Sufism in the Secret History of Persia ♣

SUFISM IN THE SECRET HISTORY OF PERSIA ♣ Gnostica Texts and Interpretations Series Editors Garry Trompf (Sydney), Jason BeDuhn (Northern Arizona) and Jay Johnston (Sydney) Advisory Board Antoine Faivre (Paris), Iain Gardner (Sydney), Wouter Hanegraaff (Amsterdam), Jean-Pierre Mahé (Paris), Raol Mortley (Newcastle) and Brikha Nasoraia (Mardin) Gnostica publishes the latest scholarship on esoteric movements, including the Gnostic, Hermetic, Manichaean, Theosophical and related traditions. Contributions also include critical editions of texts, historical case studies, critical analyses, cross- cultural comparisons and state-of-the-art surveys. Published by and available from Acumen Sufism in the Secret History of Persia Milad Milani Histories of the Hidden God: Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions Edited by April DeConick and Grant Adamson Contemporary Esotericism Edited by Egil Asprem and Kennet Granholm Angels of Desire: Esoteric Bodies, Aesthetics and Ethics Jay Johnston Published by Peeters Schamanismus und Esoterik: Kutlur- und wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Betrachtungen Kocku von Stuckrad Ésotérisme, Gnoses et imaginaire symbolique: Mélanges offerts à Antoine Faivre Edited by Richard Caron, Joscelyn Godwin, Wouter Hanegraaff and Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion Edited by Antoine Faivre and Wouter Hanegraaff Adamantius, Dialogues on the True Faith in God Translation and commentary by Robert Pretty SUFISM IN THE SECRET HISTORY OF PERSIA MILAD MILANI First published 2013 by Acumen Published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © Milad Milani, 2013 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. ISBN: 978-1-84465-677-6 (hardcover) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Designed and typeset in Warnock Pro by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan For Homa This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgements xiii Abbreviations xv Introduction: Iranian or Persian? The religious landscape of Iranian identity 1 1 The macrohistorical pursuit of secret Persia and the Sufi myth-history 5 2 From Mithra to Zarathushtra 15 3 The Gathas and Mithra 41 4 Mithraism and the parallels of Sufism 61 5 The resurgence of “Persianate” identity in the transmission and fusion of ancient Iranian ideas within Islam 79 6 From late antiquity to neo-Mazdakism 103 7 Later antiquity: Mazdak and the Sasanian crisis 139 8 Between late antiquity and Islam: The case of Salman the Persian and Waraqa (the Christian scribe) 157 9 The end of the journey: Persian Sufism 205 Conclusion 223 Select bibliography 227 Index 231 vii This page intentionally left blank PREFACE There has never been an intention to confine this monograph series to texts and interpretations in the Western esoteric tradition. The first number, devoted to the only surviving dialogue from Late Antiquity, between five gnostics and an orthodox Christian, has its likely provenance in southern Asia Minor (Turkey) or Syria. More recently, the study of the religion of the Yezidis by Garrik Asatrian and Victoria Arekalova takes us to the Kurdish re gion straddling the Near and Middle East. In this present volume we find con- centrated study on a host of materials almost completely separated from the Western tradition, and it is both a pleasure and honour to celebrate it as the first among an emergent cluster of textual and interpretative studies intensely focused on Near and Middle Eastern Gnosis, and on a living tradition at that. In undertaking a work such as this, on Persian Sufism and its long-term historical roots, daunting problems can put off even the most enthusiastic authors, because there are swathes of Iran’s complex and extraordinary past left quite undocumented. This is not only because there have been significant pockets of purely oral culture in the Middle Eastern and Central Asian regions, but because of destructive invasions, those by Alexander (“the Terrible”, not the Great in Persian eyes!), by iconoclastic Moslem Arabs, by the Mongols and by the Turkish Tamerlaine, to name key agents. Considering these draw- backs, how estimable are Dr Milani’s labours to fill in the gaps and uncover so many connecting pieces in the jigsaw of the Iranian peoples’ mysterious spiritual heritage. In the course of this exercise, Milad Milani has forced himself to walk along something of an intellectual tightrope. This comes from essaying a critical macrohistory or Überschau of Persia’s religious variegations through time by responding to cues in Persianate Sufi contemplations and uses of the past, particularly those provided by the long-inured Nematollahi (or Ni’matullâhî) order. A fascinating conversation is created in this book between in-house Sufi ix PREFACE outlooks (in all a mix of poetic motifs, suggestions, clues, surviving innuen- dos, anti-establishment proclivities, daring flights of spiritual insight and more recent theosophical reflection) and the sharp mind of a younger critical historian of socio-religious ideas. Dr Milani has respected the voice of the believer, and let it provide footprints to follow for his investigations, yet not as a naïve tracker who could be easily deceived, but as one well trained historically, lin- guistically equipped and sensitive to literary creativity. The result is a credit to the standards of scholarship we seek to be maintained in this series and to the insights of the Sufi tradition of which Dr Milani strives to give a just and accurate account. My personal association with Milad Milani goes back to his undergraduate student days. Soon after his honours year in Studies in Religion, he became my colleague and collaborator as an historian of ideas and spiritualities, and completed his doctorate by 2008 on the difficult data and issues that were eventually to constitute the subject of this volume. Our collegiality continued after Dr Milani continued his academic career in other universities, and he has become one of the five founding members of the new Institute for the Study of Religion, Politics and Society. Expanding our contacts in the world of ethno-religious variety in the Near and Middle East has widened our respec- tive agendas for research and helped make possible the prospective number of new and related studies in this series. Scholars learn much from each other by comparing their own method- ologies. In meeting the challenge of writing this book, Dr Milani has had to face an array of apparently disordered materials and, like a detective, to “make some sense of a mess” left over from the stamping grounds of many different worldviews and collective human interferences. I myself would have been tempted to apply a neo-Vichian analysis, that is, one concerned to distinguish layers in the history of consciousness or “place” the different mental diction- aries of Persia’s peoples from the stage when the divine was more immediate (as in Zarathushtra’s hymns of dialogue with the ever-present Ahura Mazda), through the age of heroes (conveyed by the fabled figures in Hakîm Ferdowsi’s poetic epic Shahnameh), on to our current state of prosaic reflectiveness on the long-term Iranian past as an exercise in historiography. This would follow but upgrade the guidelines of the founder figure of Social Science himself, the profound Giambattista Vico. The chosen approach of Milad Milani, by comparison, is different. His is a voice – and perhaps this should have been acknowledged straightaway – that is an indigenous Persian one, and needs to be heard as such. He looks upon his country’s former times as a seamless tap- estry (like a fabulous carpet from the region!), sensing there is necessarily a chronological order in its making (and recognizing this in the flow of Sufi wis- dom) but then applying taxing critical historical analysis from his academic education, especially informed by the generations of impressive scholars, both Western and Iranian, from over the last hundred years. I am not sure whether my approach would have worked as well; indeed, it might have faltered, and x PREFACE I am thus all the more in admiration of my colleague’s attempts. It has been alleged of Alexander Pushkin that he read history as a riddle needing deci- pherment: like him, Milad Milani shows us the skills to combine scholarly caution with the gifts of divining many forgotten atmospheres and re-invoking the powerful poesis of a Rumi and Hafez. It is a very great pleasure to welcome this book. Garry W. Trompf University of Sydney xi This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is dedicated to all Iranians (or Persians, as some may prefer) – I think about the truly enchanting land that is Iran and, above all, the tenacious spirit of her legacy.

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