God's Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Middle Period 1200-1550Wandering dervishes formed a prominent feature of most Muslim communities well into the modern period, surviving in some regions even today. Shocking in appearance, behaviour, and speech, these social misfits were revered by the public, yet denounced by cultural elites. "God's Unruly Friends" is the first in-depth and comprehensive survey of this enigmatic type of piety, tracing the history of the different dervish groups that roamed the lands in Western, Central and South Asia as well as the Middle East and Southeast Europe. Demonstrating that the dervish lifestyle originated as a reaction to the formation of 'socially respectable' Sufi orders, author Ahmet T. Karamustafa compels us to reconsider the medieval Islamic past as a vast spectrum of widely divergent forms of pious living, accommodating the 'puritanical' and the 'libertine' alike. As the definitive appraisal of this neglected topic, "God's Unruly Friends" will fascinate both scholars of religion and those who seek to challenge and broaden their conception of Islam. |
Contents
Renunciation through Social Deviance | 13 |
Renunciation Deviant Individualism and Sufism | 25 |
Ascetic Virtuosi | 39 |
Copyright | |
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Abdāls Abdals of Rūm Abū activity Ahmad Ahmad al-Badawi al-Suhrawardi's Alī Anatolia antinomian appears Arab ascetic asceticism Asia Minor Āşık awliya Bābā Barak Baba Battutah beard Bektaşīs Çelebi cultural Damascus dervish groups dervish piety deviant dervishes deviant renunciation Digby disciple Edited elite Evliya Çelebi Gölpınarlı group of Qalandars Hācī hair Hasan hashish Haydarīs hospice Ibn Battutah India institutional Sufism Iran Islamdom Islamic societies Istanbul Jamal al-Din Sāvī Jāmīs Kaygusuz khanqah Köprülü Kütüphanesi Later Middle Period master Mehmed Mehmed II Meier Menavino mendicancy mode of piety movements Muhammad Muslim mystical ninth/fifteenth Nişancı numbers Otman Baba Ottoman Empire Persian poet popular religion poverty practices Qalandarīyah Qalandars Qalandars and Haydarīs Qur'an Qutb al-Din Haydar religious renunciatory reports Rūmī saints seventh/thirteenth century Seyyid Shams-i Tabrīzīs shaving Shaykh socially deviant sources Spandugino spiritual Sufi Sufi orders Sufism takbir Tārīkh-i tariqah tekke tenth/sixteenth century this-worldly translation Türk Turkish Uthman Vahidī verses Zāvah