HORUFISM

a body of antinomian and incarnationist doctrines evolved by Fażl-Allāh Astarābādi (d. 1394), known to his followers also as Fażl-e Yazdān (“the generosity of God”). Its principal features were elaborate numerological interpretations of the letters of the Perso-Arabic alphabet and an attempt to correlate them with the human form.

HORUFISM, a body of antinomian and incarnationist doctrines evolved by Fażl-Allāh Astarābādi (d. 796/1394; q.v.), known to his followers also as Fażl-e Yazdān (“the generosity of God”). Its principal features were elaborate numerological interpretations of the letters of the Perso-Arabic alphabet and an attempt to correlate them with the human form. The movement that espoused these teachings was relatively short-lived in Persia, but it had a significant prolongation in Anatolia and the Balkans, primarily under the auspices of the Bektāši order.

The foundational text of Horufism, Fażl-Allāh’s Jāvdān-nāma, has not yet been published, either in its fuller version, written in the dialect of Astarābād, or in its synopsis in standard Persian, nor has it been studied in any detail. The rest of the voluminous literature of Horufism, in Persian and Turkish, also remains largely in manuscript (for a comprehensive listing of titles in Turkish libraries, see Gölpınarlı, 1973, pp. 45-147), the only exceptions being the poems of Fażl-Allāh written with the pen name Naʿimi (in Āžand, pp. 127-45); various texts published by Clément Huart (1909) and Ṣādeq Kiā (1951, pp. 210-46); the works of Nesimî (Nasimi, 1973); Turkish poems by Refîʿî (Rafiʿi) and Penâhî (Panāhi; see Ertaylan, 1946); and Firişteoğlu’s Işknâme-i Ilâhî (1881), a Turkish précis of the Persian Jāvdān-nāma. Horufism is, therefore, imperfectly known to scholarship, and speculation about its ultimate origins seems hazardous. Since the Koran is a revealed book in form as well as content, it is natural that the letters of which it is formed should have been viewed, from the earliest times, as more than phonetic markers. Not every consideration of the numerological and symbolic significance of the letters can, therefore, be regarded as a precursor or source of Horufism. At least two elements of Horufism are, however, highly reminiscent of Ismaʿilism, although no direct line of filiation can be traced: a cyclical view of time, and an esoteric mode of interpretation (taʾwil-e bāṭeni), both of the Koran and of religious duties, whereby the alleged inner meaning serves not to complement the outer meaning, but to displace it. Ismâîl Hakkı Burûsevî (d. 1137/1725), a well-known Turkish Sufi and exegete, thus remarked of the Horufis that “they are blameworthy because they have laid hold of the indication (al-ešāra) while rejecting the obvious meaning (al-ʿebāra)” (in Ruḥal-bayān IV, p. 4). The cycle of sainthood (welāyat) propounded by Horufism, however, does not include the imams peculiar to Ismāʿili tradition, consisting instead of the first eleven imams of Twelver Shiʿism. At the same time, Horufism cannot be classified as a variety of ḡolāt Shiʿism, for it shows no particular interest in elevating the rank of Imam ʿAli b. Abi Ṭāleb above the ordinary. Ebn ʿArabi has been mentioned as a possible Sufi forebear of Horufism (Mélikoff, 1998, p. 118), but Fażl-Allāh’s doctrines bear little resemblance to Ebn ʿArabi’s understanding of the “science of letters” (ʿelm al-ḥoruf) as expounded in his Fotuḥāt al-makkiya (I, pp. 56-74). They are, however, strikingly reminiscent of Saʿd-al-Din Ḥa-muya’s abstruse speculations on the same subject in his al-Meṣbāḥ fi’l-taṣawwof, written sometime in the early 7th/13th century.