New light on Inayat Khan’s time in Moscow

New light is shed on Inayat Khan’s year in Moscow (1913-14) by Oleg Yarosh, in “Universal Sufism and the Cultic Milieu in Russia at Turn of the xx Century,” Mondi 1, no. 1 (2019), pp. 101-20. Yarosh, who is head of Oriental Philosophy at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, uses not only Inayat Khan’s memoirs but also Russian sources that other researchers have not used.

Inayat Khan’s most important Russian host, it seems, was Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949, pictured), a celebrated poet who had spent much of his life abroad and whose salon was one of the most fashionable in Moscow. He was a follower of Anna Mintslova (1865-1910), a Russian disciple of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), and was also interested in Sufism, which few Russians then were—Sufism was too closely associated with Russia’s Muslims, who were not highly regarded by the elite, says Yarosh. Notes on Sufism are to be found in Ivanov’s archive, and he wrote poems referring to Rumi and Hafez. One of his last poems, written in exile after the Russian Revolution, was “Певец у Суфитов” (Sufi Singer), which hails both Rumi and Hafez, who are linked to the “witness” of Plato.

Ivanov’s understanding of Sufism, then, seems to have something in common with the literary Western Sufism of Goethe and of the later nineteenth century, not especially with that of Inayat Khan. But even if Ivanov did not learn his Sufism from Inayat Khan, a pre-existing interest in Sufism may have been what led him to introduce Inayat Khan into Russian society, and it was evidently through him that Inayat Khan met other celebrities such as the composer and pianist Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915), a friend of Ivanov—celebrities who, one gathers from Yarosh, may not have been quite as taken by Inayat Khan as his memoirs suggest.

Before he met Ivanov, Inayat Khan’s point of arrival in Moscow was a fashionable night-club called “Maxim,” run by an unusual African-American entrepreneur, Frederick Bruce Thomas (1872-1928: see Vladimir Alexandrov, The Black Russian, 2013). A Russian Theosophist, Eugenia Spasskaya, noted in her memoirs that when other Theosophists heard of “a Hindu, Inayat Khan” in this “tavern hell,” they tried to “buy out the naïve teacher,” but that Inayat Khan preferred to stay at Maxim for a while.

Apologies for inactivity

My apologies for recent inactivity on this blog.

Sufism as Art in Berlin

For all those interested in the New York Sufis once led by Muzaffer Ozak, a lecture-performance at the ACUD macht NEU art collective in Berlin, March 31, 2018, at 7:30pm, "Al-Isnad or Chains we can believe in."

The lecture-performance is by Slavs and Tatars, who have previously held exhibitions and lectures around the world inspired especially by one episode in this story, the "Sufi mosque" with lights by the leading modern artist of the time, Dan Flavin. Although this artistic episode is emphasised, Slavs and Tatars are also good on the "back story."

ACUD macht NEU is at Veteranenstraße 21, Berlin 10119. Read more here.

The Sanctuary of Sufism Reoriented

In Western Sufism, I left Sufism Reoriented, the American group descended from Inayat Khan that shifted to Meher Baba and left the Western Sufi milieu, running a preschool in California. A new article by Amos Barshad in Fader reports that it has also built a large “sanctuary” (pictured) in Saranap, California, designed to withstand Californian earthquakes and last 700 years until the expected return of Meher Baba. This project is said to have cost around $35 million, most of it donated by David Overton, a long-term member of Sufism Reoriented who grew rich from his worldwide chain of Cheesecake Factory restaurants. The Sanctuary sounds a bit like a survivalist project, with two thirds of its space under ground. Curious.

My thanks to C for drawing my attention to this article.

Film about the Darqawiyya of Norwich

There is a now a film about the Darqawiyya of Norwich, formerly of Bristol Gardens, discussed in chapter 14 of Western Sufism. It is entitled “Blessed are the Strangers” and is directed by Ahmed Peerbux. It has a website, where a trailer is available. The film lasts 58 minutes.

Using autobiographical interviews with participants, “Blessed are the Strangers” tells the central story of the Darqawiyya from its origins, and also the story of the Brixton-mosque Muslims who ended up joining the Darqawiyya in Norwich. As might be expected, it does not cover all the details discussed in Western Sufism, but the basic understanding of the book and of the film are the same.

Beautifully made, and worth watching.

The Burhaniya in Italy

A new article on the Burhaniya in Italy: Paola Abenante, “Essentializing Difference. Text, knowledge and ritual performance in a Sufi brotherhood in Italy,” The e-Journal of Economics & Complexity 2, no. 1 (May 2016), pp. 51-68.

Abstract:

The paper explores the different and competing understandings of ‘proper Islamic praxis’ between Egyptian Muslim immigrants and Italians converts to Islam within the Italian branch of an Egyptian-Sudanese Sufi brotherhood, in Rome. The Italian brethren foreground intellectual engagement with texts and scriptures over ritual performance and the role of the body, elements to which immigrants instead give prominence. I suggest that such polarization and the reasons of its persistence may be best understood by focusing on the performative role of cultural essentialisms against immigrants and of stereotypes concerning the definition of ‘orthodox’ Islam circulating in Italy and beyond. Whereas these prosaic essentialisms and binaries do not actually map socio-cultural realities, they are on their turn performative: essentialised discourses orient everyday praxis, make sense of experience and support forms of empowerment and of domination within the brotherhood.

Dervishes in Dickens and Bérault-Bercastel

Two further eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European references to Sufis again show how familiar the reading public was with Mevlevi turning. In his Histoire générale de l'Église (1778-90), the French historian Antoine-Henri de Bérault-Bercastel discusses the “Convulsionnaires” (Convulsionists), a controversial eighteenth-century religious movement that emphasized direct religious experience. He describes some Convulsionnaires as standing on their heads while others “turned rapidly on their feet like dervishes” (1840 edition, vol. 10, pp. 418-19). The same comparison is made by Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities (1859) when Dickens refers to the Convulsionists while ridiculing pre-revolutionary French society (p. 134). Dickens, however, does not mention turning, which makes the logic of the comparison hard to follow.