RT Article
T1 From Blessed Lips: the Textualization of Abu Saʿid’s Dicta and Deeds
JF Journal of Persianate studies
VO 12
IS 1
SP 5
OP 31
A1 O’Malley, Austin
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2019
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1817479261
AB Abstract This paper examines the formation and development of the Abu Saʿid Abuʾl-Kheyr hagiographic tradition. It shows how reports about the eleventh-century saint circulated within a shrine community of his descendants and disciples, both orally and in ad hoc notes, before being set down in writing. It argues that the Asrār al-towhid, the largest and best-known hagiography devoted to Abu Saʿid, is not a natural outgrowth of this oral material, but a reworking for a broad audience of outsiders in light of the shrine community’s destruction by the Ghuzz Turks in the 1150s. In the case of the Asrār, textualization involved substantial rhetorical and linguistic changes in order to open up the material to a literary public of non-initiates; it also implied a new understanding of how Abu Saʿid’s blessings would manifest themselves in the world.
K1 Sainthood
K1 Mysticism
K1 Abu Saʿid
K1 Islam
K1 textuality
K1 Orality
K1 Hagiography
K1 Sufism
DO 10.1163/18747167-12341330