“The sword of the Sunna and the beauty of the Path”: The hagiographical image of Jaʻfar Sadiq in Sufi tradition

Abstract

The paper presents a Russian translation and a brief analysis of Remembrance of Jaʻfar Sadiq from the Persian Suf anthology Memorial of God's Friends by Farid al-din Attar. Jaʻfar Sadiq, the sixth Shiʻi imam, founder and eponym of the Ja‘fari school of jurisprudence, played an important role in the Suf tradition. The Sufs revered him as a member of Prophet Muhammad's family (ahl-i bayt) and, through his persona, connected their own tradition of piety with the age of the Prophet and his companions. Sufs also considered him a bearer of hidden knowledge (‘ilm al-bāṭin), an inimitable interpreter (mufassir) of the Quran and claimed to be his spiritual descendants by including him in Suf lineages. These virtues became the main features of Ja‘far Sadiq's hagiographic portrait in the Persian Suf tradition.