The Socio-Political Muwashshahat of Abu l-Hasan al-Shushtari

There has been shockingly little scholarship produced concerning this towering Andalusian poet and Sufi mystic, Abu l-Hasan al-Shushtari. This thesis aims to rectify this neglect by uncovering not only the impact his poetry had on the Islamic world in the thirteenth century and beyond, but the socio-political impact his muwashshahat had in his native land of al-Andalus during his lifetime. This original research aims to understand how and why al-Shushtari's mystical muwashshahat, employing the everyday vernacular of the people of al-Andalus, stood out within a genre that for centuries prior to al-Shushtari had been a largely secular genre of Arabic poetry.