“Narrating Authority in Seventeenth-Century Jerusalem: Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-ʿAlamī and the Autobiographical Practice of Ottoman Ṣūfīs”

Abstract

This article examines the Jerusalemite Ṣūfī master Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-ʿAlamī (d. 1628) through his autobiographical-hagiographical treatise Maʿālim al-Taṣdīq li-Maʿrifat Dukhūl al-Faqīr fī al-Ṭarīq. Preserved in a single manuscript, the work blends autobiography, thabat (register of authorizations), and visionary hagiography to construct a narrative of sanctity rooted in Jerusalem. It is argued that al-ʿAlamī’s consistent self-designation as al-faqīr (“the poor one”) exemplifies the humility trope central to early modern Ṣūfī self-writing, while his detailed enumeration of initiations, ijāzāt, and encounters with saints anchors his spiritual legitimacy within recognized lineages.The study makes three interrelated contributions. First, it recovers a neglected Palestinian Ṣūfī voice, challenging the marginalization of Jerusalem in studies of Islamic mysticism. Second, it expands the geography of Ṣūfī autobiography by situating Jerusalem alongside Cairo, Damascus, and Morocco as a site of mystical self-writing. Third, it demonstrates how manuscript culture itself functioned as a form of authority, as the colophon, genealogies, and single-copy preservation of Maʿālim al-Taṣdīq reveal the role of hereditary custodianship in sustaining memory.By situating al-ʿAlamī’s text within the wider Ottoman and Maghribī networks of the seventeenth century, the article contributes to debates on the relationship between autobiography and hagiography, the circulation of Ṣūfī memory, and the politics of textual survival in Palestine.