al- S̲h̲aʿrānī

(1,069 words), ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Aḥmad (897-973/1492-1565), Egyptian Ṣūfī, scholar, historian of Ṣūfism, and a prolific writer about many religious subjects during a period otherwise poor in distinguished figures of learning and piety in the Arab lands.

Sources. The main sources for al-S̲h̲aʿrānī’s life are his own writings, which must, of course, be used with caution. This is especially true of Laṭāʾif al-minan , his lengthy account of the graces bestowed upon him by God, a work that beside recounting miraculous events, also includes many autobiographical elements. Paradoxically, al-S̲h̲aʿrānī’s voluminous literary output obscures our view of him, because most of his biographers, such as his disciple ʿAbd al-Raʾūf al-Munāwī [q.v.], drew heavily on his works, adding little new information. An important biography, al-Manāḳib al-kubrā , was written in 1109/1697 by Muḥammad Muḥyī ’l-Dīn al-Malīd̲j̲ī, an affiliate of the al-S̲h̲aʿrānī order (Cairo 1350/1932).

Origins and life. According to al-S̲h̲aʿrānī, his ancestor five generations back was Mūsā Abū ʿImrān, son of the sultan of Tlemcen in North Africa. Mūsā was a follower of S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Abū Madyan S̲h̲uʿayb (d. 594/1197), the founder of the S̲h̲ād̲h̲ilī Ṣūfī tradition, who sent him to Egypt. Finally, the family settled in the village of Sāḳiyat Abū S̲h̲aʿra in the Minūfiyya province, hence the nisba . Al-S̲h̲aʿrānī came to Cairo at the age of twelve and settled in the Bāb al-S̲h̲aʿriyya quarter and was raised in a Ṣūfī milieu. He became a student of Cairo’s best-known ʿulamāʾ of all the mad̲h̲āhib , not only his own S̲h̲āfiʿī one, and a follower of distinguished orthodox Ṣūfīs. Yet his spiritual director was an illiterate palm-leaf plaiter (hence, his laḳab ), named ʿAlī al-K̲h̲awwāṣ al-Burullusī (d. 939/1532-3). Al-S̲h̲aʿrānī became a successful and wealthy man and a popular writer thanks to his attractive personality, erudition and readable style. Inevitably, his popularity made him many enemies and rivals, the most prominent of whom was Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Karīm al-Dīn (d. 985/1578), the leader of the (then) unorthodox K̲h̲alwatī ṭarīḳa , but he claimed to have had personal contacts with members of the ruling class, from the pas̲h̲as, the Ottoman governors of Egypt, down. He died on 12 D̲j̲umādā I 973/5 December 1565, and was buried in the zāwiya , which had been built for him. His son ʿAbd al-Raḥīm (d. 1011/1608) succeeded as the head of the zāwiya and the ṭarīḳa, although he did not have his father’s personality and ability. Yet the ṭarīḳa survived into the 19th century. Ewliya Čelebi mentions al-S̲h̲aʿrānī’s mawlid in the second half of the 11th/17th century. The ṭarīḳa is mentioned by al-D̲j̲abartī and by E.W. Lane, but not by ʿAlī Bās̲h̲ā Mubārak, whose al-K̲h̲iṭaṭ al-tawfīḳiyya al-d̲j̲adīda is a major source for Egyptian Ṣūfism in the late 19th century, nor by 20th-century sources and authorities on the subject.

His Ṣūfism. Al-S̲h̲aʿrānī represents the orthodox, middle-of-the-road, only moderately ascetic, and nonpolitical brand of Egyptian Ṣūfism. He was influenced by S̲h̲ād̲h̲ilī ethics and literature, but did not identify with that ṭarīḳa, since he considered it too aristocratic. Socially, he was associated with the Aḥmadiyya or Badawiyya, the ṭarīḳa of Sīdī Aḥmad al-Badawī (d. 675/1276) [q.v.], whom he

venerated, but he fiercely attacked the antinomian and vulgar Aḥmadīs and other similar orders for their “excesses”, their disregard of the S̲h̲arīʿa and lack of respect for the ʿulamāʾ Likewise, al-S̲h̲aʿrānī criticises the K̲h̲alwatiyya [q.v.], popular at that time among the Turkish soldiers, attacking its principle of k̲h̲alwa , solitary retreat of the adherents, as causing hallucinations and not true religious experience. He never states his own ṭarīḳa affiliation, and identifies generally with the ṭarīḳ al-ḳawm , i.e. the orthodox way of al-D̲j̲unayd. His initiation into 26 ṭarīḳas seems to have been merely ceremonial or for the sake of obtaining baraka.

As a historian of Ṣūfism (he compiled collections of ṭabaḳāt containing lives and sayings of Ṣūfīs) and an apologist for it, al-S̲h̲aʿrānī insists that genuine Ṣūfīs have never contravened the S̲h̲arīʿa in word or deed, and if it seems otherwise, it is only because of a misunderstanding, misinterpretation, ignorance of the Ṣūfī terminology, or interpolation by enemies. In this way, al-S̲h̲aʿrānī chose to defend the orthodoxy of the great mystic Muḥyī ’l-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabr [q.v.], whose ideas he epitomises in his al-Yawāḳīt wa ’l-d̲j̲awāhir , rendering the mystic’s complicated theories in a simplified way.

His fiḳh . In his al-Mīzān al-Kubrā , al-S̲h̲aʿrānī expounds a theory based on Ṣūfī assumptions that aims at the unification of the four mad̲h̲āhib, or at least their equality and the need to narrow the gaps between them. He believed that there were no real differences between the founders of the mad̲h̲āhib, in contradistinction to the opinions held by their narrowminded imitators ( muḳallidūn ). The founders were awliyāʾ and thus had access to the Source of the Law ( ʿayn al-S̲h̲arīʿa ) whence they derived the precepts of religion. According to him, there is only one S̲h̲arīʿa, and it has two standards—strict ( ʿazīma ) for those who are resolute in their religion, and lenient ( ruk̲h̲ṣa ) for those who are weak. Generally, al-S̲h̲aʿrānī criticised the fuḳahāʾ for troubling the common people with the finer points of jurisprudence, of little relevance to the essentials of Islam.

His social ideas. His weaknesses and inconsistencies notwithstanding, al-S̲h̲aʿrānī had a feeling for the essentials in religion. He also had a genuine empathy for the weak and underprivileged elements of society, such as fellaheen, labourers, and women. He paid particular attention to the relations of Ṣūfīs with members of the ruling class and wrote a treatise advising ʿulamāʾ and faḳīrs how to get along with amīrs . His criticism of the rulers’ injustice in general and the Ottoman rulers of Egypt in particular, is typically circumspect, but he hints at the date 923/1517, the year of the Ottoman conquest, as a turning point for the worse, and elsewhere makes a hostile remark about the ḳānūn , the Ottoman administrative law.

BibliographyEI 1, al-S̲h̲aʿrānī (J. Schacht)

A.E. S̲h̲midt, ʿAbd al-Vak̲h̲k̲h̲ab as̲h̲-S̲h̲aʿrānī i ego kniga razospanni̊ k̲h̲ z̲h̲emčuz̲h̲in, St. Petersburg 1914

T. al-Ṭawīl, al-S̲h̲aʿrānī, imam al-taṣawwuf fī ʿaṣrihi, Cairo 1945

J.S. Trimingham, The Sufi orders in Islam, London 1971, 220-5

J.-C. Garcin, Index des Ṭabaqāt de S̲h̲aʿrānī (pour la fin du IX e et le début du X e S.H.), in Annales Islamologiques, vi (1966), 31-94

M. Winter, Society and religion in early Ottoman Egypt: studies in the writings ofʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-S̲h̲aʿrānī, New Brunswick, N.J. 1982.