Between 1400 and 1650, followers of the Sufi poet Shah Ne'matullah Vali navigated land and sea routes through Central Asia, Iran, and India, spreading into many centers of power where they acted as agents of mobility and cross-cultural exchange. Along the way, they built shrines whose poetry, spatial configuration, and materiality created intimate religious spaces that were able to engage local audiences, invoke distant places, and appeal to pilgrims and merchants from different regions.
Pushing back against global art history trajectories that have privileged east-west connections as well as Islamic art studies that have largely focused on the Mughal Empire, Intimacies of Global Sufism explores the opportunities and challenges that Sufis encountered in developing a transregional network of material culture. Using the concept of intimacy to highlight shrines' affective interconnections between people, objects, and ideas, author Peyvand Firouzeh invites readers to step inside these sacred spaces and rethink their wider significance. Looking closely at sites ranging across thousands of kilometers, this book combines a detailed analysis of architecture, decorative objects, and manuscripts with local and dynastic histories, Sufi poems, architectural and patronage documents, and a unique focus on the disciple-artists who created these spaces.
Richly illustrated with more than 100 images of these sites' architecture and artifacts,Intimacies of Global Sufism offers readers a new vantage point on the early modern world and on the ways that sacred spaces forged a transnational community.
