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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the cultivation of divine presence as an intimate and relational source through the healing agency, hospitality, and "istimāla" (attracting people to Islam through love) of Bosnian Naqshbandi Sufi sheikh Mesud Hadžimejlić (1937–2009).

Paper long abstract

In this paper I examine the cultivation of divine presence as an intimate and relational source through the healing agency, hospitality, and "istimāla" (attracting people to Islam through love) of Bosnian Naqshbandi Sufi sheikh Mesud Hadžimejlić (1937–2009), a family descendant of the Bosnian Naqshbandi pir Husejn Baba Zukić (d. 1799). Based on interviews conducted in Spring 2024 and written sources, the paper explores how sheikh Mesud - regarded as an evlija (walī, friend of God) by local Muslims, exemplifies a broader pattern of Bosnian Sufi sheikhs whose hospitality and care towards others, held restorative powers in the Bosnian postwar period. I theorize such attentiveness in sheikh Mesud's activities as an embodiment of Muslim adab (beautiful/noble behaviour) - a form of transmission and proselytization that Bosnian sheikhs frequently emphasize on one hand, and as micro-moments of care on the other that hold a significant meaning in maintaining everyday relationships. His hospitality across ethnic and religious divides, his nurturing of neighbourliness, and his cultivation of "being with others"—expressed in the Bosnian vernacular as biti dobar čovjek (being a good human/being human)- all speak of everyday piety as ordinary practice, and of agency which is an expression of transmission of divine grace rather than of sovereign willpower. This unbroken transmission through silsila (spiritual genealogy) illustrates circular temporality: divine love flows through generations not as linear progress but as constant return and renewal to its source.