The Qalandariyya: From the mosque to the ruin in poetry, place, and practice
Qalandariyya is a troubling and ambivalent presence in the Sufi tradition. This chapter explores the complex interweaving of historical, literary, religious, and political dimensions of the Qalandar. Moving from philology to poetry, from ritual to resistance, qalandariyya is examined through multiple theoretical lenses, fusing the texts and methods of classical Islamic scholarship with contemporary critical approaches. The chapter examines the significance of the Qalandar as trope in Persian Sufi literature and then traces the emergence and spread of Qalandars as a loosely organized Sufi order, focusing on how they were perceived and received in South Asia and Anatolia between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The development of the Qalandariyya and related orders can be seen as simultaneously a part of the broader evolution of Sufi institutions and a critique of the direction that Sufis had moved in.
