and edUcation reforms, mandated a Western
dress code, and abolished the wearing of the
veil. He created a strong central government by
destroying the old fiefdoms that had divided the
country internally and he limited the aUthority
of Iran’s Shii religious institutions by control-
ling the tithes that functioned as their primary
source of wealth. The shah’s reforms sparked
Iran’s economy and reignited its sense of national
sovereignty, making Iran one of the most stable
and formidable powers in the Middle East. Yet,
because of his lasting distrust of the British and
Russians, Reza Shah Pahlavi chose not to assist
the Allies in their fight against German forces
during World War II. As a result, in the closing
year of the war, the Allied forces reoccupied Iran,
forced his abdication, and replaced him on Iran’s
throne with his son, mohammad reza pahlavi (r.
1944–79).
Reza AslanFurther reading: Amin Banani, The Modernization of
Iran (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961);
Cyrus Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah (London:
I.B. Tauris, 1998); Homa Katouzian, State and Society in
Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the
Pahlavis (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000).
ridda See apostasy.
Rifai Sufi Order
The Rifai Sufi Order takes its name from Ahmad
al-Rifai (1106–82), a Shafii legal scholar and
mystic from the marshlands of southern iraq.
He was a contemporary of abd al-qadir al-Jilani
(d. 1166), the eponymous founder of the qadiri
sUFi order, and disciples claimed he was from
the household of mUhammad, the Prophet. Details
about al-Rifai’s life are sketchy, other than that he
was raised by his paternal uncle, Mansur, after the
death of his father. Mansur had initiated a der-
vish order called the Rifaiyya, which Ahmad led
after his uncle’s death. He was 28 years old at the
time. His tomb in the village of Umm Ubayda in
southern Iraq had become a large dervish hospice
by the time ibn bat tUta visited it in the mid-14th
century. The famed Rifai Mosque in cairo is also
thought to contain his remains, but because this
is a late-19th century mosqUe, it most likely con-
tains the remains of one of his descendants or a
Rifai shaykh.
As has often been the case for Islamic organi-
zations, it was Ahmad’s disciples who developed
the order’s rituals, rules, and doctrines. They
also established branches throughout the Middle
East and southeastern Europe. It remained the
most widespread order in Sunni arab lands
until the 15th century, when it was superseded
by the Qadiri order. The Ottoman sUlta n Abd
al-Hamid II (d. 1918) renewed its importance as
part of his effort to promote pan-islamism. Today
the most prominent Rifai branches are in iraq,
syria, palestine, egypt, tUrkey, Bosnia and Her-
zegovina, Albania, Bulgaria, and Greece. There
are branches in coastal cities of india, especially
Surat, where it is the most important Sufi order.
Several branches have also been established in
the United States, including in California and
New York.
According to a 16th-century source, the Rifais
credited their founder with teaching about five
stages (maqamat) of spiritual development: pious
circumspection (waraa), worship (taabud), love
(mahabba), mystical insight or gnosis (maarifa),
and unity with God (tawhid). The Rifai order
is most famous for its ecstatic rituals, which
included riding lions, snake-handling, walking
on fire, eating glass, and piercing the body with
hooks, swords, and skewers. The shaykh of the
order purifies the wounds of the dervishes with
his spittle. The absence of bleeding is taken as a
demonstration of the saint’s miraculous powers.
Such practices came to be widely condemned in
the Muslim community only in the 19th and 20th
centuries, when political authorities, liberals,
and Wahhabi-minded reformers denounced suchK 592 ridda