State and religion in Islamic societies

Past & Present, May, 1996 by Ira M. Lapidus

The group structure of Sufism was progressively consolidated in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The residences, once homes to eclectic comings-together of itinerant mystics, gradually became the homes of organized brotherhoods. Formal ceremonies such as the giving of an ijaza or certificate of learning, the passing-on of the khirya or the patched cloak of the master to the disciple, the conferring of a silsila or rhain of authoritative transmission going hack from the present master to the Prophet, turned students into disciples totally dedicated to the service of the master. The only route to spiritual salvation was complete dedication to the master.

Then in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the various groups of Sufi masters and their disciples were linked together. Those masters who were students of a common master in the previous generation came to consider themselves members of a brotherhood, a tariqa, a loosely affiliated international association of Sufis who shared the same religious practices and spiritual tradition. Extended Sufi networks were promoted by ambitious masters who sent their disciples as khalifas or delegates to establish branches of the principal brotherhood. In the course of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Kubrawiya became important in Iran and Transoxania, the Suhrawardiya in Iraq, the Qadiriya in Iraq and Egypt, the Shadhiliya in North Africa and the Chistiya in India. The Sufi brotherhoods organized not only the relations of masters and disciples, but brought into their reach lay affiliates, who looked to the Sufi orders for ritual leadership, healing, mediation, welfare services and political spokesmanship. As Sufism spread, the great mass of the population became affiliated with one or several of the brotherhoods in addition to their affiliation to the schools of law. By the fifteenth century, throughout the Islamic lands the common people were ordinarily both the clients of schools of law and members of one or another Sufi brotherhood. The schools of law and the Sufi brotherhoods had become the backbone of Muslim community organization.

These religious groups commonly withdrew from political affairs and turned into self-protective communities concerned with worship, ceremony and healing activities, the administration of religious law, education and the upholding of morality and of the symbols of an Islamic order. While many avoided contact with rulers, courts and the holders of political power,the religious elites none the less took on a this-worldly responsibility for the upholding of community life and for the teaching of religiously defined ways to personal salvation. Thus they preserved a kind of purity, avoiding the potential corruption of politics, but remained engaged in the needs of their people. The split between Muslim states and Muslim religious communities which came into the open in the ninth century was now fully institutionalized in a structure of society which separated local community organizations from states.