Sufism, Subjectivity, and Modernity in Iran
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Looking for the Human: Sufism, Subjectivity, and Modernity in Iran The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Ames, Robert Landau. 2018. Looking for the Human: Sufism, Subjectivity, and Modernity in Iran. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41129134 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Looking for the Human: Sufism, Subjectivity, and Modernity in Iran A dissertation presented by Robert Landau Ames to The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April, 2018 © 2018 Robert Landau Ames All rights reserved. ! Dissertation Advisors: Professor Ali Asani Robert Landau Ames Professor Afsaneh Najmabadi Looking for the Human: Sufism, Subjectivity, and Modernity in Iran Abstract My dissertation proceeds from two related insights. The first of these is that Sufism in early modern Iran possessed a coherent theory of knowledge that reflected the period’s culture more broadly. The second is that this episteme not only survived modernization, but actually proliferated and took on new literary forms throughout the Qajar period (1785-1925). Sufism achieved this influence in the modern era despite the fact that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are usually figured as ruptures with the early modern intellectual life of the Timurid (1370-1501) and Safavid periods (1501-1722), when its role in intellectual life was more visible, if also controversial. Secondary sources usually frame modern Iranian reformism as quite unfriendly to mysticism, given the equation of the modern to the rational and the assumed opposition between mystical and the rational. However, my research into both reformism and mysticism demonstrates both that mystical rhetoric appeared regularly in supposedly anti- mystical modernist writing and that nineteenth- and twentieth-century Sufis actually addressed questions of intellectual and political reform in their writing, despite the common assertion that they were irrationally traditional and politically quietist. My research opens by situating the early modern Sufism of Husayn V!‘iz K!shif" (ca. 1436/7-1504-5) and Mu’azzin Khur!s!n" (d. 1668). Unlike the usual approach to the study of Sufism, I compare K!shif" and Khur!s!n"’s prose works on Sufism to contemporaneous works on literary theory and ethics rather than to earlier “classical” works on Sufism in order to illustrate that a common conception of knowledge was at work across these disciplines. It then proceeds to a comparison of the works of nineteenth-century reformists like Fath ‘Al" ! """! Akhundz!dah and M"rz! Malkum Kh!n to mystics from the same period including Mull! H!di Sabzav!r" and M"rz! Hasan Saf" ‘Al" Sh!h. This portion of my project culminates in a comparison of the poetry of Al" Kh!n Zah"r al-Dawlah, who was both a Sufi and a reformist courtier who participated in Iran’s constitutional revolution (1906-11), and the prose ethics of M"rz! Hasan Amin al-Shar"‘ah, who was both a cleric and a constitutionalist. ! "#! Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................... III Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... V Note on Transliteration ......................................................................................................... VII Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 a) Sufism and the Practice of Knowledge ......................................................................... 4 b) What We Talk About When We Talk About Mysticism .............................................. 7 c) Individual Ascent and Collective Decline ................................................................... 8 d) Reform, Revival, and Early Modernity ...................................................................... 13 e) Conclusion: Dissertation Outline ............................................................................... 15 Chapter 1- Listen to the Nay: Poetry, Mysticism, and the Knowing Subject ....................... 18 1a) Situating Rumi and the Masnav! .............................................................................. 22 1b) Knowledge and the Nay ........................................................................................... 25 1c) The Subject in Classical Persian Literary Theory ..................................................... 31 1d) Discipline and Poetic Wisdom ................................................................................. 40 1e) Sufism, Poetry, and Literary Theory in the Timurid Period ...................................... 43 1f) An Introduction to K!shifi ....................................................................................... 45 1g) K!shif" as Literary Theorist ..................................................................................... 52 1h) Conclusion: From Rum to Isfahan ........................................................................... 50 1i) Appendix: A Nay N"mah Translation ....................................................................... 55 Chapter 2- K!shif"’s Late Timurid Ethics and Mu’azzin Khur!s!n"’s Sh"‘" “Golden Chain” ................................................................................................................................................. 57 2a) Government of the Self and Timurid Bureaucracy ................................................... 62 2b) Sufism at Court ....................................................................................................... 68 2c) Mu’azzin Khur!s!n", the Tuhfah-yi ‘Abb"s!, and Sufi Subjects Under the Later Safavids ......................................................................................................................... 69 2d) All the World’s a Stage ........................................................................................... 81 2e) The Fashion of Futuvvat .......................................................................................... 84 2f) Brothers of Bread and Salt ....................................................................................... 91 2g) K!shif", the “Sh"#itization of Futuvvat,” and Sufism After the Safavids ................... 92 2h) Questioning Safavid Persecution ........................................................................... 100 2i) Conclusion: Ethics and Governmentality ................................................................ 102 Chapter 3- Sufism Beyond Itself: Two Nineteenth-Century Responses to Rumi’s Masnav! ............................................................................................................................................... 106 3a) Background on Reform .......................................................................................... 107 3b) $kh%ndz!dah’s Atheism and Nationalism ............................................................. 112 3c) Fictional Correspondence ...................................................................................... 115 3d) Personal Correspondence....................................................................................... 118 3e) Background on Sabzav!r" ..................................................................................... 122 3f) Sabzav!r"’s Sharh ................................................................................................. 124 3g) Poetic Canon-Building .......................................................................................... 132 3h) Cosmological Elements ......................................................................................... 134 ! #! 3i) Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 137 Chapter 4- Humanity and/as Modern Religion: "dam!yat, Ins#n!yat, and Q#n$n in M"rz! Malkum Kh!n and Saf" ‘Al" Sh!h ........................................................................................ 139 4a) About the Author: M"rz! Malkum Kh!n ............................................................... 143 4b) The Principles of Humanity ................................................................................... 145 4c) Q"n#n.................................................................................................................... 149 4d) About the Author: Saf" #Al" Sh!h ........................................................................... 149 4e) On Knowledge ....................................................................................................... 153 4f) Governing Speech .................................................................................................. 157 4g) Sufism at Work: Ethical and Economic Practice .................................................... 171 4h) The Sufi and the New Man ..................................................................................