Persian Sufism in the Contemporary West: Reflections on the Ni'matu'llahi Diaspora
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2 Persian Sufism in the contemporary West Reflections on the Ni‘matu’llahi diaspora1 Leonard Lewisohn Introduction ‘The literary output of American Sufi movements’, Marcia Hermansen remarks, ‘is by now so vast that it would require a volume rather than an essay to adequately discuss the history and doctrines of each of the groups in detail’.2 One of the most intellec- tually formidable of these movements is the Persian Sufis of the Munawwar ‘Ali Shah branch of the Ni‘matu’llahi order.3 For the past quarter century, ever since Dr Javad Nurbakhsh, the current master of this branch, visited the USA in 1974, this order has become a major publisher of Sufi works in English, French, German, Russian, Spanish and Italian.4 The present study approaches the evolution of this branch of the Order during the last quarter century of its diaspora to the West with a view to both its intellectual and doctrinal thought as well as the exoteric socio-political dimension of its public persona. In the case of the former, theories of the historical origin of Sufism and Sufi doctrine are discussed, while in respect to the latter, institutional structures, social attitudes, types of publications, gender relations, finance, proselytization, dissemina- tion of doctrine and public relations of this Order are explored. Based on personal interviews recently conducted both in Iran and the West, as well as reference to the Order’s own extensive Persian and English language published works, the study reveals how contact with the religiously diverse climate of Western society has cre- ated new cultural expressions of traditional Sufi doctrines. Exodus and exile among the early Ni‘matu’llahiyya Nisbat-i in rah bih ‘Iraq u Khurasan nist Hamdam-i ‘Isa shudan ay khar asan nist.5 Resembling epiphenomena of the religious struggle between formalistic clericalism and poetic mysticism in Islam,6 the flight of the mystic Sufi soul away from the oppressive body-politic of Shi‘ite clerical persecution and intolerance, over the past five centuries there have been numerous occasions when political circumstances obliged groups of Persian Sufis to relocate themselves outside of Iran. The founder of the Ni‘matu’llahi Order, Shah Ni‘matu’llah (d. 834/1431) passed several years of his 50 Persian Sufism in the contemporary West life as an internally displaced exile, having become a victim of intra-tariqa rivalry and intrigues against him by the Naqshbandi master Amir Kulal (d. 773/1371) who pres- sured his spiritual protégé Tamerlane to make Shah Ni‘matu’llah leave Samarqand, where he had accrued a vast number of followers. He moved south to Mashhad in 771/1369, spent a year in Herat, and then finally settled in the village of Mahan, south of the city of Kerman in southeastern Iran.7 In the last few years of his life, Shah Ni‘matu’llah was invited to India to visit the court of the Bahmani ruler of the Deccan, Ahmad Shah Wali. Although he declined the invitation, he sent his grand- son Nuru’llah to represent him there. In what has been described as ‘a second migra- tion of the Ni‘matu’llahi family away from religious sectarianism’,8 sometime between 1433 and 1435, Shah Ni‘matu’llah’s son (Nuru’llah’s father) and successor Shah Khalilu’llah (d. 859/1455) followed him to India, returning only once to Iran in 1441.9 This quasi-diaspora of the leaders of the Ni‘matu’llahiyya from Iran to India has been described by Terry Graham as ‘a situation perhaps unique in the history of Sufism’, where ‘the body of an order continued to operate shorn of its head, which survived separately in a distant clime’.10 A similar pattern of exile and exodus of Ni‘matu’llah leaders from the Order’s native heartland, Persia, has continued to the present day in the branch of the Order discussed here. As a consequence of his political involvements, Khalilu’llah effectively became the founder of a dynasty of Sufi courtiers, so that the mystical charisma of the Order eventually became absorbed into the ceremony of protocol of the Bahmanid royal court in the Deccan.11 Over the next two hundred years, the Safavid branch of the Order back in Iran adopted Yazd as its administrative centre, collaborating and cul- tivating marriage ties with the Safavid police state, the silsila changing in the process into a ‘moribund dynastic family tradition’.12 Throughout these two (sixteenth and seventeenth) centuries, the Indian branch often sent emissaries to Persia, but it was not until 1184/1770, when Sayyid Ma‘sum ‘Ali Shah formally emigrated back to Iran, generating what has been dubbed ‘the Ni‘matu’llahi renaissance’,13 that a repa- triation of the Ni‘matu’llahiyya from India back to Persia took shape. During the last two decades of the eighteenth century, the lives of two principal leaders of the Order, Ma‘sum ‘Ali and Nur ‘Ali Shah, despite their successful return to Iran after over 250 years of absence, were spent in a state of internal exile. Subject to persecution and harassment from cleric and prince alike, they wandered from city to city in Iran. For over half a century following their return from India, the Ni‘matu’llahis seldom found any rest and repose from clerical intimidation.14 The same pattern continued under later leaders as well, with the fourteen years (1238/1823–1253/1837) of Zayn al-‘Abidin Shirvani’s (‘Mast ‘Ali Shah’) leadership of the Ni‘matu’llahiyya being spent in forced internal exile, divagating from city to city under threat of execution and trailed by fatwas for his death. However, with the accession of dervish-loving Muhammad Shah Qajar in 1834, both their internal exile and external diaspora came to an end. The material circumstances of the Ni‘matu’llahi shaykhs and Sufis were vastly improved due to the influence of the Qajar Grand Vizier Mirza Aqasi (1198–1265) – a Ni‘matu’llahi leader and associate of Mast ‘Ali.15 Many of them were even granted royal stipends. When, in 1251/1835, Mast ‘Ali’s successor Rahmat ‘Ali Shah was made Vice-premier of Fars (bearing the title of ‘Na’ib al-Sadr’) by Persian Sufism in the contemporary West 51 Muhammad Shah Qajar’s royal decree, the integration of the Order into the political and social hierarchy of Iran became secure for the next 145 years. Since the history of Persian Sufism during this early modern period has been treated elsewhere in some detail,16 we now turn our attention to the exodus of the Ni‘matu’llahiyya following the revolution of 1979. The western migration and subsequent exile of the Ni‘matu’llahiyya (1973–2001) Dr Nurbakhsh made his first trip to the USA in 1974 on the request of some American devotees.17 In the following year the first two Khanaqahs in North America were established in San Fransisco and New York by his senior shaykh Mr Masha’Allah Niktab‘, and in the same year Dr Nurbakhsh travelled to England, where the first European khanaqah was set up in the Notting Hill Gate district of London. During the next three years (1976–78), Dr Nurbakhsh sent Mr Niktab‘ every summer for several months to the UK and the USA on a mission to initiate seekers and found centres. As a consequence of these trips, two more Khanaqahs were established on the American eastern seaboard (in Washington D.C. and in Boston), where a small group of American seekers was initiated.18 In 1979 Dr Nurbakhsh emigrated to the United States19 where, on the East and West coasts, he immediately proceeded to set up several khanaqahs. In 1983, he moved to England where he has since resided. From 1974 to the present (2002) the process of diffusion of Ni‘matu’llahi Sufism in the West has culminated in the estab- lishment of altogether twenty-five khanaqahs in lands outside Iran, respectively located in West Africa (Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; Porto-Novo, Benin and Burkino Faso), Australia (Sydney) and Europe (Manchester and London, UK; Köln, Germany; Paris and Lyon, France; Madrid, Spain; Stockholm, Sweden; and Leiden, the Netherlands). In North America, there are khanaqahs in Washington, D.C.; Boston, Massachusetts; Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Santa Fé, New Mexico; Santa Cruz, California; San Francisco, California; San Diego, California; New York, New York; Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, Canada. Numbers, organization and social structure of the Ni‘matu’llahiyya in the West It is estimated that some 3600 members currently exist world-wide outside of Iran. Some 2500 members can be found in North America, 500 in Europe, 100 Australia, perhaps 50 in Russia (in the khanaqah, in Moscow) and some 500 in West Africa. Congregations that gather for twice-weekly meetings in these twenty-five khanaqahs may vary in number from five to fifty persons per session.20 Although Dr Nurbakhsh is the supreme head of the Order, whose word in spiri- tual matters carries absolute authority21 under him are a series of shaykhs empowered to initiate seekers. Currently there are nine shaykhs in the West: four Iranian and one American shaykh in North America; three Iranian shaykhs in Europe; and two African shaykhs in West Africa; the shaykh responsible for Russian members is a Russian 52 Persian Sufism in the contemporary West citizen resident in the USA, who travels regularly to Moscow where there is a group of devotees. All current Ni‘matu’llahi shaykhs are male, both in Iran and the West. Immediately below the shaykh in the hierarchy is the ‘director on the way’ (pir-i dalil), responsible for giving basic religio-spiritual guidance and direction to novices and postulants.