| My dissertation focuses on the innovative ways in which Maryam Hand, a Sufi poet and a follower of the spiritual Shadhiliya Path (or Tariqa) in the United States, describes her spiritual journey in her non-published manuscript The Garden in the Fire: A Spiritual Journey through Poetry. I explore Hand's autobiographical Sufi poetry in relation to the Sufi teachings of Shaykh Muhammad Sa'id al-Jamal ar-Rifei as-Shadhuli, the current spiritual leader of the Shadhiliya Path and the Head of the Higher Sufi Council in Jerusalem, and to the Sufi authorship tradition. First, I lay a contextual and historical framework of Sufism and Sufi poetry in order to better understand Maryam Hand's Sufi poetry. Second, I explore the main themes of Hand's spiritual journey in her non-published poetry, and the way she re-invents Sufi poetry through autobiographical accounts, gender exploration and community focus. Third, I look at the relation of her poetry to the tradition of Sufi poetry authorship. In the light of Michael Frishkopf s article, "Authorship in Sufi Poetry", I explore the problems of authorship, and related concepts of textuality and meaning in Sufi poetry and to what extent they apply to Hand's poetry. In the United States, although dhikr (remembrance) is a ritual carried out in weekly gatherings of the followers of the Shadhuliya order, hadra (call for the presence of metaphysical agents) is not included. Hence, the role of a munshid (singer) is absent in an American Sufi circle. In the case of Maryam Hand, this non-presence of the munshid is, however, substituted for by the poetry readings that she gives in Sufi and non-Sufi communities, and the mystical experiences she lives on her own and later offers to the readers through her poetry. The whole site of Sufi-American poetry can be understood as emerging from that missing part of the ritual. |
