Kings and Dervishes

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.

• ContentsIntroduction 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 Century11. 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