ABSTRACT
The first part of this chapter is dedicated to exploring a section of the Fusṭāṭ al-‘adāla that was intended to provide the author’s patron (Muzzafar al-Din Chobanid) with a description of the practices and beliefs of a group of antinomian Sufis (Qalandars) that had been expanding into Anatolia in the 13th century. This unique account might raise some questions regarding its authenticity and the accuracy of the information contained. For this reason, the second part of the chapter is dedicated to looking in detail at the similarities and differences between the description of the origins of the Qalandar movement in the Fusṭāṭ al-‘adāla and the account contained in the ‘official’ hagiography of the Qalandars, the Manāqib-i Jamāl al-Dīn Sāvī, which was written in the 14th century by Khatib Farisi, a member of the Qalandar movement. This comparison offers the unusual possibility for historians of the period to obtain two descriptions of the same events from confronting sections of society. Finally, the last part of the chapter explores the idea of ‘orthodoxy’ offered by the Fusṭāṭ al-‘adāla to its patron by looking at the work’s fifth chapter. This section is an analysis of how the author of the text offers his Turkmen patron a complementary view between Hanafi and Shafi‘i interpretations of Islamic law as a tool to tackle and confront the spread of the Qalandar ‘heresy’ in Anatolia.
