Saïd Amir Arjomand's Kings and Dervishes is a pioneering study of the emergence and development of Sufism during the formation of the Persianate world. Whereas Sufi doctrine was expressed in the New Persian language, its social organization was detached from the civic movement among the urban craftsmen and artisans known as the fotovva(t) and was politically shaped by multiple forces—first by the revival of Persian kingship, and then by the emergence of the Turko-Mongolian empires.
The intermingling of Sufism's developmental path with the transformation of the Persianate political regimes resulted in the progressive appropriation of royal symbols by the Sufi shaykhs. The original Sufi world renunciation gave way first to world accommodation and the medieval love mysticism of Jalāl al-Din Rumi and Hāfez of Shiraz, and then to world domination. This comprehensive work of historical sociology traces these spiritual and political evolutions over the course of some six centuries, showing how the Sufi saints' symbolic sovereignty was eventually made real in the imperial kingship of the Persianate world's early modern empires.
Contents
Introduction
The Emergence of the Persianate World and Its Extension beyond Iran
Sufism and Kingship in an Analytical Frame
Power in the Heavens and on Earth in the Sufi Cosmology
1. The Emergence and the Development of Persianate Sufism in Greater Khorasan
Greater Khorasan as the Cradle of Sufi Islam
The Buddhist and Manichaean Roots of World Renunciation in Early Sufism
The Social Base and Organization of Early Sufism in Khorasan
Divergence of the Developmental Path of Sufism from that of the Fotovvat Movement
2. Persianate Sufism—from Ascetic World Renunciation to Divine Love
The Theoretical Elaboration of Sufi Islam
The Development of Love Mysticism in Persian Sufi Literature
3. The Development of Persianate Sufism in Iran, the Seljuq Kingdom of Rum, and Northern India
The Development of Love Mysticism in Western Iran and Shiraz
The Mongol Invasion and the Dispersal of the Sufi Masters of Khorasan
The Spread of Persianate Sufism to Northern India
4. The Persianate Theory of Kingship and Its Symbolic Contestation
The Revival of Kingship in Iran and Its Historical Context
The Muslim Encounter with Greek Practical Philosophy and its Mystical Turn
The Civic impact on Political Theory and the Fotovvat Professional Ethic
5. Sufi Love Mysticism and Its Antinomian and Gnostic Turns in Thirteenth-Century Anatolia
Society, Polity, and Rebellion in the Seljuq Kingdom of Rum
Jalāl al-Din Rumi and the Development of Antinomian Love Mysticism in Anatolia
The Rehabilitation of Antinomian Love after the Confrontation with Gnostic Reason
The Militarization of Popular Contestation in the Anatolian Frontier Region
6. The Emergence of the Sufi Orders in Iran and the Coming of Age of Sufi Sainthood
The Reorganization of the Fotovvat into Sufi Congregations under the Late Abbasid Caliphate
The Organization of the Sufi Orders in Iran and Northern India and the World-Accommodating Turn in Sufism
The Age of Sufi Sainthood (Velāyat) and Its Cosmogony
7. Persianate Kingship in the Turko-Mongolian Empires and the Political Ethic of World-Accommodating Sufism
Islamic Royalism and the Idea of Iran in the Later Il-Khanid Empire
The King and the Dervish: The Impact of Sufism on the Conception of Kingship on the Peripheries of the Il-Khanid Empire
8. The Fotovvat Movement and the Symbolic Popular Contestation of Turko-Mongolian Domination
The Symbolization of Kingship in the Culture of Fotovvat and Sufism
Popular Contestation and the Appropriation of Royal Symbolism for the ʿAyyārān
The Popular Transformation of Persian Epic under Turko-Mongolian Domination
9. Urban Confraternities and Antinomian Democratization in the Age of Hāfez
Islamic Royalism in the Delhi Sultanate and the Jalāyerid Kingdom
The Political Culture of the Patrician Principalities on the Periphery of Nomadic Empires
Antinomian Sufism and the Democratization of Culture: Khwāju and Hāfez in Shiraz
10. Sufi Sainthood and World Accommodation in the Timurid Age
The Supernatural Powers of the Sufi Saint in the Empire of the World Conqueror
Love and Reason Revisited: The Gnostic Disparagement of Ecstatic Love
Sufi Political Thought in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century
11. The Origins and Development of Countermillennial Sovereignty in Safavid Iran
The Shiʿite Millennialist Challenge and the Ambiguities of Sufi Mahdihood
The Emergence of the Safavid Sufi Order and Its Eventual Turn to Mahdism
The Mahdist Revolution and the Absorption of Sufi Sainthood into Safavid Countermillennial Autocracy
The Persistence of World Renunciation and Its Transformation into Transcendental Wisdom under the Safavids
Conclusion
Abbreviations
References
Index
Height:229
Width:152
Spine:30
Weight:590.00