Sanctity and Mysticism in Medieval Egypt: The Wafa?' Sufi Order and the Legacy of Ibn al-?Arabi

Using the original writings of two Egyptian Sufis, Muhammad Wafaμ and his son Aliμ, this book shows how the Islamic idea of sainthood developed in the medieval period. Although without a church to canonize its "saints," the Islamic tradition nevertheless debated and developed a variety of ideas concerning miracles, sanctity, saintly intermediaries, and pious role models. In the writings of the Wafaμs, a complete mystical worldview unfolds, one with a distinct doctrine of sainthood and a novel understanding of the apocalypse. Using almost entirely unedited manuscript sources, author Richard J. A. McGregor shows in detail how Muhammad and Aliμ Wafaμ drew on earlier philosophical and gnostic currents to construct their own mystical theories and notes their debt to the Sufi order of the Shaμdhiliyya, the mystic al-Tirmidhiμ, and the great Sufi thinker Ibn Arabiμ. Notably, although located firmly within the Sunni tradition, the Wafaμs, felt free to draw on Shi'ite ideas for the construction of their own theory of the final great saint.