Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d.412/1021) changed the face of qur’anic exegesis when he collected the teachings of his Sufi predecessors and rearranged them into his compendium of qur’anic exegesis, Ḥaqā’iq al-Tafsīr (The Realities of Exegesis). By fastening the words of his spiritual ancestors to the words of the Qur’an, al-Sulamī developed a new mode of interpreting the Qur’an: one that allowed for an understanding of the Qur’an through the lens of lived mystical experience rather than rigorous curricula of study. This paper argues that al-Sulamī’s tafsīr served to develop ideas of who qualifies as an authoritative interpreter of the Qur’an beyond the rigid notions of tafsīr that existed in al-Sulamī’s social and religious context. Using the spiritual teachings and experiences of celebrated 9th century mystic Dhū al-Nūn al-Miṣrī as a case study, the paper goes on to argue al-Sulamī redefined the paradigm of qur’anic exegesis by establishing Sufis as the prime authorities of qur’anic knowledge. Instead of championing the masters of language and law as the authoritative transmitters of the meaning of the Qur’an, al-Sulamī’s project recognized Sufi masters alone as the authentic interpreters of the Qur’an—a notion forcefully propagated by later luminaries of the Sufi tradition, including Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) and Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240). Relying on qur'anic theories advanced by Gerhard Böwering and hagiographical research developed by Jawid Mojadeddi, this paper analyzes how al-Sulamī combined the use of ḥadīth methodology, Sufi theology, and language deconstruction to establish the Qur’an, not as a object of rigorous examination and study, but as a dynamic vehicle of human experience.

Both the content and channels of manuscript transmission of the philosopher Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi’s short Arabic treatise, I‘tiqad al-Hukama’, “The Creed of the Sages,” show that this was an early work written prior to his “conversion” to Platonism/Illuminationism. Nevertheless, the concern with the compatibility of Sufism and philosophy is already present. Combined with parallel evidence from content and transmission of his Persian allegories, this provides evidence of his early philosophical and religious standpoints. The I‘tiqad al-Hukama’ is a short treatise of about ten printed pages defending the position that doctrines held by the ancient philosophers were compatible with revealed religion in general and Islam in particular. The account given of philosophy is Avicennan and covers cosmology, the relationship of God and the universe, the nature of the human soul, the basic structure of the physical world, and the religious topics of the immortality of the soul and the nature and powers of prophets and saints. The text argues that while the doctrines of the philosophers may appear to differ from those of revealed religion, the underlying meaning is the same—for example, that the philosophers’ notion of the contingency of the universe is essentially identical with the religious idea of its being created. The I‘tiqad contains none of the distinctive ideas of Suhrawardi’s masterwork, The Philosophy of Illumination: light as the fundamental reality, four rather than three metaphysical levels, the Platonic Forms, the critique of Avicennan ontology. This points to an early origin in Iran prior to his philosophical conversion and later journeys in Anatolia and Syria. This impression is reinforced by the evidence of the ten known manuscripts, which indicate that the work initially circulated in Iran and then in Iraqi Shi’ite circles. It was seemiongly unknown to the Sunni circles reviving Suhrawardi’s works in the later 13th century in Iraq and Anatolia. The now-famous Persian allegories show similar origins, as well as indicating that Suhrawardi himself came from a Sufi family and that his intellectual arc moved from childhood Sufism to a philosophy that held the compatibility of philosophy and religion to his mature thought in which Avicennan philosophy was modified in a strongly Neoplatonic fashion. Thus, analysis of content and manuscript tradition can be used to give a clearer picture of Suhrawardi’s early intellectual position.

Sainthood is often an important point of contention between Sufis and non-Sufis in the debate over religious authority in Islam. Historically, Sufi authority has played an important role as one of the main vehicles of Sunni authority by sanctifying the position of the scholarly class of ‘ulama’. Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. 912 CE) is the first Sunni mystic and theologian to systematize the concept of sainthood by making use of Hanafi theology, hadith, and the ascetic-mystical ideas of his age. This paper discusses how the social and religious context of early Islamic Iran and Central Asia informed al-Tirmidhi’s concept of sainthood. Al-Tirmidhi’s discussion of sainthood is understood as a response to the demise of the social institution of clientage in the Eastern provinces of the Abbasid Empire. Clientage, wala’, serves as the foundation upon which al-Tirmidhi builds his theory of sainthood, in which the saints are the true (and superior) guides for the umma(h) as well as its elect members. Al-Tirmidhi uses the vocabulary of clientage to juxtapose the “free” saints to that of the general Muslim populace who are still “slaves” to their lower desires. The muridun, or those who seek God, are styled as the mukatabun, or slaves who have entered into an agreement with their master to free them for a fixed sum. Current studies of al-Tirmidhi’s approach to sainthood have not adequately accounted for the social and political context within which al-Tirmidhi wrote. This discussion is situated in the broader context of a struggle for religious authority during the 9th and 10th centuries CE between Ismailis, Twelver Shi’is and Sunni ulama represented as Sufis. This struggle for religious authority occurred at a time when the Abbasid Caliphs were no longer able to mediate the religious discourse in their shrinking domain. Al-Tirmidhi’s structuring of sainthood has important implications for the development of Sufi modes of authority that have lasted to this day.

Myriad studies, from perspectives as diverse as psychology, religion and anthropology, have analyzed Sufi conceptions of selfhood. Variously described as the “human microcosm”, “subtle spiritual centers”, or “bodily presence”, the human being (dhāt al-insān) appears composed of body (jasm), ego (nafs), heart (qalb), intellect (ʿaql), spirit (rūḥ), and “secret” (sirr). Most analyses concern medieval Sufism, often in its Persian or Indian expression. Despite a plethora of prior literature, remaining important questions include the relationship of this conception to Sufi revivalism in the eighteenth century, its resonance in the Maghrib and Africa, and its apparent displacement with (Western?) notions of selfhood based on the familiar spirit-mind-body division from the late nineteenth century. This paper returns to earlier discussions of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century phenomenon of “Neo-Sufism” or the Ṭarīqa Muḥammadiyya in dialogue with conceptions of selfhood. My analysis draws on source material that has largely escaped previous accounts, such the primary sources of the Tijāniyya and the works of the formative thinkers Muḥammad al-Sammān (d. 1775, Medina) and Maḥmūd al-Kurdī (d. 1780, Cairo), the latter who figure prominently in eighteenth-century Sufi revivalist networks. Textual analysis focuses on 1) expressions of paradigmatic human identity in relationship to self-actualization or knowledge inscription (taḥqīq); 2) resulting visionary potentialities, particularly in reference to seeing the Prophet Muḥammad; and 3) the envisioned social role of self-actualized saints. These sources are analyzed in dialogue with field research in centers of the Tijāniyya in Morocco and Senegal. My argument is that preexisting conceptions of Sufi self-actualization gained heightened importance in the late eighteenth century, culminating in the emergence of renowned Sufi saints perceived to be in constant contact with the enduring bodily presence (dhāt) of the Prophet Muḥammad. Such saints in turn became the focal points for Ṭarīqa Muḥammadiyya Sufi revivals impacting the whole of the Muslim world. Students used the paradigmatic bodily presences of such masters to elaborate transcendent communal identities in times of historical uncertainty. Later modernist shifts in learning methods and epistemology reconstructed classical Sufi notions of human identity to promote a restricted vision of individual selfhood more easily controlled by the emergent modern state.