On Kings Real and Spiritual: Rhetorical Strategies in Timurid Historical and Hagiographic Narratives

This paper will focus on the representation of competition and cooperation between Sufi masters and royal figures in Persian literature from the fifteenth century. From as early as the tenth century, Sufis began describing their great saints as spiritual kings who presided over “courts” of close disciples. The borrowing of royal nomenclature began acquiring reality in the late medieval and early modern periods when Sufi masters came to exercise tremendous social and economic power in Persianate societies. As a consequence, saints and actual kings had to put up with each other as power brokers, which led to collusions, collaborations, and occasional confrontations among Sufis and royalty. I will exemplify the working of this dynamic by focusing on the figure of the great Turko-Mongol conqueror Tamerlane (d. 1405) who is depicted as the embodiment of worldly power in various hagiographical narratives. To establish the patterns of Sufi-royal relationships, I will analyze stories of interactions between Tamerlane and four major Sufi figures: Sayyid Amir Kulal (d. 1370-71), Sayyid ^cAli Hamadani (d. 1385), Zayn ad-Din Taybadi (d. 1389), and Shah Ni^cmatallah Vali (d. 1431). These stories indicate that contacts between spiritual and real kings stemmed from their common desire for dominion over the bodies as well as the minds of citizens. Moreover, Sufi saints’ bodies were taken to represent their whole communities, much as kings’ bodies can represent dynasties and polities. The paper will argue that, contrary to prevailing academic views, Sufi hagiography is a vital source for understanding Islamic social and religious history.