مرید

The pir-morid relationship is not just a Sufi technical structure. It is also a cultural template that Iranians use to describe many kinds of teacher-student bonds: the master craftsman and his apprentice, the literary mentor and his protégé, the political theorist and his followers. The asymmetry of the relationship and the willingness of the morid to submit to the pir's authority makes Westerners sometimes uneasy, but inside the Iranian and broader Persianate cultural frame the relationship is understood to require submission only as the entry point. The end-state of the relationship is that the morid becomes a pir in turn, and the lineage continues. The submission is temporary, the transformation is the point. The Sufi orders of Iran, Anatolia, Central Asia, and South Asia all rest on this transmission structure, and the word مرید is the marker of where each new seeker enters the chain.