Kings and Dervishes

Saïd Amir Arjomand's Kings and Dervishes is a pioneering study of the emergence and development of Sufism during the formation of the Persianate world. Whereas Sufi doctrine was expressed in the New Persian language, its social organization was detached from the civic movement among the urban craftsmen and artisans known as the fotovva(t) and was politically shaped by multiple forces—first by the revival of Persian kingship, and then by the emergence of the Turko-Mongolian empires.

The intermingling of Sufism's developmental path with the transformation of the Persianate political regimes resulted in the progressive appropriation of royal symbols by the Sufi shaykhs. The original Sufi world renunciation gave way first to world accommodation and the medieval love mysticism of Jalāl al-Din Rumi and Hāfez of Shiraz, and then to world domination. This comprehensive work of historical sociology traces these spiritual and political evolutions over the course of some six centuries, showing how the Sufi saints' symbolic sovereignty was eventually made real in the imperial kingship of the Persianate world's early modern empires.

Saïd Amir Arjomand is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Stony Brook University, the founding editor of the Journal of Persianate Studies, and author of Messianism and Sociopolitical Revolution in Medieval Islam and Revolutions of the End of Time.

Contents

Introduction 
The Emergence of the Persianate World and Its Extension beyond Iran 
Sufism and Kingship in an Analytical Frame 
Power in the Heavens and on Earth in the Sufi Cosmology 

1. The Emergence and the Development of Persianate Sufism in Greater Khorasan 
Greater Khorasan as the Cradle of Sufi Islam 
The Buddhist and Manichaean Roots of World Renunciation in Early Sufism 
The Social Base and Organization of Early Sufism in Khorasan 
Divergence of the Developmental Path of Sufism from that of the Fotovvat Movement 

2. Persianate Sufism—from Ascetic World Renunciation to Divine Love 
The Theoretical Elaboration of Sufi Islam 
The Development of Love Mysticism in Persian Sufi Literature 

3. The Development of Persianate Sufism in Iran, the Seljuq Kingdom of Rum, and Northern India 
The Development of Love Mysticism in Western Iran and Shiraz 
The Mongol Invasion and the Dispersal of the Sufi Masters of Khorasan 
The Spread of Persianate Sufism to Northern India 

4. The Persianate Theory of Kingship and Its Symbolic Contestation 
The Revival of Kingship in Iran and Its Historical Context 
The Muslim Encounter with Greek Practical Philosophy and its Mystical Turn 
The Civic impact on Political Theory and the Fotovvat Professional Ethic 

5. Sufi Love Mysticism and Its Antinomian and Gnostic Turns in Thirteenth-Century Anatolia 
Society, Polity, and Rebellion in the Seljuq Kingdom of Rum 
Jalāl al-Din Rumi and the Development of Antinomian Love Mysticism in Anatolia 
The Rehabilitation of Antinomian Love after the Confrontation with Gnostic Reason 
The Militarization of Popular Contestation in the Anatolian Frontier Region 

6. The Emergence of the Sufi Orders in Iran and the Coming of Age of Sufi Sainthood 
The Reorganization of the Fotovvat into Sufi Congregations under the Late Abbasid Caliphate 
The Organization of the Sufi Orders in Iran and Northern India and the World-Accommodating Turn in Sufism 
The Age of Sufi Sainthood (Velāyat) and Its Cosmogony 

7. Persianate Kingship in the Turko-Mongolian Empires and the Political Ethic of World-Accommodating Sufism 
Islamic Royalism and the Idea of Iran in the Later Il-Khanid Empire 
The King and the Dervish: The Impact of Sufism on the Conception of Kingship on the Peripheries of the Il-Khanid Empire 

8. The Fotovvat Movement and the Symbolic Popular Contestation of Turko-Mongolian Domination 
The Symbolization of Kingship in the Culture of Fotovvat and Sufism 
Popular Contestation and the Appropriation of Royal Symbolism for the ʿAyyārān 
The Popular Transformation of Persian Epic under Turko-Mongolian Domination 

9. Urban Confraternities and Antinomian Democratization in the Age of Hāfez 
Islamic Royalism in the Delhi Sultanate and the Jalāyerid Kingdom 
The Political Culture of the Patrician Principalities on the Periphery of Nomadic Empires 
Antinomian Sufism and the Democratization of Culture: Khwāju and Hāfez in Shiraz 

10. Sufi Sainthood and World Accommodation in the Timurid Age 
The Supernatural Powers of the Sufi Saint in the Empire of the World Conqueror 
Love and Reason Revisited: The Gnostic Disparagement of Ecstatic Love 
Sufi Political Thought in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century

11. The Origins and Development of Countermillennial Sovereignty in Safavid Iran 
The Shiʿite Millennialist Challenge and the Ambiguities of Sufi Mahdihood 
The Emergence of the Safavid Sufi Order and Its Eventual Turn to Mahdism 
The Mahdist Revolution and the Absorption of Sufi Sainthood into Safavid Countermillennial  Autocracy 
The Persistence of World Renunciation and Its Transformation into Transcendental Wisdom under the Safavids 
Conclusion 

Abbreviations 
References 
Index