Tradition and Modernity 25and prophetic discourse, on the other. This tense relationship reached a grave
stalemate in the Sunni world with the work of Ibn Rushd (d. 1198), known in
Europe as Averroes. His rationalist philosophy became the object of attacks
by the fuqaha (the practitioners of fi qh – that is, jurisprudence), though he was
himself an active jurist. Sufi sm exploited the tension to its advantage in order
to show its commitment to orthodoxy, by focusing on the exemplary value of
the Sunna (the canonical practice) of the Prophet. Sufi leaders proved that the
Sunna was a path of pious imitation of the Prophet’s virtuous life that the single
faithful had to practise via a disciplined training under the guide of a master,
in order to gain access to the essential truth of faith, the haqiqa. This inner truth
could be achieved only through establishing a close relationship to the human
being who is particularly close to God, the prophet Muhammad, and to the
other ‘friends’ (awliya) of God, the new Sufi ‘saints’.
Similar to the new monastic movements of the ecumenical renaissance in
Latin Christian Europe, the consolidation of Sufi sm took on the form of a
socio-religious movement of the commoners laying a claim to grasp the essence
of the transcendent truth. This basic similarity is matched by clear differences
with the European experience at the level of the institutional environment and
with regard to the organisational form of the movements, as well as in terms of
the required – individual and collective – disciplines. The most salient aspect
of the wave of institutionalisation of Sufi sm during the ecumenical renaissance
is that, while the new monastic orders in Europe infl uenced the renaissance of
civic life while coming from outside the urban communities, the Sufi orders
entered an almost symbiotic relationship with urban associations and especially
with the craftsmen guilds, by providing them with ties of trust underpinned by
the authority of the shaykhs (the masters) of the brotherhoods (see Gerber 1994:
113–26).
In this institutional environment, the leaders who cared for the consensus of
the commoners were, and could only be, the ulama. It is important to provide a
profi le of their social skills and institutional rooting, in order to understand how
the Islamic community was staffed at both a micro- and a macro-level of social
organisation. As summarised by Eisenstadt (2002: 151):
this highly autonomous religious elite did not develop into a broad, independent,
and cohesive ecclesiastic organisation, and the religious groups and functionar-
ies were not organised as a distinct, separate entity... It was the ulama who
created major networks that brought together, under one religious – and often
also social-civilisational – umbrella, varied ethnic and geopolitical groups, tribes,
settled peasants, and urban groups, creating mutual impingement and interac-
tion among them that otherwise would probably not have developed. And it was
the ulama, acting through different, often transstate, networks, who were the
crucial element forming the distinctive characteristic of public spheres in Islamic
societies.