Introductory Remarks

A well-reputed spiritual master in his own right, Ṣafī l-Dīn Ibn Abī l-Manṣūr lived a long and active life and was acquainted with some of the most influential Muslim mystics of the seventh/thirteenth century in Egypt and Bilād al-Shām (Greater Syria). In his Risāla he drew impressive hagiographic 44 portraits of more than one hundred of them, showing the great diversity of Sufi personalities, doctrines, and practices in that time. As far as Egyptian Sufi attitudes towards non-Muslims in particular are concerned, four of these portraits are particularly worth mentioning here: those of the shaykhs ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nuwayrī (d. 616/1219), Abū l-Ḥajjāj Yūsuf al-Mughāwir (d. 619/1222–1223), Ḥasan al-Ṭawīl (d. 616/1219), and Majd al-Dīn al-Akhmīmī (d. 653/1255).

In fact, only the portraits of al-Ṭawīl and al-Akhmīmī directly concern attitudes towards local dhimmīs (Christians and Jews living under Muslim rule), whereas the first two (l-Nuwayrī and al-Mughāwir) concern warfare against European Christian armies either in Egypt or on the Iberian Peninsula. Nevertheless, I analyze all four portraits here as they provide us with valuable insights on the representations of the relationship between spiritual election and military commitment in the period under consideration.

Ṣafī l-Dīn’s Portrait 1: Shaykh al-Nuwayrī, or ‘Miracles at War’

Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nuwayrī is described as a Sufi master and a jurisprudent (faqīh) who directly engages in military jihad. In 616/1218, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and his sons leave the town of Nuwayra in Lower Egypt for Damietta in order to fight against the Crusaders. There, the shaykh dies as a martyr and performs a posthumous miracle, thus causing the Frank soldier who had killed him to become Muslim on the spot. By resorting to a common rhetorical device in hagiographic texts, Ṣafī l-Dīn even provides a constructed dialogue in which the Frank soldier himself 45 reports the shaykh’s miracle to a merchant from Nuwayra whom he incidentally meets in Acre during a truce:

The Frank (...) said to him: ‘O Muslim, don’t be afraid! I am a Muslim like you!’, and pronounced the profession of faith (al-shahāda). Then, he added: ‘I am the one who killed Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nuwayrī. I entered his tent, and hit him on his neck until he died. Then (after he died) I insulted him by saying: ’O priest of the Muslims (yā qissīs al-muslimīn), you say in your Qurʾan: Never think of those who have died in the cause of Allāh (fi sabīl Allāh) as dead. Indeed, they are alive with their Lord, who provides them.’¹⁵ But the faqīh (= Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān) opened his eyes and said in a loud, powerful voice: ‘Yes, they are alive with their Lord who provides them’. Then he turned silent. When I saw and heard this, disbelief (kufr) was torn from my heart, and I converted to Islam at the shaykh’s hands. And I hope that God will forgive me thanks to the shaykh’s blessing and my conversion at his hands. (Gril 1986, Arabic text: folios 127 b–128)

Here, sanctity goes hand in hand with jihād. Indeed, the shaykh’s spiritual election turns his apparent individual defeat (his being surprised and killed by the enemy) into a victory for Islam: the “unbeliever” who killed the shaykh becomes a Muslim, potentially acting as an infiltrator among his fellow Crusaders. In line with common conversion story patterns, in this anecdote the conversion process is triggered by a Muslim shaykh’s display of piety and miraculous powers before a non-Muslim, showing the truth of Islam and the shaykh’s spiritual election, thus pushing the non-Muslim to embrace Islam “at the shaykh’s hands” (ʿalā yaday al-shaykh, a typical formula in such stories). 46

Ṣafī l-Dīn’s Portrait 2: Shaykh al-Mughāwir and the Fifth Column Saint

The association between spiritual election and military jihād is all the more evident in Ṣafī l-Dīn’s portrait of Shaykh Abū l-Ḥajjāj Yūsuf, significantly nicknamed al-Mughāwir (“the one who frequently takes part in military expeditions”). He was an Andalusian mystic who settled in Egypt and became a disciple of Ṣafī l-Dīn’s master Shaykh Abū l-Ḥasan Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh.¹⁶

According to Ṣafī l-Dīn, Shaykh al-Mughāwir spent many years “either on military expeditions (mughāwir^an bi-l-ḥarb) or in spiritual peregrination (siyāḥa).” However, it is the military side of al-Mughāwir’s activity that Ṣafī l-Dīn focuses on in his portrait. The author willingly emphasizes Shaykh al-Mughāwir’s contribution to the fight against the Christian Reconquista of Spain. Shaykh al-Mughāwir’s spiritual election is presented as being in direct service of the war against “unbelievers” (kuffār); in fact, on his numerous missions in the enemy’s lands, he freely uses his faculty of making himself invisible in order to perform his military tasks. In this framework, Ṣafī l-Dīn reports an anecdote in which the “fifth column” topos plays a structural role. One day, a divine order (lit., “a true order coming from the True One”, amr ḥaqq min al-Ḥaqq) enjoins Shaykh al-Mughāwir to go to the “country of Unbelief” (bilād al-kufr; probably referring to some Christian kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula) for a meeting with an unknown ṣiddīq (lit., “strictly veracious”, which in Sufi jargon denotes one of the loftiest degrees of Muslim saints). There, al-Mughāwir discovers that this ṣiddīq is the very king of the country, who secretly converted to Islam and who acts as a 47 “fifth column” inside his own Christian kingdom. In addressing the shaykh, the crypto-Muslim king enumerates the many advantages he has due to his condition, both on spiritual and military grounds:

I am enjoying such benefits (fawāʾid) among them (the “Unbelievers”) that I would never have had if I were among Muslims. [...] My affirmation of divine Oneness (tawḥīdī), my submission to God (islāmī), my deeds (aʿmālī) are purely consecrated to God only (khāliṣat^an lillāhⁱ), since no one knows of it. My food is (always) lawful (ḥalāl) because it has the status of a war booty (fayʾ), on which there is nothing to suspect. Finally, I am serving Muslims much better than if I were the greatest of their kings, because I have the power to protect them against the hostility of the Unbelievers, of whom I have many executed, and whose state I am constantly spoiling. (Gril 1986, Arabic text: folio 67b)

Then, the king proves his assertion by having some clerics beheaded under the pretext of their alleged negligence in serving the church of which they are in charge.

Ṣafī l-Dīn’s Portrait 3: Piety, Violence, and Political Activism in Shaykh Ḥasan al-Ṭawīl

Shaykh Ḥasan al-Ṭawīl, whom Ṣafī l-Dīn presents as an accomplished juridical scholar and a great spiritual master, is apparently committed to fighting against both external and internal threats (be they real or perceived) to the socio-political order of Islam. On the one hand, Ṣafī l-Dīn reports that Ḥasan al-Ṭawīl died in Damietta “in the year the city was under siege”, that is 616/1218, although he does not say whether the shaykh was 48 actually killed by the enemy or whether he died of natural causes (Gril 1986, Arabic text: folio 55). On the other hand, the shaykh’s hagiographical notice is focused on an episode of “moral regulation” against local dhimmīs. In fact, Ḥasan al-Ṭawīl is presented as inciting “the commoners” (al-ʿawāmm wa-l-jumhūr) of Fusṭāṭ (Old Cairo’s) to uprise against the Ayyubid Sultan al-Malik Al-Kāmil in protest against a Coptic church being built on the alleged site of an ancient mosque. Quite interestingly, far from criticizing the shaykh’s behavior on that occasion, Ṣafī l-Dīn presents this episode as a demonstration of Ḥasan al-Ṭawīl’s spiritual election; more precisely, he mentions it as one of the many “miracles/wonders” (karāmāt) of the shaykh:

He was credited with many miracles (karāmāt). Among these, it is said that the shaykh once undertook to uncover a mosque which had been covered by the construction of a church. The Christians plotted to prevent him from it. (The Sultan) Al-Malik al-Kāmil bent on their side, but all the commoners (al-ʿawāmm wa-l-jumhūr) rose up (thārat) with Shaykh Ḥasan (Gril 1986, Arabic text, folios 53 b–55).¹⁷

Things went so far that the Sultan himself, while walking on the banks of the Nile, was fiercely contested by the populace and feared being stoned (Gril 1986, Arabic text, folio 54). Surprised by the intensity of that protest, the Sultan resorted to the highest representative of “institutionalized” Sufism, the shaykh al-shuyūkh Ṣadr l-Dīn (d. 616–617/1218–1219),¹⁸ who 49 was the master of the khānqā Saʿīd al-Suʿadāʾ.¹⁹ The Sultan hoped that the latter’s spiritual authority might counterbalance that of Shaykh Ḥasan al-Ṭawīl. Thus, the shaykh al-shuyūkh and one of the Sultan’s viziers were sent to inspect the site of the contested church in order to investigate the alleged presence of an ancient mosque. Once there, however, they found themselves surrounded by a threatening mob and could only act as if the church were a mosque, thus implicitly approving the protesters’ assumption:

The shaykh al-shuyūkh had no alternative but to extend his prayer mat (sajjāda) and pronounce the takbīr in order to perform the prayer that is prescribed upon entering a mosque (taḥiyyat al-masjid). As soon as he was out, the whole church was thrown down (by the mob). If the shaykh and the vizier had not acted like this, they would have remained under the (church’s) rubble until the Day of Resurrection. (Gril 1986, Arabic text, folios 54–54b)

The Sultan, feeling that he had been cheated and coerced, decided to exile Shaykh Ḥasan. Such a reaction, however, only resulted in confirming the shaykh’s sanctity and reasserting the preeminence of spiritual power over political power. The night after the shaykh left the city, the Sultan had a frightening dream (manām): he saw the shaykh and he found himself 50 surrounded by the guardians of Hell (al-zabbāniyya), who threatened him: “If you do not call Shaykh Ḥasan back, we shall make you die.” So the Sultan finally resorted to a vizier who was in good relations with local Sufi networks and asked him to persuade the shaykh to come back.

Shaykh Ḥasan’s return, however, marked the Sultan’s final humiliation: once back in Fusṭāṭ, Shaykh Ḥasan was summoned by the Sultan but refused to meet him, saying that they had already met (in line with a narrative pattern often recurring in medieval Arabic sources on scholars and saints alike).

In reporting this complex affair, Ṣafī l-Dīn not only represents a scholar rebuking political authorities for being too soft towards dhimmis (indeed a commonplace in medieval Arabic sources, even beyond hagiography). More precisely, this account shows how inter-faith tensions might interact with intra-Muslim competition between spiritual and political authorities for discursive control over Egyptian Muslims and, by extension, over Egyptian society at large.

Also, this episode is important for at least two other reasons:

1. It is an example of a popular and spontaneous act of destruction of a non-Muslim place of worship, even in opposition to “state” powers, occurring in the Ayyubid period, in which such practices of “moral regulation” are apparently less documented than in Mamluk times.²⁰

2. The crucial role played by a Sufi master as a leader and source of legitimacy of the riot is an important example of interaction between Sufi piety and political activism in the Ayyubid period.²¹ 51

Ṣafī l-Dīn’s Portrait 4: Shaykh al-Akhmīmī: Love Across Religious Boundaries?

While Shaykh Ḥasan al-Ṭawīl does not refrain from violence in order to reassert the socio-political hierarchies established by Islamic jurisprudence among different religious communities, another spiritual master from Fusṭāṭ, namely Shaykh Majd al-Dīn al-Akhmīmī, is credited with a much more open attitude towards others.

Ṣafī l-Dīn represents Shaykh Majd al-Dīn as being tirelessly committed to the good of every human being, beyond all social and religious cleavages, to such an extent that “he was loved by (people of) all groups and denominations” (tuḥibbu-hu sāʾir al-ṭawāʾif wa-l-milal). Such description is all the more interesting in that Shaykh Majd al-Dīn is not presented as a marginal or “unruly” figure but as a full-fledged representative of the cooperation (and at times overlap) between mystical and juridical milieus which marked Egyptian society throughout Ayyubid and Mamluk times. According to Ṣafī l-Dīn, the shaykh was largely appreciated for his moral virtues and his excellence in Qurʾanic reading and reciting. For these reasons, the official preacher (khaṭīb) of the Great Mosque in Fusṭāṭ (i.e. the mosque of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ), the pious jurist Taqī l-Dīn Abū l-Ṭāhir al-Maḥallī, wanted Majd al-Dīn to marry his daughter and to succeed him in his prestigious task:

This shaykh Majd al-Dīn was highly reputed for his dignified poverty (al-faqr al-naẓīf) and his gentle sense of superiority vis-à-vis worldly things (al-ṣalaf al-laṭīf) as well as for his excellence in Qurʾanic reading and reciting (al-qirāʾa al-ḥasana wa-l-tajwīd). Therefore, [all] hearts were attracted to him, to such an extent that the learned and observant (ʿālim ʿāmil) imam, the jurist Taqī l-Dīn Abū l-Ṭāhir, [who was] the preacher of [the 52 Great Mosque in] Fusṭāṭ (khaṭīb Miṣr) and a companion (ṣāḥib) of Shaykh al-Qurāshī,²² desired to associate with him. With this aim, he married Majd al-Dīn to his daughter, and appointed him to the office of preaching (khiṭāba) at [the Great Mosque of] Fusṭāṭ. Majd al-Dīn succeeded him in this task in a very good way. He attracted all hearts towards him. He had very good character and morals (kāna ḥasan al-akhlāq), and was deeply committed to the needs of [all] persons (kathīr al-māshī fī ḥawāʾij al-nās) and willing to intercede for their [legitimate] interests. For this reason, he was [much] sought-for (marghūb) to intercede for the needs of the rich and the poor (al-kabīr wa-l-ṣaghīr), the free and the slave (wa-l-ḥurr wa-l-ʿabd), the Muslim and the Unbeliever (wa-l-muslim wa-l-kāfir). Therefore, [people from] all social and religious groups loved him (tuḥibbuhu sāʾir al-ṭawāʾif wa-l-milal). (Gril 1986, Arabic Text: folios 97 b–98)

Quite interestingly, no mention is made of any conversion to Islam as a result of the shaykh’s commitment to the needs of non-Muslims. In this, the story apparently departs even from hagiographic narratives on so tolerant a Sufi master as Ibn Hūd, whose positive interaction with the Jews of Damascus was finally justified, in the eyes of his supporters and his critics alike, with the many conversions he was able to cause.²³

Indeed, far from molding his portrait of Shaykh Majd al-Dīn on conventional patterns of conversion stories, the author shows the possibility of mutual respect—and even affection—between Muslims and other 53 members of the Islamic social fabric. Such attitude of mutual respect, however, does not imply any questioning of the many inequalities of that social fabric, Shaykh Majd al-Dīn being clearly depicted as fully complying with the requirements of the Islamic law and with his exoteric office as a preacher.

If Majd al-Dīn is not attributed with any activity of conversion, neither is he attributed with any critical attitude towards canonical hierarchical relationships between Islam and other religions or between Muslims and other religious communities. On the contrary, the shaykh’s benevolence and sense of justice towards non-Muslims are to be understood in the light of conventional views on asymmetrical socio-religious relationships; in a sense, he may be described as a prominent Muslim social actor playing a paternalistic role towards non-Muslim “protected people”.

In this, Majd al-Dīn’s attitude is not unlike that of some prominent Sufi masters, such as Ibn ʿArabī and Rūmī, whose well-known expressions of spiritual openness to the Other, as Herrera rightly points out, are actually contextualized within a clearly Islamo-centric vision, proclaiming the undisputed superiority of Islam over all other religions. According to Ibn ʿArabī, other revealed religions are to Islam as starlights are to the sunlight (Herrera 2015, 100); in a similar vein, Rūmī states that “All roads lead to the Kaaba” (meaning that the Kaaba, i.e. Islam, is the ultimate goal of mankind; 263).

In addition to this, it is worth noting that according to sources other than the Risāla, Shaykh Majd al-Dīn did not refrain from engagement in military jihād: Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī, in Laṭāʾif al-minan, reports that Majd al-Dīn was present at the Battle of al-Manṣūra (647/1250) under the same tent as Shaykh al-Shādhilī and other prominent Sufis (fuqarāʾ: lit., “poor [in God]”) and jurists (fuqahāʾ) of the time (Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 2005, 51–52). 54

Indeed, one should not overlook the fact that Ṣafī l-Dīn, the author of the Risāla, expresses his admiration for both Shaykh Ḥasan al-Ṭawīl and Shaykh Majd l-Dīn. This suggests that, however different their spiritual temperament may be, the two masters’ fundamental views are not really at odds (at least in the author’s eyes). Ultimately, both Ḥasan al-Ṭawīl and Majd al-Dīn act within the “logics of dhimma”, so to speak: If the former intervenes to restore socio-religious hierarchies threatened by unsubmissive dhimmīs, the latter works for maintenance of those hierarchies by ensuring respect of the (asymmetrical) rights of the various actors in the unequal socio-religious fabric.

Introductory Remarks

A wide range of meaningful if often indirect references to Jews and Christians are found in the foundational narratives of the ṭarīqa Shādhiliyya. This Sufi group began in Tunis in the second quarter of the seventh/thirteenth century, around the Maghrebian Shaykh Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī (d. 656/1258), and fully flourished in Alexandria, where al-Shādhilī settled with his favored disciple Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Mursī (d. 686/1287) and some other followers in the mid–640s/1240s. Thanks to their relentless efforts to conjugate the outward and inward dimensions of the Islamic faith, this Sufi current rapidly gained ground throughout the whole of Egypt and North Africa.

In early Mamluk Egypt in particular, the Shādhiliyya soon emerged as a catalyzer of different spiritual trends in Sunni Islam at the intersection of various juridical, mystical, and even philosophical milieus (Cecere 2013a; Cecere 2014a). For these reasons, the Shādhiliyya played a major role in shaping Egyptian Sufism and broader Muslim Egyptian culture in that time and in the following centuries.

Since both al-Shādhilī and al-Mursī left no written legacy, our analysis will focus on the works by their earliest hagiographers, namely the Kitāb laṭāʾif al-minan by the Egyptian shaykh Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī (d. 709/1309) and the Durrat al-asrār by the Maghrebian shaykh Muḥammad Ibn Abī l-Qāsim al-Ḥimyārī, also known as Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh (d. 724/1324 or 733/1333). 61

A comparative analysis of interfaith references in these two works is quite interesting for more than one reason. In fact, the production of two distinct biographies of the eponymous master of the Shādhiliyya in the same period (roughly half a century after this master’s death) is probably to be explained against the background of the competition that broke out over the Shādhilī spiritual heritage after the death of Shaykh al-Mursī (d. 686/1287). Such competition seems to have led to the formation of at least three collateral lines of spiritual authority: two of them developed in Egypt—one around Ibn ʿĀṭāʾ Allāh (seemingly prevailing in Cairo and southern Egypt) and the other one around Yāqūt al-Ḥabashī (based in Alexandria)—, whereas the third line developed in Tunis under the authority of the Masrūqī brothers.³¹

In this framework, the hagiographical works by Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh and Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh, who was a disciple of the Masrūqī brothers, might be seen as two conflicting narratives on the origins of the Shādhiliyya (Hofer 2015, chapter 4 and 5). On the one hand, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh, through several allusions skilfully scattered throughout the text, presents himself as the true “heir” of al-Mursī and then of al-Shādhilī, thus implicitly claiming spiritual authority over the Shādhilī network and the sublime rank of Pole of His Time (quṭb al-zamān).³² On the other hand, the North African Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh, writing his Durrat al-asrār soon after 718/1318 (Amri 2013, 14), i.e. a few years after Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh’s death, draws a completely different picture of the Shādhiliyya. He emphasizes the high spiritual rank of the Tunisian line and describes intense contact between this group and the Alexandrian masters al-Mursī 62 and Yāqūt, whereas he mentions Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh only once. Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh thus presents a multipolar view of the nascent Shādhilī community as a network whose two main hubs, Tunis and Alexandria, enjoy equal spiritual authority. This is totally at odds with Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh’s Egypto-centric view of the Shādhiliya as a group coherently organized around the spiritual lineage al-Shādhilī > l-Mursī > Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh.³³

In this light, one may wonder whether these two authors (and maybe their respective circles) had conflicting views on interfaith issues as well. Indeed, the first findings of our survey seem to indicate that this was precisely the case. On the one hand, both works do not provide full-fledged doctrinal expositions concerning Jews and Christians, and attitudes towards these religious communities are to be gleaned from reports on al-Shādhilī’s and/or al-Mursī’s deeds and teachings. On the other hand, it is not difficult to see that the two works differ in quantity and quality of references to Jewish and Christian elements (individuals, traditions, doctrines), which might indicate different attitudes on this subject by the two authors (a point that I will try to elucidate in the next sections).

A Conventional Conversion Story in Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh

The main interreligious reference found in Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh’s work is quite a conventional conversion story, enhancing Shaykh al-Mursī’s spiritual 63 virtues. Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh reports this story on the authority of Shaykh Yāqūt al-Ḥabashī, one of al-Mursī’s closest disciples in Alexandria:³⁴

He [Shaykh Yāqūt al-Ḥabashī] also informed me: “[One day] I was at Nastaraq, outside Alexandria. Fish there were [usually] plentiful [...]. [That day, on the contrary,] I searched for one but I failed to find even a single one. I met the captain of the fishing crew and asked him about fishing:”With this wind" he replied, “not one fish can be caught”. This person was a Christian. So I said: “Enter [the sea] with the blessing of God, for the shaykh (al-Mursī) enjoys favor with Him”. [...] I gave him the money, and he entered the sea, spread the net, drew it in to the shore and he took from the net an abundance such as they had ever seen. The people present were astonished at that. [...] Among the fish [...], one was bigger than any I had never seen. A Jew came up [...] and he sought to buy it. I prevented him from doing so, and sent all the fish to the shaykh (al-Mursī). When he was given the fish, he ordered: “Pick out that [big] fish and bring it to Yāqūt to give to the Jew, for he has a wife with a child who is hungry for fish. There is none today, and he had his eye upon it”. So I took the [...] fish and gave it to the Jew and informed him of what the shaykh had said. He became a Muslim, together with a group of Jews, the captain of the fishing crew, and a number of Christians. (Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh 1887, 52, our translation; see also Douglas 1993, 208–209)

Shaykh al-Mursī’s generosity towards the Jewish family as well as the supernatural support that he gives through Yāqūt’s intervention to the Christian fishermen should not lead us to read this story as an example 64 of a purely ecumenical attitude fostering cooperation and mutual respect between followers of different Abrahamic religions and to consider them on equal footing. Indeed, the Shaykh’s kindness likely must be understood as a manifestation or proof of his spiritual faculty of kashf (that is, knowledge/perception of invisible things): just as he is aware, by preternatural means, that the Jew has a child who is hungry for fish, so he is probably aware that his own act of kindness will induce the Jew and his family to convert out of admiration for the generosity and the miraculous powers of a representative of the Islamic religion. In the same vein, the support that Shaykh Yāqūt—in the name of his master Shaykh al-Mursī—offers to the Christian fishermen is subordinated to their invocation of a Muslim saint: the ensuing miraculous fishing is meant to show the superiority of Islam over Christianity and make the Christian fishermen recognize which is the “true” religion of God. This anecdote thus fits perfectly into typical narrative patterns of conversion stories, combining hagiographic and apologetic motifs that were apparently common in Sufi literature of the Mamluk period. Here, as in many such narratives, a Muslim shaykh’s display of miraculous powers and extraordinary kindness towards non-Muslims testifies to the “truth” of Islam and the shaykh’s spiritual election, thus pushing the concerned non-Muslims to embrace Islam.

In the light of the evidence provided by this first survey, Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh’s hagiographic work on the founding masters of the Shādhiliyya does not seem to provide any original perspective on Jews and Christians. Conversely, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh’s narrative on the origins of the Shādhiliyya presents a quite more nuanced spectrum of references to Jews and Christians, ranging from purely polemical to more complex ones, as we shall see in the next section. 65

Complex Interreligious Dimensions in Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh

In his Kitāb laṭāʾif al-minan, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī does not express any explicit position on relationships with Jews and Christians. In particular, although he eulogistically mentions both Ṣafī l-Dīn’s and Ibn Nūḥ’s works as authoritative sources on Shaykh al-Shādhili’s spiritual election (Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 1999, 75), Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh does not show any interest in the interreligious aspects of these two works and does not even hint at the debate on dhimma that was so relevant to Ibn Nūḥ. Indeed, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh’s views on such issues must be gleaned from the rare but all the more interesting references to Jews and Christians scattered throughout the Kitāb laṭāʾif al-minan, the meanings of which are not always obvious or unambiguous.

On the grounds of a first survey of relevant textual material, we have adopted a provisional division of these texts into three groups, ranging from more conventional to more complex and to potentially open-minded attitudes:

1. Conventional apologetic attitudes and stereotypes;

2. Ambivalent attitudes towards the Other’s religion and spiritual powers;

3. Possible attitudes of mutual respect in interfaith contact situations. 66

Moral and Doctrinal Flaws of Non-Muslims and the Divinely-ordered Hierarchy Among Religions

As a matter of fact, most mentions of Jews and Christians in Kitāb laṭāʾif al-minan seem to be in line with apologetic stereotyped views based on Qurʾanic interreligious polemics which highlight the others’ alleged moral and/or doctrinal flaws.

For instance, Jews are presented as the scriptural model of hypocrisy. In a crucial theoretical passage on sanctity (walāya) and divine love (maḥabba), Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh recalls the well-known Qurʾanic allegation that Jews’ love for life indicates their insincerity in love for God: “Say: ‘O you who are Jews, if you claim that you are the friends of Allah (awliyāʾ Allāh), excluding the [other] people, then wish for death, if you should be truthful’.” (Qurʾan 62:6). In another passage, the author presents al-Mursī as conflating false Sufis with Jews and asserting, in line with traditional exegesis, that the Qurʾanic phrase “avid listeners to falsehood, devourers of [what is] unlawful” (Qurʾan 5:42) was revealed with reference to Jews (nuzilat fī l-yahūd) (Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 2005, 108).³⁵

In an equally apologetic vein, al-Mursī is reported as saying that Jesus was “worshipped instead of God” (or at least along with him; Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 2005, 108), thus confirming Islamic traditional representations of Christians as polytheists (mushrikūn). 67

As far as actual relationships between Muslims and followers of the other “heavenly religions” are concerned, the following anecdote attributed to the eponymous master al-Shādhilī seems to confirm conventional views on what were considered as the proper socio-religious hierarchies:

Shaykh Abū l-Ḥasan [l-Shādhilī] said: “Once, during my (spiritual) wanderings (siyāḥāt), I found shelter in a cave (maghāra), close to a city inhabited by Muslims. I remained there (in the cave) during three days without having anything to eat. After these three days, some Christians (nās min al-Rūm)³⁶ passed by, as they had landed from their ship close to the place where I was. Where they saw me, they said: - ‘A priest (qissīs) of Muslims!’³⁷ Then, they gave me some food and left abundant provisions with me. I was astonished at receiving this support from the hands of the unbelievers (kāfirīn), where Muslims had refused (not offered) it to me. And just then, a [preternatural] voice (qāʾil, lit.”someone who spoke“)³⁸ said to me:”The [accomplished spiritual] man (al-rajul) is not the one who is given support for victory (nuṣira) by his friends! Verily, the [accomplished spiritual] man is the one who is given support for victory (nuṣira) by his enemies (aʿdāʾ)." (Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 2005, 55) 68

Since the author does not specify whether these Christians were soldiers (Crusaders), pilgrims, or merchants, it is not easy to assess the exact meaning of the word “enemies” (aʿdāʾ) in this narration. However, the fact that they are qualified as kāfirūn (“unbelievers”) indicates a negative attitude towards Christians as such, no matter the specific condition of the group evoked in the anecdote. Indeed, the story embodies a twofold symbolic meaning. Hagiographically, the miraculous support that al-Shādhilī receives from God through such unexpected intermediaries confirms and “magnifies” the shaykh’s divine election. In terms of interreligious polemics, the reverent homage of those Christians to a “priest of the Muslims” implies their recognition of the spiritual and moral authority of a representative of Islam, thus confirming the hierarchy of values between the three “heavenly religions” established by Islamic law.

Quite interestingly, this interpretation is supported, in my opinion, by comparison with a slightly different version of the same anecdote that Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh presents in another work of his, the Tāj al-ʿarūs li-tahdhīb al-nufūs (“The Bride’s Crown. On Discipline of the Souls”; Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 2010, 63). This version differs from the other in only a few details, which, however, appear to be quite significant as they make the story more indefinite and therefore more exemplary. In this version the scene is placed not in the surroundings of a Muslim town but in a totally indeterminate desert. More importantly, the “enemies” (aʿdāʾ) who feed the shaykh are not designated here by the term Rūm, which would have qualified them as foreign Christians, but by the general term naṣārā that applies to all Christians (as followers of al-Nāṣirī: “the Nazarene”). This seemingly gives a universal 69 scope to such enmity, thus further stressing the apologetic dimension of this story.³⁹

Muslim Saints and the Prophets of Israel

In addition to the examples above, a polemical and apologetic attitude can easily be identified behind other inter-religious references, which are linked in various ways to a key concept in Muslim prophetology: Muḥammad’s superiority to all previous prophets, all of them being considered Muslim prophets, however, in the framework of the full Islamization of Jewish and Christian sacred history.

Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh insists on Muḥammad’s preeminence from the very beginning of the book. In particular, in his theoretical introduction to notions of sanctity (walāya) and prophecy (nubuwwa) in Islam he mentions some well-known hadiths proclaiming Muḥammad’s superiority over all prophets and focuses on the Hadith of Intercession (ḥadīth al-shaʿāfa), which he quotes in the following version on the authority of one of his exoteric teachers, the Shāfiʿī jurist and muḥaddith (hadith scholar) Sharaf al-Dīn al-Dimyāṭī:

The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “On the Day of Resurrection (yawm al-qiyāma), [all] human beings (al-nās) [...] will go to Adam, peace be upon him, and say: ‘Intercede for [us, who are] your 70 progeny. But he will say: ’I’m not fit for such a task (lastu la-hā), but you should go to Abraham, peace be upon him. Indeed, he is the intimate friend of God (khalīl Allāh)!’ So, they will go to Abraham, peace be upon him, but he will say: ’I’m not fit for such a task, but you should go to Moses, peace be upon him. Indeed, he is the one to whom God spoke directly (kalīm Allāh)!’ So, they will go to Moses, peace be upon him, but he will say: ‘I’m not fit for such a task, but you should go to Jesus, peace be upon him. Indeed, is the Spirit of God (rūḥ Allāh) and His knowledge (ḥikma)!’ So, they will go to Jesus, peace be upon him, but he will say: ‘I’m not fit for such a task, but you should go to Muḥammad, peace and blessings be upon him!’ So they will come to me and I will say: ‘I am (the only one) fit for this task.’” (Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 2005, 12–13).

As Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh convincingly argues, even the structure of this narration is intended to emphasize Muḥammad’s preeminence: the reason why Adam does not directly indicate Muḥammad as the only one who can intercede for humankind, he infers, is that “if the indication of turning to Muḥammad had been given from the beginning, this hadith would not have made it sufficiently clear that no other prophet was granted such a rank (rutba)” (Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 2005, 13–14).

A few lines afterwards, still dealing with sanctity and prophethood, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh comments on the well-known hadith “Those who have science are the heirs of the Prophets (al-ʿulamāʾ wirāthat al-anbiyāʾ)” (Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 2005, 16). Far from taking the word ʿulamāʾ in its usual sense of “experts in (outward) Islamic sciences”, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh brings it back to its etymological meaning (“sages”, “people who have knowledge/science”) and argues that with this word Prophet Muḥammad was indeed referring to saints (awliyāʾ Allāh, lit. “friends of God"), because they are the ones who have true science (ʿilm): the science that comes from God and guides human beings 71 towards God. In other words, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh endeavors to demonstrate that only saints are the true ʿulamāʾ and thus the only legitimate heirs of the prophets. In this framework, he quotes another hadith, which has an important interreligious dimension:”Muḥammad [...] said: ‘Those members of my community who will have [true] science (ʿulamāʾ ummatī) will be like the Prophets of Israel (anbiyāʾ banī Isrāʾīl)’".⁴⁰

The meaning of such reference seems to be quite complex. On the one hand, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh does not quote this hadith here for interreligious polemical purposes, but only to support his claim that saints, as they are the true ʿulamāʾ, are entitled to guide “the community of Muḥammad” (the Muslim community), just as previous prophets were entitled to guide the people of Israel. On the other hand, in light of Muḥammad’s preeminence this hadith has a most important doctrinal implication: if Muslim saints, being the true ʿulamāʾ, are Prophet Muḥammad’s heirs, they not only inherit the same function that the Prophets of Israel had but somehow enjoy spiritual preeminence vis-à-vis those prophets. Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh does not express such an idea in a theoretical form. However, he clearly illustrates it through an anecdote which precisely concerns a miraculous meeting between a Muslim saint and a prophet of Israel taking place in contemporary Egypt. The latter should be identified either as Prophet Jeremiah or as the author of the Book of Daniel. In fact, according to local traditions both of them rest in Alexandria, their tombs having been integrated into mosques.⁴¹ As for 72 the Muslim saint, it is one of the most prominent spiritual masters in the early Shādhiliyya: Shaykh Makīn al-Dīn al-Asmar, who had followed both Shaykh al-Shādhilī and Shaykh al-Mursī but whose spiritual degree was so high that he was considered to be under Prophet Muḥammad’s immediate direction (see Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 2005, 64). According to Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh, he was told the story by the saint himself:

Shaykh Makīn al-Dīn (al-Asmar) informed me: “I entered the mosque of the Prophet (Jeremiah or Daniel) in Alexandria, in (the area of) al-Dīmās (masjid al-nabī bi-l-Iskandariyya bi-l-Dīmās), and I found the Prophet who is buried there. He was standing (qā’iman) [i.e., he had risen from his grave] and was praying, wearing a striped cloak (ʿabāʾa mukhaṭṭaṭa). He said to me: ‘Go before (me) and direct the prayer’. But I replied: ‘You (should) go before (me) and direct the prayer’. [That Prophet replied]: ‘Indeed you (Muslims) belong to the community of a Prophet on whom nobody can have precedence (taqaddum).’ I insisted: ’In the name of this Prophet, [I will not be satisfied] unless you go before [me] and direct the prayer.’ But he replied: ‘[...] In the name of this same Prophet, I will not [be satisfied] unless (you do it)’. [...]. So, I went before him and directed the prayer.” (2005, 98) 73

In this scene, thus, one of the Prophets of Israel is presented as taking a Muslim saint as an imam for prayer, claiming that the latter (though not being a prophet himself) belongs to the community of the most eminent among all Prophets, Muḥammad. In doing this, Jeremiah/Daniel not only acknowledges Muḥammad’s superiority over all previous prophets but extends this hierarchical relationship to their respective communities. Along with supporting Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh’s views on the relationships between sanctity and prophethood, this narrative thus addresses a powerful polemical message to Jews and Christians of the time. In other words, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh implicitly invites Jews and Christians to acknowledge Muḥammad’s prophetic message and his superiority over all previous prophets and to embrace Islam or at least to accept the superiority of Muslims over other religious communities (in line with the logics of dhimma).

Ambivalent Attitudes Towards the Other: the Magic of Jews

Quite an ambiguous attitude is to be detected behind a tale in which Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh presents a Jewish rabbi (ḥabar min aḥbār banī Isrāʾīl) at the crossroad between religious knowledge (which allows him to understand the logics of the relationships between God and the human being) and magical arts (by which he tries to exploit such logics for the sake of a human being). Such representation is all the more interesting in that Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh narrates this tale in a highly sensitive doctrinal framework, namely his discussion on how the righteous should or should not react to offenses (see Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 2005, 91-92). In this story, a man robs a poor and righteous woman of her only hen. She does not invoke any punishment for the thief, instead relying entirely on God. When the thief starts plucking 74 the hen, all the feathers stick to his face and no one can take them away. The thief consults a rabbi, who provides him with the solution: “I see no remedy for you except that the woman [...] invoke God against you: if she does so, you will be healed.” Such remedy proves successful, and the rabbi comments: “The woman, when she was robbed of the hen, did not invoke God against the thief, but she handed the whole thing over to God, and God helped her. But when finally she invoked God, she wanted to help herself, and (this is why) the feathers fell from the face of the thief” (Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh 2005, 92).

As mentioned above, the figure of the rabbi is presented here under an ambivalent light: on the one hand, he proves fully aware of the logics of the relationship between God and the human being. On the other hand, he makes use of this awareness to help a sinner and, as it were, to cheat God Himself. In contrast to the woman’s mystical attitude of tawakkul (“totally relying on God”), the rabbi is thus attributed with a negative theurgical attitude: indeed, the author presents him as being endowed with religious knowledge and spiritual power but using them for distorted aims. In other words, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh both acknowledges and demonizes the Other’s religious knowledge and spiritual power.

All this seems quite significant in terms of social representations of Jews and Judaism in the author’s environment and in the Egyptian Muslim collective imagery of the time. In particular, this story might be linked to seemingly widespread narratives connecting Jewish culture and religion to the sphere of magical sciences such as those recently studied by Dora Zsom (2013). Though partly inspired in Midrashic stories as reworked in Islamic narratives on Prophets who came before Muḥammad (qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ), such representations were far from promoting positive views on Jews and Judaism among Muslims. Rather, they contributed to strengthening an ambiguous attitude of demonization and instrumentalization of actual or 75 supposed Jewish magical crafts. On the one hand, these crafts were seen as proofs of Jews’ allegedly defective love for God (as is the case with the story analyzed above). On the other hand, however, some elements of Jewish magic were at times smuggled into some Muslim circles and reused as parts of practices that were represented as fully Islamic. Quite significantly, an example of such “reuse” is to be found, according to Dora Zsom, precisely in the environment of the Shādhiliyya. As she convincingly argues, Jewish influence may in fact be detected behind a Shādhilī talismanic practice called ḥizb al-dāʾira (lit., “The Litany of the Circle”), which combined “a magical invocation and the figurative representation of a circle” (2013, 275) and was intended to protect the practitioner from death. If sources inside the tariqa attribute the ḥizb al-dāʾira to the eponymous master al-Shādhilī and make no mention of any possible Jewish model or influence, Zsom suggests that the background of such practice can be found in certain Midrashic stories about Moses fighting against death. In this light, how to explain the silence of relevant Shādhilī sources on the possible “Jewish dimension” of this practice? Were these authors merely unaware of such Jewish background (the relevant motifs having perhaps been absorbed and reworked in Islamic traditions prior to the emergence of the practice of the ḥizb al-dāʾira)? Or did they deliberately choose to obliterate an origin they felt was embarrassing? At the present state of research, any answer to such questions (and possibly the questions themselves) would be far too speculative.

That being as it may, it is worth noting that Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh for his part is not completely silent on contacts between the early Shādhiliyya and Jewish learned environments. In fact, he narrates only one—quite significant—anecdote on this issue, seemingly crediting the eponymous master al-Shādhilī with an unusually open-minded attitude. This anecdote is analyzed in the next section. 76

A Non-polemical Hagiographic Story?

If most passages from the Kitāb laṭāʾif al-minan examined up to this point have an apologetic purpose, the following anecdote apparently has no apologetic meaning at all. Here, Ibn ʿAtāʾ Allāh says:⁴²

I was told that Shaykh Abū l-Ḥasan (l-Shādhilī) - may God be satisfied with him - asked a Jewish ophthalmologist (yahūdī kaḥḥāl) to heal one of those who lived with him (baʿḍ man ʿindahu; i.e. one of the shaykh’s disciples or family) but the Jew said to him: “I am not allowed to heal (anybody). In fact, a decree (marsūm) has been issued in Cairo, stipulating that no physician may practice [medicine] without a special permit (idhn) by the supervisor of medicine (mushārif al-ṭibb) in Cairo”. As soon as this Jew went out [from the shaykh’s house], the shaykh ordered his servants (khudamāʾ): “Prepare what is required for travel”. He immediately set off and he did not stop until he was in Cairo. There, he obtained a permit for that physician (ṭabīb), and he [immediately] went back to him [in Alexandria], without even spending a single night in Cairo. As soon as he arrived at Alexandria, he summoned that doctor. The latter excused himself for the same reason he had excused himself before. Then, the shaykh showed him the paper with the permit, and the Jew was greatly astonished (akthara l-yahūdī min al- 77taʿajjub) at the shaykh’s noble and generous nature (min hādhā l-khalq al-karīm) (Ibn ʿAṭaʾ Allāh 2005, 152–153).

In this story, al-Shādhilī is attributed with a confident and respectful attitude towards a Jewish physician: the shaykh asks the kaḥḥāl to heal someone from his closest entourage and goes so far as to solve the physician’s bureaucratic problem with the Mamluk medical administration.

Though the shaykh’s generosity might seem to be in line with the common pattern of conversion stories, the outcome of the story is totally unexpected: the Jewish physician shows his gratitude and admiration for the Muslim shaykh’s generosity, but no mention is made of any conversion.

In contrast to conventional apologetic stories, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh shows the possibility of an attitude of mutual respect between Muslims and non-Muslims. Without crediting Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh with a pluralistic attitude avant la lettre, the importance of such anecdote in terms of practices of interfaith contact should not be overlooked.

Polemical Attitudes Against Non-Muslim Physicians

The attitude attributed to al-Shādhilī in the anecdote mentioned above is decidedly at odds with deep-rooted attitudes of caution or even of sheer hostility towards non-Muslim physicians expressed by several Muslim thinkers, including some prominent Sufi masters, in different times and places.

On the one hand, Jewish and Christian doctors were numerous and highly appreciated in Medieval Egypt and their services were much sought-after by Muslims of all social backgrounds, as is well exemplified by the 78 famous relationship between Saladin and Maimonides (Ashtor 1956; Mazor 2014).

On the other hand, however, the practice of resorting to non-Muslim doctors did not cease to arouse vocal criticism in several juridical and mystical milieus over centuries.

As Paulina Lewicka (2012) argues in her study on medical culture and inter-faith antagonism in Egypt and Syria, such criticism apparently grew stronger throughout the Mamluk times. Although Lewicka explicitly mentions only one Sufi master (Shaykh al-Shaʿrānī) among the supporters of this trend (22), it is quite probable that juridical advice against resorting to non-Muslim physicians might have a large circulation in Sufi environments of the time.

Beside this, some significant examples of polemical attitudes against non-Muslim doctors analyzed by Herrera (2015) are directly relevant to the purpose of the present paper:

1. One of the most revered auctoritates for the early masters of the Shādhiliyya, the fifth-sixth/eleventh-twelth-century theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), whom they also considered as one of the highest saints in history, overtly complained that only a few Muslims embraced the study of medicine, as this compelled Muslims to resort to Jewish and Christian physicians (100).

2. In the same vein but with a much more hostile attitude, one of the most renowned Sufi masters in Ottoman Egypt, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Sha’rāni (d. 973/1565), affiliated with the Shādhiliyya, enjoined Muslims not to take Jewish or Christian physicians. This was because only Muslim physicians were credited with relying on God’s assistance, which was considered the indispensable condition for true healing. In case one could not find a Muslim doctor, one had to patiently wait for God’s help instead of addressing a non-Muslim 79 doctor in any way. Also, in a move that speaks volumes about this Sufi master’s views on other religions, Shaykh al-Sha’rāni went so far as to say that resorting to Jewish physicians was even worse than resorting to Christian ones because Jews were “morally depraved” (385).

3. Along with overtly polemical texts, Herrera identifies a special sub-genre of conversion narratives in which a righteous Muslim seeks the help of a Jewish or Christian doctor against a bodily disease, but this is actually an excuse to heal the non-Muslim from his spiritual disease, the therapy being, of course, the doctor’s conversion to Islam (383 ff.).

In the light of these remarks, however fragmentary they may be, the conduct that Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh attributes to Shaykh al-Shādhilī appears exceptional or at least rather unconventional, especially because the shaykh’s addressing of a Jewish doctor is not even justified by the purpose of converting the latter to Islam.

From Physical to Spiritual Contact?

In consideration of the key role usually attributed to sight (both physical and spiritual) in Sufi literature, al-Shādhilī’s choice to entrust a person from his closest entourage to a Jewish ophthalmologist might indicate a special degree of openness to interfaith contact, especially with regard to Jewish learned environments. The fact that medicine was often practiced by rabbis in medieval Egyptian Judaism might further corroborate this assumption.⁴³

In this framework, it is worth noting that the earliest treatise on the Sufi practice of dhikr (invocation of God’s name), composed in the milieu of the Shādhiliyya, the Miftāḥ al-falāḥ (“The Key to Salvation”), traditionally 80 attributed to Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh himself,⁴⁴ provides an indirect but quite interesting indication of possible contacts between the early Shādhiliyya and some Jewish circles in such an intimate sphere as spiritual practices. In fact, the author describes a special meditative posture otherwise known as tazyīq, which consists of putting one’s head between or on one’s knees in association with recitation of dhikr formulas implying the evocation of God’s names. As first noted by Paul Fenton (1990; 1991; 1992), the same association between the “head between knees” posture and the evocation of the Divine Name characterized some Jewish mystical traditions, especially in the circle of the so-called “Jewish Sufis” which developed in Ayyubid Cairo around Avraham Maimonides (d. 1237) and lasted for more than one century well into the Mamluk era.⁴⁵

However, at the present state of research it would be too daring to speculate on the possible meaning of the simultaneous presence of this practice in both Muslim and Jewish spiritual circles. In particular, as I pointed out in a previous study, no clear indication has yet been found on whether this was simply the effect of parallel historical developments in the respective traditions or if both groups mutually influenced each other in keeping such practice (Cecere 2016, especially 285–286). In this respect, a specific difficulty is to be remarked concerning Islamic Sufi literature. In fact, whereas Jewish sources provide explicit mention of contact with Muslim Sufis, and further evidence in this sense is found in some of the Cairo Genizah documents (Fenton 1986; Zsom 2015), Muslim Sufis are apparently silent about Jewish Sufis. 81

Mutual Respect and Hierarchical Relationships

For all of the reasons discussed above, I argue that in the anecdote about the Jewish doctor Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh attributes the eponymous master al-Shadhili with an attitude implying mutual respect and even cooperation between a Muslim and a Jew.

On the one hand, such attitude appears exceptional compared to other textual material analyzed in the present paper, a possible parallel (for some aspects at least) being found only in Ṣafi l-Dīn’s portrait of Majd al-Dīn al-Akhmīmī (see above). On the other hand, as is precisely the case with Majd al-Dīn, one should not overestimate the innovative potential of such open-minded attitudes towards interfaith contacts. In other words, mutual respect between Shaykh al-Shādhilī and the Jewish ophthalmologist does not justify a claim for questioning hierarchical relations between their religious communities. Indeed, the ideological meaning of this anecdote is to be understood in the theoretical framework consistently evoked by the many other passages directly or indirectly concerning Jews and Christians in Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh’s Laṭāif al-minan, all of them ultimately supporting conventional views on non-Muslims and hierarchical relationships between religions.