Wilāya in Medieval Khurāsānī Sufism, with Particular Reference to Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021)

This article uses the insights of modern discourse on virtue ethics to explore wilāya/ walāya in key Sufi texts in Khurāsān in the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries. Scholars of Sufism agree that the “friends of God” (awliyāʾ Allāh) wield spiritual authority over the world, and the article probes the relationship between this general claim about spiritual authority and its manifestation in the bestowal of divine marvels (karāmāt). The article begins with a general discussion of virtue theory, focusing on key concepts in the thought of Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), then examines wilāya in the thought of al-Sulamī and some of his near contemporaries. An examination of marvels (karāmāt) provides a final feature of wilāya that illustrates more precisely the concept of virtue and the type of virtue ethics in question, thus contributing to the increasing interdisciplinary study of wilāya.