Knowledge and Miracles: Modes of Charisma in Syrian Sufism

Abstract

Charisma is an important feature of religious authority in Syrian Islam, since Sunni religiosity is mostly lived as a collective phenomenon in small communities organized around a charismatic religious leader, locally referred as shaykh or murshid (master). The fact that Syria never had a religious institution that could centralize Sunni Islam under its authority, such as Al -Azhar in Egypt, allowed local arrangements of religious power and prestige to continue to be highly relevant in the configuration of religious meaning and experience. The efforts of the Syrian nation-state to control Sunni religiosity through the creation of a centralized religious hierarchy under the control of the Grand Mufti of Syria have largely failed, and independent structures of Islamic religious authority continue to persist on the local and/or regional level.