research paper Sufism

Theoretical Extremes of the Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran: Review Article

Author(s): Leonard Lewisohn

Source: Iranian Studies , Apr., 2009, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Apr., 2009), pp. 285-310

Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of International Society of Iranian Studies

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25597548

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Iranian Studies, volume 42, number 2, April 2009

Leonard Lewisohn

Theoretical Extremes of the Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran: Review Article

Highlighting certain fallacies in a recent anthropological study of three branches of the Ni'matu'll?h? Sufi Order in modern Iran, this review article tries to cast light on the little-understood relationship between legalistic Islam and Persian Sufism. It also attempts to clarify the connection (or rather, lack thereof) between Sufism and the Pahlavi state and the current Islamist regime, while discussing the subtle distinction between tasawwuf and 'irf?n in the mystical philosophies of Sh?ite Islam. Some of the vicissitudes of three decades (1978-2008) of suppression and persecution of Sufis by the

fundamentalist S Mite state in Iran are also chronicled.

This new anthropological study of Sufism by Matthijs Van den Bos in contem porary Iran is a mixed blessing. The text is divided into four parts, the first three of which provide a chronologically based account of the development of the two branches?the Saf?'al?sh?h? and the Sult?n'al?sh?h??of the Ni'matu'll?h?

Order, over the course of the last hundred years with emphasis on the current period of the Islamist Republic. Mystic Regimes represents thoroughgoing, exhaustive research with respect to these two Sufi organizations, the findings of which are contorted by a contrived thesis and dogged by a signal lack of knowledge of Sufi doctrine and history on the author's part. As a piece of research, it occasionally has great merit for the student, but as an informative study of Iranian Sufism, it falls well short of the mark.

In what follows, a survey is made of Bos's study, chapter by chapter, assessing its theses in light of the classical Persian Sufi tradition, which should form the pedagogical foundation, both practical and theoretical, upon which the edifice of any anthropological study of Sufism should be erected.

Leonard Lewisohn is Lecturer in Persian and Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow in Classical Persian and Sufi Literature, University of Exeter, UK. I would like to acknowledge the invaluable help of Terry Graham in editing earlier versions of this article, and warmly thank my many learned dervish friends of the Gunabadi brotherhood (whose names unfortunately must remain anonymous here) for their generous assistance in providing so much information relevant to this review.

Matthijs Van den Bos, Mystic Regimes: Sufism and the State in Iran, from the Qajar Era to the Islamic Republic (Leiden: Brill 2002), ISBN 90-04-12815-8, viii+286pp.

ISSN 0021-0862 print/ISSN 1475-4819 online/09/020285-26 |*% RoUtlecJcie ?2009 The International Society for Iranian Studies ?^ Taylor & FranJfcroup DOI 10.1080/00210860902765067

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286 Lewisohn

Introduction

Bos claims to base his work on the anthropological theories of two little-known anthropologists: M. Bax and F. Spier, most of whose works are in Dutch. In the introduction (p. 2) he cites Bax's concept of "religious regime" as "deployed by ... Spier." Described in only cursory and vague terms, with the ideas and works of neither author properly introduced, the conceptual basis of the study is confusing from the start. Governed by the dictates of his rather serendipitous terminology, opting for technical jargon over clear and unambiguous expression, Bos then devises his own subjective theoretical construct to postulate a new type of "orien tal despotism" (to borrow Marx's term based on that theorist's own simplistic view of Asian governments) among Sufi orders, as if they were mini-governmen tal units within the framework of the society at large.

This reductive approach to the institutions of Sufism under scrutiny comple tely misleads the reader as to the fundamental purpose of a Sufi order, as where (p. 20) he cites M. Kerrou's opinion that "the history of the saints is naught else but the history of their authority." This politicized definition of sanctity is then fantastically expanded in order to implicitly repudiate the very metaphysical, reli gious, doctrinal and theoretical foundations of Sufism. A political slant is even brought to bear on such obviously esoteric-symbolic works such as 'Attar's

Mantiq al-tayry which, Bos alleges "embodies claims to worldly power" (p. 20). Having just edited an entire volume of essays on 'Attar penned by some of the foremost living authorities in the field of Persian literature, who approached this Sufi poet from a variety of contemporary literary and critical perspectives, I find outlandish the author's notion that the Quest for the S?murgh forms a secret subtext underpinning modern Middle Eastern power politics; it is typical of his tendency to suppose hidden political agendas beneath the most innocuous spiritual doctrines and ideas of the Persian mystics.

Bos's anthropological usage of the term "regime," inadequately explained from the start, represents a sardonic distortion of the Arabic term tar?qat. In its tra ditional technical sense in Islamic history, the tar?qat is the spiritual path taken by the Sufi seeker towards the Absolute; it is the intermediate stage between obe dience to the letter of the Islamic Canon Law (shari'af) and the inward attainment or realization of the goal of both Law and Path, that is, the vision of the divine Reality {haq?qaf). Bos overturns this fundamental spiritual hierarchy entirely. According to his perspective all the spiritual tenets, beliefs, ideas, symbols, doctrines, etc. of every so-called Sufi "regime" are best interpreted as minor epi phenomena of their social institutions of religious authority suigeneris. "Religious symbols," he admits (p. 19), "are not central to this study, while the Sufi orders that produce these, in historically distinctive relations to other regimes, are." The

The Art of Spiritual T light: Tarid at-Din 'Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition, edited by Leonard Lewisohn and Christopher Shackle (London, 2006).

See the article on "Tar?ka" in El2, vol. 10, 243-257 by multiple authors.

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 287

notion of "religious symbols" is a mental cipher that allows him to dismiss the entire corpus of metaphysical and doctrinal literature of Persian Sufism, and, ulti

mately, everything to do with the Muslim mystics' creative, aesthetic and spiritual experience, as irrelevant to the anthropological study of man.

In Bos's view, Sufism should not merely be reduced to power politics. Sufism itself is politics, because, as he believes, there are "socio-political factors that deter

mine religious regimes" (p. 40). Indeed, Sh?h Ni'matu'll?h (1330-1431)?the founder of the Ni'matu'llahiyya, whose Sufi Order Bos proposes in Mystic Regimes to dissect for us but none of whose works he deigns to cite?often claimed the Kingdom of Love {salt?nat-i 'ishq) and Spiritual Poverty (salt?nat-i

faqr) were his own personal dominion. But only by the most fantastical stretch of the imagination can one impose such a pseudo-anthropological ta'ivil upon the following verse (one out of hundreds in his poetical works like this), where this anti-political Sufi doctrine appears explicitly stated:

To kings, leave royalty and majesty. To us dervishes leave dervish poverty. The vaunted lore that's known?give that to the (<wise.,} Bereft of self, leave us selflessness.

Unfortunately, the pejorative connotations of the term "regime"?implying a whimsical, domineering rulership based on intolerance, oppression, blind obedi ence, authoritarianism, dictatorship, etc., qualities which are antithetical to the ideals espoused by the Sufis, both classical and modern?are so profound and all-pervasive that they taint much of Bos's (sometimes excellent) prose with a stri dently charged anti-Sufi polemical slant.

In a word, the thesis of Mystic Regimes is based on the theoretical fallacy that a Sufi order is equivalent to a "mystical regime," as if it were some sort of political entity, a microcosm of society at large. The author would have done well to have

Bos seems here to be influenced by the perspectivist theories of Clifford Geertz's symbolic anthropology (his "Religion as a Cultural System," in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973)), whose vocabulary when applied to the study of Sufism, as Vincent Cornell has pointed out, ultimately "poisons the well against spiritual realities and strips religion of its claim to truth," rendering "the academic study of sainthood all but impossible." Vincent Cornell, Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin, TX, 1998), xli. For a detailed critique of Geertz's approach, see Talal Asad, "The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Cat egory," in Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD, 1993), 27-54.

Kulliy?t-i Ash'?r-i Sh?h Ni'matu'll?h Val?, ed. by Jav?d N?rbakhsh (Tehran, 1361/1982), no. 11,

P- \ "We'll never trade the kingdom of spiritual poverty for the world; we'll never sell one cup of

wine for ten score kings" {M? salt?nat-i faqr bi-?lam nafarush?m \yikj?m-i shar?bi'bi-du sad jam nafar ?sh?m), ibid., no. 1177, p. 541.

P?dis?h up?dish?ht, m? u darv?sh?-yi m? \ '?qil?n u ?shin?y?n, m? u b?khw?sh?-yi m?, ibid., p. 13. Cf. Bos's remark: "the Ne'matoll?h? regime assumed state-like properties in its conceptions of

self as a parallel power" (p. 112).

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288 Lewisohn

studied Sufi doctrine first and then to have framed his conclusions in that context

rather than grounding himself in such erroneous ramification?the artificial, arbi trary intellectual qualification that constitutes such a fallacy.

As if to veil the superficial nature of the theoretical structure advanced to tackle Sufism, the clouding of Bos's exposition is exacerbated by prolix and often grammatically unsound statements throughout his introduction. If the author's use of jargon is bewildering enough, his penchant for pleonastic expressions leads to complete bemusement. Ideas are seldom explained in any detail. Bos introduces his own brand of technical vocabulary by quoting one obscure statement before gliding on to another one even more arcane. The reader is harried and hazed by such bizarre expressions as "performance's mul tiple regime dependencies" (p. 5), and hassled and harangued by such garbled usages as "mystic and competitor regimes forward legitimations and delegitima tions that are oriented towards a transhistorical Ursprung (p. 13). The instances of awkward phraseology in the introduction, which are far too numerous to cite here, cast further shadow over the literary style and academic exposition. Little light is going to be shed on the so-called political roles of esoteric Sufi orders

when they are blanketed by such a thicket of circumlocutions as the "uses of transhistorical idealism and its closure thus enter the equation in meaningfully shaping lateral regime relations" (p. 13).

The Introduction states that the scope of the study is restricted to the Saf?'al?sh?h? and the Sult?n'al?sh?h? (Ni'matu'll?h?) orders. But it is difficult to understand Bos's decision to omit the Dhu'l-Riy?satayn?- Ni'matu'll?h? order from his book's purview. There already exist a good number of publications on this branch. The author attempts to justify his omission by stating that the Dhu'l-Riyasatayn branch "developed in a unique, non-Iranian direction after the Islamic revolution" (p. 9). However, since 1979 the Dhu'1-Riy?satayn Ni'matu'll?h? branch of the order has in fact become a virtual champion of the fashionable tendency among Iranians towards the "Persianization" of Islamic Sufism. Its recently deceased leader Dr Javad Nurbakhsh (d. 10 October 2008) is certainly the most widely published Persian Sufi author in the West, whose voluminous writings in Persian (when not subject to the vagaries of gov ernment censorship and/or confiscation) are sold in bookshops throughout Iran. Interestingly, Bos's arbitrary omission of the Dhu'l-Riy?satayn?- Ni'matu'll?h? branch from the book's survey is later subverted by his treatment of it (pp. 148-153) which misrepresents the order's views and doctrines considerably, as we shall see.

Thus we read: "In the Islamic Republic and the Pahlavi period, Sufi experience differed because (different) religious urge was subject to different constraint" {sic, p. 4), and introducing somebody called Fabian, he says: "one ought to abandon the view that sees performance as 'enactment' (of texts) and treat it instead as 'event' and 'action'" (p. 4).

10On which see Leonard Lewisohn, "Persian Sufism in the Contemporary West: Reflections on the Ni'matullahi Diaspora," in Sufism in the West, ed. by Jamal Malik and John Hinnells (London, 2006), 49-70.

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 289

Chapter I: <(Full Circle: On the Interpretation of Iranian Sufism"

Reminiscent of the owl's treatment of the hoopoe in Suhraward?'s tale (the owl, be reminded, blinded the other bird for the heresy of believing that one could see in full daylight ), this chapter (31-44) offers a highly selective and distorted presentation of Henry Corbin's monumental contribution to Iranian Studies. Bos begins (pp. 31-32) by arguing that Corbin's scholarship is not grounded in either history or in time. Basing himself on the "reality of objective geogra phy," he claims that this truly epistemologically subjective doctrine of his "meets the denial of Sufis." He highlights the notion of the transcendence of chronological time in Sufism, maintaining that the Iranian Sufis' supposed resist ance to "secular, historical chronologies" (p. 31) itself forms part of their theoso phical teachings.

This standpoint according to Bos's thesis leads to "the essentialist Sufi vision of the self and a "negation of social historicity." This is a superficial account of Sufi metaphysics and psychology. Sufis have never negated the uses of chrono logical history, never asserted that the self is an essence outside of time. Quite the contrary, their view is opposed to this, as the psychological basis of the Sufi doctrine of ' fan?y attests. This is not only a parody of Corbin's phenomen ological approach to Islamic theosophical doctrines but a travesty of all Sufi doctrines of time.

A few pages later, with the author's critique that "Corbin, Nasr, Tab?tab?'? and their Tehran circle rewrote Shi'ism into otherworldly gnosis" (p. 37), Bos's

From Suhraward?'s "Lugh?t-i m?r?n," in Majm?'a-yi Musannaf?t-i Shaykh Ishr?q (Shih?b al-D?n Suhrawardi), ed. by S. H. Nasr (Tehran, 1380/2001), with an introduction by Henry Corbin, vol. 3, pp. 302-305.

Cf. Wolfgang Smith, Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief (Peru, IL, 1984), chapter 2.

"In the experience o?fana the sufi participates in the real life, as his sense of independent exist ence vanishes and he realizes the truth that he exists entirely by God ... The experience does not destroy the personal identity (rasm) of the Sufi; on the contrary, it strengthens it by making him realize his rootedness in God." M. A. H. Ansari, "The Doctrine of One Actor: Junayd's View of Tawhid," The Muslim World (1983): 46.

A similar no less foolish but far more scholarly parody of Corbin's phenomenology was advanced by Steven Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade and Henry Corbin at ?ranos (Princeton, 1999); on which see Maria Subtelny's revealing riposte: "History and Religion: The Fallacy of Metaphysical Questions (A Review Article)," Iranian Studies, 36, no. 1 (2003): 91-101. Corbin, following the lead of a number of Sufi thinkers, discriminated between horizontal and vertical time, or linear time vs. the time of the soul, or external vs. internal history {gam?n ?f?qi va anfus?). In the Sufi tradition, while the corporeal senses may experience a portion of the timeless vision of the heart and soul (cf. Rum?, Mathnaw?-yi ma'naw?, ed. R.A. Nicholson (Rprt: Tehran, 1363/1984), this does not necessarily negate the reality of linear temporality.

On which, see G. B?wering, "Ideas of Time in Persian Sufism," in The Heritage of Sufism, ed. by L. Lewisohn (Oxford, 1999), vol. I: Classical Persian Sufism from its Origins to Rumi (700-1300), 199ff.

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290 Lewisohn

polemical agenda to deprecate Corbin's phenomenology is sharpened. There was no doubt a strong interest amongst these thinkers in transcendental gnosis?as the discovery and publication by both Corbin and S. H. Nasr of the texts of the major thinkers of the School of Isfahan, not to mention lesser known classical and contemporary Sufi and Ismaili thinkers fully demonstrates?but to assert that they therefore "rewrote Shi'ism" or "ignored discontinuous political incursions, which were lacking in eternal essence" (p. 35) is a deliberate misreading of their intellectual project taken to the point of absurdity.

Corbin's History of Islamic Philosophy for instance, is a chronologically organised account (beginning with the Qur'an in the seventh century and ending with Sabzaw?r? and his school in the nineteenth), arranged according to historically based sources and periods in the context of which the major figures and move ments in Islamic thought as they lived in chronological time are presented and dis cussed. In no sense does it "rewrite" Shi'ism, although Corbin does, indeed, present his own fresh interpretations of it, as would any historian of philosophy. Bos's quip that Corbin made the undervaluation of "social dynamics and histori cal trends" into his personal "research methodology" (p. 41) is utterly facetious. In these pages, Bos hardly mentions, much less attempts to evaluate and analyze the methodological framework of Islamic theosophical thought on its own terms, that is, within the very framework in which the researches of Henry Corbin in Islamic philosophy were conducted. Either unwilling or unable to properly evaluate Corbin's methodology, the author in this chapter succeeds only in deforming the French scholar's monumental contribution to Iranian Studies beyond all recognition.

However, the most troubling distortion perpetrated in this chapter is the author's assertion that "Corbin's representations have now become 'Shi'ism from the point of view of Shi'ism itself, that is, Shi'ism even from the politicised perspective of the Islamic Republic" (p. 43). This recalls Wasserstrom's bizarre remark that Corbin's thought incarnated an "assault on democracy and science."19 While it is true that the Islamic fundamentalist ideologues currently reigning in Iran have appropriated the works, names and reputations of many Western orientalists?e.g. Browne, Nicholson, Izutsu, Corbin, Nasr,

Corbin in fact specifically addresses the problem of the periodization of the history of Muslim philosophy, underlining that it is wrong to impose that the occidental categorization of Antiquity, Middle Ages and Modernity on Islamic philosophy, stating that other categories, specifically Islamic, must be employed. See his En Islam iranien (Paris, 1971), I: xiii. Tab?tab?'?, of course, was by no means apolitical in his philosophy, as Hamid Dabashi has shown in his Theology of Discontent: the Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York, 1993), 316ff.

Corbin was virulently opposed to historicism, but did favor and support historical studies, underlining that "une humanit? qui renoncerait aux ?tudes historiques, serait une humanit? frapp?e d'ann?sie collective." En Islam iranien, I: xvi.

His references to Corbin's ideas take the form of telegraphic statements, as on pp. 34-35, where his hermeneutical phenomenology is summarized and critiqued in only six sentences and two notes.

Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion, 155.

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 291

Schimmel?to further their own political agenda and furnish much of the missing cultural capital for their theocratic state, this does not mean that those intellec tuals endorse or approve of being intellectually gang-raped by these Islamist thugs as implied here. Despite the idiosyncratic originality of some of Corbin's opinions, one thing that he always opposed was the Shi'ite legalist monolithic misrepresentations of Islam as constituting the sole kind of Muslim orthodoxy. That is the present position of Tehran's mullocracy, who love to sprinkle their sermons with references to Ayatollah Khamenei's pompous sobriquet as Supreme "Leader of all the Muslims of the World."

II: " Trilateral Figurations on the Development of Iranian Sufism"

Chapter 2 (pp. 45-69) opens with an excellent account of the appearance of Sufism in the Muslim world, followed by a commendable summary of the con frontation between juridical and Sufi notions of spiritual authority and initiation (wal?yat), and the socio-cultural particularities of these notions in Iranian Shi'ite thought (pp. 46-50).

However, Bos's thesis that "because of its antinominian traditions, Sufism is not a unitary social object" (p. 47) is vastly overplayed. It is widely acknowledged by Sufi chroniclers that there is a diversity of social expressions in the history of Sufism, such as the historic divisions between the Schools of Baghdad and Khurasan, sober vs. intoxicated Sufis, although nothing is mentioned of these classic notions anywhere in this book. In their place, Bos invents his own cat egories with ramifications, providing a simplistic presentation of the historical strife between canonical jurists and Sufis, which, he asserts, does not express any real dichotomy of fundamental religious types. This argument flies in the face of what nearly all established Islamic scholarly opinion in this field (in par ticular A. Zarr?nkub, M. Hodgson and S. H. Nasr) generally maintains. Of course, there has always existed a "historical pattern of overlap between Jurists and Sufis" (p. 47; emphasis added). Sufis may come from any social background, permeate every walk of life, and can practice any profession. As demonstrated by the prominent example of Abu Hamid Ghaz?l?, there is nothing to prevent Sufis from being doctors of the Law as well. Such cases tend to exist more in the Sunni context than the Shi'ite, since the Shi'ite jurisprudent has to contend with the idea of finding gnosis through the Hidden Imam rather than through a living master. However, the ease with which a Sunni jurist can be a Sufi?and even a Sufi master?is borne out by the cases of Ab?'l-Q?sim Junayd Baghdad! (d. 910), 'Ayn al-Qud?t Hamadh?n? (d. 1131) and S?'in al-D?n Turka Isfahan! (d. 1427),

who were all professional judges. At the same time this spirituality attuned to

See L. Lewisohn, "Sufism and Theology in the Confessions of S?'in al-D?n Turka Isfahan! (d. 830/1437)," in Sufism and Theology, ed. by A. Shihadeh (Edinburgh, 2007), 63-82; and L. Lewisohn, "In Quest of Annihilation: Imaginalization and Mystical Death in the Tamh?dat of 'Ayn al-Qud?t Hamadh?n?," in The Heritage of Sufism, vol. I: Classical Persian Sufism from its

Origins to Rumi, ed. by L. Lewisohn (Oxford, 1999), 285-336.

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292 Lewisohn

both Nomos and Eros does not eradicate the deep doctrinal dichotomies and differences in mystical theology, nor render traditional modes of literary expression (literal ^?/V/exoteric terminologies vs. symbolic bat in ?'esoteric language) and methodology (reliance on reason/'^/ or relayed tradition/'naql vs. emphasis on lovej'ishq and intuition/>e^?/) between Jurists and Sufis thereby obsolete. Such divergences are consistently highlighted by nearly all classical Persian Sufi authors, from Qushayr? and Hujw?r? down to Ghazal? and 'Attar, and reappear unchanged in the treatises of Turka Isfahan!, and finally in the writ ings of Fayd-i K?sh?n? and 'Abd al-Razz?q L?h?j? of the School of Isfahan. That a political substructure, even a social motivation, may be manifested through this dichotomy (p. 18, n. 12) is not in question. However, this socio-political dimen sion does not thereby abolish the psychological and metaphysical "typologically structured spiritual universe" (p. 48) which sustains it, as Bos argues. One cannot simply reduce the theocentric universe of Islam to a power play of competing

modes of political or spiritual authority, as he would have it. The final pages of the chapter (61-67), devoted to discussing the Ni'matu'll?h?

Order under the Q?j?r Shahs, are well written and extensively annotated, but the characterization (p. 65) of Muhammad Sh?h Q?j?r as being "a Sufi-king as much as the Safa vid Sh?h Ism?'?l" shows lack of awareness of the degenerate nature of Safavid pseudo-Sufism. The latter was an intolerant and fanatical warrior against non-Shi'ites, a political despot, Sufi in name alone; the former was a far more moderate ruler (albeit politically inept). His comparison is particularly feeble here if only because there is as much doubt about the authenticity of Shah Ism?'?l's Sufism among specialists in Safavid religion and history as the reality of Muammad Sh?h Q?j?r's devotion to his Sufi vizier M?rza Aq?s? is attested by the majority of historians of the Q?j?r period.

See L. Lewisohn, "Sufism and the School of Isfahan: Tasawwufand Trfan in Late Safa vid Iran ('Abd al-Razz?q L?h?j? and Fayd-i K?sh?n? on the Relation of Tasawwuf, Hikmat and Trfan,''' in The

Heritage of Sufism, vol. Ill: Late Classical Persianate Sufism: the Safavid and Mughal Period, ed. by L. Lewisohn and D. Morgan (Oxford, 1999), 63-134.

As the great literary historian Dhab?hu'll?h iaf? {T?rikh-i adabiy?t-i Iran, II, 13th edition (Tehran, 1373 A.Hsh./1994), V/1: 170) points out: "The tinpot sect of Safavid Sufis who flourished during the uprising and expansion of power and under the rule of Shah Isma'?l and his son Sh?h Tahm?sp were devoid of all of the disciplines of classical Sufism; not only were they unaware of the higher ideals of Sufism, they had only a vulgarized apprehension of the existence of such ideals, their understanding being based on popular, watered-down beliefs followed without any deeper awareness. Since they followed the tar?qat of their own shaykhs in such an ignorant manner, no wonder that they readily condemned all other intellectual movements besides their own as heretical, and endeavoured to eliminate everyone else ... These pseudo-Sufi Turkish Qi%il b?sh, from the time that Sultan Junayd and Sultan Hay dar had decked them out in coats of mail and stripped them of their dervish robes, forging their pious strings of beads into sabres and spears ... were in reality, no longer Sufis, although we can see, incredible as it appears, that they still insisted on calling themselves Sufis."

For a fuller coverage of Muhammad Sh?h's relation to Sufism see Leonard Lewisohn, "An Introduction to the History of Modern Persian Sufism," a two-part study in The bulletin of the

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 293

This is overall a well-researched and lucidly presented chapter, but the author's frequent usage of Chahardih?'s Sayr? dar tasawwuf as a source (cited six times here alongside eminent scholars such as Zarr?nk?b) makes a mockery of his serious academic research. Sayr? dar tasawwuf is a poorly composed hodgepodge of personal, often polemically expressed, opinions. This text is replete with crude aspersions cast on almost all the contemporary Sufi masters and orders in Iran, with a pronounced anti-Sufi bias. Thus, it is hardly appropriate to set it on a par with great academic scholars of Iranian Sufism such as Zarr?nk?b, Corbin and Gr?mlich. For Bos to go so far as to praise (p. 11) the incoherent jumble that constitutes Sayr? dar tasawwuf as a "magnum opus" raises serious doubts about the scholarly objectivity of this study and puts to question the very criteria of his research.

III. "New Mystic Regimes (1900-1941)"

Chapter III (pp. 73-110), which is devoted to political developments in Ni'matu'll?h? Sufism during the Constitutional Revolution (1905-11) and under the rule of Reza Shah (1921-41), starts out with an excellent overview (pp. 73?77) of the transformations which modernization and Westernization effected on Persian Sufism during this period. It must be said, however, that despite the basically solid scholarship, certain shallow generalizations do occasion ally slip in, such as the unsupported statement: "The Ne'matollah? path had dis integrated in the late Qajar era" (p. 76). This is patently untrue. The Order, in all its branches, was vigorously active throughout the period, forming the basis for its signal expansion several generations later in the late twentieth century.

School of Oriental and African Studies, "Part I: The Ni'matu'll?h? Order: Persecution, Revival and Schism," 61, no. 3 (October 1998): 448f.

24Bos reads the name as Chah?rdah?, as if the said individual were the "fourteenth" of something or other, whereas he comes from a complex of four villages, "chah?r dih" in Iran's Caspian Sea province of Gilan.

Sayr?dar tasawwuf is?contrary to its title's declared meaning "A Survey of Sufism"?a diatribe against Sufism and its adherents. Its approach is polemical rather than objective, and its judgments are personal, often to the point of being vitriolic?full of wild assertions and unsubstantiated asser tions about, and attacks upon, almost all the various contemporary Sufi masters in Iran. (Not to

mention the fact that it is poorly punctuated and sparsely annotated). For instance, on p. 135 of the text Chah?rdih? makes the wild accusation that the poetry of Jav?d N?rbakhsh and ^?diq 'Anq? was all plagiarized from the works of Farah Hamad?n?, which is not only completely false, but vicious slander. On p. 138, Chah?rdih? has the gall to criticize the fact that Iranian Sufis use the Mathnaw? of Rum? "to ornament their Orders," a plainly ridiculous quibble, since all the great Persian Shi'ite theosophers (not to mention Sufis), from Mulla Jadr? to Sabzavar?, have used the Mathnaw? to "ornament," illustrate and underpin the conceptual basis of their thought.

Thus in the next chapter, on pp. 97-108, there appear 25 references within the space of 60 notes to Sayr? dar tasawwuf.

See Lewisohn, "An Introduction," 449ff., which comes to opposite conclusions.

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294 Lewisohn

While a very valuable overview of the masters of the Sultan 'Ali Sh?h Gunab?d? Order from the 1880s to 1918 (year of the death of N?r 'Ali Sh?h II of that branch) is given (pp. 77-80), nothing whatsoever is mentioned of the theosophical works of these masters. Here, as elsewhere in the book, the exter nal political history of the Gunab?d? Sufis takes priority over their literary, intel lectual and philosophical traditions. Strangely, far more space (pp. 81?86) is allocated to the renegade Sufi preacher and jurist Kayw?n Qazw?n? (d. 1938) in this chapter than to either of the two key Gunab?d? masters of the same period!

Pages 97-108, which discuss the evolution of the Saf? 'Ali Sh?h order and its connection with Freemasonry, are by far the best written, focused and most thoroughly researched sections of the book. Even so, the picture they give of the order is askew. We hear nothing at all of Saf? 'Al? Shah's famous and fre quently reprinted D?van, the compendium of poetry which gained such renown that his poems were set to music by the greatest composers and sung by the best vocalists in early twentieth-century Iran. Moreover, no mention is made of his major mystical mathnaw? epic, Zubdat al-asr?r^ nor of his unique, fully ver sified Persian exegesis of the Koran surah by surah. These important doctrinal and theosophical works, if and when cited in the book, are done so merely to give indication of Saf?'s spiritual authority and power (p. 182), or as containing allusions to the social psychology of martyrdom (p. 183, n. 39). Throughout

Mystic Regimes^ Sufi literary works are treated as merely of accessory significance, to be mined to extract something of political relevance from them (e.g. p. 108, n. 149).

IV. "Contrary Mystic Regimes (1941-1979)"

In this chapter (pp. 111-142), Bos sets out to analyze "Sufism's royal patronage in the period 1941-1979, and its partial transformation, as a religious tradition, into a regime-bound discourse" (p. 112). The rigorous academic analysis that had been the cardinal virtue of the two foregoing chapters is now abandoned. Circumstantial evidence based on unsubstantiated assumptions are advanced to support a number of questionable theses, which are then presented in place of the bare facts. We hear nothing about any of primary spiritual aims and vision of the Persian Sufi tradition?unity (tawh?d), gnosis (ma'rifaf), love ?ishq), creative intuition (kashf shuh?d), etc.?all such notions are reduced to the dark stratagems of power politics.

"Beyond the promise of personal salvation," he muses, "Sufism offered a doctrine of empowerment. Herein lies an important reason why it was Sufis rather than, for instance, monarchy-minded jurists, to whom royals were particu larly drawn" (p. 113). In other words, Bos suggests that Att?r and R?m? and the

whole literary heritage of the Persian Sufi tradition, arguably the richest mystical

Discussed in Lewisohn, "An Introduction," 450f.

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 295

literature in all the languages of the world, had no innate emotional or literary appeal over the hearts and minds of the Sufiophile political intelligentsia in Pahlavi Iran, who only sought "empowerment" through reading Sufi poetry and by venerating the verse of their awliya\

Even more illuminating is Bos's next sentence where he pontificates: "There was not provision in Shi'ism for a caliph, let alone a king, but the idea of divine power vested in the physical person of a leader was what defined Shi'ite Sufism?as it did the former state religion of Zoroastrianism, the main pillar of royal legitimisation" (p. 113). How true indeed that Shi'ism rejected the pol itical legitimacy of the Sunni caliphate. Wow false to maintain that Shi'ism thereby also rejected kingship and the monarchical rule of kings. Kingship was not only the normal, but the only conceivable form of temporal authority in Shi'ite political theory down to the late Q?j?r period. Contrary to Bos's claim, until 1979 reli gious authority in Shi 'ism never became institutionalized to the point of being centralized in a single religious figure invested with "divine power" in Iran. Certainly such a notion does not "define Shi'ite Sufism" either, at least not in the temporal sense of the term. Here Bos is culpable of the same sin that he con demned Corbin for?rewriting the history of Shi'ism.

Bos's translation of the spiritual charisma of the Sufi shaykh into brute political force simplistically conflates the symbolic notion of spiritual kingship with worldly rule based on temporal authority. Sh?h Ni'matu'll?h himself had warned against this conflation in a ghazal addressed to Tamerlane:

While your domain is from China to Shira%, Mine is a realm with no frontier.

I serve this king of mine. You may go and vaunt your throne and crown.

Having misconstrued a fundamental Sufi spiritual doctrine into a political stra tagem for attainment of worldly power, by this sleight of pen?a garbled reading in turn based on a major historical fallacy about Shi'ite political theory itself

29In his edited Authority and Political Culture in Shi'ism (Albany, NY, 1988), 80ff., S. A. Arjomand underlines the fact that the Safavids inherited and preserved intact most of the political institutions of Sunni Iran, and in particular notes that the notion of kingship remained completely intact down to the rule of the Q?j?rs, who "legitimized kingship ... as authority pertaining to the temporal sphere." (p. 90)

Arjomand, Authority and Political Culture in Shi'ism, 93. As Mangol Bayat ("Anti-Sufism in Qajar Iran," in Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries

of Controversies and Polemics, ed. by Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke (Leiden, 1999), 627) under lines, both the Shi'ite Sufi 'urafa and the cle?c-hukam?' "shared in common the conception of a specially gifted individual, endowed with a semi-divine qualification to unveil, in an evolutionary fashion, the esoteric meaning of the holy texts."

Kulliy?t-i Ash'?r-i Sh?h Ni'matu'll?h, p. 412, no. 900; trans. Terry Graham, "Sh?h Ni'matu'll?h Vali: Founder of the Ni'matu'll?h? Sufi Order, in The Heritage of Sufism, I: The Eegacy of Medi?val Persian Sufism, ed. by L. Lewisohn (Oxford, 1999), 183.

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296 Lewisohn

which adopted a seriously flawed assumption and misrepresented it as political fact?Bos now speculates that because the Pahlavi monarchy lacked all temporal legitimacy, its rulers sought out the Sufis "for a mystical sanction of ambiguous,

worldly power" (p. 113). Reiterated throughout this chapter, this same fallacy made-fact appears, Bos returning again and again to charge the Sufis for soliciting state support: "Sufism in the period 1941-1979 would thus remain enigmatic, without the political context of royal patronage, as Opus Dei without its flawless embedding in Franco's nationally catholic Spain" (p. 111). His Opus Dei com parison is particularly odious, since the reactionary Catholic organization was purpose-built as an ideological motor to drive the Falangist regime. This is counter to the whole principle of Sufism down through the ages, the aims of which are largely apolitical, directed at the ethical and spiritual cultivation of its followers on a strictly individual basis without reference to class, rank, pro fession or political connection.

Feeding the reader a diet of selectively culled quotations from a number of Persian and Western sources, the ensuing pages (115-121) bolster Van den Bos's predetermined thesis that Sufism between 1941 and 1979 in Iran was characterized by the all-encompassing patronage of the Pahlavi state, thus chan ging Sufism's character into a regime. A barrage of quotations is then utilized to make such sweeping generalizations as: "royal patronage was not just bestowed upon them but actively sought by Sufis" (p. 120). This is a gross overstatement of the simple truth that members of certain Sufi groups, like everyone else in the post-World War II society of Iran down to the Ayatollahs' coup d'?tat of 1979, had some kind of connection with the royalist state. The truth is that some Sufis had affiliations with the Pahlavi state. And many more did not. The same goes for every other social grouping in the whole country. So what? The pre sence of Sufis in the higher echelons of the Pahlavi state was even more happen stantial than the participation of Freemasons in the British and American secular governments today.

In discussing royal patronage and religious opposition in the Saf?'al?shah? order (pp. 121-131), Bos offers credible new information (notwithstanding his continued reliance upon Chah?rdih?'s polemical works, especially p. 125, n. 63) on the political background of this order. Indeed, if any Sufi group in Iran can be found which from its inception was intimately linked to royal power, it was this brotherhood, and therefore Bos's regime thesis can be made to fit the facts on the ground somewhat. Despite this brief synthesis, however, the argument still remains somewhat artificial since it strains the sense of Sufism both as a tariqat and haq?qat: a path of salvation and a truth attained through contemplative practice and gnostic realization. Whereas Bos's deliberate intent is to impose a purely political reading on Saf?'al?shah? Sufism, politics is, from Sufism's gnostic perspective, ultimately insignificant. That is not to deny or overlook the significance of the fact that a number of leading members of this brotherhood filled high posts in the Pahlavi State, which Bos documents in laudable detail here. Yet this still does not justify the social caricature of

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 297

this order which his philosophically asymmetric reading of tasawwuf evokes in any informed reader.

Pages 131-142 revisits the "Solt?n'al?shah? order" (often referred to as the Gunab?d? order) from the time of S?lih 'Al? Sh?h onwards. Bos records the fact (p. 134) that it was forbidden for Solt?n'al?shah? Sufis to engage in politics, but being so intent on perceiving a hidden political agenda in every meeting, piece of writing or sermon by their masters in pursuit of his mystic regime theory, he thinks it exemplary scholarship to ignore their explicit declaration and assume exactly the opposite to be true.

V. "Purgatory [sic] Revolution (1979-1989)"

Bos spent an entire year (1996-97), followed by a month or two in 1998, conducting anthropological research on the Solt?n'al?shah? and Saf?'al?sh?h? orders in Iran, before revising and publishing his research in 2002. During this period, he interviewed countless Sufi shaykhs and ordinary dervishes, enjoying ample chance to hear what they had to say about the harassment and persecution to which tasawwuf m Iran was subjected over the previous two decades.

Bos prefaces his analysis on the post-revolutionary condition of the two orders under discussion in chapter five with a disingenuous statement: "It seems that public documents from revolutionary Iran that testify to Sufism as a target are either unavailable, as yet, or non-existent. Nevertheless, many Iranians narrate the fate of Sufism in terms of official persecution" (pp. 147-148). He then assures us that the persecution experienced since 1979 by Sufis is but "alleged" (p. 148; p. 178, n. 24). On pp. 147-148, he records at random a few of the accusa tions (heresy, innovation, polytheism, etc.) through which clerics assail Sufism. To be thorough, he should have looked at the articles in conservative newspapers to glean the regime's disdainful view of Sufism, along with any number of speeches and sermons delivered by mullahs, and pens for hire in the right wing press. The websites of the Gunab?d? Order which document the abuses perpetuated by the regime against it, as well as the many Iranian blogs and web sites of Sufism's many foes should also have been examined.

The right-wing Kayh?n and fumh?r?-yi Islam?newspapers feature anti-Sufi editorials and articles on a weekly basis.

See in particular: http://www.Gonabadie-news.blogspot.com; http://www.soltanalishahi. blogspot.com.

Three websites founded by pro-regime writers based in Qum dedicated to attacking Sufism in contemporary Iran are: http://www.kherghe.blogfa.com; http://www.zirekherghe.blogfa.com/ and http://www.kajkool.blogspot.com/. Another website frequently featuring attacks on the Ni'matu'llahi Gunab?d? Order is http://www.gonabadllO.com/. The key websites of notoriously bigoted right-wing ayatollahs, such as Nur? Hamad?n?, H?j Shaykh Jav?d Tabr?z?, F?dil Langar?n?, Saf? Gulp?yig?n?, and Mak?rim Sh?raz?, all of whom have issued fatwas over the past decade declar ing Sufism blasphemy and Sufis heretics, which contain much material inciting hatred and the persecution of Sufis in Iran, are:

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298 Lewisohn

For all his interviews, Bos fails to realize that in a closed society like Iran under the current Islamist dictatorship his informants would have been cautious about

making statements that would have been construed as critical of the regime, notably with respect to the massive expropriation of meeting houses in provincial cities. I myself have often heard from countless Soltan'al?sh?h?, Saf?'al?shah?, and Dhu'l-Riy?satayn- Ni'matu'll?h? Sufis and Shaykhs over the past three decades of how, after their regular monthly interrogation in the police station is over, the dervish is threatened, "If you tell anyone of this interview or of the intimidation that we have made against you and your order, it will have serious consequences for your family, affiliates, and affect your job, etc." The shallowness of the author's sociological perceptivity shows in his failing to realize why the Gun? b?d? dervishes whom he interviewed (p. 156) were so evasive in discussing the arson attack on their centre in Tehran in 1979, meeting every attempt of his to bring up the subject with utter silence. Bos's lack of sensitivity to normal Islamic adab again re-emerges when he watch him (pp. 166-167) try to interro gate some Saf? 'Al? Sh?h? Sufis about their finances, only to be met with evasive and indignant replies. He is seemingly unaware that the Prophet explicitly advised Muslims to speak as little as possible about their finances, travel plans, or religion; thus silence is the normal response among Muslims to any enquiries about these subjects from strangers and foreigners. Any inquiry about a dervish's personal finances, aside from the utter vulgarity of the query, constitutes itself a breach of courtesy {adab) and an affront to the classic Sufi principle of tawakkul.

In fact the dervishes of all the Sufi Orders have been suffering severe harass ment at the hands of the fundamentalist state for the past three decades. Two par ticularly tragic instances of the fanatic clerics' assault on the Gun?b?d? Sufis must here be highlighted. On 13 February 2006, over a thousand Gunabad? dervishes of the Ni'matu'll?h? Order were attacked by the police abetted by a right-wing vigilante mob outside their Husayniyya-Kh?n?qah in the centre of the city of Qom.37 During this incident over a thousand dervishes were arrested and impri soned, some remaining in police custody for months after. Again, on 4 Novem ber 2007, an armed vigilante gang funded by the fundamentalist Islamic regime,

1 Mak?rim Sh?r?z?, see http://www.makaremshirazi.org/persian/ and http://www. amiralmomenin.net/persian/modules.phppname=es & p=2&id= 122.

2 F?dil Langar?n?, see http://www.lankarani.org/far. 3 N?ri Hamadan?, see http://www.noorihamedani.com; http://www.aftabnews.ir/

vdchwmn23xnxz.html; http://www.hawzahnews.ir/showdata.aspxPdataid ==2484. 4 Saf? Gulp?yig?m, see http://www.saafi.net/.

See Leonard Lewisohn, "The Way of Tawakkul: The Ideal of 'Trust in God' in Classical Persian Sufism," Islamic Culture, LXXIII, no. 2 (1999): 27-62.

For first-hand eyewitness accounts given to the authors by members of this branch with a good account of the tragedy, see http://www.geocities.com/latifsalam786/qom_events.htm. Ayatollah

Montazeri's critique of the tragedy is given on the BBC Persian Service website at http://www.bbc. co.uk/persian/iran/story/2006/02/060220_mqom-gonabadi-montazeri.shtml. For the Gunabadi Order's website in the West and other articles about this tragedy, see http://www.icchome.org.

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 299

known as the Bas?j-i Mustad'af?n (nicknamed "Bas?j?"), along with the state security services, attacked the center of this same group of Sufis in Borujerd, a city in the province of Luristan in the west of Iran, home to some thousand followers of the Ni'matu'll?h? Order's Gunab?d? branch. After pillaging all its possessions and furnishings, they burned it down. Some seventy people were injured and more than one hundred and fifty dervishes and sympathizers were imprisoned.

For an anthropologist to have been so out of touch with his subject as to seriously suggest that the harassment and persecution of this branch is merely "alleged" and part of the "contemporary Sufi narration of the self (p. 148) is mystifying.

The Dhu'l-Riy?satayn? (spelled here "Zo'r-Rey?sateyn") branch of the Ni'ma tu'll?h? order, which Bos claims to have "evolved in a non-Iranian direction" (p. 9) so as to be beyond the scope of his study, is next given short shrift (pp. 148-153). Short on facts, long on conclusions, without adequate fieldwork and research and on the basis of a few European scholarly sources as well as a few casually conducted interviews conducted in the West?no interviews at all he admits were conducted with Dhu'l-Riy?satayn? branch members in Iran?he then attempts to reach major conclusions at a single bound about its native

members there.

On page 150, note 16, he notes with aplomb that, "the Zo'r-Rey?sateyn, it is not exaggerated to state [sic], are a 'weststruck' part of Iranian society." This is a highly biased adjective to use, at least in the normal sense as coined by Jal?l Al-e Ahmad. Iranian society for the past century and a half has been subject to Wes ternization and secular influences, but for an anthropologist to adopt the wacky rhetorical posturing of the long passe Al-e Ahmadian vision of gharb^adig?, and characterize this branch as being 'weststruck' leaves a long ripple of wonder coursing through the shallow puddle of his research.

On the following page (151) he claims that a London representative told him that the Tehran kh?naq?h of the Dhu'l-Riy?satayn? branch of the Ne'matoll?h? order has been closed down. This is an interesting proposition considering I visited it myself in November 2007, and happen to know it has not once been closed down during the last fifty odd years. Despite the curfew imposed on the centre by the fundamentalist police at the time of my visit, over two hundred dervishes were sitting in a circle chanting R?m?'s and 'Iraqi's poetry in a series of upper-floor rooms filled with priceless calligraphy, on the walls of which hung the Order's regalia. Could Bos have afforded the time to

The background, history and various details underlying this assault on the Persian Sufis discussed are analyzed by news-sites and other links in English and Persian at: http://www. majzob.com; http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20071112_Sufi_site_attacked_ in_Iran.html; http://www.30morgh-121.blogfa.com; http://www.soofee.blogfa.com; http:// www.darvishan.info; http://www.Gonabadie-news.blogspot.com; http://www.soltanalishahi. blogspot.com;

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300 Lewisohn

conduct even one interview with a member of the Order on the ground in Iran such mistakes would have been avoided.

The comparison of the "ecumenicalism" of the Dhu'1-Riy?satayn? branch with Idries Shah's new age "ecumenicalism" in note 16 on page 151 once again demon strates Bos's naivety regarding source materials. Idries Shah's writings on Sufism are considered notoriously unreliable within academic circles, whereas Javad Nurbakhsh's well-annotated anthologies of classical Persian Sufi texts have received accolades from the likes of Henry Corbin and Annemarie Schimmel. The feebleness of the analogy is akin to comparing the academic works of Joseph Campbell on world mythology or of Mircea Eliade on the history of religions to the new-age tracts of Murshid Sam Lewis.

Lastly, it seems obvious that in note 17 (p. 150, n. 17) the reason Bos found "no evidence" to support my expressed opinion that many of the members of the Dhu'1-Riy?satayn? branch were "advocates of secular liberalism and modernis ation," is because he has neglected to make an in-depth the study of the Dhu'1-Riy?satayn? branch of the Ne'matoll?h? order, expressly deciding to "ignore" it in the main body of his research for this book. If he had made such a study, he would have found the evidence that a number of its members were in fact part of the liberal, secular opposition to the Pahlavi state, as I have shown elsewhere recently.

Despite considerable fieldwork and research, and the ample political contextua lization of the Saf? 'Al? Sh?h? Sufis, the major problem here is that Bos's inatten tion to the written sources penned by its Sufi masters and shaykhs means that serious issues relating to the socio-cultural circumstances of the Saf? 'Al? Sh?h? order in contemporary Iran are consistently avoided. Some basic questions are never asked by the author: What sort of jobs do its members and leaders hold? What kind of material is the Order now publishing? What is the outlook of the order on religious diversity? Limiting his queries strictly to matters of spiri tual leadership/authority (pp. 162-166) or the financial structure of the order (p. 167) intimates his pursuit of a predetermined agenda.

VI. <(Keform(ul)ations (1989-1998)"

Chapter 6 (pp. 139-171) covers the post-revolutionary period from 1989 to 1998 and is dedicated to analyzing the supposed ideological rapprochement with the ruling mullocracy by the two Sufi orders under discussion. Here, Bos's approach stands in sharp contrast to that of a rigorous scholar like Valerie Hoffman, an anthropologist who spent several years at the side of an Egyptian Sufi master, frequenting his assemblies and the meetings of dervishes of diverse orders.

3 As famously exposed in L. P. Elwell-Sutton, "Sufism and Pseudo-Sufism," Encounter, XLIV, no. 5 (May 1975): 9-17.

See Lewisohn, "An Introduction," Part I: 439. Lewisohn, "Persian Sufism in the Contemporary West," 63f.

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 301

Her approach involved total immersion in the language, literature, and culture of Egyptian Sufism. Despite being a Christian, a foreigner, and a woman within a patriarchical culture, she was able to penetrate the hidden, secretive world of the Sufis, share meals with them, even go on pilgrimages, walking long distances in the same moccasins, so to speak, as the Red Indians. Consequently, she was able to make valid observations on the relationship of contemporary Egyptian Sufism to its classical antecedents. Only after years of study and fieldwork, once she had thoroughly understood the way in which its classical ideals were reflected within its modern transformations, was she able to humbly describe and analyze her experiences of Egyptian mystical Islam in mature, scholarly terms.

Bos, on the other hand, lacking a comparable background in the research and study of the classical Persian Sufi tradition, is patently oblivious of some of the fundamental distinctions between theosophical terms used by the Sufis in Iran. In this chapter in particular, he appears to be unaware that the philosophical mys ticism ?irf?n) of philosophically-minded seminarians in Qom (such as Khumayn?,

who did indeed share with the Sufis a number of mutual interests: the notion of

the Perfect Man, ins?n al-k?mil, and preoccupation with the study of the Sufi hikmat of the Eus?s al-hikam of Ibn 'Arab?) is a world apart from the tar?qat based and kh?naq?h-ctnttred tasawwuf of the vast majority of Persian Sufis who belong to the various well-known orders, such as Dhahabiyya, Qadariyya, Naqshbandiyya and Ni'mat';ll?hiyya. To the seminarian philosophers of Qom, (irfan designates the complicated theosophical teachings of Mulla Sadr? known as "Transcendental Theosophy" or al-hjkmat al-muta' ?liyah. The deeply Shi'ite nature of the Sadr?ian 'irf?n of the cleric almost always excludes from its purview and extrudes from its discourse the intoxicated love-mysticism of the classical Persian Sufis {tasawwuf-i '?shiq?na), traceable back to Hall?j and R?zbih?n. The ecclesiastical Shi'ite philosophers accept some of the mystical the ories of the early Sufis, but look askance at nearly all normal Sufi practices: more often than not they are intolerant of Sufi music (sama), they constantly revile the Sufi kh?naq?h institution, and they all reject the hierarchical structure of the Sufi masters as being a dangerous innovation.

To the ordinary dervish, on the other hand, 'irf?n denotes the intellectual doctrines of tasawwuf itself, the higher reaches of specifically Sufi metaphysical teachings {maf?rif) as presented in the classical gnostic Sufi texts such as the Gulshan-i r?% of Shabistar? (especially through its commentary by L?h?j?), the Mathnaw? of R?m?, the Akbarian treatises of 'Ir?q? and J?m?, not to mention the classical Sufi texts composed by Sulam?, Qushayr?, Ansar?, and so on. So, when a certain Sultan 'Al?-Shah? master is cited by Bos as saying: "we ourselves are on the track of 'erfan" (p. 197), it should be pointed out that his Sufi sense of

V. Hoffman, Sufism, Mystics and Saints in Modern Egypt (Columbia, SC, 1995) See Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke, eds., Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of

Controversies and Polemics (Leiden, 1999), where a number of articles dissect this dichotomy.

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302 Lewisohn

"gnostic mysticism" has little or nothing to do with the notion of (erf?n advo cated by the member of the Bas?j, as Bos (pp. 175-176), alas, imagines it does.

Bos then conflates these two traditions of philosophical mysticism {hikmat, (irf?n) and Sufism {tasawwuf) ?which represent entirely different modes of spiri tual practice and schools of contemplative and theosophical discipline?into an entirely fantastical theoretical construct that he calls "State Mysticism" (pp. 172-180). A brief summary of the historical and doctrinal background of the polemics of the jurists in Shi'ite Iran against the Sufis, from the sixteenth century until today, would have entirely put to rest this fallacious construct. Although Bos does quote two anti-Sufi ayatollahs' pronouncements about Sufism's "illegitimacy" (p. 180) in this context, he strangely ignores the very evi dence he advances. In a political climate where such hardline views prevail, where the might of the opponents of Sufism is everywhere in evidence, it is clear how

much the term "State Mysticism" is actually an oxymoron. By adopting this oxy moron as a research axiom some misleading corollaries necessarily ensue:

On page 174, he repeatedly identifies Khomeini's mystical writings as being "Sufi," when in fact they are purely "gnostic," or 'irf?nl, as expressed from a theoretical or intellectual point of view. To cite the name of Khomeini as exem plifying a rapprochement of Sufism and juridical Islam is to confuse the hikmat theosophy of theoretical 'irf?n with the practical concerns of kh?naq?h-ccntcred tasawwuf in which the p?r-mur?d? relationship is paramount. This indicates a major misunderstanding of both Sufism and the politics of the Islamic

A good summary of the dichotomy is given by Mangol Bayat, "Anti-Sufism in Qajar Iran," in Islamic Mysticism Contested, ed. by Jong and Radtke, 624-638. Twice, Van der Bos touches on the basic dichotomy between nomocentric juridical Islam and eros-oriented Sufi Islam: once when a dervish whom he interviews assures him (p. 217) that "mystics and jurists do not understand each other's languages" and again (p. 218), when he speaks of the "wide distribution of these dichotomies in Iranian culture." But having almost no background in the study of philosophical 'irf?n, theoretical hikmat, or in the doctrines and history of classical tasawwuf, such statements pass unnoticed and remain at the level of private musings (e.g. his discussion of this dichotomy on pp. 217-218), or are oddly considered to be evidence of the Sufis' "negation of civil society"

(P-42518) The opposition of fundamentalist clerics to Sufism was the subject of a comprehensive article

in the Iranian Weekly News Magazine: Shahrvand-i imr?^j hafta-n?ma-yi tahl?l?-yi sarasar? dar %am? nah?-yi iqtis?d?, ijtima? va var^ish?, 2, no. 28 (?zar 1386/9 December 2007): 49-54, which features fascinating views with the current Gunabad? master Dr Nur 'Al? T?banda, and the famous Guna bad? Sufi professor of philosophy Dr Shahr?m P?z?ki, then analyzes the fatwas delivered by four bigoted ayatollahs (Saf? Gulp?yig?n?, Muk?rim Sh?r?z?, N?ri Hamad?n?, and F?dil Lankar?n?? who declare all Sufis to be heretics!), as well as providing interviews with several other prominent anti-Sufi ayatollahs in Iran.

4 Even in his bowl-more-scalding-hot-than-its-broth apology for Khomeini's thought, Emad Bazzi?"The Relationship Between Mysticism and Politics in the Personality of Ayatollah Khomeini" (PhD dissertation, University of Sydney, 2002), 28, n. 28?had the ken to note this, confessing that Khomeini, despite his veneration for the Trf?n-i nat(ar? of Ayatollah Sh?h?b?d?, was "vehemently opposed to Sufism in its social manifestation."

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 303

Republic of Iran: precisely the two areas of critical importance to the claims of Bos's thesis.

Bos notes (pp. 176-177) that the Islamic Republic in the final year of the Iran Iraq war used '"erfan?" terminology to rally support for the war effort, implying somehow that their propagandistic use of mystical imagery and ideas is based on some authentic Sufi teachings onjih?d'or rooted in Sufi doctrines of'fan?' (annihil ation in God) or khidmat (service to society). If the Islamist state sent schoolchil dren and youths to the front line, after having brainwashed and indoctrinated them to believe that the Chinese-made plastic keys hung around their necks

were the keys to heaven, if they sent them to the greater glory of holy martyrdom only to be gunned downed by 'Ir?q? tank-fire, this has as much in common with Sufism (see pp. 175-177) as fiberboard does with sandalwood. An examination of three key classical Persian Sufi texts which discuss the spiritual doctrine of

jih?d reveals that while the lesser jih?d in Sufism consists of physical combat against an outward enemy under strict conditions, the greater jih?d comprises struggle against the passions of the lower soul (nafs). The dumb idea that martyr dom on the field of battle should be automatically equated with the acquisition of higher knowledge (ma'rifat) is strongly rejected by a number of classical Sufi texts.50

In this chapter not only is Bos demonstrably misinformed about relations on the ground between the two fundamental camps he is treating (Shi'ite clerics and Sufi mystics), his evident unfamiliarity with Iranian idiomatic parlance sometimes permits him to make translations without confirming the real meaning of the terms he is rendering into English. For example, on page 178 he both mistran slates and misattributes one of the most common quotations in all Persian poetry.

Where the original, from the B?st?n of Sa'd? reads, "Worship is nothing other than service to people" / [Not in rosary, prayer mat and mantle],"5 Bos renders it:

47Cf. Rum?'s Mathnaw?, ed. Nicholson, IV: 1704. See Rash?d al-D?n Maybudi, Kashf al-asr?r wa 'uddat al-abr?r, ed. by 'Al? Asghar Hikmat.

Tehran, 1952-60), IV: 60-61; 'Att?r, Tadhkirat al-awliy?\ ed. by M. Isti'l?m?, 3rd ed. (Tehran, 1365/1986), 349-350; Abu T?hir Kh?naq?h?, Gu^?da dar akhl?q va tasawwuf, ed. by Iraj Afsh?r (Tehran, 1347 A.Hsh./1969), 74.

On which, see Reza Shah-Kazemi, "Recollecting the Spirit of Jihad," in Islam, Tundamentalism and the Betrayal of Tradition, ed. by Joseph Lumbard (Bloomington, IN, 2004), 121 ? 142.

50See, e.g. Rum?, Mathnaw?, ed. Nicholson, V: 3850ff. 51 ' Later on, at p. 217, n. 32, the author mistakes this verse by Rum?: "whom they taught the secrets of Truth, they instructed by sewing his mouth"?commonly cited by Persian Sufis of various orders to explain the necessity for secrecy of Sufi initiation and other rites, paraphrases it in English, before speculating that it derived from "the Ahl-i Haqq repertoire." The verse in question is Har ki r? asr?r-i k?r ?m?khtand \ muhr kardand u dah?nash d?khtand (Rumi, Mathnaw?, ed. Nicholson, V: 2240; some other editions in lieu of asr?r-i k?r read asr?r-i Haqq, which is the reading given by Bos).

52Sa'd?, B?st?n, in Kulliy?t-i Sa(d?, ed. by Muhammad 'Al?Furugh? (Tehran, 1363/1984), 225,1. 11

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304 Lewisohn

"Worship does not go without service to people," blithely ascribing this hemistich to the Sufi B?yaz?d (who was not even known to be a poet!), not realizing that Sa'd?'s verse is probably a paraphrase of Abu Sa'?d ibn Ab?'l-Khayr's (d. 1048) famous story about khidmat in the kh?naq?h as constituting an invaluable spiritual asset.

VII. "Sufism, Civil Society and the State"

Serving as a summary of the book as a whole, the first few pages (207?213) of this chapter address the issue of civil society, guilds and NGOs in Iran, and are especially well-written, using objective standards of descriptive scholarship often absent from the rest of the book. Following this excellent presentation, Bos then situates Sufism in the context of civil society in Iran during the late 1990s and the beginnings of the Khatami era. Surfeited with anthropological jargon alien to the mystical doctrines and principles of the Sufi institutions he is studying, and centered upon the shaky "mystic regimes" construct, these pages (213-216) cast little light on Persian Sufism's political role in modern Iran. This chapter is bedeviled by the author's penchant for sweeping, unsup ported generalizations, as with the assertion that "most Iranians do not primarily recognise" Sufi orders as Islamic associations (p. 213). If the research here had been based on a statistical survey or a series of questionnaires, such statements could be taken seriously, but expressed here as an unsubstantiated private opinion, they are devoid of substance.

The author's allegation that Sufism constitutes a negation of civil society (pp. 218-220) and his endorsement of the anti-Sufi views of Mohammad? (1975) who, so Bos attests, "rightly suggested" that Sufi orders are "mutual inter est clubs" whose interests do not, "contrary to civil associations, transcend the confines of the lodge," is one more careless presumption added to the towering heap of trivial assertions made so far. Mohammadfs argument overlooks the powerful social role which Sufism historically played in Persian society and culture in its interface with spiritual chivalry (futuwwat, javanmard?). Unfortu

~ See Leonard Lewisohn, "Bayazid Bistami," in The Encyclopaedia of Religion, ed. by Lindsay Jones, 2nd edition (New York, 2005), II: 955-957.

See Abu Sa'?d ibn Ab?'1-Khayr, Asr?r al-tawh?d f? maq?m?t al-Shaykh Abu Sd?d, ed. by M. R. Shaf?'?-Kadkan? (Tehran, 1376/1997), I, p. 210: 20-24. The point here is that service, whether to one's fellow man or to one's spiritual master (cf. Bos's mentioning this on p. 179) is (i) a means of self-purification, insofar as it allows one to distance oneself from egocentric activity and gain nearness to God (on this type of khidmat, see Rum?, ed. Nicholson, Mathnaw?, VI: 845), and (ii) it brings benefit to one's neighbors in accordance with several of the Prophet's injunctions always cited by the Persian Sufis, among which can be cited: "The best of men are those who confer benefits upon them." Ah?dith-i Mathnaw?, ed. Bad?' al-Zam?n Fur?z?nfar (Tehran, 1361/ 1982), no. 600.

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 305

nately, space does not allow any discussion of the social function of spiritual chivalry?futuwwat\javanmard??in Persian Sufism here. Reflecting Bos's inat tention to the historical background and consequent misunderstanding of the social role of the Sufi institutions examined in his book, neither of these terms, nor indeed any discussion of the mystical concept and living tradition of chivalry, appears at all in Mystic Regimes. Some three decades ago a team of two Western and three Iranian anthropologists underscored ?v?Xjavanmard? influenced by dar v?sh?was one of the most enduring elements of contemporary Iranian character, but in Bos's Mystic Regimes these notions all languish in intellectual exile.

Furthermore, the criticisms of Sufism expressed in sources which Bos con sulted and used as supporting evidence to bolster his theory of the anti-civil society or anti-social nature of Sufi orders (articles in the Kiy?n periodical cited on p. 214, fn 29; 218, fn 39) are mostly revamped and slightly updated expressions of the same old anti-Sufi sentiments found in the early nineteenth century politi cal reformers such as Akhundz?da (1812-78), Mirza Malkum Khan (1833-1908) and M?rz? Aq? Khan Kirm?n? (1854-96), many of which were later reiterated by Kasraw? (1891-1946), and given a light literary gloss by Al? D?sht?. Others are merely re-statements of the neo-Marxist materialist critique of religion as a social malady, ideas quite popular among the Iranian secular intelligentsia following World War I ?regurgitated Safavid-Shi'ite Sufi-phobia decked out in the guise of modern social theory.

In his treatment of the putative political function of dhikr (p. 226), Bos attempts to draw analogies between the fundamentalist State's politicized manipulation of public Friday prayers {nam?%) with private Sufi dhikr sessions, suggesting that two forms of worship are reducible to almost identical structures of power politics: "both the Friday sermon and the Sufi ceremonies were hier archically authoritarian in that they created two largely undifferentiated strata?the faithful and the affiliates versus the prayer leader and the master? the one defined by the 'following' to the other" (p. 227). Some pages later

The social role of Sufis in Persian society is expressed through the vast Sufi javanmard? litera ture and doctrines, which advocated the interdependence of public ethics and private spirituality, and held that the chevalier must be a Sufi, and the Sufi cannot be a Sufi unless he behaves with chi valry. See Muhammad Ja'far Mahj?b, "Chivalry and Early Persian Sufism, in L. Lewisohn (ed.) The Heritage of Sufism, vol. I: Classical Persian Sufism from its Origins to Kumi (700- 1300), (Oxford, 1999), pp. 549-81. Although seriously understudied, futuwwat is by no means an extinct tradition in con temporary Sufism in Iran today. Many of the finest classical Persian texts were published in Rasail-i fav?nmard?n, ed. M. Sarr?f (Tehran & Paris, 1973) and in Muhammad Ja'far Mahj?b, A'm-ijav? mardi'y?futuwwat (New York, 2000). The tradition was analyzed by Henry Corbin, "Juv?nilit? et chevalerie en Islam iranien," in Corbin, E'Homme et Son Ange (Paris, 1983), 207-260.

'M.C. Bateson et al., "Saf?-yi B?tin: A Study of the Interrelations of a Set of Ideal Character Types," in Psychological Dimensions of Near Eastern Studies, ed. by John Brown and Norman Itzkowitz (Princeton, NJ, 1977), 257 273.

See Leonard Lewisohn, uAn Introduction to the History of Modern Persian Sufism, Part II: A Socio-cultural profile of Sufism, from the Dhahab? Revival to the Present Day," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS), 62, no. 1 (1999): 54-57.

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306 Lewisohn

the author proposes that the purpose of the Sufi dhikr was primarily for the integration of "affiliates into the orders, thereby reproducing hierarchy and respectability" (p. 245). This is clearly a sociologist's reverie, aimed at reducing the most internal and private devotion in Muslim mysticism to purely exoteric public acts of self-display. The long footnote 117 (p. 245: in which Rida 'Al? Sh?h's views of the dhikr ceremony are cited) does not cinch the sociological point Bos would make, but simply shows the sharfat-otiented nature of the Gunab?d? Sufis' sessions. Sufi gatherings in all Muslim countries are subject to guidelines, both internal and external. The difference is that in some gatherings these guidelines are known only to initiates, and if by chance an outsider happens to gain admission, he or she may be bemused by the ceremony when not under standing the esoteric content.

The use of the word "performances" (p. 247) to characterize the practice of dhikr shows Bos's incognizance of the transpersonal nature of the practice. As Jean During observes, dhikr is the negation of self during sam?\ and neither of these exercises can technically be described as being a "performance" either in the liturgical or musical sense of the word. Of course, when the sociologist essaying to fathom such esoteric practices is unfamiliar with trance states evoked by sacred music that are exhaustively recorded by ethnomusicologists the world over, he will remain confined to the strait jacket of his own

Western cultural biases and of course be unable to conceive of any type of utter ance beyond egocentric self-expression. Bos's thesis is hardly bolstered by his complete lack of any reference to the vast literature of Sufi writings on both types of prayer. Dhikr is simply the heart of the body of nam?^ whence the Prophet's remark that "Ritual prayer is incomplete without presence of heart." Following this principle the Sufi teachers insisted that the inward dhikr of the heart constituted the essence of the ritual prayer. In this respect, R?m? devotes a long section in his F?hi m? f?hi to comparison between nam?^ to dhikr, which would have furnished Bos with the missing spiritual context? selflessness?of the Sufi mystical theology that underpins his discussion but eludes his analysis here.

See Jean During's exhaustive treatment of this in his Musique et mystique dans les traditions de ITran (Paris and T?h?ran, 1989), 5: 527-532. See also my "The Sacred Music of Islam: Sama in the Persian Sufi Tradition," The British Journal of Ethno m?sico logy, VI (1997): 1-33. On dhikr and selflessness, see Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC, 1975), 172ff.

See Jean During's insightful discussion of the difference between profane and sacred Sufi musical "performance": "What is Sufi Music?," in The Heritage of Sufism, vol. II: The Legacy of Med iaeval Persian Sufism (1150-1500), ed. by L. Lewisohn (Oxford, 1999), 282-287. For a more elab orate treatment of the same, see also Jean During, Musique et Extase: L'audition mystique dans la tradition soufie (Paris, 1988), 58ff.

See Gilbert Rouget's discussion of dhikr and sama in his Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession, trans, by B. Biebuyck (Chicago, 1985), chapter 7.

61See Fur?z?nfar, Ahad?th-i Mathnaw? (Tehran, 1361 A.Hsh./1982), 5. This passage in question is from his F?hi m? f?hi, trans, by R. A. Nicholson, Rumi: Poet and

Mystic (London 1978), 92. For excellent discussions of the relationship between dhikr and nam?%,

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 307

The author's comparison of the political structure of the Shi'ite clerical class and the Sufi orders (pp. 221-225) is good up to a point?and that point is where the difference and divergence between the two systems commences. This point of divergence is that the Sufi hierarchy is largely an esoteric one, founded on an elaborate theosophical doctrine grounded upon a refined psychol ogy of mystical states and spiritual stations. Another point of divergence lies in the fact that the esoteric hierarchy of Persian tasawwuf (briefly mentioned on p. 226) is underpinned by a millennium of written Sufi doctrinal history, whereas the differentiated hierocratic authority of the mujtahid cultists who wield power in Iran today is a relatively recent phenomenon (the modern Shi'ite hierocracy represents a political innovation institutionalized during the reign of the Safa vid Sh?h Tahm?sp in the late sixteenth century ). Thus, the author's claim to have uncovered "fundamental resemblances in terms of their

organization" (p. 224) sounds like the fisherman who described the hunting of seahorses as being an equestrian sport.

Instead of providing the definite conclusion one would expect from a study of this nature, in the final pages of the book (pp. 239-251) the author resorts to the same circumlocutive language found in his introduction, jumbling together topics in an unstructured manner. For instance, the place and significance of adab in Persian Sufism, which had only been briefly mentioned once before (p. 186), here receives cavalier treatment. In the context of Bos's intentional sociologization of the objects of his study, for instance, "the killing of Hall?j" in 922, an example of aberrant behavior, is slated to be "among the reasons for the development of Sufi [adab] manuals" (p. 240)!

He goes on to state that "political concerns" form the real context for the uni versality of adab in Sufism (p. 240). Adab is a polysemious term and may be trans lated variously as proper behavior, discipline, etiquette, refinement, proper upbringing, good taste, or knowledge of literature, depending on context. In terms of ?d?b al-s?fiyya, it has often been said that, "the whole of Sufism is adab y So when Hall?j 's contemporary Abu Muhammad Jurayr? (d. 923) remarked: "Sufism is to be vigilant over one's inner states, and to observe the

see 'Az?z Nasaf?, Kashf al-haq?'iq, ed. by Ahmad Mahdaw? D?mgh?n? (Tehran, 1344 A.Hsh./1965), 132-134; Abu Haff 'Umar Suhraward?,(Aw?rif al-ma'?rif, trans, into Persian by Ab? Mans?r 'Abd al-Mu'min Isfahan!, ed. by Q?sim Ans?ri (Tehran, 1364 A.Hsh./1985), 134-136.

63Cf. the classic study by M. E. Blochet, "?tudes sur l'?soterisme Musulman," Journal Asiatique, Series 19/VoI. 19 (1902): 489-531.

Said Amir Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Iman: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shi'ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago, 1984), 132-159.

Nor is any mention made of the fundamental differences in typology between Persian Sufis' esoteric hierarchy and the dogmatic hierocratic authority of the fuqah?', a difference reflected in Persian Sufi poetic imagery with its strict dichotomization between two entirely contrary spiritual types and religious loci: %?hid vs. 'arif, '?qil vs. '?shtq, masjid vs. maykh?na, etc.

66tAl? Hujw?r? (Jull?b?), Kashf al-mah?b, ed. by D. Zhukovski (Repr. Tehran, 1336 A.Hsh/1957), 47, 1. 4.

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308 Lewisohn

requirements of adab" he was alluding to the quite refined codes of Sufi Adab that had already existed long before Hall?j's martyrdom in 922. Although as a spiri tual doctrine belonging to the Sufi scale of virtues, adab relates to the sphere of social transactions [mu(?mal?t) rather than to mystical states (ahw?l), the thesis advanced on pages 242?243 that the concern and concentration on adab in the various branches of the Ni'matu'll?h? Order that Bos examined "had jurist or state concerns for law and order as a context" and so "aided integration into the Pahlavi dynasty and accommodation vis-?-vis the Islamic Republic" (p. 242) is an egregious misconception. Adab in Sufism has always been under stood to be primarily internal {batin) rather than external, and the written codi fications of rules oi?d?b, such as the ?dab al-mur?d?n of Abu Naj?b Suhraward? (d. 1168) were essentially penned for their disciples' moral edification, expressing an "ethical doctrine that is applicable to social reality." Political concerns in this genre of literature, contrary to Bos's theory, are so utterly peripheral as to be inconsequential. Unfortunately here, as so often in this book, the author's dis cussion of Sufi adab relies only on secondary sources; if he had bothered to examine the classical manuals of Sufi adab themselves, this erroneous view might have been rectified.

Ab?'l-Q?sim al-Qushayr?, Tarjuma-yi Ris?la-yi Qushayriyya, ed. by Badi' al-Zam?n Furuz?nfar (Tehran, 1379/2000), p. 473: 17-18. For an excellent overview of the earliest Sufi manuals on adab, see Fritz Meier, "A Book of Etiquette for Sufis," in Fritz Meier, Essays on Islamic Mysticism and Piety, trans, by John O'Kane (Leiden, 1999), 49-55.

Thus Rum? assails the functional use of adab for political advancement and characterizes those whose proper comportment is for the sake of public conformity or in pursuit of outward {^fihir) social status, as "the blind {k?ran)"?see Mathnaw?, ed. Nicholson, II: 3219-22. It is surprising that despite his references to Meier and Trimingham (pp. 242-243), Bos still labored under the mis conception that the formulation of these rules were politically motivated. Such an idea simply is not evidenced from any of the classical sources.

Ad?b al-mur?d?n Arabic text with Persian translation by 'Umar ibn Muhammad ibn A/6mad Shirak?n, ed. by N. M?yil Harav? (Tehran, 1363/1984). See Ian Netton, "The Breath of Felicity:

Adab, Ahw?l, Maq?m?t and Abu Naj?b al-Suhraward?," in The Heritage of Sufism, ed. by Lewisohn, I: 457-482

M. Milson, A Sufi Rule for Novices: Kit?b ?d?b al-mur?d?n of Abu Naj?b al Suhraward? (Cambridge, MA, 1973), 17.

For example, some the following manuals written by Persian Sufis that concern Adab: Ans?r?, Mukh tasar f? ?d?b as-s?fiyya, ed. by Laugier de Beaurecueil, in Bulletin de F institut fran?ais d! arch?ologie Orientale, 59 (1960): 203-40; Abu Talib Muhammad ibn ' Ali, Qut al-qul?b? mu'?mal?t al-mahb?b wa wasf tar?q al-mur?d il? maq?m at-tawh?d, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1351/1932); Abu Nasr 'Abdullah ibn 'Al? al-Sarr?j, Kit?b al-luma fi at-tasawwuf, ed. by R. A. Nicholson (Leiden, 1914); Abu Haff 'Umar al-Suhraward?, 'Aw?rif al-ma!?rif (Beirut, 1966); 'Ali b. 'Uthm?n al-Hujw?r?, Kashf al-mahj?b, ed. by V. A. Zhukovsky (Tehran, 1336 A.H.sh./1957), trans, by A. Nicholson (London, 1936); Sulam?, Kit?b adab al-suhba wa-husn al-'ushra, ed. by M. J. Kister (Jerusalem, 1954) and Sulam?, ]aw ami ?d?b as-s?fiyya, ed. by E. Kohlberg (Jerusalem, 1976). Also see Ira M. Lapidus, "Knowl edge, Virtue and Action: The Classical Conception of Adab in Islam," in Moral Conduct and Auth ority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, ed. by Barbara Metcalf (Berkeley, CA, 1984), 38-61. For a good overview of the main sources on Sufi adab, see G. B?wering, 'The Adab Literature of Classical Sufism," in Moral Conduct and Authority, ed. by Metcalf, 62-71.

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Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran 309

Coda

My dear heart, the course which all true love Runs is one. In the realm ruled by love, both the prince And the pauper are one. Until on true love s way You wash clean the false stains and the hues Which seem two,you'll not grasp how it is That N?matu'll?h is himself all one.

Winding up his views in the final paragraph of the book, a similar misunder standing occurs, where Bos remarks: "Even while Kay Ka'?s says, in his descrip tion of the darv?sh [that] 'The essence of truth (r?stt) is the negation of ambivalence {dog?negt)\ this essay has argued that it has been, paradoxically, an essential ambivalence, which maintains and reproduces Sufi truth" (p. 251). Bos annotated his theory to an essay by the famous sociologist Catherine Bateson et al. " who lived and taught in Iran during the 1960?70s. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens among sociologists who study Sufism of the present day with little or no background in the facts of its past, unaware that it is those facts which determine modern social reality, Bateson herself had herself misun derstood and thus mistranslated the key term {dug?nagt) in the Kay-K?v?s passage that she cited.

In Sufism, the Persian term duganag??from the Arabic: thanawiyyat?refers to the divisive state of dualistic consciousness between man and God that causes one to be blind to "Oneness" and unable to see either God in creation or creation

in God. Being trapped in the finite state of his individual selfhood, such a person's distorted polychromatic vision is blind to the monochrome reality of divine Unity (tawh?d), so that, in Shelley's words:

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass Stains the white radiance of Eternity.

A correct translation of the text of the original passage from the Q?b?s-n?ma, misinterpreted and mistranslated by Bateson et al., is as follows:

Ay dit, hi tar?q-i( ashiq? r?hyakf stjDar kishvar-i 'ishq banda u sh?hyakt st\T? tark-i daw-rangt nakum dar rah-i 'ishqjV?qif nashaw? ki Ni'mat Allahyaki st. In Kulliy?t.. ., p. 876, Quatrain 51.

'Bateson et al., "Saf?-yi B?tjn^ 213. That is why B?yaz?d Bas/?m? explained that one must negate oneself to perceive "Reality"

(haqfqat). "What folly to think divine Unity {tawhfd) can be apprehended while still possessed by dualistic self-consciousness (dug?nigi)." 'Abd al-Rahm?n J?m?, Nafah?t al-uns min hadar?t al-quds, ed. by Mahmud 'Abid? (Tehran, 1370 A.Hsh/1991), 55. It is for this reason that Sufis have said that "as long as one perceives things from a dualistic perspective, one is just a Magian" (Ibrahim

Khaww?s, ibid., 138).

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310 Lewisohn

[The Sufi] regards everything with sincerity {sidq), being detached from material considerations {tajr?d). He never sees from a dualist standpoint nor looks with divisive regard at anything {bi-'ayn-i dug?nagt dar h?ch-ch?^ nanigarad).

He abandons supposition, opposition and contention, for a sincere contempla tive regard is devoid of supposition. Nobody ever opposes him either, because the essence of Reality lies in the negation of divisive dualism {ki- ayn-i haqiqat naft-yi dug?nagt-ast) just as the essence of sincerity lies in the rejection of contentiousness.

As we can see from the above passage, in Sufi mystical theology the term dug? nag? denotes the schizoid perspective which cannot transcend human?divine polarity and so is unable to behold divine Unity. Due to his dualist perspective, the beholder is doomed to view everything as twofold, that is, as many and mani fold instead of one. As opposed to the Sufi perspective which sees divine Unity sustaining and manifested in all phenomena?since "Sufism itself is oneness (yaganag?)" ?this dualistic consciousness generates delusions and creates "differences" which in turn spawn "contentiousness." Hence R?m?'s verse: "God's drunkards, though a multitude, are no more than one, while those with passion drunk, even if one, are yet dualists {dug?n). Bateson's?and follow ing her, Bos's?garbling of dug?nagt to mean "ambivalence" distorts its sense and significance in the Sufi lexicon and, in fact, entirely traduces the Sufi mystical theology which should have been a central concern of their studies.

In any case, what is clear from the above review is that Bos himself possessed an ambivalent relationship to the Sufi material he studied, that he has projected his own idiosyncratic and equivocal reading of tasawwuf upon both its historical reality and the social circumstances of the Sufi mystics that he encountered in modern Iran. In sum, Mystic Regimes chronicles the fate of an anthropologist who, despite his acquiring the lacquered shell of scholarly conna?tre ? fond and the armor of a sophisticated apparatus criticus, was unable to fathom the doctrines and traditions underlying the Sufi practices that he studied and so succumbed to his discipline's weirdest theoretical extremes.

Kay-K?v?s ibn Iskandar b. Q?b?s, Q?bus-n?ma, ed. by Ghul?m-Husayn Y?sufi" (Tehran, 1352/ 1973), 252.

76A saying of Ab? Sa'?d al-'Ar?b?, in J?m?, Nafah?t, 227. Kulliyy?t-i Shams y? Dfv?n- kab?r, ed. by B. Fur?z?nfar (Tehran, 1336/1957), I, ghazal 332,

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