Emerging Approaches to the Sufi Traditions of South Asia: Between Texts, Territories and the Transcendent

Abstract

This article examines Sufism as a textual world composed of several overlapping genres of writing, arguing that the crucial interface between different kinds of writing, the world and the individual Muslim presents a major challenge for the study of Sufism. The co-existence of the embodied realities of powerful Sufi practitioners of South Asia’s past and present with the alternative textual reality of the literary world of Sufi writings from the region is explored in depth. The article presents an overview of the Sufi traditions of South Asia, emphasizing some emerging research angles on the problematic convergences between texts, territories and the transcendent elements in Sufism in four major sections.