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‘By comparing notions of authority in early Sufism and early Shi’ism, Dr Ghofrani
has provided us with an engaging and instructive study. By tracing the journey
of the term and concept of walāya between the two interconnected discourses of
Sufism and Shi’ism, she puts forward a challenging thesis of how ideas and termi-
nology travel between religious contexts, producing new connotations and mean-
ing along the way’.
Robert Gleave, Professor of Arabic Studies,
University of Exeter, UK
Walāya in the Formative Period of
Shi’ism and Sufism

Focused on Shi’ism and Sufism in the formative period of Islam, this book
examines the development of the concept of walāya, a complex term that has,
over time, acquired a wide range of relationships with other theological ideas,
chiefly in relation to the notion of authority.
The book offers a textual and comparative analysis of walāya based on
primary sources in the ninth and tenth centuries, from both Shi’i and Sufi circles.
The starting point is one of the oldest surviving Shi’i sources, Kitāb Sulaym.
Alongside this, the author analyses al-Īḍāḥ of Faḍl Shādhān al-Nishābūrī, Kitāb
al-Maḥāsin of al-Barqī, and Kitāb al-Kāfī of al-Kulaynī. Three major texts in
Sufism are considered: Kitāb al-Ṣidq by Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz, Tafsīr al-Qurʾan
al-ʿAẓīm by Sahl al-Tustarī, and Al-Tirmidhī’s Kitāb Sīrat al-Awliyāʾ. Together,
these sources highlight the doctrinal aspects of walāya, exploring the identity,
function, appointment, and description of those considered ‘walī’. The author
ultimately argues that walāya is a cluster of rich, deep-rooted responses to the
question of authority, developed within both Shi’ism and Sufism after the death
of the Prophet.
The book is much-needed reading for students and scholars interested in Shi’i
and Sufi studies and Islamic philosophy.

Shayesteh Ghofrani is an independent scholar. After completing her mas-

ter’s in Continental Philosophy, she received her PhD in Islamic Studies from
the University of Exeter and continued with a postdoc at the Institute of Ismaili
Studies in the UK. Her research interests include the formative period of Islamic
history with a focus on Shi’ism and Sufism.
Routledge Sufi Series
General Editor: Ian Richard Netton
Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Exeter

The Routledge Sufi Series provides short introductions to a variety of facets of the
subject, which are accessible both to the general reader and the student and scholar
in the field. Each book will be either a synthesis of existing knowledge or a distinct
contribution to, and extension of, knowledge of the particular topic. The two major
underlying principles of the Series are sound scholarship and readability.
Previously published by Curzon
21. Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī and the Controversy of the Sufi Gaze
Lloyd Ridgeon
22. Sufism in Ottoman Egypt
Circulation, Renewal and Authority in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Rachida Chih
23. Perspectives on Early Islamic Mysticism
The World of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī and his Contemporaries
Sara Sviri
24. Sufism and the Perfect Human
From Ibn ‘Arabī to al-Jīlī
Fitzroy Morrissey
25. State and Sufism in Iraq
Building a “Moderate” Islam Under Saddam Husayn
David Jordan
26. Sufism in Eighteenth-Century India
Muḥammad Nāṣir ʿAndalīb’s Lament of the Nightingale and Ṭarīqa-yi Khāliṣ
Muḥammadiyya
Neda Saghaee
27. Walāya in the Formative Period of Shi’ism and Sufism
A Comparative Analysis
Shayesteh Ghofrani

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www​.routledge​.com​/

Routledge​-Sufi​-Series​/book​-series​/SE0491
Walāya in the Formative
Period of Shi’ism and Sufism
A Comparative Analysis

Shayesteh Ghofrani
First published 2023
by Routledge
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Names: Ghofrani, Shayesteh, author.
Title: Walāya in the formative period of Shi’ism and Sufism : a comparative
analysis / Shayesteh Ghofrani.
Description: First. | New York : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Routledge Sufi
series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN
2022045566 (print) | LCCN 2022045567 (ebook) | ISBN
9781032432496 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032432526 (paperback) | ISBN
9781003366416 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Authority--Religious aspects--Islam. | Shīʻah--History. |
Sufism--History. | Islam and state.
Classification: LCC BP165.7 .G482 2023 (print) | LCC BP165.7 (ebook) |
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ISBN: 978-1-032-43249-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-43252-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-36641-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003366416
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Service, Chennai, India
Contents

List of Illustration x
Acknowledgements xi
Note on Transliteration, Translation, and Abbreviation xii

Introduction 1
Origin of the Term Wilāya/Walāya 3
A Note on Vocalization and Meaning of Wilāya/Walāya 5
Walāya in the Qurʾan 9
The Cosmic Dimension of Walī 9
This-Worldly Dimension of Walī 12
Qurʾanic Walāya and Future Developments 14
Formative Period in Shiʿism 15
Formative Period in Sufism 18
Scholarly Challenges in the Formative Period 19
Shiʿi and Sufi Texts in the Formative Period 21
Notes 24

1 Walāya in Formative Shiʿism 35

The Concept of Walāya according to Sulaym b. Qays al-Hilālī 36
Kitāb Sulaym 38
Walāya in Kitāb Sulaym 39
The Concept of Walāya according to Faḍl ibn Shādhān
al-Nishābūrī 42
Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ 44
Walāya in Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ 44
Aspect of Knowledge 45
Aspect of Political Authority 47
The Concept of Walāya according to Aḥmad al-Barqī 49
Kitāb al-Maḥāsin 50
viii Contents
Walāya in al-Maḥāsin 51
Aspect of Primordial Covenant 51
Aspect of Love 54
The Concept of Walāya according to Abū Jʿafar Muḥammad
al-Kulaynī 55
Kitāb al-Kāfī 55
Walāya in al-Kāf ī 56
Aspect of Knowledge 57
Aspect of Faith 60
Notes 61

2 Development of Walāya in Formative Shiʿism 73

Walāya as Political Authority 73
Walāya and Knowledge 76
Walāya and Primordial Covenant 79
Walāya and the Elect Community 83
Walāya as Faith and a Pillar of Islam 84
Closing Remarks 88
Notes 89

3 Walāya in Formative Sufism 97

The Concept of Walāya according to Aḥmad b. ʿĪsā al-Kharrāz 98
Kitāb al-Ṣidq 99
Walāya in Kitāb al-Ṣidq 100
Stations for the Awliyāʾ 100
Awliyāʾ, Knowledge, and Hierarchy 103
The Concept of Walāya according to Sahl al-Tustarī 105
Al-Tustarī’s Tafsīr al-Qurʾan al-Karīm 106
Walāya in al-Tustarī’s Tafsīr 107
Aspect of Creation and Emanation 107
Aspect of Primordial Covenant 108
Aspect of Gnosis and Knowledge 109
Aspect of Spiritual Hierarchy 110
The Concept of Walāya according to Ḥakīm al-Tirimidhī 114
Kitāb Sīrat al-Awliyāʾ 115
Walāya in Kitāb Sīrat al-Awliyāʾ 115
Awliyāʾ Allāh vs. awliyāʾ ḥaqq Allāh 115
Aspect of Creation and Prophethood 117
Hierarchy of the Awliyāʾ 120
Aspect of Knowledge 124
Notes 126
 Contents ix
4 Development of Walāya in Formative Sufism 139
Walāya and Knowledge 140
Hierarchy among the Awliyāʾ 142
Walāya, Emanation and Primordial Covenant 147
Walāya vs. Nubuwwa 149
Closing Remarks 151
Notes 152

5 A Comparative Study of Walāya in Shiʿism and Sufism 156

Significance of Walāya in Shiʿism and Sufism 158
Stage 1: Walāya in Earliest Sources 160
Stage 2: Walāya at the Time of Minor Occultation 161
Stage 3: Walāya at the Beginning of the Major
Occultation 163
Conclusion 166
Notes 170

Bibliography 173
Index 185
Illustrations

Figures
4.1 Hierarchy of the awliyāʾ in al-Kharrāz’s Kitāb al-Ṣidq 143
4.2 Hierarchy of the awliyāʾ in al-Tustarī’s Tafsīr 145
4.3 Hierarchy of the awliyāʾ in al-Tirmidhī 148
5.1 Aspects of walāya 168

Table
5.1 Shared Aspects of walāya in Shiʿism and Sufism 169
Acknowledgements

The present book has been a journey for me, both personally and academically.
This journey would not be possible without the help of my peers.
The completion of this book owes an enormous debt of gratitude to the late Dr
Janis Esots at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, UK, whose help in revising
the text was indispensable and for giving me detailed and constructive comments
on this monograph. I wished we could both see the publication of this research,
but sadly, he left us all very soon. This book is dedicated to him.
My personal and earnest gratitude extends to Rafiq R. Ajani. This book has
benefited immensely from his thorough questioning and review, throughout its
journey, even when it was barely a PhD thesis.
My special gratitude extends to Professor Robert Gleave for assisting me to be
on the right track during the writing phase of my PhD thesis and also to Professor
Andrew Newman, who read my thesis and provided me with his valuable and
extensive comments.
Note on Transliteration,
Translation, and Abbreviation

This book follows the transliteration system used by the Encyclopaedia of Islam,
third edition. Diacritical marks are not used with some names, such as dynasties,
cities, and communities, which occur frequently in the book and are treated as
common English words in The Concise Oxford Dictionary. For example, Abbasid
for ʿAbbāsid, Ismaʿili for Ismāʿīlī, Sufi for Ṣūfī; Sunni for Sunnī, Shiʿi for Shīʿī,
Qurʾan for Qurʾān. The lunar (qamarī) dates of the hijrī calendar are followed by
the corresponding Gregorian solar years. In rare instances, when a date refers to
the solar hijrī calendar used in Iran, it is indicated by ‘Sh’ (shamsī). All transla-
tions from the Qurʾan are taken from The Glorious Qurʾan: Text and Explanatory.
Translation by Mohammad M. Pickthall (Chicago: Iqraʾ International Educational
Foundation, 2001).

Abbreviations
EI1 M. T. Houtsma, M. T. et al., Encyclopaedia of Islam. First Edition.
Leiden: Brill, 1913–1936.
EI2 Gibb, H. A. R. et al., eds. Encyclopaedia of Islam. Second edition.
Leiden: Brill, 1960–2004.
EI3 Fleet, Kate et al., eds. Encyclopaedia of Islam. Third edition.
Leiden: Brill, 2007–
EQ McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, ed. Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾan. Printed
Edition. Leiden: Brill, 2002–2005.
EQ Online Pink, Johanna general ed. Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾan. Online
Edition.
Introduction

This book is about the genesis of the concept of wilāya/walāya. Although there are
many academic studies concerning the concept of wilāya/walāya, little research
has been done on the meaning, origin, historical characteristics, and significance
attached to it. Within Muslim contexts, historically, the concepts of religious
authority are mainly derived from three key Arabic terms, namely wilāya/walāya,
khilāfa, and imāma.1 Even though wilāya/walāya, khilāfa, and imāma have their
origin in the era prior to the nation-states, they are still relevant as concepts under-
lying authority and leadership within nation-states in Muslim contexts. There is
a system of authority and leadership in Iran derived from the concept of wilāya/
walāya,2 and there are still groups wanting to create a system of caliphate in our
times. Then there are several groups of Shiʿis, all adhering to the idea of imāma,
whether in the form of a living imām or one in occultation. However, surprisingly
there exist to my knowledge no comprehensive history of these key concepts sur-
veying the development of the idea of authority since their inception. These three
concepts, wilāya/walāya, khilāfa, and imāma, and their related cognates with their
complex usage in pre-Islamic Arabia as well as the variety of meaning in the
Qurʾan provided Muslim thinkers from the formative period of Islam to the pre-
sent day with ideas that could easily lend themselves towards the articulation of
political and spiritual authority, governance, and sanctity in Islam.
The current study, however, limits itself only to the development of the concept
of wilāya/walāya among the Shiʿi and the Sufi circles within the formative period
of Islam. It is concerned with the notion of wilāya/walāya to be translated, for
now, as ‘friendship or nearness with God’, in order to show how wilāya/walāya is
understood in Shiʿism and Sufism and how the concept of wilāya/walāya develops
within these two traditions with clear yet unacknowledged influence upon each
other. It is this process of development that has given rise to diversity of interpre-
tations and understanding of religious authority among Muslims. By investigating
the development of the concept of wilāya/walāya, this study shows that like all
concepts, wilāya/walāya is not something clearly and universally defined since
inception. It came about by a gradual shift of circumstances.
Wilāya/Walāya is one of the main doctrinal concepts of both Shiʿis and Sufis.
The term wilāya/walāya is significant and quite unique in the sense that in its
most basic meaning it designates a type of relationship between persons of equal

DOI: 10.4324/9781003366416-1
2 Introduction
or unequal status. Shiʿism appropriated the concept of wilāya/walāya to express
its understanding of the role of the imām as well as the position of the Shiʿi com-
munity with respect to the imām, whereas the Sufis appropriated the same concept
to express the role of the awliyāʾ and their spiritual characteristics. Based on the
study of extant sources, it seems that Sufis came to use the concept of wilāya/
walāya much later than the Shiʿis. The Shiʿis took this term and made it their main
religious and communal principle from a very early stage in their history, but
Sufism, especially at the beginning, tended rather to an individual and personal
spiritual path. It was later on, however, that Sufism had an influence on Shiʿism
which can be observed right from the third/ninth century onwards, when the earli-
est works in Sufism were produced.3
Noting the influence, similarities, and differences between Shiʿism and Sufism
about authority is not just the provenance of academia in our times. Comparison
between these two, based on the concept of wilāya/walāya, has been made in the
past. Ibn Khaldūn (d. 784/1382)4 was among the first to notice the close affinity
between the concept of wilāya/walāya in Sufism and the Shiʿi concept of imāma.
He investigated the early history of both Shiʿism and Sufism to conclude that
Sufism is virtually saturated with Shiʿi ideas. In his Muqaddima, he writes:

Each group [early Sufis and early Shiʿis] came to be imbued with the dogmas
of the other. Their theories and beliefs merged and were assimilated. In Sufi
discussion, there appeared the theory of the “pole” (quṭb), meaning the chief
gnostic. The Sufis assumed that no one can reach his station in gnosis, until
God takes him unto Himself and then gives his station to another gnostic who
will be his heir … The theory of successive poles is not confirmed by logical
arguments or evidence from the religious law. It is a sort of rhetorical figure
of speech. It is identical with the theory of the extremist Shiʿa about the suc-
cession of the imāms through inheritance. Clearly, mysticism has plagiarised
this idea from the extreme Shiʿa and come to believe in it … The Sufis, fur-
thermore, speak about the order of existence of the awliyāʾ who came after
the pole, exactly as the Shiʿa speak about their chiefs [imāms]. They go so
far, (in the identification of their own concepts with those of the Shiʿa), that
when they constructed a chain of transmitters of the wearing of the Sufi clock
(khirqa) as a basic requirement of the mystic way and practice, they made it
go back to ʿAlī. This points in the same direction and can only [be explained
as Shiʿa influence].5

On what sources Ibn Khaldūn based his study of the early history of Islam we
do not know. Yet, he insists on the Shiʿi influence in the Sufi understanding of
religious authority and doctrine of the hierarchy of the awliyāʾ who are presented,
just like the Shiʿi imāms, as the continuation of the prophetic mission on a new
historic stage. Just as the Prophet Muḥammad was the ‘seal’ (khātam) of prophet-
hood (nubuwwa), the highest of the awliyāʾ is considered the seal of sainthood
(khātam al-awliyāʾ).6 He writes:
 Introduction 3
It is obvious that the Sufis in Iraq derived their comparison between the
manifest and the inner [world] from the Ismaʿilīyya Shiʿa and their well-
known theory concerning the imāma and concerned matters, at the time when
Ismaʿilīyya Shiʿa made its appearance. The [Ismaʿilīyya Shiʿa] considered
the leadership of mankind and its guidance toward the religious law a duty
of the imām. Therefore, they assumed that there could be no more than one
imām if the possibility of a split were to be avoided, as is established in
the religious law. [Correspondingly, the Sufis] then regarded as a duty of
the pole who is the chief gnostic, the instruction [of mankind] in the gnosis
of God. Therefore, they assumed that there could be only one, on analogy
from the imām in the manifest [world], and that he was the counterpart of the
imām. They called him pole, because the gnosis revolves around him, and
they equated the “saints” (awliyāʾ) with the ʿAlid chiefs (imāms), in their
exaggerated desire to identify [their concepts with those of the Shiʿa].7

It can be said that the current research extends Ibn Khaldūn’s project, not focus-
ing on the general practices, as he did,8 but on the conceptual development of the
notion of wilāya/walāya.9 It is surprising that such a comparison broached by a
historian in the fourteenth century has received only scant attention in our times
within academia. Much attention has been paid to the line of thought concerning
wilāya/walāya leading from al-Tirmidhī (d. 295–300/907–912) in the late third/
ninth century to the thought of Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) where wilāya/walāya is
linked to the notion of the ‘perfect man’ (insān al-kāmil).10 Within the study of
Shiʿism the concept of wilāya/walāya has been confined mainly to the concept of
imāma and in particular to the discussion of the legal and theological concerns
embodied in the notion of ‘wilāyat/walāyat al-faqīh’ (guardianship of the jurist)
within Twelver Shiʿism.11 This research will thus be a small step towards redress-
ing the balance by focusing on the sources earlier than the fourth/tenth century
to see how the notion of wilāya/walāya came about and what were the doctrinal
aspects that gave initial shape to the form of wilāya/walāya within Shiʿism and
Sufism, thereby exploring the identity, function, appointment, and the description
of those considered as ‘walī’,12 and hence, the first step in understanding religious
authority in formative period of Islam.

Origin of the Term Wilāya/Walāya

Conceptually speaking, Henry Corbin situated the origin of the concept of wilāya/
walāya within Sufism rooted in Zoroastrianism and Buddhism. In discussing the
idea of the ‘pole’ within Sufism, Corbin associates the term ‘pole’ with a dominant
figure in Zoroastrian called Srausha (Pahlavi Srūsh, Persian Surūsh). Srausha is
represented as a priest-angel, identified as the angel of initiation (wilāya/walāya).
He writes:

At the pole, at the pole star, it is the abode of the Angel Srausha … since
hierocosmology places the angel of Initiation in the cosmic north, and since
4 Introduction
hierognosis perceives in his person the pole, it goes without saying that the
arrival at the summit of mystic initiation has to experienced, visualized and
described as arrival at the pole, at the cosmic north. And here exactly is where
we can glimpse a link of continuity between Zoroastrian spirituality on the
angel Srausha and the spiritual universe of Sufism centred around the pole
… On the one hand, the pole is therefore the situs of the angel Srausha, on
the other hand this is the qualification given in Sufism to the great shaykh
of the period, and for this reason the pole is considered in Shiʿite Sufism as
representing the hidden imām.13

Corbin also argues that the concept of wilāya/walāya as initiation has its roots
in Central Asian Buddhism, especially after al-Trimidhī in whose writings the
number of the 40 abdāl is particularly significant. He concludes that the sym-
bols of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Sufism are all in accord with the same
representation.14
Another scholar whose scholarship on Shiʿi doctrines and their origin throws
light on the origin and understanding of the concepts of wilāya/walāya within
Shiʿism is Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi.15 For Amir-Moezzi, the Shiʿi belief of
wilāya/walāya grew out of a combination of ancient Arab beliefs combined with
Jewish, Christian, and Qurʾanic concepts pertaining to the cult of kinship and the
family of the Prophet. The early Shiʿism, according to Amir-Moezzi, was deeply
esoteric and accordingly, wilāya/walāya in Shiʿism became endowed with deeply
esoteric meaning as well.16 Wilāya/Walāya, for Amir-Moezzi in the context of
early Shiʿism, has a simple translation with two independent and complemen-
tary meanings: (1) applied to the imāms referring to their ontological status or
their sacred initiatory mission, in which it indicates that imām/walī is the ‘chief’,
the ‘master’ of believers, par excellence. In this acceptation, walī is a synonym
of waṣī (the inheritor, the heir)17 and (2) applied to the faithful followers of the
imāms, wilāya/walāya denotes love, faith, and submission of the believers to their
imām, becoming the equivalent of tawallī, being faithful friend or the obedient
protégé of someone.18
Etymologically speaking, however, the term wilāya/walāya is a verbal noun
from the Arabic root w-l-y which means ‘to be near’, ‘to be a friend’, and ‘to gov-
ern and to command’.19 Patricia Crone explored the origins of the root w-l-y and
placed it in pre-Islamic Arabia based on the classical Muslim institution of client-
age, called walāʾ. Walāʾ is, according to Crone, a kind of agreement whereby in
pre-Islamic times a person with no previous bond to an Arab tribe became a mem-
ber and the client of a particular tribe. Walāʾ was always used to formally connect
two individuals both known as mawālī, and throughout the Umayyad period, this
institution was practised as means of attachment of newcomers to the conquest
society.20 Thus, walāʾ was an important institution for the reorganization of the
enlarged Muslim community. Though its function later developed differently in
works of fiqh,21 in the early Islam, walāʾ provided the most effective means of
incorporating the non-Arab converts into the new community of the Arabs, while
safeguarding the latter’s dominant role.22
 Introduction 5
Hermann Landolt also places the term's origin in the pre-Islamic kinship prin-
ciple and inheritance laws in Arabia. In the tribal Arab tradition, the primary heir
is the walī as, the closest paternal male in descending or ascending order. Also,
under specific conditions, the inheritance of a manumitted slave goes to his former
owner, who has become his patron (mawlā). Also, wide-ranging marital instruc-
tions and the gift of the bridal dowry to the brides or wives, as well as the protec-
tion of the possessions of orphans and just treatment of the mentally weak (safīh),
whom their walī in legal matters should represent, are Qurʾan-based laws which
also have their origin in Pre-Islamic legal rules in Arabia.23
However, the history of the term wilāya/walāya, in the meaning of ‘legitimacy
for leadership’ of the Muslim community, starts with the first crisis of Muslim
history, that is, after the death of the Prophet in 11/632 and the election of Abū
Bakr (d. 13/634). The first issue of Muslim history following the death of the
Prophet was largely an institutional issue and the caliphate provided a solution to
this problem. The second and far more serious issue was then, and has remained to
the present an issue of legitimate authority, in which the concept of wilāya/walāya
played a major role.
We can conclude that the term wilāya/walāya and its cognate words have their
origin in pre-Islamic Arabia and have always been defined and interpreted in vari-
ous ways. Wilāya/Walāya as a concept designates a type of relationship between
two or more parties, ranging from the relationship between a servant and a master,
a mutual aid, a client and a patron, relations of friendship and closeness, kinship,
inheritance, and so on to the imbued spiritual relationship and divine absolute
authority.

A Note on Vocalization and Meaning of Wilāya/Walāya

In this book thus far, the two vocalizations wilāya and walāya have been placed
together because these vocalizations, derived from the same verbal root w-l-y,
have given rise to a spectrum of meanings both equally relevant to this research.
Within the classical Muslim texts, the question of whether wilāya and walāya
were the correct vocalization was primarily a question raised by grammarians as
well as philologists. It was chiefly a linguistic matter to understand the correct
verbal noun of walī. In his Lisān al-ʿArab, Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1311–1312) has
recorded several opinions on this debate, out of which a few are worth noting here.
According to Ibn Manẓūr, Ibn Sikkīt (d. ca. 244/858) and Ibn Athīr (d. 606/1310)
preferred the vocalization of wilāya as the source of walī, whereas Sībawayh (d.
ca. 178/793) argued for the vocalization of walāya. Ibn Sīda (d. 458/1066) consid-
ered both vocalizations as almost identical. Al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822) also accepted
both vocalizations as valid sources of the word walī.24 It is clearly apparent in
Lisān al-ʿArab that, from the early discussions among Muslim grammarians,
there has never been an agreement over the preferred or correct form of vocaliza-
tion. Both wilāya and walāya could equally be considered as the verbal noun of
walī.25 It is only later in the fourteenth century that we observe a debate, albeit
fragmentarily, about the meaning of the two terms, chiefly by the Sufi thinkers.
6 Introduction
For example, Egyptian Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Māgirī (d. ca. 696/1297) argued that
both terms refer to ‘authority’ and there is no ambiguity concerning the meaning
of two terms:

We say (and with God is the approval): walāya is a verbal noun and wilāya
is a gerund (ism maṣdar). The meaning of both is ‘assistance or support’
(nuṣra), according to Sībawayh. Al-Azharī, however, says that walāya means
‘most clearly related’ (azhar fī-naṣab), while the idea of assistance or support
comes from the saying, ‘a patron by virtue of authority’ (walī bayna wilāya).
Wilāya, therefore, is like a command (imāra), as in the saying ‘governing by
virtue of [delegated] authority’ (wālin bayna wilāya).26

An Indian Sufi master of the medieval period, Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (d. 725/1325),
however, slightly distinguishes the two, with wilāya conveying a sense of proxim-
ity and love, and walāya connoting authority. However, he posits walī as possess-
ing both wilāya and walāya:

The walī possesses both walāya and wilāya at the same time. Walāya is that
which masters impart to disciple about God, just as they teach them about the
etiquette of the way. Everything such as this which takes place between the
shaykh and other people is called walāya. But that which takes place between
the shaykh and God is called wilāya. That is special kind of love, and when
the shaykh leaves the world, he takes his wilāya with him. His walāya on the
other hand, he can confer it, then it is suitable for God Almighty to confer the
walāya on someone. But the wilāya is the shaykh’s constant companion. He
bears it with him [wherever he goes].27

This debate, however, did not have theological or philosophical repercussions

amongst Muslim thinkers in the formative and medieval periods. It was much
later in the nineteenth-century academia that the two vocalizations wilāya and
walāya became a locus for distinguishing Shiʿism from Sufism and subsequently
gave rise to theological and doctrinal discussions. Many scholars of the field
have associated the vocalization of walāya with Shiʿism and wilāya with Sufism.
Henry Corbin is one of the first Western scholars who recognized that there is
a relationship between Shiʿism and Sufism and wrote about the two vocaliza-
tions of the term. Corbin associated the vocalization of ‘walāya’ with Shiʿism
and the vocalizations of ‘wilāya’ with Sufism.28 He considered ‘initiation to the
imām’ a more suitable English translation of the term ‘walāya’ in Shiʿism and
‘sainthood’ an appropriate rendering of the term ‘wilāya’ in Sufism.29 He stated
that Shiʿi gnosis is an ‘initiatic religion’ and, therefore, the common transla-
tion of walāya as ‘holiness’ would be unsatisfactory.30 ‘Walāya as an initiation
and as an “initiatic” function is the spiritual ministry of the imām whose cha-
risma initiates his faithful in the esoteric meaning of the prophetic revelations’.31
Therefore, Corbin translated the term walī as ‘grand master’ or ‘the master of
initiation’.
 Introduction 7
Corbin further argued that Sufism has its roots in Shiʿism. In his History of
Islamic Philosophy (1964),32 Corbin stated that the final phase of the cycle of
prophecy (nubuwwa) is, in Shiʿism, the initial phase of the cycle of walāya. The
awliyāʾ Allāh in Shiʿism ‘are strictly speaking, the prophets and imāms, the elite
of humanity to whom the divine secrets are revealed through divine inspiration’
and they are ‘spiritual guides of humanity’.33 Thus, walāya, along with the notion
of bāṭin, makes Shiʿism as a whole, the ‘gnosis (ʿirfān) of Islam’. He concluded
that this Shiʿi gnosis led to the elaboration of the mystical experience of the Sufis.
For him, Ibn ʿArabī’s work could in this sense be read as ‘the work of a Shiʿi
author’. Positing the roots of Sufi gnosis in Shiʿi gnosis, Corbin made the claim
that the Sufi notion of wilāya has a Shiʿi origin.34
A few years later, in 1972, Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his ‘Sufi Essays’35 agreed
with Corbin and highlighted the fluid environment of the first two centuries
of Islam in which elements of Islamic esotericism appear as representing both
Shiʿism and Sunni Sufism.36 Following Corbin on the vocalization, Nasr also
emphasized the same distinction between the two vocalizations, arguing that the
term wilāya is associated with Sufi practices whereas the term walāya is associ-
ated with Shiʿi practices. For Nasr, however, wilāya means ‘sanctity’ and the
walāya refers to ‘initiatic power or function’.37 In Shiʿism, Nasr argues, the basic
function of the imām is associated with the ‘power’, hence the function of walāya
is ‘spiritual guidance and initiation’, which is ‘transmitted to Fāṭima and ʿAlī
from the Prophet and through them to all imāms’. Nasr also agrees with Corbin
that the term wilāya within Sufism was originated from the Shiʿi term of walāya
and it provides a similar function of walāya, that is, ‘to concern the ever-living
spiritual presence in Islam which enables men to practice the spiritual life and
reach to the state of sanctity’. As in Shiʿism, the imām possesses the spiritual
power and function of walāya, likewise, the Sufi quṭb possesses the function of
wilāya as the spiritual guide in Sufism.38 According to Nasr, both terms communi-
cate the same meaning and function within different historical contexts that have
resulted in a remarkable similarity between Shiʿism and Sufism.
One of the most detailed studies of the significance of the terms wilāya and
walāya is by Vincent Cornell. To see the essential difference between these two
terms, Cornell analyzed the function of the two related terms in the context of
Moroccan Sufism. Cornell explains walāya as ‘the sainthood of intimacy’ and
wilāya as ‘sainthood of authority’, both existing simultaneously in Sufism.39 He
highlights that in Moroccan context, walāya connotes the ‘internal visage (bāṭin)
of sainthood’ and thus it refers to the divine and ‘metaphysical essence of the
sainthood’, enjoyed by all Sufi aspirants in all levels and varying degrees, whereas
wilāya refers to the ‘outward visage (ẓāhir) of sainthood’, limited only to specially
recognized (khāṣṣ) Sufi masters. Hence, walāya is translated as ‘closeness to God’
and wilāya as ‘authority on earth’. According to Cornell, these two dimensions are
complementary but legitimate at the same time. The ‘saint’s authority on earth’
(wilāya) cannot be confirmed without the ‘saint’s closeness to God’ (walāya).40
Besides scholars who make a clear distinction between the two vocalizations
of wilāya and walāya, there are those who make a distinction between the two
8 Introduction
terms albeit not a clear one. For Maria Massi Dakake, the boundaries between
walāya and wilāya are not always clear in meaning. Although she describes both
terms in a similar manner, she claims that each term refers to a different aspect
of the same verbal root meaning. The word walāya, she argues, is applied most
commonly to the state of ‘closeness and nearness’ or of ‘friendship and kinship’,
whereas wilāya, on the other hand, refers more specifically to a ‘ruling or mana-
gerial office’ and refers to ‘a kind of authority that is limited and circumscribed,
confined within a particular locality or jurisdiction and subject to higher author-
ity’. Similarly, wālī, as opposed to walī, denotes ‘governorship’ whom the caliph
appointed and is a derivative of wilāya, not walāya. She writes that wālī, in prin-
ciple, was simply the ‘local’ or ‘near’ representative of the far-off authority of the
caliph. Such authority was not usually interpreted as religious authority; rather,
it represented managerial control over the economic and military affairs. On the
other hand, Dakake categorizes the relationships which involve the idea of mutual
aid and support, coupled with the idea of attachment of loyalty and devotion,
under the term walāya. She traces the Qurʾanic origin and early religious con-
notations of the concept of walāya and the role it played in shaping the sense of
‘communal solidarity’ among followers of the first Shiʿi imām, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib.
She states that walāya pertains not only to the charisma of the Shiʿi leadership and
affection to them but also to unity and loyalty among the members of the com-
munity itself. As Shiʿi theology advanced from the late Umayyad times onwards,
she sees the principle of walāya being connected in an essential way with the Shiʿi
notion of faith or true belief (īmān). Thus, walāya was the essential foundation
for recognizing a true believer (muʾmin), over against recognition of unbelievers
(kuffār) who did not accept the walāya towards ʿAli and his family. The author
argues that it is this fundamental meaning of walāya that counts for its function
in the shaping of Shiʿi identity. She uses the term walāya to express the terms
‘walī’, ‘awliyāʾ’, or ‘mawlāʾ’ and uses wilāya instead to express the aspect of this
word that precisely relates to authority or jurisdiction. It is the esoteric aspect of
walāya, which, Dakake notes, overlaps with the history of Sufism.41
In the vocalization debate between wilāya and walāya, this research is in line
with the arguments of Hermann Landolt and Carl Ernst. According to Landolt, the
distinction between the two vocalizations is not normally indicated in the texts,
and the classical Arab lexicographers are not unanimous on this point.42 Ernst
goes even further arguing that the Sufi and the Shiʿi concepts of sainthood and
initiation overlap considerably and the distinction between the two vocalizations
cannot be neatly turned into doctrinal hypostases. He challenges Corbin’s dis-
tinction by saying that the initiatic authority, exclusively reserved for Shiʿism
by Corbin, also plays an important role in Sufism. Similarly, the terminology of
mystical experience could also be found in Shiʿism.43
In this research, which considers the period prior to the fourth/tenth century, it
will be seen that the notion of wilāya/walāya is extremely dynamic. While these
two terms are not distinguishable in an un-vocalized text, there is no textual evi-
dence to support any of the discussions mentioned above regarding the vocaliza-
tion during this period. What we do know is that the self-same notion started its
 Introduction 9
life within the context of political authority and inheritance after the death of the
Prophet and within two centuries acquired a spiritual and metaphysical dimension.
This research traces the development of this self-same notion of wilāya/walāya
during the period of extreme fluidity. For the sake of convenience, however, I will
use the vocalization of walāya throughout this book.

Walāya in the Qurʾan

Before embarking on the study of the development of the term in Shiʿism and
Sufism, it is worthwhile to briefly examine how walāya or its cognate terms
appear in the Qurʾan. An understanding of walāya developed from within the
Qurʾan will help us measure how much the Shiʿi or the Sufi understanding of this
concept merges or deviates from that of the Qurʾanic usage.
The term walāya itself appears only twice in the Qurʾan (Q 8:7244 and 18:4445).
However, the derivative forms of the root w-l-y appear more than two hun-
dred times. The derivatives are yalū (1 time), wallāʾ (30 times), tawallāʾ (78
times), awlāʾ (11 times), awlayān (1 time), mawālī (3 times), mawlāʾ (18 times),
wilāyat/walāyat (2 times), walī (86 times), wāl (1 time), muwallī (1 time). This
section concentrates on the derivative word ‘walī’, which refers to the person who
has walāya. One of the ways in which walī can be understood in the Qurʾan is by
following the semantic analysis of the term.46 A semantic field denotes a concep-
tual network formed by a set of related words which share a common semantic
property. Words in a semantic field are not synonymous but are all used to talk
about the same general phenomenon. Each individual semantic field has at its
centre a ‘keyword’ around which several other related words form a periphery of
meaning, such that the meaning of the keyword becomes apparent by its relation
to the peripheral words. Therefore, to understand walāya through the derivatives
of the root w-l-y, this section will look at words that appear along with the key-
words walī (and its cognates) in the Qurʾan. It will also consider words that are
associated with walī. Furthermore, the Qurʾanic verses under consideration can
be divided into two categories: verses that speak of a cosmic dimension and those
that speak of this-worldly dimension.

The Cosmic Dimension of Walī

Within the cosmic dimension, those verses are grouped together that convey the
relationship between God and the rest of the creatures, mainly where God declares
Himself as Walī. In these verses God not only emphasizes that He is the Walī of
believers (Q 4:45; 4:123) and the angels (Q 34:41), but He also states that there is
no walī beside Him. This formula of declaration and then negation is similar to the
formula ‘la ilāha illa Allāh’ (Q 37:35; 47:19), in which God declares Himself as
Allāh and negates all other gods beside Him. Apart from this similarity there is a
difference between God as ‘Allāh’ and God as ‘Walī’. God as ‘Allāh’ is God irre-
spectively of believers and unbelievers, whereas God is a Walī only for the believ-
ers. In the verses that God is considered as the only true Walī of the believers, the
10 Introduction
Qurʾan uses terms, such as ‘min dūn Allāh’ (‘apart from Allāh’, Q 2:107; 4:123;
6:51), ‘aghayr Allāh’ (‘other than Allāh’, Q 6:14), or ‘kafī bi-Allāh’ (‘Allāh [is]
sufficient’, Q 4:45), to say that there is no walī apart from or other than Himself
and that He is, as a Walī, sufficient for his believers (Q 6:14).
Just by looking at the statement in which God declares Himself as walī, it is
difficult to say what the word walī means. The context of the verses and the words
used along with the term walī, such as naṣīr, mawlāʾ, muʾmin, can help towards
understanding the meaning of this term.47 The variety of meanings of walī within
the cosmic dimension are discussed as follows:

1. In most of the verses God as Walī is coupled with another word, ‘naṣīr’. The
word naṣīr appears 26 times in the Qurʾan along with one of the forms of the
root w-l-y, out of which 15 times it is paired with the term walī.48 In all these
15 instances, walī and naṣīr are God’s attributes usually appearing after the
negation form ‘min dūn Allāh’, meaning there is no God apart from Allāh
who is the Walī and the Naṣīr. As part of the Qurʾanic style, double divine
attributes occur frequently at the end of verses, particularly in the longer
sūras.49 Numerous pairs of terms describing God’s attributes consist of syn-
onyms such as the double epithet ‘al-raḥmān al-raḥīm’ ‘most benevolent,
ever-merciful’ at the beginning of 113 chapters of the Qurʾan.50 According
to Arabic-English Lexicon, the literary meaning of naṣīr is ‘assister’ and
‘aider’, especially against an enemy,51 and hence by using the synonym for-
mula of the Qurʾanic pairs, walī is also understood as a ‘helper’ and ‘aider’.
God’s omnipotence as the most powerful helper (walī/naṣīr) is one of the
major themes of the Qurʾan and several verses make it clear that those who
‘turn away’ (Q 9:74) and/or ‘are led astray by him’ (Q 18:17) have no walī
(Q 42:8), that is, neither helper nor protector (Q 18:44).
2. Mawlāʾ and its plural form mawālī occur 21 times in the Qurʾan and just like
its cognate walī covers a wide range of meanings. In most of the Qurʾanic
verses, mawlāʾ is God’s name and a divine attribute.52 In these verses, God
is described as Mawlāʾ, in a sense similar to the verses in which God is
described as a Walī. For instance, God is Mawlāʾ of believers (Q 2:286; 6:62;
10:31) and unbelievers do not have any mawlāʾ (Q 6:62; 9:51; 22:78; 66:2).
In these contexts, mawlāʾ and walī can be taken as synonymous with the
meaning of Lord, Protector, and Helper. Furthermore, as the basic mean-
ing of mawlāʾ suggests, it is fair to say that God as Mawlāʾ and Lord of
believers not only indicates the One who has the authority over them, but
also implies that He is in charge of them. Mawlāʾ is also designated to show
God’s patronage over Moses (Q 20:39, Q 20:40–41). The verse indicates that
God had chosen Moses and led him the way He wanted to the point that God
said to him: ‘I have bound you to myself’ (wa-ṣṭanaʿtuka li-nafsī, Q 20:41).
According to Arabic-English Lexicon, ‘iṣṭanaʿa’ means ‘he made’ or ‘pre-
pared’, exceeding the usual or ordinary by bounds or degree in putting a thing
into a good, sound, right, or proper state.53 Hence, the phrase in the Qurʾan
‘iṣṭanʿatuka li nafsī’ (Q 2:43) means ‘and I have chosen thee for myself’ to
 Introduction 11
‘establish my evidence and to serve as my spokesman between me and my
creatures’. Apart from ‘fostering someone’s career’, it also denotes at the
same time an almost parental connection of a master to his client or protégé
(muṣṭanaʿa, ṣanīʿ, ṣanīʿa) who has been reared, educated, and trained well by
his master.
3. In the Qurʾan, the term walī occurs 22 times along with the root ʾ-m-n.
This root, ʾ-m-n, is one of the most frequent roots in the Qurʾan, occurring
537 times in its verbal form ‘āmana’ and 202 times in its active participle
form, ‘muʾmin’. The term muʾmin is mainly used in the Qurʾan to describe
the people who have īmān (another derivative of the root ʾ-m-n) which pri-
marily denotes ‘belief’ or ‘faith’. Thus, muʾmin has been commonly under-
stood as ‘believer’. However, there is one exception in the Qurʾan in which
muʾmin cannot be described as believer and that is, when in Q 59:23, God
calls Himself as Muʾmin. Since the root ʾ-m-n has the sense of safety and
security in its meaning and God also describes Himself as the One who pro-
vides security against fear (Q 106:4), in this context, God as muʾmin can be
understood as the ‘Guarantor of security’ or a ‘Protector’.
4. In other verses, God as Walī also appears when God encourages believers to
fight their enemies without fear (Q 4:45; 4:123). In such verses, walī can be
understood as ‘Ally’ and ‘Protector’, where the protection offered is from a
physical enemy (Q 3:122). Apart from providing protection from a physical
enemy, God as Walī also offers believers His protection from error. There are
verses in which God declares Himself as walī for the believers who remain
steadfast in their beliefs and practices (Q 4:173). Furthermore, God as walī is
sometimes used within the context of ‘sovereignty’ in which He is the Creator
of Heavens and Earth (Q 12:101), who gives life, causes death (Q 9:116), and
provides food (Q 6:14). In this context, God as Walī can be understood not
just as a protector but also as a ‘Lord’, ‘Sovereign’, and ‘Provider’ (Q 6:14).
Also, His provisions and protections are not limited to this world but extend
to the next world as well. In this world and the next, God as Walī promises to
reward the ones who recognize Him as a Walī. On the Day of Judgment, God
as Walī, the Lord of Resurrection, will reward and protect those who have
recognized Him as Walī (Q 6:70) and will punish those who have taken a walī
apart from Him (Q 9:74; 41:31; Q 17:97).
5. One of the most interesting points regarding God as walī is that there is a
clear distinction between true and false walī. If the domain of true walāya is
with God, the domain of false walāya lies with the Satan. The Satan is the
walī for those who do not believe in God and His walāya (Q 3:175). The
Qurʾan tests the believers by asking them whom they will chose as their walī.
There are clear warnings for the believers not to choose Satan and his walāya
(Q 4:119). In this case, there is an element of ‘faithfulness’ and ‘loyalty’ in
the use of the term walī. God in effect is asking the believers to be loyal and
faithful to him instead of the Satan. These verses represent an eternal conflict
between God’s walāya and the Satan’s walāya and just like Adam, every
believer is given a choice between the two walāya (Q 7:27, Q 45:10). Moses
12 Introduction
is also mentioned in the Qurʾan as the one who chose God as his walī (Q
7:155).

This-Worldly Dimension of Walī

This-worldly dimension of walī emphasizes the role of walī and walāya between
mankind rather than between God and mankind. Within this dimension, walī is
considered as an ally, a guardian, and in its plural form as members of the com-
munity of believers:

1. The Qurʾan portrays awliyāʾ (sing. walī) primarily as fellow members of a

community of believers. Awliyāʾ are described as men and women who can
be trusted, who can fight for the interest of the community, who are loyal to
God and His Messenger, and who pay their religious dues (Q 9:71). Though
the scope of awliyāʾ in these verses is restricted to Muslims. Some verses
explicitly consider non-Muslims excluded from the bounds of awliyāʾ (Q
5:51 and Q 5:57). The historical context of these verses suggests that the
Prophet was encouraging his followers not to follow those before them who
have broken their covenant with God.
2. There are verses in which walī is used to suggest a relationship of mutual sup-
port. As scholars of the field have argued and we will also see in this book,
there is a direct link between the terms walī and walāʾ. In pre-Islamic Arabia,
‘walāʾ’ (from the same root as walī) represented two main roles: the first role
forms relationship of mutual support between two tribes or between individu-
als belonging to two tribes. It represented admission of individuals into a clan
or a tribe through an agreement with one of its members or with the tribe.
The strength of such a relationship is reflected in the fact that once ‘walāʾ’
is concluded the individuals on both sides would acquire equal rights, would
inherit from each other, and would be bound by the same set of obligations
(Q 17:33). From this perspective walāʾ created relationships requiring sup-
port that were equal in force to blood relationships.54 Hence, walī as a person
who carries walāʾ is understood as an ‘ally’ and a ‘protector’.55 The second
role of walāʾ formed relationship and support offered to the deprived mem-
bers of the society, such as minors, orphans, and widows. This was mainly
applicable after wars, when many orphans and widows were left uncared for
which eventually resulted in verses declaring the responsibility of the Muslim
community towards them. In such verses, walī comes closer to the meaning
of ‘guardianship’ (Q 2:282).
3. A walī in the Qurʾan is also portrayed as heir or successor. In this sense, walī
can claim certain rights of inheritance and has certain duties or responsibili-
ties to assist an ally against enemies, in such cases as the retaliation for unjust
killing of kinsmen (Q 17:33). Inheritance and assistance expected of a walī
may also be of a spiritual kind. Zacharias, having no biological son, fears the
claims of his mawālī as secondary heirs and asks God to give him a ‘noble
offspring’ (Q 19: 5–6).
 Introduction 13
4. As mentioned within the cosmic dimension of walī, God calls Himself Mawlāʾ
in a sense similar to walī which indicates the meaning of Lord, Protector, and
also the One who has authority. In some other verses, however, mawlāʾ is used
to convey human relationships in non-religious contexts, such as a master, a
responsible person, heir, a kinsman, or a client (Q 4:33, Q 16:76, Q 19:5). In
this-worldly context, mawlāʾ is a person or a party by proximity (walāʾ). The
Qurʾanic conception of clientage, furthermore, reflects the old Arab system
of individual and collective mutual relationships in tribal society. In the legal
usage of the term, mawlāʾ is a person linked to another person by the notion
of walāʾ which is understood to have a pre-Islamic origin. It is an institution
which places one person in a relationship of dependence with another. As a
tie of clientage or a patronage for the incorporation of outsiders into Arab
tribes, after many conquests, walāʾ was also used for the incorporation of
non-Arabs into the conquered society.56 The term mawlāʾ thus referred to
two types of social relationships.57 The first was a relationship between Arab
tribesmen as kinsman and the second was the relationship of non-Arabs into
the Arab tribal society as a master-manumitter and a benefactor or patron on
the one side and a freedman, protégé, or a client on the other.58
Mawālī in the Qurʾan also conveyed in a sense of kinship.59 In this sense,
mawālī were considered as fellow tribesmen who were related by blood or
marriage.60 The most important mawālī in the sense of kinship were men-
tioned as ḥalīf (ally or confederate) and jār (neighbour). A mawlāʾ in the
sense of ḥalīf was a pre-Islamic term which regarded as a system for a par-
tial or total incorporation of Arab foreigners into an Arab tribe ranging from
short-term agreements to mutual adoption to amalgamation. Such incorpora-
tions never included non-Arab ethnic individuals or groups.61 Ḥalīfs were
occasionally singled out as mawālī al-yamīn (kinsmen by oath) as opposed
to mawalī al-wilāda or qurāba (kinsmen by birth/kinship).62 The other term
was ‘jār’ (neighbour).63 Jārs were mainly Arab individuals or groups who
had gone to live among foreigners for some reason and enjoyed very much
the same status as their host tribes.64
Mawlāʾ also indicated the relationship between manumitter (ʿabd) and
freedman (ḥurr).65 This affiliation dealt with the status of freedmen in early
Islamic society. The laws related to this kind of a tie have their roots in pre-
Islamic society. The relation of manumitter and freedman was as lasting as
the kinship ties. The manumitter’s rights and duties extended to the freed-
man’s descendants as well as his freedman and their freedmen in perpetu-
ity. Freedman was not allowed to change his patron (mawlāʾ) and it is to
this tie that freedman owes his membership of Muslim society. Although the
law formally did not oblige freedmen to serve or honour their patrons, but
in practice, freedmen were expected to assist their manumitters, whether in
financial, military, or political matters.66
Mawlāʾ also implied a contractual clientage, a tie between a patron
(mawlāʾ) and a client (mawālī). All non-Arabs who wished to join the
rank of the conquerors had to find an Arab Muslim patron, who, upon their
14 Introduction
declaration of conversion or allegiance, obtained very much the same rights
and duties as the manumitter of his former slave. This contractual clientage
also has its origin in old Arab rules of walāʾ.67 It was applied to all non-Arab
newcomers, freeborn or freed, converted or unconverted, to the Arab society.
Although in public law freedmen and converts enjoyed the same rights and
duties as other Muslims, in private law, they were dependent on their patrons
(mawālī). Thus, it was an unequal tie. As we will see in Chapters 3 and 4,
al-Tirmidhī develops his understanding of the awliyāʾ based on this social
system of walāʾ as clientage.
5. In the last section, we investigated the cosmic dimension of God as Walī
coupled with the word naṣīr. There are other verses in the Qurʾan with the
same root n-ṣ-r that indicates this-worldly dimension of walāya. The verse
worth noticing here is Q 8:72,68 which reflects the situation immediately after
the Prophet’s emigration in Medina, where he began to establish his new
community. The occurrence of the word walāya happened at the same time.
The term anṣār (helpers) occurs both in reference to the Prophet’s Medinan
supporters (Q 9:100; 9:117) and more generally to those who perpetuate
God’s way by siding with his chosen people, i.e., prophets (Q 61:14). In early
Islamic history, anṣār were members of two Arab tribes in Medina known
as Aws and Khazraj.69 They were those Medinans who accepted Islam and
received the emigrants (muhājirūn) from Mecca and helped them to settle in
their new abode. In regard to awliyāʾ, the verse identifies three groups: (1)
muhājirūn, those who emigrated with the Prophet from Mecca; (2) anṣār,
those who helped muhājirūn; and (3) those who did not emigrate.70 Thus, it
is not just the anṣār who were considered as awliyāʾ, but also the muhājirūn,
the emigrants, who sought help which can be translated as allies or friends
of each other.71 Although the notion of ‘brotherhood’72 worked for a while
between muhājirūn and anṣār (Q 3:103), the difficulties were soon to arise.
To avoid further issues, Prophet made a series of agreements based on pre-
Islamic contractual clientage system of walāʾ.73 According to this agreement,
the muhājirūn were given the status of an independent tribe with the same
rights and responsibilities as those of Medinan tribes who were named one
by one with their mawlāʾs or mawālī.
In addition, in the newly established community in Medina, awliyāʾ also
described the opponents of the Prophet (Q 8:73) and also ‘the Jews and
Christians’ (Q 5:51). This meant that in the newly established community
in Medina, both true followers of the Prophet and his opponents were seen
as awliyāʾ, as ‘alliance of each other’, whether this ally was directed to the
Prophet or directed against the Prophet’s opponents.74

Qurʾanic Walāya and Future Developments

In sum, in the Qurʾan, there are verses that speak of a cosmic dimension and those
that speak of a this-worldly dimension of walī. Within the cosmic dimension, first
 Introduction 15
and foremost, God treats Himself as the only true Walī. He claims that there is no
Walī apart from Himself. This makes walāya one-directional, meaning that God
can be a Walī, but no one can be walī to Him. Walī also extends to the domain
of God’s rule, which, apart from believers in this-worldly realm, includes the
angels. The Qurʾan also grants walāya to the Satan, but unlike God who is a true
walī, Satan has been considered as a false walī, but a walī nonetheless. Just as
God’s domain of walāya extends to believers, Satan’s domain of walāya extends
to unbelievers. While giving the domain of walāya over unbelievers to Satan, God
repeatedly emphasizes that He is not walī of unbelievers. Furthermore, within
this-worldly dimension, the Qurʾan addresses the men and women members of
the community of the believers as awliyāʾ (plural of walī). Apart from addressing
the community of awliyāʾ, the Qurʾan instructs as not to take the non-believers
as awliyāʾ.
It is evident that the Qurʾanic usage of walāya and its cognates relates to a set
of ideas which are interrelated, such as relationships entailing mutual protection,
loyalty, and inheritance. It pertains to a bond of loyalty and trust between God and
those who believe in Him, as well as those who are united in following Satan. It
can be said that insofar as the Qurʾan urges the believers to consider God as their
primary walī and Satan as their enemy, walāya establishes a link between faithful-
ness to God and loyalty or attachment to one’s religious community.
The notion of the Qurʾanic walāya, however, does not encompass the entirety
of the concept of walāya developed within the formative period of both Shiʿism
and Sufism as we will see in this book. Among the Shiʿi circles, particularly since
the second/eighth century, walī has been associated with the ‘imām’ having a
special authority. From the third/ninth century, walī appears in a number of texts,
largely among mystical circles designating a walī who enjoys a special relation-
ship with God. However, in the Qurʾan, the notion of walī, unlike within the later
Shiʿi and Sufi circles, does not carry any aspect of authority or a privileged spir-
itual hierarchy, unless it is ascribed to God Himself.
Nevertheless, the notion of walāya in the Qurʾan provides the ground for
the formation of the comprehensive understanding of walāya within Shiʿism
and Sufism which encompasses a set of meanings bringing together many other
aspects such as knowledge, spiritual inheritance, emanation, primordial covenant,
etc. tied to the notion of walāya—aspects which are not linked with the notion of
walāya in the Qurʾan.

Formative Period in Shiʿism

There are two occasions in the early history of Shiʿism when walāya became a major
subject of discussion. First at Medina, when the question of the Prophet’s successor
was disputed and second in Kūfa, following the failed revolt of Ḥusayn, ʿAlī’s son,
against the Umayyads which ended with the killing of Ḥusayn at Karbalāʾ in 61/680.75
The death of Ḥusayn and other descendants of the Prophet at Karbalāʾ opened a wide
gulf between the Shiʿis and the Sunnis and this event in particular made the Shiʿis
agree on the illegitimacy of the Umayyad dynasty which caused further dissensions.
16 Introduction
The first split occurred in 65/685, when some Shiʿis headed by al-Mukhtār ibn Abī
ʿUbayd revolted against the Umayyads. Al-Mukhtār’s objective ‘was the establish-
ment of Shiʿi rule headed by the house of ʿAlī’.76 Two years later al-Mukhtār was
killed by the governor of Basra, Muṣʿab ibn Zubayr, and his revolt was put down.
Mukhtār’s revolt was followed by another armed resistance headed by Zayd ibn ʿAlī
(d. 122/740), one of the brothers of the fifth imām, Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. 114/734).
Since the later revolt, armed rebellion became one of the prevalent features of Zaydī
Shiʿism. However, the Ḥusaynī branch of the Shiʿis (the followers of imām al-Bāqir),
and later on what became the imāmī sub-sect of Shiʿism, adopted ‘passive methods
of protest’ and channelled their efforts towards the development of the imāmī Shiʿi
doctrine.77
The tension between the Shiʿis and the Umayyads started at the time of the cali-
phate of ʿAlī. The conflict between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya rested on ʿAlī’s conviction of
the legitimacy of his caliphal authority and on Muʿāwiya’s increasing insistence on
his own right to be heir (walī) to ʿUthmān in demanding retaliation for his blood.78
This claim, moreover, became the basis of Muʿāwiya’s bid for the caliphate. Ibn
Qutaybah reports that Muʿāwiya received the allegiance of the people of Syria as
ʿUthmān’s successor soon after ʿAlī had assumed the caliphate office.79 The situa-
tion between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya, which was chiefly based on the understanding of
the terms walāya and ahl al-bayt, was causing rupture in the Muslim community, a
rupture that soon found expression in the civil war known as the Battle of Ṣiffīn. The
clearest assertion of Muʿāwiya’s claim to the caliphate was made to the people of
Syria shortly before the Battle of Ṣiffīn. Muʿāwiya argued:

O people! Tell me, why ʿAlī son of Abū Ṭālib has become more worthy of
this office than me? By God, I was the scribe of the Messenger of God. My
sister [Umm Ḥabība, daughter of Abū Sufyān] was wife to the Messenger of
God. I was, moreover, governor for both ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb and ʿUthmān
b. ʿAffān. My mother was Hind daughter of ʿUtba b. Rabīʿa, and my father
was Abū Sufyān b. Ḥarb. Although the people of the Ḥijāz and Iraq pledged
allegiance (bayʿa) to ʿAlī, the people of Syria pledged allegiance to me. And
all those people are equal, and whoever has the power to seize something, it
becomes rightly his.80

The rule of the Umayyad dynasty (r. 41–132/661–750) was troubled with ongoing
tension with the Shiʿis, especially after the event of Karbalāʾ. The harsh anti-Shiʿi
policy adopted by most of Umayyad caliphs, however, provided fertile ground
for the development of both Shiʿi and Sunni heresiographic literature, and in fact,
many Shiʿi sub-sects emerged during the Umayyad era.81 The situation of Shiʿis
did not change with the rise of the Abbasids.82 According to Muhammad Qasim
Zaman, the Abbasid revolution was a Shiʿi movement, calling for the rights of
the family of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt) which brought the Abbasids to power in
132/749.83 There is enough evidence to demonstrate that in the period following
their elevation to political leadership, the Abbasids took great pains to emphasize
their position as the kin of the Prophet and members of his household.84 For M.
 Introduction 17
Sharon, there ‘is no doubt that around the year 100 AH [718 CE] the term ahl
al-bayt was already used to refer exclusively to the house of ʿAlī’.85 Madelung,
however, criticized this view and after a close examination of the Hāshimiyyāt of
al-Kumayt, he argues that the special status of the Banū Hāshim as the relatives
(dhawuʾl-qurba) of the Prophet and his ahl al-bayt had been well established in
the lifetime of Muḥammad:

As the kin of the Prophet, the Banū Hāshim were excluded, like Muḥammad
himself, from receiving alms (ṣadaqa, zakāt) and from administering their
collection. They were associated with the Prophet in their entitlement to a
portion of the khums, the fifth of the war booty not distributed among the
warriors, and in the fayʾ, the spoils that fell to the Muslims without battle.
Their title as dhawuʾl-qurba to these portions was explicitly confirmed in two
verses of the Qurʾan.86

Madelung argues that after studying al-Kumayt’s poetry there cannot be room for
doubt that ahl al-bayt meant the descendants of Hāshim in general, rather than
exclusively the house of ʿAlī, which was the supposed ground for the claimed
legitimacy of the Abbasids in place of the Umayyads.87 The many uncertainties
about the Abbasid genealogical position in the Prophet’s household do not, how-
ever, bring into question the Shiʿi character of the movement which brought them
to power.

This Shiʿi direction is evident not only by their urge to reinstate the politi-
cal rights of the Prophet’s family and to pursue retribution for the wrongs
done to members of ahl al-bayt, it is also expressed in the superior posi-
tion accorded to the person of ʿAlī as the sole legitimate successor of the
Prophet.88

Once the Abbasids realized that the Shiʿis offered a probable revolutionary threat
and would not recognize the legitimacy of the Abbasid rule, they began to limit
and control the activities of the various Shiʿi sects and Shiʿism once again found
itself in the position of persecuted minority. It was only during the reign of
al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–833) that the aspirations of the Shiʿis were tempo-
rarily raised, affected by al-Maʾmūn’s marriage to the daughter of imām al-Riḍā,
the eighth imām, and al-Maʾmūn’s promise to nominate al-Riḍā as heir appar-
ent. However, the hopes of imāmī Shiʿis for the recognition of their claims to be
Prophet’s successor were soon dispelled with the death of al-Riḍā and they were
reverted to their previous situation of a persecuted sect.89 Most Shiʿi imāms living
under the Abbasid rule were kept under house arrest and died under unnatural cir-
cumstances.90 The Abbasids kept a cautious eye on the Shiʿi imāms and on other
descendants of the Prophet’s family, whom their disciples considered to be the
only legitimate candidate for leadership of the Muslim community.91
It should be noted that in speaking of Shiʿism at this time, we are still only speak-
ing of certain broadly recognizable tendencies, often in mutual conflict, with much
18 Introduction
fluidity about them. Abbasids may initially have claimed for themselves the position
and prerogatives of a Shiʿi imām (claims which they came to abandon not long after
their rise to power); however, they could scarcely have been ignorant of the appeal
that the ʿAlid household and its prominent members—some of whom seem to have
been regarded as imāms at this time—could exercise over the Abbasid supporters
themselves. It was with good reason that after the revolution, if not already before it,
the Abbasids seem to have been suspicious of the ʿAlids.92 In gradually distancing
themselves from the Shiʿi circles in which the Abbasid revolution had originated, the
early Abbasid moved in the direction of the ‘ahl al-sunna’.93
The religious development of Shiʿism continued at a significant pace despite
the community’s political suppression. The imāmī Shiʿism that initially emerged in
Kūfa94 began to spread and influence important cities of the eastern provinces of the
Abbasid state. Already in the days of the Umayyads, disciples of imām Jaʿfar Ṣādiq
(d. 148/765) had arrived in Qum, the earliest Shiʿi stronghold in Iran.95 As we shall
see, all the imāmī Shiʿi literature selected for the current study were produced in Iraq
and Iran.96 Apart from Qum in which Shiʿism managed to establish a firm stronghold,
Kūfa, Baghdad, Rayy, and Nishāpūr are among the places where the Shiʿis took ref-
uge from the central Abbasid and Umayyad states and produced their works far from
the caliphate’s centre of power.

Formative Period in Sufism

Many scholars have seen the origins of Sufism97 influenced by religions such as
Buddhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism as well as from the cultural bor-
rowings of greater Syria, Iran, and Egypt to the Gnostic Neoplatonic and the patris-
tic–monastic heritage of Eastern Christianity.98 Scholars such as Louis Massignon
and Paul Nwyia have criticized this one-sided approach and have inquired into the
Qurʾanic heritage for understanding the origins of Sufism.99 Inclination towards ascet-
icism played a major role in the emergence of Sufism.100 We have few details about
the earliest appearance of ascetic tendencies in early Islam, but by the time of the
Umayyad rule, it is possible to trace some evidence of them. These tendencies can
be seen within the context of the resistance of the ascetic and pious circles against
the Umayyad worldliness which was expressed in theological debates concerning the
rightful ruler of the faithful and the conditions suitable for the leadership of the com-
munity. The name that stands out within the early anti-Umayyad ascetic circles is that
of the patriarch of Muslim mysticism, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728).101 Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s
preaching and his exhortations constantly warned against the worldly attitude to
earthly possessions apparent around the time.102 This ascetic movement in the first
centuries of Islam gradually combined with mystical tendencies developed the earli-
est form of Sufism.103 Ibn Khaldūn gives the following account of this development:

The way of life adopted by Sufis was in force from the beginning of Islam and
the most of eminent of the Companions and their disciples it to be the way of
Truth and Guidance. It was based upon devotion to God and separation and
the renunciation of the pomp and vanities of this world and the reckoning as
 Introduction 19
nothing, pleasures and riches and fame, and [it included] retreat for purpose
of devotion. Nothing was more common among the Companions and the oth-
ers of the Faithful in the earliest times, and when the love of the world was
widespread in the second century [of the Islamic era], and later, and most
men allowed themselves to be dragged into the whirlpool of the world, those
consecrated to piety were called Sufis.104

A new episode in the history of Islam was opened when the Abbasids came to power
in 133/750.105 The beginning of many changes within Sufism can be traced back to the
time of al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–833). Al-Maʾmūn encouraged the discussion of
religion by representatives of various creeds and, in this manner, speculative elements
were soon assimilated into Sufism.106 The expansion of the Islamic Empire during the
late Umayyad and early Abbasid periods had brought the Muslims into contact with
large groups of non-Muslims representing different cultures and diverse traditions:
Zoroastrian influences especially at the beginning of the Abbasid period, when the
capital was shifted from Damascus to Baghdad; Buddhist influence in Eastern Iran
and Transoxiana and Manichaeism widespread in the Near and Middle East and in
Central Asia. The most noteworthy contacts of the early Abbasid Muslims were with
Christian ascetics and hermits who inhabited places in Iraq and Lebanon that are men-
tioned repeatedly in Sufi stories. Jesus, the last prophet before Muḥammad, according
to the Qurʾan, appears to the Sufis as the perfect ascetic and also as the pure lover of
God. Perhaps, it can be said that the first Sufis adopted the woollen garment (ṣawf)
from the Christian ascetics, from which their name derives.107
A parallel development in early Sufism was taking place in Khurāsān in the
north-eastern part of the Abbasid Empire. Among the early Khurāsānian Sufis,
the former merchant Shaqīq al-Balkhī (d. 193/809) is worth mentioning. Recent
studies have shown that he professed tawakkul (absolute trust in God)108 while
being the first to discuss the ‘mystical states’ and was deeply concerned with
what he calls ‘the light of pure love of God’. This refers him to the saint of Basra,
Rābiʿa al-Adawiyya (d. ca. 185/801). Rābiʿa is generally regarded as the person
who introduced the element of selfless love into the austere teachings of the early
ascetics and gave Sufism the hue of true mysticism.109 She was famed for her
teaching on mystic love (ḥub, maḥabba) and the intimate friendship with God
(uns) which is the preoccupation of His lover.110 It is during this time that many
individuals appeared to support this trend of Islam, such as Sulaymān al-Diyānī
(d. c.215/830) and al-Dhunnūn al-Miṣrī (d. 245/859 or 248/862). Somewhat later,
figures like Abū Yazīd al-Basṭāmī (d. ca. 261/874 or 264/877–878)111 and Abū
Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (d. 309/922)112 appeared in the eastern part of the Abbasid state.

Scholarly Challenges in the Formative Period

The two first centuries of Islam are probably the most problematic era for research-
ers in Islamic history. Josef van Ess admits that there are only a few early wit-
nesses from the first two Muslim centuries still extant. Further, he admits that all
later Islamic texts stand under suspicion of projection. Consequently, he refuses
20 Introduction
to present the first century of Islam at all. Rather, he begins with the second,
although he states that the same problems exist for this century too, in that there
are hardly any ‘original texts’ to be found.113 In Ohlig’s words:

The first two Islamic centuries lie in the shadows of history, and it remains
inexplicable how the development of a large Islamic empire could have left
behind no witness whatsoever, even among groups from whom we might
expect such traces, such as the enemies of the Arabs, the many Byzantines
known for their literary skills and output, and the Jews and Christians living
under the alleged Islamic authority.114

The lack of sources that can be dated with precision to this period hinders the
efforts of modern scholars to reconstruct its history and the early development of
various Islamic doctrines and movements.115 Most of what we know about this
time is found in scattered quotations in later scholarship, a fact that in and of itself
raises serious questions about their authenticity.116 The problems of reconstructing
early Islamic history are further complicated by the nature of the transmission of
knowledge. The debates about whether early Islamic scholarship was transmitted
orally or in written form still rage in recent scholarship.117 Even if writing was
practised on a large scale, orality continued to have its own tradition. Certain
types of texts were preserved only through oral transmission.118 Needless to say
that oral transmission involves memory and memory has its own shortcomings.
Problems resulting from orality include confusion about the sequence and sig-
nificance of events as well as details such as names and settings. Furthermore, in
contexts where orality is the primary means of communication, despite its signifi-
cance and value in preserving a community’s traditions and beliefs, historical fact
easily becomes mixed with myths and legends, making the product meaningless
as history. These issues apply equally well to the writing.

Early Islamic scholarship is full of cases in which an account of an event

takes a particular form as a result of its being produced out of several not
necessarily identical reports. This applies to both religious accounts and his-
torical narratives (ḥadīth, conquests and the like).119

There is another challenge that one cannot ignore when studying early Islam:
determining the motivations and biases of information and authors. As Robinson
noted, ‘to make these early authorities objective and reliable transmitters of
Islam’s origins is not simply anachronistic: it underestimates the creativity of
early Muslims’.120 Their biases and prejudices determined, on the one hand, the
way each original informant understood an event and transmitted it, and on the
other hand, the way an author later presented it. The form and context of a narra-
tive, for instance, might reflect the informant’s or author’s eagerness to legitimize
certain views and practices of the group he belongs to by negating views and prac-
tices of opposing groups. In the context of Sunni-Shiʿi debate, the event of Ghadīr
Khumm in 10/632 is a significant example of how both informants and authors
 Introduction 21
determined the form and context of a report in accordance with their religious and
political biases. What Muḥammad said at Ghadīr Khumm can never be recon-
structed with any certainty. The Shiʿis insist that it was there that Muḥammad
designated ʿAlī as his successor. The Sunnis, however, are either silent about
the incident or reject the claim that Muḥammad said anything about the issue of
succession at the Ghadīr Khumm.121 Clearly, the beliefs of any author determine
not only whether an account is to be recorded or ignored but also what goes into
it in terms of details. Attributing words and views to an authoritative figure is a
motivation that must be kept in mind especially when studying and examining the
early Islamic period.
Turning to the past for legitimization is a phenomenon that generally involves
pseudo-epigraphy. That is, the ‘internal forgery of texts and their ascription to
authoritative historical figures and transfer of authorship, the reattribution of
anecdotes and sayings from one person to another’.122 Two factors led to the
development of pseudo-epigraphy and transfer of authorship in early Islam. The
first relates to the rapid spread of Islam, and the second to internal Islamic hostil-
ity. Both pseudo-epigraphy and transfer of authorship demonstrate the eagerness
of particular groups to attain legitimization by falsely attributing works and words
that endorse the group’s views, beliefs, and practices to historical figures of great
religious symbolism. Pseudo-epigraphy and transfer of authorship were practised
to a great extent in Islamic scholarship.123
The issue of authenticity of the primary sources in the current study has been
left to the scholars who have already examined the authenticity of those texts.
Discussions on the authenticity of a particular manuscript or text are beyond the
scope of this research as well as of the author’s expertise. I have relied on the
assessments of the scholars who have worked on and edited these sources and
have dealt with the issue of the authenticity of a particular manuscript. As a matter
of fact, wherever a manuscript is available in the printed version, all references
are given to the printed edition, usually to the most recent one. What follows is
a brief on available literature in Shiʿism and Sufism in the formative period and
main primary sources which this book is based on.

Shiʿi and Sufi Texts in the Formative Period

Hossein Modarressi Tabatabai has situated the beginning of Shiʿi literature in the
late Umayyad period (established in 40/661), primarily focused on anti-Umayyad
themes. Many anti-Umayyad pamphlets and books were written, but the oldest
surviving Shiʿi book from this period is Kitāb al-Aṣl or simply Kitāb Sulaym b.
Qays al-Hilālī. In later Shiʿi works, it is mostly referred to as kitāb or aṣl. The
word ‘aṣl’, in the Shiʿi ḥadīth literature, denoted a personal notebook of mate-
rial received through oral transmission.124 Kitāb Sulaym is one of the earliest
Shiʿi extant sources which, the scholars agree, was composed either in the late
Umayyad or early Abbasid period. This means that by the time of Kitāb Sulaym,
the Shiʿi history has already witnessed the First and Second Civil Wars in Islam,
the massacre of Ḥusayn and his family in the event of Karbalāʾ in 60/680, and
22 Introduction
also the rise of the ghulāt around 133/750. The work provides the earliest docu-
mented understanding of wilāya/walāya in Shiʿism. As much as the Civil Wars
were concerned with the right political leadership of the Muslim community, it
seems it was the massacre of the grandson of the Prophet that awakened a pre-
vailing religious wave against the Umayyads and their supporters. The event of
Karbalāʾ marked a critical turning point and the consequences of al-Ḥusayn’s
martyrdom contributed to the proliferation of powerful religious sentiments.125
Ghulāt (radicals) also offered a distinct speculative political orientation as well as
religious tendencies within Shiʿism.126
Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728), the famous preacher of the Umayyad period in
Basra, was also active around the same time. Ḥasan’s political judgements of
the earlier caliphs arise from his religious principles. Just like Shiʿi writers, he
also fearlessly criticized the rulers of his time, the governors of Iraq, and had
to go into hiding.127 The Umayyad period is also the time of the appearance of
the major work al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya (sometimes as al-Sīra al-Rasūl Allāh) by
Ibn Isḥāq (d. 50/767),128 biographer of the Prophet Muḥammad whose book, in a
recession by Ibn Hishām (d. 218/833),129 is one of the most important sources on
the Prophet’s life. Citations from the al-Sīra also appear in the works of Muslim
historians such as al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923).130 In addition, it should be noted that
through vast Muslim conquests, the Umayyad period was also the time when the
Muʿtazilī ideas took shape under the influence of three non-Islamic religions, i.e.
Christian, Zoroastrian, and Manichaean theologies.131 By the time of the Abbasid
revolution, the Greek philosophy also found its place within the Islamic world.
During the reign of Hārūn, the first translations of Greek philosophical and scien-
tific works were made.132 Meanwhile Abu al-Hudhayl (d. ca. 235/849) developed
the first elaborated Muʿtazilī system.133 Neoplatonic ideas through the translations
of Greek philosophy into Arabic had a major impact on theological discussions.134
Caliph al-Maʾmūn was interested in Muʿtazilī doctrines and supported the trans-
lation of the major writings of the Greek philosophy. The first philosopher in
Islam, Yaʿqub ibn Isḥaq al-Kindī (d. ca. 252/866), was close to the Muʿtazila in
his theological views.135
It is in this context of intellectual flourishing and stifling that Sufism found
room to participate in the theological debates and prominent Sufi writers emerged.
All three major texts which will be discussed in this research are almost contem-
porary and were compiled towards the end of third/ninth century. Kitāb al-Ṣidq
by al-Kharrāz (d. 279/892 or 286/899), Tafsīr by Saḥl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896),
and Sīrat al-Awliyāʾ by al-Tirmidhī (d. 318/936 or 320/938) are three major early
extant works that were established in the mid-late Abbasid rule. It should be noted
that Sufism by this time is still in its formative period, more than half a century
away from the systematic manuals of Sufism, such as al-Taʿaruf by al-Kalabadhī
(d. 380/990 or 384/994), al-Kitāb al-Lumʿa by al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988), Qūt al-Qulūb
by Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 388/998), and al-Ādāb by al-Sulāmī (d. 412/1021),
among others.
The Shiʿi source extant from this period is Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ of Faḍl Shādhān
al-Nishābūrī (d. ca. 260/873–874).136 As compared to Sulaym ibn Qays, there is
 Introduction 23
much more credible information available about the life and writings of Faḍl. It
is clear from the text of al-Īḍāḥ that the issue of knowledge of the imām was of
significant import at this stage. As we will see later, Faḍl held a moderate view
against the extreme views of the ghulāt, maintaining that imāms’ special knowl-
edge was restricted to the law and to the interpretation of the Qurʾan and was
based entirely on transmission from the Prophet.
From the period of the Minor Occultation, two major extant works are Kitāb
al-Maḥāsin of al-Barqī (274/888 or 280/894) and Kitāb Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt of
Ṣaffār al-Qummī (d. 290/902–903). Al-Barqī and al-Ṣaffār were contemporaries
and reflect almost similar viewpoints. Towards the end of the Minor Occultation
and beginning of the Major Occultation, walāya becomes well established in
Shiʿism. Al-Kāfī of al-Kulaynī (d. 328/939–940 or 329/940–941) is the most
important text documenting in detail all the basic ingredients of imāmī Shiʿi the-
ory in this period.
The approach used in this research drives from two standpoints: ontologi-
cal and epistemological. First, from an ontological standpoint, this research is
concerned with the question of ‘what is the nature of the concept of walāya?’
And second, from an epistemological standpoint, ‘how can one know a walī?’
The discussions carried out within the texts under this study do not distinguish
between ontological and epistemological corresponding questions. The present
study attempts to answer these questions by a study of the classical texts in their
own context.
It should be noted that the manner in which this research approaches the clas-
sical texts in relation to the issue of walāya involves primarily looking for key-
words related to the concept of walāya insofar as they are identified within the
semantic field of walāya. Therefore, the ideas from the classical texts examined in
the following chapters are restricted to the scope of the keywords identified. There
is thus a possibility that the classical texts may contain discussion relevant to the
concept of walāya in which the identified keywords may not have been used. This
is true as well of the texts which belong to the formative period but have been left
outside the scope of this research, primarily for the reason that the keywords do
not appear in those works. However, the information obtained by focusing on the
keywords is sufficient to meet the objectives for this research towards the study
of the development of the concept of walāya in formative Shiʿism and Sufism.
The book is divided into five chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 consider sources
that deal with the concept of walāya in Shiʿism before the Minor Occultation
(i.e., before 260/874) and the sources dealing with the same during the Minor
Occultation and just before the beginning of the Major Occultation. The start-
ing point for research into the development of walāya in Shiʿism is one of the
oldest surviving Shiʿi sources—Kitāb Sulaym. The second major text considered
here is al-Īḍāḥ of Faḍl Shādhān al-Nishābūrī (d. ca. 260/873–874). This work is
one of the main sources in the early imāmī literature. Both sources are impor-
tant because these are the only two extant sources that provide a pre-ghayba
understanding of the notion of walāya. For the period of the Minor Occultation,
Kitāb al-Maḥāsin of al-Barqī and for the period of the Major Occultation, Kitāb
24 Introduction
al-Kāfī of al-Kulaynī (d. 328/939–940 or 329/940–941) are considered, which
are among the most important early texts documenting in detail the basic ingre-
dients of imāmī Shiʿi theory. While Chapter 1 provides an exhaustive account of
the walāya in these texts, Chapter 2 analyzes the understanding of walāya from
the ontological and epistemological viewpoints in these texts to see the changes
and development of walāya in the formative period of Shiʿism. Chapters 3 and
4 perform a similar exercise on the early Sufi sources. Within the scope of this
research, there are three major documents concerned with the subject of walāya in
Sufism: Kitāb al-Ṣidq by Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz (d. 286/899), Tafsīr al-Qurʾan al-
ʿAẓīm by Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896), and Al-Tirmidhī’s (d. 320/938) Kitāb Sīrat
al-Awliyāʾ. Chapter 5 performs a comparative analysis of the concept of walāya
in formative Shiʿism and Sufism.

Notes
1 There are other terms related to authority as well, such as ‘amīr’ or ‘sulṭān’. However,
the ‘religious authority’ is largely denoted by the three mentioned terms. Amīrs were
mainly commanders and army generals whose primary duties were martial in nature.
Umayyads also called themselves amīrs until ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nāṣir (d. 350/961)
assumed the title of caliph. Their governors and the governors of the Fāṭimids were
called not amīr but wālī (see A.A. Duri, ‘Amīr’, in EI2, http://dx​.doi​.org​.iij​.idm​
.oclc​.org​/10​.1163​/1573​-3912​_islam​_SIM​_0602 (consulted online on 23 November
2020)). Sulṭān, on the other hand, denotes mainly ‘proof’ or ‘argument’ and it only
occasionally seems to mean ‘authority’, and even then, mostly in association with
‘proof’ (see Kadi, Wadad al-Qāḍī, ‘Authority’, in EQ Online, http://dx​.doi​.org​.iij​.idm​
.oclc​.org​/10​.1163​/1875​-3922​_q3​_EQSIM​_00037 (consulted online on 23 November
2020)). Also see Asma Afsaruddin, ‘Authority, religious’, in EI3, http://dx​.doi​.org​/10​
.1163​/1573​-3912​_ei3​_COM​_23445 (consulted online on 17 October 2020), where
she refers to a number of terms such as sulṭān, mulk, ḥukm, and amr, stating that none
of these terms has the meaning of authority.
2 Amir-Moezzi has pointed out that the concept of wilāyat/walāyat al-faqīh has its
genesis in the philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā and his understanding of the notion of
wilāya/walāya. For more information, see Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi and Christian
Jambet, What is Shīʿī Islam? An Introduction, trans. into English by Kenneth Casler
and Eric Ormsby (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 116–117.
3 In his book, Sufism and Shiʿism (1991), Kamil Mustafa al-Shaibi also emphasized the
similarities prevailing between Shiʿism and Sufism. He concluded that since Shiʿism
came first and had established its doctrines upon a spiritual foundation long before
Sufism, it was Shiʿism that provided Sufism with many pivotal ideas. Al-Shaibi main-
tains that Sufi wilāya/walāya formed a ‘complete imāma’ with all its divine privi-
leges. It is for this reason that Sufism was compelled to be dependent upon the Shiʿi
beliefs. Al-Shaibi observes that Sufism also had an influence on Shiʿism, albeit later,
especially during the rise of the Safavid dynasty. For more information, see Kamil M.
al-Shaibi, Sufism and Shiʿism (Surrey: LAAM Ltd, 1991).
4 Ibn Khaldūn was a famous historian of the fourteenth century. His work Muqaddima,
as the name suggests, is a prolegomenon to the science of history and epistemology.
See M. Talbi, ‘Ibn Khaldūn’, in EI2, vol. iii, p. 826.
5 Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddima, tr. Franz Rosenthal (New York, 1958), vol.3, pp. 92–93.
For this point, also see Alexander D. Knysh, Ibn ʿArabī in the Later Islamic Tradition:
 Introduction 25
The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam (Albany: University of New
York Press, 1999), pp. 192–193.
6 The expression khātam al-awliyāʾ first appears in the writing of al-Tirmidhī (d. ca.
298/910) in which the position of the highest ‘awliyāʾ’ is placed in parallel to the
prophet Muḥammad, who is declared as the seal of the prophets (khātam al-nabīyyīn)
in the Qurʾan: ‘Muḥammad is not the father of any man among you, but he is the mes-
senger of Allāh and the Seal of the Prophets; and Allāh is ever aware of all things’ (Q
33:40). We will discuss this term in detail within the writing of al-Tirmidhī later in
this book.
7 Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima, vol.3, p. 94.
8 Apart from noting the invisible hierarchy of the walī, Ibn Khaldūn looks at the practice
of using cloak (khirqa) and the esoteric instructions passed down as secrets (asrār)
within both Shiʿism and Sufism. See Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima, vol.1, p. 187. In this
research, we will not be concerned with the general practices but with the develop-
ment of the notion of wilāya/walāya.
9 We are also not sure about Ibn Khaldūn’s intentions and probable biases in writing
about the closeness of Shiʿism and Sufism and their influences on each other. Even
though he has been praised as a great (or even sometimes greatest) Muslim historian
of medieval times, the method he uses to write history indicates his time’s understand-
ing of history. A time when polemic writings, biased ideas, and also divine predictions
were impertinently part of historical texts. In fact, Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddima is a
massive book and only those parts that refer to Ibn Khaldūn’s logical and innovative
explanations of history are often translated and published. There is a little mention
of the massive collection of books and articles about his obsession with diviners and
saints, with magical books written secretly for the Prophet Muḥammad that fore-
told the entire history of the world. For more details, see Allen James Fromherz, Ibn
Khaldūn: life and times (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), ch.1.
10 For instance, see Fitzroy Morrissey, Sufism and the Perfect Human: From Ibn ʿArabī
to al-Jīlī (Routledge, 2020). In this book, Morrissey investigates the history of Sufism
through the concept of insān al-kāmil and shows the development of the concept from
Ibn al-ʿArabī to al-Jīlī and beyond.
11 See Hamid Dabashi, ‘Early Propagation of Wilāyat-i Faqīh’, in Expectation of the
Millennium: Shiʿism in History, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hamid Dabashi, Seyyed
Vali Reza Nasr (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 287–300.
12 Ahmet T. Karamustafa has correctly identified the four-fold areas of (1) identity,
(2) function, (3) appointment, and the (4) description of awliyāʾ as those which are
sorely missing from the contemporary scholarship on wilāya/walāya. See Ahmet T.
Karamustafa, ‘Wilāya according to al-Junayd’, in Reason and Inspiration in Islam:
Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism in Muslim Thought, edited by Todd Lawson (I.
B. Tauris, 2005), p. 64.
13 Henry Corbin, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism (London: Shambhala, 1978), pp.
55–56.
14 Corbin, The Man of Light, p. 57.
15 Amir-Moezzi also uses the vocalization of walāya in his study of Shiʿism.
16 Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shiʿism: The Sources of
Esotericism in Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 29.
17 Waṣī, pl. awṣiyāʾ or waṣiyyūn, is a theological term in Shiʿism translated as legatee,
executor, successor, or inheritor. It was first used to designate ʿAlī as the inheritor of
the Prophet’s worldly possessions and of his political and spiritual authority. To read
more about waṣī, see E. Kohlberg, ‘Waṣī’, in EI2, vol. xi, p. 161.
18 Amir-Moezzi, Divine Guide, p. 159. Also see Amir-Moezzi’s recent work, Ali, le
secret bien gardé. Figures du premier Maître en spiritualité shi’ite (Paris: CNRS
Éditions, 2020) where he shows that in Shiʿism, ʿAlī, son-in-law and cousin of the
26 Introduction
Prophet Muḥammad, occupies the highest spiritual rank and is the imām par excel-
lence, a similar status, as the Christ has in Christianity. Shiʿism can therefore be
defined, in its most specific religious aspects, as absolute faith and love in ʿAlī. ʿAli
is portrayed as the most perfect manifestation of the attributes of God.
19 See Maria Massi Dakake, The Charismatic Community: Shiʻite identity in early Islam
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), p. 16.
20 Patricia Crone, Slaves on Horses: The Evaluation of the Islamic Polity (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 49.
21 See Monique Bernards, John Abdallah Nawas (eds), Patronate and Patronage in
Early and Classical Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
22 The significance of the institution of walāʾ in al-Tirmidhī’s language has been noted
by Aiyub Palmer in his study of al-Tirmidhī’s works. I will discuss this point in more
detail in Chapters 3 and 4 of this book. See Aiyub Palmer, Sainthood and Authority in
Early Islam: Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī’s Theory of Wilāya and the Re-envisioning of the
Sunnī Caliphate (Studies on Sufism: E-Book, December 2019, vol. 5).
23 Hermann Landolt, ‘Walāyah’, in Encyclopaedia of Religion, vol. 15 (New York:
1987), p. 317.
24 Abū al-Faḍl Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab (Beirut: Dār
al-Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1419/1999), vol. 15, pp. 402–404.
25 Also see Michael Chodkiewicz, Le Sceau des saints: Prophétie et sainteté dans la
doctrine d’Ibn Arabî (Paris, 1986), pp. 29–39. Also see Vincent Cornell, The Realm
of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1998), p. xviii.
26 Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-Māgirī,
Al-Minhāj al-wāḍiḥ fī taḥqīq karāmāt Abī Muḥammad Ṣālih (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb
al-ʿIlmiyya, 1933), p. 80. This is a translation by Cornell in The Realm of the Saint,
p. xix.
27 Nizam al-Din Awliya, Morals for the Heart, tr. Bruce B. Lawrence (Mahwah and
New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1992), p. 95.
28 Corbin, The Man of Light, p. 149.
29 Annemarie Schimmel does not agree with this. She makes it clear that the role of the
awliyāʾ in Islam does not correspond to that of the ‘saint’ in Christianity. According
to Schimmel, ‘walī is closely connected with the mystery of initiation and progress
on the spiritual path and leads through a well-established hierarchy, the members of
which surpass each other according to the degree of their love or gnosis’. For this rea-
son, the word ‘saint’ is not an appropriate translation of the term walī or for that mat-
ter ‘sainthood’ for wilāya/walāya. See Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of
Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), p. 204.
30 Corbin, The Man of Light, p. 134.
31 Corbin, The Man of Light, p. 149.
32 Henry Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy (London-New York: Kegan Paul
International; London: in association with Islamic Publications for the Institute of
Ismaili Studies, 1993). This book was first published in French as Henry Corbin,
Histoire de la Philosophie Islamique (Paris: Gallimard, 1964).
33 Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy, p. 26.
34 Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy, pp. 28–29. Hermann Landolt found Corbin’s
opinion regarding the origin of Sufism highly problematic. According to Landolt, it is
untenable as a historical statement. However, Landolt admits that Corbin’s thesis can
be taken as a simple reflection of the powerful notion of ‘inheritance’ in Islam. ‘The
fact that Sufism cannot be understood without the notion of prophetic inheritance as
transmitted by a shaykh, and that the notion of prophetic inheritance as transmitted
by the imāms belongs to the very essence of Shiʿism in the first place’. See Hermann
Landolt, ‘Henry Corbin, 1903–1978: Between Philosophy and Orientalism’, in
 Introduction 27
Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 119, No. 3 (Jul.–Sep. 1999), pp. 488–
489. Also, for critical reviews of Corbin’s theory, see articles by Hamid Algar, ‘The
Study of Islam: The Work of Henry Corbin’, in Religious Studies Review 6 (April
1980), pp. 85–91 and Charles J. Adams, ‘The Hermeneutics of Henry Corbin’, in
Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. Richard C. Martin (Tucson and Arizona:
University of Arizona Press, 1985), pp. 129–150.
35 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Sufi Essays (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1972).
36 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ‘Shiʿism and Sufism: Their Relationship in Essence and in
History’, in Sufi Essays (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1972), pp. 104–120.
37 Sayyed Hossein Nasr, Living Sufism (London, Boston: Unwin Paperbacks, 1980),
p. 45.
38 Nasr, Living Sufism, p. 95.
39 Cornell, The Realm of the Saint, pp. 216–217.
40 Cornell, The Realm of the Saint, p. 227.
41 See Dakake, The Charismatic Community, pp. 16–25.
42 Hermann Landolt, ‘Walāyah’, in Encyclopaedia of Religion, vol. 15 (New York:
1987), p. 316.
43 Grace Martin Smith and Carl W. Ernst, ‘Introduction’, in Manifestation of Sainthood
in Islam eds. Grace Martin Smith and Carl W. Ernst (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993), p. 15.
44 Lo! those who believed and left their homes and strove with their wealth and their
lives for the cause of Allāh, and those who took them in and helped them: these are
protecting friends one of another. And those who believed but did not leave their
homes, ye have no duty to protect them till they leave their homes; but if they seek
help from you in the matter of religion then it is your duty to help [them] except
against a folk between whom and you there is a treaty. Allāh is Seer of what ye do
(Q 8:72).
45 In this case is protection only from Allāh, the True, He is Best for reward, and best for
consequence (Q 18:44).
46 The semantic analysis of the Qurʾanic concepts was first proposed by Toshihiko
Izutsu. For Izutsu, the entire vocabulary of the Qurʾan can be treated as an array of
interrelated semantic fields. See Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the
Qurʾan (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002). pp. 24–41.
47 In addition, there are also several less frequent terms coupled with walī in the Qurʾan
which are not much significant to this study. I will mention few here: (1) Rabb: The
Arabic verb ‘rabba’, lit. ‘to be lord’, also means ‘to bring up’ or ‘to care for’ and,
thus, ‘rabb’ not only means lordship and master or authority but also provider and
sustainer. Rabb in the Qurʾan mainly refers to God’s dominion over both the worlds
(Q 1:2; 2:131; 5:28; 6:45), over Heaven and Earth (Q 13:16; 17:102; 18:40; 19:65),
and as the Lord of the east and the west and what is between them (Q 26:28) (see
Simonetta Calderini, ‘Lord’, in EQ, vol. 3, pp. 229–231). Rabb in pre-Islamic times
was used in Old Arabia for a ‘master of slave’, and many gods were called rabb and
the kāhins of Mecca (soothsayers) were also called rabb (A. J. Wensinck and T. Fahd,
‘Rabb’, in EI2, vol. viii, p. 350). The Qurʾan also uses the form arbāb as a plural of
rabb for the gods other than Allāh (Q 9:31; 12:39). Rabb also occurs in the Qurʾan
with reference to human master (Q 12:23,24, 41,50). The word occurs three times
along with walī in Q 6:127; 6:128 and 7:3. In Q 6:127, God as Rabb is the ‘Provider
of peace’, and hence, God as Walī can be understood as ‘Protector’ or ‘Ally’. In Q
6:128, awliyāʾ can be understood as ‘human masters’ and in Q: 7:3, rabb refers to the
divine lordship. In these contexts, the term walī portrays the meaning of ‘lordship and
mastership’ and can be understood as ‘Lord’ and a ‘Protector’. (2) Shafīʿ: The word
shafīʿ is also paired three times with walī in the Qurʾan (Q 6:51; 6:70; 32:4). Shafīʿ is
a nominal noun referring to the one who possesses shafāʿa (intercession) and thus, in
the Qurʾan, shafīʿ is the one pleading with God on behalf of or advocating someone
28 Introduction
(Valerie J. Hoffman, ‘Intercession’, in EQ, vol. 2, pp. 551–552). Like the term walī,
God is the only one who possess shafāʿa and He is the absolute Shafīʿ (Q 39:44),
which can be understood as ‘Lord’ and a ‘Protector’; however, under His permis-
sion two parties are mentioned that can intercede: the angels (Q 42:5; 53:26) and the
prophets (Q 7:53). Without God’s permission, even these two parties are powerless
and cannot intercede on the Day of Judgment. Intercession is in the Qurʾan mentioned
mainly in two contexts. It does not apply to unbelievers (Q 7:53), and it may only
apply to believers whom He wills and approves (Q 2:254; 4:85; 34:23) (see Hoffman,
‘Intercession’, p. 553). Where shafīʿ occurs in pair with walī as God’s divine attrib-
utes in the Qurʾan, these two terms cannot be taken fully as synonymous. God is
Walī and Lord of believers exclusively but His shafāʿa would be bestowed to only
among believers with certain qualities. They are mentioned in the Qurʾan as the peo-
ple of ʿahd (For ʿahd (pl. ʿuhūd), lit. ‘joining together or a contract’, see J. Schacht,
‘ʿAhd’, in EI2, vol.1, p. 255). (3) sulṭān: The word sulṭān occurs twice with the root
w-l-y and only once with the term walī itself in (Q 17:33). Sulṭān usually means
‘proof’ or ‘argument’ and very rarely means authority in the Qurʾan (Kadi (al-Qāḍī),
‘Authority’, in EQ, vol. 1, pp. 188–189) which can be taken as ‘Lordship and the
absolute Authority in the entire creation’. However, God Himself has given His
authority to His selected people. In the Qurʾan, sulṭān is also mentioned to be in the
possession of God’s prophets and His messengers. God has selected and empowered
His messengers with extraordinary power and authority supported by sulṭān (Q 11:96;
4:144). These prophets and messengers are well aware of the fact that their authority
fundamentally is from God (Q 14:11) and exactly for this reason people must listen to
them and obey them. Whoever does not take God’s sulṭān and obeys Satan’s word is
considered as non-believer (Q 14:22). In the later verse, the sulṭān as a right authority
has been given to walī by God to strike back if a walī’s relative is wrongfully killed.
We might add that in the above quotation, it is clear that walī refers to a legal case and
not a divine attribute. (4) wāq: The following quotation may be used to illustrate the
way Qurʾan understands walī as related to wāq, ‘thus have We revealed it, a decisive
utterance in Arabic; and if thou shouldst follow their desires after that which hath
come unto thee of knowledge, then truly wouldst thou have from Allāh no walī nor
defender’ (Q 13:37). Wāq is a verbal noun from the root w-q-y with the literal mean-
ing ‘to fear’ (Leonard Lewisohn, ‘Taḳwā’, in EI2, vol. xii, p. 872.) and ‘to protect
oneself from harm’ (Scott C. Alexander, ‘Fear’, in EQ, vol. 2, pp. 194–196). Wāq
and taqwāʾ are from the same root. Taqwāʾ is one of the most frequent occurrences
in the Qurʾan. Taqwāʾ with the closer meaning of ‘seeking protection from God’ is an
essential term which can be called religious piety and hence, it is considered as the
common characteristic of the believers and as a measurement for the sincerity of a
believer’s life (Lewisohn, ‘Taḳwā’, p. 872). Taqwā is also considered as the essence
of the faith (Q 22:32) and internal piety (Q 22:37) and whoever does the most taqwāʾ
is the most honoured before God (Q 49:13) (Alexander, ‘Fear’, p. 196). The verse Q
5:2 reflects a clearer understanding of taqwāʾ, which centres around the notion of a
careful and watchful fear of the divine vengeance to prevent severe punishment. This
basic understanding reflects taqwāʾ as the fear of divine chastisement. In this verse,
God as wāq coupled with walī can be understood as ‘Defender’ and ‘Protector’. It can
be said that while walī conveys a sense of protection through loyalty and lordship,
wāq conveys a sense of protection from fear of punishment.
48 See Q 2:107; 2:120; 4:45; 4:75; 4:89; 4:123; 4:173; 9:74; 9:116; 29:22; 33:17; 33:65;
42:8; 42:31; 48:22.
49 Sabine Schmidtke, ‘Pairs and Pairing’, in EQ, vol. 4, pp. 1–2.
50 This phrase is recited before each sūra, except for the ninth.
51 Edward William Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (London: Williams & Norgate 1863),
p. 2083.
 Introduction 29
52 See Q 2:286; 3:150; 6:62; 8:40; 9:51; 10:30; 19:5; twice in 22:78; 47:11; 66:2; 66:4.
53 Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, p. 1730.
54 Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic
Patronate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 78–83.
55 Let not the believers take disbelievers for their awliyāʾ in preference to believers.
Whoso doeth that hath no connection with Allāh unless (it be) that ye but guard your-
selves against them, taking (as it were) security. Allāh biddeth you beware (only) of
Himself. Unto Allāh is the journeying (Q 3:28).
56 For more information, see Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, pp. 78–79.
57 For detail information about the types of relations regarding walāʾ, see Crone, Roman,
Provincial and Islamic Law, pp. 36–63.
58 Patricia Crone, ‘Mawlāʾ’, in EI2, vol. vi, pp. 875–876.
59 The Qurʾan contains a variety of what might be identified as ‘kinship terms’: qurabā
(close relative Q 2:83; 2:177; 4:8; 4:36; 5:106; 6:152; 8:41; 9:113; 16:90; 17:26;
24:22; 30:38; 35:18; 42:23; 59:7); the superlative, al-aqrabūn as the closest relatives
(Q 2:180, 215; 4:7; 4:33; 4:135); arḥām, as maternal kin (Q 8:75; 33:6); ʿashīra
as clan or tribe (Q 9:24; 26:214; 58:22); zawj and zawja as husband and wife (Q
2:25; 2:35; 2:102; 2:230; 2:232; 2:234; 2:240; 3:15; 4:1; 4:12; etc.); imraʾa as wife or
woman (Q 2:282; 3:35; 3:40; 4:12; 4:128; 7:83); ṣāḥiba as wife, companion, or friend
(Q 6:101; 70:12; 72:3; 80:36); akh as brother or friend (Q 2:178; 2:220; 3:103; 3:156;
3:168; 4:12); ḥamīm as solicitous relative or close friend (Q 40:81; 68:38; 70:10);
ṣihr as relation through marriage (Q 25:54); nasab as lineage, kindred, attribution (Q
23:101; 25:54; 37:158) among others. See Talal Asad, ‘Kinship’, in EQ Online, http://
dx​.doi​.org​/10​.1163​/1875​-3922​_q3​_EQSIM​_00250 (consulted online on 12 January
2020).
60 Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, p. 48.
61 See Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, pp. 51–52. According to Crone,
Arab conquerors did not assign the status of ḥalif to the non-Arab converts; however,
the only non-Arabs to be incorporated as ḥalīfs were Persian troops of the Ḥamrāʾ
and Asāwira who deserted to the Arabs at an early stage of the conquests and Arabs
respected their military strength (for more detail information, see Crone, Roman,
Provincial and Islamic Law, pp. 54–55).
62 Crone, ‘Mawlāʾ’, in EI2, p. 876.
63 The Qurʾan mentions jārs along with parents, near kindred, orphans, and needy peo-
ple whom kindness should be shown (Q 4:36).
64 Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, pp. 51–52.
65 Here, I would like to explain a little bit about the term ʿabd as opposed to ḥurr (free-
man). According to Arabic-English Lexicon dictionary, ʿabd is an epithet, used for ‘a
male slave’. ʿAbd is used for black male slave and ‘mamlūk’ for the white male slave.
It also means ‘servant’ and ‘worshiper’. Slavery is expressed by derivatives of ʿabd
such as ʿubūdiyya. The ‘master’ is, in this context, called ‘sayyid’ and also ‘mawlāʾ’.
For more information about ʿabd, see R. Brunschvig, ‘ʿAbd’, in EI2, vol. i, pp. 25–40,
and also Jonathan E. Brockopp, ‘Slave and Slavery’, in EQ, vol. 5, pp. 57–60.
66 Crone has done extensive and detailed work on the legal aspects of early Islamic
law. For more information, see Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, pp.
36–68. Also see her other book, Crone, Slaves on horses. Robert Gleave, too, looks
at the legal aspects of walāʾ, arguing that these legal aspects are common to both
the Shiʿi and the Sunni legal sources. However, according to Gleave, in the legal
sense, walāʾ in Shiʿi law is an insubstantial institution and of a secondary impor-
tance in comparison to its counterpart in the legal Sunni sources. See Robert Gleave,
‘Patronate in early Shiʿite law’, in Patronate and Patronage in Early and Classical
Islam, eds. Monique Bernards and John Nawas (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2005), pp.
134–166.
30 Introduction
67 Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, pp. 36–39.
68 Lo! those who believed and left their homes and strove with their wealth and their
lives for the cause of Allah, and those who took them in and helped them: these are
protecting friends one of another. And those who believed but did not leave their
homes, ye have no duty to protect them till they leave their homes; but if they seek
help from you in the matter of religion then it is your duty to help (them) except
against a folk between whom and you there is a treaty. Allah is Seer of what ye do.
69 Muhammad al-Faruque, ‘Emigrants and Helpers’, in EQ, vol. 2, pp. 15–17.
70 The worried remaining Meccan Muslims also asked God to bring them out of ‘the city
of the unjust’ and to provide for them ‘a walī from thee and a helper (naṣīr) from thee’
(Q 17:80). But then, according to (Q 8:72) ‘those who believed but did not leave their
homes, ye have no duty to protect them till they leave their homes; but if they seek
help from you in the matter of religion then it is your duty to help (them)!’
71 These two groups made the nucleus of the future Muslim community (umma).
72 There are verses in the Qurʾan that indicate that the sense of community and mutual
respect, concern and aid implied by brotherhood in its extended, metaphorical sense
which unites Muslims. For more details, see my footnote on akh in this section.
73 Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, p. 36. This is reflected in the verses Q
8:72–74.
74 To continue with the semantic analysis, the next frequent word coupled with walī in
the Qurʾan is āmanū. There are verses which describe the characteristics of muʾminīn,
for instance, muʾminīn are like brothers (ikhwān) to each other (Q 49:10); they pro-
tect and help each other (Q 8:72; 8:74; 9:71); they make peace if they fall to fight
(Q 49:9–10); they are merciful among themselves, forceful to unbelievers, and do
righteous deeds (Q 48:29). In these verses, the term muʾminīn primarily connotes the
description and adherence of the Muslims and therefore the terms muʾmin and muslim
can be taken as synonymous. However, there are clear references in the Qurʾan that
recognizes believers of other religions as muʾmin as well. For instance, non-Muslims
referred to as People of the Book are also described as muʾminīn (Q 2:62; 3:110;
3:113–115; 3:199; 5:66; 5:83; 28:52–54; 57:27). The other term is akh/akhū/akhī
(brother). There are verses that refer to the term’s literal biological kinship (Q 4:23),
whereas there are other verses that indicate brotherhood outside the confines of biol-
ogy (Q 2:220; 49:12). Although several occurrences of akh emphasize that biological
relationship is less important than spiritual kinship, Q 33:5–6 indicates that for legal
purposes biological brotherhood is more relevant to matters of inheritance. These
verses also confirm the adoption of each other as brothers in the case of relationship
between Meccan muhājirūn and Medinan anṣār. In the verse Q 33:5, the term ikhwān
(sing. akh) attached to the term mawālī can be understood as ‘clients’’ or ‘protégé’ of
those who are called brothers (ikhwān). Compared with akh, mawlāʾ is an expression
which describes a slightly firmer relationship with another person.
75 For more information, see M. M. Bar-Asher, Scripture and exegesis in Early Imāmī
Shiʿism (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 1–2.
76 For more detail about al-Mukhtar, see G.R. Hawting, ‘al-Mukhtār b. Abī ʿUbayd’, in
EI2, vol. vii, p. 521.
77 See Bar-Asher, Scripture and exegesis, p. 2.
78 Muhammad M. Ayoub, The Crisis of Muslim History, Religion and Politics in Early
Islam (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003), p. 93.
79 Ibn Qutaybah, Al-Imāmah wal-Siyāsah aw Taʾrīkh al-Khulafāʾ, ed. ʿAlī Shīrī (Beirut:
Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1990), vol. 1, p. 99.
80 Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad Al-Kūfī, Kitāb al-Futūḥ (Ḥaydarābād: ʿUthmāniyyah
University, 1969), vol. 2, pp. 428–429. I have made amendments to the Ayoub’s trans-
lation of this paragraph in The Crisis of Muslim History, p. 104.
81 Bar-Asher, Scripture and Exegesis, p. 2.
 Introduction 31
82 For the rise of Abbasids and their daʿwa, see Daniel L. Elton, ‘ʿAbbāsid Revolution’,
in EI3, http://dx​.doi​.org​/10​.1163​/1573​-3912​_ei3​_COM​_0025 (Consulted online on
13 June 2020).
83 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Religion and Politics under the Early Abbasids: The
Emergence of the Proto-Sunni Elite (Brill: Leiden and New York, 1997), p. 33.
84 For detail information about early Abbasid, see chapter 4 in M. Sharon, Black
Banners from the East: The Establishment of ʿAbbāsid state-Incubation of a Revolt
(Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University and Leiden: Brill, 1983).
85 Sharon, Black Banners, p. 79.
86 W. Madelung, ‘The Hāshimīyyāt of al-Kumayt and Hāshimī Shiʿism’, in Studia
Islamica, No. 70 (1989), p. 10.
87 For a critique and some evidence that the Banū ʿAbbās and the Banū Muṭṭalib were
together with the household of ʿAlī, also regarded as part of the ahl al-bayt, see W.
Madelung, ‘The Hāshimīyyāt of al-Kumayt and Hāshimī Shiʿism’, pp. 10–25.
88 Zaman, Religion and Politics under the Early Abbasids, p. 34.
89 To read more, see Bar-Asher, Scripture and Exegesis, p. 3.
90 Bar-Asher, Scripture and Exegesis, p. 4. Also see Moojan Momen, An Introduction to
Shiʿi Islam, the history and doctrines of Twelver Shiʻism (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1985), pp. 39–45. Nimrod Hurvitz also agrees that it is quite likely that the
Abbasid caliphs put the Shiʿi imāms under house arrest in reaction to their growing
influence, but he also mentions that they did not follow a consistent policy. He clas-
sifies Abbasid caliphs’ reaction to Shiʿi imāms into three types: (1) some caliphs such
as al-Maʾmūn or al-Mustanṣir attempted to appease the imāms and their followers,
(2) others such as al-Mutiwakkil persecuted them, and (3) a third group did not take
any clear stand. For more information, see Nimrod Hurvitz, ‘Early Hanbalism and the
Shiʿa’, in The Sunna and Shiʿa in History: Division and Ecumenism in the Muslim
Middle East, ed. by Ofra Bengio and Meir Litvak (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2011), p. 39.
91 Bar-Asher, Scripture and Exegesis, p. 3.
92 Zaman, Religion and Politics under the Early Abbasids, p. 35.
93 The term ‘ahl al-sunna’ seems to have made one of its earliest appearances in the
statement by Muḥammad b. Sīrīn (d. 110/729), who is reported to have remarked:
‘they (the traditionalists) were not used to inquiring after the isnād, but when fitna
occurred, they said: name us your informants. Thus, if these were ahl al-sunna,
their traditions were accepted, but if they were ahl al-bidʿa, their traditions were not
accepted’. See Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj al-Qushayrī, Ṣaḥīḥ, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd
al-Bāqī (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʼ al-Kutub al-ʻArabīya, 1955), vol. 1, p. 15.
94 For origins and early development of Shiʿism until the emergence of the major sectar-
ian branches, see W. Madelung, ‘Shīʿa’, in EI2, vol. ix, pp. 420–424.
95 Bar-Asher, Scripture and Exegesis, p. 4.
96 For more information about these centres, see Andrew Newman, The Formative
Period of Twelver Shiʿism: Ḥadīth as Discourse between Qum and Baghdad (Curzon
Press: Richmond, Surrey, 2000).
97 ‘Sufism’ or ‘mysticism’? Which one is a better title for this trend of Islam in the
formative period? This question has been raised by many scholars within Islamic
Studies and also of Study of Religions alike and there have been different views to
answer this question. For a detailed study of the differences between Sufism and
Mysticism in early Islam, see Sara Sviri, Perspectives on Early Islamic Mysticism-
The World of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī and His Contemporaries (London and New York:
Routledge, 2020), pp. 23–32. For the period of current study, however, it is evident
in early sources that in the socio-historical context of the second half of the second/
eighth century, two different social types had been named by the term ṣūfī. On the
one hand, the rough living, harsh, and in times, provocative ascetics and on the other,
32 Introduction
the respectable, pious, well-to-do religious leaders and individuals (also see Sviri,
Perspectives on Early Islamic Mysticism, pp. 23–32). In this light, leaving many com-
plications of the terminology aside, in this study, I will use the term ‘Sufism’ by which
I mean the later connotation.
98 Gerhard Böwering, Sufi Hermeneutics in Medieval Islam (Tokyo: Sophia University,
Institute of Asian Cultures, 1987), p. 1.
99 For the origin of Sufism, see L. Massignon, Essai sur les origines du Lexique
Technique de la Mystique Musulmane (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1954)
and Paul Nwyia, Exegese coranique et langage mystique: nouvel essai sur le lexique
technique des mystiques musulmans (Beirut: Dar el-Machreq editeurs, 1970).
100 For more information on this, see Ahmet T Karamustafa, Sufism: the Formative
Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 2–10; also see Margaret
Smith, Studies in early mysticism in the Near and Middle East: being an account
of the rise and development of early Christian mysticism in the Near and Middle
East up to the seventh century, and of the subsequent development of mysticism in
Islam known as Sufism, together with some account of the relationship between early
Christian mysticism and the earliest form of Islamic mysticism (London: Sheldon
Press, 1931), p. 154.
101 See Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, pp. 29–30.
102 H. Ritter, ‘Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’, in EI2, vol. iii, p. 248.
103 Smith, Studies in early mysticism in the Near and Middle East, pp. 157–158.
104 Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddima, p. 59–60. Also see M. Smith, Studies in early mysticism in
the Near and Middle East, p. 158.
105 Arts and sciences, law and philology, theology and philosophy were developing and
the legal injunctions of the Qurʾan were brought into a more systematic form by
the scholars who are considered the founders of the four orthodox law schools: Abū
Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767), Mālik ibn Anas (d. 179/796), al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820), and Aḥmad
ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241/855). Theological issues were extensively discussed, and the ini-
tial efforts were made more or less at the same time to define the central subject of
Islam, namely the unity of God, with theologians progressively learning the skills of
dialectical debate and logic. The theological discussions by now showed a great new
interest in Greek science and philosophy. See Schimmel, Mystical Dimension, pp.
31–33.
106 See Masood Ali Khan, ‘Sufism: origin and earliest sects’, in Encyclopaedia of Sufism,
ed. Masood Ali Khan and S. Ram (New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 2003), vol.1, p. 58.
107 For more information on this, see Schimmel, Mystical Dimension, pp. 33–35.
108 Tawakkul is a verbal noun form ‘wakala’ which literally means ‘to entrust to, have
confidence in (someone)’ and it is a concept in Islamic religious terminology, espe-
cially in Sufism. To read more about tawakkul, see L. Lewisohn, ‘Tawakkul’, in EI2,
vol. x, p. 377.
109 See Schimmel, Mystical Dimension, pp. 35–38.
110 Margaret Smith-[Ch. Pellat], ‘Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya al-Ḳaysiyya’, in EI2, vol. viii, p.
355.
111 See H. Ritter, ‘Abū Yazīd (Bāyazīd) Ṭayfūr b. ʿ Īsā b. Surūshān al-Biṣṭāmī’, in EI2,
vol. i, p. 162.
112 See L. Massignon, ‘al-Ḥallādj’, in EI2, vol. iii, p. 100.
113 See Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2 und 3 Jahrhundert Hidschra: Ein
Geschichte des religiosen Denkens im fruhen Islam (Berline and New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 1991), vol. 1, p. viii.
114 Karl-Heinz Ohlig, The Hidden Origins of Islam, ed. Karl-Heinz Ohlig and Gerd-R
Puin (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2010), p. 9.
115 On the types of documents from the first century of Islam, see N. Abbott, Studies in
Arabic Literary Papyri (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1957–1972).
Another random document with
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agencies and the overcrowded condition of the capital, due to the
thousands of men and women pouring into and going through the
city, it saved for all these people many hours and much energy. The
inquiries that came to it by personal appeal, by telephone, and by
mail mounted to an average of many hundreds daily.
In addition to the news matter which it distributed at home and
abroad, the Committee on Public Information sent out an official
bulletin which, with a circulation of more than 100,000, gave
information concerning all governmental affairs and activities in
connection with the war; prepared special articles concerning all
phases of the war progress of the nation which were widely
published in the Saturday and Sunday magazine sections of
newspapers; and published several series of pamphlets, written by
authorities upon the questions discussed, which set forth the
reasons for our participation in the war, exposed the pretensions of
Germany and dealt with other important matters. These pamphlets
also had a wide circulation and were especially useful for the
hundreds of public speakers who talked to assemblages of people in
mines, factories, ship-yards, theaters and other public places. They
were intended to give information to all who wanted it and to furnish
ammunition for the determined battle the Committee was waging to
win the attention and rouse the feeling of a polyglot nation, huge
numbers of whose people had not hitherto acquired much
knowledge of or developed much interest in their adopted country.
For all this work several hundreds of authors, newspaper and
magazine writers, publicists, university professors and others either
gave their time and labor freely or took for their services an amount
of pay that barely paid their living expenses, and, for the rest, were
repaid by the satisfaction of doing something to aid the needs of their
country.
An organization of speakers called “Four-Minute Men,” working
under the Committee, had a membership of 35,000 and gave short,
incisive talks in five or six thousand communities, speaking at motion
picture theaters, at factories during the noon hour, at country
churches and school houses, at assemblages of every sort. The
campaigns in which they took part embraced work for the Red
Cross, the welfare organizations. Liberty loans, savings stamps,
against German propaganda, and every kind of activity for the
winning of the war that the nation engaged in. A bulletin for the use
of the Four-Minute Men was prepared by the Committee’s experts
for each campaign, giving material for their suggestion and
guidance.
In addition to these men, the Committee organized a great
national campaign of public speaking which enlisted the services of
patriotic men and women in each state, of returning soldiers, of
people who had been abroad and had witnessed the fighting or had
seen conditions in the belligerent and neutral countries, and of Allied
officers. This work was decentralized and, by means of the
coöperation of the State Section of the Council of National Defense,
was organized in each state. War conferences and war exhibits were
held in important centers, the war agencies in each state were
brought into unison with the work and the campaign for informing
and inspiring the people was carried through, all parts of the state,
down to the villages and country districts. A band of a hundred
veteran French soldiers,—the famous “Blue Devils”—a Belgian
regiment, and a company of American doughboys sent back from
the front for this purpose were severally conducted at various times
across the country by the Committee on Public Information, with the
double aim of helping the American people to realize the war more
vividly and of enabling these fighting men to carry back to the front
first hand information about what America was doing and what was
her spirit.
At the request of the Committee the heads of the various
advertising clubs of the country came together and mobilized for the
country’s service their organizations and their experts in every phase
of advertising. For every one of the great campaigns for the
prosecution of the war, these experts, under the direction of the
Committee on Public Information, saw to the preparing of posters,
advertisements, matter for bill boards, street car cards and all such
matter. In the campaign to recruit 250,000 laborers for the shipyards,
as a single instance, eighty advertisements were prepared by
typographical advertising experts and were carried in magazines and
trade papers that donated the space and gave a combined
circulation of 8,000,000. In a similar way the Committee organized
and utilized the pictorial assistance that could be given by artists. Its
Division of Pictorial Publicity included nearly all the best known
artists of the United States and to it went every department of the
Government that wished to make pictorial appeal to the people. Its
hundreds of members contributed, for all purposes, three thousand
or more posters, cartoons and drawings and aided much in the
inspiring and uniting of sentiment.
Photographs and motion pictures were important factors of the
Committee’s work. Through it were distributed all of the photographs
taken by permission of the Army and the Navy and thousands upon
thousands of these pictures, covering’ every phase of the operations
of the war making and war production divisions of the Government,
were published in newspapers and magazines, collected by
individuals, used for the illustration of lectures and, in connection
with some of the actual war making objects and with models of
others, shown in exhibits at county and State fairs attended by
millions of people. The motion picture division of the Committee’s
many-sided activities gave powerful aid in its campaign of education
and interpretation both at home and in other countries. Important
phases of the preparation at home for war and of the army in training
or in battle in France were put into single reel and longer features,
some of them providing a full evening’s entertainment, and exhibited
in thousands of moving picture houses in the United States and, with
their captions translated into many languages, were sent all through
Latin America, the Orient, Africa, the Allied and neutral nations of
Europe, to carry their message of America’s spirit and America’s
purposes.
All of these agencies the Committee on Public Information
organized and used for the purpose of widening the horizon and
informing and illumining the mind and spirit of our own citizens with
regard to the causes, the purposes and the meaning of the war and
of America’s participation in it and to combat the specious and wide-
spread propaganda of the German Government. That propaganda
sought to blind our people to the issues involved, to create sentiment
against our war associates, to undermine our faith in our own war
agencies and our conviction of the righteousness of the war and the
adequacy of our war effort, and was especially insidious and
dangerous among the ignorant, among aliens not yet well informed
concerning the country and in some of the districts of the South.
Wherever it worked the Committee met and endeavored to nullify its
efforts.
Equally well organized, determined and successful, but much
more difficult, was the struggle the Committee carried on against
anti-American propaganda and influences in other countries. It had
different phases and features, according to the conditions in the
different lands, and it presents, altogether, one of the most dramatic
and thrilling of all the stories of civilian effort for the war. But it is
possible here only to outline its general features. The United States
had for many years been soaked through and through with German
propaganda, but so insidiously, so gently and so gradually had the
work been carried on that scarcely any one had recognized its
extent, its influence and its purpose. The shock of war brought some
realization of what had been going on, the efforts of the Committee
on Public Information revealed much more, and then the quick
reaction of an intensely patriotic people brought against the pro-
German campaign, paid for and directed in Germany, such a storm
of popular indignation that it had little chance to make headway
except among the ignorant and some of the foreign born. But in the
neutral countries German propaganda, German effort to win
sympathy and belief and set feeling and conviction against America
and the Allies was in full possession and had to be combated with
care and tact as well as haste and energy. In every one of them
America had been misrepresented, jeered at, lied about, pictured in
colors that made her and her people the most despicable and
loathsome upon the face of the earth, while her war effort was
described as so inefficient and so impossible of success as to be
ridiculous.
The Committee established an office in the capital of each one of
the neutral countries, as it did also in that of each of our co-
belligerents. The office head and the greater part of his staff went
from home, but at his destination he secured translators and other
helpers and had the hearty coöperation of Americans already there.
His mission, carried on by every available means, was to oppose
German propaganda and spread the truth about America.
Publication was procured for news by wireless and cable and for
descriptive articles by mail, while pamphlets and leaflets were widely
distributed. Particularly well organized and efficient was the
machinery for the sending of news by wireless and cable which
carried to all the nations of the earth, except Germany and her allies,
two thousand words every day about what America was purposing
and accomplishing for the war. Until this machinery was started the
neutral nations knew next to nothing of what this country was doing
except through the perversions and outright lies of German agents. It
was by this means that President Wilson’s addresses and messages
had almost world-wide distribution as soon as they were published in
the home country and the advantage was gained of the striking
influence they everywhere exerted.
Next to the news service in importance was the influence
exercised by the moving picture films, which everywhere won favor
almost instantly, aroused the greatest interest, by their better quality
crowded out the German films and in every country brought straight
to the people such knowledge of Americans, of their every day life, of
their purpose in the war and of their wonderful achievements for its
prosecution as amazed them and greatly helped to turn the general
sentiment as much in favor of as it had previously been against the
United States. These pictures, on the civilian side, were gathered
from every phase of American life, showing our cities, our
agriculture, our educational institutions, our industries, our homes,
our manifold efforts for social welfare, and were used to correct the
deplorably mistaken conceptions about this country which had
gained vogue almost all over the world. They were always followed
by pictures of war work, such as training camp activities, aviation
fields, ship building and other matters, with films also of our camps
and troops in France.
A Foreign Press Bureau had the services of a long list of authors
and publicists, many of them of wide reputation in our own and other
countries. It sent every week to each one of the foreign
representatives of the Committee a budget of matter that
supplemented the daily news service and covered every phase of
American life and endeavor. From the different countries came
requests by cable for articles on specific subjects of the greatest
variety which were prepared by specialists. One of these articles was
reprinted by the British Government for use in England, where it
distributed 800,000 copies. Through this Bureau and in connection
with the matter it issued went posters, captioned in the language of
each country to which they were sent, and millions of picture postals
and photographs. The Committee representatives in the various
lands commandeered the show windows of American business
houses and kept up in them a frequently changed display of posters,
bulletins and pictures.
In some countries reading rooms were established equipped with
American newspapers, magazines and books and decorated with
American posters and photographs, and in some cases classes were
held in them for the study of English. Sometimes men of American
citizenship and of thorough patriotism were sent back to their native
countries to talk to and with the people concerning America. A
company of newspaper editors from each of several countries toured
the United States as guests of the Committee on Public Information
and others from Spain, Switzerland, Holland and the Scandinavian
countries were taken through the districts of American war works
and camps in France. What they saw was so different from their
preconceived and Germany-perverted ideas and made such a
revolution in their minds that it changed the tone of their papers and
had a notable influence upon public opinion in their respective
countries.
German propaganda was busy against America even in the
countries of our war associates where it sought to undermine
confidence in us, create suspicion of our purposes and in each one
instill the fear that the United States would join some other of the
Allies against that particular one. This presented a problem easier to
deal with than did the neutral countries because the Committee had
the coöperation of the respective governments. The same means
were used as in the neutral countries, the moving picture being a
particularly efficient instrument in the work. Russia was the only
country in which the Committee failed to win its purpose. Its
representatives there worked hard and zealously, but Russia was so
big and inarticulate, the German propaganda had behind it such vast
sums of money and the Bolsheviki, as soon as they gained the upper
hand, shut down so completely upon all freedom of expression
except for their own ideas and purposes that they had finally to give
up their struggle. But they had used the opportunity to spread
information among the advancing German troops, to leave the seeds
of some knowledge of America and her desires and aims, and they
did achieve some worth-while results in Siberia and in the prison
camps of Russia.
Some of the most interesting and valuable work done by the
Committee in this war of ideas was in connection with its effort, in
which it coöperated with the War Department, to inject some real
knowledge of America into the enemy’s troops and into the country
behind his armies. The Committee prepared most of the material for
this purpose, among those engaged upon the effort to make it
efficient being authors, historians, journalists, and advertising and
psychological specialists, while the military forces undertook the job
of distribution. Immense quantities of material, pamphlets, leaflets,
short, pungent statements, speeches, facts about America’s war
preparations and intentions, were dropped by the ton upon the
troops of the Central Powers and behind the lines upon cities and
towns and countrysides. They were carried by airplanes which
spread the documents far and wide, they were thrown by rifle
grenades, by rockets and by a specially developed type of gun.
Balloons of various kinds rained literature upon armies and the
country just behind them. Kites dropped leaflets upon the trenches.
An American invention was a specialized balloon with a metal
container for the literature and a control attachment governing the
movements of the balloon and the distribution of the ten thousand
leaflets it carried.
There can be no doubt of the effectiveness of this campaign upon
the minds of the enemy’s people because, in the first place, both the
German and the Austro-Hungarian governments went to the most
extreme lengths in the effort to combat it, making death the penalty
for touching the literature. Nevertheless, the majority of the prisoners
captured by the Americans had it in their pockets. In the next place,
the influence of it became evident after the war closed in the temper
and attitude of the enemy peoples and their determination to discard
crowns and thrones and set up democratic governments. President
Wilson’s speeches were found to be especially effective, each one
that was sent across the lines being followed invariably by increasing
ferment and dissatisfaction among the people. Into Germany, when
the German censor had mutilated one of these speeches and
distorted its meaning, the Committee at once sent the entire speech
in German with the omitted and distorted parts properly printed in
red. The result was so evident that the German government soon
began to print the President’s addresses correctly and in full.
It was a difficult fight that the Committee waged outside of the
home country and the lands of our co-belligerents, for it had to meet
a tricky foe who already held possession and would and did use all
manner of insidious means and lying statements. But everywhere
the Committee presented its claims frankly and openly, telling the
authorities just what it wanted to do and what its methods would be,
offering to the people plain and true statements and depending upon
their honesty, intelligence and sense of justice. One large factor in its
success was undoubtedly this openness and honesty of purpose and
methods. The completeness with which public opinion in the neutral
countries finally swung to the side of the United States and the
Allies, the collapse of civilian Germany and the decay of morale
among the German and Austro-Hungarian troops all helped to prove
the importance and the success of its long, hard struggle. Just how
great a portion of these developments was due to the Committee’s
work can not yet be estimated. But, because mind and spirit
dominate force and its weapons were wholly those of mind and spirit,
it is already evident that it deserves no small measure of credit.
 CHAPTER XXV
WAR-TIME CONTROL OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY

The entire commercial and industrial life of the country was

established on a war basis very soon after war was declared. Trade
had to be thus mobilized in order to defeat the efforts of the enemy
to supply himself by roundabout and underground means with
American products and in order to use efficiently the organization of
commerce for the prosecution of the war. Industry had to be
mobilized in order to make sure that it would produce all the
enormous amounts of every sort that would be needed for war
purposes. A people accustomed throughout their history as a nation
to a minimum of governmental control of or interference in their
business affairs and believing in and practicing the principle of
individualism in business suddenly found themselves called upon to
surrender that principle and submit to pervasive governmental
regulation. It was a sharp and searching test of patriotism and of
loyalty to national ideals and it put to thorough trial the mental
elasticity, alertness and resourcefulness of the business life of the
country.
These new conditions, limitations and controls were administered
by War Boards of Trade and Industry. That for trade was instituted
six months after the declaration of war as a more comprehensive
and efficient successor of an Export Administrative Board. The
purpose of the War Trade Board was primarily to carry out the
provisions of the Act forbidding Trade with the Enemy and certain
portions of the Espionage Act. It had under its control the whole of
the foreign commerce of the United States, which it managed by
means of a system of licenses for exports and imports. Not a pound
of goods of any sort could be shipped out of or into the country
without a license granted by the War Trade Board, and no license
was granted by it without full knowledge of the character of the
shipment, its destination if an export and its source if it were inward
bound. It had its branch offices in a score of cities, its
representatives in foreign countries, its trade advisers and
distributors who were men of intimate and extensive knowledge of
trade conditions in all commodities at home and abroad, its members
who supplied information concerning war trade matters all over the
earth, from Iceland to Cape Horn and from Siam round the world to
Japan, its bureaus which studied the problems constantly arising and
collected data for their solution and for the guidance of the Board.
The applications made to the War Trade Board for export licenses,
nearly all of which were granted, averaged over 8,000 per day. The
transactions which passed daily through its hands represented
values of from $40,000,000 to $50,000,000. It had 3,000 employees,
most of whom were located in its Washington offices, although its
representatives were to be found in every important trading post in
the world outside of enemy countries.
The War Trade Board, by limiting exports, conserved the products
of the country for the use of our own people and the people of the
nations associated with us in the great conflict so that these products
might be used in whatever way would best aid the prosecution of the
war; it so controlled and supervised the shipping of goods to
associated and neutral nations as to conserve shipping space for
military uses; it regulated with the closest surveillance the shipping of
goods to neutral countries in order to make sure that they would not
be re-shipped in covert ways to enemy destinations; it hunted out
enemy and enemy-controlled firms in our own and neutral lands,
closed up the former and prevented trade with the latter, although it
also in neutral countries made every effort to find and list for
American merchants, in the place of these forbidden firms, others in
the same lines not friendly with the enemy with whom trade could be
carried on; and it so arranged trade with neutral nations as to supply
them with necessities, under guarantees that these should not be
reëxported, in return for their export to the United States and her
associates of certain needed products and permission for this
country to use their shipping.
This mobilization of the commercial arm of the United States soon
proved its value and the government’s control of trade through the
War Trade Board was a highly important factor in hastening the
winning of the war. The firm hand which was laid on commerce with
certain neutral nations of Europe, through which Germany had been
getting large amounts of food and supplies, finally made effective the
blockade of the enemy. The trade of those nations with the United
States during the two and a half years before our entrance into the
war had jumped to enormous figures, many times its previous
volume. When the War Trade Board assumed control of American
commerce it fell, in the case of one nation, to one-twentieth of what it
had been in the first year of the war, while the total exports of food
stuffs of the neutrals of northern Europe to the Central Powers
declined in a few months by from sixty-five to eighty-five per cent of
what they had been in the previous year.
The Board procured, by trade arrangements with European
neutrals, the use of shipping for the United States and Great Britain
amounting to over two million tons, for which there was the greatest
need for transportation of troops, munitions, foods and supplies to
Europe. For this same purpose the Board conserved much tonnage
by practically suspending, for several months, trade in many
commodities with South America and the Orient. Working in
harmony with the War Industries Board, it prevented the shipment
out of the United States of all materials needed by this country and
the associated nations for the swift and efficient prosecution of the
war.
Both the War Trade Board and the War Industries Board
coöperated constantly with the other civilian organizations through
which the nation carried on its support of the war, such as the Food
Administration, the Fuel Administration, the Council of National
Defense, the U. S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation
and the Railroad Administration, and by this union of organization
kept up a harmonious, smoothly articulated and swiftly moving team-
work through which the full resources and powers of the entire nation
were mobilized and put to the service of the two direct war agencies
of the Government, the War and the Navy Departments.
The function of the War Industries Board in this nation-wide
scheme of organization was so to organize and regulate the
industries of the country as to insure the materials necessary for the
war prosecuting agencies of the Government and at the same time
protect the country’s civilian needs. It was charged with providing the
nations associated with us in the war with such military supplies as
they desired and America could spare and neutral nations with such
commodities as they needed and would exchange for materials
essential to this country. Thus these two administrative war
agencies, the War Trade Board and the War Industries Board,
together had practically complete control of all the vast affairs of the
whole nation’s industry and commerce. As a sculptor works a piece
of clay into any desired form, these two boards took the country’s
business life into their hands and moulded and shaped it into a war-
making machine.
By a system of priorities that governed both production and
distribution the War Industries Board regulated the supply of raw
materials to manufacturers and the delivery of finished products. It
stimulated production and speeded distribution of whatever was
urgently needed for the fighting forces, for exchange with neutrals or
for our own people, but limited the supply of raw materials, or coal,
or electricity, or labor, and temporarily withheld the facilities of
distribution when need was not immediate, or when there would
otherwise have been interference with some war-making effort.
Every important class of industry in the country, and some that were
not of large consequence in so far as the size of their business was
concerned, came within the scope of the Board’s operations. The
expert leaders of these industries were represented among the
advisers of the Board, to which they brought their comprehensive
and profound knowledge of resources, conditions, methods of
operation, and quantity, quality and ordinary destination of output.
Industries were listed, classified and studied to determine the degree
of preference to which each was entitled, and in many cases the
same method was applied to individual plants within an industry. To
those entitled to preferential treatment because they could best
subserve some phase of war need was given priority of service in all
their requirements, while the needs of others were deferred until the
preferred industries or plants were satisfied.
It is not possible to describe all the multiple achievements of the
War Industries Board, but a glance at them shows many of vital
importance. By establishing maximum prices upon a number of
staple raw materials necessary in the war-making program, an
executive order of the President putting into legal operation its
agreements and decisions, the Price Fixing Committee of the Board
stabilized prices and prevented or lessened profiteering in many
industries. The Conservation Section reduced wastage in industry in
various ways, but especially by curtailing the number of patterns, or
varieties, in each of many lines of production, scrutinizing for this
purpose nearly two hundred different industries. Thus, the thousand
and more different patterns for a buggy step were reduced to two,
with resulting economy of both labor and material. A Committee on
Emergency Construction took charge, under the Construction
Division of the Government, of the vast building program upon which
the nation had at once to enter. Cantonments, flying fields, camps,
hospitals, embarkation depots, docks, wharves, storehouses,
ordnance, powder, explosives and nitrate plants and other structures
had to be built with the greatest possible rapidity. The War Industries
Board first developed a method for getting the necessary information
concerning contractors who could take charge of this enormous
building program and devised a scheme of organization and then, by
means of its priorities system, made sure that each operation should
have at the moment of need the necessary materials, transportation
facilities and labor. These structures, finished and in construction,
totaled a cost at the end of the war of approximately two billion
dollars. The Chemical Division did highly important work in the way
of instituting, aiding and speeding scientific investigations and
stimulating new chemical industries, such as the potash supply and
the dye industry. The Steel Division received the enthusiastic
coöperation of the steel manufacturers, who speeded up their plants
for the production of the immensely increased quantities needed of
this vital product. More and more steel, and ever more steel, was
necessary for the making of munitions, guns, cannon, rails,
locomotives, shipyards, ships. In the last six months of 1918 the
steel products that went into direct and indirect war necessities
amounted to 22,000,000 tons, a production of about twenty-five per
cent more than would have been the reasonable expectation for the
period. The Steel Division handled approximately 40,000,000 tons of
steel per year. The Board’s program of speeding work greatly
increased the output in many vital industries. For instance, the
locomotive industry doubled its production in three months without
increasing its facilities or expanding its works. It has been estimated
that the industrial capacity of the country was increased by at least
twenty per cent.
All over the country business men coöperated with the War
Industries Board with patriotic zeal, willingly curtailing their output
and reducing their incomes in order to release material, capital,
labor, fuel, transportation facilities, for the expediting of work
necessary for the winning of the war. Dozens of them left their affairs
in the hands of subordinates or gave up high-salaried positions and
entered the service of the War Industries Board in order that the
nation might have the advantage of their training and their wide and
expert knowledge. These men, who were generally known as “the
Government’s dollar-a-year men,” because legally the Government
can accept no gratuitous service, freely gave to the country, as their
contribution to the winning of the war, what it could not have bought
for millions of dollars and worked with as much energy and ardor as
ever they had done for the making and furthering of their own
fortunes.
 CHAPTER XXVI
“THE GREATEST MOTHER IN THE WORLD”

Before the world war the American Red Cross would have had
ample reason to complain, had it been so minded, of the indifference
of the great masses of the American people to its rightful claim upon
their interest, sympathy and support. But its world-wide works of
compassion during the war, that won for it the loving titles of “The
Greatest Mother in the World” and “The Universal Mother,” opened
their eyes and their hearts until they almost merged themselves in it
and made it the organization through which they themselves
functioned for the help of the war-made need and suffering.
The American Red Cross was transformed to a war basis within a
month after the United States entered the conflict. It had then less
than half a million members. Five months later they numbered five
millions. The membership rose to fifteen millions in the following
spring and a campaign for new members in December, 1918, for
which arrangements had been made before the end of the war,
raised the number to nearly 18,000,000, an average of membership
in the Red Cross for almost every family in the Union. In addition, the
Junior Red Cross, composed of school children organized under
their teachers into auxiliaries for Red Cross work suitable to their
ages, numbered approximately 10,000,000.
Whatever the Red Cross has asked of the American people for the
financing of its vast works of mercy they have given with overflowing
hands. In June, 1917, it went to them for a war fund of
$100,000,000. They gave it $115,000,000. In May of the following
year the Red Cross told them it needed another hundred million
dollars and they gave it $176,000,000. Altogether, more than
47,000,000 American people gave to the Red Cross during our war
period $325,000,000 in money and manufactured products of a
value of $60,000,000.
Of the 8,500 persons who carried on the administrative and
executive work of the organization in its national, divisional and
foreign headquarters 2,000 were volunteers. Many of these unpaid
executives gave up large salaries and important positions in private
life to devote their skilled and capable service to this world mother.
Of the paid employees more than 5,000 received no more, and some
of them less, than $1,500 a year.
Almost 4,000 chapters, with 16,000 branches, covered the entire
country with a network of busy groups whose willing hands
contributed aid and comfort that the Red Cross carried widely over
land and sea. A division in which were organized Americans outside
of the continental limits, called the Insular and Foreign Division,
girdled the earth and included a membership of 100,000 adults and
125,000 juniors. Its members contributed almost $2,000,000 in
money and finished products representing a value of $1,500,000.
They were scattered throughout Central and South America, the
West Indies, Hawaii, the Philippines, little Guam, China, Japan,
Siberia, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland.
In nearly 4,000 Red Cross chapters more than 8,000,000 women
gave volunteer service so faithfully that, however untrained they
were at the beginning of the war, at its end the big majority of them
were skilled workers in all the Red Cross needs. They made a total
of 291,000,000 articles, in which were used raw materials costing
$40,000,000. All of these articles were standardized, army surgeons
establishing the standard for surgical dressings and a committee of
women, sent to Europe for that purpose, designing models and
illustrations of garments needed in the hospitals and in civilian relief
work. Knitted garments and comfort kits were also made by uniform
models. Practically every American fighting man who went overseas
during the last year of the war and every man in the training camps
who needed them were supplied with Red Cross knitted articles,
while many of the Allied soldiers and thousands of refugees wore
them with gratitude. These volunteer Red Cross workers, who at the
same time were busy upon their home duties, made over
250,000,000 surgical dressings, 14,000,000 knitted articles,
1,400,000 garments for refugees and 22,255,000 garments and
supplies for hospitals. They also renovated hundreds of thousands of
soldiers’ garments and aided in the collection of thousands of tons of
clothing for the destitute in Europe.
Through the Home Service section of the Red Cross organization
communities all over the country, alike in cities and remote country
districts, found the opportunity of giving individual service which
would help in the winning of the war by sustaining the morale of
soldiers’ families and promoting the public welfare. Through this
branch of Red Cross activity, in which 10,000 local committees and
50,000 men and women participated, 300,000 families of soldiers
were aided with advice, counsel and practical helpfulness of
whatever sort was needed for the solving of business or legal
tangles, household perplexities, family problems, difficulties due to
illness, worry and loneliness. These Home Service workers carried
on a nation-wide campaign to encourage the writing of cheerful
letters to the men overseas, they spread a doctrine of neighborliness
toward soldiers’ families, they enlisted the aid of physicians, lawyers,
business men, teachers and others who could give the special kinds
of assistance that were needed and they devoted to this work of
conserving morale and promoting welfare some $6,000,000, aside
from their personal service, which was far beyond money value.
Training courses were instituted to fit for more intelligent and efficient
work those wishing to enter this branch and were taken by several
thousand persons.
The Red Cross carried on a camp service at all the camps and
cantonments in the United States which rendered emergency aid,
looked after the welfare of sick soldiers and maintained connection
with the Home Service section. It established soon after we entered
the war at more than five hundred railway stations a canteen service
which furnished refreshments to traveling soldiers and sailors, while
its sanitary service coöperated with the public health authorities to
maintain healthful conditions in military zones. It coöperated with the
Government by organizing base hospitals, naval hospital units, and
ambulance companies and by enrolling nurses, of whom over 30,000
answered its call, and forming them into units for service.
Overseas, the army service of the American Red Cross was to be
found wherever it could aid in caring for the wounded of the front line
forces or in safeguarding the health and improving the comfort of
soldiers in the rear of the battle zones. It built huge storehouses for
the temporary housing of its supplies at every American port in
France, at distributing points, at army concentration camps and
behind the lines. It erected two nitrous oxide plants that together
produced 25,000 gallons per day. Its canteens and rest rooms were
strung along the lines of communication between front and rear, its
rolling canteens and hot drink kitchens carried comforts and
refreshments even into the front line trenches, it helped to maintain
sanitary conditions wherever there were American troops, it cared for
the sick and the wounded in base hospitals and convalescent
homes, it looked out for American soldiers in enemy prisons, learned
their addresses and furnished them with food, clothing and supplies,
it searched for the missing, gave counsel to the troubled, and was
ready with instant help for any and every need of the soldier or sailor.
While its first interest and care were for the men of the American
Expeditionary Forces, its similar services were always ready for the
needs of the soldiers of the Allied nations. To the French soldiers the
American Red Cross gave especial attention because, on account of
the long and desperate struggle which France had carried on with
the enemy on her own soil, their need was greatest. The advance
guard of the American Red Cross on its war footing which went to
France in June, 1917, numbered nineteen men. Within six months it
had there 3,000 workers, whose numbers were constantly being
augmented, it was providing food, baths and beds to 20,000 French
soldiers per day at its canteens and rest rooms on the lines of
communication, serving hot and cold drinks from canteens at the
front, while at its metropolitan canteens an average of 750,000
French and Allied soldiers were being fed each month and it was
giving invaluable aid and service to French hospitals.
 Wounded Men in a Hospital Weaving Rugs
Among the populations of the countries that were fighting the
common foe the work of the American Red Cross was of incalculable
value in the saving of life, the prevention of suffering and the
conserving of morale. Its civilian service was wide spread and
included the people of Palestine, Roumania, Greece, Serbia, Poland,
Russia and Siberia, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and France. The
service it gave varied with the local needs. In Switzerland it dealt
mainly with the interned, the refugees and the prisoners that were
being returned to their own countries, providing food, clothing,
comforts and whatever assistance was needed. In Italy, where at the
end of the war the Red Cross had expended almost $17,000,000, its
appearance in the summer of 1917, the advance courier of
American’s assistance, was of great value in counteracting German
propaganda against the United States and proving to the people that
they could depend upon American aid. It fed thousands of the
refugees from the invaded region: its canteens, rest-houses and
distributed comforts cheered the Italian armies at the front and their
supporting lines; it furnished hospital supplies and scores of
ambulances manned by Red Cross drivers; it sought out the families
of soldiers that needed aid and gave help to more than 400,000; it
established work rooms for women, nurseries and schools for
children, homes and colonies in the mountains and at the seaside for
children who were ill; and at the end of the war it had under way a
campaign against tuberculosis.
In Belgium it carried on a children’s service by aiding existing
hospitals, building new ones, establishing colonies and nurseries for
children and organizing the aid of nurses and physicians for baby-
saving effort, gave to all in need dispensary and home service and
food, and supplied its usual army service for the Belgian soldiers
whether at the front, in hospitals or interned in Holland, and gave, in
addition, educational help. Among the half million and more Belgian
refugees it set up administrative relief units of its own which
coöperated with those of Belgium and aided with money, machinery,
food, clothing, materials and friendly help of every sort.
In England the Red Cross service was devoted to caring for the
hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and sailors passing
through on their way to and from the front, or in camps, nursing the
wounded sent back from France, and providing for those
shipwrecked near British shores.
In France, in addition to its very great and important work among
the soldiers of our own and the Allied armies, with its many hospitals
and convalescent homes, its diet kitchens and hospital huts, its
medical supplies, its baths and sterilizing plants, its canteens and
kitchen service, and its expert service in searching for missing men,
it carried on extensive civilian relief in coöperation with the French
Government and with French societies. It cared for refugees, for
needy families whose men were at the front, provided clothing, food,
medical attention and better housing, helped to rehabilitate battle
devastated regions and enable their population to return,
inaugurated an anti-tuberculosis campaign and carried on a
children’s service for the saving of babies’ lives and the conserving
of the health and welfare of children. The American Red Cross had
9,000 persons in all the activities of its service in France during our
war period.