Sufis and Their Lodges in the Ottoman Hijaz

The distinguished position of the seventeenth-century Hijaz attracted Sufis from across the Islamic world, making it the largest Sufi center of that era, with more than forty Sufi orders active during the Ottoman period. Most of the region's many scholars were associated with Sufism and affiliated to these orders; their lives and Sufi activities more broadly were documented by one of their number, al-?Ujaymi, in two texts. These texts, critically edited here for the first time, constitute some of the best evidence for the character of spiritual life in the Hijaz during the seventeenth and early eighteenth century.