REBIRTH 171swers his own question: because the flute started out as a reed, growing
by the river bank, rooted in soil. When it was made into a flute, it was
severed from its roots. The sorrow keening in its song is the reed's wist-
ful memory of its lost connection to the source. In the next thirty thou-
sand couplets, Rumi delivers hundreds of stories in a language thrumming
with eroticized religiosity, illustrating how we human flutes can recover
our connection to the source. Rumi remains influential, even in the
English-speaking world, where translations of his work outsell those of
every other poet.^4
In short, Sufism had something for every taste and class. Sufis con-
verted the pastoral nomads to Islam, so these tribes imbibed the passions
of Islam before absorbing its doctrines. Sufi orders intertwined with arti-
sans' guilds, with merchants associations, with the peasantry, with aristo-
cratic military groups-like a web, Sufism connected all the disparate
groups in this atomized world.
Some Sufi brotherhoods devoted to futuwwah ideals developed into
ghazi corporations. The word ghazi meant something like "warrior saint."
Ghazis were reminiscent of the Knights Templar and other Christian mil-
itary orders spawned during the Crusades, except that no one ordained
them, Islam having no pope-like figure to do the ordaining. Instead, ghazis
ordained themselves, forming around some masterful knight and taking
inspiration from some charismatic sheikh. They adopted special headgear
and cloaks and other accessories as badges of membership in their group.
They had initiation rituals involving vows, pledges, iconic artifacts and ar-
cane relics, much the same sorts of things boys cook up when they form
"secret clubs."
Members of ghazi orders centered their lives around campaigns into
Christian territory to perform great deeds of valor for the advancement of
the one true faith. They were very much like an Islamic version of the
knights of Arthurian legend.
Hundreds of these ghazi group sprang up, big ones and little ones. In
search of fame and fortune, these knights sallied into the frontier
"marches," that ever-growing belt of territory that the Byzantines still offi-
cially claimed but where their authority had grown dubious. Once in a
while some ghazi chieftain secured enough territory to claim a little state
of his own, whereupon he promptly declared himself an amir (also emir)