Document of the Month 3/26: A Mystical Homily

“Whoever Places the Hand of Good Actions in the Circle of Chivalry”:

A Homily in the Jawānmardī Mystical Tradition

Jawid Mojaddedi

This month’s document, Firuzkuh 3, is a well-preserved folio discovered in the Firuzkuh area of Ghur, Afghanistan, together with about 100 other Firuzkuh Papers. This very short text in elegant rhymed prose appears to be a homily produced by one of the local mystical circles (Figures 1 and 2). Although such texts are conventionally described as “Sufi,” using the term Sufism inclusively, there is reason to make a distinction for this particular homily. After all, it begins with the words (recto, lines 1–2): “Whoever places the hand of good actions in the circle of chivalry” (har ki dast-i nīkūkārī dar ḥalqa-yi jawānmardī zad), specifically mentioning the name for the jawānmardī tradition of mystical chivalry, which was independent of the Sufi tradition in origin at least.¹ Furthermore, this initial statement emphasizes “good actions” (nīkūkārī), which are prioritised in that tradition ahead of mystical theory.  

Fig. 1: Firuzkuh 3 recto (image courtesy of Nabi Saqee). Full details of the document, including a transcription and English translation can be found in the Invisible East Digital Corpus

Mystical traditions reflected in Firuzkuh 3

The jawānmardī tradition of course did not exist completely separately, and indeed already by the twelfth century efforts had been made to integrate it into Sufism, making the distinctions often unclear.² One way to gauge the degree of these traditions’ influence on the homily in Firuzkuh 3 is to identify distinctive terminology and concerns that represent the separate approaches. Although the term ولایت is used early in the text (recto, line 3), it is not being used in the technical Sufi way for “Friendship with God” (walāya), but rather simply to mean a “realm” or “station” (wilāya). This leaves this homily remarkably void of specifically Sufi terminology, the main exception being the use of maʿrifa “gnosis” (recto, line 3). This latter term is used in the second instance of the repeated expression “places the hand of… in the circle of…” (dast-i… dar ḥalqa-yi… zad), after the abovementioned use of jawānmardī (recto, line 1), suggesting that the homily belonged to a mystical circle that integrated the traditions together to some degree. However, the lack of further terminology of this kind, not to mention allusions to mystical theory in general, further mark this homily out as one which emerged from a circle shaped mostly by the jawānmardī tradition.

Khurasan is generally presented in Sufi historiographical texts as the geographical origin of the jawānmardī tradition, with one of the tradition’s earliest texts written by Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) of Nishapur.³ Sulamī also wrote about another prominent Khurasanian mystical tradition called the malāmatiya (“People of Blame”), to which his maternal grandfather Ibn Nujayd (d. 365/976) had belonged.⁴ Through these thematic writings about the tenets of these respective traditions and also by including many of their members in his highly influential work of Sufi historiography, the Ṭabaqāt al-Ṣūfiyya, Sulamī played a major role in integrating the jawānmardī and malāmatī traditions with the mainstream Sufi tradition represented by Abū l-Qāsim al-Junayd (d. 297/910) and his followers in Baghdad.⁵ The homily in Firuzkuh 3 shows the distinctive focus on inner sincerity (ikhlāṣ), which was shared by both jawānmardī and malāmatī traditions, such as in the statements: “Whoever recognises the false claim (daʿwī )  attains the true meaning (maʿnī )” (recto, lines 8–9) and “Whoever has left behind the path of pretension (daʿwī ) finds the route to true meaning (maʿnī ) clear” (recto, lines 12–13). While the malāmatī tradition advocated hiding one’s piety in order to resolve this problem, the focus in jawānmardī circles was on ethical behaviour or good deeds (nīkūkārī ) and service to others (khidma), corresponding to the content of this homily. One can also witness in this homily the use of accessible, non-technical language in general, another distinctive trait of discourse in the jawānmardī tradition, which was not as closely integrated with scholastic traditions as the main Sufi tradition. 

Fig. 2: Firuzkuh 3 verso (image courtesy of Nabi Saqee). Full details of the document, including a transcription and English translation can be found in the Invisible East Digital Corpus

Scriptural sources

As most Muslim homilies, this particular one from the jawānmardī tradition can also be seen as inspired originally by scripture, in this case from the sunna of the Prophet Muḥammad. A great many mystical homilies share the form of expression originally found in the influential saying of the Prophet of Islam: “Whoever knows himself knows his Lord” (man ʿarafa nafsah fa-ʿarafa rabbah). It is also very common to include a sequence of statements using the same form repetitively, as can also be seen throughout Firuzkuh 3. In many cases, they are clearly direct commentaries on that famous ḥadīth, such as the following one attributed to Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896) in Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī’s (d. 430/1038) Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ:

Sahl was asked about the saying, “Whoever knows himself knows his Lord.” He answered, “Whoever defines himself for the sake of his Lord, his Lord defines him for the sake of Himself.”⁶

While the brief homily in Firuzkuh 3 is not a direct commentary on this saying of the Prophet Muḥammad, the popularity of homilies using the same expression repeatedly in Persian is attributable to the pithy and poetic form of that original Arabic saying. 

Concluding remarks

The reason behind the preservation of this homily in writing is probably related to its frequent use in a jawānmardī circle. It is not only written in elegant rhymed prose, but it concisely summarizes key tenets of the tradition. Therefore, it would have served as an ideal homily for members of the circle to recite together at gatherings in order to reinforce shared values and give encouragement for perseverance with ethical behaviour, avoidance of pretence, and detachment from worldly things, through reminders of the universally appealing goals that can be attained by following the path, such as liberation (āzādī, recto, line 10) and joy (shādī, recto, line 11, verso, line 11).

Notes

1 See M. Zakeri, “Javānmardī”, Encyclopaedia Iranica https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/javanmardi/
2 Ibid. See also L. Ridgeon, Morals and Mysticism in Persian Sufism: A History of Sufi Futuwwat in Iran (London: Routledge, 2010).
3 Al-Sulamī, Kitāb al-Futuwwa, ed. Süleyman Ateş as Kitabu’l-futuvve (Ankara: Ankara University Press, 1977).
4 R. Hartmann, “As-Sulamī’s Risālat al-malāmatija”, Der Islam 8/3–4 (1918), pp. 157–203.
5 See further J. Mojaddedi, The Biographical Tradition in Sufism: The Ṭabaqāt Genre from al-Sulamī to Jāmī, chapter 1 (Richmond: RoutledgeCurzon, 2001).
6 Al-Iṣfahānī, Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ wa-Ṭabaqāt al-Aṣfiyāʾ, vol. 10, p. 201 (ed. Cairo, 1938).

Jawid Mojaddedi is Professor of Religion at Rutgers University. His area of research is early and medieval Sufism. He began his research with a focus on early Sufi historiography, which culminated in the publication of his book The Biographical Tradition in Sufism: The Ṭabaqāt Genre from al-Sulamī to Jāmī (RoutledgeCurzon, 2001). His other books include an unabridged verse translation of all six volumes of Rumi’s magnum opus, The Masnavi, in the Oxford World’s Classics series (Oxford University Press, 2004–25), as well as a monograph on Rumi, Beyond Dogma: Rumi’s Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories (Oxford University Press, 2012).

The online series, Document of the Month, presents some of the most interesting and revealing medieval documents from the desks of Invisible East researchers and their colleagues worldwide. Each piece in the series is dedicated to a single document or a closely related group of documents from the Islamicate East and tells their story in an engaging and accessible way. You will also find images, editions and translations of the documents. If you would like to contribute to the Document of the Month series, please, get in touch with Nadia Vidro.

If you would like to see another homily, please refer to Firuzkuh 2.