Classical Sufi writers built an elaborate, largely invisible government of the world out of the concept of sainthood, and the qutb sits at the top of it. Ali Hujwiri's eleventh century Kashf al-Mahjub and later, more systematically, Ibn al-Arabi's cosmological writings describe a graded company of saints, unknown to the ordinary believer and usually to each other, who between them maintain the moral and spiritual order of creation: the awtad, the pegs, stationed at the four cardinal points; the abdal, the substitutes, a fixed number who die and are seamlessly replaced without the world noticing; the nuqaba, the chiefs; and above them all the qutb, sometimes styled qutb al-aqtab, the pole of poles, the single figure of the age whose spiritual rank anchors the entire structure beneath him.
William Chittick's study of Ibn al-Arabi's metaphysics treats this hierarchy as a serious cosmological claim within the tradition rather than devotional flourish: the world, on this account, could not continue without a living qutb occupying the post, and when one dies another is instantaneously appointed, invisibly, from within the ranks below. Annemarie Schimmel's survey of Islamic mysticism notes that despite the elaborate technical vocabulary, almost no one holding the rank claims it publicly, since claiming spiritual authority for oneself is itself read as evidence against genuine attainment.