A New Text for the History of Sufism: Abū Manṣūr al-Iṣfahānī’s (d. 418/1027) Shawāhid al-taṣawwuf

Abstract Abū Manṣūr Maʿmar b. Aḥmad al-Iṣfahānī (d. 418/1027), a Ḥanbalī scholar and Sufi, is a relatively neglected figure in the history of Sufism given his textual output. In his study of ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī al-Harawī (d. 481/1088), Serge de Laugier de Beaurecueil first drew attention to Abū Manṣūr and later published his Nahj al-khāṣṣ . Since then, Nasrollah Pourjavady has edited and published several extant works of Abū Manṣūr’s with substantial introductions and an extensive article on Abū Manṣūr himself. The present article contributes to these studies by introducing the (re)discovered Shawāhid al-taṣawwuf , a work of Abū Manṣūr previously thought lost, which provides novel insight into both Abū Manṣūr’s conceptualization of Sufism and Sufism’s broader history in the fourth/tenth century. The Shawāhid al-taṣawwuf , which survives in a single manuscript held at the Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, is multigeneric. It is at once a treatise of Sufism, a biographical dictionary of Sufi shaykhs, and an autobiographical narrative of Abū Manṣūr’s own travels to meet Sufi masters. Aside from providing new information about Abū Manṣūr’s engagement with Sufism, the content of the Shawāhid sheds new light on the social history of Sufism in the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, drawing attention to previously unknown figures and initiatic chains. An edition of the Shawāhid al-taṣawwuf , by the author of the present article, is underway.