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Ismāʿīl al-Qasṛī, Kubrawiyya, and Sufi Genealogies: “Deep-Dark Transmissions” in Medieval Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2022

Abstract

This paper sheds light on Ismāʿīl al-Qasṛī, his scholarly and pietist networks, Sufi genealogy, and its later transmission. Other than his debated role in Najm al-Dīn Kubrā's initiation into Sufism, very little is known on this understudied yet significant Sufi from Khuzistan. The paper argues that Ismāʿīl al-Qasṛī and his western Iranian Sufi genealogy was the primary, rather than secondary, initiatory chain claimed by Kubrā, his associates, and the later heritage. Besides, al-Qasṛī's robe continued to be transmitted beyond Kubrā's Sufi chain, and received multiple names in the absence of a prominent, eponymous master to claim it. Also introducing the figures in al-Qasṛī's, and hence Kubrā's, spiritual genealogy, the paper discovers the overlooked yet decisive impact of Iranian masters, most notably the famous pietist of the Fars area, Abū Isḥāq al-Kāzarūnī, on Sufism in the later tradition.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Iranian Studies. Originally published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

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Footnotes

The author is grateful to Ashkan Bahrani for his constructive feedback on an earlier draft of the paper, and to Richard McGregor and Abdulrhman Affaq for their help with archival research in Cairo. This research was supported by the Ibn ʿArabī Interreligious Research Initiative at Monash University.