Saints and Sons: The Making and Remaking of the Rashidi Ahmadi Sufi Order, 1799-2000 (Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia)

This first history of the Rashidi Ahmadiyya argues for a new explanation of the great Sufi revival of the eighteenth century, and also defines a new paradigm of development and change in Sufi orders. In his study of one widespread Sufi order over two centuries and three continents, the author identifies a repeating cycle in which a section of an order rises under a great shaykh, splits, and stabilizes. Though each great shaykh seems to remake the order with little reference to what has gone before, there are in fact two constants through all cycles: the written literature of the order, and the limiting effect on even the greatest shaykhs of their followers' expectations.

Author

Editor

Common title

View

Saints and Sons

Reinhard Schulze is professor emeritus at the University of Bern and the current director of the Forum Islam and Middle East (FINO). He has published extensively on Muslim social and cultural history from early modernity to contemporary times, with a special emphasis on political dimensions of modern Islam. His research on Islam and enlightenment and on the genealogy of political Islam has led to important debates within Islamic studies. In his keynote speech, Professor Schulze addressed the conference topic of multiple religious identities in relation to the ambiguity of the religious in pre- and postnational social worlds.

Reinhard Schulze

Born:

Reinhard Schulze

Author Books