Sufism in an Age of Transition: 'Umar al-Suhrawardi and the Rise of the Islamic Mystical Brotherhoods (review)

This is in every way a very good book. It deals comprehensively with the life and thought of an important Sufi thinker and leader, and provides a plausible explanation for the political success of his project of extending his thought throughout much of the Islamic world of his time. Ohlander argues that al-Nāsir li-Dīn Allāh, the Abbasid caliph, made al-Suhrawardi part of his campaign to project his influence more widely, and the institutionalization of the Sufi educational bodies provided a useful way of accomplishing this. We get a detailed account of the thinker's background, who he worked with, and the role he played in the cultural and political life of Baghdad, and the nature of his thought. What is important about him is not just his thought, it is argued, but his ability to embody it in institutions – institutions which could be set up in a range of places and which through the curriculum could connect students and teachers with Baghdad and all it represented at the time. There is no doubt about al-Suhrawardi's diplomatic role here, being sent on missions by his political masters and embodying his theological output in ways that were helpful to the latter, especially in allowing the connection between the political centre and the outlying territories to be interconnected through institution building, I could not help being reminded of how institution building is criticized in modern times, and how soft power is at the same time being prioritized, and the history of the twelfth and thirteenth (sixth and seventh centuries AH) saw these as being essentially part of the same process.

It might seem that there is going to be a difficulty in fitting Sufism into an institutional setting, since does it not emphasize the personal relationship between the believer and God, and does it not also tend to prioritize the solitary traveller on the road to truth, as compared with the mass practices of the general community? Yet, of course, this sort of approach to Sufism makes it incompatible with political allegiance, since the believer would tend to alienate himself as far as possible from social and political issues, and would perhaps also avoid large human gatherings. Al-Suhrawardi, in his manuals, shows how the Sufi path may be regarded as very much something to be accomplished with others, in a community and together with carrying out one's normal communal tasks, and so it fitted in very nicely with life in society, the sort of life that rulers wanted their subjects to live and which also made the subjects available for common tasks like political and, if necessary, military support. So a kind of muscular Sufism was constructed, and its precise rules and regulations are laid out by al-Suhrawardi, while its source is linked with the political authority of the regime in Baghdad.

If one were to search for something to criticize in the book, there is sometimes rather a lot of repetition, but this is a minor cavil in a very welcome addition to the scholarly literature on the history of Sufism.