Abu l-Huda was born in a small village on the margins of the northern Syrian desert in 1850 into a family of humble origins. In his early childhood, he was initiated into the Rifaciyya order, which is still widely spread today in the rural areas of Syria and Iraq. He was quick to develop substantial contacts with Rifaci sheiks in Aleppo, who dominated certain important posts in the city. In 1874, he became the naqib ala shraf (scion of the descendants of the prophets) there at a strikingly young age. In the following years, he managed to overcome several severe setbacks to his career and finally established himself in the entourage of the new Sultan Abdlhamid II, whose accession to the throne marked the end of the tanzimat, a period of wide-ranging administrative reforms in Ottoman history

Eich, T.

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Regional Issues2 4 I S I M  N E W S L E T T E R  7 / 0 1Mid dl e Ea stTH O MA S  E I C HAbu l-Huda was born in a small village on the mar-gins of the northern Syrian desert in 1850 into a fam-ily of humble origins. In his early childhood, he wasinitiated into the Rifaciyya order, which is still widelyspread today in the rural areas of Syria and Iraq. Hewas quick to develop substantial contacts with Rifacisheiks in Aleppo, who dominated certain importantposts in the city. In 1874, he became the naqib al-a s h r a f (scion of the descendants of the prophets)there at a strikingly young age. In the followingyears, he managed to overcome several severe set-backs to his career and finally established himself inthe entourage of the new Sultan Abdülhamid II,whose accession to the throne marked the end of thet a n z i m a t, a period of wide-ranging administrative re-forms in Ottoman history.*Quest for a PhantomInvestigating Abul-Huda al-SayyadiAbu l-Huda was allegedly one of the mostpowerful men in the Ottoman Empire forseveral years. From 1881 onwards, he com-menced vast publishing activities. It isclaimed that he wrote up to 200 books, ofwhich approximately 60 can still be foundtoday. In 1909, he died in Istanbul on theBosphorus island of Prinkipo where he hadbeen exiled by the Young Turks after theircoup d’état. Apart from this, little is knownwith certainty about Abu l-Huda.In existing literature, he has been charac-terized as a reactionary and obscurantist,who tried to oppose the reformist circles ofhis time. He is usually juxtaposed with oneof the two fore-thinkers of Arab nationalism:cAbd ar-Rahman al-Kawakibi or Butrus al-Bustani. By this, he is interpreted as a meretool in the hands of Abdülhamid II forspreading his pan-Islamic propaganda. Un-fortunately this interpretation rests on onlyone small booklet of Abu l-Huda which,even at a short glance over his publicationlist, is clearly an exception. No thorough at-tempts have been made to question howthis astonishing career was possible, whathappened after Abu l-Huda had permanent-ly settled in Istanbul and what comprisedthe contents of his writings. It might evenbe said that, over time, analysis gave way tothe development of an ‘Abu l-Huda topos’,which is generally applied when somethingnegative has to be said or explained awayabout the political and intellectual develop-ments of the Ottoman Empire and especial-ly its Arab provinces under Abdülhamid II.The sourcesWhen endeavouring to investigate Abu l-Huda, the reason for these fascinating lacu-nae in our knowledge of this important peri-od in Middle Eastern history soon comes tolight: the sources. To begin with, there is noautobiography and the biographies of someof his followers – once they are discovered –offer little information due to their laudato-ry genre. Painstaking research is necessaryto find a substantial number of his books,and acquiring trustworthy and dated infor-mation through interviews poses difficul-ties. The archives of European consulates inIstanbul consulted thus far contain only ma-terial about two or three isolated episodes.Even classic strategies employed by histori-ans of the Middle East, such as consultingw a q f documents in Aleppo, provide scantresults. Investigating Abu l-Huda is indeed aquest for a phantom.What can be secured from these sources isinformation about people who had contactwith Abu l-Huda. A certain pattern of recur-ring names reveals itself and many of thesemen can easily be identified. By such means,the common depictions of Abu l-Huda as anobscurantist and reactionary are severelycontested: he obviously had early contactswith outstanding scholars in Damascus whowere later to gain fame as the forefathers ofthe Syrian Salafi movement. After his rise toinfluence in Istanbul, he supported such fa-mous reform-minded theologians as Mah-mud Shukri a l -cA l u s i in Baghdad by provid-ing him with a teaching post at the SultanAli mosque, which had been recently reno-vated and re-established due to Abu l-Huda’s intervention. This being said, thesimilarities between the contents of espe-cially Abu l-Huda’s later writings to reform-ers such as Muhammad Abduh come as nos u r p r i s e .The common interpretation of the intel-lectual history of the Middle East in the late1 9t h century rests on an assumed rupture be-tween reform-minded u l a m a a d v o c a t i n gtheir vision of an Islam purified of popularpractices and superstitious beliefs, on theone hand, and reactionary traditionalists re-sisting any change, on the other. Abu l-Huda is usually interpreted within this frameas the outstanding representative of the lat-ter. This picture is erroneous.Since Abu l-Huda was the leader of the R i-f aci y y a order in his time, which was popularespecially among the lower strata of society,he undoubtedly represented the more tra-ditionalist camp in this dichotomy. Butanalysis of his social networks as well as ofthe development of his writings over timeshows that the so-called ‘traditionalists’ hada permanent exchange of ideas with the re-formers, thus developing a new interpreta-tion of Islam. For example, a discussion offindings from the field of European astrono-my concerning the distance between thesun and the Earth can be found in R i f aci y y awritings from the late 1880s. In this sense,the traditional sector of society appears lessas resisting the changes of its time and per-haps more as actively contributing to thesec h a n g e s .Lineage as a tool int h e p o w e r - s t r u g g l eAbu l-Huda built up a network of contactsand followers in the entire fertile crescent.He even tried to take over the mighty R i-f aci y y a in British-controlled Egypt, a movesuccessfully opposed by the Khedive. Usual-ly persons from less influential families,some of whom had experienced a recentloss of influence, were integrated into Abu l-Huda’s following. At the same time, a wide-ranging scheme of construction andrestoration of shrines took place. Most ofthe important R i f aci y y a tombs are situatedin Iraq, some of them in Baghdad. On theother hand, the famous shrine of cA b d a l -Qadir al-Jilani, founder of the Qadiriyyaorder, had served as an intellectual and po-litical focus in that city over decades, if notcenturies. It apparently lost much of its im-portance during the 1880s and 1890s due tothe competition of the new and well-en-dowed R i f aci y y a shrines, since some of themost renowned scholars of Baghdad taughtat the schools attached to these newshrines. The Qadiriyya’s answer to these de-velopments was simple: they claimed thatone tomb was fake, that the man buried inthe second (the Sultan Ali Mosque) was notthe father of Ahmad a r - R i f aci, who foundedthe R i f aci y y a, and that R i f aci himself and con-sequently all of his offspring were not de-scendants of the prophet (a s h r a f, sing.s h a r i f). Therefore, in the 1880s and 1890s amultitude of publications treating thesesubjects can be observed. This phenome-non comprised several aspects. Firstly,a s h r a f were exempted from military serviceand taxes. Secondly, these books were partof a major power-struggle going on in theMiddle East at the close of the 19t h c e n t u r y .On the one hand, there was the competitionof several shrines for pupils and pilgrims atthe local level. On the other hand, thesebooks constituted the attempt of an over-throw of Abu l-Huda, himself the initiator ofthis sudden competition. As already men-tioned, he was the naqib al-ashraf in Aleppo.He maintained this post until his death in1909, although he stayed most of the timein Istanbul. The easiest way to get rid of Abul-Huda was to negate his noble lineage lead-ing back to the prophet via Ahmad a r - R i f aci.This was done by reactivating very old de-bates about the noble lineage of the R i f acithat traced back to the prophet. If this un-dertaking had succeeded, it would not onlyhave meant that Abu l-Huda would havebeen unemployed in the strict sense of theword. Since the notion of a holy man inIslam is usually connected with the assump-tion that he is a s h a r i f, it would most proba-bly have meant that the recently construct-ed and renovated shrines of the R i f aci a l lover the fertile crescent would have lost pil-grims, income and importance. Therefore,other competing Sufi orders would have ex-perienced a steep rise in the number of theirfollowers and influence. This means that thedebate about lineage in the 1880s and1890s was not a sign that nothing hadchanged in the Middle East over the last 500years when these discussions were conduct-ed for the first time. Even more so, it was avery particular power struggle, which owedmuch of its force to the socio-economicchanges taking place in the Middle East inthe late 19t h c e n t u r y .Changing research methodsA network analysis was developed in thelate 1950s, originally by anthropologists, asa means for analysing smaller residentialgroups. It rests on the premise that individ-uals construct a network of personal rela-tionships and use that network to reachtheir personal aims. It also rests on thepremise that there are certain patterns un-derlying these networks. Network analysischallenges the structuralist view that indi-viduals are completely determined by soci-ety’s norms and categories, while trying toavoid the opposite extreme of formalist re-ductionism, which defines norms as mereby-products of social change. Only recentlyhave the first attempts been made to applythe methodical instruments, developed fornetwork analysis by anthropologists, to thesources of historians of the Middle East.Common pitfalls of historiography, like pro-jecting modern nationalist paradigms suchas borders or ethnic community back intothe past, can thus be avoided. ◆N o t e* In older literature, Abdülhamid’s reign was totallyjuxtaposed to the t a n z i m a t-period, while in morerecent studies greater emphasis is placed on thecontinuities between the two periods.Thomas Eich, MA, is working on his dissertation onAbu l-Huda at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.He is member of the junior research group (Volkswa-gen Foundation) on ‘Islamic Networks in Local andTransnational Contexts, 18t h- 2 0t h c e n t u r i e s ’ .E-mail: thomas.eich@ruhr-uni-bochum.deURL: www.ruhr-uni-b o c h u m . d e / o r i e n t / n e t z w e r k e . h t m lThe shrine ofAhmad al-Sayya-di, ancestor ofAbu l-Huda, nearHuma, the spiritu-al centre of the R i-f aci y y a in Syria.

Quest for a Phantom Investigating Abu l-Huda al-Sayyadi

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Quest for a Phantom Investigating Abu l-Huda al-Sayyadi

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