A qalandar is an itinerant Sufi, who learns and teaches during his travels. I’ve been enamored by the idea of the qalandar for some time. However, my worlds and travels are imaginal, through the beauty of literature.
Qalandar is a site for interesting reads; lines of poems, paragraphs from books, lyrics from songs. It’s also an open space. Please send in anything you’d like to contribute to “qalandar [at] islamicate [dot] com.” Please include as much citation information as possible. If you are translating from a language other than English, please include the original text as well. Please do NOT include any commentary. What you send in does not have to do with Islam in any way, the site is more to get a place for people to be exposed to new literature.
It’s going to be a fun experiment, and I hope many of you take part in it.
Hi 😉
I have to take issue with your description of the Qalandar sect as ‘itinerant sufis’. Although the Qalandar tradition did owe much to early Sufiism it is a rather misleading description.
Whilst the Sufi seeks union with god through a rejection of the temporal world, the Qalandar sought unity with god by being rejected by the temporal world. It is quite a major distinction.
The Qalandar also drank alchohol and generaly rejected all aspects of conservative medieval Islamic cultural taboos.
The qalandar were viewed as the height of medieval Middle Eastern Herasy.
To equate them as simply wandering Sufis does not do their deeply complex, largely unknown and truly fascinating ideology justice.
They are indeed a fascinating group who I would like to know far more about.
The most notable qalander being Rumi a former Qadi who rejected his conservative roots and traveled with his Qalandar companion from Iran to Syria.