Table Of ContentSufism in Ottoman Egypt
This book analyses the development of Sufism in Ottoman Egypt, during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Examining the cultural, socio-economic
and political backdrop against which Sufism gained prominence, it looks at its
influence in both the institutions for religious learning and popular piety.
The study seeks to broaden the observed space of Sufism in Ottoman Egypt
by placing it within its imperial and international context, highlighting on one
hand the specificities of Egyptian Sufism, and on the other the links that it
maintained with other spiritual traditions that influenced it. Studying Sufism as a
global phenomenon, taking into account its religious, cultural, social and political
dimensions, this book also focuses on the education of the increasing number of
aspirants on the Sufi path, as well as on the social and political role of the Sufi
masters in a period of constant and often violent political upheaval. It ultimately
argues that, starting in medieval times, Egypt was simultaneously attracting
foreign scholars inward and transmitting ideas outward, but these exchanges
intensified during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a result of the new
imperial context in which the country and its people found themselves. Hence,
this book demonstrates that the concept of ‘neosufism’ should be dispensed with
and that the Ottoman period in no way constituted a time of decline for religious
culture, or the beginning of a normative and fundamentalist Islam.
Sufism in Ottoman Egypt provides a valuable contribution to the new
historiographical approach to the period, challenging the prevailing teleology. As
such, it will prove useful to students and scholars of Islam, Sufism and religious
history, as well as Middle Eastern history more generally.
Rachida Chih is a Research Fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique and a member of the Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Central
Asian Studies, at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France.
Routledge Sufi Series
General Editor: Ian Richard Netton
Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Exeter
The Routledge Sufi Series provides short introductions to a variety of facets of the
subject, which are accessible both to the general reader and the student and scholar
in the field. Each book will be either a synthesis of existing knowledge or a dis-
tinct contribution to, and extension of, knowledge of the particular topic. The two
major underlying principles of the Series are sound scholarship and readability.
Previously published by Curzon
Al-Hallaj
Herbert I. W. Mason
Beyond Faith and Infidelity
The Sufi Poetry and Teaching of Mahmud Shabistari
Leonard Lewisohn
Published by Routledge
Sufism and Jewish-Muslim Relations
The Derekh Avraham Order
Yafiah Katherine Randall
Practicing Sufism
Sufi Politics and Performance in Africa
Edited by Abdelmajid Hannoum
Awhạ d al-Dīn Kirmānī and the Controversy of the Sufi Gaze
Lloyd Ridgeon
Sufism in Ottoman Egypt
Circulation, Renewal and Authority in the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries
Rachida Chih
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/middle
eaststudies/series/SE0491
Sufism in Ottoman Egypt
Circulation, Renewal and Authority in
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Rachida Chih
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Rachida Chih
The right of Rachida Chih to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-13589-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02735-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of illustrations vi
A note on transliteration vii
Introduction 1
1 Circulation and networks: the role of Cairo and al-Azhar 17
2 Education: how to guide disciples? 51
3 The Muhammadan path (tarīqa Muhammadiyya)
and Sufi renewal 77
4 Prophetic heritage, authority and the intercession of saints 110
Conclusion 146
Bibliography 149
Index 166
Illustrations
Figures
0.1 Djerdjeh (Jirjā), Upper Egypt viii
1.1 Al-Azhar, general plan 33
1.2 Al-Azhar, the courtyard 34
Map
0.1 The Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century vii
A note on transliteration
The system of transliteration adopted in this work for Arabic words consists of
a simplified and modified form of Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Islam system. For
simplicity’s sake I have omitted diacritical marks. The letters ā, ū and ī repre-
sent the voicing of the long Arabic vowels. Well-known places such as Hejaz,
Mecca, Medina and Luxor have been given in accordance with modern spelling.
The same holds true for terms which have been sufficiently anglicised to be easily
understood, such as ulama, fatwa, Sufi, Sunni, Shi’i, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanafi.
Map 0.1 The Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century
Figure 0.1 Djerdjeh (Jirjā), Upper Egypt
Source: Auguste Bartholdi, Djerdjeh (Jirjā) 1855–1856 (BnF-Paris)
Introduction
‘Shaykh al-Hifnī died before the morning of Saturday 17 Rabī‘ I 1181 (23
August 1767). He was buried on Sunday after prayers in a great gathering at al-
Azhar. It was a very solemn occasion. Thirteen days separated his death from that
of the master al-Mallawī. From then on, affliction began to descend on Egypt and
conditions began to deteriorate, confirming what Rāghib (Pasha)1 had said – that
(al-Hifnī’s) existence had sheltered the people of Egypt from affliction. Indeed,
it is a clearly perceived fact that if there is no one among men to speak the truth
openly, enjoin the right, forbid the wrong, and establish guidance, the order of the
world becomes corrupt and men’s hearts are filled with dissension. When dissen-
sion fills men’s hearts, affliction follows. It is known and established matter that
the soundness of its community depends on its scholars and kings. The soundness
of kings depends on the soundness of scholars, and the corruption of the effect
follows from the corruption of the cause. How much more so when the cause [of
soundness] was lost. The millstone does not turn without its axis, and (al-Hifnī)
was the “pole” of Egypt.’2
These lines penned by ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Jabartī (d. 1825), Egyptian historian
and author of the longest and richest historical chronicle of Egypt between the
end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, have an
apocalyptic tone because he who had just died was no ordinary man: Muhammad
b. Sālim al-Hifnī, Shafi‘i jurist, professor and then rector at the al-Azhar mosque
from 1757 until his death in 1767 was also a spiritual master (shaykh) of the
Khalwatiyya Sufi path, into which he was initiated by a Syrian, Mustafā al-Bakrī
(d. 1749).3 Jabartī, in the long obituary that he devoted to al-Hifnī, painted a pic-
ture of a scholar (‘ālim) whose learning was at once exoteric and esoteric, intellec-
tual and spiritual, and who put his learning into practice in the service of mankind.
Al-Hifnī represented an ideal in which Jabartī, who was himself a well-educated
Sufi (he was initiated into the Khalwatiyya by another of Mustafā al-Bakrī’s dis-
ciples, Mahmūd al-Kurdī, d. 1780), was pleased to recognise himself, and that he
projected in his chronicle.4 But if the death of Shaykh al-Hifnī had serious conse-
quences for Egypt, it was because he was more than just a Sufi scholar: by giving
him the title of pole (qutb), the historian is expressing his opinion that al-Hifnī
was the greatest living saint of his time, and thus testifying to a belief that was
deeply anchored among eighteenth-century Muslims, whether they formed part of
