عنوان

Gendering Asceticism in Medieval Sufism

شماره

TL54772

زبان متن نوشتاري يا گفتاري و مانند آن

انگلیسی

عنوان اصلي

Gendering Asceticism in Medieval Sufism

نام عام مواد

[Thesis]

نام نخستين پديدآور

Abdel-Latif, Sara Ahmed

نام ساير پديدآوران

Saleh, Walid

نام ناشر، پخش کننده و غيره

University of Toronto (Canada)

تاریخ نشرو بخش و غیره

2020

متن يادداشت

240 p.

جزئيات پايان نامه و نوع درجه آن

Ph.D.

کسي که مدرک را اعطا کرده

University of Toronto (Canada)

امتياز متن

2020

متن يادداشت

Medieval Sufis reoriented the practice of Islamic mysticism away from asceticism and towards a structured program of inner cultivation under the guidance of elite male teachers. This dissertation argues that this inward turn represents a key historical moment in which Sufi identity was deliberately constructed upon idealized elite masculinity to combat rival groups in fifth/eleventh-century Nishapur. While previous scholars suggest medieval Sufism arose out of the Baghdadi context, an examination of the writings of two influential Nishapuri authors, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) and Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1074) reveals sociopolitical conflicts unique to Nishapur that provoked the formation of an urban institutionalized Sufism that excluded all but the male elite. The gendered consequences of this institutionalization is explored through the legacy of al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī and the reproduction of their gendered discourse in the writings of Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) and Abū al-Faraj b. al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200). Through a gender-sensitive critical re-reading of asceticism in historicizations of medieval Nishapur, I demonstrate the role of opposition to rival ascetic groups in the institutionalization and perpetuation of elite androcentric Sufism. This study investigates shifting gendered discourses in representations of four early ascetic practices: bodily mortification (zuhd), wandering without provision (siyāḥa), sexual abstinence (ʿuzla, ʿafāf), and excessive voluntary fasting (jūʿ, ṣawm). The decline in popularity of these exercises came with increasingly more obvious language of gender differentiation in the writings of Sufi authors. Through an intersectional gender analysis that compares elite male depictions of women to those of youths, the enslaved, and racialized individuals, I problematize modern scholarship on Sufism and Islam that employs gender binaries without considering other social markers of difference in Islamicate literatures. I conclude that authors of medieval Sufism reinvented asceticism to oppose those they deemed deviant to their own hegemonic masculinity. Understanding that elite social actors negotiate orthodoxy and regulate practice through the language of gender demonstrates the usefulness of gender analysis as a method of exposing discourses of power in the formation of religious identity.

اصطلاح موضوعی

Gender studies

اصطلاح موضوعی

Islamic studies

اصطلاح موضوعی

Religious history

مستند نام اشخاص تاييد نشده

Abdel-Latif, Sara Ahmed

مستند نام اشخاص تاييد نشده

Saleh, Walid

مستند نام تنالگان تاييد نشده

University of Toronto (Canada)

نام الکترونيکي

فرمت انتشار

p

نوع ماده

[Thesis]

کد کاربرگه

276903

سطح دسترسي

a

تكميل شده

Y