Abstract
This chapter explores the emulation of this particular set of charismatic practices amongst students and members of the Qadiriyya community. Charismatic power was further strengthened through the daily emulation of exemplary practice. Students lived and studied alongside the dangjiaren and other chujiaren, and it was here that processes of ‘implicit pedagogy’ were at their strongest. Religious adherents, too, sought to emulate and benefit from the exemplary model of the dangjiaren in various ways.
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Notes
- 1.
Buehler noted in the context of a Naqshbandi Sufi lineage in India that ‘since there are varying degrees of connected-ness to the Prophet, even non-Sufis can receive some divine energy (fayd), but without a shaykh there is seldom enough divine grace to make spiritual progress’ (Buehler 1998, p. 83).
- 2.
Ma Yong is now studying Arabic at a Language Institute in Egypt and plans to continue on to university after that.
- 3.
This is very reminiscent of the Sufi idea that the spiritual journey is made through different levels of ‘being’, by way of latifas, or subtle faculties, through an ongoing process of unveiling (tajilli). These latifas have a physical and a corresponding spiritual presence. Their physical location in the chest is: qalb (xin, heart), left side, and rūh (soul/spirit, xing), right side both in the lower part of the chest. Sirr (xing, spirit) and khafi (secret) are located in the upper left and right side of the chest, respectively. Akhfa (most secret and mysterious) is located in the centre of the chest. Nafs (ziwo, ego) is located by some in the navel and by others in the centre of the forehead (Lizzio 2007, pp. 12–13).
- 4.
In Sufism, it also connects to the 28 Divine Names and the 28 stations of the moon, each of which corresponds to a letter of the Arabic alphabet (Bakhtiar 1976, p. 7).
- 5.
See David Lee’s English translation of this poem in full with an associated commentary (Lee 2015, Appendix 1).
- 6.
One chujiaren that I met explained that he had come from Taitai Gongbei in Linxia (a Qadiriyya gongbei that commemorates a female Sufi saint). He had been instructed to come to this gongbei by the dangjiaren at Da Gongbei and to visit the imam there to discuss issues related to the management and upkeep of the site.
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Cone, T. (2018). Charisma and Emulation. In: Cultivating Charismatic Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74763-7_4
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