(CON)TESTED BELIEF: Sayyid Ḥaydar b. ʿAlī al-Āmulī’s Interdiscursive Synthesis of the Ṣūfī and Shīʿī Traditions

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the life, work, and thought of Sayyid Ḥaydar b. ʿAlī al-Āmulī (d. ca. 787/1385-86), an Iranian-cum-Iraqi scholar of the post-Īlkhānate interregnum period renowned for his efforts to synthesize Twelver Shīʿī theology with philosophical Ṣūfism. Eschewing teleological narratives that either implicitly or explicitly read Āmulī as an early node along a broader arc that culminates in certain Ṣūfī-inflected florescences of Twelver philosophical discourse from the 11th/17th century and onward, this dissertation seeks rather to understand how and why, in his own context and on his own terms, Āmulī makes his synthetic intervention into the Ṣūfism and Shīʿism that he himself encountered, inherited, and inhabited. In the prologue to Jāmiʿ al-asrār, which is among his earliest surviving works, he famously asserts that “Shīʿī and Ṣūfī are two different names for a single reality.” But in what sense? Ṣūfī theory and Twelver theology do not immediately lend themselves to synthesis as they rest on divergent epistemologies, ontologies, and conceptions of authority. The central task of this dissertation, therefore, is to give a coherent account of how he negotiates these tensions and on what grounds he believes they can be reconciled into a single system. The study is divided into two major parts, both of which take the concept of interdiscursivity—that is, the generative interchange of concepts, vocabularies, and methodologies between two or more discursive traditions—as a primary analytical lens. Part I is historically and philologically contextual in nature, tracing those aspects of the Ṣūfī and Shīʿī traditions in the Mongol period that are indispensable for properly understanding Āmulī’s background (Chapter 1), reconstructing his biography (Chapter 2), and inventorying his works, including those that survive, those that are now lost, and those that are uncertainly or falsely attributed (Chapter 3). Part II is addressed to analyzing key features of Āmulī’s thought—namely his understanding of tawḥīd (Chapter 4), his reconciliation of Ṣūfī and Shīʿī theories of existence (wujūd) (Chapter 5), and his approach to sanctified authority (walāya) (Chapter 6)—with a view towards understanding exactly how, in his body of work conceived as a whole system, each feature contributes to his ability to defend the claim that Ṣūfism and Shīʿism are expressions of the same truth. The analyses in Part II depend above all on close readings of Āmulī’s surviving works, while at the same time putting them into conversation with the works of the many scholars (Ṣūfī, Shīʿī, or otherwise) whom he engages or who are in some way relevant interlocutors in the wider intellectual culture of his time. Given the scope of the problem this dissertation addresses, it sheds light not only on Āmulī and his ideas, but also on developments in the Ṣūfī and Shīʿī traditions at a critical but understudied historical moment.