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Concept
Futuwwa
Summary
Futuwwa (Arabic: فتوة, "young-manliness" or "chivalry") was a conception of adolescent moral behavior around which myriad institutions of Medieval confraternity developed. With characteristics similar to chivalry and virtue, these communal associations of Arab men gained significant influence as stable social units that exerted religious, military, and political influence in much of the Islamic world.
In its most literal sense, Futuwwa described the quality of being young. It was not until the eighth century C.E. that the word came to represent something like a moral code. The evolution of the word, from adjective to moral framework, was driven by a melding of and Islamicization of Persian and Arab traditions.
The spread of Islam was accompanied by the spread of a definition of the ideal Arab man, or fatā. Even in the Pre-Islamic era, this theme constituted a popular form of poetry that revolved around the personage of Ḥātim aṭ-Ṭā’ī, a famous Arab poet renowned for his generosity. At-Ṭā’ī reappears in early Futuwwa literature as a pre-Islamic ancestor to the chivalrous moral code that would later find expression in similar Islamic icons, namely Alī ibn Abū Ṭālib. Over time, this poetry would confer upon fāta, an epithet employed in the Quran to celebrate the righteousness of such figures as Yūsuf and Ibrahīm in the Sleepers of the Cave, a deeper moral significance. The development of an Arabic notion of the ideal man was further influenced by the Persian concepts of Javānmardi, a similar system of ideals closely linked to Sufi orders.
Among the earliest attempts at crystallizing the concept of futuwwa into literary form was a ninth century treatise by Abū al-Fātik linking the behavior of fatā with expectations governing behavior at the table. The associations of young men alluded to in al-Fātik's code, precursors to more formally constituted brotherhoods of later centuries, are first described in the Kitāb al-Aghānī, a ninth century anthology of poems and songs from the Arab world.
Official source
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