Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:55:31.992Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Citations of ᶜAttār and the Kanz al-Haqāyeq in ᶜAli Akbar Khatāyi’s Book of China: A Sufi Path of Bureaucracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Kaveh Louis Hemmat
Kaveh Louis Hemmat*
Affiliation:
Benedictine University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

ᶜAli Akbar Khatāyi’s Khatāynāmeh (Book of China), a detailed description of state and society in Ming China written in 922/1516, includes citations from the Kanz al-Haqāyeq (attributed to Mahmud Shabestari) and ᶜAttār’s Elāhināmeh. By citing these two texts at key points in his description of the Chinese government, Khatāyi articulates a radical political vision in which the civil officials, rather than the emperor, are the true rulers. Furthermore, by using the Kanz al-Haqāyeq as a portal text, and through frequent citations of other gnostic poetry, he crafts his own authorial presence by identifying his own text with fotovvat and gnosticism, and invokes a conceptual framework based on the thought of Ibn ᶜArabi epitomized in his intertexts.

Keywords

ChinaSufismpolitical theoryOttoman EmpirepoetryfutuwwaAttarMahmud ShabistarimessianismHurufism
Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 5 , September 2018 , pp. 667 - 691
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers, Carol Fan, and Özge Koçak Hemmat for feedback on this article, as well as to Marlis Saleh and other staff of the Regenstein Library, at the University of Chicago, where I first chanced upon the Khatāynāmeh, and the Süleymaniyye Library. This article is dedicated to the dear memory of Heshmat Moayyad.

References

Afshāri, Mehrān. Si fotovvat’nāmeh-ye digar: si resāleh-ye nāshenākhteh dar fotovvat va pishehvari va qalandari. [Thirty More Fotovvat'namehs: Thirty Previously Unknown Treatises on Fotovvat, Trades, and Qalandarism]. Chāp-e avval. Tehrān: Nashr-e Chashmeh, 1390 [2011-2].Google Scholar
Algar, Hamid. “The Hurufi Influence on Bektashism.” In Bektachiyya: études sur l’ordre mystique des Bektachis et les groupes relevant de Hadji Bektach, edited by Weinstein, Gilles and Popovic, Alexandre, 39–53. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Alvānsāz Khuyi, Mohammad. Mazārāt-e Khuy. Chāp-e 1. Tehrān: Ketābkhāneh, Muzeh va Markaz-e Asnād-e Majles-e Shurā-ye Eslāmi, 2011.Google Scholar
Amanat, Abbas. “The Nuqtavi Movement of Mahmud Pasikhani and His Persian Cycle of Mystical Materialism.” In Medieval Isma’ili History and Thought, edited by Daftary, Farhad, 73–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Arnakis, George. G. “Futuwwa Traditions in the Ottoman Empire Akhis, Bektashi Dervishes, and Craftsmen.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 12, no. 4 (1953): 233–235. doi: 10.1086/371156Google Scholar
Attār, Farid al-Din. Elāhināmeh [Book of the Divine]. Edited by Ruhāni, Foʾād. Tehrān: Ketabforushi-ye Zavvār, 1339 [1960-1].Google Scholar
Babayan, Kathryn. Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran. Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 35. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Bashier, Salman. “Radical Vision and Unified Religion.” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ᶜArabi Society 44 (2008): 25–37.Google Scholar
Bashir, Shahzad. Messianic Hopes and Mystical Visions: The Nūrbakhshīya Between Medieval and Modern Islam. Studies in Comparative Religion. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Bashir, Shahzad. “The Imam’s Return: Messianic Leadership in Late Medieval Shiᶜism.” In The Most Learned of the Shiᶜa, edited by Walbridge, Linda S., 21–31. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Binbas, Evrim. “Timurid Experimentation with Eschatological Absolutism: Mīrzā Iskandar, Shāh Ni’matullāh Walī, and Sayyid Sharīf Jurjānī in 815/1412.” In Unity in Diversity: Mysticism, Messianism and the Construction of Religious Authority in Islam, edited by Mir-Kasimov, Orkhan, 271–301. Leiden: Brill, 2014.Google Scholar
Bokhāri, Ṣalāh al-Din ibn Mobārak, Ṣari’oghli, Khalil Ibrāhim., and Sobhāni, Towfiq. Anis al-tālebin va ‘oddat al-sālekin [Seekers' Companion and Path-Treaders Gear]. [Tehran]: Kayhān, 1371 [1992-3].Google Scholar
Brookshaw, Dominic Parviz. “Mytho-Political Remakings of Ferdowsi’s Jamshid in the Lyric Poetry of Injuid and Mozaffarid Shiraz.” Iranian Studies 48, no. 3 (2015): 463–487. doi: 10.1080/00210862.2014.1000617CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Bruijn, J. T. P. “Kaykāvus B. Eskandar.” Encyclopaedia Iranica. Accessed August 25, 2017. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kaykavus-onsor-maali.Google Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Chittick, William C. “The Perfect Man as the Prototype of the Self in the Sufism of Jāmī.” In Sufism. Volume II: Hermeneutics and Doctrines, edited by Ridgeon, Lloyd, 63–79. London: Routledge, 2008.Google Scholar
Chittick, William C. The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Chodkiewicz, Michael. “La Réceptıon de la doctrine d’Ibn ᶜArabi dans le monde ottomane.” [The Reception of the Doctrine of Ibn ‘Arabi in the Ottoman World]. In Sufism and Sufis in Ottoman Society : Sources, Doctrine, Rituals, Turuq, Architecture, Literature and Fine Arts, Modernism, edited by Yaşar Ocak, Ahmet, 97–120. Publications of the Turkish Historical Society, XXX. Ankara: Atatürk Supreme Council for Culture, Language and History, 2005.Google Scholar
Corbin, Henry. History of Islamic Philosophy. London: Kegan Paul International, 1993.Google Scholar
Eliot, T. S. Blade Runner. DVD. Directed by Ridley Scott. Burbank: Warner Brothers, 2010.Google Scholar
Fleischer, Cornell H. “Ancient Wisdom and New Sciences: Prophecies at the Ottoman Court in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries.” In Falnama: The Book of Omens, edited by Farhad, Massumeh, Bağcı, Serpil, and Mavroudi, Maria V., 232–243. London: Thames & Hudson, 2009.Google Scholar
Fleischer, Cornell H. “The Lawgiver as Messiah: The Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Süleymân.” In Soliman le magnifique et son temps [Suleyman the lawgiver and his time], edited by Veinstein, Gilles, 159–177. Paris: La Documentation Française, 1992.Google Scholar
Gāzargāhi, Kamāl al-Dīn Hosayn, and Tabāṭabā’i Majd, Gholām Rezā. Majālis al-‘oshshāq: tazkereh-ye ‘orafā. [Gathering of the Lovers: A Memoir of Gnostics]. Chāp-e 1. [Tehran]: Zarrin, 1375 [1996].Google Scholar
Gevorgyan, Kachik. “Futuwwa Varieties and the Futuwwat-nāma Literature: An Attempt to Classify Futuwwa and Persian Futuwwat-nāma Literature.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 40. no. 1 (2013): 2–13. doi: 10.1080/13530194.2012.734955Google Scholar
Gril, Denis. “L’Enigme de la Šaǧara al-nuʾmaniyya fīl-dawla al-ᶜuṯmaniyya, attribuée à Ibn ᶜArabī.” [The Enigma of the No'manian Tree upon the Ottoman Dynasty, Attributed to Ibn ‘Arabi]. In Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople: actes de la table ronde d’Istanbul, 13‒14 Avril 1996, 133–151. Varia Turcica 33. Paris: Harmattan, 2000.Google Scholar
Hamid, Hamid. Zendagi va ruzgār va andisheh-ye Puriyā-ye Vali, Pahlavān Mahmud Khvārazmi, bā matn-e enteqādi-ye kanz al-haqāʾeq. [The Life and Times and Thought of Puriyā-ye Vali, Pahlavān Mahmud Khvārazmi, with Critical Edition of the Treasury of Truths]. Tehrān: Ketābforushi-ye Khayyām, 1353 [1975].Google Scholar
Hemmat, Kaveh Louis, “Children of Cain in the Land of Error: A Central Asian Merchant’s Treatise on Government and Society in Ming China.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30, no. 3 (2010): 434–448. doi: 10.1215/1089201X-2010-026Google Scholar
Heinrichs, Wolfhart. “Prosimetrical Genres in Classical Arabic Literature.” In Prosimetrum: Crosscultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse, edited by Harris, Joseph and Reichl, Karl, 249–76. Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer, 1997.Google Scholar
Ibn al-ᶜArabi, Muhyi al-Din. The Ringstones of Wisdom: Fusūs al-Hikam. Translated by Dagli, Caner K.. Chicago: Great Books of the Islamic World; Distributed by Kazi Publications, 2004.Google Scholar
Jacobsen, Stefan Gaarsmand. “Limits to Despotism: Idealizations of Chinese Governance and Legitimizations of Absolutist Europe.” Journal of Early Modern History 17, no. 4 (2013): 347–389. doi: 10.1163/15700658-12342370CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jāmi, ‘Abd al-Rahmān. Nafahāt al-ons min haarāt al-qods [Scents of Intimacy from the Threshold of the Sacred]. Edited by Towhidipur, Mahdi. [Tehran]: Ketābforushi-ye Sa‘di, 1336.Google Scholar
Kafadar, Cemal. Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Kauz, Ralph. “KETĀY-NĀMA.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Accessed September 2, 2017. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ketay-nama.Google Scholar
Khatāʾi, ᶜAli Akbar. Khatāynāmeh: sharḥ-e mushāhedāt-e Sayyed ᶜAli Akbar Khatāʾi, mu‘āṣer-i Shāh Esmā‘il Ṣafavi dar Chin [The Book of China: Account of the Observations of Sayyed ᶜAli Akbar Khatāʾi, Contemporary of Shāh Esmā‘il Ṣafavi, in China]. Edited by Afshār, Iraj. Tehrān: Markaz-e Asnād-e Farhangi-ye Āsiyā, 1993.Google Scholar
Landau, J. M. “Kuttāb.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Accessed September 3, 2017. http://dx.doi.org.turing.library.northwestern.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_4594Google Scholar
Lewisohn, Leonard. Beyond Faith and Infidelity: The Sufi Poetry and Teachings of Maḥmūd Shabistarī. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1995.Google Scholar
Lewisohn, Leonard. “The Transcendental Unity of Polytheism and Monotheism in the Sufism of Shabistari.” In The Heritage of Sufism. Volume II: The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism (1150‒1500), edited by Lewisohn, Leonard, 379–406. Oxford: Oneworld, 1999.Google Scholar
Loewen, Arley. “Proper Conduct (Adab) Is Everything: The Futuwwat-Nāmah-i Sultānī of Husayn Va’iz-i Kashifi.” Iranian Studies 36, no. 4 (2003): 543–570. doi: 10.1080/021086032000139221Google Scholar
Losensky, Paul E. Welcoming Fighānī: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal Ghazal. Bibliotheca Iranica no. 5. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1998.Google Scholar
Markiewicz, Christopher Andrew. “The Crisis of Rule in Late Medieval Islam: A Study of Idrīs Bidlīsī (861‒926/1457‒1520) and Kingship at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2015.Google Scholar
Meisami, Julie Scott. Medieval Persian Court Poetry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisami, Julie Scott. “Mixed Prose and Verse in Medieval Persian Literature.” In Prosimetrum: Crosscultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse, edited by Harris, Joseph and Reichl, Karl, 295–320. Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 1997.Google Scholar
Melikian-Chirvani, Assadullah Souren. “Le Livre des rois, miroir du destin. II—Takht-e Soleymān et la symbolique du Shāh-nāme.” [Book of Kings, Mirror of Destiny II: The Throne of Solomon and the Symbolism of the Epic of Kings]. Studia Iranica 20 (1991): 33–148. doi: 10.2143/SI.20.1.2014449Google Scholar
Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. “Astrology, Lettrism, Geomancy: The Occult-Scientific Methods of Post-Mongol Islamicate Imperialism.” The Medieval History Journal 19, no. 1 (2016): 1–9. doi: 10.1177/0971945815626316Google Scholar
Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. “Of Islamic Grammatology: Ibn Turka’s Lettrist Metaphysics of Light.” Al-ᶜUṣūr Al-Wusṭā 24 (2016): 42–113.Google Scholar
Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. “Powers of One: The Mathematicalization of the Occult Sciences in the High Persianate Tradition.” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 5 (2017): 127–199. doi: 10.1163/2212943X-00501006Google Scholar
Mendoza, Juan González de. The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China and the Situation Thereof. Translated by Thomas Staunton, George. Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, no. 14–15. New York: B. Franklin, 1970.Google Scholar
Minorsky, Vladimir, and Ismā’īl I, Shāh. “The Poetry of Shāh Ismā’īl I.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 10, no. 4 (1942): 1006a–1053a. doi: 10.1017/S0041977X00090182CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mir-Kasimov, Orkhan. Words of Power: Ḥurūfī Teachings between Shi‘ism and Sufism in Medieval Islam: The Original Doctrine of Faḍl Allāh Astarābādī. London: I. B. Tauris Publishers in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2015.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Colin P. “Persian Rhetoric in the Safavid Context: A 16th Century Nurbakhshiyya Treatise on Inshā.” In. Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order, edited by William Hanaway and Brian Spooner. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2012: 196–231.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Colin Paul. The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran: Power, Religion and Rhetoric. Vol. 1. I. B. Tauris & BIPS Persian Studies Series; London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2009.Google Scholar
Moin, Azfar. The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Morris, James W. “Ibn ᶜArabi’s Messianic Secret: From ‘the Mahdi’ to the Imamate of Every Soul.” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society 30 (2001): 1–18.Google Scholar
Natanzi, Mo‘in al-Din. Montakhab al-tavārikh-e mo‘ini. [Mo‘ini's Selections from the Chronicles]. Edited by Estakhri, Parvin. Tehran: Enteshārāt-e Asātir, 1383.Google Scholar
Nafisi, Saᶜid. Sarcheshmeh-ye taṣavvof dar irān. [The Fountainhead of Sufism in Iran]. Tehran: Ketābforushi-ye Forughi, 1965.Google Scholar
Nesimi. Nesimi divanı. Istanbul, 1844. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.dd0001293356.Google Scholar
Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar. “Les Melâmî-Bayrâmî (Hamzavî) et l’administration ottomane aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles.” [The Melâmî-Bayrâmî (Hamzavî)s and Ottoman Administration from the Sixteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries]. In Melâmis-Bayrâmis: études sur trois mouvements mystiques musulmans. Réunies par N. Clayer, A. Popovic & T. Zarcone, 99–114. Istanbul: Isis, 1998.Google Scholar
Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar. “Les réactions socio-religieuses contre l’idéologie officielle ottomane et la question de zendeqa ve ilḥâd (héresie et athéisme) au XVIe siècle.” [Socio-Religious Reactions Against Official Ottoman Ideology and the Question of “zendeqa ve ilḥâd” (Heresy and Atheism) in the Sixteenth Century]. Turcica 21–23 (1991): 71–82. doi: 10.2143/TURC.23.0.2014189CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar. Osmanlı toplumunda zındıklar ve mülhidler. [Heretics and Atheists in Ottoman Lands]. 15.‒17. yüzyıllar. 4th ed. Beşiktaş, İstanbul: Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı Yayınıdır, 2013.Google Scholar
Piemontese, Angelo. “La Leggenda Del Santo-Lottatore Pahlavān Maḥmud Xvārezmi ‘Puryā-Ye Vali’ (m. 722/1322).” [The Legend of the Saint-Wrestler Pahlavān Maḥmud Xvārezmi ‘Puryā-Ye Vali (d. 722/1322)]. Annali, Istituto Universitario Orientale Di Napoli 15 (1965): 167–213.Google Scholar
Ridgeon, Lloyd V. J. Jawanmardi: A Sufi Code of Honour. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pines, Yuri. “Contested Sovereignty: Heaven, the Monarch, the People, and the Intellectuals in Traditional China.” In The Scaffolding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a Concept, edited by Ben-Dor, Zvi Benite, Geroulanos, Stefanos, and Jerr, Nicole, 80–101. Columbia Studies in Political Thought/Political History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, William Clare. Marx’s Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Robinson, David. Martial Spectacles of the Ming Court. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 87. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013.Google Scholar
Rubanovich, Julia. “Aspects of Medieval Intertextuality: Verse Insertions in Persian Prose Dastans.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 32 247–268.Google Scholar
Sāmi, ᶜAli. “Yādbud-e didār-e pādeshāhān az tachar-e kākh-e Dāryush-e bozorg dar Takht-e Jamshid.” [Memorial of Visitation of Kings to Tachar at the Palace of Darius the Great at the Throne of Jamshid]. Honar va mardom 148, no. 1353 (1975): 2–12.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Shabestari, Mahmud ebn ‘Abd al-Karim. Majmu‘eh-ye āsār-e shaykh mahmud shabestari. [The Collected Works of Shaykh Mahmud Shabestari]. Zabān va Farhang-e Irān 115. Tehrān: Ketābkhāneh-ye Tahuri, 1365 [1986-7].Google Scholar
Shabestari, Mahmud ebn ‘Abd al-Karim [sic.] Resāleh-ye kanz al-haqayeq. [The Treatise of the Treasury of Truths]. Matba‘eh-ye ‘Elmi, 1353 [1934].Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin. “On Performing and Explaining Linguistic Actions.” The Philosophical Quarterly 21, no. 82 (1971): 1–21. doi: 10.2307/2217566CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sobhāni, Towfiq. “Negāhi beh fotovvat.” [An Examination of Fotovvat]. In Tārikh va farhang-e javānmardi: sepāsnāmeh-ye pishkash beh Iraj Afshār, edited by Razavi, Mas‘ud, 26–48. Tehrān: Enteshārāt-e Ettelā‘āt, 1391 [2012-3].Google Scholar
Taeschner, Franz. “Akhi,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Accessed September 3, 2017. Consulted July 6, 2018. http://dx.doi.org.turing.library.northwestern.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_0465.Google Scholar
Taeschner, Franz. “Futuwwa,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Accessed September 3, 2017. Consulted July 6, 2018. http://dx.doi.org.turing.library.northwestern.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0228.Google Scholar
Tezcan, Baki. “Law in China or Conquest in the Americas: Competing Constructions of Political Space in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire.” Journal of World History 24, no. 1 (2013): 107–134. doi: 10.1353/jwh.2013.0027Google Scholar
Tezcan, Baki. The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Tor, Deborah. G. Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry, and the ‘ayyār Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World. Istanbuler Texte Und Studien, Bd. 11. Würzburg: Ergon, 2007.Google Scholar
Vakili, Sharvin. Ostureh’shenāsi-ye pahlavānān-e irāni. [Mythology of Iranian Heroes] Tehrān: Pāzinah, 1389 [2010‒11].Google Scholar
Yavuz, F. Betul. “The Making of a Sufi Order Between Heresy and Legitimacy: Bayrami-Malāmis in the Ottoman Empire.” PhD diss., Rice University, 2013.Google Scholar
Stefanos, Yerasimos. La fondation de Constantinople et de Sainte-Sophie dans les traditions Turques: légendes d’empire. [The Foundation of Constantinople and Hagia Sophia in Turkish Traditions: Legends of Empire]. Bibliothèque de l’Institut français d’études anatoliennes d’Istanbul 31. Istanbul: Institut français d’études anatoliennes, 1990.Google Scholar
Yule, Colonel Sir Henry, and Cordier, Henri, eds. Cathay and the Way Thither. Taipei: Ch’eng-Wen Publishing Company, 1966.Google Scholar