Lit. ‘rascal, tramp, vagabond’. A term used for the members of an organisation grouped under the concept of futuwwa (chivalry), especially the highway warriors active in the wilderness of Iraq and Persia from the 9th to the 12th centuries CE. The Sufi author Abū’l-Ḥasan al-Hujwīrī (d. 1072 CE) differentiates between the futuwwa of these ʿayyars (which he rejects as merely external) and the spiritual futuwwa of the Sufis and Gnostics.
