Prof. Neguin Yavari, PhD

“Futuwwatnāmah-i sulṭānī” is a late 15^th century introduction to the science and art of futuwwat (often loosely translated as chivalric brotherhoods) by Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Wā‘iẓ-i Kāshifī (d.1504/05). As noted by its author, it is an attempt to clarify the literal and allegorical valences of the concept. As a branch of the science of taṣawwuf and tawḥīd, Kāshifī writes, the science of futuwwat has a long genealogy stretching back to Abraham, the first fatā, who donned his mantle on his progeny. Indistinguishable from the Sufi ṭarīqat at the outset, it came into its own during the lifetime of the Prophet Seth. How did futuwwat separate from ṭarīqat, and more significantly, what can be gleaned from documenting such a supposed cleavage? I shall argue that Kāshifī’s intention in highlighting the difference between the two—which is not much—is more a matter of method rather than doctrine. 

Modern scholarship has Kāshifī as a “Twelver Sunni,” or a crypto-Shi‘i, a broker of sorts between Iran’s mainly Sunni past and its Shi’i future. Against that current, I argue that in Kāshifī’s writings, the Sufi past is mined as an archive to present a novel template of piety, one that responds to and reflects the winds of change that swept the Islamic world in the late 15^th century and beyond. Important elements of this early modern phase of Iranian history originate in the religious sphere, as visible in the written record of the 14^th and 15^th centuries. The religious landscape of the period differs significantly from earlier times, so much so that the myth of a by and large Sunni Iran that was converted to Shi‘ism from the outset of the 16^th century should be put to rest. The roots of philo-‘Alid piety go back several centuries, and Ṣafavid Shi‘ism was just one of a plethora of new pieties that took hold in the 14^th century, a good number of which were not ‘syncretistic’ and looked not to reconcile but to override differences among communities of Muslims.

The new pieties of the early modern period demand not just a thorough revision of how the history of Sufi movements and practices is studied, and a reevaluation of categories and concepts used to differentiate religious movements and identities, but also a rethinking of Islamic history in the context of global early modernity.