and in the longstanding divisions among four major schools of Islamic law
(shari’a). Contending authority structures are most clearly seen in the frictions and
conflicts between authorized religious authorities (‘ulama) and the more believer-centred
(‘mystical’) teachings of Sufi ‘saints’ whose shrines can spawn highly distinctive
regional cults. Finally, anthropologists’ stress on variety followed the academic
imperative of substituting their tradition of historial particularism for the *Orientalism
and *essentialism of textual scholars who helped to create ‘the Islamic’ as the
prototypical ‘Other’ of the Christian West.