ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Simnānī’s Religious Encounters at the Mongol Court near Tabriz

Devin DeWeese

The life and autobiographical writings of the celebrated Sufi ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Simnānī (659/1261–736/1336) remain strangely unexplored by students of the political, cultural, and religious history of Ilkhanid . His own long service, and that of his father and two uncles, at the Mongol court gave him a distinctive perspective on court affairs, and his legacy as a Sufi shaykh and prolific author facilitated the preservation of several intimate and self-referential accounts, among Simnānī’s own numerous works and those of his direct disciples, that offer fascinating vignettes of the cul- tural encounter entailed­ by the interaction of Mongol and Muslim elites in northwestern­ Iran. The present study is intended to outline just one aspect of that encounter in the context of Simnānī’s life and the devel- opment of his Sufi career: the diverse religious influences to which he was exposed during the critical period following his initial turn to Sufis­ m, while in Ilkhanid service. That period saw an increasing tension between Simnānī’s wish to withdraw from court service, and his growing desire to travel to Baghdad to meet a particular Sufi teacher, on the one hand, and the efforts of the Mongol elite—including the īlkhān Arghun him- self—and his own family to keep him at the Mongol court near Tabriz, or, if that proved impossible, then at least to prevent him from going to ­Baghdad; those efforts included a series of religious encounters arranged for Simnānī while he was detained at the royal ordu near Tabriz for sev- eral months in 687/1288. These encounters no doubt had a lasting impact on Sim­nānī himself, but Simnānī eventually did make his way to Baghdad, and the course his religious life took afterwards obviously colored his rec- ollection of the time he spent at the Mongol ruler’s court dis­cussing spiri- tual disciplines and doctrines with practitioners of other paths, and with Arghun himself. Nevertheless, his accounts of that time in his life offer a glimpse of religious interaction in this era, as staged and “sponsored” by the Mongol elite, and of one remarkable individual’s efforts to make sense out of his own temporary engage­ment with religious diversity. 36 devin deweese

The outlines of ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Simnānī’s life are relatively well known, thanks, most recently, to the study of Jamal Elias.1 Born into a politically prominent family of Simnān, he entered the service of Arghun at the age of 15, some nine years before Arghun assumed power in 683/1284; his paternal uncle, Jalāl al-Dīn, was Arghun’s vazīr from the beginning of his reign until 687/1288, when he was dismissed (his execution came a year later), while Simnānī’s maternal­ uncle, Rukn al-Dīn, and his father Sharaf al-Dīn were both among the loyal servants of Arghun who eventually ran afoul of rival offi­cials under Ghazan and were executed (his father already in 695/1295, his uncle in 700/1301). ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla was spared his rela­tives’ fate by his departure from the court to adopt the life of a Sufi; he says relatively little about Ghazan, or his famous conversion to , in his writings, and it seems that he was closer to Öljeytü, in whose encamp- ment he spent considerable time even after he made known his wish to leave Arghun’s service (Öljeytü would later disappoint Simnānī, however,

1 Jamal J. Elias, The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of ʿAlāʾ ad-Dawla as-Simnānī (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), with the biographical survey on pp. 15–31; see pp. 165–212 for the most thorough account to date of Simnānī’s writings. Among earlier studies may be mentioned Sayyid Muẓaffar Ṣadr, Sharḥ-i aḥvāl va afkār va āthār-i ʿārif-i rabbānī Abū’l-Makārim Rukn al-Dīn Shaykh ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Simnānī (Tehran: Chāpkhāna-yi Dānishgāh, n.d. [ca. 1955–56]); Henry Corbin, “L’intériorisation du sens en herméneutique soufie iranienne (Ṣâʾinoddîn ʿAlî Torka Ispâhânî, ob. 830/1427 et ʿAlâoddawla Semnânî, ob. 736/1336),” Eranos-Jahrbuch, 26 (1957): 57–187 [137–172]; idem, En Islam iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, t. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), section 2 (Shî’isme et Soufisme), ch. 4 (“Les sept organes subtils de l’homme selon ‘Alâoddawleh Semnânî (736/1336),” 275– 355); Marijan Molé, “Les Kubrawiyya entre sunnisme et shiisme aux huitième et neuvième siècles de l’hégire,” Revue des études islamiques 29 (1961): 61–142 [76–109]; Fritz Meier, “ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī,” EI2 1 (1960): 346–347; Hermann Landolt, ed., Correspondance spiritu- elle échangée entre Nuroddin Esfarayeni (ob. 717/1317) et son disciple ‘Alaoddawleh Semnani (ob. 736/1336) (Tehran: Département d’Iranologie de l’Institut Franco-Iranien de Recher- che/Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1972; Bibliothèque Ira- nienne, vol. 21), esp. 10–21; Hermann Landolt, “Simnânî on Waḥdat al-Wujûd,” in Collected Papers on and Mysticism, ed. Mehdi Mohaghegh and Hermann Landolt (Tehran, 1349/1971; Wisdom of Persia series, vol. IV), 91–112; idem, “Der Briefwechsel zwischen Kāšānī und Simnānī über Waḥdat al-Wuǧūd,” Der Islam, 50 (1973): 29–81; idem, “Deux opuscules de Semnânî sur le moi théophanique,” Mélanges offerts à Henry Corbin, ed. S.H. Nasr (Tehran, 1977; Wisdom of Persia series, vol. IX), 279–319; Andreas D’Souza, “Simnani’s Cosmology and its Mystical Implications,” The Bulletin of the Henry Martyn Institute of (Hyderabad, A.P.), 8/4 (Oct.–Dec., 1985): 94–126; Jamal J. Elias, “A Kubrawī Treatise on Mystical Visions: The Risāla-yi nūriyya of ʿAlāʾ ad-dawla as-Simnānī,” Muslim World, 83 (1993): 68–80; ʿAbd al-Rafīʿ Ḥaqīqat, Khumkhāna-yi vaḥdat: Shaykh ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Simnānī, ʿārif-i buzurg-i qarn-i haftum va hashtum-i hijrī (Tehran: Shirkat-i Muʾallifān va Mutarjimān-i Īrān/Chāpkhāna-yi Kāvīyān, 1362/1983); George Lane, Early Mongol Rule in Thirteenth-Century Iran: A Persian Renaissance (London/New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 253; and the introductions to other publications of Simnānī’s works, including those of Thackston and Māyil Haravī noted below.