eat a lot perfection will be lost For those who eat a lot beauty will be lost The heart becomes wise if one eats little The body becomes nothingness if one eats little The heart is illuminated if one eats little If one eats too much the heart is blackened Know that those who suffer a curse Do so by their full-time negligence The wing of a bad omen has struck their faces It may look like a dove but really it’s a raven Take care not to travel alone From sages themselves does danger come Don’t gaze in the mirror every night Without knowing it, don’t waste your life In the shadows you will move forward alone You will obey, once from the mirror you turn Don’t sit side-by-side with an ignoramus Don’t hit yourself with your own clenched fists (…)

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Every man’s body is replete with flesh Making him sick, in its prison enmeshed If you’re afraid, it’s yourself you must conquer If you have a request, then God gives the answer Satan’s battle against faith has this goal It’s because he wants to steal your soul O family, the road is long, the burden weighty How your evenings and mornings seem heavy! (…) Such mortifications, affecting the body as well as the ego, are infrequent in eighteenth century Central Asia, and refer back to medieval ascetic practices that were later marginalised.37 Here Kharābātī places himself in this radical lineage. One could object that this is just Sufi rhetoric, as found in other, much more orthodox and majoritarian sources; this would be to deny the specificity of this mathnawī and its bare, almost brutal style, which seeks rather to convert than to illustrate. Here the antinomianism of the dervish is affirmed, gorging itself on imperatives, interjections and counterpositions. It is therefore not surprising that the verses devoted to language defend its paradoxical usage. 4

On the Paradox of Language

The preceding passages contain a few allusions to the problems of words and of expression. Like Nawāʾī, of whom one recalls his enjoinders to Sufis to moderate their language as much as their appetites, Kharābātī sets out the exhortation, ‘Eat little, speak rarely, sleep little’, and adds, ‘Never reveal a secret to any person’. The dervish must master his words and not combine them with words that may be harmful, ‘Whoever speaks with piety / On him my God will doubtless have pity // Seat yourself with the pious ones / Ask for grace like the pious ones (…) The conversation of the impious breeds impiety / Conversation with 37

For examples, see: Hujwīrī, The Kashf al-mahjùb, 324–25; Qushayrī (d. 465/1074) devotes a whole chapter of his treatise to the technique for mastering hunger (jūʿ): Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī, Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism. Al-Risala al-qushayriyya fi ‘ilm al-tasawwuf, trans. Alexander D. Knysh and Muḥammad Eissa (Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2007), 157–60.

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good sense breeds sincerity’. However, it’s often the opposite that is true: ‘If a person says strange things / No wonder God reproaches him!’; ‘Those who disobey insult God / Their mouths will fill up with stones and clods’; ‘For he who fills his mouth with bad words / Satan has inspired his words’. This is not an issue of the moral decorum of language, as propounded in seventeenth century France by Pierre Bayle and Nicolas Boileau38, but concerns rather an ascesis of language, based on religious demands. Kharābātī’s chapter ‘On the indecency that lies in speaking much’ underlines this39: Ah, prudence, prudence, prudence! The garrulous merit avoidance If he speaks too much, he’s in ignorance None of what he says makes sense If one is careless of self, one is pretending Aware of one’s words, one is waking Words will make him suffer in both worlds Until the very end he will be crushed by God (…) He becomes like a demon if he is garrulous No longer human, he is monstrous He who remains silent is the best of men He who speaks much is the worst of men (…) O brother, you have spent your life being ignorant He who speaks much is damned in the end Myself, how shall I make hearts rejoice? With which heart’s pain shall I mourn?

38 39

Aurelio Principato, Eros, Logos, Dialogos: huit études sur l’énonciation romanesque de Charles Sorel à Germaine de Staël (Paris: Peeters, 2007), 9–19. Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 25b–26a.

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Kharābātī once again expresses his aversion to overflowing speech, not neglecting to include in his attack the people who are responsible for it. Ignorant, lazy, monstrous (nasnās), demon-like (waswās) – loquacious people will carry the responsibility for their words down here below as well as in the hereafter, because language (our author suggests) is a serious business. So serious, in fact, that language itself not only forbids the dervish from frequenting most of its users, but also from using it himself, even if he is capable of doing so. This economy of the spoken, coming close to mutism, reminds one of the rare examples of mute mystics from the Timurid period, as mentioned above in our first chapter, who themselves descended from an ancient Sufi tradition.40 There is a new paradox here, in this linguistic regime: Kharābātī the composer of verses does not believe in poets, or at least he is suspicious of many of them, as affirmed in his chapter ‘On the poet’41: There are two kinds of poets Either naturalistic or mystical poets If the poet a true bard remains This poet shall be saved from hell, amen! Full of divine graces the mystical poet is He will awake in paradise, there is no doubt of this Very subtle is the poet who’s naturalistic But the closest to God is the one who’s a mystic The naturalistic poet loves the natural But his work shall be destroyed by the natural The mystical poet receives a divine gift Partial faith only has the poet who’s naturalistic Nature makes the naturalist blind He is always miserable, day and night The poet is the one who loves song He draws on the invisible world 40 41

See especially Hujwīrī, The Kashf al-mahjùb, 355–57; and the chapter devoted to silence (ṣamt) in Qushayrī, Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism, 138–42. Kharābātī, Mathnawī, 93a–94b.

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(…) If the poet a true bard remains No doubt he’ll stay out of hell, amen! If the poet praises mere creatures He will never escape hell’s clutches The naturalist is not a theist, never If he’s stone it’s not marble, ever The mystical poet’s sincerity is all With each breath, crying from the invisible world Poet, declaim your verses spontaneously And in this world you will find only rough weeds Poet, let your verses make you wait And you will expect God in hope night and day (…) Crack open the glass of your being Then you’ll become a pure being It is wealth to be among those who are suffering Whoever is among the people is in suffering Whoever, like Satan, says, ‘I am the greatest one’ Will end by saying ‘I am the Christian or Zoroastrian’ (…) The distinction made by Kharābātī comes from a classical pairing in Arabic literary criticism, which was also taken up in the Turko-Persian world; first, the natural (ṭabʿ, maṭbūʿ) designates the fluid and direct rapport between writing and reality that exists when a gifted poet makes such links in a natural way. What is usually contrasted with this is the artificial (takalluf, mutakallif), in which the writer gets tangled up in complications and fails to find the most appropriate word or the image that comes closest to reality.42 42

Jamel Eddine Bencheikh, Poétique arabe, précédée de Essai sur un discours critique (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), xxxi–xxxii, 81–86; Justine Landau, De Rythme et de raison. Lecture croisée

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However, here ṭabʿī is presented as being, in fact, the opposite of ghaybī, the invisible, occult or mystical. This may be a reference to the language of the invisible (lisān al-ghayb), attributed to the poet Ḥāfiẓ (d. 792/1390). This adjective, ghaybī, signifies something a bit beyond the natural, physical, visible world of nature itself. This being the case, the naturalistic or realistic poet (ṭabʿī-parwar) is thereby distinguishable from the mystical or theistic poet (tengrī-parwar). Kharābātī has turned the scale of values around: it is no longer the ṭabʿī who is preferable to the takalluf, it’s the ghaybī who must supplant the ṭabʿī. Our author rejects, in no particular order, all taste for nature, attention to creatures, or subtleties of any sort. In the place of the spontaneous poet, too brilliant not to be under some Satanic influence, he places the figure of the bard (madḥ-khwān), described as a devotional singer who awaits divine inspiration, and who is at once of the people (khalq ichrä) and distant from them, a model that is strongly reminiscent of the maddāḥ, those heterodox cantors of Central Asia, whom we will discover in the fifth chapter. Finally, the couplet evoking the work (ish) of the naturalistic poet being destroyed by nature or the natural (ṭabʿī) can be understood not so much as a critique of the rhymer who becomes a victim of his own prowess, but as a reminder of the red thread of devastation: nature suffocates language’s mystical possibilities by sating language with profane spectacle. To finish, let us give the last word to Kharābātī, who spoke thus43: No one would know how to avoid fearing God Nor how to forget the anger of God Whether rich or poor, the shah, everyone Whether shaykh, Sufi, mullah, everyone Whether qadi, mufti or officer He can never refuse what has been offered O brother, hear this counsel and remember it No one could remain indifferent to it

43

de deux traités de poétique persans du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2013), 121–25, 204; ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Mīzān al-awzān (the measurement of meters), in Mukammal asarlar to’plami. Vol. 16 (Tashkent: Fan, 2000), 43–44. Kharābātī, Mathnawī, f. 208b.

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In the Depths of the Grottoes of Central Asia 1

Silences in Khotan 

On Wednesday 13 April 1892, and again on 5 June of the same year, the French explorers Jules-Léon Dutreuil de Rhins and Fernand Grenard ventured into a grotto twenty kilometres south of Khotan. As experienced travellers, they knew that eastern Turkestan resembled the rest of Central Asia: there was more to it than the endless great steppes that had been hypnotising occidentals with their flatness since Marco Polo (who had in fact, passed through Khotan). The two travellers noted1 that once they’d arrived in Yarkand there was ‘A curious thing about the country around the town, where there is a great number of ravines, of vertical cliffs carved from the whitish clay. In the sides of these cliffs grottoes are dug out, which serve as living-places for a mass of poor folk. One finds such cliffs and such grottoes everywhere in Kashgaria, but perhaps nowhere as many as in Yârkend. In fact, the name of the town is significant in this respect; it means “the town of ravines and cliffs”, and indigenous tradition reports that in the past the population of Yârkend consisted entirely of troglodytes.’ In a sense, everything has been summed up already. The Central Asian cavities were numerous; they served as shelters for the poorest fringes of the population. As spaces that were out of alignment, for lives that had run their course, grottoes call forth a social reality as much as they do a space for religious imagination, and, we may add, dervishes exist precisely at the intersection of these two notions. Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard describe the most elaborate grottoes in detail, with an almost naive disapproval2: ‘One penetrates into these molehills, each of which is composed of a single room, by a sloping corridor shut off by a hurdle. A round hole, cut into the ceiling, serves equally ill as a chimney and as a window, there is as little light coming into it as there is smoke going out of it. The smoke combines very appropriately with a terrible smell of he-goat and sour milk to suffocate anyone coming in from outdoors; even in times of the greatest drought there is always, within, a moist and repugnant 1 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 1:38 (and 1:39 for the illustration). 2 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 1:70. A sketch appears in 1:165.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_006

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Figure 4 Grottoes of Kashgaria

humidity and when it rains the ceiling seizes the opportunity to let in water, when it doesn’t collapse outright. When one has become accustomed to the darkness, one sees a woman cooking her thin corn broth and wearing a large patched shift, formerly white, and then one sees, pell-mell, a heap of dried brushwood, a coffer, a little wooden cradle without a base containing a crying naked infant, a butter-churn, wooden vases full or empty of milk, a young kid being suckled by its mother, a few lousy torn blankets, with a bolster that’s shiny with grease.’ Nevertheless, there is one cavern that attracts them particularly, that of the shrine of Kuhmārī, located, as we have said, twenty kilometres from Khotan. Let us return to the account by the two Frenchmen of their expedition3: ‘We found yet more relatively insignificant vestiges of antiquity, but [this is] where we had the good fortune to make the most important archaeological discovery ever in eastern Turkestan. We speak of the grottoes of Koumâri, carved into a little hillside that drops steeply down to the left bank of the Karakâch daria: In this place there are several subterranean chambers to which one climbs via a rough ladder, but into which the indigenous people do not dare to penetrate because of their superstitious respect for the place. (…) At the summit of the south-east extremity of the hill, where the grottoes of Koumâri are carved, stands the mazâr (shrine) of Khodja Mouhebb Khodjam. This mazâr consists simply of a wooden enclosure surrounding a few poles to which horsetails are 3 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 3:142–44. This is a lengthy quotation from which I have cut a few passages, and to which I have added some commentary.

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Figure 5 Shrine of Kuhmārī)

attached. Opposite, a mosque has been built of planks covered with pebbles. To the north-west, at the far end of the hill, stands another small mazâr called Kountou, just above the riverbed. Dutreuil de Rhins visited this site on Wednesday 13 April 1892 and brought back a few fragments of a very old manuscript that an indigenous person told him had been stolen from the sacred grotto. I went there myself on 5 June of the same year, and was fortunate enough to lay my hands on all that remained of the rest of the manuscript (…)’ What they had found was a Buddhist manuscript dating probably from the first century of our era, and it is an exceptional document. Where our two scholars were excavating in search of pre-Islamic vestiges, we are looking for ascetic or even hermitic practices of Islam, the past of which, regardless of its confessional origins, interests us less than its present. Grenard concludes, ‘The details that Hiouen Ts’ang gives about the last mountain apply perfectly to the hill at Koumâri. It has two summits, that of the Kountou mazâr and that of the Mouhebb Khodjam mazâr; in its flank and its central part are carved grottoes, in which a manuscript and objects relating to the Buddhist religion have been found; at the foot of these grottoes one can still see the remains of walls, seemingly the vestiges of the monastery spoken of in the annals of the T’ang. Today as in the past, the hill of Koumâri is a sacred mountain, consecrated by Muslim saints who apparently succeeded to the luminous Buddha.’ A few years later, on 12 November 1900, Aurel Stein visited Kuhmārī with the same archaeological preoccupations.4 Besides confirming that this was an 4 Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan, 1:185–90.

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Figure 6 Grottoes of Kuhmārī

ancient site sacred to Buddhism, although the above-mentioned manuscript had probably first been conserved elsewhere, the historian of Central Asian Islam reads that the little mosque attached to the shrine of Muḥibb Khwāja was probably built during the reign of Yaʿqūb Beg, between 1864 and 1877; this is an irrefutable sign of an active cult here in the nineteenth century. The grotto was where saint Muḥibb lived. Composed of two stories and accessible by ladder, there is an upper chamber measuring 3m50 in length and 2m50 in width, with several holes piercing the surrounding stone. A long crack rises from the ceiling and disappears into the stone above. Buddhist legend affirms that this was a passage that was obstructed in order to hide the ascete who had gone off to settle in the cavity; the Islamic version says that it was via this ancient passageway that the Muslim martyr was able to flee. The walls of the cave are covered with soot that, according to Stein, originates from the tapers lit by pilgrims for their vigils. According to the pilgrims, this blackness of the walls comes from the torches of the infidels who tried to kill the saint. The archaeologist Stein adds, not without malice5: ‘The shrine and cave of Kuhmārī still form a favourite place of pilgrimage for the faithful of Khotan, and the well-fed, contented look of its shaykhs shows that their income 5 Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan, 1:189–90.

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Figure 7 Shrine of Kuhmārī (Ancient Khotan, vol. 1, p. 186)

derived from pious offerings is substantial. The intercession of holy ‘Maheb Khojam’ is believed to be especially efficacious when the low state of the rivers makes the cultivators of certain tracts fear inadequate irrigation and consequent failure of crops. On this account, quasi-official recognition, in the form of a liberal offering from the Amban (governor), Pan Darin, was said to have been recently accorded to the shrine. It is possible that this belief in a connexion between worship at Kuhmārī and the supply of flood-water in the rivers had its distant origins in the legend which, as related by the ‘Annals of Li-yul’,

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Figures 8,9

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Entrance and interior of the grotto in 2008

made Buddha symbolise at this spot the future draining of the waters covering Khotan.’ Not long after this, on 11 December 1906, the Finnish Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim went, in his turn, to the grotto, and brought back the following legend6: Pursued by his enemies, the saint Ḥājjī Kuhmārī sought refuge in the grotto, which opened itself up miraculously when he flew away. The opening was so narrow that he was obliged to take the shape of a snake to pass through it. The black colour of the walls came from the smoking fires set by his enemies to asphyxiate the saint. The faithful believe that he still lives in the grotto and appears to those who pray with sufficient fervour. Outside the grotto, notes Mannerheim, there is ‘a little Muḥammadan temple’, along with a few shelters for pilgrims. These latter inscribe their names on the walls of the ‘temple’. Allow us to add that according to Grenard and despite the useless doubts of Stein, the people of the region translate the name ‘Kuhmārī’ to mean ‘the ser-

6 Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Across Asia from West to East in 1906–1908 (Oosterhout: Anthro­ pological Publications, 1969), 1:101.

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pent of the mountain’; this translation is grammatically correct and corresponds to the above legend. The field data collected by Rahile Dawut in the 1990s, as well as those collected by the present author, confirm and complete the description of this place.7 The shaykhs of the tomb relate that Muḥibb Khwāja was a descendant of Imām Ḥasan, the son of ʿAlī. Muḥibb was said to have come from Arabia in order to spread Islam in Khotan. At the moment of his death, he made his last will and then changed himself into a snake. As for the pilgrims, both men and women, sometimes accompanied by children, their custom is to stay in the grotto, all night as well, for devotional vigils. This space is particularly busy in July and August, and is part of the pilgrim circuits (säylä-sayahät) followed by Uighur Muslims in the region. As well as the grotto, the mosque, a small inn and the humble dwelling in which the shaykhs live, one must also take note of the presence of a cell of a relatively uncommon sort, for isolation or spiritual concentration (etikapkhana/iʿtikāf khāna); this is used by the most devout pilgrims and by the Sufi adepts. It’s probable that this was the building called a ‘temple’ by Mannerheim. Finally, there is more than one hagiographical recital dedicated to Muḥibb Khwāja; these are contained in the Tadhkira-yi Satuq Bughra Khan, which, as far as appearances can tell us, dates from the sixteenth century.8 We read that the man whom the text calls Muḥibb Kuhmār was a descendent of Ḥasan; a scholar and great ascete, he mastered Arabic but also Greek, Syriac and Hebrew. Formerly a hunter, he decided to live an austere life after having mistreated a bird. In the desert, a serpent offered to join him. The ascete asked the snake how it was possible for a human and a serpent to become companions? The reptile answered by citing the Quran (67:3), ‘He is the All-mighty, the Allforgiving – who created seven heavens one upon another. Thou seest not in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection. Return thy gaze; seest thou any fissure?’ Muḥibb suspected that the snake was actually a man or a jinn. They travelled together for a year, during which the animal performed numerous extraordinary feats. At that point, Muḥibb though that of the two of them it was the serpent who represented the man or was a holy personnage. This was confirmed by the reptile, who admitted that his name was ʿAbd Allāh Yamanī and that his task was to travel across the world and control it. The serpent then changed itself into a man, recited the Fatiha and blew on the face of the ascete, who immediately lost consciousness. The snake-saint cut open Muḥibb’s chest, 7 Rahilä Dawut, Uyghur mazarliri, 123–25. I interviewed a shaykh and two pilgrims in July 2008. 8 Tadhkira-yi Bughra Khan, MS Supplément turc 1286, ff. 317b–322a; translated into English by Julian Baldick, Imaginary Muslims, 163–66 (ch. 37 of the tadhkira).

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Figure 10 Cell for spiritual concentration in 2008

cleaned out the inside and closed his torso back up. He again recited the Fatiha and blew on Muḥibb’s face. The ascete re-awakened with a pure heart. ʿAbd Allāh informed him that from that time on he would come and visit him twice a year, and then he disappeared. Muḥibb stayed where he was for two years, and attained a high spiritual degree while snakes stood guard around him. After this, ʿAbd Allāh enjoined Muḥibb to go to Turkestan, and a serpent guided him there. Two more years passed, and Muḥibb arrived in Māchīn, in eastern Turkestan, where he encountered a dervish called Sufyān whose speech flew like an arrow, thus his nickname, ‘arrow-speaker’ (dam-i tīr). This dervish taught the ascete to shoot arrows as he did. Where Muḥibb shot, there an inn (langar) for the dervish was built. The two men parted and agreed to communicate by means of arrows. Ten years passed. The serpent that had guided Muḥibb stayed coiled up by the stoop of the hermitage in order to stay

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safe from Satan and evil jinns. The ascete soon became a great saint. As a saint, he communicated with Khidr and Abū al-Fayḍ Ilāhī twice a day. On one occasion, the arrow came in through his door and then disappeared. Muḥibb understood that his final hour was upon him, and asked the people around him to bury him in his hermitage and continue consulting him for 200 years. Pilgrims who had a request knew that it was a good omen if they saw the serpent. The animal continued to carry out its task as a guardian; people came with their problems, leaving ink and paper and returning later to find the answers to their questions written down. This state of affairs lasted for 200 years, even though the serpent also died, twenty years after Muḥibb’s death. One of the responses on paper stipulated that the saint was to be buried in his hermitage. From all these data one may learn several things. The topography suggests, as much as does the oral or written legend of the holy place, that its function was eremitic. There is no mention anywhere of spiritual education, the founding of a community, of social relations. This is a space for voluntary solitude, the roots of which certainly plunge down into a Buddhist sub-soil, while its modern form nevertheless appears only in devotional Islam. Whatever the biographical reality of Muḥibb Khwāja, Kuhmārī has perhaps been a hermitage for dervishes since at least the nineteenth century, using the grotto for khalwat and the cell for iʿtikāf. What remains to be examined is the Uwaysī identity indicated by the telepathic link established with Khidr and Abū al-Fayḍ, something that is sometimes a sign of heteropraxy; the story also demonstrates a naturalistic tendency. The bird victim, and especially the serpent – protective spirit or servant of the saint – are part of a bestiary that’s well known in Islam, in North Africa, for example.9 There as here, the animal that crawls on its belly is linked to a spring (water-source) or to a grotto, often taking on a guardian’s role, perhaps in reference to the following anecdote: the Prophet was reciting a verse of the Quran to his disciples in a grotto; a snake appeared and He ordered that it be killed, but the reptile escaped. From this the Prophet deduced, ‘God has protected it against coming to harm from you as He has protected you against coming to harm from it.’ More specific to our own, Central Asian, example, what strikes one at Kuh­ mārī is the generally economical use of words. Apart from the Muslim folk tradition transmitted by the Stories of the Prophets (qiṣāṣ al-anbiyāʾ), in which the snake is a beast that was chased from paradise and condemned to silence, 9 Mohammed Hocine Benkheira, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen and Jacqueline Sublet, L’Animal en islam, 114, 144, 163. See also J.-H. Probst-Biraben, “Le serpent, persistance de son culte dans l’Afrique du Nord,” Journal de la Société des Africanistes 3/2 (1933): 289–95; René Basset, Le Culte des grottes au Maroc (Algiers: J. Carbonel, 1920), 20, 39–40.

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there are diverse narrative, cultual and physical elements that are marked by silence. The interior voices of the Uwaysī, the expression by means of arrows, the communication with paper and pen, the cell and the spiritual concentration that takes place within it – all of these describe an austere world with no timbre, the world of the mutist dervishes. The very restrained serenity that comes over the pilgrims even today seems to recall this former hermitage atmosphere. 2

Whispers in Tashkent and Samarkand 

On the outskirts of Tashkent, the capital of today’s Uzbekistan, we find a case that resembles that of Kuhmārī without being identical to it. This site is at the bottom of an underground space that was formerly just northwest of the city, in a village that at the time was known as the ‘Gnostic’s [village]’ (Orifon/ ʿĀrifān); this appellation may well have come about because of the underground space there. During the nineteenth century the village was swallowed up by Tashkent, becoming known as Kökcha suburb. Here can be found the shrine of the (supposedly) thirteenth century Sufi saint Zayn al-Dīn Bābā, next to which is a cell for retreat (chilliaxona/chilla khāna) that has two underground stories excavated from a hillock and surrounded by a large cemetery; these can today be visited piously without the obligation to practice the austerities that were the rule in the past.10 After the dig of 1951, Russian archaeologists were able to recreate a fairly precise chronology of the strata of construction.11 The young Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan undertook extensive restoration of the shrine during the 1920s, after having rebuilt the walls of the tomb and those of the mosque that was attached to the holy place during the nineteenth century. Resembling the Sufi lodges of the period, with a cruciform plan, a porch and a cupola, the entire monument dates from the sixteenth century, although the shrine itself was already receiving the largesse of Tamerlane (d. 807/1405), who paid to have several Sufi sepulchral monuments reconstructed. Until these reconstructions, the tomb of Zayn al-Dīn Bābā as erected by his disciples was probably of modest dimensions. All of the edifices on the site are of later date than the cell for retreat, which existed during Zayn al-Dīn’s lifetime, since he made this cell his home. 10 11

I visited the site and spoke with the shaykh in May 2002 and in October 2007. V.A. Bulatova, “K istorii mavzoleia Zein-ad-dina,” in Arkhitekturnoe nasledie Uzbekistana, ed. G.A. Pugachenkova (Tashkent: Akademii Nauk, 1960), 75–84; V.A. Bulatova and L.Iu. Man’kovskaia, Pamiatniki zodchestva Tashkenta xiv-xix veka (Tashkent: Gafur Guliam, 1983), 116–18. Both publications are illustrated.

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Figure 11 Shrine of Zayn al-Dīn Bābā in Tashkent in 2007

This Sufi master would have lived between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. Before describing this Sufi ascetic, let us note the possibility that the cell for retreat was dug as early as the twelfth century or even the eleventh; this is according to the archaeologists’ dating of several of the artifacts that were unearthed, including construction materials, the mihrab and even an ancient irrigation channel. However, what interests us most is not so much medieval but modern times, in the heart of which the marginal practice of spiritual reclusion still subsists. The name of Zayn al-Dīn is absent from the great biographical compendiums of Central Asia, such as Jāmī’s Nafaḥāt al-uns or Nawāʾī’s Nasāʾim almaḥabba, and does not seem to appear before the sixteenth century in hagiographical sources other than the Persian Qandiyya, which is a later description of Samarkand than had been thought12; we will also return to that text in the part of our sub-chapter devoted to the grottoes of the legendary city. 12

C.A. Storey, Persidskaia literatura. Bio-bibliograficheskii obzor, translated into Russian and reviewed with supplements and corrections by Yu. E. Bregel (Moscow: Glavnaia Redaktsia Vostochnoi Literatury, 1972), 2:1113–1115.

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The Qandiyya reports several important facts about the man to whom it refers as ‘Zayn al-Dīn from the village of ʿĀrifān’.13 His master is said to have been Abū Yūsuf Hamadānī, and his disciple Nūr al-Dīn Baṣīr (d. 646/1249). Although it is the latter of these who most interests the hagiographer, an implicit portrait of our man is nevertheless drawn. The reader is reminded that Zayn al-Dīn came from Nūshkent (a village near Tashkent), and that he settled in ʿĀrifān, five kilometres from the city. He was in contemplation (naẓar) when Baṣīr came to him, but he immediately agreed to undertake the spiritual training of this young adolescent who, we read, ended up spending more time with his master than with his own mother. One day, Zayn al-Dīn asked his little circle of disciples why no one could speak of mystical knowledge. While the other novices were perplexed, Baṣīr stood and said that this knowledge consisted of acting in a just manner (ṣawāb) – in other words, it was not to do with speech. In this little scene we see the classical apophatism of mystical Islam, according to which any attempt to define God is a betrayal.14 More precisely, the hagiographer sums up the teaching of Zayn al-Dīn Bābā as silence, contemplation and the practice of retreat. A second anecdote confirms this point: Baṣīr was in the habit of preparing the ewer for his master’s ablutions. One night, he carried the ewer to the threshold of Zayn al-Dīn’s cell and prostrated himself there. It was winter, and very cold, snowing heavily, so that the disciple was covered with snowflakes. In the morning, when the saint came out of his seclusion, he fell over the heap of snow, from which Baṣīr suddenly appeared. He had kept the ewer close to his chest, and the water was still warm. From this the master concluded that his disciple had himself become a master, and sent Baṣīr, with his mother, to Samarkand to preach. This story illustrates the preceding lesson on just actions as a mode of mystical knowledge, and underlines the demanding ascesis of the recluse. Oral tradition has transmitted the following teaching down to the present day.15 It is said that Zayn al-Dīn arrived in the village on a camel, the animal having stopped at the gates of the city of Tashkent. The shaykh interpreted this as a divine sign and settled in an underground chamber. Later he built other cells around his, for a few of his disciples. An urban legend even states that there was a tunnel stretching for several kilometres under the city, linking Zayn 13 14 15

Qandiyya wa Samariyya. Dū risāla dar tārīkh-i mazārāt wa jughrāfiyā-yi Samarqand, ed. Irāj Afshār (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Farhangī-i Jahāngīrī, 1367/1988), 85–88. On this question, see Eric Geoffroy, “L’apophatisme chez les mystiques de l’Islam,” Revue des Sciences Religieuses 72/4 (1998): 394–402. Ozod Shomansur, Shayx Zayniddin ku’yi Orifon Toshkandiy. Risola (Tashkent: O’zbekiston milliy kutubxonasi, 2006). This small work contains some scholarly studies, but is primarily intended for pilgrims.

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al-Dīn’s cave to the tomb of Qaffāl Shāshī (d. 365/976), the celebrated Shafiite jurist who was buried in Tashkent, so that Zayn al-Dīn and the jurist could commune with each other. Thus today’s popular imagination has held onto the idea of a parallel world in the depths, echoing to the sound of dervishes whispering. In addition, the octagonal and isothermic chilla khāna has acoustic properties that would be propitious for the recitation (tilāwat) of the Quran. In practical terms, there are two openings, in the floor and in the ceiling, permitting daylight to shine into the chamber and thus allowing the time of day to be perceived. This structural detail, domestically interpreted, according to a certain post-Soviet scientism that is prevalent in Uzbekistan, as the traces of an observatory for dioptrics, actually bears witness to the religious and spiritual uses of such an underground cell, dedicated to the contemplative life. The shaykh of the shrine affirms that this spiritual practice was maintained until the nineteenth century, a hypothesis that appears to be supported though not authenticated by some late manuscripts relating to the architectural ensemble. What we know of the identity of Zayn al-Dīn is effectively completed by documents conserved by his supposed descendants, who have become the clergy of the holy place.16 Although the chronology remains uncertain, a genealogical scroll (nasabnāma) states that our Bābā was the son of the great Sufi shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ al-Suhrawardī, whose diplomatic missions linked Baghdad to Khwarezm for several years, which would explain Suhrawardī’s somewhat tenuous link with Central Asia and the city of Tashkent. What really makes sense of this filiation is the status of Suhrawardī as a tutelary figure for Central Asian dervishes.17 In any case, it is useless to seek an undiscoverable biographical exactitude, since forged genealogies are common currency. The nasabnāma was written in Chagatay Turkish and in Arabic, probably at the end of the eighteenth century, with seals dating from 1789, 1792, 1804 and 1889. There is also a group of five other genealogical documents that can furnish complementary information.18 Written in Persian and in Arabic, they contain a large number of the seals that are applied by judges to certify the filiations mentioned therein, and thus the inheritance of land. The most recent seals are dated 1215/1804, 1236/1820, 1281/1864, 1293/1876 and 1301/1884. Finally, there is one document that indicates an Uwaysī Sufi lineage. In any case, we know that Zayn al-Dīn Bābā was the object of intense veneration until the 16 17 18

V.A. Bulatova, “K istorii mavzoleia Zein-ad-dina,” 80–81. See the reference to Suhrawardī in the Qalandarnāma by Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī, translated in the introduction to the present work. Ozod Shomansur, Shayx Zayniddin, 28–36.

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Figure 12 Cell adjoining the shrine, with the entrance on the right, in 2007

Figure 13 The interior of the cell with a dervish’s staff as a relic, in 2007

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nineteenth century: the complex was used, maintained and institutionalised. The notion that dervishes should have waited for a later epoch to elect to live here and practice as hermits would appear to be uncertain. However, the case of Samarkand tends to support this hypothesis. The nineteenth century offshoot of the Qandiyya mentioned above is called the Samariyya, thus reviving the two components of the name ‘Samar-Qand’; this was written by Abū Ṭāhir Samarqandī. The seventh chapter, called ‘On the subject of the grottoes and gulfs that are well-known for their quality and their propriety’ (dar bayān-i ghārhā wa maghākhā ki bi ṣifat wa khāṣiyat mashhūrand); there is much to be gained from translating this chapter19: ‘The first gulf is that of Saint Khwāja-yi Sang-rasān [the petrifying one], which crosses the external facade of the citadel of Afrasiab. It contains a series of cells (huḥjra), some of which are full of human bones. The second is the grotto of the Indigent One (maskīn). This can be found below the holy place (mazār) of Muḥammad Sang-rasān, on the north side, near the Siab River (siyah-āb), underneath the great tel. This is the grotto of Saint Khādim, who was one of the Turkish shaykhs (mashāʾikh-i turk) and who made it into a spiritual cavity (kanda maqām) for Sufis. His tomb is near the grotto. This was a dwelling rich in spiritual effects and a place for saints. The third grotto is that of the Bridge of Muḥammad Chap. It lies at the foot of the citadel of Afrasiab, to the west of the highway leading to the Bridge of Muḥammad Chap, above the River Siab, that people take to go to the Plaza Garden and the Upper Garden. The fourth grotto is that of Khwāja Danyāl. This grotto can be found at the foot of the citadel of Afrasiab, east of the mausoleum of Khwāja Danyāl. This is a noble dwelling. The fifth grotto is that of the Lovers (ʿāshiqān). It is situated on the eastern side of the citadel of Samarkand, near this citadel’s moat. Saint Makhdūm Khwārizmī dug out this grotto for Sufis. There is a series of cells here. After the death of the saint, this became for some time the lodge of the Qalandars (qalandarkhāna) of the city of Samarkand. The sixth is the grotto of Kūhak. It lies to the east of Kūhak hill. People say that a man by the name of Mullā Sakkākī practiced austerities in this cavity, and that he named it “Conquest of the conquerors of the forty” (taskhīr-i musakhkhirāt-i chihil).’ With the exception of the prophet Danyāl/Daniel – certainly fictional in this context –20 and of Khādim, who was a Yasawī shaykh in the fifteenth century, 19 20

Qandiyya wa Samariyya, 151–52. In Qandiyya wa Samariyya, 181–82, Abū Ṭāhir specifies: ‘[The shrine of Danyāl] is situated outside the town, in a northerly direction, in the eastern crevasse of the citadel of Afrasiab, on the banks of the River Siab. People claim that this is the tomb of the prophet Danyāl. But the shrine of this saint is in Mosul.They also say that it was a companion of Qutham b. ʿAbbās [a proselytising Arab chief] who rested in this place.’ Additionally,

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these saints are hard to identify. They were essentially marginal, and the memory of Samarkand has retained them only in the hollows of its stones. The fact that all the sacred grottoes are part of the antique site of Afrasiab indicates a recuperation of pre-Islamic sites, as happened at Khotan. Without going into archaeological detail that would be beyond both the remit of this book and the capacities of its author21, let us retain the existence of a profound continuity of hermetic values in Transoxanian Islam. Although our source seems to be evoking a world that no longer exists, in a present that no longer invites into its entrails dissidents who are ceaselessly aligning themselves with the past, his description of the grottoes still resonates with the whispers of dervishes. One might even say (perhaps risking over-interpretation?) that the very structure of the chapter reads like a brief history of Sufi asceticism in Samarkand, despite the absence of dates. According to Abū Ṭāhir, at the beginning there was a ‘petrifying’ saint, in the possible sense that he taught his disciples to isolate themselves within the stones; the inviolate bones in the caves are their final traces.22 The medieval Sufism of the Turkish shaykhs (that is to say of the steppes, more or less) gave birth to a holy man who was called Khādim (the servant) or Maskīn (the indigent one) because he had made a vow of radical poverty. His cavern became a hermitage over the long term. A master from Khwarezm also made a grotto into a dwelling for Muslim mystics, lovers of God; this grotto later (apparently in the pre-modern period) became the lodge for the Qalandar dervishes of the city at a time when they were increasing in number. Finally, an ascete chose a cavity as the propitious place for quadragesimal retreat, ‘the conquest of the forty’; perhaps he left behind the memory of a technique less excessive than total reclusion, more accessible to the faithful and easier to adapt to the rhythms of modern life. On the subject of the grotto of Danyāl, let us add the description made by the French ethnologist Joseph Castagné of the site as he saw it in the 1910s: ‘Great willows, with knotty branches and thick foliage, cast their shade on this place, which is good for meditation. All sorts of objects brought as offerings by the faithful testify to the veneration of the tomb: clay lamps, stones covered

21 22

I visited this mazār in February 2001 and in September 2013: pilgrims at the site affirmed that it did in fact contain a part of Danyāl’s body, brought there by Tamerlane, and that the relic had continued to grow, which was the reason for the form of the tomb. See G.A. Pugachenkova and I.V. Rtveladze, “Afrasiab i. The Archeological Site,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online. Another grotto containing a mummified body (that of Saint Isḥāq Khatlānī) is said to exist in the vally of the high Zerafshan in Tajikistan, see Joseph Castagné, “Le culte des lieux saints de l’islam au Turkestan,” L’Ethnographe 46 (1951): 89.

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Figure 14 Shrine of Danyāl in Samarkand in 2013

Figure 15 Uzbek pilgrims at the entrance in 2013

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Figure 16 Cenotaph of Danyāl in 2013

Figure 17 Doors at the entrance to the grotto of Danyāl in 2013

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Figure 18 Interior of the grotto of Danyāl in 2013

with Arabic inscriptions, rams’ horns, scraps of cloth attached to staffs at the top of which are pieces of red or white fabric fluttering like flags, horsetails solidly attached to reflective metal balls … all of these objects reveal the presence of a venerated tomb.’23 Such grottoes as this one may today become cells for short-term retreat and centres for miraculous healing. This appears to be the definitive destiny of most of the dervish grottoes of twentieth century Central Asia, as we will see in the following example, to the west of Khwarezm. 23

Joseph Castagné, “Le culte des lieux saints de l’islam au Turkestan,” 85–86.

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Graffiti in Manguistaou 

In today’s Kazakhstan, the region of Manguistaou (or Mangyshlak) is characterised by solitary necropolises, established as dependencies of troglodyte mosques whose galleries run underneath the desert. As a brief historical reminder, let us note that Manguistaou was inhabited by Turkic tribes from the tenth century; these were Islamised during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Ustyurt Plateau to the east was controlled for a long time by the Kazakh hordes, and conquered by the Russians in the 1870s.24 The Islamic history of the region remains very poorly understood; the following pages limit themselves to the introduction of the question of Muslim hermits and dervishes, relying on a small assortment of varied publications of fieldwork collected by Kazakh researchers and by the present author. Let us hope that the future publication of manuscripts, especially those held in private archives, will offer new material for historians of Sufism.25 The names of three saints occur particularly frequently: Shopan Ata, Shaq­ paq Ata and Beket Ata. They are buried in three necropolises spread across the Manguistaou peninsula; small groups of pilgrims travel from one to the next.26 The first stage of the pilgrimage, situated at the foot of the Ustyurt on the ancient caravan route to Khwarezm, is the holy complex of Shopan Ata, 24 25

26

Yuri Bregel, “Mangishlak,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., BrillOnline; Gian Luca Bonora, Guide to Kazakhstan. Sites of Faith, Sites of History (Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C., 2014), ch. 9. For an initial grounding, especially on the lineages of the Yasawī sayyid, on the Sufi lodge of master Ḥidāyat Khwāja Bāqirghānī and on the nomadic Mangyshlāqī disciples of Nāṣir Khwāja and then of the Kubrawī Ḥusayn Khwārizmī, see Devin DeWeese, “The Sayyid Atāʾī presence in Khwārazm during the 16th and early 17th centuries,” in Studies on Central Asian History in Honor of Yuri Bregel, ed. Devin DeWeeese (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2001), 255–56, 265–67. There are other holy caves that would repay systematic research. Apart from the three places mentioned I was able in August 2016 to visit the mazār of Karaman Ata and that of Sultan Epe. Both of these form large complexes, containing underground mosques with several chambers linked together by tunnels. On the surface, the necropolises are watched over by families of guardians who guide pilgrims. According to the few accounts that I was able to gather, Karaman Ata is said to have been the grandson of Shopan Ata, sent to propagate Sufism in the tribe of the Adai. Some pilgrims practice circumambulation on the surface, resting their hands on the nearby stones. The necropolis contains tombs dating from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The site of Sultan Epe goes back to the twelfth-thirteenth centuries, and not to the ninth as asserted on the official plaque; here the tomb is on the outside and is said to contain the earthly remains of a man considered a son by Ḥakīm Ata. Beause he had helped some fishermen as a young man, Sultan Epe became the patron saint of sailors on the Caspian Sea.

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the largest such site in Manguistaou.27 The Kazakh ethnologist Raushan Mustafina described it in 1991, before the renovations and additions of recent decades, indicating that the space around the saint’s tomb was shabby but carefully maintained, showing that there was an assiduous cult here in spite of the lack of any public finance during the Soviet period. The underground part of the holy site can be found in the south-western part of the cemetery, which contains Oghuz, Kipchak, Turkmen and Adai Kazakh tombs. Pilgrims take their shoes off and enter through a passage in the limestone, which leads to a main grotto around which, along with alcoves for the performance of devotions, are placed the ground-level tombs of Shopan and his sister. In the middle of the main chamber are two beams, planted in the ground and passing up through the ceiling by a skylight through which air and light can enter the underground chambers. The double mast (tugh), representing the cosmic axis, receives the wishes of the pilgrims in the form of knotted cloths and ram-horns. Various rituals are practised on the floor, which is entirely covered with mats and rugs: prayer, the lighting of candles, vigils. As is to be expected, the mazār28 has a reputation for bringing about births, healing various ills and reinforcing faith. The documentation concerning Shopan Ata currently remains mostly oral and legendary. It was assembled by three generations of scholars who had ­access to popular testimonies rather than to Sufi initiatic teachings; they ­questioned mullahs, the shrine’s guardians, supposed descendants, and pilgrims.29 Among the Russian orientalist, the Soviet ethnologist and the Kazakh researcher, none is opposed to the general conviction that the saint lived between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. However, their versions diverge when it comes to the exact spiritual pedigree of Shopan. Of Yasawī obedience (this Sufi order began its spread through Central Asia during the medieval period), he is said to have been the disciple either of the eponymous master Aḥmad Yasawī himself, or of one of this masters’ disciples, either Saʿīd Ata or Ḥakīm Ata. The name Shopan, which means ‘shepherd’, was given to him because he converted the pastoral nomads of Ustyurt to Islam. Let us add that this appellation certainly also refers to the religious figure of the shepherd of souls. Among the legends recounting his great deeds there are two very current, and similar, filiation 27 28 29

Raushan M. Mustafina, “Sviatye Beket-ata i Shopan-ata: legendy i traditsiia pochitaniia,” Otan tarikhy 4/44 (2008): 155–56. In Kazakh, the terms zherasty meshet or zher töle meshiti (underground mosque) and auliya (holy place) are used. A.K. (sic), “Prednaia Adaevtsev o sviatykh, sekty khanafie, zhivshikh i umershikh na Mangyshlake,” in Sbornik svedenii o Kavkazkikh gortsakh (1873), 7:12–14; Sergei M. Demidov, Sufizm v Turkmenii (evoliutsiia i perezhitki) (Ashkhabad: Ylym, 1978), 62–65; Raushan M. Mustafina, “Sviatye Beket-ata i Shopan-ata: legendy i traditsiia pochitaniia,” 153–55.

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l­ egends. The first recounts that as he was dying, Aḥmad Yasawī had to choose a successor. He threw a baton (ʿaṣā) from the window of his mosque in Turkestan, on the southern edge of the Kazakh steppe, promising to give his blessing to the man who picked it up. Only Shopan understood that the baton was already much farther to the west, in Manguistaou. It took the dervish several months to find the object, planted in the shade of a tree where some men were waiting for him. He married the daughter of one of these men, and stayed there to preach his master’s teachings as his legitimate successor. The second tradition has it that Shopan Ata was the natural heir of king Muḥammad (of the Khwārezmshāh dynasty), who reigned in Khwarezm between 1200 and 1220. Unable, for unknown reasons, to accede to the throne, he became a dervish under the spiritual direction of Saʿīd Ata. One day, this latter set his novices a test: he threw his baton out from the chimney of the yurt. After searching for seven years, Shopan found the baton hanging from a mulberry tree in the Manguistaou steppe. A third version specifies that only the saint was able to pull the baton from between the stones where it had stuck, and that he then drove it into the ground afresh. Both of these legends conclude that it was in the place where he found the baton (the tugh that still exists today) that Shopan Ata built the mosque, and from there that he initiated disciples. Neither the problems of genealogy (whether of brotherhood or of tribe) nor the question of Islamisation concern us in the present volume. For us, the interest of Sufi oral history lies in its recounting and remembering of an initial act of retreat into underground chambers in the Islam of Manguistaou, an act about which one can at the very least assume that it counted among the spiritual practices contemporaneous with the diffusion of these re-tellings in the second half of the nineteenth century. Today these practices seem to have disappeared. According to our observations in 2016, Shopan Ata had become a very popular pilgrimage site for Kazakh families, who follow their underground devotions (which are quite controlled by the celebrants) with customary rituals around a sacred fountain, and then around a wood and cement yurt of recent date. The second stage of the pilgrimage is also the second act in the intellectual foundation of Sufi anchoritism: Shaqpaq Ata.30 About 135 kilometres north of the town of Aktau, not far from the village of Taushyq on the steep edge of a valley, this site is sculpted in the thick layers of a limestone deposit. Near the mazār is a necropolis containing tombs dating from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries; a mosque set between the shrine and the shores of 30

A.K. Muminov and A.Sh. Nurmanova, Shaqpaq-Ata. Jerastı meşiti men qorımınıñ epi­gra­ fikası (Almaty: Daik Press, 2009), 28–32. Numerous photographs.

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Figure 19 Entrance of the shrine of Shopan Ata in 2016

Figure 20 Entrance of the main grotto in 2016

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Figure 21 Collective yurt for pilgrims in 2016

the Caspian Sea welcomes pilgrims. The pilgrims climb a staircase leading to a terrace (both built in 1983, when large-scale restoration was begun) in order to gain access to the grotto. After having entered and passed along a tunnel carved into the stone, they arrive in the troglodytic mosque, lit by a skylight, where the roof is held up by three-quarter pillars. Above this are a tower and a minaret that are half-destroyed. Three additional chambers prolong the sides of the principal chamber in a cross shape. The walls of the holy place contain niches (miḥrāb) and, especially, more than 200 illustrated inscriptions, closer to graffiti than to epigraphic art. They are present in exceptional quantities. This site dates back at least to the first half of the fourteenth century, despite the fact that the official plaque at the entrance situates it in the period between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries. The founding saint, Shaqpaq Ata, is also supposed to have lived in the fourteenth century.31 Popular tradition identifies him with Shāh-i mardān, the grandson of the Yasawī Shopan Ata, who was given the name of Shaqpaq, meaning fire-starter or flint, because of his ability to start a fire by rubbing one 31

A.K., “Prednaia Adaevtsev o sviatykh, sekty khanafie, zhivshikh i umershikh na Mangyshlake,” 12–14; reprinted in A.K. Muminov and A.Sh. Nurmanova, Shaqpaq-Ata, 32–33.

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fingernail against another. Another legend recounts more prosaically that the dervish on his travels needed to start a fire and did so with the help of a piece of flint; Kazakh researchers observe that flint is abundant in the region. Allow us to add that this sobriquet, as for Shopan, seems also to have a symbolic significance: the saint as the one who lights the way into religious conscience, or who starts the mystical fire. It must be recalled that we are speaking of Sufism here, and not merely of the cult of saints. Hagiographical tradition describes Shaqpaq Ata as a devoted hermit, worker of miracles, and martyr. Notably, it is reported that on the summit of Mount Imedi there is a holy place called Sahabi (‘cloudy’ and/or ‘companion of the Prophet’) because Shaqpaq went there on a cloud. Another, more eloquent tale has the dervish fleeing from his enemies. When the hour for prayer arrived, he found a large stone, climbed upon it and began to pray. He prayed for two years without perceiving the passage of time. The marks of the praying saint’s feet, hands and forehead can still be seen in the stone. After two years, his enemies found him and cut off his head, but Shaqpaq took his own head in his arms and ran away. The prints of his fleeing feet are said still to be visible in the Qunan Su ravine. Beyond their habitual functions (sacralising the territory around the shrine, martyrology, expressing the idea of the miraculous decapitation32), these legends attempt to preserve the memory of hermetism in caves and grottoes. In fact, these memories are explicitly illustrated, if we are to believe some of the graffiti markings of Shaqpaq Ata. Generally these inscriptions written in Arabic, Persian or Chagatay consist of proper names, sometimes accompanied by dates, by a bismillah, hadiths, or poems. While not saying much about medieval frequentation of the site, these graffiti teach us a lot about visitors in the modern period, and for our purposes provide precious data. They show that there were intensive pious visits to this holy place from the beginning of the eighteenth century up until the 1920s, with pilgrims and the faithful coming from Khwarezm but also from as far afield as Azerbaijan, Bukhara and Andijan.33 Among the visitors were a number of masters and disciples, as well as a ribāṭchī. Editors have not heretofore noticed that the latter title designates someone who lives in Sufi lodgings, isolated from the world, and that this graffiti, carved by an anchorite called Mullā Ẓāhir, quotes a couplet by the mystical poet Fuḍūlī (d. 963/1556): ‘In strange lands there’s no satisfaction for a ­stranger / [For] no one is welcoming with a stranger’ (Ghurbatda gharīb shādmān bolmas

32 33

Very common in Central Asia, one also finds this attributed to Qutham b. ʿAbbās and to ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī. A.K. Muminov and A.Sh. Nurmanova, Shaqpaq-Ata, 33–34, 67, 72, 76, 81, 104.

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emish / hīch kimse gharībā mihribān bolmas emish).34 This signifies that the voyage of the dervish must lead him inward, to his Creator, and not to the otherness of the outside world. The contours of a Sufi culture marked by dervishism are delineated on the walls of the grotto by other graffiti.35 A long poem by the ascete (zāhid) Mullā Muḥammad deplores the ontological evanescence of the world; an apocryphal hadith defends voluntary poverty and degradation; a certain Niyāz Muḥammad Andijānī proclaims that knowledge of the Islamic sciences does not a Muslim make. These proofs of the perseverance of anchoritism are few but they do have the value of all autograph writings. When we visited this site in August 2016, none of our interlocutors (guardians or pilgrims) mentioned the practice of spiritual retreat. The chamber on the right-hand side is frequented as much by Muslims as by orthodox Christians, both men and women, who all lie on their backs in order to receive the Baraka, the influx of the saints, while a preacher recites an invocation in the mihrab. Finally, it is interesting to note the existence of a grotto linked to another shrine, in the Jambyl region and also called Shaqpaq Ata, which is dedicated to a serpent cult, as at Kuhmārī.36 Here women who want to become pregnant come to spend a night, during which, it is said, the snake slides over their bodies and around their necks, without harming them. The third stage of the pilgrimage brings us back to the western Ustyurt plateau. The five chambers of the Beket Ata shrine were hollowed out of the heart of Mount Oglandy; pilgrims reach it via a long walkway. Most of them are content to pray there under the direction of the local cleric, sitting in the immaculate whiteness of the first chamber. This vast complex contains a mosque as well as a hostel for visitors. In 2016 we spotted a notice addressed to the pious visitors in Kazakh, prohibiting them, for example, from leaving votive offerings or performing traditional healing rituals. Such control of pilgrimage leaves ­little space for devotional acts and spiritual techniques. The information panel that was put up in 1986, but has recently been removed, gave the saint’s dates as 1650–1713. Scholars believe that in fact he died in 1813 and lived between the second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.37

34 35 36 37

A.K. Muminov and A.Sh. Nurmanova, Shaqpaq-Ata, 72; Fuzūlī divanı, ed. Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı (Istanbul: İnkılâp Kitabevi, 1948), 355. A.K. Muminov and A.Sh. Nurmanova, Shaqpaq-Ata, 76, 104, 107, 108. Raushan M. Mustafina, Predstavleniia, kul’ty, obriady u kazakov (v kontekste bytovogo islama v iuzhnom Kazakhstane v kontse XIX-XX vv.) (Almaty: Qazaq Universiteti, 1992). Raushan M. Mustafina, “Sviatye Beket-ata i Shopan-ata: legendy i traditsiia pochitaniia,” 156.

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Figure 22 Shrine of Shaqpaq Ata in 2016

Figure 23 Central chamber of the grotto

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Figure 24 Ritual for receiving the influx of the saint

In 1991, Turganbai Sauleev was not only the guardian of the space (shyrakshy in Kazakh), but also the principle source of information on Beket Ata.38 From his oral testimony one discovers that the holy man studied at a madrasa either in Kunya-Urgench (in today’s Turkmenistan) or in Khiva. In a characteristic hagiographical topos, it is said the young student was remarkable for his intellectual capacities but also for his physical strength. When the master challenged his pupils to uproot a tree near the madrasa, only Beket managed to do so. When, on another occasion, the teacher threw his baton out the window – this may reflect a contamination from the legends relating to Shopan Ata39 – only Beket was able to find it where it had embedded itself in the soil next to a shepherd and his flocks; only he was able to pull it out of the ground. The subsequent stages of his career are more important for our purposes. Once Beket Ata had completed his studies, he became a dervish and retreated into a grotto in Manguistaou, interrupting his austerities only to teach the children of the 38 39

Raushan M. Mustafina, “Sviatye Beket-ata i Shopan-ata: legendy i traditsiia pochitaniia,” 151–53. Counter to all temporal coherence, one anecdote affirms that Beket Ata was a disciple of Shopan Ata.

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Figure 25 Walkway leading to the shrine of Beket Ata in 2016

nomads to read. Two additional chambers were said to have been dug out by his pupils. Then all sorts of acts are attributed to the saint: fighting against Kalmuk infidels, resolving conflicts with the Turkmens, distributing donations, caring for people with mental illnesses, etc. Then, in a posthumous miracle, Beket Ata was not buried immediately, but left for a time in the underground mosque, where his body remained intact; the shroud that was draped over him yellowed slightly. The grotto continued to offer its benefits to those who spent nights in it. During the troubles of 1916–1920, Turganbai’s father received a signal from the saint one night, enjoining the populace to leave for Nukus in order to avoid the depredations of the White Russians. Most people did not believe him, and were massacred. Later, Turganbai acquired the power to treat sciatica, while his sister treated rickets. This is the substance of the ‘history’ of the grotto of Beket Ata, which was among the final spaces for subterranean retreat in the Kazakh region, providing the conditions that made Islamic marginality (as distancing from the world) possible in modern Central Asia. As an epilogue, let us remember that the dervishes had not altogether disappeared from Soviet Kazakhstan, despite having been reduced to a mere shadow of their former status, irremediably relegated to the ranks of healers, similar

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Figure 26 Entrance of the grotto in 2016

to the Muslim ‘shamans’ (bakhshi).40 Between 1983 and 1987, Raushan Mustafina collected the testimonies of two holy fools (dīwāna/duana) in the oblasts of Chimkent and Almaty.41 The father and grandfather of the first of these, Alman, were both also bakhshi. He himself was 56 years old when a spirit ‘came to visit’ him, demanding that he take the whip of his deceased mother and a vielle (kobyz) and make a pilgrimage to around twenty mazār. Battling against this interior voice, Alman insulted it and drank vodka to excess. Eventually, he lost the capacity to speak, fell ill and suffered from pains in his hands and feet. It was no good. Admitting defeat he obeyed, and, restored to health, put on a white coat before undertaking eleven months of speechless wandering. At the 40 41

Raushan M. Mustafina, Predstavleniia, kul’ty, obriady u kazakov, 143–46. There are also dīwāna indicated in the steppe to the north-east of Kazakstan as early as the end of the eighteenth century and until the 1860s: Allen J. Frank, “Sufis, Scholars, and Divanas of the Qazaq Middle Horde in the Works of Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï,” in Islam, Society and States across the Qazaq Steppe (18th-Early 20th Centuries), eds. Niccolò Piancola and Paolo Sartori (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenchaften, 2013), 227– 30.

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end of his travels, Alman discovered his healing powers and his gift for finding lost people. The second dervish was called Umurzak, and was 88 years old at the time of the interview. His life had been very dramatic – orphaned at the age of five, visited at 13 by a spirit who ordered him to incite the nomads to sell their herds and flee from the region, which was threatened with imminent starvation, losing almost all of his family to the terrible famine that ravaged Kazakhstan in 1931–1933. The genie that inhabited him tormented him so fiercely that he lost his reason completely. Then Umurzak wandered from one camp to another, dressed like a vagabond. Constantly possessed by the spirit, he stopped smoking and drinking, becoming a healer and at times being able to foretell the future. 4

Legends in Fergana and Pamir

Let us return to the southern part of Central Asia. The Fergana regions contains areas of karst, with numerous cavities (g’or or teshiktash in Uzbek, ungkur in Kirghiz), the most celebrated (though little studied to date) of which is that at Chihil-sutūn/Chil-ustun, in the Osh oblast, in Kirghizstan.42 A religious site that is still frequented today, this grotto takes its name (‘forty columns’) from its abundant stalagmites and stalactites. The devout get to the mountain from the town of Charbak either along an increasingly steep path or by going around the rocky outcrops at the crest of the mountain. A monumental entrance takes the shape of an arc; this opens onto three chambers, linked together by narrow tunnels, difficult to pass through in places. With its ceiling of bands of yellow onyx and spots of red haematite, propitious to esoteric visions, the first chamber is the most used by pilgrims. With the exception of any undiscovered documentation that may be unearthed in future, the first mention of the grotto is by the Ferganese Muḥammad Ḥakīm Khān, in a chronicle accompanied by an account of pilgrimage, completed in 1843.43 While the khan of Kokand, ʿUmar Khān, and his suite were travelling from Osh to Andijan, Muḥammad decided to depart from an extraordinary spot called Chihil-sutūn. He relates: I got it into my head to see it. Saying goodbye to the khan, I left for the countryside. Once I’d arrived there, I noticed a very high mountain, 42 43

Our principle source is the detailed study by Valentin L. Ogudin, “Kul’t peshcher v narodnom islame,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 1 (2003): 69–86. Muḥammad Ḥakīm Khān, Muntakhab al-tawārīkh, ed. Yayoi Kawahara and Koichi Haneda (Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2006), 2:184–86.

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visible from afar, on which were visible two staircases and the opening leading to a grotto. Seeing this redoubled my curiosity. Leaving the horses behind, with twenty men I went towards the summit. After many efforts, we reached the first staircase, much damaged. When I looked down, the horses were the size of ants. I was full of anxieties, but overcoming these difficulties I continued to climb the stairs, and came to the second staircase, even more decrepit than the first. If by misadventure someone had broken his leg and fallen, he wouldn’t even have reached the ground. I pictured myself on the bridge of Ṣirāṭ44, and a thousand times regretted my mad undertaking. Constrained to advance, with no retreat possible, I eventually gave myself up to destiny and after much misery and difficulty reached the entrance to the grotto. When we went in, we saw that it resembled a great mosque, with its forty columns so finely sculpted from the stone. Twenty of them were set aslant, not touching the ground, and another twenty were straight and did not reach the top. After about a thousand steps we could just see a narrower part where a rivulet of water ran; there was also a white stone on which the image of a camel was engraved, with its legs bent. As we progressed, we were again trapped in a dark and narrow passage. However, with the help of big torches we had retraced about a thousand of our steps when an enormous bat, the size of a pigeon or a steppe partridge, flew past and extinguished our torches with a flap of its wings. At that moment we mastered our fear and appreciated all the marvels of this place, and then we left with much difficulty and went back down to our horses. A few years later, in 1898, it was the turn of the Russian explorer V. Demchenko to climb the mountain. In spite of the complete destruction of the wooden staircase, the place was still the object of great veneration. Demchenko’s local guides prostrated themselves before they explored the grotto, where they discovered something like a small mosque and the remains of human bones. The explorer suggested that the cavern might have served as a hiding place, or that someone was ambushed there, but the guides evoked a legend according to which a white demon had lived there, against whom ʿAlī had fought. Finally, the epigraphic data from the first two chambers – again a sort of graffiti, in sum – throw light on the visitors to Chihil-sutūn. Let us pass over the inscriptions in Latin characters, and especially those in Cyrillic, left by overly curious Europeans, and which sometimes obscure Muslim prayers. An initially surprising discovery is the presence, carved into the stone, of several Sanskrit formulas in the Devanagari alphabet. In fact, these are invocations of Hindu 44

According to several hadiths, this bridge to the heavens runs along a precipice over hell. Believers pass along it easily, while the evil fall into the flames of Gehenna.

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gods, probably carved in the eighteenth century by people from Indian merchant communities that had formed in Central Asian towns. Are we dealing here with the traces of a religious space shared with Muslims, or, on the contrary, with proofs of the concealment of a minority religion? This remains an open question. In addition there are professions of faith, verses from the Quran, the symbol of the hand (representing the five members of the Prophet’s family), the sword of ʿAlī, footprints (qadamjāh), the names of Muslims and the dates of their pious visits, etc. All of these clues traced on the walls indicate a Muslim occupation from at least 1716 until the 1870s. From the fieldwork of Valentin Ogudin, it appears the grotto of Chihil-sutūn is at the centre of a vast religious complex of five sacred spaces.45 At the foot of the mountain, east of the hamlet of Charbak, the fervent village of Aravan lies next to a boulder called Dūldūl Ata on which the image of a celestial horse and foal appear.46 Legend has it that ʿAlī tied up his horse Dūldūl here when he battled with the demon of the grotto. As for Charbak, according to tradition its grove of walnut trees comes from Qurbān Ata/Kurban Ata, a dervish from the early eighteenth century who, it is said, arrived from nowhere, dug a well on this spot and threw some walnuts into it. A mullah from the region recounts what followed: the holy man continued to live in society until he discovered a secret stream that led to the grotto. He alone was able to follow it without danger to himself. Qurbān closed off the passage and settled in the cave to live there as a hermit. Before leaving, he told his relation Charbak Dīwāna, who lived in the grove, ‘If you need me, call me and I will come out of the grotto.’ Charbak agreed, in spite of his sorrow at the absence of one who was dear to him. One day he called on Qurbān, who appeared immediately and asked him the reason for his call. Charbak, in tears, explained that he ardently desired to see him again – a futile excuse that displeased Qurbān. The same thing happened again, and the third time the anchorite did not appear, though this time the need was genuine. He who wants to meet the saints, the mullah reminds us, must venerate Allah by constantly reciting prayers and by remaining pure. Since this time, the faithful pray either in a cell for retreat (chilla khāna) at the heart of the grove or in the grotto itself, hoping to meet the saint in a dream and communicate with him. According to believers, Qurbān Ata still lives in either the grotto or the grove. The third part of the sacred landscape, Qïz mazār/Kiz mazar, can be found to the south of the crest of Chihil-sutūn, in a canyon. At the heart of a small amphitheatre, a flat stone measuring 190 × 90 cm stands a bit proud of the 45 46

Valentin L. Ogudin, “Kul’t peshcher v narodnom islame,” 77–79. See also Joseph Castagné, “Le culte des lieux saints de l’islam au Turkestan,” 82.

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ground. The mullah explains that its surface constitutes a miraculous map. The fossilised lines represent innumerable secret subterranean passages leading to the sacred grotto. There was a cell (ḥujra) on this flat stone, in which it was necessary to spend a night before entering into Chihil-sutūn; this was destroyed in the 1970s for unknown reasons. Finally, there are two other sites linked to the hermitage of Qurbān Ata. Forty metres below the entrance to the grotto of Qurbān Ata lies the grotto of Āshkhāna/Oshxona (dining hall), in which offerings of food were made to the saint; it is said to have contained a secret passage that the 1911 earthquake definitively destroyed. The other site, Sulï Kamar/Suvli Kamar, or ‘watery grotto’, lies on the hill farther along the crest and ends in an underground basin whose water comes, according to popular belief, from a sacred spring in Chihil-sutūn. Once again, the social imagination has multiplied the layers of a buried world behind this world, where it is a question of welcoming religious marginality in as physical a way as possible.47 It is not so much a question of populating the surrounding landscape with mythologies as of maintaining the reality of a legendary radicalism, the opening scene of which is the actual life of its founding saint. Both pilgrims and the guardian of the place state with certainty that Qurbān Ata did exist.48 He was a dervish and fool of God who lived three hundred years ago. Having decided to take back the grotto from the demon who inhabited it, he acquired supernatural powers with the help of spirits (chiltan) who continued to haunt him. However, from the Sufi point of view, this is not the essential aspect of the story, which lies in the practice of spiritual isolation, begun in this place by the hermit Qurbān Ata. This practice seems to have lasted until the 1870s, the time of the latest inscriptions, and to have subsisted into the twentieth century only at the cost of a ritualisation of the practice. Anchoritism has been replaced by the night’s vigil. Today the pilgrim experience lasts at least one night, and may be prolonged to three days. Added to the fasting and prayers is a two-fold vigil: before climbing Chihilsutūn the pilgrim spends a night in the chilla khāna of Charbak Dīwāna; during this period of half-sleep God sends a sign in a dream. If the sign is terrifying (fires, floods, war, death etc.), then the pilgrim must put off the ascension to another time; otherwise it is permitted to climb the mountain. Once the pilgrim arrives in the grotto, he or she must attempt to enter into communication with the reclusive saint, either by wandering through the maze of galleries 47

48

Some beliefs attribute secret passages to Mecca to the grottoes, as is the case for the holy place Apshyr Ata, south of the town of Osh, near the village of Kulatov in the Nookat region. For more on this, see Gulnara Aitpaeva, ed., Sacred Sites of the Southern Kyrgyzstan: Nature, Manas, Islam (Bishkek: Aigine Cultural Research Center, 2013), 98. Valentin L. Ogudin, “Kul’t peshcher v narodnom islame,” 80–81.

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until God brings him or her to the saint, or by spending the night in a half-sleep during which the saint will speak. Here the language of dreams is at a premium. Even recently, Sufi adepts continued to make this journey.49 In the summer of 1991, a Naqshbandī group from Margilan accomplished a pilgrimage to the grotto. Some had come earlier to spend the night in the chilla khāna or in the grove, others arrived from the town the next morning by car. The Sufis took no food, either while travelling from their homes or within the grotto. They drank their water, which was barely sufficient in the heat of the summer, sparingly, and used it for their ablutions. Once they arrived in the grotto, they passed praying through the archway and then spent the greater part of the night in wakeful prayer. Alas, neither those who stayed awake nor those who slept were granted a vision of the saint. Our last example of a dervish’s cave lies in Tajik Pamir, on the upper reaches of the Obimazor river, a tributary of the Obihingou that has its source in the mountains of the Darvaz. The Obimazor (‘River of the holy place’) runs like a thread through a narrow valley full of rubble and boulders, at an altitude of 2,700 m. When the Soviet ethnologist Nikolai Andreevich Kisliakov arrived in the village of Hazrati Burkh in 1931 there were no more than thirty-six houses there, made of rough stone; there were three tiny hamlets distributed nearby.50 At that time, the principal economic activities of the villagers – hunting ibis, weaving, and metalwork – had already practically disappeared, surviving only in the cult objects associated with Saint Burkh. His cave sits proudly in the middle of the village on the steep bank of the Obimazor. Burkh Sarmast Vali has rested there since an uncertain date, beneath the dome of a quadrangular tomb with two columns in the shape of minarets around a carved doorway. The mazār has two chambers: the vestibule and the holy of holies. A mantle made of goat hair (chadar-palas) covers the raised sepulchre, at its base are placed weaving spindles (navarda), which are considered to be relics that must be kissed during pious visits, before proceeding to make an offering to the shaykh of the shrine. On the opposite riverbank is a spring, the bottom and sides of which are covered in red clay called ‘Burkh earth’ (khoki burkh); popular belief attributes healing properties to this clay. The holy place is said to attract pilgrims from Tajikistan, but also from Bukhara, Samarkand, India and Afghanistan. Kisliakov collected a curious hagiography on the subject of Hazrati Burkh, the essence of which is as follows: 49 50

Valentin L. Ogudin, “Kul’t peshcher v narodnom islame,” 83. Nikolai A. Kisliakov, “Burkh – gornyi kozel (drevnii kul’t v Tadjikistane),” Sovetskaia etnografia 1–2 (1934): 181–89.

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One day, God gave some luminous pearls to a certain Abū Saʿīd Rūmī. He lost them and set out to seek them. In vain. He then asked a mystic whose name was Burkh to find them. After forty years of fruitless searching, Abū Saʿīd ran into Burkh without recognising him and asked him who he was. Once he’d heard his name, and had confirmation that Burkh was a descendent of the Prophet, Abū Saʿīd understood his error, repented and declared that he would immediately depart. Eventually, Burkh found the pearls, but the quest made a holy fool of him. From the country where he had met Abū Saʿīd, Burkh flew with his mother and brothers to the fortress of Kabul. One of his brothers died. The family then flew to Tolikon (Tālikān, near Kunduz). A few months later, his younger brother also died. Burkh said to his mother, ‘God’s anger has struck, let us leave this place.’ He took her hand and they left together for Shahrab (Shahrāb in Iran?). It was there that his mother died. The saint stayed for several months, observing a vigil on her tomb. One night, he dreamed that she was enjoining him to leave. He then went to Borshida Mountain and settled under a tree. Long after this, an old man called Bobo Khoja climbed the mountain looking for wood. He seized the branch of a tree and suddenly heard a voice saying to him, ‘Your burden is already heavy enough!’ Bobo Khoja saw no one, and was about to try to break the branch again when he noticed a strange green stone. He picked it up and discovered the entrance to a grotto, where Burkh was living, always prostrated. The saint lifted his head and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, tell people about me, go and find them that they may come and build a tomb for me.’ Bobo asked how he could prove the saint’s existence, and Burkh gave him the luminous pearls as a proof. Bobo Khoja did as he’d been asked and the villagers began to build the tomb. The dervish demanded that it be finished in a single day, but at nightfall only the carpenters’ work on the doorway was done. The saint’s supernatural powers forced the artisans to keep working through the night, and by dawn the next morning the tomb was finished. At that moment, an ibex descended the mountain and stopped on a platform. Saint Burkh ordered Bobo Khoja to kill the animal and offer it as a sacrifice for the artisans. He did so, and the ibex’s spilt blood is said to have given the spring-water its purple colour. The recently deceased Uzbek ethnologist Raxmat Raximov furnished many complementary data from written material and fieldwork undertaken in the 2000s.51 To sum some of these up: although the village no longer exists, its 51

Raxmat R. Raximov, “Odinokii mazar v tesnine gor,” in Tsentral’naia Aziia: traditsiia v usloviiakh peremen, eds. Efim M. Rezvan and Raxmat R. Raximovich (Saint Petersburg: Kunstkamera, 2009), 2:180–227; id., “Mifologia Burkha: ne tait li ona istoriiu vne vremeni ?,” in Tsentral’naia Aziia: traditsiia v usloviiakh peremen, 2:228–80.

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­ opulation having been displaced elsewhere, the shrine has been enlarged with p the addition of a porch, a mosque and a cell for retreat. Many times restored, the original tomb dates from the eighteenth or nineteenth century. As for the reclusive dervish, legend describes him as having long black hair down to his chest, and as having lived in the grotto for 300 years. In addition, Bobo Khoja became an integral part of the cult, as he was the guardian of the tomb and was later buried at his master’s side. Subsequently the role of shaykh was transmitted according to criteria of religious knowledge, but seems to have stayed within a single family. Finally, the weaving spindles that are said to have belonged to Burkh can be understood literally, as the instruments of the saint’s former art and as incarnations of the forge and looms that had operated in the village, but also allegorically as symbols of the esoteric weaving introduced by the dervish: between the social, natural and supernatural worlds. Let us remember, in this context, the similar metaphor that was already being woven by ʿAbd al-Raḥīm in his Qalandarnāma, when he spoke of the dervish’s cloak. One is obliged to acknowledge that the character of Burkh has less to do with some ancestor, perhaps the founder of a community, and more in common with the figure of the Sufi hermit, wearer and weaver of the cloak, whose uncompromising isolation defines a model of piety that’s exclusive, as though marginality was the only possible doorway into the beyond – in other words, excess as access to God. In this regard it is striking to note that there is a homonymous saint, with a sulphurous reputation, who is well represented in the Sufi tradition in Central Asia and elsewhere. The two saints appear to have only their name in common – except, perhaps, for the status of each as a perfectly marginal being. There is no doubt that this classical tradition has influenced the recent development of the legend of the Pamirian saint, to the point that it identifies the two men as one.52 To sum up, Burkh/Burq was a black slave (Burkh al-ʿAbd al-aswad) who was asked by Moses to call on God to grant rain to the land of Israel, which was suffering from drought. God Himself had recommended him to Moses for the innocence of his gentle madness. Burkh’s prayer for rain did receive an answering aid from God; he did not hesitate to boast insolently of this in the presence of Moses, who wanted to punish him. But the angel Gabriel stopped Moses, arguing that God had had Burkh as his slave for so long because three times a day he made God laugh out loud, which Moses was utterly incapable

52

I have not been able to consult it, but suppose that this ‘contamination’ affects the popular work by Abdulmalik Shekhov, Hazrati Burkhi Sarmasti Vali (Dushanbe: Alif, 1998), which is often cited by Raximov.

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of doing!53 In Central Asia, Burkh the madman, the drunkard (Burkh-i dīwāna, Burkh-i sarmast) is eventually obliged to give way to orthodoxy54: the delirious saint had become an intimate friend to God, who promised to grant him what he willed. Burkh was capable of making very extravagant demands; one day he asked God to destroy hell, and thus to save His own creation from the flames. Faced with God’s refusal, the dervish reproached Him with imperfection because He had not kept his promise, with impotence because He could not destroy hell, and with incoherence because He destroyed what He had perfectly created! The quarrel ended when God explained to Burkh that hell was there to ensure His authority and men’s obedience, which calmed the holy fool, who understood that the destruction of hell would not have been good for him. However, apart from this return, in extremis, to order, Burkh clearly incarnated the antinomian spirit, somewhere between a laugh and an insult. Although the custom of hermetic cave-dwelling is not necessarily synonymous with heterodoxy, it often acts as the social (if not the doctrinal) antechamber to difference. Assuredly this technique, however minoritarian it may be, derives from the imitatio Muḥammadi. The Prophet himself set the example, according to Sufis, in the hadith as in the biography (the Sīra), which both describe him retreating for one month each year into a cavern in Mount Hirā, or ‘the mountain of light’ (jabal al-nūr), near Mecca. It was during one of these retreats that the nocturnal meditation of Muḥammad was interrupted by the angel Gabriel, who transmitted the divine words to him. Thus began the Quranic revelation.55 And thus were quests for mystical illumination pursued. 53

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A first version can be found in the Qūt al-qulūb by Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (386/996), then in the Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn by Ghazālī, the Muṣibat nāma by ʿAṭṭār, etc. There are a few references in Hellmut Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul. Men, the World and God in the Stories of Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, trans. John O’Kane and Bernd Radtke (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 539 and 584. See two editions of the Burq nāma, respectively by Herrmann Vambéry, Ćagataische Sprachstudien. Enthaltend grammatikalischen Umriss, Chrestomathie und Wörterbuch der Ćagataischen Sprache (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1867), 59–70, and by Andras Bodrogligeti, “Aḥmad’s Baraq-nāma: a Central Asian Islamic Work in Eastern Middle Turkic,” Central Asiatic Journal 18/2 (1974), 83–128. There are manuscript references in Devin DeWeese, “An ‘Uvaysī’ Sufi in Timurid Mawarannahr: Notes on Hagiography and the Taxonomy of Sanctity in the Religious History of Central Asia,” Papers on Inner Asia n° 22, Bloomington (1993), 27–31. Claude Addas, “Hirā’,” in Dictionnaire du Coran, ed. M.-A. Amir-Moezzi (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2007), 389–91. A second ‘Scriptuary cavern’ is the well-known Cave of the Seven Sleepers or Companions of the Cavern (aṣḥāb al-kahf) in Quran, 18:9–26, but this place was good for protection and resurrection and not for revelation. However, as, according to the Quran, the period of reclusion for the Seven Sleepers was 300 years, that myth was able to impregnate the Central Asian legends mentioned above. See Geneviève Gobillot, “Gens de la Caverne,” in Dictionnaire du Coran, 362–65.

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However, one who follows an example is not disbarred from doing so in an exaggerated way. Gleaned from here and there in the hagiographical tradition of Sufism, are the names of a few anchorites who go counter to authority, indicating both a relative intensity of this behaviour in the medieval age and its modern persistence. From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, there was a certain number of saintlets in the ‘extreme Maghreb’ taking temporary or permanent refuge on the grottoes of the Atlas Mountains, or even in Marrakesh in the lepers’ quarter, evidently in order to avoid State authoritarianism. They lived on offerings or what they could gather.56 At the other end of the Muslim world, in 742/1341, the traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, after being disgraced in the prince’s eyes, found refuge with the dervish Kamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghārī, who lived in a dugout near Delhi.57 In Iran, the master, Ḥājjī al-Dīn ʿUmar Murshidī (d. 826/1423) began his spiritual career as an ascete of the grottoes before returning to society.58 The hermitic saint Ibrāhīm Darwīsh lived in the mountains of Badakhshan during the seventeenth century.59 Moroccan pilgrims who visited the retreat of ʿĀysha Qandīsha also passed by the neighbouring cave of a fool of God (majdhūb) to receive his benediction.60 The maceration of the Sufis in the subsoil of Central Asia seems to have drawn to a close during the nineteenth century. Even earlier, as we have seen, anchoritism had begun to give way to the abbreviated vigil. As time passed, all of these asocial Islamic figures lived more in the imagination of religion than in its reality, like ghosts, forced by their cavernous box-like surroundings to resonate with dark legends – legends that amplified their bad reputations at the same time as they offered a moment of respite to people who loved rumours and were tired of the established order. It is not the case that the dervishes disappeared – on the contrary – but they ceased to evolve except in their representation of themselves, built up on the road out of cobbled-to­gether hawkers’ legends and impenetrable languages. 56 57 58 59 60

Jean-Pierre Van Staëvel, “La caverne, refuge de l’‘ami de Dieu’: une forme particulière de l’érémitisme au temps des Almoravides et des Almohades (Maghreb extrême, XIe-XIIIe siècles),” Cuadernos de Madīnat al-zahrā’ 7 (2010): 311–25. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Voyages et périples, in Voyageurs arabes, translation, presentation and annotation by Paule Charles-Dominique (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 767. Shahzad Bashir, Sufi Bodies. Religion and Society in Medieval Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 63–64. Thomas Welsford, Four Types of Loyalty in Early Modern Central Asia. The Tūqāy-Tīmūrid Takeover of Greater Mā Warā al-Nahr, 1598–1605 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 213. Michael W. Dols, Majnūn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, 235.

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On the Road with Cantors and Itinerants 1

The maddāḥ in Uzbekistan and Xinjiang

Unlike hermits and the wakeful, who have learned of the virtues of silence or whispers, the marginal group of those whom we will call ‘cantors’ (to translate the Arabic term maddāḥ with all its meanings) owes its social existence to the sounds it produces. Declamations, acclamations, chants, songs and music – much more frequently mystical than epic – resound in the sonic landscape of the under-populated southern part of Central Asia, still resonating to the slow frequencies of a pre-industrial society. They are in no way newcomers. We have seen how Nawāʾī was already invoking the musicians, singers and storytellers of Herat in his Maḥbūb al-qulūb, giving them no quarter.1 Let us recall how the Timurid scholar regarded most of them as being among the least respectable dervishes: they brought a dangerous mood to séances of spiritual concert (samāʿ), all frequented the same debauched dives, deliberately confused a fermented high with mystical exaltation, took advantage of people’s gullibility, and mistreated language and harmony. At about the same time, the Sufi predicator Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī, who lived during the fifteenth century in Nishapur, Mashhad and Herat, devoted a chapter to cantors in his Futuwwatnāma.2 According to him, there were four sorts of maddāḥān, distinguishable by their literary aptitudes: the authentic ones, who composed and put into verse their own panegyrics (madḥ); the ‘narrators’ (rawāyān), who recited the verses of others; those who had work of another sort at the same time (a ‘day-job’); and finally, those who had learned a few verses by heart and went from door to door reciting them: ‘they sell an ode for a piece of bread and make the eulogy of the Prophet’s family into a trap for their own begging’. Another passage of this work proposes a typology of the maddāḥ according to their use of literary language: those who recite all poetry, as much in Arabic as in Persian; the ‘brilliant’ cantors who interpret all sorts of prose; the maddāḥ with ‘ornate language’, who sing ornamented prose (muraṣṣaʿ), decorated with verses. Lastly, Kāshifī enumerates the insignia of the cantor: lance, standard, initiatic belt, blanket, lantern and axe. As with the 1 See under the sub-heading devoted to them in chapter 1 of the present volume. 2 Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī, Futuvvatnomay sultoni, 95–101; studied, with other sources, in Jean Calmard, “Les rituels shiites et le pouvoir,” 131–34.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_007

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dervish, each object carries a symbolic load. Among these different types of Khorasanian maddāḥ, it is the most modest and least prestigious that are the most fascinating to our eyes; they are probably the most numerous, too. In Anatolia during Seljuk and Ottoman times cantors were also storytellers (qiṣṣakhwān), recounting Persian or Turkish epics, or stories of the Prophet and his family, ahl al-bayt.3 In fact, tradition has it that the first maddāḥ was a companion of Muḥammad, and sang his praises. It is only from the eighteenth century that there began to be a distinction between maddāḥ and qiṣṣakhwān, when the first of these groups began to specialise in realistic or even humorous recital. Although the only names and manuscript records to have come down to us are those of the most eminent, thanks to patronage from the court and the elite, it is important to remember that numerous anonymous cantors, with few or no writings to their names, wandered the Anatolian roads, living by begging and associating so closely with dervishes and bards (ʿāshiq/āshik) – whose patron saint was Yūnus Emre – that they were all mixed together in a single social group. They also shared a single space on occasions such as religious festivals, pilgrimages, market days – or, from the nineteenth century, in the central squares, taverns and cafés (kahvehāne). Although maddāḥ, āshik and dervishes had very different repertoires, with the first group preferring to perform social tableaux and moral lessons where the others offered love-stories/dialogues and calls to fervour, all of them expressed popular sentiments such as social aspiration in simple terms. Finally, although their appearance differed according to the various accessories as enumerated by Kāshifī, their use of language had many similarities. Pertev Boratav writes, in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, ‘The narrative technique of the meddāḥs followed a parallel evolution to that of the themes. Gradually as realistic themes supplanted heroic themes, the narration was enriched by dramatic elements; the actor was substituted for the storyteller; he embodied the deeds, by miming and, by changes in the intonation of his voice, the various people of his narratives; and indirect speech gave way to direct speech animated by dialogues. It is this other aspect of the art of the meddāḥs which has interested specialists in the history of the theatre as much as the researchers on the narrative genre. (…) According to the testimony of literary and iconographic sources, as well as of direct observers, the meddāḥ used to perform his art in a public place (in a café usually), and used to install himself on a platform, at a higher level than his audience; he held in his hand a cane which 3 Pertev N. Boratav, “Maddāḥ,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., BrillOnline; Özdemir Nuktu, “Meddah,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, online; Nurettin Albayrak, “Āşık,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, online.

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he used for making a noise; a napkin placed on the shoulder was used to obtain, by its application to the mouth at the desired time, the various effects of vocal intonation of the person imitated. The meddāḥ began and ended his narration with dedicatory formulas which contained, essentially, excuses for the situation in which the listeners might be vexed by the fortuitous resemblance of names of people or places, or by too daring subject matter.’ In the southern part of Central Asia during the nineteenth century and until the 1920s, cantors who were the distant heirs of the middle ages lived in specific quarters when they were not on the road. Tashkent still had 200 maddāḥ, mostly living in the Beshaghach/Beshog’och neighbourhood near the Qalandar lodge.4 There were neighbourhoods of the same sort in Khiva around 18705, in Samarkand at least since the eighteenth century (in the southeastern part of this city of 20,000 inhabitants)6, in Bukhara in an area that came to be called the Street of Musicians (kucha-yi nagārachīhā), where the profession was eventually institutionalised in conservatoires and other State organisations.7 Gathering around an inn (mihmānkhāna) run by an elder, the maddāḥ went from village to village in small groups, stopping in the bazaar, the central square or in a tea house (chaykhāna). While the crowd was gathering, the leader chanted his melody, with his staff he marked the episodes of a rhythmic narrative animated by the cries and leaps of the little troop. Here in Central Asia, unlike in the Ottoman Empire, the repertoire had preserved its religious character. There were three peaks in these recitals: the cantors began by intoning what were called ‘spiritual’ verses (ḥikmatī) drawn from oral or written poetry anthologies attributed to Aḥmad Yasawī or to the less well known Qalandar, Bābāraḥīm Mashrab (d. 1123/1711), these two being very popular figures among Turkestani dervishes.8 Second, the maddāḥ touched the listeners’ religious feelings by recounting the life of the Prophet of Islam, or the tribulations of Sufi saints, with many marvellous details and moral lessons. Here again the repertoire came from oral or written works that were known 4 According to Anna Troitskaia’s classic article, “Iz proshlogo kalandarov i maddakhov v Uzbekistane,” which I translated from Russian into French in Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, 269–312 (see especially p. 283 and following). I lived for more than six months in the Beshog’och quarter in 2002, but no trace nor memory of the presence of dervishes subsists. 5 E.A. Akhundzhanov, “K istorii razvitia knizhnogo dela v Khive,” O’zbekistonda ijtimoii fanlar 7–8 (1997): 103. 6 M.M. Abramov, “Iz istorii Samarkanda kontsa XVIII-nachala XIX veka,” O’zbekistonda ijtimoii fanlar 9 (1970): 98–99. 7 A.B. Dzhumaev, “K izucheniiu ritualov ‘arvokhi pir’ i ‘kamarbandon’ v gorodskikh tsekhakh muzykantov Srednei Azii,” O’zbekistonda ijtimoii fanlar 5-6-7-8 (1995): 163–65. 8 There is a translation from Chagatay, with a commentary on Mashrab’s life and poetry, in my Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, 31–136.

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to people from the less educated social classes and to the ‘lesser clergy’. The sermon would culminate in a collective prayer for the faith, for its guardian and for its believers. From the socio-religious point of view, the cantors were inter-mixed with other marginal groups – Qalandar, dervishes, showmen and gypsies. Their initiatic rites were, in fact, very similar: sometimes these were inscribed in a corporation manual (risāla) and put under the protection of a patron saint such as Gabriel or the Sufi ʿAbd al-Qādir Gilānī9; the reception of a new member, or the ten- or twenty-year anniversary of the group’s incorporation, would be the occasion for a specific ritual. The performers would gather and invoke the spirits of their founding masters, read the Quran, share a collective meal and present their respects to the musical instruments. The end of the session would arrive when the eldest among them took the newest postulant’s hands in his own, reciting the Fatiha before wrapping an initiatic belt (kamar) around him. Representing as they did a sort of figurehead for an at-risk class, acting as the scarecrows of an observant counter-society, the maddāḥ of Turkestan, perhaps in spite of themselves, presented a problem for the colonial authorities, in terms both of public order and of religious fervour. There were current rumours, whether these were myth or reality, that they served as spokesmen for the recalcitrant, as when they were suspected of having preached holy war on the orders of the Sufi rebel Dukchi Ishan in Fergana in 1895.10 It was equally said that they had been very numerous in the Emirate of Bukhara after having been instrumentalised by the court itself. In a valuable article founded on documents from the central state archives, the historian Aftandil Erkinov retraces the stages in the persecution of the maddāḥ by the Russian Governorate (1865–1917), before they were eradicated by the Soviet regime.11 This ‘problem’ opened up divisions among the authorities between 1895 and 1897. Nil Lykoshin, Tashkent’s police chief and a connoisseur of the ‘natives’, who had translated the texts of Mashrab into Russian, condescended to these street pre­dicators, considering them devoid of Islamic scholarship; an opinion that he believed the more erudite locals shared, while the lower classes were too 9 10 11

See the sections in chapter 3 on peasants, artisans, doctors and the powerful. The ethnomusicologist John Baily was present at similar ceremonies among the musicians of Herat during the 1970s (personal communication, Venice, 30 October 2015). M.G. Vakhabov, “Eshche raz ob andizhanskoi vosstanii 1989 goda,” O’zbekistonda ijtimoii fanlar 7 (1987): 46. Aftandil Erkinov, “Maddakh,” in Islam na territorii byvsheì Rossiiskoi imperii. 4. Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (Moscow: Vostochnaia Literatura, 2003), 45–47; id., “Le contrôle impérial des répertoires poétiques. La mise au pas des prédicateurs maddāḥ dans le Gouvernorat général du Turkestan (fin XIXe-début XXe siècle),” Cahiers d’Asie centrale 24 (2015): 145–82.

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naively attentive. Suspicion and anxieties about their bad influence on the masses were increasingly directed at the cantors, to the extent that Lykoshin decided to ban their activities; his justifications were as follows: their life-style was sordid, the way they collected money was questionable, and the gatherings they brought about were potentially dangerous. As a compensation, the police chief offered them the opportunity to sign on in centres for rehabilitation through work. Tashkent’s chief, Aleksei Tveritinov, thought this was a premature decision, arguing that such a ban could be perceived as an injustice and as running counter to civil liberties. This was not so much a show of goodwill as a prudent tactic; the real intention behind it was to put the ‘bazaar preachers’ to good use in the support of colonial power and policies. In 1898 everything changed. Immediately after the insurrection in Andijan in 1898 and the execution of its instigator Dukchi Ishan, the city’s government feared that the maddāḥ had had a hand in encouraging anti-imperial sentiment. From that time, the police forbade gatherings around the maddāḥ and other holy fools (dīwāna), kept a watch on wandering dervishes, and prevented them from, as we may read, inculcating their delirious visions and unrealised dreams into the credulous population. The situation was becoming untenable for the cantors, constrained by new rules and strangled by debt. Families addressed desperate and contrite appeals to the authorities. Let us look at one particularly upsetting example, dated 28 July 189812: To his Excellency the Governor general of Turkestan The Sart storytellers Mullā ʿAbduḥalīm and Dāmullā Mullā Aḥmatov And the maddāḥ Igamberdi Mullaḥmat Beshaghachkoy By recounting the lives of our ancestors of old, by the interpretation of the prayers of the Quran and of the rituals of the prayers – since our earliest childhood and following in the footsteps of our fathers and great-grandfathers – there are almost eighteen people, from a poor and unfortunate background, who have been able to earn a little bit of bread to provide regular nourishment for our families; now, according to the undertaking of the Chief of the town, we are constantly made to submit to various interdictions. Taking into account that our recitals and the meaning of our prayers have been studied and counted among the books authorised by censorship, and that our recitals do not go against the will of the authorities or the peace of the inhabitants living under the protection of out Great Sovereign (the Tsar), and that not one of us would permit 12

Aftandil Erkinov, “Le contrôle impérial des répertoires poétiques,” 166.

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himself to pronounce the least word against him, we all have families and children to feed. With the adoption of these undertakings, we are being thrown into abject poverty, having no other means of earning our living, and it being too late for us to find any other work not demanding qualifications, since, being Muslims, we have received a superior education and are unaccustomed to painful work. We remind you of what has been mentioned by Your Excellency and humbly request that you adopt an undertaking allowing us to recite the prayers and their rituals as well as the Quran. The maddāḥ submitted unreservedly, so that repression became a method of instrumentalisation. Permission to perform was reserved for those who could obtain official agreement after having been scrutinised by the censors. The rules were simple, unspoken but understood: their sermons could in no case contain any texts susceptible to being interpreted as praising a sacred power. In other words, any glorification of the Prophet, no matter how apolitical it might be, was banned. Sufi saints could be celebrated strictly for their traditional association with a traditional localism, as though mysticism was to give way to the picturesque. Here already, at the beginning of the twentieth century, we find the tendency, later taken up by the Soviets, of turning Islam into folklore. Moving along with and around the cantors (as strictly defined), there were also two other marginal groups, one related to the street arts and one to the itinerant lifestyle. Enquiries conducted in Uzbekistan by Russian and European ethnologists at the beginning of the 2000s throw some light on the past of these little-known groups, at least on those aspects that are within their living memories. Under the generic name of dārbāz/dorboz, which is literally ‘tightrope-walker’, the first of these groups contains different types of street performers: acrobats, balancing acts, jugglers, magicians, strongmen.13 Some elements drawn from Sufi manuals (risāla) and oral recital contain essentially religious legends that are interpreted by anthropologists in terms of Islamisation, but their meaning seems to us rather to partake of the initiatic message. Thus when we learn that the Prophet’s cousin ʿAlī invented the tightrope in order to cross a moat and conquer an infidel fortress, we feel that the artiste here evokes not so 13

Olaf Günther, “Acrobats Remember Their Lives,” in The Past as Resource in the Turkic Speaking World, ed. Ildikó Bellér-Hann (Würzburg: Ergon, 2008), 123–37; Id., Die dorboz im Ferghanatal. Erkundungen im Alltag und der Geschichte einer Gauklerkultur (Frankfurtam-Main: Peter Lang, 2008).

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much the conversion of others but rather the conquest of one’s own internal fortress. In the same way, when the strongman (pālwān/polvon) recounts that his patron saint Bilāl, the black companion and first convert of Muḥammad, was, among other tortures, placed under an enormous stone by his master, but survived thanks to his physical strength, it is just as much a spiritual strength that he is demonstrating. In fact, the links with dervishes were evident until the beginning of the twentieth century, in spite of the lack of historical data. Interviews with the dorboz reveal that it was by this Sufi name that the most modest of the street performers were called, while the more eminent among them claimed dervishism (darwīshlïq), for themselves, initiating themselves into its teachings and tracing an audacious parallel between the technique of the balance artist and the ascetic path. It may be the case that the discourse of today’s street performers should challenge notions of their social or religious marginality, and that the names of successful performers should constantly be cited, in order to reject a Soviet historiography that was keen to invent victims of a feudal past in order to justify its cultural politics, but it nevertheless remains difficult to believe that the dorboz could have occupied a more enviable place in society than did dervishes and the maddāḥ, at least until the Soviet period. For the historian of Central Asian Islam, it is less a question of the conception of arts as major or minor, and the effect of this on the social rank of the performers, than of the representation of the Islamic doxa. In the eyes of the religious elite of Turkestan as for the colonial political powers, does not the acrobat represent the ignorant masses of Islam who invented myth-making prophets, recycled Sufism any way they could and displayed a lifestyle in opposition to that of the honest man? Here again, it makes no difference whether we are dealing with myth or reality, because opinion itself is the deciding factor. Regardless of the lack of sources, we must at least renounce a post-Soviet historiography (or a too-pat post modernism) in which power relations disappear and every person submits to religious orthodoxy, and the social body exists in an inclusive dream. Returning to the question of opinion, especially the exogenic opinion that attributes foreign origins to the acrobats, claiming they are the ancestors of Gypsies (lūlī/luli) who came from India, how can we see this otherwise than as a relegation to the socio-religious margins? As mythical as such links may be, they are nevertheless assumed to exist between street performers and the itinerant groups that in Uzbekistan take the generic names of Luli, Mugat or Multani.14 The Gypsies had social ­relationships 14

Karine Gatelier, “La représentation des Mugat dans les sources écrites: réalité de leur mobilité et de la sédentarité,” Cahiers d’Asie centrale 11–12 (2003): 269–89; id., “Hama Mugat !:

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with dervishes, dorboz, and maddāḥ, since these latter groups included some of the former among their members, and members of all of the groups ­sometimes dispensed the same services; one thinks in particular of activities related to begging, magic and fortune-telling. Although there are no historical studies of the Luli, ethnology teaches us that the Gypsies of Turkestan practiced and continue to practice as small-scale artisans and itinerant vendors. As, starting in the nineteenth century, they became more sedentary, itinerant families were obliged to adapt to new ways of living and settle in one place: either in groups at the edges of villages, where they cultivated crops and raised animals for food, or in specific areas within the big cities. This is suggested in one of the rare primary sources to mention the Luli at any length. The Makhāzin altaqwā (‘The treasures of piety’), a work in verse that was finished by the ranking civil servant and Naqshbandī scholar Mīr Ḥusayn Mīrī in about 1830, treats of different aspects of the Emirate of Bukhara.15 One passage therein describes the quarter of Kāfirābād (‘city of infidels’), doubtless so-called because of the common belief that Gypsies practiced a religion other than Islam, although they were in fact Sunni Muslims. This belief is the reason for the segregation of their buried dead, as is the case in the Shāh-i zinda cemetery in Samarkand and the Chigatay cemetery in Tashkent.16 The Kāfirābād quarter is said in the Makhāzin al-taqwā to have been home to about 1,000 families. Our author then takes the trouble to denounce the occupations of the women there in barely veiled terms: the Luli women spend their time sitting on the doorsteps of their miserable hovels, outrageously made up and covered in vulgar jewellery; they freely receive the shady clients who visit them. Leaving to one side the complex question of prostitution, let us retain only the representation of a supposedly foreign population, whose very language,

15

16

modèle de reproduction identitaire des Mugat, Tsiganes d’Asie centrale,” PhD diss., Paris, EHESS, 2004. For more on this author and his works, consult Anke von Kügelgen, “Die Entfaltung der Naqšbandīya Muğaddidīya im Mittleren Transoxanien vom 18. bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts: Ein Stück Detektivarbeit,” in Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries. Vol. 2, eds. Anke von Kügelgen, Michael Kemper and Allen J. Frank (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1998), 107–8. Karine Gatelier and Nuryog’di Toshev discovered the passage concerning Kāfirābād. An author from the beginning of the twentieth century, Vladimir Ivanov affirmed that in Bukhara the Gypsies were not allowed to enter the town after sunset. Nevertheless, he observed Gypsy quarters (maḥalla) in Nishapur and Sabzevar in the Khorasan, see Wladimir Ivanow, “Further notes on Gypsies in Persia,” Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, new series 16 (1920): 282–83. On this point, and on the subject of Islam among the Gypsies, see Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov, Gypsies in Central Asia and the Caucasus (Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 47–49.

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as we shall also see on the subject of Xinjiang and when we analyse in detail the idiom of the dervishes, was by reputation impenetrable for non-Gypsies. The maddāḥ of the Chinese Wild West are not as well-known as their colleagues in Uzbekistan. We know nearly nothing about their lives in the Emirate of Yaʿqūb Beg, nor of what the political attitude to them was after the creation by the Qing in 1884 of the province of Xinjiang. We do know that they were part of the religious landscape, as testified by Grenard and Dutreuil de Rhins17: ‘It is said that before 1863 books were very rare in Khotan; one found very few commentaries on the Law or legends of the saints there. Since then, translations of Persian works have spread; these are mostly fragments of those texts that are recited by the travelling storytellers who on bazaar-day gather the loitering crowd around them (…) Their tales present about the same characteristics of naive marvels and tasteless farce as in every country in the world, and their motives are more or less the same, too.’ A bit later there are details on the language used: ‘One must be cautious, because none of these tales presents the local dialect in all its purity. Those who narrate them have travelled a lot, or they have a certain amount of education, so that they tend to mix several more or less different dialects.’ This suggestive but reductive observation does not completely take into account the fact that the repertoires of the cantors of Tarim included popular songs (chöchäk) that were mostly intended to be comical.18 Accompanied by musicians and performing in groups of three or four, the maddāḥ could perform skits vaguely reminiscent of boulevard theatre, mocking mandarins and Qadis.19 In one sense, these scenes continued in the tradition of popular irony against the authorities, especially the religious authorities, that was expressed through jokes and sayings such as the well-known ‘Do as the mollah says, not as the mollah does!’ (mulllānïng degänini qïl qïlghanïnï qïlma).20 What’s more, before undergoing the polishing that was intended to make them more tame, it was not unknown for the epic tales (dāstān) recited by the street singers to include political allusions, apologies of martyrdom and even calls to holy war.21 The subversive intention was thus explicit.

17 18 19 20 21

Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 3:86–87. There are some translated examples in Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 3:104–24. Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 2:140–41. Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 2:237– 38. Jun Sugawara, “Expanded texts of ‘martyrdom’: The genesis and development of the Uighur legend of Abdurahman Ḫan,” Eurasian Studies 12 (2014): 417–35.

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Current ethnomusicology confirms that today’s Uyghurs have perpetuated the tradition of cantors and other dervishes in a form that is very attenuated but still close to that of the nineteenth century. Kashgari musicians in the 1980s could list eleven categories of religious musician22, among which no fewer than four could be considered marginal. The first and calmest of these is the maddāḥ/mädda, presented as actors and masters of two or three disciples, most active at the time of Muslim and agrarian festivals and living on donations from the public. They tell tales from the Quran and of the Prophet’s life. The second group is the ʿāshiq/ashiq, bards who devoted their lives to singing God’s praises, accompanied on the sistrum (sifāy/sapay) and frame-drum (dāf/ dap). They had long hair and wore rags, playing in public spaces but refusing any alms. All of them, men and women, made a vow of celibacy and renounced property, including dwelling-places; they did not refuse to consume hemp. The third type of religious musician corresponds to the majnūn/mäjnun or madman, who was also celibate, a ragged wanderer and user of hemp. Their instruments were the sistrum, drum and vielle (sitār/satar), and they often played in cemeteries. Finally there are the dīwāna/diwanä, the holy fools, making up a group of professional beggars who could marry and stay living under one roof. Nevertheless, they lived in poverty and were meant to distribute their worldly goods to those more unfortunate than themselves. They were mainly active near mosques, sometimes on a daily basis, reciting in a sing-song and clapping sistrum against shoulder. Certain of them claimed to have been chosen by God, to be Sufis and members of Sufi brotherhoods. As in Russian Turkestan, so in the eastern parts of Turkestan cantors and their partners in misfortune rubbed along more or less easily with other marginal populations. It must be admitted that our current knowledge on this subject is very insufficient. However, the clues provided by language, or rather by the slang used by marginal populations, do promise some interesting results. It was precisely the use of language that attracted the attention of Fernand Grenard when he made contact with the Luli and the Abdāl/Abdal of Khotan. On the first of these groups, the orientalist merely mentions his visit in December 1891 to an encampment near Khotan: ‘Conmen and fortune-tellers, they speak a composite language combining Persian, Turkish, Baluchi, various Hindu dialects, Arabic and other words with roots that cannot be determined.’23 Then Grenard asked himself whether these Luli might not include a sub-group called Abdal, because, especially from the linguistic point of view, there is a 22 23

Sabine Trébinjac, Le Pouvoir en chantant. Tome 1: L’art de fabriquer une musique chinoise (Nanterre: Société d’éthnologie, 2000), 180–86. Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 2:308.

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Figure 27 Dīwāna in Keriya

surprising number of common points. He concluded that the differences in ethics and traditions between the two groups were too numerous for them to be identical. What’s more, the Abdal families that he met in Keriya and Cherchen in 1893 were constantly intriguing.24 In spite of having been granted land by Yaʿqūb Beg in recognition of their service in the army, this minority remained very poor and despised, living apart from the rest of society. Possibly influenced by Shiism, the Abdal cultivated isolation on the territorial level and on that of their notoriously secret language, the understanding of which was impossible for the uninitiated. In October 1906, Paul Pelliot did some research into the Abdal of eastern Turkestan.25 Without casting doubt on his predecessor’s results, this archae24 25

Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 2:308–11. Paul Pelliot, “Les Ābdāl de Païnāp,” Journal asiatique, 10th series, tome 9 (1907): 115–39. In Otto Ladstätter and Andreas Tietze, Die Abdal (Äynu) in Xinjiang (Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1994), 51–56, several hypotheses on the origins of the

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Figure 28 Dervishes of Kashgar

ologist noted that the Abdal in the Kashgar region did not suffer from any social exclusion, but rather the opposite, in that the general population found them to be ‘people who are somewhat strange, who often become sorcerers’. They seemed to feel ‘a sort of superstitious respect for them, as much because of the occult powers they are meant to have as because of the large number of languages they are supposed to know’. In fact, according to popular opinion, the name ʿAbdal’ was given to wandering monks who begged as they passed through towns wearing black turbans and white coats (chāpān); they were seen as being a little superior to the dīwāna and the Qalandars. The main thing that set them apart was their Persian dialect. The elucidation of people’s origins or ethnic identities is not this book’s concern. In our perspective, which is the study of religious marginality in Islam, we are hypothesising that aspects of this marginality took refuge in language after having been driven out of theory and praxis, and out of the contents of Abdal are discussed, with no decisive conclusion. However, linguistic analysis (pp. 86–95) reinforces the hypothesis of an Iranian ethnicity from a low social class.

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the texts as much as their transmission. The name Abdāl designates not only this hypothetical minority of crypto-Shiites in Xinjiang but also the general dervish milieu in Central Asia, following the example of heterodox groups in Anatolia, such as the Abdāl of Rūm, or those in Khorasan and Transoxania, if we are to believe the Qalandarnāma of Harawī and of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm that we studied closely in our introduction and in chapter 2.26 During the nineteenth century and until the first decades of the twentieth a common argotic language called abdāl tili/abdoltili held together this milieu that defined itself as kastak (or crafty, artful fellow in nineteenth-century European terms), in opposition to other people, the daghā/degha or ‘dupes’. 2

Abdāl tili, the Language of Outsiders

The dervish’s slang is a slippery terrain because data are few and invite perilous etymological or ethno-historical conjecture. Nevertheless, we propose to take another look at the available information on the language of marginal peoples, gathered principally by Vladimir Alekseievich Ivanov, Anna Leonidovna Troitskaia and the late Clifford Edmund Bosworth; we will concentrate more than they did on the heterodox culture contained in this language. While travelling through Iran and Turkestan at the beginning of the 1910s, Ivanov observed that numerous idioms were common to dervishes, cantors, petty criminals and Gypsies – that is, to the underclasses – who all used TurkoPersian argotic languages that were similar though not identical, and shared several formal characteristics: suffixations, the transposition of syllables, and creolisation.27 It was during a trip to Qarshi, in today’s Uzbekistan, that the orientalist discovered a manuscript collection (majmūʿa) attributed by its seller (against all probability) to Avicenna; the price therefore rose to a peak that was inaccessible to a university researcher’s pocket. Ivanov rented the document for one night and discovered within the 200 in-quarto folios the secret of a linguistic code that was said to have benefited a religious community. According to the anonymous author, this was ‘the language of those who adore the Divine ʿAlī (zabān-i ʿAlī ilah khwānān)’. At that time, ʿAlī Ilahī designated various types of heretical and antinomian sects, and not only Shiites as Ivanov 26

27

Alexandre Papas, Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, 195–96, 308–9. The Anatolian Abdāl, perhaps the heirs of the heterodox communities, used a slang that was studied by Andreas Tietze, “Zum Argot der Anatolischen Abdal (Gruppe Teber),” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 36/1–3 (1982): 521–32. Vladimir Ivanov, “An Old Gypsy-Darwish Jargon,” Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, new series, 18 (1922): 375–83.

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thought. The manuscript, which seemed to have been copied during the sixteenth century, contained, written in the margins of three of its pages, a poorlywritten fragment of a secret lexicon called Āghāz-i kitāb-i sāsiyān-i bikamāl, or The beginning of the book of perfect beggars. The scholar identified 100 among the 400 words noted. Let us retain, on the social side, the ‘thief’ (genāw), the ‘rascal’ (jaʿfar), the ‘Sufi’ (sahāk), the ‘brigand’ (bīs), the ‘acolyte’ (zanbūrī), the ‘gambler’ (munkākir) – all terms that oscillate easily between literal and religious meanings. A few decades later, in 1945, Anna Troitskaia conducted interviews with Uzbek performers, in particular with three comic actors (qiziqchi) called Arifjan Tashmatov, Rafik-ata Gaibov and Abdurahman Abdullaev, in order to gain a better understanding of the jargon they used among themselves, the abovementioned abdoltili, which was also known as mehtarlik, takia-i sozanda; that is to say, the language of musicians that was also known to women, children, the maddāḥ and the Qalandars.28 With few adjective and not many verbs, this sociolect consisted mainly of words that named individuals (by age and gender), parts of the body, foodstuffs and colours; there were also words for values such as good and evil, and words relating to the universe of violence (to which we shall return). If, proud of her collection of more than 200 words, Troitskaia somewhat exaggerates the possibilities of Abdoltili as a lingua franca by comparing it to the language of the Abdāl of eastern Turkestan, she nevertheless concludes that this language has little in common with that other secret slang spoken by the Luli of Fergana, arabcha.29 Going beyond oral sources, the Soviet ethnologist followed Ivanov in consulting a manuscript copy of the Kitāb-i sāsiyān, dated to 745/1344 that was conserved at the Institute of Orientalism in Tashkent, shelved under reference 2213/25. This document was divided into two parts: a dictionary of the language of beggars in nine chapters, and a lexicon of the slang of the ʿAlī Ilahī, with the following chapter headings: names of saints; parts of the body; names of family relationships, various objects and adjectives; names of animals; names of products; names of all sorts of goods; names of towns and places; verbs; numbers. The second part includes the names of dishes, drinks and certain professions. The (coded) names of towns, and the lexicon itself, clearly delineate the world of Central Asian dervishes: Samarkand, Merv, Bukhara, Herat, Nishapur, Rey, Balkh; places where ascetes (zāhid) lived, martyrs (shahīd) died and ritual circles (ḥalqa), gathered, where the lute (barbat zadan) and the flute (ney kardan) were played. 28 29

Anna L. Troitskaia, “ʿAbdoltili – argo tsekha artistov i muzykantov Srednei Azii,” Sovetskoe vostokovedenie 5 (1948): 251–74. Anna L. Troitskaia, “ʿAbdoltili,” 256–59, tables 1 and 2.

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Troitskaia compared this with another source, Abū Dulaf’s tenth century Ode to Beggars (Qasīda sāsāniyya), an Arabic lexicon of delinquency that was studied in detail by Edmund Bosworth.30 From this she concluded that there was a linguistic continuity between the underclasses of medieval society in the Muslim orient and modern Central Asian dervishes. Bosworth himself did not oppose this hypothesis, arguing as follows: the spread of the Sāsān in the eastern provinces took place in propitious conditions just to the extent that, even until the twentieth century, those regions preserved very ancient languages and populations; this is demonstrated by (among others) the Yaghnobi Iranian language (descended from Sogdien) in Tajikstan, and by, for example, the secret language of some Central Asian and Iranian professions, Zargari, which inserts the sound [z] or [za] into each syllable.31 We will follow the path of neither of these authors; there are too few ­sources, the analogies are too tenuous and the hypotheses don’t ring true. As modest as it may seem, rather than dealing with vast continuities this book prefers discreet ambiguities, minute irregularities, imperceptible mutations. Leaving aside the diachronic approach, we will stick with the synchronic: the state of Abdoltili as the nineteenth century becomes the twentieth says little about the conservation of a language (all languages are stratified by their long life-spans), and less still about the conservation of the discrete groups of people who spoke Abdoltili; it speaks rather more of the language’s destiny as a locus of preservation. Marginal peoples’ slang rings out as their final expression, a last refuge for an antinomianism whose acts and ideas are disappearing, whose very practitioners are fading, leaving behind only the words they’ve used. We propose to look at part of the Abdoltili lexicon, reconstituted with the help of the actors/performers from Tashkent32, in order to return it to its status as slang through a translation – we feel this is the only way to preserve its intentions, both comical and subversive.33 There are four particularly common operators here: suffixation as a popularising device, vulgarism, the repertoire of violence, and that of dervishism. 30 31 32 33

C. Edmund Bosworth, The Mediaeval Islamic Underground, 2:181–290, with critical edition and translation of the text into English. C. Edmund Bosworth, The Mediaeval Islamic Underground, 1:171–76. References to Zargari in Gurgen Melikian, “On the problem of secret languages and slangs in Iran,” Iran and the Caucasus 6/1–2 (2002): 181–88. Anna L. Troitskaia, “ʿAbdoltili,” 269–74. I take inspiration here from what was attempted by Mikhaïl Mikhaïlov, on the basis of Fikrī’s Lughat-i gharībe (Istanbul, 1890), in his Matériaux sur l’argot et les locutions populaires turco-ottomans (Leipzig: Eduard Pfeiffer, 1930), although he abstained ‘from publishing about 45 words and expressions that, while being characteristic, have a obscene meaning (…)’ 

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The first of these operations is to be understood as an alteration or subversion not of the meaning of a noun but of its register. Thus buyrak means ‘heart’, but buyraktuqi (with the suffix ‘-tuqi’) should be translated as the ‘beating one’; dandon means ‘tooth’, but dandontuqi would mean ‘gnasher’; ‘door’ would be dar whereas dartuqi designates ‘the heavy one’; ‘mother’ is modar and modartuqi ‘mum’; Qobbar, the ‘police officer’ becomes qobbartuqi, the ‘copper’; qulf, the ‘lock’ becomes qulftuqi, ‘locksmithery’; tabar, the ‘axe’ becomes tabartuqi, the ‘chopper’. In the same way, the much rarer suffix ‘-ki’ turns patta, ‘money’ into pattaki, ‘dosh’. As for the suffix ‘-tak’, its French equivalent would be ‘-ard’, with perhaps ‘-y’ in English, giving us kastak, ‘roublard’ (FR)/ ‘dodgy (person)’ (EN), akhmardor kastak, ‘richard’ (FR)/ ‘filthy-rich (person)’ (EN); hashpak (musical instrument) would be ‘le braillard’ (FR), the ‘rackety one’ (EN); and kalpak would give ‘klébard’ (FR)/ ‘doggy’ (EN). In the last case the French version has its origins in the same word, the Arabic kalb having been incorporated into French slang as ‘klébard’. Vulgarisms, the second common linguistic operation in Abdoltili, correspond to bad language, obscenities and coarseness of all kinds. In Abdoltili, bazaura danap means a ‘bird’ (young woman), danapboz ‘skirt-chaser’, enmoq ‘to nab, score, snag or snatch’, enqim is ‘flab’, hor ‘shit’, hordela ‘arse’, kannos danap the ‘brat’, kokonlamoq ‘gabbing’, otar is ‘Joe public’, pindadargosh ‘the one who’s clammed up’, qlikannos the ‘stuck-up one’, sekokonchi the ‘gabbler’, sout or sogut an ‘old fogey’, shaushau or shoushou ‘to piss’, valhajar ‘rabble, scum’. Perhaps we should stop there. The third operator of the language of marginal people, which we (slightly dramatically) called ‘the repertoire of violence’ covers a wide range of objects, gestures, and persons who are linked to the interlopers’ world on the streets. The word dela means ‘house’, but also ‘tavern’, with its derivatives dela khutarak and dela-i qilil, which would be ‘hovel, shack or hut’. Dilorom literally means the ‘appeasement of the heart’, or, in other words, the (thief’s) object of desire, but in Abdoltili becomes the equivalent of either the ‘key’ or the ‘lock’, and thus corresponds to ‘charm’ (thieves’ cant for lockpick or key) and ‘joke’ (thieves’ cant for lock). In the same way, duxon, cigarette, corresponds more closely to ‘fag’ and duxon talesi, tobacco pouch to something like ‘mill’ (an obsolete slang term for a snuff or tobacco pouch). In Persian, tīgh means a ‘blade’, ‘knife’, but the meaning of tighno is closer to ‘shiv’. The word yakan (money) would be translateable as ‘dosh’. Finally, akhmar, the literal meaning of which is ‘gold’, would be more accurately translated as ‘bread’ or ‘dough’, which when it builds up constitutes the ‘loot’ (goz), or else the part of profits called the bahra, the ‘split’. Thus, the act of sharing out any profits is bahra qilmoq, ‘splitting the loot’. Eniqp uymoq (to steal) is closer to ‘to nick’ and quttoqlamoq

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means ‘to pinch’ or ‘to lift’; met qilmoq or metlamoq (to kill) means ‘to ice’; sokhunmoq (to strike) means ‘to duff up’; uday bulmoq (to escape) ‘to hook it’; pastop qilmoq (to hide) ‘to stash’. There are distinct words for strangers or outsiders, such as ganjo, similar to the Romani ‘gadjo’ (non-Romani) and noshi (the mark or dupe). Hatapboz means a player or punter; muddabirdegho and ghamboz both mean ‘stool pigeon’; munopuqtuqi means ‘double-crosser’; genou and khittok are robbers or pickpockets; kula ‘kiddies’; khit ‘scum’ or ‘riffraff’, and poisha, sut danap and khit danap are all words for ‘working girls’. Finally, when we speak of the repertoire of dervishism, we refer to the oftenambiguous words that describe the figures and behaviours prevalent in the milieux of the dervishes, those ‘nutters of God’ (gelmon). There is the musician, or ‘note-eater’ (maisagar), the street-singer or busker (malamgu), the ‘performer’ (shelagar), the ‘gov’nor’ (ponuchi). They may consume ‘hooch’ (harl, opohal, mayob), hash (hashah), ‘black’/opium (napialan, qorakhonam), or other ‘highs’ (jingon). Although it is the best-known secret language of Central Asia, Abdoltili is far from being the only one in this region where the principle of hermeticism claims descent from antinomian tradition. We now return, in a way, to the beginning of our book – not to Herat, but to various regions of Afghanistan where we find different and specific social groups, each with its secret, or at least exclusive, idiom that it was still possible to hear at the end of the 1970s.34 At the end of our first chapter we mentioned the followers of Shaykh Mohammadi. They lived in the north and east of the country, essentially surviving as itinerant vendors, but they also included a few groups of Malang Sufi beggars, who were considered the more ‘authentic’ descendants of their eponymous founder. All of them claimed to know a secret language called Ādūrgarī/Ardurgari, taught to them from the age of six or seven, after Persian Dari. This language was said to have ‘stolen its words’ from about twenty other languages. The Kawol, who went to southern Tajikistan from Afghanistan, claimed descent from the lineage of either Shaykh Mohammadi or Fakir Mardum, and spoke Kawoli, a Persian argot. Also in Tajikistan, in the Gissar valley, the speakers of Chistonegi fell into three groups, the most illustrious of which was called by the curious code-name ‘Qalandar mulberry-eaters’ (lalandara tutxur). The Chistoni distinguished their argotic lexicon from the rest of their language, and claimed that it came from a ‘language of thieves’ (zaboni duzdi). An interesting 34

Jadwiga Pstrusińska, Secret Languages of Afghanistan and Their Speakers (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 36–42, 48–55. Although it has many excellent qualities, this work does display a tendency to get lost in the byways of hazardous etymological investigations.

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task remains, that of comparing these linguistic phenomena with the variants of Arabic argots (lughat al-sīm) attested from the nineteenth century to our own times.35 3

Argot and Mystical Language

These argots spoken by marginal peoples would seem to be separate in every way from the mystical language of Sufis, at least in its well-known versions. Abdoltili and Adurgari appear to be completely lacking in any technical lexicon such as that studied by Louis Massignon and Paul Nwyia.36 Few of the Sufi concepts (iṣṭilāḥāt al-ṣūfiyya) that make up the fundamental Arabic vocabulary, elaborated between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries and adopted by all Sufi currents, can be unearthed in the work of a dervish such as Kharābātī. The science of Arabo-Persian letters, elaborated by Faḍl Allāh Astarābādī (d. 796/1394) does not seem to have reached the antinomian spirits of Central Asia either.37 Yet we know that Hurufism (ḥurūfiyya, from ḥurūf, letters) and its esoteric and numerical speculations on the thirty-two characters of the alphabet, attracted numerous adepts not only in Iran, India and the Ottoman Empire, but also in the heterodox circles of Herat. Must we therefore conclude that these tardy jargons are just a final paltry vestige of Sufi antinomianism in Central Asia, the mere remains of mysticism that has progressively lost its way? That would be too simple. Instead, one must first restate the relevant questions relating to language over the long duration, in order to understand what is at stake socially and religiously; then one must compare our marginal people with other cases of socio-linguistic outsiders in the Muslim world.38 When one establishes links between the argots of modern times and the way language was used by fifteenth century dervishes a constant begins to 35 36

37 38

E.K. Rowson, “al-Sīm,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., BrillOnline. Louis Massignon, Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulman (Paris: Cerf, 1968); Paul Nwyia, Exégèse coranique et langage mystique. Nouvel essai sur le lexique technique des mystiques musulmans (Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1991). For a reflection on the didactic dimension, see Carl W. Ernst, “Mystical Language and the Teaching Context in the Early Lexicons of Sufism,” in Mysticism and Language, ed. Steven T. Katz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 181–201. Hamid Algar, “Horufism,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online; Shahzad Bashir, Fazlallah Astrabadi and the Hurufis (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006). We can go no further in the context of this book. The temptation to compare with other religious cultures remains strong, particularly with regard to Christian mysticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what Michel De Certeau called the ‘ways of speaking’ in La Fable mystique, 1, XVIe-XVIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), ch. 4.

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appear, one that goes beyond the dialectological continuity sought by Troitskaia and Bosworth – there is a constant power struggle, a tension within the very modes of expression of Islam. ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī deplored the brute-like voices of the cantors and storytellers, accused false Sufis of twisting the real meanings of words, blamed drunkenness for abolishing the poetic … all of this while leaving the door open to the subversive potential of the mystical vagabonds, either through laughter or laconicism. The Timurid scholar’s ambivalence even allowed him to concede that as long as a religious speaker abstained from poetry, then a radical verbal economy, or its opposite, verbal delirium, could guarantee not only his sincerity but his saintliness itself. Later, the Qalandar Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, himself a user of popular speech, or at least a non-scholar, defended an ascesis of language against all forms of sophistication. This linguistic poverty was the natural concomitant of the voluntary impoverishment of the dervish. Forbidding neither esoteric etymologies nor speculative lexicography, ascesis retained only the religious significations of words. What do we retain of Kharābātī? The onslaught of imperatives, interjections, and contrapositions in his verses seem to belong rather to the sermon than to literature. The poet reinvented himself as a preacher, believer in a stylistic privation that tended towards a negation of speech itself, and therefore of his own reasons for writing. Thus it’s not surprising that he cast down the figure of the poet to put in its place that of the inspired cantor (maddāḥ), who was more popular yet less profane. Going against the grain of a noisy modernity, reclusive dervishes deep in their grottoes observed a silence that was heavy with content. It was a question of making oneself absolutely available to God’s message, whether it was expressed in the language of dreams or the play of echoes. All that remained of their erstwhile vocabularies, however scholarly these might have been, was a few inscriptions or orally transmitted anecdotes. As for the slang and argotic languages, as well as being the secret preserve of a brotherhood they were used to thwart attempts by vain intellects to impose signification or semantics, in order better to denounce the derisory nature of human expression in the search for the absolute. Only a language that had been pushed to lexical extremes could escape its own banalisation. To sum up, the marginal people of Sufism never stopped disputing institutionalised language in Islam, including their own, because according to them, and in parallel with the repeated institutionalisations of Sufism in general, everything that came out of the mouth of a believer, like everything that was traced by his reed pen, was destined to become part of the monotonous flow of social exchanges. In other words, neither ordinary language nor the language of monuments, nor literature, nor the liturgy … nor perhaps even the

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language of scripture itself managed to reproduce the initial primitive miracle of language. This in its turn and for the same reasons set up a chronic battle against the dervishes’ mystical language itself. With their slang and argotic languages antinomians from Central Asia and elsewhere fought the last engagement in this war. We can gain a better understanding of what was at stake in these power relations by looking elsewhere than Asia. We need not spend too much time on the classic theme of linguistic concision, but shall merely observe that until fairly recently the dervishes sought, in one way and another, to keep this medieval tradition alive; the tradition did not survive in the same way in the Arabicspeaking world. And yet that part of the world invented mystical linguistic concision, whether in the ‘paradoxes’ (shaṭaḥāt) of Bisṭāmī, as we have seen in the introduction, or those of Ḥallāj and of Niffarī (d. 354/965), whose dialectical force lay in their incitement to mutism – as guarantor of the experience of mystical union and as a means of translating this new experience for others.39 The Suryāniyya language, contemporaneous with our Central Asian marginal folk but less studied, has fascinated researchers for several reasons. Already a theme in the tenth century in the Epistles of the ‘Brothers of purity’ (Ikhwān al-ṣafā) – a collection of doctrinal writings elaborated within a clandestine brotherhood with Shiite tendencies – pseudo-Syriac (Suryāniyya) was said to have been spoken by Adam himself, after which time the words were lengthened by the composition of Suryāniyya ‘letters’, and progressively formed all the different languages. As the mother of all languages, this angelic idiom was accessible only to certain mystics, and then only in a spontaneous and unpredictable way.40 Most of these people were illiterate shaykhs (ummī) of the Ottoman period who, following the Prophet’s example, had obtained their wisdom through inspiration (ilhām), notably in the Uwaysī telepathic mode. Alongside all those who expressed themselves in a ‘foreign language’ (lisān aʿjamī), those who had difficulty in speaking (aghlaf al-lisān), those who knew the synthesising words (jawāmiʿ al-kalim), and those who reached glossolalia, there were also the speakers of Suryāniyya.41 The hagiography of the ummī 39

40 41

Pierre Lory, La science des lettres en islam (Paris: Dervy, 2004), 51–52, 128–29; Abdelwahab Meddeb, Les dits (shatahât) de Bistami (Paris: Fayard, 1989); Louis Massignon, Kitāb alṭawāsīn par al-Ḥallāj (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1913); Arthur J. Arberry, The Mawáquif and Mukhátabát of Muḥammad Ibn ʿAbdi’ L-Jabbár Al-Niffari (London: Luzac, 1935, re-published 1978). Pierre Lory, La science des lettres en islam, 28, 69. Eric Geoffroy, Le soufisme en Égypte et en Syrie sous les derniers Mamelouks et les premiers Ottomans. Orientations spirituelles et enjeux culturels (Damascus: Institut français d’études arabes de Damas, 1995), 299–307.

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shaykh of Fez, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh (d. 1132/1720), provides a description of pseudo-Syriac.42 In essence, an extreme concision allows this idiom, which is undetectable by the senses, to produce a multitude of meanings – more than any other language – with a minimum of words. For where other languages are composed of words, Suryānī is above all composed of letters of the alphabet, each of which changes its meaning according to its association with another letter. The apparently incomprehensible babblings of infants are close to Suryānī to the extent that on the esoteric side Adam spoke in Suryānī to his children, who transmitted it onwards. Here we also perceive the notion of a language in its infancy being related to holiness. Finally, Dabbāgh teaches that certain words in the Quran come from pseudo-Syriac and not from Arabic. Consequently, they carry meaning beyond what is apparent. In addition, the initial letters of the Quran’s chapters belong to Suryāniyya; they reveal the path to the interior significance of the text. Even in the twentieth century, some Sufis still had, by reputation, the ability to speak pseudo-Syriac; for example, Upper Egypt’s ardent ecstatic (majdhūb) Aḥmad Radwān (d. 1967), who addressed the earth’s saints in their primordial language and received premonitory messages from them.43 Not in the Middle East now, but in the Maghreb, the argotic speech or Ghūs of Morocco’s Heddāwa in the nineteenth century relied on an Arabic syntax while its vocables drew on various sources.44 Here again, one finds few verbs or connectors, but rather a detailed secret vocabulary of drugs, their consumption and what was forbidden. There was no mystical lexicon. Nevertheless, in way that related closely to Ghūs, the gyrovagues used expressions that sprang from an intention to diminish both the substance of the world and the presumptions of any grasp of the spiritual on the material world. On the one hand, the Heddāwa called themselves by their given names as little as possible, to the point where it was forgotten; they compulsively multiplied the number of diminutive words that they used to indicate utensils, foods or the gestures of daily life. On the other hand, when they spoke of their brotherhood rituals they 42

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Shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh, Paroles d’or. Kitâb al-Ibrîz. Enseignements consignés par son disciple Ibn Mubârak al-Lamtî, preface, notes and translation from Arabic by Zakia Zouanat (Paris: Le Relié, 2001), 201–9, 258; Aḥmad b. al-Mubārak al-Lamaṭī, Pure Gold from the Words of Sayyidī ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh (Al-Dhabab al-Ibrīz min Kalām Sayyidī ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh), translation, notes and detailed plan by John O’Kane and Bernd Radtke (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 421–57. Rachida Chih, Le soufisme au quotidien. Confréries d’Egypte au XXe siècle (Paris: Sindbad, 2000), 105. Pierre Brunel, Le monachisme errant dans l’Islam. Sidi Heddi et les Heddawa (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1955), 360–67.

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replaced technical terms with images or very concrete periphrases, in the same way as epigrams and humorous sayings replaced abstract quotations. The Turkish-speaking world also had an episode of mystical language in the pre-modern period; this did not last as long, but was resolutely sophisticated. This was no less nor more than the invention of a language, Bāleybelen, by a Sufi scholar called Muḥyī Gülşenī (d. 1014/1606).45 Muḥyī Gülşenī was a shaykh in the Gülşeniyye brotherhood, an order founded in Cairo at the beginning of the sixteenth century, which was passably heterodox and Hurufī. Also in Cairo, once he had finished his years of training in Edirne and Istanbul, lived the man nicknamed Dervīş Muḥyī. A tireless polymath in Persian and Ottoman Turkish, in 988/1580 he composed a grammar and a dictionary of Bāleybelen, an unusual name that means ‘language of the life-giver’, in reference to the name of the author (muḥyī) and the promethean essence of his invention. Essentially, this new idiom that foreshadowed Esperanto or Volapük had an alphabet of thirty-three Arabo-Persian letters, in the service of a morphology of Semitic type, that is to say, one based on consonant roots with grammatical inflections made of prefixes and suffixes, as in the agglutinative Turkic languages. Of more interest to us is the fact that the Bāleybelen lexicon of 10,000 items seems to have been created ex nihilo but in fact takes its inspiration from the three source languages (Arabic, Persian and Turkish), even containing terms the meaning of which corresponds either metaphorically or metonymically to its ‘etymology’. For example, in Bāleybelen pīr means ‘mirror’, and comes from the Persian word pīr, signifying ‘spiritual master’, that is, the metaphorical mirror of the disciple. Gulāb means ‘cheek’ in Bāleybelen, and comes from the Persian gulāb, meaning ‘rose-water’, a metonym for tears. Dervīş Muḥyī himself admitted that his aim was to explain the rules and the vocabulary of this language in order to put it into order, to teach the exoteric knowledge of the Sufis, and to allow poets and writers to understand it. Partly the fruit of Sufi inspiration and partly the expression of unity with God, Bāleybelen was explicitly presented as an idiom of divine origin whose only purpose was mystical. Its use remained

45

Sylvestre de Sacy, “Le Capital des objets recherchés, et le chapitre des choses attendues ou dictionnaire de l’idiome balaïbalan,” Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la bibliothèque impériale, tome 9 (1813): 365–96; Alessandro Bausani, “About a curious ‘mystical’ language Bāl-a i-balan,” East and West 4/4 (1954): 234–38; Mustafa Koç, Bāleybelen. İlk yapma dil. Muhyī-i Gülşenī (Istanbul: Klasik, 2011); Charles G. Häberl, “Bālaybalan language,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online. For a recent study on the Gülşeniyye, see Side Emre, Ibrahim-i Gulshani and the Khalwati-Gulshani Order: Power Brokers in Ottoman Egypt (Leiden; Brill, 2017). A manuscript copy of the Kitāb-i bāleybelen is available online: .

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limited to the Gülşeniyye brotherhood, but the radical gesture of the Ottoman shaykh was praised by several of the period’s intellectual authorities. Each of the many mystical languages represented an alternative to the anticipated failure of language. Like their brothers in the middle east, Transoxanian dervishes did not resign themselves to institutionalised ways of speaking: the Turkish of political domination, the Persian of literary prestige, the inesca­ pable Arabic of the sacred realm. The marginal peoples of Islam never entrusted their voices to a mode of expression that claimed to be definitive, instead, step by step, they tested the means of uttering the things that clean religious consciences held to be unsayable. And if antinomianism in the modern era faded until only words were left, at least in the centre of Asia, this happened because of an obstinate fidelity to the first among them: no.

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Conclusion: Dervishes Yesterday and Today Having reached the end of this long and somewhat fragmented historical journey, we can observe that the situation in Central Asia incontestably demonstrates the existence in Muslim societies of ‘a desire for transgression and a return to the wild side of life’ – a desire quoted in our introduction as applying to the Christian west only. More specifically, the case of Central Asia encourages us to look for diversity in Sufism in parallel with its institutionalisation, and long after the Medieval era, and to draw on the most varied array of ­sources possible, because the marginal people we seek are, by definition, excluded from majoritarian discourse, or escape from it. The current volume aims to convince the reader of the necessity of having recourse to doctrinal treatises, to poetry, to orally-transmitted legends, ethnographical research, and lexicography. There are two questions arising from all this, one historiographic and one current: To what extent do the conclusions of this quasi-counter-history of Central Asian Islam, which attempts to rescue from oblivion the signs of religious resistance to the limits and the very name of faith, apply to the rest of the Muslim world? Our first chapter attempted to answer this by following up a few clues on the history of dervishes. To recapitulate: in Herat at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth there was a milieu of interlopers making shift to survive while being the object of contempt and fascination. The dervishes and their extreme practices were as scandalous as they were sanctified. By cross-referencing several chapters of Nawāʾī’s moral treatise with hagiographical notices we were able to describe a popular milieu, anonymous and yet containing strong and individual personalities, not reducible merely to the classical figures of ummī shaykhs such as were identified by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī (d. 973/1565) from Cairo, for example, but representing instead a rich society that included street performers, gypsies, beggars, etc. The spoken language here was also popular, encompassing harangues, patter and song. Instead of researching in the ummī realm, it will be necessary to examine the minority socio-religious groups such as the Khāksārs of Iran (the word appears, instead of a name, in chapter 33 of the above-mentioned treatise) in order to unearth these marginal ways of living and expressing oneself. In the region of Bukhara in the seventeenth century, groups of Qalandarī Sufis built up around small masters at the margins of the great brotherhoods; their physical appearance could be shocking or amusing, although from the Qalandarī point of view it was the material representation of their beliefs. Through our reading of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm’s treatise we have been able to give

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_008

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details of the ideal type of the Transoxianian dervish by analysing not only the physical characteristics of the paraphernalia that extends his body, but also the symbolic value of each object, the rituals involved in its fabrication, and the initiatic teachings expressed by each piece of equipment. The results of this analysis reveal a relatively coherent doctrine situated between scholarly Islam and popular practice. Here we are dealing neither with the speculation of high Sufism nor with people who are completely illiterate. In this respect the obsession of the Qalandars with all that is lexical, etymological or has to do with the language of symbols is striking. It is likely that the exploration of neglected treatises from the Qalandariyya, such as the massive Rawḍ al-azhār fī ma⁠ʾāthir al-qalandar and its supplement (takmila) printed in Rampur1, will considerably enhance our understanding of dervish thought. During the eighteenth century a poet was born in eastern Turkestan and grew up to write vindictive verses that promoted a flight from the world; far from being the precursor of Enlightenment as he was called by some, this preacher displayed a sombre conscience, leaning towards the obscurantism of despair. Kharābātī’s voice is a singular one, which is not, to our knowledge, echoed in any hagiographies or other Sufi prose writings of the period and region. Dervishes, and other men of faith, often expressed their religious claims or transgressive views through poetry. Here, our author is not content to berate his society for its weaknesses – in his meaning as in his form, avoiding technical language and rhetorical subtleties, he defends an untimely asceticism. In order to take the measure of the extent of this Sufi contemptus mundi at the beginning of modern times, one should also read Kharābātī’s contemporaries – those who were nearby, such as Shāʿir Qalandar or Ismāʿil Maḥzun Khotanī (both in Khotan) and those from farther afield, for example in the Ottoman sphere of influence, such as ʿÖmer Ḥāfıẓ Yenişehr-i Fenārī among others. Here one finds a discourse that is just as austere and disenchanted. During the nineteenth century, some belated anchorites hid themselves in grottoes in Yarkand, in Samarkand, in Mangistaou and in the Fergana; the dervishes opposed a radical indifference to triumphant modernity, through their hermitism renewing their links with the origins of Sufism. One hypothesis that resulted from the work on this chapter, founded on various ethnographical material, has to do with the persistent tension between ascetic reclusion and temporary retreat, between what one could call the khalwat and the ʿuzlat, or the arbaʿīniyya and the chilla (forty days). It is possible that our marginal subjects attempted, often unsuccessfully, to resist the institutionalisation of the khalwat, which had evolved from a solitary existence into a spiritual technique. 1 Many thanks to Fabrizio Speziale for this reference.

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As is often the case among dervishes, one can find no theoretical discussion on the subject, not even a reference to the developments on this issue written by Qushayrī, Suhrawardī, Najm al-Dīn Kubrā and a few others. However, they have left behind a legacy of mythical names, legends and inscriptions that even today still make up part of Central Asian religious culture. Beyond Central Asia, and in spite of the existence of some excellent monographs, what is needed is a synthesis or a collective work on the Khalwatiyya, explaining the institutional evolution of the khalwat. In the same way, systematic research is lacking into the confined natural spaces of Sufis – cavities, ditches, hollow trees. Until the beginning of the twentieth century the roads in the part of the world that is today’s Xinjiang and Uzbekistan were travelled by cantors, performers and Gypsies; this closed counter-society maintained close relations with dervishes, socially as much as culturally and religiously. When read in conjunction with our first chapter (on Herat during the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries) this final section, drawing primarily on lexicography, suggests the possibility of a historic continuity for marginal milieux, though other sources are needed to confirm this continuity. What remains is to follow to the end and over the long duration the traces that have barely been touched upon by a historiography that has been more attentive to institutions than to anything that calls them into question. It seemed easiest to us to follow the linguistic trail: in the context of a repression of marginal peoples in general, dervishes, whose space for action and expression was constantly shrinking, found in language itself one final resource, a last free space. Here again, it would be interesting to study comparable cases, at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, across the Muslim world, notably in the Balkans. The second question is, ‘What is the situation today for religious marginality in Islam?’ Where are the twenty-first century dervishes? If Central Asia today remembers dervishes only through a few words and even fewer individuals, and no longer as a phenomenon in a society that somehow included marginal people, it is nonetheless certain that Sufi heterodoxy has not vanished. It continues to exist and survive in other spaces, and not merely in the person of some anonymous mystical fool of God (majdhūb) or wanderer. Here we are not singing the praises of a pretty diversity in Islam – as people sometimes do for fear of falling into an essentialising uniformity – rather, we are remembering Islam’s many and fruitful contradictions. Among the fresh traces that the contemporary observer may discover there are two specific examples that interest us, both existing on the ‘periphery’ of the Muslim world, one example in Senegal and one in Pakistan. New anthropological studies reveal a hidden and perhaps unavowable face of today’s Sufism, resisting the surrounding tendencies to increasing orthodoxy.

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Within the great Mouride brotherhood, founded at the beginning of the twentieth century in Touba, a minoritary path, that of the Baay Faal/Bayye Fall, split off during the 1950s.2 Its origins lie in the preaching of Shaykh Ibra Fall (d. 1930); some sources underline his bizarre (or even delirious) behaviour. A former aristocrat who became a ragged beggar with long dreadlocks, Ibra Fall submitted himself entirely as a disciple to the founder of the Mouridiyya, Shaykh Amadou Bamba. He did not respect the Quranic precepts and was not interested in religious instruction, preferring to labour in the fields and work on the maintenance of the communitarian infrastructure (daara). After he had in his turn become a spiritual master, he instigated an absolutist mode of allegiance to the marabout and wove a large sphere of influence, through either alliances or brotherhood affiliations. Ibra Fall developed the trade in peanuts, which provided an economic basis for the propagation of the Mouride communities. The Baay Faal then gradually distinguished themselves from the Mourides, forming a spiritual path dedicated to work and submission to the master, with no fasting or daily prayers. The appearance of some of its members bore a close resemblance to that of dervishes, for similar reasons of symbolism: a wide leather belt (laaxasay), a patchwork garment (njaaxas), a talis­manic necklace (doomubaay), and dreadlocks (jneñ). They found their recruits principally among young men of the lower classes, who then joined the daara, autarchic communitarian villages situated on the outskirts of towns. Here, over a period of three years, these celibate young men divide their time between agricultural labour, collective begging (maajal), religious instruction, and performing the dhikr (sikar). They also partake of festive rituals comprising trances, dancing, flagellation and the discreet consumption of cannabis. In spite of the prevalence of a rigorous outlook in Pakistan, fed by powerful currents such as the Tablighi jamaat, ultra-devotional Islam is a major social fact there, in the north, where tradition would have it that piety is less exuberant than in the Punjab or Sindh, as much as elsewhere.3 The town of Gilgit and the valleys surrounding it count among their inhabitants a substantial number of mystical fools of God, majdhūb, dīwāna, faqīr, malang, phútkish (possessed ones) and pāgal (demented ones). Let us follow a few biographical itineraries. The much-regretted Sangula, who died in 1991, wore rags, never 2 Charlotte Pezeril, Islam, mysticisme et marginalité: les Baay Faal du Sénégal (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008). 3 Jürgen Wasim Frembgen, “Divine Madness and Cultural Otherness: diwāna and faqīrs in Northern Pakistan,” South Asia Research 26/3 (2006): 236–48; id., “Ecstatic Sainthood and Austere Sunni Islam: A majzūb in Northern Pakistan,” in Politics of Worship in the Contemporary Middle East. Sainthood in Fragile States, eds. Andreas Bandak and Mikkel Bille (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 155–68; Michel Boivin, Le soufisme antinomien dans le sous-continent indien. La’l Shahbâz Qalandar et son héritage, XIIIe-XXe siècle (Paris: Cerf, 2012), 182–89.

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washed and was often in the news for his antics – standing on one leg to pray to ʿAlī, exhibiting his penis, and insulting political and religious authorities. Before his death in 2000, Rabar Hasan (alias Labar) wandered from village to village and spent almost all his time collecting leaves and pieces of paper in order to decode the Quranic messages inscribed thereon. A pronounced taste for hashish allowed Jan Khan to pronounce prophecies, while Ghulam Abbad and a certain Dolo lived half-naked all the year round, a sign of their supernatural powers. Finally, Abdul Ghani, better-known by the name of Majzub Baba (d. 1999), lived in the small town of Chilas. He had studied at the madrasa and even got married. A mystical crisis drove him to break with this too-comfortable way of life. Indifferent to prayer and to any form of ritual purity, he lived on alms and devoted his days to blackening notebooks with illegible inscriptions, of which it was said that they blended Arabic, Persian, Pashto and Shina. Although in the north these personages inspire veneration and disdain in equal measures, in the south their holiness is recognised more generally. In addition to these individual cases representing holy fools (mast-bābā), some extant groups of heterodox Sufis, such as the Qalandariyya Shahbāziyya and the Bahāriyya, perpetuate Sufi antinomianism. Celibate wanderers of spectacular appearance, consumers of hemp, the members of these groups survive by cleaning shrines and (especially) on the alms from pilgrims. In the case of Senegal as in that of Pakistan, it is not impossible that in the possible absence of any historical continuity (which is difficult to demonstrate) there may, on the contrary, have been a whole series of ruptures and reversals through which dervishism came back into fashion, perhaps even with the involuntary support of orientalism, the salutary attraction of which to the picturesque margins may have documented the twentieth century reconstruction of a long and much-interrupted religious tradition. The task that falls to historians of Islam is to rediscover the genealogy of contemporary dervishism through a multitude of hidden clues and scattered sources. In the present volume we have attempted to undertake these inquiries, in the consciousness that some texts, especially manuscripts and archive documents, will escape our notice, and that fieldwork may remain incomplete, for the area is so vast, the period so long and its religious history so little-known.4 Nevertheless, (in a pastiche of Sufi hagiography), we rely on the readers of this brief essay to pardon the faults and weaknesses of its miserable author. 4 Recent important publications on Central Asian Islam include: Rian Thum, The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); Eren Tasar, Soviet and Muslim. The Institutionnalization of Islam in Central Asia, 1943–1991 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Devin DeWeese and Jo-Ann Gross, eds., Sufism in Central Asia. New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th-21st Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

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Index OfIndex Namesof Names

223

Index of Names Aaron 132 ʿAbbās 78, 87, 100 ʿAbd Allāh Buzurg 100 ʿAbd Allāh Kūchakī 100 ʿAbd Allāh Ṣaffār 99 ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar 100 ʿAbd Allāh Yamanī 150–151 ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Khān 21, 59 ʿAbd al-Jabbār ʿIshqī 100 ʿAbd al-Khalīl Ata 73, 98 ʿAbd Manāf 81, 82, 86–88 ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib 77, 81, 87–88 ʿAbd al-Qahhār Shahrisabzī 100 ʿAbd al-Qāyyūm 101 ʿAbd al-Quddūs 99 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf 98 ʿAbd al-Ṣamad 101 ʿAbd al-Shahīd 100 ʿAbd al-Shukūr 99 Abdullaev, Abdurahman 196 Abraham 63, 66, 77–78, 80, 87–89, 98–100, 132 Abū ʿAlī Rūdbārī 100 Abū Bakr 66, 89, 92, 94, 98–99 Abū Dhar 87, 102 Abū Dulaf 197 Abū al-Fatḥ Rāhib 81–82 Abū al-Fattāḥ Daqqāq 99 Abū al-Fayḍ Ilāhī 152 Abū Ḥanīfa 100 Abū al-Qāsim Balkhī 100 Abū Qays 88 Abū Saʿīd 25 Abū Saʿīd Andikānī 98 Abū Saʿīd Rūmī 179 Abū Sufyān 78 Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī 181b Abū Yazīd Simnānī 100 Adam 62, 66, 76–78, 81, 87–88, 98, 101, 202–203 Adham Saqqā 102 ʿAdnān 88 Āfāq Khwāja 24 Afshari, Mehran 22, 59 Agar 80

Aḥmad Khadruyya 99 Aḥmad Radwān 203 Akhī Maḥmūd 50 Akhī Muḥammad 50 ʿAlī 78, 80, 83–84, 89, 94, 98–99, 101, 131, 134, 150, 175–176, 188, 195–196, 210 Alman 173–174 ʿAlqama-yi ʿĀd 86 Amadou Bamba 209 Amīr Khalīl khwānanda 34n Amīr Kulāl 98 Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad Ali 8n Anṣārī, ʿAbd Allāh 11, 50 Āṣaf b. Barakhyā 77 Ashraf Astarābādī 50 Aṣīl al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh Wāʿiẓ 50–54 ʿĀṣim b. Habhāb 81 Astarābādī, Faḍl Allāh 200 ʿAṭṭār 181n Avicenna 195 ʿĀysha 82 ʿĀysha Qandīsha 182 Bābā ʿAlī Pāy Ḥiṣārī 54 Bābā Arslān 51 Bābā Gīlānī 52 Bābā Ḥasan Turk 51, 54 Bābā Ḥidā 51 Bābā Ibrāhīm 53 Bābā Jalīl 54 Bābā Jamāl 51 Bābā Jān Bābā 53 Bābā Khamīrgar 51 Bābā Kūkī 52, 54 Bābā Mullā Imān Balkhī 21 Bābā Pīrī 55 Bābā Qanbar 51 Bābā Qul Mazīd 101 Bābā Sammāsī 98 Bābā Sangū 51, 53 Bābā Sarïgh Pūlād 55 Bābā Shihāb 54 Bābā Turkesh 99 Bābā Zakaryā 51 Babur 34, 52

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_010

224 Badawī, Aḥmad 73, 101 Bahāʾ al-Dīn Mashriqī 100 Bahlūl 6, 71 Bahlūl Kāmlāʾī 100 Baily, John 186n Balʿam Bāʿūr 127–128 Barāq Abdāl 70 Barāq Bābā 70 Bayle, Pierre 140 Beket Ata 163, 169, 171–172 Belin, François Alphonse 30 Bilāl 189 Bisṭāmī, Bāyazīd 8, 49, 73, 98–99, 202 Bloch, Marc 19 Bobo Khoja 179–180 Boileau, Nicolas 140 Boratav, Pertev 184 Bosworth, Edmund 195, 197, 201 Buddha 146, 149 Bultot, Robert 128 Burkh 178–181 Castagné, Joseph 159 Charbak Dīwāna 176–177 al-Dabbāgh, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz 203 Dāmullā Mullā Aḥmatov 187 Danyāl 158–159 Darwīsh Bahrām Saqqā 101 Darwīsh Manṣūr 54 David 77–78 Dawut, Rahile 150 De Certeau, Michel 200n Demchenko, V. 175 Dermenghem, Émile 7 Dolo 210 Dukchi Ishan 186–187 Dūldūl 176 Dutreuil de Rhins, Jules-Léon 24–25, 144, 146, 191 Elias, Norbert 20 Enoch 132 Erkinov, Aftandil 186 Eve 81 Evliyā Çelebī 5 Faghnawī, Maḥmūd Anjīr 98 Fakir Mardum 199

Index Of Names Fārmadī, Aḥmad 98 Farzūq 86 Fāṭima 83, 97 Fattāḥ Khwārizmī 100 Fayḍī, ʿAlī 28 Feridun 47 Fikrät, Hörmätjan 105, 118 Foucault, Michel 6 François I 56 Gabriel 77–78, 81–82, 85–86, 89–90, 95, 180–181, 186 Gaibov, Rafik-ata 196 Gatelier, Karine 190n George (Jirjīs) 86, 132 Ghazālī 181n Ghijduwānī, ʿAbd al-Khāliq 98 Ghulam Abbad 210 Gīlānī, ʿAbd al-Qādir 72, 101, 186 Grenard, Fernand 22, 24–25, 144, 146, 149, 191–192 Gurgānī, Abū al-Qāsim 98, 101n Ḥabīb ʿAjamī 101 Ḥāfiẓ 143 Ḥāfiẓ Qazaq qānūnī 34n Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm 21–22, 59–61, 63–67, 69–70, 72–74, 76, 80, 82, 84, 88–91, 94–95, 97, 99–102, 131, 180, 195, 201, 206 Ḥājjī al-Dīn ʿUmar Murshidī 182 Ḥakīm Ata 98, 163n, 164 Ḥallāj, Manṣūr 57, 71, 202 Hamadānī, Abū Yūsuf 98, 155 Hamadānī, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt 8, 57, 168n Ḥamal 88 Hamaysaʿ 88 Ḥamīd ʿIshqī 101 Ḥamīd Rūdbārī 100 Ḥamīd Walad 99 Harawī, Amīr Ḥusayn 11, 15–16, 47, 75, 156n, 195 Harawī, Niẓām al-Dīn 100 Hartmann, Martin 104 Hārūn al-Rashīd 100 Ḥasan 99, 150 Ḥasan Baṣrī 95, 101 Ḥasan ʿūdī 34n Hāshim 81, 87–88

225

Index Of Names Ḥidāyat Khwāja Bāqirghānī 163n Hiouen Ts’ang (Xuanzang) 146 Hosayni, Naser al-Din Shah 59 Hūd 78 Ḥusāmī Maddāḥ 50 Ḥusayn 99, 102 Ḥusayn Kūchak nāʾī 34n Ḥusayn Khwārizmī 163n Ibn ʿArabī 73, 101 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 182 Ibn al-Qouçâb 7 Ibra Fall 209 Ibrāhīm Darwīsh 182 Idrīs 66, 78 Igamberdi Mullaḥmat Beshaghachkoy 187 ʿIrāqī, Fakhr al-Dīn 8 Isaac 66, 74, 80 Isḥāq Khatlānī 159n Isḥāq Khwāja 23 Ishmael 77–78, 80, 88, 94, 132 Ismāʿil Maḥzun Khotanī 207 Ivanov, Vladimir 190n, 195–196 Jābir Anṣārī 89 Jacob 66, 80 Jaʿd b. Aṣfar 81 Jaʿfar Ṣādiq 73, 98–99, 101 al-Jāḥiẓ 3 Jāmī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 48, 154 Jāmī, Aḥmad 49 Jamshīd 44 Jan Khan 210 Jarring, Gunnar 105n Jesus 66, 78, 81–82, 86, 89, 132 Jethro 66 Job 94 Jonah 85–86, 132 Joseph 78, 88–89 Junayd Baghdādī 49, 71 Jurjānī, Abū al-Qāsim 101 Jurjānī, Aḥmad 95 Jurjānī, Ismāʿīl 5 Jurjānī, Muḥammad 99 Kaʿb al-Aḥbār 97 Kalbī 100 Kamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghārī 182

Karaman Ata 163n Kāsānī, Aḥmad (Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam) 35n, 93, 98, 100 Kāshgharī, Saʿd al-Dīn 50n Kāshifī, Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ 120n, 183–184 Kaygusuz/Qayghusuz Abdāl 10 Khadīja 88 Khādim 158–159 Khalīl Ata 73 Khāmūsh, Niẓām al-Dīn 99 Kharābātī 23–24, 104–105, 111, 113, 115–116, 118–121, 123–125, 127–128, 131–132, 134, 136–137, 139–143, 200–201, 207 Kharaqānī, Abū al-Ḥasan 73, 98 Khāwand Tahūr 100 Khayyam, Omar 23 Khidr 7, 109, 152 Khujandī, Maṣlaḥat al-Dīn 73 Kirmānī, Awḥad al-Dīn 9 Kisliakov, Nikolai 25–26, 178 Korah 132 Khwāja Aḥrār 98, 99 Khwāja Isḥāq 100 Khwāja Jawānmard 100 Khwāja Qāsim 100 Khwāja-yi Sang-rasān 158 Kononov, Andrei 28 Kubrā, Najm al-Dīn 73–74, 101, 208 Laʿl Shāhbāz Qalandar 70 Lazard, Gilbert 28 Leylī 69 Lot 74, 78 Lykoshin, Nil 186–187 Maʿadd 88 Maḥmūd Baḥrī 4 Majnūn 69 Majzub Baba (Abdul Ghani) 210 Makhdūm Khwārizmī 158 Mannerheim, Carl Gustaf 149–150 Maqṣūd ʿAlī raqqās 34n Marco Polo 144 Maʿrūf Karkhī 71, 101 Marzāq 86 Mashrab, Bābāraḥīm 185–186 Massignon, Louis 200

226 Masʿūd Jabalī 95 Mawlānā Darwīsh Dīwāna-yi Shamʿrīz 48–49, 50 Mawlānā Ghiyāth al-Dīn Shamʿrīz 51n Mawlānā Ḥājjī Abdāl 51 Mawlānā Khurd ʿAzīzān (Tāshkandī) 98 Mawlānā Khwāja gūyanda 34n Mawlānā Mastī 98 Mawlānā Muḥyī 53 Mawlānā Qizili 34n Mawlānā Ṣāliḥ Tarkībī 98 Mawlānā Shams al-Dīn Maʿdābādī 54 Michael 78 Mikhaïlov, Mikhaïl 197n Mīr ʿAbd al-Ḥayy 25 Mīr Ḥusayn Mīrī 190 Moses 66, 78, 81, 87, 94, 127, 132, 180 Muḥammad (Khwārezmshāh) 165 Muḥammad b. Abū Bakr 91, 97 Muḥammad Bāqir 99 Muḥammad Darwīsh Ghijduwānī 98 Muḥammad Ḥakīm Khān 174 Muḥammad Khān 24 Muḥammad Qāḍī 98, 99 Muḥibb Allāh balabānī 34n Muḥibb Khwāja 145–152 Muḥyī Gülşenī 204 Mullā ʿAbduḥalīm 187 Mullā Aka Shiburghānī 98 Mullā Hāshim 105 Mullā Mīr Makhdūm ibn Mullā Shāh Yūnus 105 Mullā Muḥammad 169 Mullā Muḥammad Sayyid Khān 105 Mullā Pāyanda Muḥammad Aqṣī 98 Mullā Sakkākī 158 Mullā Ẓāhir 168 Muniyaz, Abbas 104 Mūsā Kāẓim 99 Muṣṭafā ʿAlī 31 Mustafina, Raushan 164, 173 Nabt 88 Naqshband, Bahāʾ al-Dīn 70, 93, 98, 99n Nāṣir Khwāja 163n Nawāʾī, ʿAlī Shīr 20, 23, 27–28, 31, 33–48, 52–55, 57, 65, 102, 119, 128, 139, 154,183, 201, 206

Index Of Names Nidāʾī 21–22, 103n Niffarī 202 Nīsābūrī 6 Niyāz Muḥammad Andijānī 169 Noah 63, 66, 77–78, 81, 88 Nuʿmān Mānūrī 99 Nuʿmān Miṣrī 73 Nūr al-Dīn Baṣīr 155 Nuranjan 104 Nūrī, Abū al-Ḥusayn 35 Nwyia, Paul 200 Ogudin, Valentin 176 Ortis 56 ʿÖmer Ḥāfıẓ Yenişehr-i Fenārī 207 Pādishāh Ḥusayn Qalandar 70 Palang Tabarrānī 50 Pan Darin 148 Pelliot, Paul 193 Pīr Fakhr Thānī 51 Pīr Sih Sad Sāla 51 Pīr Surkh 52 Pīr Turk 51 Prévert, Jacques 106 Prophet Muḥammad 54, 55, 64–66, 68, 76–83, 87–91, 93, 97–98, 100–102, 106, 110–111, 118, 137, 168, 176, 179, 181, 183–185, 188–189, 192, 202 Qaffāl Shāshī 156 Qāsim ʿAlī qānūnī 34n Qāsim b. Muḥammad 98 Qedar 88 Qurbān Ata/Kurban Ata 176–177 Qushayrī 208 Quṭb al-Dīn Ḥaydar 7, 50 Qutham b. ʿAbbās 158n, 168n Rabar Hasan 210 Ram 69 Rāmitanī, ʿAlī 98 Raphael 78 Raxmat Raximov 179, 180n Riḍā 99, 101 Ridgeon, Lloyd 66n Riwgarī, Khwāja ʿĀrif 98 Ruḥānī Bābā 56

227

Index Of Names Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn 73, 96, 119 Rūzbihān Baqlī 8 Sabit, Eziz 105 Saʿīd Ata 164–165 Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn ibn Mubārak Bukhārī 99n Ṣāliḥ 74, 78, 101, 132 Salmān Fārisī 91–92, 98 Samarqandī, Abū Ṭāhir 25, 158–159 al-Samarqandī, Mūsā 28 Samlākhayl 78 Sangula 209 Saqqā 87n Satan 41, 43, 69–70, 97, 128, 152 Sauleev, Turganbai 171–172 Sawī, Jamāl al-Dīn 8 Sayf al-Dīn Turk 50 Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh Khwārizmī 101 Sayyid Aḥmad ghijakī 34n Sayyid Ata 73 Sayyid Awtad al-Dīn Khwārizmī 101 Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Khwārizmī 101 Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Qalandar 70 Sayyid Ghiyāth al-Dīn 52 Sayyid Marjān Muḥammad Qalandar 101 Sayyid Qāsim Khwārizmī 101 Schmitt, Jean-Claude 1 Seth, 66, 77–78, 81 Seven Sleepers 181n Shāhrukh 10, 54 Shāʿir Qalandar 207 Shaqpaq Ata 163, 165, 167–169 al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb 206 Shaykh Bahrām Ṭabasī 101 Shaykh Burhān 99 Shaykh Khudā(y)dād 98 Shaykh Mohammadi 199 Shaykh Mubram 102 Shaykh Muẓaffar 99 Shaykh Ṣādiq 100 Shaykh Sāsān 3 Shaykh Sulaymān 99 Shiblī, Abū Bakr 35 Shopan Ata 163–165, 167–168, 171 Shuʿayb 81 Sirhindī, Aḥmad 100 Solomon 76, 77–78

Speziale, Fabrizio 207 Stein, Aurel 146–147, 149 Sufyān 151 al-Suhrawardī, Shihāb al-Dīn 15, 156, 208 Sultan Bayezid II 9 Sultan Epe 163n Sulṭān Ḥusayn Bāyqarā 20 Tabataba’i, Sayyed Muhammad Sadeq 59 Tabrīzī, Qāsim 101 Tamerlane 20, 53, 153, 159n Tashmatov, Arifjan 196 Toshev, Nuryog’di 190n Troitskaia, Anna 27, 195–197, 201 Tsar 187 Tustarī 75 Tveritinov, Aleksei 187 ʿUbayd Allāh Khān 49–50 Udad 88 Udd 88 ʿUmar 89, 94, 98–101 ʿUmar Khān 174 Umm Hānī 81, 87 Umurzak 174 ʿUthmān 89, 93–94, 98–100 Uways Qaranī 6, 54n, 98, 101 Villon, François 2 Wāṣifī, Zayn al-Dīn Maḥmūd 34, 48 Yaḥyā 94 Yaʿqūb Beg 147, 191, 193 Yaʿqūb Charkhī 98 Yasawī, Aḥmad 73, 98, 164–165, 185 Yūnus Emre 184 Yūsuf Ashʿarī 99 Yūsuf Saqatī 99 Zangī Ata 98 Zangīcha Tūnī 50 Zayd Aʿrābī 82 Zayd b. Arqam 100 Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn 51, 99 Zayn al-Dīn Bābā 153-156 Zulaykha 89

228

Index of Places

Index Of Places

Index of Places Afghanistan 21, 53–54, 178, 199 Afrasiab 158–159 Aksu 22–24, 104–105, 113, 120, 128 Aktau 165 Aleppo 3 Almaty 173 Altishahr 22, 24 Anatolia (Rūm) 9–10, 55, 70, 184, 195 Andijan 168, 174, 187 Andkhoy 53 Annam 25 Apshyr Ata 177n Arabia 2, 150 Aravan 176 Ardabil 24 Ard al-Tabbālah 4 Āshkhāna/Oshxona 177 Atlas Mountains 182 Azerbaijan 168 Bāb al-Lūq 4 Badakhshan 182 Badr 82 Baghdad 2, 4–5, 156 Balkh 21, 196 Baṭḥā 86 Beshaghach/Beshog’och 185 Bombay 4 Borshida Mountain 179 Bukhara 18, 21, 59, 61, 67, 75, 105, 168, 178, 185, 190n, 196, 206 Cairo 3–5, 28, 204, 206 Caspian Sea 163n, 167 Central Asia 2, 5, 8, 11, 18–19, 21–22, 24–26, 119, 123n, 139, 143–144, 154, 156, 162, 164, 168n, 174, 180–183, 185, 195, 199–200, 202, 205–206, 208 Chafūrchāq 105 Charbak 174, 176 Cherchen 193 Chigatay 190 Chihil-sutūn/Chil-ustun 174–177 Chilas 210 Chimkent 173

China 22, 26–27 Choghtal 104–105 Congo 25 Constantinople 31 Damascus 3, 5 Darvaz 178 Delhi 182 Dūldūl Ata 176 Dushanbe 59 Eastern Turkestan 10, 22, 144, 151, 193, 196, 207 Edirne 204 Egärchi 104 Egypt 3–5, 89, 203 Emirate of Bukhara 186, 190 Fergana 25, 99, 174, 186, 196, 207 Fez 5, 203 Gallipoli 31 Gāzurgāh 11n, 50 Gehenna 175n Ghuziv 11 Gilgit 209 Gissar valley 199 Hama 3 Herat 11–12, 19–20, 28, 30, 37, 39, 44, 48, 50–52, 54–56, 100, 183, 186n, 196, 199–200, 206, 208 Homs 3 India 2n, 4, 5, 8n, 11–12, 15n, 22, 71, 100, 178, 200 Injīl 51, 55 Iran 2–3, 8, 20, 34, 51, 59, 179, 182, 195, 200, 206 Iraq 3, 15n Israel 180 Istanbul 5, 10, 28, 120, 204 Jambyl 169

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_011

229

Index Of Places Jerusalem 86 Kaʿba 68 Kabul 179 Kāfirābād 190 Karakâch daria 145 Karategin 26 Karmana (Navoiy) 25 Kashgar 22, 105n, 194 Kashgaria 25, 113, 144 Kashmir 77 Kawthar 91 Kazakhstan 163, 172, 173n, 174 Kazakh steppe 18 Kerbala 78 Keriya 193 Khaybar 131 Khiva 171, 185 Khiyābān 50–52 Khorasan 6, 10, 18–19, 34, 100, 156, 190n, 195 Khotan 22, 25, 105, 144–145, 147, 149–150, 159, 191–192 Khwarezm 99, 101, 159, 162–163, 165, 168 Kirghiz mountains 18 Kirghizstan 174 Kokand 174 Kökcha 153 Kucha 22 Kūhak hill 158 Kulatov 177n Kunduz 179 Kunya-Urgench 171 Lebanon 6 Lund 105, 106n Māchīn 151 Maghreb 182, 203 Mālān 50 Manguistaou 163–165, 171, 207 Margilan 178 Marrakesh 182 Mashhad 183 Māwarāʾ al-nahr 21, 67, 99–100 Mazandaran 28 Mecca 28, 55, 97, 105, 177n, 181 Medina 81, 91, 97 Merv 196 Middle East 203

Morocco 203 Mount Ḥijāz 81 Mount Hirā 181 Mount Imedi 168 Mount Oglandy 169 Mount Saʿdāniya 86 Mount Ṭāʾif 86 Moscow 26 Mosul 158n Muḥammad Chap bridge 158 Mukhtār hill 51 Multan 12 Muslim East 4 Near East 80 Nishapur 183, 190n, 196 Niya 25 Nookat 77 North Africa 152 Nukus 172 Nūshkent 155 Obihingou river 178 Obimazor river 178 Orifon/ʿĀrifān 153, 155 Osh 174, 177n Ottoman Empire 25, 185, 200 Oxus (Amu Darya) 21 Pakistan 208, 210 Pamir 26, 174, 178 Paradise 81, 82 Paris 28 Persia 2 Plaza Garden 158 Punjab 209 Qaran 101 Qarshi 195 Qïz mazār/Kiz mazar 176 Quba 91, 102 Qunan Su 168 Rampur 207 Rey 196 Roumelia 9 Russia 25–26 Russian Empire 24

230 Sabzevar 190n Saint Petersburg 26–28, 59 Samarkand 18, 25, 27, 53, 153–156, 158–159, 178, 185, 190, 196, 207 Sāq Salmān 52 Senegal 208, 210 Shāh-i zinda cemetery 190 Shahrab 179 Siab River 158 Siberia 22 Sindh 209 Sino-Manchu Empire 24 Ṣirāṭ bridge 175 Street of Musicians 185 Sulï Kamar/Suvli Kamar 177 Syria 2–3 Tabūk 80 Tajikistan 26, 159n, 178, 197, 199 Tarim 191 Tashkent 27–28, 105, 119, 153, 155–156, 185–187, 190, 196–197 Taushyq 165 Tehran 26, 59, 105 Tibet 25 Tigris 78 Tolikon/Tālikān 179 Torbat-i Jām 54

Index Of Places Touba 209 Transoxiana 25, 195 Tunisia 4, 6 Turfan 22 Turkestan 26, 151, 186, 190, 192, 195 Turkestan (city) 165 Turkmenistan 171 Turko-Persian (area) 7–8, 10, 18 Tus 51 Uḥud 54b, 87 Upper Garden 158 Upper Mesopotamia 2 Urumqi 105 Ustyurt 163–164, 169 Uzbekistan 25–27, 153, 156, 183, 188–189, 191, 195, 208 Western Europe 1 Xinjiang 18, 25–26, 104–105, 183, 191, 195, 208 Yarkand 22, 144, 207 Yemen 101 Zerafshan 159n Zubaydā 52