The Politics of Sufism

How Popular Shrines Scripted the Rise and Fall of Three Islamic Empires

Sufism as an esoteric creed of extreme devotional rigor is not quite the novelty to Islam that it’s often mistaken as. The practice has a history that goes back all the way to the days of the Umayyads whose indulgence alienated a large body of puritan Muslims who sought a less hedonistic path to salvation. Never mind the resentment over the locus of authority no longer being in Ahl al-Bayt or Muhammad’s household. This primordial Sufism sought to bypass the Caliph in its quest for salvation. Much like Protestantism would seek to bypass the Papacy in the Middle Ages. But let’s start from the beginning to understand the chronology.

The Political Backdrop

Muhammad’s death in 632 AD set off a chain reaction that would take Islam through three caliphates, three civil wars or fitnas, and a large number of big-ticket assassinations. At first his companions established Islam’s first theocratic polity, the Rashidun Caliphate. This only lasted three decades before running into problems and folding. At this point, Islam experienced its first “theopolitical” schism. One faction followed Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali, and the other followed Muʿawiya, the governor of Syria and a Rashidun loyalist. Ali’s camp would later develop into Shiʿa and the mainstream into Sunni. But for now, the difference was less doctrinal and more political.

Muʿawiya continued the caliphal mainstream as a new Umayyad Caliphate whereas Ali’s successors established a separate Imamate of its own. In the latter sequence Ali was followed by his eldest, Hasan. But Hasan got killed shortly thereafter and was followed by younger brother Husayn. This one lasted a decade. After Husayn, the Alid line also underwent a minor split in leadership. While the mainstream Shiʿa polity continued with his son al-Sajjad, a splinter group separated under Ali’s third son Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya. This was the Kaysani Imamate.

The Umayyads, meanwhile, had embarked upon a territorial blitzkrieg and conquered vast swathes from Spain in the west to Sindh in the east and Transoxiana in the north to Egypt in the south. This brought a large number of non-Arabs into the Islamic fold. A distinct class of non-Arab Muslims or mawālis emerged. For the first time in Islam’s history, there were more non-Arabs than Arabs. But the Caliphate remained Arab and this was problematic. While the mawālis played a crucial role in the empire’s expansion, they were often excluded from positions of power and subjected to discriminatory policies. In most newly conquered non-Arab lands, Arabs and mawālis were barred from intermingling. Meanwhile, there was a simmering discontent over nepotism. A large section of Muslims was growing disenchanted with the caliphate as the leadership became a de facto hereditary position. We will return to this later. Let’s catch up with the Alids first.

After al-Hanafiyya died in 700 AD, the Kaysani leadership went to his son Abu Hashim. Disenchanted by the growing politicization of Islam, Abu Hashim preached a more puritanical doctrine with a special focus on austerity and frugality. He is widely acknowledged as the world’s first “Sufi.” The name Hashim is an allusion to Banu Hashim, the tribe he belonged to, via his grandafther Ali. Banu Hashim was a subset of Muhammad’s Banu Quraysh and Kaysani was a subset of Banu Hashim. Even today, Jordan’s royal family claim descent from this bloodline, hence the appellation Hashemite.

Abu Hashim passed away in 716 AD but before doing so, he named a distant cousin Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Abdallah or Muhammad al-Imam as his successor. This may or may not have been a rumor but that’s immaterial, for the succession went as claimed anyway. Muhammad al-Imam became the new Kaysani Imam and the head of the Banu Hashim clan. Drawing upon his great-grandfather Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, al-Imam and his descendants are also called Abbasids.

After al-Imam, the Kaysani leadership went to his eldest, al-Saffah. This was a particularly turbulent time in the already violent Muslim world, for the very next year it imploded into its Third Fitna or civil war between two Umayyad factions. Remember the discontent over the Caliphate’s nepotism among Arab Muslims? This was its culmination. The immediate trigger was Caliph al-Walid II’s ouster and execution by a rival aspirant. Such was the upheaval in Damascus that the capital had to be moved to Harran in Turkey. But the proverbial Rubicon had already been crossed. The conflict quickly escalated to attract even non-Umayyad adversaries, most notably the Alids, the Kharijites, and the Hashimiyya. It lasted three years and by the time the dust settled, the Umayyads were a dying shadow of their former glory. But had the dust really settled?

The Age of the Abbasids

Far from Damascus and Harran, a different kind of unrest brew in Khorasan. Today split between Afghanistan and northeastern Iran among others, this region had a very different culture from the rest of the Arab world. While Arabs and mawālis were prohibited from intermingling elsewhere, they did so freely here. Without the apartheid, Arab settlers grew increasingly Persianized in their cultural and ethnic makeup here. This was also a region with strong Shiʿa influence thanks to its close proximity to Karbala, the site of a pivotal Alid massacre. Consequently, in these parts the Sunni-Shiʿa political divide was virtually nonexistent. Therefore, when the Umayyads lost their moral, military, and political capital in the west, the already resentful east saw opportunity.

This resentment culminated, almost immediately after the Fitna, into a new civil war that would ultimately end the Umayyads. This was led by none other than al-Saffah and his brother al-Mansur. The unrest lasted three years and is called the Abbasid Revolution. Al-Saffah rallied support on the plank of restoring Islam’s authority back in Muhammad’s household via Ali’s bloodline. The waning Umayyad power along with the loose caliphal control over these lands meant the Abbasids were destined for victory. Which finally arrived in 750 AD. The Umayyad run had folded less than a century since its first Caliph.

The Abbasid Caliphate was now in session. Its seat was in Kufa, Iraq. With the exception of a brief four-year window during the civil war, the Umayyad seat had always been in Damascus. With the Abbasids there was a clear shift, the power center had moved east and was for the first time in a non-Arab city. This was Sufism’s first affair with power. The world’s first Sufi was, to cut a long story short, the ideological progenitor of what would go on to become Islam’s most influential Caliphate. Although it must be noted that restoration of Islam to its original form and the Caliphate to Muhammad’s bloodline was all just a political ploy. Once in power, the Abbasids not only extinguished the very Imamate that seeded its authority, but also descended into the same hedonistic and nepotistic abyss that sank their Umayyad predecessors. And yet, they lasted longer than both Rashidun and Umayyad put together. How? And what role does political Sufism has to play in it?