Author's note: This article was first presented at a MESA panel in Washington, D.C., in 1995. I thank all the participants of the panel. I am especially grateful to Professor William Ochsenwald for his comments. I also thank Dr. Edward Mitchell, Paul Powers, and the anonymous reviewers of IJMES for their insights. Needless to say, I am solely responsible for any errors in the text.

¹ Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 4–7.Google Scholar

² Ibid., 47–65.

³ Foucault, Michel, “Two Lectures,” in Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, ed. Dirks, Nicholas B., Eley, Geoff, and Ortner, Sherry B. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 200–21.Google Scholar

⁴ Al-Suwaidī's Riḥla is available in several versions. The original, penned by Shaykh ʿAbdullah al- Suwaidi, is still in manuscript form. A shorter, anonymous version was written by one of his sons, most probably ʿAbdul-Raḥmān al-Suwaīdi, and is also in manuscript. The section of the original manuscript in which ʿAbdullah al-Suwaidī recounts his debates with the Persian and Afghan ulema in Najaf was edited and published separately in Egypt. See ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥusaīn ibn Mirʿi ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-ʿAbbāsī al- Suwaidī, “Al-nafḥa al-miskīyya fī al-riḥla al-makkiyya” (The Fragrant Breeze of Musk in the Meccan Journey), British Library, London, or. ms. add. 23385; “Narratio Obsessionis”, British Library or. ms. add. 7337; and al-Suwaidī, ʿAbdullāh, Muʾtamar al-Najaf (The Najaf Conference), with an introduction by Muḥyi-al-Dīn al-Khatīb (Cairo: Salafiya Press, 1973).Google Scholar

⁵ Voll, John, Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982), 62.Google Scholar

⁶ Voll, , Islam, 37Google Scholar.

⁷ al-Alūsī, Abu Thanāʾ, Kitāb gharāʾib al-ightirāb wa nuzhat al-albāb fī al-dhihāb wa al-iqāma wa aliyāb (The Book of Marvels of Expatriation and the Promenade of Essence in the Departure, Residence and Return) (Baghadad: Shahbander Press, 1909).Google Scholar

⁸ Abou-El-Haj, Rifʿat Ali, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 1–28;Google Scholar and Fleischer, Cornell H., Bureaucrat and Intellectual: The Historian Mustafa Ali: 1541–1600 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 230–31.Google Scholar

⁹ Al-Suwaidī, , “Al-nafḥa al-miskiyya,” fol. 133–38.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Al-Alūsi portrays himself as “a bird in a cage” in Baghdad and hopes that, as soon as his situation is ameliorated by imperial irāda, he will regain his “verdant living … and render the faces of [his enemies] blue [with anger].” See al-Alūsī, , Kitāb gharāʾib al-ightirāb, 226–28.Google Scholar

¹¹ Al-Suwaidī, , “Al-nafḥa al-miskiyya, fol. 3–5.Google Scholar

¹² al-Murādī, Muḥammad Khalīl, Silk al-durarfi aʿyān al-qarn al-thāni ʿashr (The String of Pearls on the Notables of the Twelfth Century) (Baghdad: Al-Muthanna Press, n.d.), 3:84–86.Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Foran, John, “The Long Fall of the Safavid Dynasty: Moving Beyond the Standard Views,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (05 1992): 281–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Voll, , Islam, 83.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Hamid Algar has published an excellent analysis of the whole episode in his article “Shiʿism and Iran in the Eighteenth Century,” in Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History, ed. Naff, T. and Owen, R. (Carbondale, III.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), 288–403.Google Scholar See also Enayat, Hamid, Modern Islamic Political Thought (Austin: University of Texas at Austin, 1982), 39–41;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Cole, J. R. I., Roots of North Indian Shiʿism in Iran and Iraq (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988),30–32.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought, 18–31.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ibid., 40.

¹⁹ Hamid Algar has argued that Nadir Shah's reasons for sponsoring the Jaʿfari madhhab were, in the main, political. Because Twelver Shiʿism was closely identified with the Safavids, a modified Shiʿism, more akin to Sunni precepts, might be more easily adopted as Nadir's credo, as well as appease his troops, who were for the most part Sunni Afghans and Turcomans. Finally, Nadir's “ambitions went beyond the boundaries of Iran [and] the profession of Shiʿism, which had become closely identified with Iran in the Safavid period, would have been inappropriate for the ruler of a broader Islamic realm.” See Algar, , “Shiʿism and Iran,” 298–99Google Scholar

²⁰ Voll, , Islam, 34–39.Google Scholar

²¹ Al-Suwaidī, , “Al-nafḥa al-miskiyya,” fol. 55–112.Google Scholar

²² Ibid., fol. 133–37.

²³ Ibid., fol. 134–37.

²⁴ Rafeq, Abdul-Karim, The Province of Damascus, 1723–1783 (Beirut: Khayats Press, 1966), 98–101;Google Scholar and idem, “Changes in the Relationship Between the Ottoman Central Administration and the Syrian Provinces from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries,” in Studies, 60–73.Google Scholar

²⁵ Hourani, Albert, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge: Belknap, 1991), 236–37.Google Scholar

²⁶ Voll, , Islam, 58–59.Google Scholar

²⁷ Ibid., 64.

²⁸ Zilfi, Madeleine C., The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Post-Classical Age (1600–1800) (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1988), 129–235.Google Scholar

²⁹ Ibid., 229.

³⁰ ʿAbdul-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Suwaidī, “Ḥadīqat al-zawrāʿ fi sīrat al-wuzarāʾ” (The Garden of Baghdad in the Biographies of Governors), ms. or. add. 18507, British Library, London, fol. 122.Google Scholar

³¹ Ibid.

³² Al-Suwaidī, , “Al-nafḥa al-miskiyya,” fol. 162–65.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid., fol. 135–37.

³⁴ Ibid., fol. 195.

³⁵ Ibid., fol. 196.

³⁶ Alorabi, Abdul Rahman, “The Ottoman Policy in the Hijaz in the Eighteenth Century: A Study of Political and Administrative Developments, 1143–1202” (Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1988), 75–77.Google Scholar

³⁷ Al-Suwaidī, , “Al-nafḥa al-miskiyya,” fol. 38–39, 196.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid., fol. 24.

³⁹ Voll, , Islam, 56.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Al-Alūsī, , Kitāb gharāʾib al-ightirāb, 5.Google Scholar

⁴¹ For more information on the origin and development of the Naqshbandi ṭarīqa, see Abu-Manneh, Butrus, “The Naqshbandiyya–Mujaddidiyya in the Ottoman Lands in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Die Welt des Islams 22 (1984).Google Scholar

⁴² Al-Alūsī, , Kitāb gharāʾib al-ightirāb, 15.Google Scholar

⁴³ Ibid., 16.

⁴⁴ Algar, Hamid, “The Naqshbandi Order: A Preliminary Survey of its History and Significance,” Studia lslamica 44 (1976): 148;Google Scholar and Abu-Manneh, , “The Naqshbandiyya–Mujaddidiyya in the Ottoman Lands,” 1–36.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ ʿal-ʿAzzāwī, Abbās, Dhikrā Abī Thanāʾ al-Alūsī (In Memory of Abu Thanaʾ al-Alusi) (Baghdad: Tijara and Tibaʿa Press, 1958), 25–26.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ al-ʿAzzāwī, ʿAbbās, Tarīkh al-ʿIrāq bayna iḥtiāllayn (The History of Iraq Between Two Occupations) (Baghdad: Tijara and Tibaʿa Press, n.d.), 8:15.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid., 16.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 17.

⁴⁹ Al-Alūsī, , Kitāb gharāʾib al-ightirāb, 23–24.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Ibid., 25.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² For details on the Shikāya literature, see Faroqhi, Suraiya, “Political Activity Among Ottoman Taxpayers and the Problem of Sultanic Legitimation (1570–1650),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 35, part 1 (02 1992): 1–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Gerber, Haim, State, Society and Law in Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 154–73.Google Scholar

⁵³ Faroqhi, , “Political Activity,” 2.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Faroqhi, Suraiya, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1994), 7–10, 184–87;Google Scholar and Hourani, , A History of the Arab Peoples, 222.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Al-Suwaidī, , “Al-nafḥa al-miskiyya,” fol. 191–93.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Al-Alūsī, , Kitāb gharāʾib al-ightirāb, 106.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Ibid., 117.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 117–22.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 123.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 128.

⁶¹ Ibid., 129.

⁶² Al-ʿAzzāwī, , Dhikrā Abū Thanāʾ al-Alūsī, 96.Google Scholar

⁶³ Findley, Carter V., Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 61–63.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Al-Alūsī, , Kitāb gharāʾib al-ightirāb, 128–29.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Ibid., 129.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 129.

⁶⁷ Findley, , Bureaucratic Reform, 3–220;Google Scholar and idem, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Hourani, , A History of the Arab Peoples, 224.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Al-Alūsī, , Kitāb gharāʾib al-ightirāb, 127.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Ibid., 127.

⁷¹ Ibid., 129–30.

⁷² Ibid., 129.

⁷³ Ibid., 129–30.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 129.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 131.

⁷⁶ For more details on the rankings and gradings within the Istanbul ulema hierarchy, see Fleischer, , Bureaucrat and Intellectual, 3–33.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Al-Alūsī, , Kitāb gharāʾib al-ightirāb, 132.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Manneh, Abu, “The Naqshbandiyya–Mujaddidiyya in the Ottoman Lands,” 26.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Ibid., 24.

⁸⁰ Al-Alūsī, , Kitāb gharāʾib al-ightirāb, 207.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Ibid., 207.

⁸² Ibid., 208.

⁸³ Ibid., 191.

⁸⁴ Findley, , Bureaucratic Reform, 204.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Al-Alūsī, , Kitāb gharāʾib al-ightirāb, 173.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 188–89.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 135–36.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 148.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 142.

⁹¹ Ibid., 143.

⁹² Ibid., 128.

⁹³ Ibid., 227.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 438–39.

⁹⁵ Ibid., 449.

⁹⁶ lbid

⁹⁷ Ibid.

⁹⁸ Ibid.

⁹⁹ Al-Suwaidī, , “Al-nafḥa al-miskiyya,” fol. 16.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Ibid.

¹⁰¹ Ibid.

¹⁰² al-Suwaidī, ʿAbdul-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbdullāh, “Ḥadīqat al-zawrāʾ,” fol. 15, 16, 19, 22, 28, 40, 41.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Al-Suwaidī, , “Al-nafḥa al-miskiyya,” fol. 55, 57.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., fol. 149–50.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., fol. 186.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., fol. 389–99.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid.

¹⁰⁸ Al-ʿAzzāwī, , Dhikrā Abū Thanāʾ al-Alūsī, 25–26.Google Scholar