Perfect Man and the Possibility of Governance in the Iranian Mystic’s Thoughts in the Ninth Hijri Century

With the fall of Abbasid caliphate, mystics and Muslim scholars expressed new ideas about governance and legitimacy. They were influenced by the idea of ​​the unity of the existence of Ibn Arabi and expressed thoughts about the perfect man and the position of the man as the successor (Khalifa) of God. In the ninth Hijri century, in the mystics’ views, man appeared as a manifestation of the Holiest and as the highest manifestation of God and found a respectable position. In their thinking, the Prophet (pbuh) and after him the Shiite Imams (a.s) and in the time of Occultation, the saints of God were introduced as examples of the perfect man and God's successors on earth. In this way, a new form of political legitimacy in the government was introduced. The leaders of this mystical intellectual trend, such as Ibn Tarke Esfahani, Shah Nematollah Vali, Khajeh Mohammad Parsa, Abdul Rahman Jami, and Pir Jamal Ardestani considered the prophets and saints of God as the perfect men who deserved the formation of the government, and in their absence, the Sultans were introduced as God's successors on Earth. Some of them introduced themselves as the perfect man and claimed to govern. Thus, by introducing the idea of ​​the perfect man and the position of the human as the successor (Khalifa) of God in their works, they led to the coherence of the mystical thought. In this paper, the views of two kinds of mystical thoughts on the position of the perfect man and their approach to governance are investigated analytically and descriptively on the basis of historical sources. This study explores the factors leading to the idea of the governance of the perfect man and to what extent, it proved successful. It claims that the idea of the perfect man was introduced by Iranian mystics at the time when Abbasid caliphate fell, and the absence of the political legitimacy provided space for introducing the novel thoughts, including the thought of perfect man. It has been shown that by offering this idea, the mystics found an alternative to Abbasid caliphate in terms of political legitimacy.