Religious authority was never a static concept in the medieval Islamic world. Without institutions such as ecumenical councils or a relatively solid "church" hierarchy, religious authority remained largely diffuse and the object of constant negotiation. Jonathan Berkey aptly characterized it as "ordered but contested." There is some order, first in the office of the caliph and later as a class of religious scholars slowly gained authority while simultaneously defining that authority based on a corpus of accepted sources throughout the medieval period. There was; however, a constant renegotiation of who composed this class of religious scholars and which sources were deemed acceptable. It is difficult to say how far and how deeply this authority actually pervaded society. It is apparent that it was not monolithic, but rather left a great deal of room for contestation and the construction of supplemental or even alternative authorities. The papers in this panel examine how different members and groups of society attempted to exert authority upon understandings of religion and on definitions of proper ritual observance in their particular medieval contexts.
The first paper deals with the perennial problem of who has the legitimate right to lead the Twelver She'v community of medieval Baghdad. Religious authority in this paper is especially interesting because of its two-fold nature: the exegetes who interpreted the Quran made use of this authority while subsequently granting it to the community of religious scholars. In describing the fate of a post-Mongol Abbasid caliph under the control of the Mamluks, the second paper explores a new, perhaps more localized, religious authority held by the caliphal family as chief administrators of the shrine of Sayyida Nafisa in Cairo, as well as their new direct relationship with the Muslims who visited the shrine. The final paper continues the theme of the shrine by focusing on how authors of Timurid shrine visitation manuals, preachers, and even Timurid princes attempted to influence the behavior of pilgrims and create an authoritative ritual of pilgrimage. While each of these papers considers religious authority from a different angle and in the different settings of Baghdad, Cairo, Khurasan and Transoxiana, together they contribute to a better understanding of the various ways that religious authority was constructed and accepted by Muslims in the medieval period.
This paper will examine the interplay between popular shrine-based piety and religious authority in Timurid Iran and Central Asia in the Later Middle Period. The veneration of saints and the visiting of shrines (ziy?rat al-qub?r) played a central role in religion in this time for all segments of society. The shrine (maz?r) can be seen as another arena of culture and religion, alongside other public places such as the mosque or the bazaar. Sultans and nobility showed their reverence to saints living and dead at shrines, Sufis gathered in these sacred spaces to learn from their masters and to undertake spiritual exercises, students gathered to listen to lectures, and common pilgrims came as well to listen to preachers and partake in the baraka of the shrine.
The question of authority and who would wield it takes a central place in the discussion of shrine ritual. In the rule of the Timurids, we see that they found benefit to turn to a conservative Islamic idiom to present their rule. At the same time, they employed and fostered a class of ‘ulam?’ that could give intellectual voice to similar forms of religious orthodoxy. This period was also a time when institutionalized forms of Sufism were rapidly growing in power and importance alongside more problematic messianic and apocalyptic figures. Because almost all of these segments of society participated in this form of piety, there were inevitably attempts by the religious and political elites mentioned above, to take an authoritative stance with regard to the practice. This paper will look for these instances of cooption of authority to dictate proper ritual and behavior and how this authority was accepted and/or contested.
My main sources will be grave visitation manuals (kit?b-i maz?r?t) of important Timurid cities such as Herat, Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tabriz. These manuals provide different points of access: some are much more normative in their instruction, while others devote more space to recounting anecdotes that present a larger picture of behavior around a shrine; some have clear Sufi associations, while others were written under royal patronage. By reading these manuals alongside a variety of other sources, I will draw out the different forms of religious authority and their role in governing the life of the Timurid shrine.
Modern scholarship has hastily dismissed the Abbasid Caliphs who reigned under the protection of the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt and Syria (1261-1517) as political sham. To be sure, securing political legitimacy for a class of slave rulers was a main concern behind the transplanting of an Abbasid scion to Cairo, at least in the beginning. However, there is good reason to believe that among the people at large, the ‘ulama’, and even among the Mamluk amirs themselves, there were other considerations that made the Caliphs important and even indispensible presences on the political stage. This importance often transcended their actual political authority, meager as it was, in ways that are starting to become evident.
One example of this importance centers about the Abbasid Caliphs' relationship with the shrine of Sayyida Nafisa (d. 824) in Cairo. This was a well-established destination for pilgrims who came to venerate since the Fatimid era. In 1341, the Mamluk Sultan awarded control of the shrine’s administration to the Abbasid family, where it remained until the Ottoman invasion of 1516-17. This action accentuated Caliphal importance and reconnected the Abbasids with the civilian public after years of intermittent confinement in the Citadel. Connection with the Saint identified the Abbasid line in the public consciousness with the other extant branch of the Prophet's family: the Alids. Becoming guardians of the shrine’s baraka, a wellspring of popular culture and piety in Cairo, provided a new religious authority for the Abbasids and bolstered reverence for the Caliphs among visitors to the shrine.
This paper will execute a much needed reexamination of the religious authority of the Abbasid Caliphate in Cairo, focusing on the shrine of Sayidda Nafisa. It will also examine wider post-Mongol conceptions of Caliphal authority. The sources for study will include Mamluk period chronicles, topographic manuals of the khitat genre and biographical dictionaries which will be cross-examined to shed light on the Cairo Caliphs and their unique relationship with the shrine and devotees of a 9th century Muslim saint, the better to illustrate notions of evolving political authority in the Islamic Middle Period.
