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The Creation of Sufi Spheres in Medieval Damascus (mid-6th/12th to mid-8th/14th centuries)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2014

DAPHNA EPHRAT  and
HATIM MAHAMID
DAPHNA EPHRAT
Affiliation:
Open University, Israel, Daphnae@openu.ac.il
HATIM MAHAMID
Affiliation:
Open University, Israel
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Abstract

This article explores the processes by which medieval Sufi masters and holy men established themselves through their physical and spatial settings and left their mark on the religious and sacred topography. Focusing on Damascus from the mid-6th/12th to mid-8th/14th centuries under the reign of the Zangids, Ayyubids and early Mamluks. The article offers observations on three parallel developments: the genesis and growth of a local space around masters of the Path, the spread of endowed establishments designed by their founders to support the mystics and their rituals, and the incorporation of venerated shaykhs' tombs and shrines into a growing inventory of regional and local sacred sites. Special emphasis is placed on the variations in the very nature of the local sites and spaces that came to be associated with Sufism, their patterns of development and geographical spread, the functions they served and their symbolic message. Through this investigation, the article casts light on the concrete signs of the creation of diverse Sufi spheres in pre-modern Damascus and develops an understanding of the tangible material manifestations of the overall prominent status that Sufism came to hold during a period of intense religious activity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 189 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2014 

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 46/11).

References

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3 For a recent contribution, see Mahamid, Hatim, Waqf, Education, and Politics in Late Medieval Syria (Saarbrucken, 2013), pp. 193–223 Google Scholar.

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9 Geoffroy, Jihâd et contemplation, pp. 25, 30.

10 On Ibn Isrāʾīl's master and spiritual lineage, see Pouzet, Damas, pp. 220–222; and see his biography in Kāthīr, Ismāʿīl b. ʿUmar b., al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya fī l-taʾrīkh (Aleppo, n.d), 13, pp. 254–257 Google Scholar.

11 On Abū al-Bayān, see especially al-Ḥanbalī, Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab (Beirut, n.d), 4: 60 Google Scholar; and see Pouzet, Damas, p. 209.

12 On al-Bayānī ribāṭ, see al-Nuʿaymī, ʿAbd al-Qādir b. Muḥammad, al-Dāris fī tāʾrīkh al-madāris (Beirut, 1981–1988), 2, p. 188 Google Scholar, based on the earliest account by the Syrian historian and topographer ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād (which is lost).

13 On him, see al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn, al-ʿIbar fī khabar man ghabar, (ed.) al-Saʿīd, Abū Ḥajar Muḥammad (Beirut, 1985), 3, p. 224 Google Scholar.

14 On the term “ribāṭ’’ and the designation of the establishment as a place of refuge for Sufis or non-Sufi poor in Mamluk Egypt, see Amīn, Muḥammad, al-Awqāf wa-l- ḥayāt al-itimāʿiyya fī miṣr 648–923/1250–1517 (Cairo, 1980), p. 111 Google Scholar.

15 See Pouzet, Damas, pp. 217–236, for the geographical origins of various mystical and ascetic currents in 7th/13th century Damascus.

16 Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 14, p. 51; Al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, p. 216.

17 Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 14, pp. 39,132.

18 Éric Geoffroy, Le Soufisme en Egypte et en Syrie sous les Derniers Mamlouks et les Premières Ottomans: Orientations Spirituelles et Enjeux Culturels (Damascus, 1995), pp. 216–217, based on the example of the hereditary zāwiya of Taqī al-Dīn al-Ḥiṣnī (d. 826/1426) in the quarter of Shāghūr in Damascus.

19 For an overview of the spread of the Qādiriyya in late medieval Syria, see Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Sufi Orders (New York and Oxford, 1971), p. 43 Google Scholar; Geoffroy, Soufisme, pp. 225–228. For the early establishment of the Qādiriyya around the thirteenth-century Ḥanbalī families of Ibn Qudāma (in Mt. Qāsyūn) and al-Yunīnī (in Baʿalbek), see Pouzet, Damas, pp. 226–227. For a later and more extensive phase in the diffusion of the Path in Ḥama around the House of al-Jīlānī, see Khenchelaoui, Zaïm and Zarcone, Thierry, “La Famille Jȋlȃnȋ in Ḥama – Syrie (Bayt al-Jȋlȃnȋ)”, Journal of the History of Sufism, 1–2 (2000)Google Scholar; special issue, The Qȃdiriyya Order, Dedicated to Alexandre Popovic, Thierry Zarcone, Ekrem IŞIN, Arthur Buehler (eds.), pp. 53–77. For the diffusion of the Qādiriyya in late medieval Palestine, see Ephrat, Daphna, “The shaykh, the physical setting and the holy site: the diffusion of the Qādirī Path in late Medieval Palestine”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 19/1 (January 2009), pp. 1–20 Google Scholar.

20 Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, (eds.) ʿA.F.M. al-Hilw and M. M. al-Tanaḥī (Cairo, 1964–76), 8, pp. 401–418. His biography is also to be found in Ibn al-Mulaqqin, Ṭabaqāt al-awliyāʾʾ, and in several comprehensive dictionaries about a great number of ʿulamaʾ. These include al-Dhahabī, al-ʿIbar, 5, pp. 250–251; al-Kutubī, Ibn Shākir, Fawāt al-wafayāt (Cairo, 1951), 1, pp. 148–150 Google Scholar; Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab, 5, pp. 295–296.

21 On this zāwiya, see al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, pp. 208–209; and see below on the transference of Ibn Qawām's casket to Mt. Qāsyūn.

22 Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 14, pp. 102–103.

23 For the early period of the spread of the Rifāʿī path in Syria, see Geoffroy, Soufisme, pp. 223–224.

24 On Ṭālib b. ʿAbdān and his lodge see, Mūsā b. Muḥammad al-Yūnīnī, Dhayl mirʾāt al-zamān (Hyderabad, 1954–61), 4, pp. 214–215; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 13, pp. 272; al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, p. 204.

25 Shuhba, Ibn Qāḍī, Taʾrīkh Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba (Damascus, 1994),ʿ2, p. 495 Google Scholar; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 14, p. 251; al-ʿAsqalānī, Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar al-kāmina (Beirut, 1993), 3, p. 77 Google Scholar; al-Sulāmī, Muḥammad b. Rāfiʿ, al-Wafayāt (Beirut, 1982), 2, p. 38 Google Scholar.

26 Al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, p. 198. For the appearance of the al-Ḥarīriyya in Damascus, see Pouzet, Damas, pp. 220–221.

27 Shāma, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Abū, Tarājim rijāl al-qarnayn al-sādis wa-l-sābiʿ, (ed.) al-Kawtharī, M. Z. (Cairo, 1947), p. 180 Google Scholar.

28 Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 13, p. 173.

29 On the Ḥarīriyya and their zāwiya, see al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, pp. 197–199.

30 On him, see Ahmet Karamustafa, God's Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200–1500 (Salt Lake City, 1994), pp. 39–52.

31 On Dirkizīnī, see ibid., p. 21.

32 For the Qalandariyya al-Dirkizīniyya lodge in the Damascene cemetery, see al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, pp. 210–212.

33 Other examples of Sufis from the Muslim West are Shaykh Abū ʿAlī b. Hūd al-Mursī (d. 699/1299), the son of a family of Andalusian rulers, and Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad al-ʿInnābī (d. 776/1374), who settled in the Andalusiyya lodge (khānqāh) inside Damascus. On al-Mursī, see Ṭūlūn, Ibn, al-Qalāʾid al-jawhariyya fī taʾrīkh al-ṣāliḥiyya (Damascus, 1981), 2, pp. 625–627 Google Scholar; On al-ʿInnābī, see Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina, 1, p. 298; Al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 1, pp. 466–467; On al-Anṣārī, see Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar, 1, p. 298.

34 Ibn Shaddād, ʿIzz al-Din Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, al-Aʿlāq al-khaṭīra fī dhikr umarāʾ al-shām wa-l-jazīra, (ed.) Sourdel, D. (Damascus, 1956), p. 191 Google Scholar; Al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, pp. 151–153; and Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 12, p. 363.

35 The position of shaykh al-shuyūkh was established in Syria by Sultan Nūr al-Dīn. He appointed one of the senior Sufi shaykhs as general manager of Sufi affairs in all of Syria. Usually, the sultan appointed the shaykh al-shuyūkh; less frequently, his delegate in the region (the governor) was in charge. On the shaykhs of the Sumaysāṭiyya, see al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, pp. 151 161; See also appointments to this khānqāh documented by al-Qalqashandī, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā fī ṣināʿat al-inshā (Beirut, 1987), 12, pp. 101–103, 409–415Google Scholar; On the creation of the office of shaykh al-shuyūkh, see Nathan Hofer, “The origins and development of the office of the `Chief Sufi’ in Egypt, 1173–1325”, Journal of Sufi Studies (forthcoming). We would like to thank the author for his permission to cite his work.

36 On disruptions of waqf affairs in late Mamluk Syria, see Mahamid, Waqf, Education, and Politics, pp. 113–129.

37 For examples of the sources pertaining to medieval Palestine, see Ephrat, Spiritual Wayfarers, pp. 97–118.

38 On these khānqhās, see al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, pp. 141, 161–162, 174–177.

39 Muḥammad b. Kannān, al-Mawākib al-islāmiyya fī l-mamālik wal-maḥāsin al-shāmiyya (Damascus, 1992), 1, p. 205.

40 Abū al-Baqāʾ al-Badrī, Nuzhat al-anām fī maḥāsin al-shām (Beirut, 1980), pp. 41–50.

41 Al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, pp. 143–144.

42 Ibid . 1, pp. 503, 507–508; 2, pp. 144–146.

43 Ibid . 1, pp. 531–532; 2, p. 136; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 13, pp. 105–106.

44 On the ribāṭs in Damascus, see al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, pp. 192–195.

45 Ibid , 1, pp. 117, 119–122, in which al-Nuʿaymī lists the individuals appointed to teach in the ribāṭ and holding the edowed position of the mashaykha.

46 On al-Shibliyya, see Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 13, pp. 105–106; al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 1, pp. 530–532. On al-Najībiyya khānqāh and madrasa, see Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 13, pp. 251–252; al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 1, pp. 468–470.

47 For examples of this blending in Mamluk Cairo, see Berkey, Jonathan, The Transmission of Knowlegde in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education (Princeton, 1992), pp. 47–50, 56–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On this subject generally, see Fernandes, Leonor, The Evolution of a Sufi Insitution: the Khanqah (Berlin, 1988), pp. 20, 33, 97–108Google Scholar. Her observations concerning the stages in the development of the Egyptian khānqāh as a multipurpose institution are germane for the Syrian region, although these changes began earlier in Syria than in Egypt. See also, Amīn, Muḥammad Muḥammad, “al-Awqāf wal-taʿlīm fī Miṣr fī zaman al-Ayyūbiyyīn,” al-Tarbiya al-ʿArabiyya al-Islāmiyya (Amman, 1990), 3, pp. 817–818Google Scholar.

48 On the early development of the zāwiya, see especially Fernandes, The Evolution of a Sufi Institution, pp. 14ff.

49 Donald P. Little dwelled on this distinction with regard to Mamluk Egypt, summarising previous research on the nature and function of the various Sufi establishments in its historical setting based on the study of surviving buildings and their deeds of endowments. See Little, , “The Nature of Khānqāhs, Ribāṭs, and Zāwiyas under the Mamlūks”, in Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams, (eds.), Hallaq, Wael and Little, Donald P. (Leiden, 1991), pp. 93–96 Google Scholar.

50 On the Ṭayiyya zāwiya and its first shaykh see al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, p. 205; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 13, p. 128.

51 Al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, p. 196.

52 In this regard, George Maqdisi observed that zāwiyas developed near the large mosques in Syria and Egypt to serve the Sufi shaykhs and their followers in the same way that the khān (hostel) and ribāṭ developed in Iraq and the East. See Makdisi, , The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 20–22, 33–34Google Scholar.

53 On these zawiyas, see al-Nuʿaymī, 2, pp. 203, 204, 205; on al-Marāghī, see Ibn Ḥajar, al-Durar, 4, pp. 389–399; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 14, p. 344.

54 For examples, see al–Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, pp. 167, 204, 209–212.

55 For descriptions of Bāb al-Ṣaghīr and other cemeteries around Damascus as objects of pious visits, see al-Badrī, Nuzhat al-anām, pp. 221–225, and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Riḥla, pp. 97–99.

56 Al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, p. 162.

57 See about these zāwiyas, al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, pp. 197–199, 212, 213–217.

58 Ibid ., al-Dāris, 2, p. 212.

59 For details, see ibid. 2, pp. 196–197, 201–202, 205–206, 208. See also Ibn Kannān's account of the many great zāwiyas in al-Ṣāliḥiyya (wa-bihā al-zawāya al-mufakhkhama) in his al-Mawākib al-islāmiyya, 1, pp. 278–279.

60 al-Badrī, Nuzhat al-anām, p. 190.

61 In his Kitāb al-ishārāt fī maʿrifat al-ziyārāt, probably the first guide for pilgrimage sites in Syria, the famous scholar and traveller, ʿAlī b. Abī Bakr al-Harawī (d. 611/1215) mentions three holy sites in Mt. Qāsyūn: the Grotto of Blood in which it is said that Cain killed Abel, the Grotto of Adam in which he lived, and the Grotto of Hunger, where it is said that forty prophets died. See, A Lonely Wayfarer's Guide to Pilgrimage, ʿAlī b. Abī Bakr al-Harawī's Kitāb al-Ishārāt fī Maʿrifat al-Ziyārāt, translated with an introduction by Josef W. Meri (Princeton, 2004), p. 24. See also the accounts of Ibn Baṭṭuṭa, Riḥla, pp. 101–102, and Ibn Ṭūlūn, al-Qalāʾid, 1, p. 87, regarding the merits of Mt. Qāsyūn.

62 Banū Qudāma, for instance, found a refuge near the holy places on Mt. Qāsyūn fleeing from the Crusader occupation of Jerusalem and Palestine. On causes of their immigration and settlement on Mt. Qāsyūn, see Ibn Ṭūlūn, al-Qalāʾid, 1, pp. 66–83.

63 Ibid ., 2, p. 482, Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 13, pp. 85–86.

64 Al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, p. 209; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 14, pp. 102–103.

65 Josef W. Meri, The Cult of Saints among Muslims and Jews in Medieval Syria (Oxford, 2002), pp. 257–261; Daniella Talmon-Heller, Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria: Mosques, Cemeteries and Sermons under the Zangids and Ayyubids (1146–1260) (Leiden, 2007), pp. 184–198; Yasser Tabbaa, Construction of Power and Piety in Medieval Aleppo (Pennsylvania, 1997), pp. 32–49.

66 Stephennie Mulder, The Shrines of the ’Alids in Medieval Syria: Sunnis, Shi`is, and the Architecture of Coexistence (Edinburgh, 2014).

67 On which, see Talmon-Heller, Daniella, “The Shaykh and the Community: Popular Ḥanbalite Islam in the 12th-13th Century Jabal Nāblus and Jabal Qāsyūn, Studia Islamica 79 (1994), pp. 103–120 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 See Taylor, Christopher C., In the Vicinity of the Righteous Ziyāra and the Veneration of Saints in Late Medieval Egypt (Leiden, 1998), pp. 47–91 Google Scholar, for an extensive and richly documented discussion of the strategy of burial in the Qarāfa.

69 Al-Badrī, Nuzhat al-anām, p. 223

70 Al-Nuʿaymī cites Ibn Shaddād, saying: “wa-qabruhu yuzāru bi-Bābi al-Ṣaghīr”. See al-Dāris, 2, p. 192.

71 Ibn al-Ḥawrānī’, al-Ishārāt, p. 62; Meri, “A Late Medieval Syrian Pilgrimage Guide”, p. 40.

72 Al-Nuʿaymī, al-Dāris, 2, pp. 210–211.

73 On him, see Mouton, Jean-Michel, Yūsuf al-Fandalāwī: “Chiekh des Malekites de Damas sous les Bourides”, Révue des etudes islamiques, 51 (1983), pp. 63–76 Google Scholar.

74 On which, see the extensive description by his grandson: Abī ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad, Manāqib al-shaykh Abī Bakr, Arabic MS, Princeton, 4552, fol. 27b-30a.

75 Sara Hamilton and Andrew Spicer make this comment in their introduction to Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, (eds.) Sara Hamilton and Andrew Spicer (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 1–2.

76 On the appearance and development of the Syrian pilgrimage literature, see Meri, The Cults of Saints, pp. 150–152; and see Sourdel-Thomine, J.'s discussion of the riḥla genre and its relationship to Damascene pilgrimage guides in “Les Anciens Lieux de pèerinage damascaines d’après les sources arabes,” Bulletin d’éudes orietales, 14 (1952–4), pp. 65–85 Google Scholar.

77 On the development of the complex and the architecture of its buildings, see Kafescioglu, Ciğdem, “‘In the Image of Rūm’: Ottoman architectural patronage in sixteenth-century Aleppo and Damascus”, Muqarans, 16 (1999), pp. 86–90 Google Scholar.

78 Ibn Ṭūlūn, Qalāʾid, 1, pp. 121–123.