Sufism and Early Islamic Piety: Personal and Communal Dynamics.

• Author: Farrell, Jeremy

Sufism and Early Islamic Piety: Personal and Communal Dynamics. By ARIN SHAWKAT SALAMAH-QUDSI. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2019. Pp. xvii + 315. $99.99, [pounds sterling]75 (cloth); $80 (ebook).

For most of the past century, studies of Sufism reflected a deep engagement, if not always agreement, with the works of Louis Massignon (d. 1962; see primarily Massignon 1997, 1982). By contrast, in her new monograph Sufism and Early Islamic Piety, Arin Shawkat Salamah-Qudsi cites Massignon four times, thus marking this work as part of a recent trend in English-language studies that only indirectly address Massignon's major theses or conclusions (see also Ohlander 2010, who does not cite him directly; Green 2012, who cites three of his studies without reference to page numbers). This pursuit of novel lines of inquiry succeeds on the one hand in demonstrating the diversity of relationships that shaped Sufism from the third/ninth through seventh/thirteenth centuries; on the other hand, the marginalization of earlier scholarship like Massignon's undercuts the original aspects of Sufism and Early Islamic Piety, limiting the utility of this work for specialist and general audiences alike.

Salamah-Qudsi claims to identify two overlooked aspects of the development of "early Sufism": one, "Sufi communal identity ... could be witnessed earlier than originally thought" (p. 263); and two, "early Sufism was ... founded on personal differences" rather than constituting a piety of "quietism" (pp. x, xiii). She stresses that previous scholarship has operated under three erroneous assumptions. First, it overemphasized "hostility between Sufi and non-Sufi parties," to the point that, "no room was given to detailed discussions of the individual cases of those personalities who acted within the boundaries of that group [viz. Sufis]" (p. x). Second, she criticizes the penchant "to mark the early phase of Sufism. before the fourth/tenth century, as a period of individualism, self-marginalization and a life of radical renunciation, while marking Sufism after that period with clear social and communal impact and formulations" (p. ix). Finally, she contends that studies of prominent early Sufis rely too much on the philological approach, and that other methods are needed (p. xii). In enumerating these critiques, Salamah-Qudsi cites no specific study.

Support for these contentions is developed in a preface (pp. ix-xvii), introduction (pp. 1-21), eight chapters divided into two parts, and "Concluding Remarks" (pp. 262-68); the book also contains a brief appendix (pp. 270-72), bibliography, and index. The first two sections of Sufism and Early Islamic Piety explain the significance of the titular terms "early Sufism," "personal," and "communal" relationships, and propound a method for utilizing the sources that preserve evidence of these relationships. Salamah-Qudsi uses the term "early Sufism" in two separate ways. Sometimes it refers to the "high ethos" (pp. 6, 123, 130, etc.) articulated by Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd (d. 910f.), whom Salamah-Qudsi deems "the most incontrovertible" (p. 5) of the ninth- and tenth-century sufiyya of Baghdad. Otherwise, "early Sufism" denotes a "general" or "common" ethos that coalesced between the period from the late tenth through thirteenth centuries: "a crucible of various modes of personal and spiritual life, diverse human concerns, interpersonal relationships and conflicts" (pp. 13-14). As for "personal" and "communal" relations, the former "reflects diversified forms of [Sufis'] family life" (p. xiii), whereas the latter refers to, "early Sufis' interactions with other Sufis and the different forms of engagement in Sufi communities, including] tensions, conflicts and quarrels" (p. xi). These sets of relations...