Μs@ Al-Kurdµ and the Transformation of the Naqshbandµ -Kh@Lidµ Brotherhood in Twentieth-Century Syria

the forgotten shaykh 373 THE FORGOTTEN SHAYKH: ‘µS@ AL-KURDµ AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE NAQSHBANDµ-KH@LIDµ BROTHERHOOD IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY SYRIA BY ITZCHAK WEISMANN Haifa Ever since the arrival of its founder, Shaykh Kh¸lid, in Damascus in 1823, the Kh¸lidº branch of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya has played a conspicuous role in the religious as well as the social and political life of Syria. To this day, the Kh¸lidiyya is the most wide- spread and influential Sufi brotherhood in the country, with active lodges in the major cities—Damascus, Aleppo and Homs, in the countryside and in the Jazira. The highest religious dignitary in Syria, the Grand Mufti A¥mad Kuft¸r¢ , who has held office since 1964, is also the foremost Kh¸lidº authority presently living in the state. Indeed, the lineages ( silsilas) of practically all Naqshbandº masters in contemporary Syria go back to Shaykh Kh¸lid. 1 Yet the evolution of the Kh¸lidiyya in Syria during the last two centuries or so has by no means been linear. It can rather be described as undulating between peaks, in which the emphatic ortho- dox and activist traits of the brotherhood came to the fore, and longer intervals in which it became almost indistinguishable from other «arºqas.2 This fluctuant course was basically determined by two interrelated factors. One was the continuous immigration of Naqsh- 1 Frederick de Jong, “The Naqshbandiyya in Egypt and Syria. Aspects of its History, and Observations Concerning its Present-Day Situation,” in Marc Gaborieau, Alexandre Popovic and Thierry Zarcone (eds.), Naqshbandis: cheminements et situation actuelle d’un ordre mystique musulman (Istanbul and Paris, 1990), 592-595; Eric Geoffroy, “Sufism, réformisme et pouvoir en Syrie contemporaine,” Égypte/Monde arabe 29 (1997), 11-21. 2 For the evolution of the Kh¸lidiyya in Syria between Kh¸lid’ s time and the demise of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, see mine, Taste of Modernity: Sufism, Salafiyya, and Arabism in Late Ottoman Damascus (Leiden, 2001), pt. 1. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2003 Die Welt des Islams 43, 3 Also available online – www.brill.nl 374 itzchak weismann bandº shaykhs to Syria, most of them like Kh¸lid himself of Kurdish extraction, which gave ever new impetus to the reformist activity and sharº{a-minded bent of the brotherhood. The other factor was the succession of political and cultural upheavals that the country has undergone from the late Ottoman period to the present, to which these religious masters were called upon to respond. Among the waves of Kh¸lidº renewal in Syria, perhaps the most important was the one that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was led by a number of shaykhs whose influence radiated from various urban centers in the country. Fore- most among them were Ab¢ al-Naª r Khalaf who propagated the path in the northern plains between Homs and Aleppo, 3 Mu¥ammad Dh¢ al-Faq¸r who spread it in the Lebanese port town of Tripoli 4 and, last but not least, {µs¸ al-Kurdº , the earliest among these shaykhs who left his mark on Damascus and its environs. 5 Surprisingly, these Sufi masters have received little notice in the historiography of modern Syria. It is only through the subsequent careers of their disciples during the French Mandate and the post-Independence eras that their importance can be properly appreciated. This article seeks to trace the reformist elements in the work of {µs¸ al-Kurdº through a critical analysis of his biographical narrative on the one hand, and by following the evolution of these elements, which amounted to a veritable transformation of the path, in 3 See Itzchak Weismann, “Religious Strife on the Periphery—Sufi Populism, Salafi Ideology and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Twentieth Century Hamah,” forthcoming in IJMES. 4 Daphne Habibis, “Change and Continuity: A Sufi Order in Contemporary Lebanon,” Social Analysis 31 (1992), 47-48. 5 Another “forgotten” Naqshbandº shaykh in Damascus at the time was {Abd al- Razz¸q al-Þar¸ bulusº , who took the path from the Khanºs, the leading Kh¸lidº fam- ily in the city through most of the nineteenth century. Although merely a milkman, and hence nicknamed “ghall¸’ al-¥alº b ”, Þar¸bulusº is described as being visited and listened to by leading {ulam¸} of Damascus. Among those who attended the dhikr he led in the Sin¸niyya mosque in southern Damascus were H¸shim al-Kha«ºb and {Alº al-Daqr, founders of the first populist religious association during the Mandate, as well as Ýasan Ýabannaka, who would become doyen of the Syrian {ulam¸} un- der the Ba{th until his death in 1978. None of these men of religion, however, seems to have kept his allegiance to the Naqshbandiyya. On Þar¸bulusº see Mu¥ammad Mu«º{ al-Ý¸fi¬ and Niz¸r Ab¸¬a, Ta}rºkh {ulam¸} Dimashq fº al-qarn al-r¸bi{ {ashar al- hijrº (3 vols., Damascus, 1986-1991), 3: 89..

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