ABSTRACT
This study involves a critical re-evaluation of the literary modes of representation of the fi gures of the sultan and the Sufi shaykh in the pre-modern Muslim world. It attempts to show how narrative frameworks from historiography and biography, depicting the lives of the Delhi sultans and Sufi shaykhs of the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries, were interdependent. In biographical genres and in the recorded conversations of Sufi shaykhs of the eighth/fourteenth century, images of the shaykh were crafted with literary techniques found in historiography. In historiography of the same period, sultans are depicted with images commonly reserved for Sufi shaykhs as found in their recorded conversations and biographies. It is important to understand the intertextuality of these literary genres and to understand the relationships between image, authorship, and audience.1 These texts provide a means to understand the evolving connections between royal courts as they played a major role in the institutionalization of Sufi orders through patronage and conferred legitimacy. They also reveal the multitude of ways Sufi shaykhs reciprocated power by legitimating the authority of sultans.
