Analyzing the Discourse in Ahmad-e Jm's Ons al-Tebn

The present article has adopted a critical discourse perspective to study Ahmad-e Jām’s Ons al-Tāʾebīn. Ahmad-e Jām (b. 1049 AD in Nāmaq, near Toršīz, Khorasan; d. 1141AD) was one of the mystics of Khorasan, Iran. Traces of cultural transition can be found in his works and Ons al-Tāʾebīn is his masterpiece. The book mainly criticizes the official mysticism of the writer’s time. The cult which had been formed in Nishapur, the political center of the time, did not recognize the dissident voices. One can well think that the sole motive for writing the book was basically to challenge the same dominant ideology.
Late 5th and early 6th centuries AH witnessed a cultural transition and a disruption of the order of discourse. Ons al-Tāʾebīn was created in the same discursive milieu and it reflected the ambience of change in this period. During the writer’s lifetime, Hanafi and Shafi, two schools of Sunni jurisprudence, were popular in Nishapur. Before the time of Nizam al-Mulk, the Persian scholar and vizier of the Seljuk Empire, many of the Sufis in this center had Hanafi leanings. There was a compatibility between jurisprudence and Sufism at the time; however, when Nizam al-Mulk took hold of power, the balance was tipped in favor of Shafis and this time there appeared a kind of harmony between Sufism and Shafi jurisprudence.
Meanwhile, the scholars of Islamic scholastic theology (Kalam) were active and Ashʿari scholastic theology was gradually casting its shadow on Khorasan. The official mysticism of the time adjusted itself with scholastic theology. Nizam al-Mulk and other representatives of political power adapted themselves to the trio and were integrated as the fourth element of the new order of discourse.
The integration of politics, mysticism, Sahfi jurisprudence, and Ashʿari scholastic theology were the principal elements of the new order of discourse. This naturally pushed Shia jurisprudence, scholastic theology, and Karrami Sufism to the margins. Ahmad-e Jām who favored Karramiyya expressed his disapproval against official Sufism. In his Ons al-Tāʾebīn, he sets the two Sufist discourses against each other: one strongly committed to sharia and the other one which had a utilitarian attitude using sharia as a means to its ends. The first one can be termed as the “committed” approach and the other as the “non-committed” one. He strongly praised the first and dispraised the second.
Different strategies adopted in his Ons al-Tāʾebīn reveal his attitude in this regard; among them one can refer to naming and describing, allusion to historical events, representation of time and place, authoritative documentation, linguistic emotionalism, metaphorization, and other techniques. He criticizes the philosophers of his time; however, he has a high regard for the kind of logic which serves Shariah. Although he did not approve of official Karrami sect, he endorses their ideology both overtly and covertly.