Tawfiq Alhamedi
Ba 'Alawiyya: Hadhrami Sayyids and Sufi Mystics
Ho, 2006, p. 38.
What was created was a missionary enterprise that yoked generations of Hadramis to a large geographical stage, and made the whole of the Indian Ocean their native habitat. In this enterprise, a particular lineage of Hadrami Arabs—the sayyids, or descendents of the Prophet Muhammad; a particular town—Tarim in Hadramawt; and a particular oceanic realm—the Indian Ocean, were all transformed into a universal sphere of Islamic concourse and discourse. The Hadrami sayyids were a particular segment of a particular people, yet they saw themselves as the active creators of a universal world (Ho, 2007, p. 349).
The Hadhrami Sayyids were important figures not only in Hadhramaut but also abroad as they took up positions as religious elites in East Africa, India, and Southeast Asia finding various opportunities for patronage abroad (Ho, p. 354). Moreover, they were also extremely important figures in the Ba’ Alawiyya which was a tariqa (pl. turuq) or religious order of a particular “Sufi brotherhood” that emphasized the Shafi’i legal framework of Islam. Sheriff (2010) notes that the turuq, of which there were four prominent ones during the time, were extremely significant organizations for coastal communities that were to later accept Islam (p. 244). The turuq consisted of religious scholars, jurists, devotees and mystics. While the religious scholars and jurists
emphasized juridical knowledge and injunctions, the Sufi mystics focused more on mystical forms of worship and understandings of the divine; in some cases these alignments coincided but generally the Sufis were prominent (Sheriff, p. 244). Moreover, Sheriff notes that Muslims and converts made use of both, the religious scholars for legal matters and the mystics for concerns relating to worship. In the case of proselytizing to local non-Muslim populations the Sufi mystics were more open towards absorbing unorthodox customs and spiritual practices they encountered than the legalistic scholars. As most Hadhrami Sayyids were part of the religious scholars and jurists, the Sufi mystics seemed to have played an intermediary role as cultural brokers between host populations and the more prestigious Sayyids. Interestingly, Sheriff in reference to Anne Bang relays that the Sayyids played a key role in spreading this systematized Sufi framework across the Indian Ocean in the 13th and 14th centuries (p. 245). Furthermore, Edward Alpers (2014) in his historical analysis of the Indian Ocean notes that by the early 14th century, the Islamic Shafi’i school of thought became mainstream amongst Indian Ocean Muslims, which Hadramis also played an intimate role in spreading to Gujarat, a sultanate that hosted one of the most important port cities of the 13th and 14th century, Cambay (p. 52; Sheriff p. 266-267). Ibn Battuta as well not only came into contact with the mercantile culture of Muslim maritime traders but he also interacted with legal frameworks such as the Shafi’i school as well as Sufi turuq, which have been already discussed to be intimately connected with Hadhrami migrants. Overall the Sayyids, Sufi mystics, and merchants all played important parts in affecting the coastal regions they migrated to.