Rituals
Bayah
Initiatory Rituals
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Origin 628 to 1200 CE
The pledge of allegiance, given by placing one's hand in the hand of the person pledged to. It began as a political act: the Quran refers at 48:18 to the pledge given under the tree at Hudaybiyya, and the succession of the first caliphs was constituted by the pledges given to them, first by a small group and then publicly. In classical political theory as al-Mawardi sets it out, the caliph's authority rests on the pledge of those qualified to give it, and the theory therefore describes an office that is contractual in form even where it was hereditary in fact.
The word carries a second, quite different life inside Sufism, where bayah is the initiation binding a disciple to a master and, through the master's chain, to the founder of the order. The two senses are not the same institution, and the confusion between them has repeatedly been exploited: movements claiming political allegiance have borrowed the language of spiritual initiation, and rulers have demanded pledges framed as religious duty.
Contemporary armed groups have made the pledge central to their claims of legitimacy. Presenting those claims as continuous with the classical institution is a rhetorical move by the groups making it, and is disputed by most Muslim scholarly authorities.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodThe Sufi initiatic sense develops separately from the twelfth century 1 Place of OriginThe pledge began as a political act at Hudaybiyya and in the succession of the early caliphs; its later separate life as a Sufi initiation binding a disciple to a master, which its own text also describes, is a distinct later usage of the same word rather than the practice's origin. Historical OriginThe practice draws on a pre-Islamic Arabian tribal custom of clasping hands to seal an agreement or to submit to a chief's authority, a gesture the Quran and the early Muslim community adapted to a new religious and political meaning rather than inventing outright. 2 Meaning
Literal MeaningThe word bayah shares its Arabic root with bay, meaning sale or transaction, and grammars of the term explain the pledge as conceived on the model of a contract sealed by a handclasp, the same gesture that historically closed a sale in Arab commercial custom, carried over into a covenant of allegiance rather than of trade. 1 Practice
Who Performs ItAll adherents of the tradition 2 FrequencyOnce, or at a turning point in a life 1 Solitary or CommunalPerformed by a gathered group 1 Attributions
PurposeWithin Sufi practice specifically, the pledge's purpose is to establish a formal chain of transmission, a silsila, running back through the master's own line of initiation to the Prophet, understood as necessary to the legitimacy and spiritual standing of the master-disciple bond and used to distinguish a recognized order from an unaffiliated teacher. 3 Learn More
The Pledge of Allegiance
Bayah is the pledge of allegiance in Islam, given traditionally by placing one's hand in the hand of the one pledged to, or by a spoken or written oath of loyalty and obedience. It began as a political act: the Quran and the early histories describe the Prophet receiving the bayah of his followers, and after him the recognition of a new caliph was effected by the bayah of the community's leading men, making it the classical mechanism by which authority was acknowledged. The same term and gesture were later taken up in Sufism, where the aspirant gives bayah to a spiritual master (shaykh), entering a chain of transmission reaching back through the master's own teachers, and binding themselves to his guidance on the path. In both its political and its mystical forms the pledge turns on a personal act of commitment and obedience, and the two senses have at times been closely intertwined in Islamic history.
The Same Gesture, a Different Register
Alongside its original political use, the same hand clasped in hand pledge became, within Sufi orders, the act by which a seeker formally becomes a disciple, murid, of a living master, shaykh, committing to follow that teacher's guidance within a particular order, tariqa. Each order traces its authority through a chain of transmission, a silsila, understood to run master to master back to the Prophet, and the disciple's pledge is presented as joining that chain rather than entering an informal arrangement with one individual.
What the pledge specifically obligates the disciple to, and what instruction or practice follows from it, is treated by many orders as internal to the relationship between a shaykh and the disciples under that shaykh's direct guidance, a matter of the order's own governance rather than material meant for outside description, and this account accordingly does not attempt to lay out what any particular order's post pledge instruction involves. Access to a given shaykh's guidance, and to whatever a given order restricts to initiated disciples, is governed entirely by that order's own structure and the shaykh's own judgment about a seeker's readiness, which varies considerably from one Sufi order to another and is not a matter this entry can generalize about.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Within Sufism the pledge is an initiation binding a disciple to a master and, through the master's chain of transmission, to the founder of the order. This is a different institution from the political pledge, despite the shared word.
Conducted By
The pledge of allegiance is given into the hand of the shaykh of the order.
Element Of
Sources
1. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition
P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.), Brill, 2005View the Source 2. God's Rule: Government and Islam. Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought
Patricia Crone, Columbia University Press, 2004Crone, Gods Rule: Government and Islam
2. God's Rule: Government and Islam. Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought
Patricia Crone, Columbia University Press, 2004On the survival of contractual language after caliphs were installed by force
3. The Sufi Orders in Islam
Islamic Mysticism: A Short History
Alexander Knysh, Brill, 2000Knysh, Islamic Mysticism: A Short History
The Qur'an
Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya (The Ordinances of Government)
Abu al-Hasan al-Mawardi, 1058On the pledge of those qualified to give it as the basis of the caliphal office
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