ROSE DEIGHTON-MOHAMMED

The terms drunk (sukr) and sober (sahw) are significant discursive elements of the Sufi tradition. In the 10th century Junayd al‐Baghdādī (d. 910) initiated their use to distinguish different approaches to Sufism The ecstatic utterances (shatḥiyāt) of Abū Yazid al‐Bistāmī (d. 874) sparked massive public scrutiny of Sufism including an historic inquisition, alarming legal scholars and public intellectuals in Baghdad. Junayd, who was both a Sufi and legal scholar, claimed his spiritual sobriety to protect himself from the punishment and rebuke he would face if associated with the “drunk” public image of Sufis like Bistāmī. Thus, while the labels drunk and sober signify spiritual orientations adopted by different Sufi figures and lineages (ṭuruq), they are also highly polemical terms The drunk and sober binary has historically functioned to differentiate good “Sufis” (those who conform to Islamic legal standards in teaching, practice, and public behavior) and “bad Sufis” (who transgress, critique, or subvert Islamic legal convention). The categories we apply to Sufi figures should accurately capture the features that make them distinct based on the available sources. These multivalent terms function as generalized labels used to divide up types of Sufism without actually pointing to the specific features that define the figures they describe. In the same way that scholars of Sufism recognize the term “Sufism” to be a broad semantically open word that denotes multiple overlapping and divergent phenomena, I contend that drunk and sober should be thought of similarly. More useful categories of analysis would point directly to the literary and conceptual features of Sufi teachings and identify precisely the characteristics that make them unique. Through an examination of the literary contributions of two Sufis associated with drunkenness and sobriety, this article complicates the use of the terms drunk and sober to describe Sufi figures. I compare the shatḥiyāt (ecstatic utterances) of Abū Bakr al‐Shiblī (d. 946) and the ḥikam (aphorisms) of Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al‐Iskandarī (d. 1309/708). These two literary genres represent vehicles in which supposedly drunk and sober versions of Sufism are often conveyed. Through a literary and epistemological analysis of their sayings, I demonstrate that what differentiates these two figures is not their supposed drunkenness and sobriety, but the image of God that is foregrounded in their pedagogy and their mode of engaging literary embodiment in their sayings. Shiblī foregrounds the divine immanent and a notion of God that is knowable through sensory experience in divine union. Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh foregrounds an image of God that is transcendent and unknowable and a pedagogy of self‐examination (muḥāsiba) and purification. While both figures acknowledge God as transcendent and immanent, the image of God that is functional in their pedagogy is distinct. Their visions of God in turn impact how each figure structures their spiritual teachings and transmissions. Shiblī teaches Sufism through an epistemology of experience, engages the first person voice, sharing personal testimony, and affirming that verifiable knowledge is only attained through the divine immanent. Conversely, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh omits first person voice and personal testament engaging the second person voice and command form statements to provoke the reader into their own self‐examination and purification. He disregards experience and focuses on preparing the individual for the annihilation of the self (fanā’ al‐nafs). Therefore, whereas Shiblī’s teachings are analogous, modeling through his own literary embodiment what it might look like and how to recognize a unitive experience with God, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh shares no experiential vision but rather prescribes actions to annihilate the apparatus of the individual self. Verifiable knowledge is not his main point, but rather, he aims to spark his reader into an unrelenting process of self‐effacement. Since he foregrounds an image of God that is transcendent, unknowable, and incomparable to human beings, the goal is not to acquire knowledge but to dismantle the various facets of personal identity that constitute and uphold an individual consciousness. I recommend rearticulating the simple binary of drunk and sober Sufism as a spectrum of possible engagements with literary embodiment, acknowledging how literary embodiment is related to the image of God foregrounded in each figures’ Sufi pedagogy.