Mystical bodies/unruly bodies: Experience, empowerment and subjectification in Syrian Sufism
Paulo G. Pinto
Social Compass June 1, 2016 DOI: 10.1177/0037768616628791 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Sufi disciples and participants in the darb al-shish ritual at the zawiya of shaykh Mahmud in Afrin, Syria |
| Topics | Mystical experience |
| Key findings | Argues that the darb al-shish ritual enables participants to embody capacities and dispositions experienced as sacred, producing religious selves endowed with what the author terms charisma. This embodied charisma posed challenges to the religious community's power structures, and collective ritual performance serves as the main arena for incorporating disciples' charismas into the community's hierarchical structure of religious power and authority. |
Abstract
Religious experience can be a tool for the constitution of social subjects, the construction of symbolic meanings and values, as well as for shaping the subjectivity and corporality of the faithful. An ethnographic account and analysis of the Sufi ritual, the darb al-shish, as it was performed in the zawiya (Sufi lodge) of shaykh Mahmud in Afrin, Syria, shows how religious experience allows the embodiment of capacities and dispositions that are lived as deriving from the sacred dimensions of existence, producing religious selves endowed with power that can be defined as charisma. The embodied charisma derived from the darb al-shish posed challenges to the power structures of the religious community in which it emerged. The analysis focuses on collective ritual performances as the main arena of incorporation of the various charismas of the disciples into the hierarchical structure of religious power and authority of the Sufi community. This approach to the ritual tackled the connection between religious experiences and the production of embodied forms of power, such as charisma, and posed the question of how religious codification deals with it.