Şeyh uçmaz, müridi uçurur

In the previous chapter I argued that Ibn ʿAtāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī's hagiographical image of al-Shādhilī and al-Mursī precipitated the institutionalisation of a collective Shādhilī identity linked to an eponymous method, or tarīqa. In order to bolster his credentials and cement his status as the authorised spokesperson for and representative of the Shādhilī tarīqa in Egypt, al-Iskandarī publicised in speech and writing a specific image of the masters that became authoritative for the emergent Shādhilī collectivity. Importantly, al-Iskandarī's construction both reflected and shaped the doctrines and practices of the nascent community. By textually standardising the doctrines and practices of the Shādhilī masters in line with communal expectations about the tarīqa, al-Iskandarī discursively mapped the identity of the collectivity onto the biographies of al-Shādhilī and al-Mursī, who thus functioned metonymically as the communal ideal. In other words, the narratives in al-Iskandarī's hagiography constituted an ideal mythical type of the ‘Shādhilī Sufi’, which the group could embody by emulating that ideal.1 Al-Iskandarī's writings thus straddle a social dialectic between the textualisation of collective praxis and the idealisation of eponymous identity that recursively shaped communal identity. That is, the institutionalisation of a coherent Shādhilī identity occurred through repeated performance of an ideal model within the social framework of a textual community. This institutionalisation created the requisite conditions for the (re)production of an emergent social formation that was increasingly organised over time. In this chapter, I explore this textualisation and idealisation of al-Shādhilī's image in more detail, examining the literary strategies by which al-Iskandarī crafted and promoted a coherent identity linked to al-Shādhilī's authority.

In order to flesh out this construction I draw primarily on al-Iskandarī's hagiography Latāʾif al-minan. Not surprisingly, it is with and through the carefully constructed narrative lives of al-Shādhilī and al-Mursī that al-Iskandarī portrays his ideal Shādhilī Sufi. Nevertheless, there are a number of other valuable texts in which al-Iskandarī performed similar work. In addition to Latāʾif al-minan, we have a manual of instruction entitled Kitāb al-tanwīr fī isqāt al-tadbīr (‘The Book of Illumination Concerning the Elimination of Self-reliance’), which details how to cultivate the Sufi virtue of al-tawakkul (reliance on God) while still maintaining a livelihood.