Chapter Five. Gender Dynamics in Sufi Rituals, Praxis, and Authority

Abstract

The previous chapters focused on tracing sama through ritual, cultural, and aesthetic expressions in various spaces. This final chapter considers some broader gender dynamics in ritual contexts and also among some of the Sufi communities explored in this book. I first consider how gender norms, especially around the place of women’s bodies, have informed Sufi experiences for women. Here, I draw on classical Sufi textual traditions and explore how gender appeared, for instance, in Rumi’s poetry and how it later influenced institutional developments within the Mawlawi Order in Turkey. The second half of the chapter considers some of the gender