Introduction

The Sufis of Upper Egypt had a troubled relationship with the state and its representatives. As we have seen, Ayyubid and Mamluk military elites typically sought the support of the ʿulamāʾ– including Sufis– as part of a broader strategy of legitimation and rule. This was true as much as of the Sufis at the Saʿīd al-Su ʿadāʾ as of the nascent Shādhilīya, although the latter were less amenable to outright sponsorship. However, these state-funded efforts seem to have been restricted primarily to the urban centres of Cairo and Alexandria. Upper Egypt lacked state-sponsored organisations such as madrasas and khānqāhs during this period, and the Sufis and their allies in the region filled the ideological vacuum. Both Jean-Claude Garcin and Linda Northrup have pointed to the relative independence from the state of pious movements in Upper Egypt. It was this independence that allowed them to take on ‘the role of critics of [the state's] moral behavior’. Indeed, part of what seems to have drawn the Sufis of Upper Egypt together and precipitated their particular articulation of Sufi authority was their dissatisfaction with and critique of the state's inability to regulate the moral economy of the Iaʿīd. The resultant collectivity of Upper-Egyptian Sufis shared five interrelated qualities that clearly set them apart from other contemporary Sufi groups.

First, the Sufis of Upper Egypt enjoyed no support or sanction from the state. They did not live in state-endowed khānqāhs or ribāts; they did not take jobs subsidised by the state, whether in madrasas or the local bureaucracy; and they did not lend their support to legitimise state actors in the region. Second, in the absence of local state-sponsored religious organisations, these Sufis propagated and enforced their own normative vision of the prophetic sunna. On one hand, they prescriptively promoted this vision through a programme of educational outreach that took place at independently financed ribā†s and madrasas. On the other hand, they proscriptively enforced that vision through the public regulation of morality. Third, the Sufis of Upper Egypt made a concerted effort to combat Shiʿites and Shiʿite influence in the Iaʿīd. Again, this project took place primarily within the context of local ribāts and madrasas.