- Background
Medieval Islamic mysticism, also known as Ṣūfism, created spiritual practices, institutions, and literary works that fostered and cultivated competing visions of the ideal spiritual path in the Islamic world. Muslim mystics embedded the ideals of these visions within spiritual hierarchies between masters and disciples, institutions such as Ṣūfī lodges and brotherhoods, and literary works like anthologies of poetry and the hagiographic tales of pious exemplars. As most of these mystics were men, they characterized their ideal spiritual path as the acme of manly virtues, a chivalric piety they called “youthful manliness” ( futuwwah in Arabic and javānmardī in Persian).
- Research Question
How did Sufi women contributed and navigated Sufi circles, and how was their authority and their social and spiritual roles portrayed in medieval Sufi literature? How did medieval thinkers conceptualize and theorize futuwwah/javānmardī, and how did their understanding of futuwwah shape the establishment of crucial social institutions?
- Resources
Tazkirat al-Awliā by Attār (12th century) and Nafahāt al-Uns Min Haḍarāt al-Quds by Jāmi (15th century).
- Research method
Reading the primary sources contextualist approach to examine the context, the milieu, and the background that produced the concept of futuwwah and how it has shaped the role of female Sufis.
- Findings
Exclusion of women is not an issue only in books like Sufi hagiographies but also in the akhlāq (ethics) books. Also, social characteristics were male-dominated and male centered; thus, one can see that women were marginalized, just as the term means “young manliness.”
- Significance
Through writing my dissertation, I will delve deeply into all the examples of Sufi women, their existence, and their role in Tazkirat al-Awliā by Attār (12th century) and Nafahāt al-Uns Min Haḍarāt al-Quds by Jāmi (15th century).
