Wild Social Transcendence and the Antinomian Dervish

Abstract

Beginning around the twelfth century, a distinct movement of itinerant antinomian dervishes evolved in the Muslim world as a form of religious and social protest. By deliberately embracing a variety of unconventional and socially liminal practices, they inverted social hierarchies and explicitly violated Islamic law. Their peripatetic lifestyle and voluntary acts of material divestment, such as living on the streets, sleeping on the ground or sheltering in graveyards, suggested a descent to animal levels of poverty. Those who chose this particular antinomian mode of life and the associated bodily, social, and spiritual disciplines, were often distinguished by bare feet, garments of animal skins, even dirt-caked nakedness, features which served as markers of wild social transcendence. By thus rejecting the demands of society on their minds and bodies, deviant dervishes remained entirely outside the normal social world. This distinct marginal space also served as an experimental theatre for testing and blurring boundaries between humans and other forms of being. Their peripatetic lifestyle and voluntary acts of material divestment mirrored the harsh living conditions of wild animals. The symbolic appropriation of animals and control over them was, therefore, of considerable importance. This paper pays particular attention to the associated vocabulary of antinomian existence in which animals play a pivotal role as agents of transformation. The concomitant display of animal attributes reflects the dervishes! own animal-like force. It acts not only as a means of liberation and a critique of social controls, but, above all, it serves as a prime tool in the dramatic attempts to discipline, control and tame their own “animal souls”.

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