Ibn Taymiyya and his Circle on samāʿ: a means to Purify Sufism? (with an Arabic edition of al-Wāsiṭī’s (d. 711/1311) Bulgha)

Abstract

By examining polemical treatises on Sufi samāʿ or ‘spiritual audition’, written by scholars with a Ḥanbalī or traditionalist orientation, we assess the strategies and rhetorical devices that they used to discuss the status of samāʿ within their tradition. Our exploration reveals a clear difference in approach between pre-Taymiyyan scholars, on the one hand, and ‘Taymiyyan’ scholars, including Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) himself, on the other. Unlike their predecessors, the latter systematically refer to the legacy of esteemed figures from the formative period of Sufism, such as al-Junayd (d. 289/910) and some of his contemporaries, invoking his spiritual authority to consolidate the relation between Ahl al-Ḥadīth traditionalism and what they considered to be Sufism in its ‘true’ form.