Leer — Mystical Dimensions of Islam — Annemarie Schimmel

MYSTICAL DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM by ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL MYSTICAL DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM This page intentionally left blank by ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL MYSTICAL DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill © 1975 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America 09 08 07 06 05 20 19 18 17 16 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical dimensions of Islam. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Sufism. I. Title. BP189.2.S34 2 9?'-4 75-16112 ISBN 0-8078-1223-4 (doth) ISBN-13:978-0-8078-1271-6 (pbk.) TO THE SAINTS OF SHIRAZ This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS / xi ABBREVIATIONS / xiii FOREWORD / Xvii THE ARABIC ALPHABET AND NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTION / THE MUSLIM YEAR / XXi 1. WHAT IS SUFISM? / 3 2. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 23 The Formative Period / 23 xix viii / CONTENTS Some Mystical Leaders of the Late Ninth Century / 42 A l-Hallaj, Martyr of Mystical Love j 62 The Period of Consolidation: From Shibli to Ghazzdli j 77 3. THE PATH / 98 The Foundations of the Path / 98 Stations and Stages / 109 Love and Annihilation j 130 Forms of Worship j 148 4. MAN AND HIS PERFECTION / 187 Some Notes on Sufi Psychology j 187 Good and Evil: The Role of Satan / 193 Saints and Miracles j 199 The Veneration of the Prophet j 213 5. SUFI ORDERS AND FRATERNITIES / 228 Community Life f 228 Abu Sa'-id ibn AbPl-Khayr / 241 The First Orders / 244 6. THEOSOPHICAL SUFISM / 259 Suhrawardi Maqtul, the Master of Illumination j 2$g lbn z Arabi, the Great Master / 263 Ibn al-Farid, Mystical Poet j 274 The Development of Ibn c Arabi’s Mysticism of Unity j 279 7. THE ROSE AND THE NIGHTINGALE: PERSIAN AND TURKISH MYSTICAL POETRY / 287 Immortal Rose j 287 The Pilgrimage of the Birds: Sanffi and c Attar j 301 Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi j 309 Turkish Popular Mysticism j 328 CONTENTS / ix 8. SUFISM IN INDO-PAKISTAN / 344 The Classical Period / 344 The “Nacjshbandt Reaction” j 363 Khwdja Mir Dard, a “Sincere Muhammadan" Mystical Poetry in the Regional Languages— Sindhi, Panjabi, Pashto / 383 9. EPILOGUE / 403 APPENDIX 1 Letter Symbolism in Sufi Literature / 411 APPENDIX 2 The Feminine Element in Sufism / 426 BIBLIOGRAPHY / 437 ADDENDUM TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY / 469 INDEX OF KORANIC QUOTATIONS / 475 INDEX OF PROPHETIC TRADITIONS / 477 INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES / 479 / 373 INDEX OF SUBJECTS / 497 This page intentionally left blank ILLUSTRATIONS The Martyrdom of al-Hallaj / 63 Woman in Trance / 151 AbuTAdyan Passing through the Pyre / Rembrandt’s Copy of a Mogul Miniature San c an Tending the Swine / 269 201 / 2 Saint with Tame Lions / 349 This page intentionally left blank ABBREVIATIONS Since this book is intended primarily for the general reader, we have—though reluctantly—refrained from having too many footnotes or too large a bibliography. The reader will find much additional information about personalities, terminology, and historical facts in the Encyclopedia of Islam (1913-36; 2d ed., i960-); the relevant articles have not been mentioned in the footnotes. The following frequently cited works are abbreviated in the text: A Abu Nu c aym al-Isfahani. Hilyat ul-auliya 3 . 10 vols. Cairo, 1932. AD Fariduddln c Attar. Diwan-i qas/Tid wa ghazaliyat. Ed¬ ited by Sa c id Nafisl. Tehran, 1339 SI1./1960. Number of poem cited. AP Armaghan-i Pak. Edited by Sheikh Muhammad Ikram. Karachi, 1953. B Ruzbihan Baqli. “Skarh-i shathiyat,” Les paradoxes des soups. Edited by Henri Corbin. Tehran and Paris, 1966. Paragraphs cited. BA Ruzbihan Baqli. " c Abhar aHashiqin” Le jasmine des fideles d’amour. Edited by Henri Corbin. Tehran and Paris, 1958. Paragraphs cited. BO John K. Birge. The Bektashi Order of Dervishes. 1937. Reprint. London, 1965. CL Henri Corbin. L’Homme de lumiere dans le soufisme iranien. Paris, 1971. D Jalaluddin Rumi. Diwan-i kabir yd Kulliyat-i Shams. Edited by Badi c uz-Zaman Furuzanfar. Vols. 1-7. Teh¬ ran, 1336 sh./1957. Number of poem cited. G Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali. Ihya 3 c ulum ad-din. 4 vols. Bulaq, 1289 h./1872—73. H C A 1 I ibn c Uthman al-Hujwiri. The “Kashf al-Mahjub,” the Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism by al-Hujwiri. xiii xiv / ABBREVIATIONS Translated by Reynold A. Nicholson. Gibb Memorial Series, no. 17. 1911. Reprint. London, 1959. IK Khwaja Mir Dard. c llm ul-kitab. Bhopal, 1309 h./i8gi- 92 - K Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Kalabadhi. The Doctrine of the Sufis. Translated by A. J. Arberry. Cambridge, 1935. L Abu Nasr as-Sarraj. Kitdb al-luma c fVt-tasawwuf. Edited by Reynold A. Nicholson. Leiden and London, 1914. M Jalaluddin Ruml. Mathnaivi-i ma c nawi. Edited and translated by Reynold A. Nicholson. 6 vols. London, 1925-40. Volume and line cited. MC Jalaluddin Rumi. Mathnawi-i macnawi. Commentary by Reynold A. Nicholson. 2 vols. London, 1925-40. MM Marijan Mole. Les mystiques musulmans. Paris, 1965. MT Fariduddin ‘Attar. Mantiq at-tayr. Edited by M. Jawad Shakur. Tehran, 1962. N Maulana ‘Abdurrahman Jaml. Nafahat al-uns. Edited by M. Tauhidipur. Tehran, 1336 SI1./1957. NS Reynold A. Nicholson. Studies in Islamic Mysticism. ig2i. Reprint. Cambridge, 1967. P Louis Massignon. La passion d’al-Hosayn ibn Mansour Al-Hallaj, martyr mystique de I’lslam execute a Bagdad le 26 Mars 922. 2 vols. Paris, 1922. Q AbiiTQasim al-Qushayri. Ar-risala fi c ilm at-tasawwuf. Cairo, 1330 h./igi2. QR AbiiTQasim al-Qushayri. Ar-rasa’il al-qushayriyya. Ed¬ ited and translated by F. M. Hasan. Karachi, 1964. R Hellmut Ritter. Das Meer der Seele. Gott, Welt und Mensch in den Geschichten Fariduddin c Attars. Leiden, 1955 - S AbuTMajd Majdud Sana 3 !. Hadiqat al-haqiqat wa sha- rfat at-tariqat. Edited by Mudarris Razawi. Tehran, 1329 sh./1950. SD AbuTMajd Majdud Sana 3 !. Diwan. Edited by Mudarris Razawi. Tehran, 1341 SI1./1962. T Fariduddin ‘Attar. Tadhkirat al-auliycf. Edited by Reynold A. Nicholson. 2 vols. 1905-7. Reprint. London and Leiden, 1959. U Fariduddin ‘Attar. Musibatname. Edited by N. Fisal. Tehran, 1338 SI1./1959. ABBREVIATIONS / XV V Fariduddin c Attar. Ushturname. Edited by Mahdi Mu- haqqiq. Tehran, 1339sh./1960. W Paul Nwyia, S.J. Exegese coranique et langage mys¬ tique. Beirut, 1970. X C A 1 I ibn Ahmad ad-DaylamL Sirat-i Ibn al-Hafif ash- Shirazi. Translated by Junayd-i Shlrazl. Edited by Anne- marie Schimmel. Ankara, 1955. Y Yunus Emre. Divan. Edited by Abdiilbaki Golpinarli. Istanbul, 1943. This page intentionally left blank FOREWORD To write about Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, is an al¬ most impossible task. At the first step, a wide mountain range ap¬ pears before the eye—and the longer the seeker pursues the path, the more difficult it seems to reach any goal at all. He may dwell in the rose gardens of Persian mystical poetry or try to reach the icy peaks of theosophic speculations; he may dwell in the lowlands of popu¬ lar saint worship or drive his camel through the endless deserts of theoretical discourses about the nature of Sufism, of God, and of the world; or he may be content to have an all-around glimpse of the landscape, enjoying the beauty of some of the highest peaks bathed in the sunlight of early morning, or colored by the violet haze of a cool evening. In any case, only the elect few will reach the farthest mountain on which the mythical bird, Simurgh, lives —to understand that they have reached only what was already in themselves. Thus, to set out and delineate some main features of Sufism, both historically and phenomenologically, will yield no result that satisfies everybody: it is easy to overlook certain aspects and give too much weight to others. The amount of oriental and occi¬ dental literature existent in print and in manuscript is beyond counting, so that even from this viewpoint a full account is not to be achieved. xvii xviii / FOREWORD Yet, my students at Harvard have urged me to put together the notes that formed the basis of several courses on Sufism—notes that consist both of literary evidence and of personal experiences with numerous friends in the Islamic East, mainly in Turkey and in Pakistan. My thanks are due to all of those who have helped me—be it only by casual remarks—to formulate my ideas about Sufism and to those who took part in the growth of this book. I wish to thank especially Dr. Charles Forman of Wheaton Col¬ lege, Norton, Massachusetts, who was kind enough to go through the manuscript to polish it from the linguistic standpoint and to suggest some simplifications. With special gratitude I acknowledge a generous subsidy from the Ozai-Durrani Funds, Harvard University, which was given in sup¬ port of the exploration of Indo-Muslim culture contained in this book. My mother has, during many years, and especially during the period of final typing, shown the virtues of patience and love, which are so typical of the true Sufi; she never failed to encourage me in my work. ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL THE ARABIC ALPHABET AND NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTION There is no single, commonly accepted system of trans¬ literating languages written in Arabic characters. Furthermore, the transcription system changes according to the languages concerned; thus, an Arabic d would be a z in Persian, a z in Modern Turkish. European scholars have used a wide variety of transcription sys¬ tems, and one of the main problems is posed by the transliteration of oriental names into a Western alphabet. Throughout this book the generally accepted American transcription system has been used. In the following list the other possible transcriptions of each letter have been indicated after the semicolon. T means “modern Turkish alphabet.” Letter in Numerical Name and transcription basic form value \ i alif: a, 5 , carrier of the initial vowel. 2 biF: b o 400 ta > \ t vA> 500 tha 3 : th; t; T: s £ 3 jim: j; g, dj, dsch; T: c £ 8 hd : h; T: h c 600 kha 1 -. kh; h, x; T: h A 4 dal: d i 700 dhal: dh; d; T: z 5 200 red: r \ 7 zay: z o* 60 sin: s k 3 °° shin: sh; s, sch; T: s o* 9 ° sad: s; s, 9; T: s 800 dad: d; non-Arabic, z; T: z xix XX / THE ARABIC ALPHABET 9 ta 3 : t; T: t a goo za 3 : z; z L 70 ' ayn: c , or unnoticed i 1000 ghayn: gh; g, g;T:g <j > 80 fa 3 : f 3 100 qaf: q; k, k, gh; T: k dT 20 kaf: k J 3 ° lam: 1 r 40 mim: m b 50 niin: n 0 5 ha 3 : h J 6 waw: w; v, u, 6, ou 10 ya 3 : y; j, 1, e. The additional Persian letters: zha 3 : zh; j £ cha 3 : ch; c, tsch; T: 9 <—> » pc?-, p & gaf -g Urdu, Sindhi, Panjabi, and Pashto, as well as other Islamic lan¬ guages o£ non-Arabic origin, have added a number of letters and diacritical marks to secure the correct pronounciation. The diphthongs, j\, a-f-u, and a-\-y, ^\, are transcribed as aw, au, o, ow, and ay, aj, ei, ej, respectively. The three short vowels, which are not expressed in writing, are transcribed as a, e\ i, e\ and u, o respectively. THE MUSLIM YEAR The Muslim year is a lunar year of 354 days, 12 months of 29 and 30 days. The calendar begins with Muhammad’s emigration from Mecca to Medina in 622; thus the year 300 h.=9i2-i 3 a.d., 600 h.= 1203-4 a.d,, 1000 h.= 1591-92 a.d., and 1300 h.=1822-23 a.d. Muharram: 10, 'Ashura, the memorial of Husayn ibn "Alt’s death at Kerbela on 10 Muharram 680 a.d. Safar Rabl c ul-awwal: 12, birthday of the Prophet. Rabl c ath-thani: 11, anniversary of c Abdidl-Qadir Gilani. Jumada al-ula Jumada al-akhira Rajab: at the beginning, raga 3 ib -nights (conception of the Prophet). 27, mi'raj, the Prophet’s ascension to Heaven. Sha'ban: 14-15, shab-i barat, when the destinies are fixed for the coming year. Ramadan: the month of fasting. In one of the last three odd nights—generally thought to be the twenty-seventh—the laylat ul-qadr, during which the Koran was revealed for the first time. Shawwal: begins with the 'id ul-fitr, the feast of breaking the fasting. Dhu’l-Qa'da DhuTHijja: the month of Pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj). From the tenth to the twelfth , the 'id ul-adha, Feast of Sacrifices. xxi This page intentionally left blank MYSTICAL DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM Glory to God Who has not vouchsafed to His creatures any means of attaining unto knowledge of Him except through impotence to attain unto knowledge of Him. Somebody asked Abu Hafs: “Who is a Sufi?” He answered: “A Sufi does not ask who a Sufi is.” i. WHAT IS SUFISM? In recent years many books have been published on Sufism and the spiritual life in Islam. Each of them has touched upon a different facet, for the phenomenon usually called Sufism is so broad and its appearance so protean that nobody can venture to describe it fully. Like the blind men in Rumi’s famous story, when they were made to touch an elephant, each described it ac¬ cording to the part of the body his hands had touched: to one the elephant appeared like a throne, to another like a fan, or like a water pipe, or like a pillar. But none was able to imagine what the whole animal would look like (M Such is the case with Sufism, the generally accepted name for Islamic mysticism. To approach its partial meaning we have to ask ourselves first, what mysticism means. That mysticism contains something mysterious, not to be reached by ordinary means or by intellectual effort, is understood from the root common to the words mystic and mystery, the Greek myein, “to close the eyes.” i. See Fritz Meier, “Zur Geschichte der Legende von den Blinden und dem Elefan- ten,” in “Das Problem der Natur im esoterischen Monismus des Islams," Eranos- Jahrbuch 14 (1946): 174. “The Blind Men and the Elephant," a Hindu fable by John Godfrey Saxe. Shah Wallullah of Dehli speaks of the blind who tried to describe a tree according to the part their hands touched; see Shah Wallullah, Lamafyat, ed. Ghulam Mustafa QasimI (Hyderabad, Sind, n.d.), p. 4. 3 4 / WHAT IS SUFISM? Mysticism has been called “the great spiritual current which goes through all religions.” In its widest sense it may be defined as the consciousness of the One Reality—be it called Wisdom, Light, Love, or Nothing . 2 Such definitions, however, merely point our way. For the reality that is the goal of the mystic, and is ineffable, cannot be under¬ stood or explained by any normal mode of perception; neither philosophy nor reason can reveal it. Only the wisdom of the heart, gnosis, may give insight into some of its aspects. A spiritual experi¬ ence that depends upon neither sensual nor rational methods is needed. Once the seeker has set forth upon the way to this Last Reality, he will be led by an inner light. This light becomes stronger as he frees himself from the attachments of this world or—as the Sufis would say—polishes the mirror of his heart. Only after a long period of purification—the via purgativa of Christian mysticism—will he be able to reach the via illuminativa, where he becomes endowed with love and gnosis. From there he may reach the last goal of all mystical quest, the unio mystica. This may be experienced and expressed as loving union, or as the visio beatifica, in which the spirit sees what is beyond all vision, surrounded by the primordial light of God; it may also be described as the “lifting of the veil of ignorance,” the veil that covers the essential identity of God and His creatures. Mysticism can be defined as love of the Absolute—for the power that separates true mysticism from mere asceticism is love. Divine love makes the seeker capable of bearing, even of enjoying, all the pains and afflictions that God showers upon him in order to test him and to purify his soul. This love can carry the mystic’s heart to the Divine Presence “like the falcon which carries away the prey,” separating him, thus, from all that is created in time. One can find these essentially simple ideas in every type of mys¬ ticism. The mystics of all religions have tried to symbolize their ex¬ periences in three different groups of images: The never-ending quest for God is symbolized in the “Path” on which the “way¬ farer” has to proceed, as in the numerous allegories dealing with Pilgrim’s Progress or the Heavenly Journey. The transformation 2. The best introduction to mysticism is still Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (1911; paperback ed.. New York, 1956). WHAT IS SUFISM? / 5 of the soul through tribulation and painful purification is often expressed in the imagery of alchemy or similar processes from nature and prescientific science: the age-old dream of producing gold from base material is realized on the spiritual level. Eventual¬ ly, the nostalgia of the lover and the longing for union was ex¬ pressed by symbols taken from human love; often a strange and fascinating combination of human and divine love permeates the verses of the mystics. Notwithstanding similarities of description of mystical experi¬ ences, it is advisable to distinguish between two main types, which have been classified as Mysticism of Infinity and Mysticism of Personality. The former type has found its highest and purest expression in the system of Plotinus and in the Upanishads, par¬ ticularly as elaborated in Shankara’s advaita philosophy. Sufism comes close to it in some of the forms developed by the Ibn c ArabI school. Here, the Numen is conceived as the Being beyond all being, or even as the Not-Being, because it cannot be described by any of the categories of finite thought; it is infinite, timeless, spaceless, the Absolute Existence, and the Only Reality. By con¬ trast the world possesses only a “limited reality,” which derives its conditioned existence from the Absolute Existence of the Di¬ vine. It may be symbolized as the boundless ocean in which the individual self vanishes like a drop, or as the desert, which shows itself in ever new sand dunes that hide its depths, or as the water out of which the world is crystallized like ice. This type of mys¬ ticism was often attacked by prophets and reformers, because it seemed to deny the value of the human personality and to result in pantheism or monism, thus constituting the greatest threat to personal responsibility. The idea of continuous emanation in contrast to the unique divine act of creation was considered, by both Muslim and Christian mystics, to be incompatible with the Biblico-Koranic idea of a creatio ex nihilo. In the so-called Mys¬ ticism of Personality, the relation between man and God is per¬ ceived as that of creature and Creator, of a slave in the presence of his Lord, or of a lover yearning for his Beloved. This type is more commonly found in earlier Sufism. These two types of mystical experience, however, are rarely met with in their purest forms. Especially in mystical poetry, an author may describe God in terminology taken from a pure love relation 6 / WHAT IS SUFISM? and a few lines later use language that lends itself to an exclusively “pantheistic” interpretation. A differentiation between the “voluntaristic” and the “gnostic” approaches to mystical experience is somewhat easier. The mystic of the voluntaristic type wants to “qualify himself with the quali¬ ties of God,” as the Prophetic tradition says, and to unite his own will completely with God’s will, thus eventually overcoming the theoretical difficulties posed by the dilemma of predestination and free will. This mysticism can be seen as a practical life process. The mystic of the gnostic type strives for a deeper knowledge of God: he attempts to know the structure of His universe or to interpret the degree of His revelations—although no mystic could ever dare to “know” His Essence. Did not Dhu 3 n-Nun (d. 859), usually re¬ garded as one of the founders of speculations about ma c rifa, or gnosis, warn his fellow mystics: “To ponder about the Essence of God is ignorance, and to point to Him is associationism (shirk), and real gnosis is bewilderment” (N 34)? Despite this bewilder¬ ment, the gnostic approach often led to the building of theosoph- ical systems with its adherents tending to interpret every aspect of mysticism in the light of their own particular theories, some¬ times even denying the simple experience of loving submission. In Islamic mysticism, both aspects are equally strong, and in later periods they are intermingled. In their formative period, the Sufis admitted of a twofold ap¬ proach to God. As Hujwlrl (d. circa 1071) says in his discussion of the states of “intimacy” and “respect”: There is a difference between one who is burned by His Majesty in the fire of love and one who is illuminated by His Beauty in the light of contemplation. (H 367) There is a difference between one who meditates upon the Divine acts and one who is amazed at the Divine Majesty; the one is a follower of friendship, the other is a companion of love. (H 373) One might also recall the distinction made by Jam! in speaking of the two types of advanced Sufis: some are those to whom the Primordial Grace and Lovingkindness has granted salva¬ tion after their being submerged in complete union and in the wave of tauhid [unification], [taking them out] of the belly of the fish “Anni¬ hilation” on the shore of separation and in the arena of permanent sub¬ sistence, so that they might lead the people towards salvation. The others are those who are completely submerged in the ocean of WHAT IS SUFISM? / 7 Unity and have been so completely naughted in the belly of the fish “Annihilation” that never a news or trace comes to the shore of separa¬ tion and the direction of subsistence . . . and the sanctity of perfecting others is not entrusted to them. (N 8-9) The distinction that modern history of religions makes between the so-called “prophetic” and the “mystic” spirit is clearly visible in Jami's description of the tw r o types of mystics—those who prac¬ tice complete reclusion ( Weltabkehr ) and are solely concerned with their own salvation in the first “flight of the one toward the One,” and those who return from their mystical experience in a higher, sanctified state of mind and are able to lead other people on the right path. Approaches to the phenomenon “Sufism” are manifold. To an¬ alyze the mystical experience itself is next to impossible since words can never plumb the depths of this experience. Even the finest psychological analysis is limited; words remain on the shore, as the Sufis would say. It would be easier to understand Sufism through an analysis of given structures: the French scholar Henry Corbin, in his book on Ibn 'Arab!, has shown to what depths such a study of structure underlying a specific mystical-philosophical system can lead. Analyses of the language of mysticism and the development of the “mystical lexicon” (Louis Massignon and, more recently, Paul Nwyia) can help illuminate the formative period of Sufi thought. The study of symbols and images used by the mystics and of the degree of their interdependence belongs to this field; it opens the way to an examination of the contribution of Sufism to the development of Islamic languages, literatures, and arts. Since Sufism is to a very large extent built upon the principle of the disciple’s initiation, the different methods of spiritual educa¬ tion, the exercises practiced in the Sufi orders, the psychological phases of the progress, the formation of orders, and their sociologi¬ cal and cultural role are rewarding fields of research. Of prime importance here are the penetrating studies of the Swiss scholar Fritz Meier. European scholars have responded to the phenomenon of Is¬ lamic mysticism in different ways, as can be understood from these remarks. Europe's first contact with Sufi ideas can be traced back to the Middle Ages: the works of the Catalanian mystic and scholar Ramon Lull (d. 1316) show a remarkable influence of Sufi litera- 8 / WHAT IS SUFISM? ture. 3 The first figure from the history of Sufism to be introduced into European literature was Rabi'a al- c Adawiyya, the great wom¬ an saint of the eighth century; her legend was brought to Europe by Joinville, the chancellor of Louis IX, in the late thirteenth century. Rabi'a’s figure was used in a seventeenth-century French treatise on pure love as a model of Divine love, 4 and her story has been retold more than once in the West, the latest echo being a contemporary German short story (Max Mell, “Die schonen Hande”). Travelers who visited the Near and Middle East in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought back information about rites of the dervishes, with both the ritual dance of the Whirling Der¬ vishes (Mevlevis) and the strange performances of the Howling Dervishes (Rifa'l’s) attracting casual visitors. In 1638 the learned Fabricius of Rostock University edited and translated, for the first time, a poem by the great Egyptian mystic Ibn al-Farid (d. 1235). Most of the information about oriental spirituality, however, was derived from the translations of Persian classical poetry— Sa'di’s Gulistan has been one of the favorite books of European intellectuals since Adam Olearius produced its first complete trans¬ lation into German in 1651. A century later, Sir William Jones at Fort William, Calcutta, fostered the study of Persian poetry, among other subjects, and as a result the first translations of Hafiz became available in the West. His ideas about Sufi poetry have influenced many English-speaking orientalists, although one may find, in some works on Sufism written during the nineteenth cen¬ tury, rather absurd views in wild confusion. Hafiz’s poetical imag¬ ery—unfortunately mostly taken at face value—has largely colored the Western image of Sufism. In the nineteenth century, historical sources and important Sufi texts were made available in print both in the Middle East and in Europe, so that scholars could begin to form their own ideas about the origin and early development of Sufism. Yet most of the sources available were of rather late origin and rarely contained reliable information about the earliest stages of the mystical move¬ ment in Islam. That is why the interpreters usually agreed that Sufism must be a foreign plant in the sandy desert of Islam, the 3. Annemarie Schimmel, “Raymundus Lullus und seine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Islam," Eine Heilige Kirche, fasc. 1 (1953-54). 4. Henri Bremond, Histoire du sentiment religieux en France, vol. 9 (Paris, 1928). WHAT IS SUFISM? / 9 religion that was so little known and even less appreciated and that could not possibly be related to any finer and higher spiritual movement. 5 A German professor of Divinity, F. A. D. Tholuck, produced the first comprehensive book on Sufism in 1821, called Ssufisrniis sive theosophia persarum pantheistica, and four years later an anthology called Bliithensammlung aus der Morgenlandischen Mystik. Amazingly enough, Tholuck—himself a good Protestant and therefore not at all prone to mystical ideas—understood that “the Sufi doctrine was both generated and must be illustrated out of Muhammad’s own mysticism.” This statement is all the more surprising in view of the miscellaneous character of the manu¬ scripts and printed books at his disposal. 6 During the following decades, several theories about the origin of Sufism were brought forth, as A. J. Arberry has shown in his useful book An Introduction to the History of Sufism , 7 It will suf¬ fice to mention a few of those theories. E. H. Palmer, in his Oriental Mysticism (1867), held that Sufism is “the development of the Primaeval religion of the Aryan race” 8 —a theory not unknown to some German writers during the Nazi 5. Basic sources are: A. J. Arberry, Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam (Lon¬ don, 1950), which deals with the history of the classical period of Sufism; Marijan Mole, Les mystiques musulmans (Paris, 1965), the best short introduction to Sufism, its history and meaning; G.-C. Anawati and Louis Gardet, Mystique musulmane (Paris, 1961), a fine study of the early period of Sufism and of Sufi practices, mainly dhikr, “recollection,” as seen by Catholic theologians. See also Louis Gardet, Experiences mystiques en terres nonchretiennes (Paris, 1953). Cyprian Rice, O. P., The Persian Sufis, 2d ed. (London, 1969), is a lovable and understanding booklet about mystical experience. Fritz Meier, Vom Wesen der islamischen Mystik (Basel, 1943), is a small but weighty book that stresses the importance of initiation in Sufism; it contains rich source material. Seyyed H. Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam (London, 1966; New York, 1967), contains a number of important remarks about the Iranian aspect of Sufism, which is dealt with more fully in the same author’s Sufi Essais (London, 1972). Inayat Khan, The Sufi Message, which has been reprinted many times, is a modern and subjective, yet impressive interpretation. Idries Shah, The Sufis, as well as his other books, should be avoided by serious students. 6. Friedrich August Deofidus Tholuck, Ssufismus sive theosophia persarum pan¬ theistica (Berlin, 1821), and the same author’s Bliithensammlung aus der Morgen- Uindischen Mystik (Berlin, 1825), are still quite revealing. 7. The history of Sufi studies in Europe has been discussed by A. J. Arberry in An Introduction to the History of Sufism (London, 1942). 8. E. H. Palmer, Oriental Mysticism: A Treatise on Sufistic and Unitarian, Theos¬ ophy of the Persians (1867; reprint ed., London, 1969), is immature but has some good points; John P. Brown, The Dervishes (1868; reprint ed., London, 1968), gives much important material, though it is not scholarly. lO / WHAT IS SUFISM? period. In any case, Sufism has often been considered a typically Iranian development inside Islam. There is no doubt that certain important Iranian elements have survived through the ages be¬ neath its surface, as both Henri Corbin and Seyyed H. Nasr have recently emphasized. 9 Many eminent scholars, mainly in Great Britain, have stressed the importance of Neoplatonic influences upon the development of Sufism. Nobody would deny that Neoplatonism had deeply permeated the Near East—the so-called “Theology of Aristotle” (which is, in fact, Porphyry’s commentary on Plotinus’s Enneads) was translated into Arabic as early as 840. Neoplatonism was “in the air,” as Reynold A. Nicholson pointed out in the famous in¬ troduction to his selection from Jalaluddin Rumi’s lyrical poetry in 1898—the first book in the long list of his still unrivaled publica¬ tions in the field of Sufism. 10 Nicholson, however, understood that the early ascetic movement can be explained without difficulties from its Islamic roots and that, therefore, the original form of Sufism is “a native product of Islam itself.” Since Islam grew out of a soil in which ancient oriental. Neoplatonic, and Christian influences were strong, a number of secondary influences may have worked upon Islam even in its earliest phase. It is only natural that the Christian influences should have in¬ terested many European scholars (Adalbert Merx, Arend Jan Wensinck, Margaret Smith), 11 who mainly tried to explore the relations of Muslims with the Syrian monks. The best studies in this field have been written by the Swedish Bishop Tor Andrae, to whom we also owe the classical discussion of the veneration of the Prophet Muhammad in mystical Islam. 12 The problem of influences becomes more difficult when one thinks of the relations with religious traditions outside the Near 9. See also Emil Brogelmann, Die religidsen Erlebnisse der persischen Mystiker (Hannover, 1932); a short survey is given by A. H. Zarrinkoob, “Persian Sufism in Its Historical Perspective,” Iranian Studies 3 (1970): 3-4. 10. Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam (1914; reprint ed., Chester Springs, Pa., 1962), is still a classic, though it is outdated at certain places. His Studies in Is¬ lamic Mysticism (1921; reprint ed., Cambridge, 1967), contains three excellent studies on outstanding personalities (Abu Sa c id, Ibn al-Farid. Jilt); and his The Idea of Per¬ sonality in Sufism (Cambridge, 1923) is a collection of lectures. 11. Adalbert Merx, Ideen und Grundlinien einer allgemeinen Geschichte der Mys- tik (Heidelberg, 1893). Arend Jan Wensinck, AbuH-farag Bar hebreaus, The Book of the Dove (Leiden, 1919). 12. Tor Andrae, 7 Myrtentradgarden (Uppsala, 1947). For his other works see the Bibliography. WHAT IS SUFISM? / 11 Eastern world. 13 Many scholars were, and some still are, inclined to accept Indian influences on the formative period of Sufism, be¬ ginning with Alfred von Kremer (1868) and Reinhart P. Dozy (i86g). But even Max Horten’s numerous articles in this field could not bring any stringent proof of such influences 14 in the early period; for later times, the situation is slightly different. 15 For the earliest period, influences from Turkestan are much more important, as Richard Hartmann has shown; Ignaz Goldzi- her had already pointed out parallel traditions in Islamic mystical tales and Buddhist stories, but this kind of parallelism can be easily traced back to the common sources, e.g., the Indian fables of the Hitopadesa and Panchatantra, which were translated into the Near Eastern languages before and shortly after the advent of Islam. And the miracles of saints are the same all over the world. The Turkestani contribution is, however, highlighted in our day by some Turkish mystics who show a tendency of speaking of a typically “Turkish” type of mysticism that comprises a strict Mys¬ ticism of Infinity, which describes God as “positive Not-Being.” But such generalizations are dangerous. Even the rather far-fetched possibility of early Chinese—i.e., Taoist—influences on Sufism has been discussed (first by Omar Farrukh). For the later period, the Japanese scholar Toshihiko Izutsu has drawn some interesting parallels between Taoist struc¬ tures of thought and Ibn c Arabi’s mystical system. 16 The study of a single mystic’s life and work can occupy a scholar throughout his life: Louis Massignon’s research into the person¬ ality of al-Hallaj, the “martyr of divine love,” is the best example for this approach; Hellmut Ritter’s masterly book on c Attar, Das 13. See Ignaz Goldziher, "Materialien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Sufismus,” Wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes 13 (1899). Reynold A. Nicholson, “A Historical Enquiry concerning the Origin and Development of Sufism," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1906, p. 303; Richard Hartmann, ‘‘Zur Frage nach der Her- kunft und den Anfiingen des Sufitums,” Der Islam 6 (1915): Annemarie Schimmel, “The Origin and Early Development of Sufism,” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, 1958. 14. Max Horten, Indische Stromungen in der islamischen Mystik (Heidelberg, 1927-28); like his article “Der Sinn der islamischen Mystik," Scientia, July 1927, this book should be used with caution. 15. Robert C. Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysticism (London, i960), is well docu¬ mented and thought-provoking, though it overstresses the Indian elements. 16. Omar Farrukh, At-tasawwuf fi?l-Islam (Beirut, 1957). For parallels see Toshihiko Izutsu, A Comparative Study of the Key Philosophical Concepts of Sufism and Taoism, 2 vols. (Tokyo, 1966-67). 12 / WHAT IS SUFISM? Meer der Seele (The Ocean of the Soul), is the result of an ideal combination of strict philology combined with aesthetic and re¬ ligious understanding. On the other hand, an investigation of a particular mystical attitude, like Benedikt Reinert’s study of tawak- kul, “trust in God,” reveals the various facets of one single stage of the Path and sheds light on many kindred problems. Whether we concentrate upon the history of Sufism, by using a vertical cut, or upon its methods, expressions, and experiences, by taking a cross section, the main problem is the fact that previously unknown manuscripts frequently come to light. 17 The libraries of the Islamic countries, and those in the West, still contain many works that may shed new light upon any of the problems at stake. Even now there is so muih material available in the different languages of Islam that any generalization seems impossible. 18 That is why this book can give only a glimpse of a few aspects of Sufism; even this will, probably, be tinged by a personal predilec¬ tion for mystical poetry derived from the large area of Iranian cultural influence. How did the Sufis themselves interpret the meaning of the word Sufism? In interpreting Islamic mystical texts, one must not forget that many sayings to which we give a deep theological or philosophical meaning may have been intended to be suggestive wordplay; some of the definitions found in the classical texts may have been uttered 17. For this problem see Fritz Meier, "Ein wichtiger Handschriftenfund zur Sufik,” Oriens 20 (1967). 18. As an antidote to the large amount of Arabic and Persian sources, one should consult Ibn al-Jauzi, Talbis Iblis (Cairo, 1340 h./1921-22), translated by David Samuel Margoliouth as “The Devil’s Delusion,” Islamic Culture 12 (1938), a poisonous book attacking the degeneration of Sufism in the twelfth century. Oriental scholars have published a number of general studies on the history of Sufism in the last twenty years, (luring which there has been a growing interest in the spiritual life of Islam. Abu 3 l- ‘•Ala 3 c AffIfi, At-tasawwuf: ath-thaurat ar-ruhiyya fPl-Islam [Sufism, the Spiritual Revolution in Islam] (Cairo, 1963); Muhammad Mustafa HilmI, Al-hayat ar-ruhiyya fPl-Islam [Spiritual Life in Islam] (Cairo, 1954); M. Qasim GhanI, Ta^rikh-i tasawwuf dar Islam [History of Sufism in Islam] (Tehran, 1330 sh./1951). Among the anthologies of Sufi texts produced in the West, the following useful collections should be men¬ tioned: Johannes Pedersen, Muhammedansk mystik (Copenhagen, 1923); Margaret Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam (London, 1950); Margaret Smith, The Sufi Path of Love (London, 1954); Martino Mario Moreno, Antologia della Mistica Arabo- Persiana (Bari, Italy, 1951): Emile Dermenghem, Vies des saints musulmans (Algiers, 1942); Virginia Vacca, Vite e detti di Santi Musulmani (Torino, n.d.). Specialized studies and anthologies will be mentioned in relevant places. WHAT IS SUFISM? / 13 by the Sufi masters as a sort of kcfan, a paradox meant to shock the hearer, to kindle discussion, to perplex the logical faculties, and thus to engender a nonlogical understanding of the real meaning of the word concerned, or of the mystical “state” or “stage” in question. The resolution of apparent contradictions in some of these sayings might be found, then, in an act of illumination. This is at least one possible explanation of the fact that the masters give many different answers to the same question. This “willful para¬ dox” and “pious highfalutin” was perhaps “intended to make their flesh creep a little for their health’s sake,” as W. H. Temple Gaird- ner puts it, who with full right asks: “Do we not take their lan¬ guage too seriously? It parades as scientific; it is really poetico- rhetorical.” 19 Indeed, one aspect of mystical language in Sufism that should never be overlooked is the tendency of the Arabs to play with words. The structure of the Arabic language—built upon triliteral roots—lends itself to the developing of innumerable word forms following almost mathematical rules. It might be likened to the structure of an arabesque that grows out of a simple geo¬ metric pattern into complicated multiangled stars, or out of a flower motif into intricate lacework. A tendency to enjoy these infinite possibilities of the language has greatly influenced the style of Arabic poets and prose writers, and in many sayings of the Sufis one can detect a similar joy in linguistic play; the author in¬ dulges in deriving different meanings from one root, he loves rhymes and strong rhythmical patterns—features inherited by the mystics of the Persian, Turkish, and Indo-Muslim tongues. But this almost magical interplay of sound and meaning, which con¬ tributes so much to the impressiveness of a sentence in the Islamic languages, is lost in translation. So also are the numerous hidden allusions inherent in every root of the Arabic tongue, which point to the whole range of historical, theological, and poetical experi¬ ences that may have been present in the mind of the author of an apparently simple statement or an easy-flowing verse. Another problem is posed by the fondness of many Sufi authors for inventing classifications, usually tripartite, to define certain mystical states; they often press the meaning of a word rather than explain it. The titles of the books composed by Sufis, particularly 19. W. H. Temple Gairdner, Al-Ghazzdli's “Mishkat al-anwar": The Niche for Lights (London, 1915), p. 71. 14 / WHAT IS SUFISM? in the postclassical centuries, show the same peculiarities; they allude to mystical states, to technical expressions, and often contain in themselves a whole spiritual program; other authors may give, by the numerical value of the title, the date of its composition. What, then, did the Sufis say about the origin of the name tasawwuf, which we translate as Sufism (or, the older form, Sufi- ism)? Their definitions go back to the earliest period and thus defy the tendency of some modern Western writers to apply this name only to the later “theosophical” aspect of Islamic mysticism. Some of the pious would even ask the Prophet when he blessed them with his appearance in their dreams: “What is Sufism?” (N 255) Hujwiri, in the mid-eleventh century, summed up the discussion: Some assert that the Sufi is so called because he wears a woollen garment ( jama-i suf), others that he is so called because he is in the first rank (saff-i awwal), others say it is because the Sufis claim to belong to the ashab-i Suffa (the people of the Bench who gathered around the Proph¬ et’s mosque). Others, again, declare that the name is derived from safa (purity). (H 30) Another—Western—definition, namely the derivation from Greek sophos, “wise,” is philologically impossible. The derivation from siif, “wool,” is now generally accepted—the coarse woolen garment of the first generation of Muslim ascetics was their dis¬ tinguishing mark. Kalabadhl, one of the early theoretical writers on Sufism (d. ca. 990), says in this respect: Those who relate them to the Bench and to wool express the outward aspect of their conditions: for they were people who had left this world, departed from their homes, fled from their companions. They wandered about the land, mortifying the carnal desires, and making naked the body; they took of this world’s good only so much as is indispensable for covering the nakedness and allaying hunger. (K 5) But Sufism is more. Junayd, the undisputed leader of the Iraqian school of mysticism (d. 910), wrote: “Sufism is not [achieved] by much praying and fasting, but it is the security of the heart and the generosity of the soul” (QR 60). Junayd is also credited with a definition in which he sees the prototypes of the Sufis in the prophets as mentioned in the Koran (in later times the ascent through the different stages of the prophets, or the identification with the spirit of one of them, is one aspect of certain Sufi schools): Sufism is founded on eight qualities exemplified in eight apostles: the generosity of Abraham, who sacrificed his son; the acquiescence of Ish- mael, who submitted to the command of God and gave up his dear life; WHAT IS SUFISM? / 15 the patience of Job, who patiently endured the afflictions of worms and the jealousy of the Merciful; the symbolism of Zacharias, to whom God said “Thou shalt not speak unto men for three days save by signs” (Sura 3:36) and again to the same effect “When he called upon his Lord with a secret invocation” (Sura 19:2); the strangerhood of John, who was a stranger in his own country and an alien to his own kind amongst whom he lived; the pilgrimhood of Jesus, who was so detached therein from worldly things that he kept only a cup and a comb—the cup he threw away when he saw a man drinking in the palms of his hand, and the comb likewise when he saw another man using his fingers instead of a comb; the wearing of wool by Moses, whose garment was woollen; and the poverty of Muhamtned, to whom God Almighty sent the key of all treasures that are upon the face of the earth, saying, “Lay no trouble on thyself, but procure every luxury by means of these treasures,” and he answered, “O Lord, I desire them not; keep me one day full fed and one day hungry.” (H 39-40) Some of Junayd’s contemporaries emphasized the ascetic side of Sufism, a complete break with what is called “the world” and ego¬ tism; “Sufism is to possess nothing and to be possessed by nothing” ( L *5)- “Sufism is freedom and generosity and absence of self-constraint” (L 57). Ruwaym’s (d. 915) advice to young Ibn Khafif, “Sufism is to sacrifice one’s soul—but do not occupy yourself with the Small¬ talk of the Sufis!” (X 90) shows that the danger of talking too much in a sort of technical and quasi-esoteric language was felt quite early. The Sufi should rather insist upon “faithfulness with the contract” (N 226) and should be free, “neither tired by searching nor disappointed by deprivation” (L 25). “The Sufis are people who prefer God to everything and God prefers them to everything else” (L 25). Some decades after Dhuhi-Nun (d. 859), who is credited with the last sayings, Sahl at-Tustari defined the Sufi: “It is he whose blood is licit and whose property is allowed [i.e., he who can be killed and whose property can be legally given to the faithful] and whatever he sees, he sees it from God, and knows that God’s loving¬ kindness embraces all creation” (B 370). The social and practical aspect of Sufism is understood from defi¬ nitions like those of Junayd and Nuri, according to whom “Sufism is not composed of practices and sciences, but it is morals” (H 42), and “who surpasses you in good moral qualities surpasses you in Sufism” (N 311). It means to act according to God’s orders and laws, which are understood in their deepest spiritual sense with¬ out denying their outward forms. This way of life is possible only through loving devotion: “Sufism is the heart’s being pure from the pollution of discord”—a sentence which Hujwirl (H 38) ex- l6 / WHAT IS SUFISM? plains as follows: “Love is concord, and the lover has but one duty in the world, namely to keep the commandment of the be¬ loved, and if the object of desire is one, how can discord arise?” The Sufis have spoken of the threefold meaning of tasawwuf according to the sharfa, the Muslim law, the tariqa, the mystical path, and the haqiqa, the Truth. It is a purification on different levels, first from the lower qualities and the turpitude of the soul, then from the bondage of human qualities, and eventually a purifi¬ cation and election on the level of attributes (L 27-28). But there are also warnings against “Sufism.” Shibli (d. 945), as was so often the case, wanted to shock his audience when he asserted: “Sufism is polytheism, because it is the guarding of the heart from the vision of the ‘other,’ and ‘other’ does not exist” (H 38). He thus attacks the ascetic who closes his eyes to the created world and wants to concentrate exclusively upon God—but since God is the only Reality, how can one think of “otherness” and so try to avoid it? Therefore, “a true Sufi is he who is not,” as KharaqanI says, with a paradox that has been repeated by other mystics (N 298, 225). The Islamic mystics enjoyed the play with the root safa, “purity,” when they discussed Sufism and the qualities of the ideal Sufi: “He that is purified by love is pure (safi), and he who is purified by the Beloved is a Sufi” (H 34), i.e., he who is completely absorbed in the Divine Beloved and does not think of anything but Him has at¬ tained the true rank of a Sufi. It is not surprising that the Sufis made attempts to designate Adam as the first Sufi; for he was forty days “in seclusion” (like the novice at the beginning of the Path) before God endowed him with spirit; then God put the lamp of reason in his heart and the light of wisdom on his tongue, and he emerged like an illuminated mystic from the retirement during which he was kneaded by the hands of God. After his fall he performed acts of penitence in India for 300 years until God “elected” him ( istafa ; see Sura 3:25) so that he became pure (safi) and thus a true Sufi. 20 Even a poet who cannot be called exactly a mystic, namely Kha- qani, the greatest panegyrist of Iran (d. 1199), claims: “I am pure since I am a servant of the purity of the Sufi”; and in one of the long chains of oaths that he likes to insert in his qasidas he swears “by the Sufis who love afflictions and are enemies of wellbeing.” He is thus close to Rumi, who a century later defined Sufism in this way: 20. Qutbaddin ai-Tbadi, At-tasfiya ft ahwal as-sufiyya, or Suflname, ed. Ghulam Muhammad Yusufi (Tehran, 1347 sh./ig68), p. 27. WHAT IS SUFISM? / 17 “What is Sufism? He said: To find joy in the heart when grief comes” (M 3:3261). KhaqanI alluded to the Sufis who carry in their waterbowl the water of life, like Khidr, and whose rods are as miraculous as the rod of Moses. 21 Later Persian, Turkish, and Urdu literature abounds in poems that praise the wonderful qualities of this or that Sufi saint or describe the miracles worked by a mystical leader. Sufism meant, in the formative period, mainly an interiorization of Islam, a personal experience of the central mystery of Islam, that of tauhid, “to declare that God is One.” The Sufis always remained inside the fold of Islam, and their mystical attitude was not limited by their adherence to any of the legal or theological schools. They could reach their goal from any starting point—neither the differ¬ ences between the legal madhhabs nor theological hairsplitting was, basically, of interest to them. Hujwlrl sums up the early Sufi atti¬ tude toward science and theology when he poignantly observes: “Knowledge is immense and life is short: therefore it is not obliga¬ tory to learn all the science . . . but only so much as bears upon the religious law” (H 11). That means: enough astronomy to find the direction of Mecca as required for the correct performance of pray¬ er, enough mathematics to figure out the legal amount of alms one has to pay—that is what the Sufi, like every good Muslim, should know. For God has condemned useless knowledge (Sura 2:96), and did not the Prophet say: “I take refuge with Thee from knowledge that profiteth naught” (H 11)? 22 c //m, “knowledge,” the pursuit of which is incumbent upon every male and female Muslim, is the knowledge of a Muslim’s practical duties: “Do not read c ilm except for the true life. . . . Religious science is jurisprudence and exegesis and tradition—whoever reads anything else, becomes abominable” (U 54). True gnosis, namely the gnosis of the One, is not attained through books, and many a legend tells how a Sufi who had reached, or thought he had reached, his goal threw away his books, for: “Books, ye are excellent guides, but it is absurd to trouble about a guide after the goal has been reached” (NS 21). “To break the ink-pots and to tear the books” was considered by some mystics the first step in Sufism. The great saint 'Umar Suhra- wardi, who studied scholastic theology in his youth, was blessed by 21. KhaqanI, Diwan, ed. SajjadI (Tehran, 1338 sh./igsg), qaslda p. 250, 51, 36g, 22. N 32 attributed to Abu Hashim as-Sufl. l8 / WHAT IS SUFISM? a saint who put his hands on his chest and made him forget all he had studied, “but he filled my breast with the c ilm ladunni” (Sura 18:65), the “knowledge immediately derived from God” (N 515). ‘Abdu’l-Qadir Gilanl performed a miracle by suddenly washing away the text of a philosophy book he considered dangerous to his disciple (N 517); other Sufis were urged by dreams to cast their precious collections of books into a river (N 432). This predilection for immediate knowledge as contrasted with legalistic scholarship was expressed in later times by many poets and mystics who ridiculed the founders of the great law schools, es¬ pecially Abu Hanlfa (d. 767) and Shafi c i (d. 820). Sana’i’s verse (at¬ tributed to both c Attar [AD 100] and Rum! [D 498]) is a case in point: Abu Hanifa has not taught love, Shafi c ! has no traditions about it. (SD 605) Sana 5 ! (d. 1131) has often contrasted the Sufi with the Kiifi, the learned lawyer Abu Hanlfa from Kufa, and still in eighteenth- century Sindhi mystical poetry the Sufi is called la-kufi, “non- Kufi,” i.e., not bound to a particular religious rite. 23 The Sufis claimed that the whole wisdom was included in the letter alif, the first letter in the alphabet and symbol of God (see Appendix 1). Are not many scholars who rely upon books “like the donkey which carries books” (Sura 62:5)? Did not Noah live for nine hundred years, with only the recollection of God? And, as Rum! adds with a slightly ironical bent, “he had not read the risala nor the Qut al-qulub” (M 6:2652-53), the two handbooks of mod¬ erate Sufism. For although the Sufis often condemned the bookish¬ ness of scholars and admonished their disciples to “strive to lift the veils, not to collect books,” 24 it is a fact that they themselves were among the most productive writers in Islamic history. And many of their theoretical works are no more readable or enjoyable than the dogmatic treatises that they attacked in their poems. The main target of Sufi criticism was philosophy, influenced by Greek thought: “There is nobody more distant from the law of the 23. For the whole complex see Annemarie Schimmel, “Shah 'Abdul Latlf's Be- schreibung des wahren Sufi,” in Festschrift fiir Fritz Meier, comp. Richard Gramlich (Wiesbaden, 1974). 24. Maulana 'Abdurrahman Jami, Lawa?ih (Tehran, 1342 sb./1963), no. 24, p. 40. WHAT IS SUFISM? / 19 Hashimite prophet than a philosopher” (U 54; see also MT 291), says 'Attar, echoing Sanaa’s sentiments when he wrote: From words like “primary matter” and “primary cause” you w'ill not find the w T ay into the Presence of the Lord. 25 The whole “Universal Reason” is nothing in the presence of a sin¬ gle divine order, “Say!” (U 45)—a fine pun on kull, “universal,” and qul, “say,” the divine address to the Prophet. The “little philoso¬ pher” is both the laughing stock and the scapegoat for the mystics. Strangely enough, Ibn Sina (Avicenna, d. 1037) has become the representative of dry rationalism, although he was as much of a mystical thinker as some of those classified as Sufis. 26 Perhaps the Sufi aversion to him, though already visible in Sana’i’s poetry (SD 57), was fostered by a story about Majduddin Baghdadi (d. 1219): “He saw the prophet in his dream and was informed by him that ‘Ibn Sina wanted to reach God without my mediation, and I veiled him with my hand, and he fell into the fire’ ” (N 427). Such an anti-intellectualism, as it was sensed by the orthodox, could lead to dangers for the communal life. One might mention the type of the “wise idiot,” 27 represented in Islamic lore first by Buhlul, a strange character who lived during the caliphate of Harun ar-Rashid (d. 809). To him, as later to many unknown and unnamed mentally deranged persons, are ascribed sayings in which they give frank expression of their criticism of contemporary life. But since they were insane they escaped punishment: “God has freed them from order and prohibition” (N 296). They are set free by God from their normal state as “slaves” and live in perfect loving union with Him, as 'Attar points out (MT 245). The type of the majdhub, the “enraptured one” who, under the shock of a mystical vision or any psychological experience, is bereft of his senses and walks around in a fashion prohibited by the religious law (i.e., stark naked) belongs to the darker side of the Sufi world. Many a mystical leader has complained about simpletons who attracted, by their strange behavior and their alleged miracle mongering, the interest of the crowd, who took them for representatives of true spirituality. 25. AbiPl-Majd Majdud Sana 3 I, “SanaTabad,” in Mathnawiha, ed. Mudarris Razawl (Tehran, 1348 sh./ig6g), line 42. 26. Henri Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital (New York and London, 1960). 27. Paul Loosen, "Die weisen Narren des Naisaburi,” Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie 27 (igi2), deals with this type of mentally deranged “wise” man or “saint.” 20 / WHAT IS SUFISM? In the introduction to his Nafahat al-uns, Jam! poignantly criticizes the imitators of the different Sufi types and their vain and dangerous attitudes. The innumerable verses of Persian poets who juxtapose molla and lover, pulpit and gallows, and claim that true love is the greatest enemy of reason and that the lover should be comparable to Majnun, the demented lover who was the laughing stock of chil¬ dren, may have enhanced the importance of this class of illiterate, crude, and sometimes even very nasty “saints.” Comparatively harmless types, living on the charity of the pious, did not really endanger the Sufi movement; but the degeneration of the wandering dervishes or faqlrs, the “poor,” who performed miracles and were beyond the law (bi shar c ), has done much to bring Sufism into discredit. It was such people whom European travelers in the East met first, so that one of the honorific names given to the genuine mystic, faqir, “poor,” has become, in German, the designa¬ tion of a mere trickster. From the very beginning, the mystics strictly distinguished be¬ tween the true Sufi, the mutasawwif who aspires at reaching a high¬ er spiritual level, and the mustawif, the man who pretends to be a mystic but is a useless, even dangerous, intruder. They knew well that the spiritual path is “hard to travel except for those who were created for that purpose” (H 4), and that it is impossible to become a true Sufi if one is not born that way: “This patched frock must have been sewn in pre-eternity,” for, as much as a person may strive to reach the rank of a Sufi, “no ass can turn into a horse by energy and zeal” (U 70-71). Therefore, the complaint about the decline of Sufism almost coincides with its beginning; a saying of the ninth- century mystic, the Persian Yahya ibn Mu c adh, warns his fellow mystics: "Avoid the society of three classes of men—heedless savants, hypocritical Koran-readers, and ignorant pretenders to Sufism” (H 17; cf. B 411). Poets have satirized the self-styled Sufi (S 666), and in the eleventh century it was repeatedly said: “Today Sufism is a name without reality, but formerly it was a reality without name. .. . The pretence is known and the practice unknown” (H 44). Peo¬ ple were content with empty confession, and “blind conformity has taken the place of spiritual enthusiasm” (H 7). The mystical con¬ certs in which the Sufis might become enraptured and begin to spin around their axis were taken, by many, for the essence,of Sufism. And to pretend mystical knowledge and experience was—and still is—quite easy. The stock of delightful stories and the legends of WHAT IS SUFISM? / 21 ancient saints could always attract people; well-recited verses might move the listeners to tears; and it was certainly easier to beg food at the doors of the rich and give a blessing in exchange than to pursue a normal profession. Thus a saint of the eleventh century angrily de¬ clared: “I looked into Hell, and I saw that most of its inhabitants were those donning a patched frock and carrying a food-bowl” (B 309). These accursed people are, as Baqll explains the saying, the traitors to mysticism, those who claim gnosis but have only the ex¬ ternal color of truth, because they lack knowledge of the Muham¬ madan religious law. “Their prayer-direction is the charming be¬ loved [shahid], the candle [ sham c at joyous meetings] and the belly [. shikam ]” (SD 82). As time passed the complaints about the degen¬ eration of Sufism became more eloquent. c UrfI, one of Akbar’s court- poets (d. 1591), says in a quatrain: The Sufi, is busy with deceiving men and women, The ignorant one is busy with building up his body. The wise man is busy with the coquetry of words, The lover is busy with annihilating himself. 28 He thus attributes to the lover the quality that should be that of the Sufi: namely, to annihilate himself in the Beloved. The word Sufi became a pejorative expression; the great mystic of Delhi in the eighteenth century, Mir Dard, insistently repeated that he did not want to be called a Sufi, but rather “a true Muham¬ madan.” He did not hesitate to call the representatives of mystical doctrines opposed to his stern, law-bound mysticism “pig-natured,” and he often expressed his contempt for the “shopkeeper sheikh,” the “seller of patched frocks” who was found everywhere in the country. He would have agreed completely with his Arabian con¬ temporary al-Badr al-HijazT, whose satire on the decline of Sufism Arberry has translated: 29 Would that we had not lived to see every demented madman held up by his fellows as a Polel Their ulema take refuge in him, indeed, they have even adopted him as a Lord, instead of the Lord of the Throne. For they have forgotten God, saying “So-and-so provides deliverance from suffering for all mankind.” 28. Muhammad c UrfI ShlrazI, Kulliydt, ed. Ali Jawahiri (Tehran, 1336 sh./i957), p. 448. 29. Arberry, Sufism, p. 128. 22 / WHAT IS SUFISM? When he dies, they make him the object of pilgrimage, and hasten to his shrine, Arabs and foreigners alike; Some kiss his grave, and some the threshold of his door, and the dust.... HijazI has put his finger on the danger of the exaggerated venera¬ tion of the spiritual master, the sheikh or plr (see chapter 5), what Muhammad Iqbal has called “pirism,” which means the absolute sway of the leader over his followers and the attendant exploitation of ignorant peasants and villagers. In their criticism of saint worship and pirism—a facet of popular Islam the danger of which one can scarcely realize without hav¬ ing lived in the East—Muslim modernists and moderate Sufis are united. But to reach this point, we have first to travel the long road through the outward history of Sufism. We shall see how this move¬ ment has assumed various shapes appropriate to the times and the personalities of its leaders, though its substance has remained the same. 2. HISTORICAL OUTLINES of CLASSICAL SUFISM THE FORMATIVE PERIOD “Islamic mysticism is the attempt to reach individual salvation through attaining the true tauhid,” says one of the leading Western orientalists. 1 In fact, the quintessence of the long history of Sufism is to express anew, in different formulations, the overwhelm¬ ing truth that “there is no deity but Allah” and to realize that He alone can be the object of worship. The history of Sufism is a chart showing some of the stations on this path of interpretation, some of the forms in which this one reality was expressed, some of the different ways in which the mystics i. Hans Heinrich Schaeder, "Zur Deutung des islamischen Mystik,” Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 30 (1935): 845. 23 24 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM tried to reach their goal, whether individually or collectively, through gnosis or through love, by means of asceticism or through practices leading to ecstatic rapture. Its external history is a history of the spiritual, theological, and literary movements inside Islam. At the same time, because of its deep roots in the ritual practices taught by the Koran, Sufism reflects the different attitudes of Mus¬ lims toward “the world”; thus we find among the mystics antiworld- ly ascetics and active fighters for the glory of their faith, austere preachers of repentance and enthusiastic hymnodists praising God’s eternal loving-kindness, builders of highly sophisticated theosophi- cal systems and enraptured lovers of Eternal Beauty. The aims of all the mystics are essentially the same. For, as Henri Corbin has stated, “the religious conscience of Islam is centered upon a fact of meta-history” (W 46), namely, upon the transhistori- cal fact of the primordial covenant as understood from the Koranic word in Sura 7:171. Before creation, God called the future humani¬ ty out of the loins of the not-yet-created Adam and addressed them with the words: “Am I not your Lord?” (alastu bi-rabbikum), and they answered: “Yes, we witness it” (bald shahidnd). The idea of this primordial covenant ( mithaq) between God and humanity has im¬ pressed the religious conscience of the Muslims, and especially the Muslim mystics, more than any other idea. Here is the starting point for their understanding of free will and predestination, of election and acceptance, of God’s eternal power and man’s loving response and promise. The goal of the mystic is to return to the ex¬ perience of the “Day of Alastu,” when only God existed, before He led future creatures out of the abyss of not-being and endowed them with life, love, and understanding so that they might face Him again at the end of time. Sufism traces its origins back to the Prophet of Islam and takes inspiration from the divine word as revealed through him in the Koran. 2 God has manifested His will, or rather Himself, in the words of the holy book, which is, basically, the only means by which man can know Him. The Koran was accepted relatively early by the faithful as uncreated and coeternal with God. It has been for every Muslim, and particularly for the mystics, the “unique lexicon,” the 2. On Koranic exegesis see Ignaz Goldziher, Die Richtungen der islamischen Ko- ranauslegung (Leiden, 1920); Paul Nwyia, Exegese coranique et langage mystique (Beirut, 1970), an excellent analysis of early Sufi language, adds to Louis Massignon’s classical study, Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane, 3d ed. (Paris, 1968). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 25 “essential textbook o£ his sciences, the key for his Weltanschau¬ ung ,” as Louis Massignon has put it (P 465). For everything con¬ cerning worldly and spiritual affairs can be found in this book, and its interpretation in different ages shows how the self-under¬ standing of the Muslim community grew and changed. The mystics have played a decisive role in the development of the Koranic sci¬ ences; their hermeneutical methods range from a simple verbal interpretation to symbolical and allegorical exegesis, without, how¬ ever, denying the value of the exterior meaning of the Koranic words. For the devout—some of whom could find up to seven thou¬ sand meanings in a single Koranic verse—the holy book was “the resurrection,” for, as Hallaj had claimed, “in it there are the signs of Divine Lordship [ rububiyya ], information of the resurrection, and news about the future till the eternity of eternities. Whosoever knows the Koran is, so to speak, in the Resurrection” (B 265). The words of the Koran have formed the cornerstone for all mystical doctrines: the early Sufis lived under the threat of the Last Judg¬ ment as described in the terrifying words of many siiras, until they discovered the promise of mutual love between God and man (Sura 5:59); they found in it the different stages of the human soul, which rises from the “soul that commands evil” ( an-nafs al-ammara) to the “soul which is at peace with God” ( an-nafs al-m.utma’inna). They read that God is closer to man than his jugular vein (Sura 50:16) and is, at the same time, the Lord and Creator of the universe, immanent and transcendent. “The sights do not reach Him” (Sura 6:103), but “whithersoever ye turn there is the Face of God” (Sura 2:109). God has “put signs into nature and into the human soul” (Sura 51:21), and it is necessary to see and to understand them. God, as revealed in the Koran, is both the stern Judge and the Merciful and Compassionate; He is All-knowing and Wise, but He is also the Most Cunning. The numerous and often contradictory attributes given to Allah in the Koran form the chain of the ninety- nine most beautiful names—names that were to play an important role in later mystical theories and in the life of prayer and were sometimes used in almost magical connections. The hope of dis¬ covering the Greatest Name of God has inspired many a Sufi who dreamed of reaching the highest bliss in this world and the next by means of this blessed name. God appears, through the Koranic words, as the only real Agent who creates and predestines human actions. He is the Absolute Personality—as the Suhs defined it: “He 26 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM alone has the right to say T ” (W 249)—and the Reality, al-haqq, a word that was used by most of the later mystics to designate God. Just as the scholastic theologians defined God by forty-one attri¬ butes—twenty attributes of necessity, twenty of impossibility, and one of possibility—many of the later Sufis invented complicated systems to draw closer to the mystery of the divine, the Absolute Being, the Pure Existence, or whatever names they might find. Pious mystics have often objected to these pseudophilosophical defi¬ nitions containing names and words not found in the Koran and therefore ill becoming Him who revealed Himself in the holy book. But the Koran contains more than the description of God and of the otherworld; it also regulates the practical and moral life of the community, and the Sufis meticulously followed its injuctions. Fur¬ ther, the recitation of the Koran was an important means of leading the spirit into a meditative state, or even of producing a mystical rapture. Recited in beautiful tones, the rhythmic and musical word¬ ing of the holy book carried the minds of the devout into higher spheres and might open a higher level of understanding to them. The language of the Koran was common to Muslims all over the world; it has helped to shape the expressions not only of theologians or lawyer divines but of poets and men of letters; it permeated the Islamic community as a living force. Even though millions of men and women did not and do not understand its Arabic wording, they still sense the numinous quality of the book and live with it. One can certainly speak of a “koranization” of the memory 3 ; and every¬ one who has read Persian, Turkish, or any other Islamic idiom knows how strongly the language of the Koran has penetrated the literature and everyday language, and how beautifully the “letters of the Koran” have been elaborated according to the artistic taste of Persians, Turks, Indians, and Africans, creating the most ex¬ quisite calligraphy—the typical art of the mystics. Sufism traces its origin back to the Prophet himself. He is de¬ scribed in the Koran as umml, “illiterate” (Sura 7:157-58), a quality that is central to the understanding of Islamic religiosity: just as in Christianity, where God reveals Himself through Christ—the word made flesh—the virginity of Mary is required in order to produce an immaculate vessel for the divine word, so in Islam, where God re¬ veals Himself through the word of the Koran, the Prophet had to be 3. Paul Nwyia, I bn c Ata? Allah et la naissance de la confrerie iadilite (Beirut, 1972), p. 46. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 27 a vessel that was unpolluted by “intellectual” knowledge of word and script so that he could carry the trust in perfect purity. Muhammad is the first link in the spiritual chain of Sufism, and his ascension through the heavens into the divine presence, to which the first lines of Sura 17 allude, became the prototype of the mystic’s spiritual ascension into the intimate presence of God. According to the tradition, esoteric wisdom was transmitted from Muhammad to his cousin and son-in-law 'All ibn Abl Talib, the fourth of the righteous caliphs (d. 661). Other members of his family and his friends, according to legend, were endowed with mystical insight or pursued mystical practices. The traditions ( hadith) that go back to the Prophet, or at least are attributed to him, served the Sufis when they elaborated their own definitions of the various stages and states. Every tendency within Islam, and so within Sufism, found material to support its claims from Prophetic traditions. In later times a con¬ siderable number of hadith that are not found in the official collec¬ tions as they were compiled in the second half of the ninth century were used by the Sufis. In a comparatively short time, Muhammad’s personality gained great importance for the spiritual life of his com¬ munity: He was the ideal leader, and the duty of every Muslim was to imitate him. His veneration soon reached mythical heights, until he was conceived by the medieval mystics as the Perfect Man par excellence, the cause and goal of creation, the friend of God and the intercessor on behalf of his community (see chapter 4). The Western student of Islam, used to the traditional picture of Muhammad as it emerged during hundreds of years of hatred and enmity in the Christian world, will be surprised to see the strong “mystical” qualities attributed to this man who was, according to the usual Western understanding, a mere politician, shrewd and sensual, or, at the best, the founder of a heresy derived from Chris¬ tianity. Even most recent studies of the Prophet, which have shown his sincerity and his deep religious concern, do not convey that quality of mystical love that his followers feel for him. We do not know how many of the later tales of Muhammad’s ascetic piety are true and how many simply reflect the ideals of later mystical devotion. A number of his sayings about the importance of prayer, and mainly of the night vigils, seem to be authentic, and “when his eyes slept his heart did not sleep,” as his beloved young wife A'isha relates. The classical manuals of Sufism contain large collections of sayings in which the Prophet exhorts the faithful to 28 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM constant prayer and to the recollection of God during every mo¬ ment of life (L 64; G 1:265-66). Indeed, a prophet who was so cer¬ tain of being God’s instrument must have relied upon prayer; for through prayer he could experience, over and over again, the pres¬ ence of Him who had sent him. Mystical tradition includes some of Muhammad’s companions among the spiritual ancestors of Sufism—we have already men¬ tioned the so-called ahl as-suffa, “the People of the Bench,” poor and pious members of the community who lived in the mosque of Medina. Among the Prophet’s companions, Abu Dharr al-Ghifari (d. 653) is often mentioned as “un socialiste avant la lettre,” as Louis Massignon puts it; it is to him that the tradition ascribes many sen¬ tences about poverty, and he appears as the prototype of the true faqtr, the poor person who possesses nothing but is totally possessed by God, partaking of His everlasting riches. Even more important is Salman al-FarisI, a Persian-born barber who was taken into Muhammad’s household and became the model of spiritual adoption and mystical initiation—he is, thus, the symbol of the Persians, who were adopted into Islam, and links the Arabian world with the Iranian tradition. His spirituality was later consid¬ ered a decisive element in the history of Persian Sufism and in Shia thought. 4 Salman the Barber was later regarded as the patron saint of small artisans, just as some of the ninth- and tenth-century Sufis were to become patrons of the artisan groups whose professions they shared; Salman came to stand for the impact of Sufism on the large masses (see MM 5). Another name mystically connected with the Prophet is that of Uways al-Qaranl, who is supposed to have lived in Yemen and who never met the Prophet. 5 It is said that Muhammad knew of his piety and uttered these famous words: “The breath of the Merciful (nafas ar-Rahmari) comes to me from Yemen.” Uways, about whom the tradition relates that he spent all his nights in prayer (T 1:21), be¬ came, for the later Sufis, the prototype of the inspired Sufi who has been guided solely by divine grace, knowing of the Prophet without outward connection. Thus uwaysl, or, as the Turks say, veysi me- shreb, is the mystic who has attained illumination outside the regu¬ lar mystical path and without the mediation and guidance of a 4. Louis Massignon, "Salman Pak et les prcmices spirituelles de l’lslam iranien," Societe des etudes iraniennes 7 (1934). 5. A. S. Husaini, “Uways al-Qaranl and the Uwaysi Sufis,” Moslem World 57, no. 2 (April 1967). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 2 Q living sheikh. And the “breath of the Merciful” has become, in po¬ etical language, the symbol for the act of divine guidance, which, like the morning breeze, opens the contracted bud of the human heart. Out of this nucleus of pious people around Muhammad has emerged a definition that was adopted by the Sufis: that is, the three¬ fold attitude of isldm, iman, and ihsan . 6 The Koran speaks of isldm and iman; isldm is the complete and exclusive surrender of the faithful to God’s will and his perfect acceptance of the injunctions as preached in the Koran, whereas iman, “faith,” constitutes the in¬ terior aspect of Islam. Thus a muslim need not be a mw’min “one who has faith,” but the mw’min is definitely a muslim. As to ihsan, it was added—according to most traditions by the Prophet himself— with the meaning “that you worship God as if you see Him,” for even though man does not see God, God always sees man, and the Koran asserts that “mercy is with those who practice ihsan [al- muhsinun, ‘those who do well’]” (Sura 7:54). With the addition of this third element the complete interiorization of Islam begins; tor the believer has to feel that he stands every moment in the presence of God, that he has to behave with awe and respect, and must never fall back into the “sleep of heedlessness,” never forget the all- embracing divine presence. We know little about the earliest appearance of ascetic tendencies in Islam. But when, in 661, 'All, the fourth caliph, was assassinated and the dynasty of the Omayyads came to power, the different trends within the community became more conspicuous. The continuous expansion of the Muslim Empire made the pious ponder the dis¬ crepancy between the eschatological threat in the early Koranic revelations and the necessity to expand the realms of Muslim rule by conquering more and more of the lands of the infidels. These conquests were led by a dynasty whose members were anything but representative of Muslim ideals: the Omayyads were always ac¬ cused of utter worldliness and impious behavior (with the exception of 'Umar II, 717-20). The resistance of the pious circles to the government grew stronger and was expressed in theological debates about the right ruler of the faithful and the conditions for the lead¬ ership of the community. The negative attitude toward the govern¬ ment engendered during these decades has significantly shaped the 6 . Arend Jan Wensinck, Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane (Leiden, 1 936-7*). * : 467b- 30 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM feeling of the pious throughout the history of Islam; the Sufis would often equate “government” with “evil.” Medina, the city of the Prophet, was one center of pious conservatives; other groups lived in the new Muslim settlements in Iraq, a province where the love for Muhammad’s family was particularly strong and which was antagonistic to Syria, the country where the Omayyad rulers had set up their capital. The name that stands for the early ascetic, antigovernmental at¬ titude is that of the patriarch of Muslim mysticism, Hasan al-Basri (d. 728). 7 He saw the glorious conquests of the Arabs in 711, the memorable year when they crossed the straits of Gibraltar (which still bears the name of the Muslim conqueror Tariq, jab a l Tariq, “Tariq’s mountain”), and when they also reached Sind, the lower Indus valley, and laid the foundation of a Muslim rule that still continues in present Pakistan; in the same year, 711, the Muslims reached the borders of Transoxania, which was destined to become an important center of Muslim learning and piety. Hasan al-Basri, however, sober and clearsighted as he was, sensed the dangers in¬ herent in a society that had become interested in conquest alone, in collecting wealth and worldly goods, while tending to forget the Koranic word (Sura 55:26): “Whatever is on earth is perishing save His Face.” He used to admonish his listeners to live strictly accord¬ ing to the rules laid down by the Koran so that they would not be ashamed at Doomsday: “O son of Adam, you will die alone and en¬ ter the tomb alone and be resurrected alone, and it is with you alone that the reckoning will be made!” Why care so much for this perish¬ able world? “Be with this world as if you had never been there, and with the Otherworld as if you would never leave it.” Many cen¬ turies later his words still echo in Persian, Turkish, and Pashto mystical verses. Hasan al-Basri was deeply steeped in the sadness and fear so typical of ascetics of all religions. “It was as if Hellfire had been created exclusively for him and for 'Umar II,” says one historian. His preaching and his exhortations, produced in beautiful sonorous Arabic, influenced many a pious soul in Iraq and elsewhere. His scrupulosity and his fear of the Day of Judgment are reflected in many sayings of his contemporaries or of later Muslims, who might 7. Hans Heinrich Schaeder, in “Hasan al-Basri,” Der Islam 13 (1923), dealt for the first time with Hasan but never completed his study. Hellmut Ritter, “Hasan al-Basri, Studien zur Geschichte der islamischen Frommigkeit,” Der Islam 21 (1933), gave an excellent analysis. Quotations are taken from Ritter’s article. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 31 exclaim, when thinking of God’s terrible wrath and of their own sinful lives: “O that I were dust and ashes!”—a saying that was pro¬ jected back even into the mouth of Muhammad’s most trustworthy companions (cf. Sura 78:41). Louis Massignon has seen in Hasan and in the ascetics who fol¬ lowed him a “realistic critical tendency” as opposed to the more “idealistic tradition” that prevailed in Kufa, the seat of the first Shia groups and the home town of Abu Hashim, the first to be called as-Sufi. It is true that the first ascetic tendencies in Basra and its en¬ vironment were almost exclusively devotional and lacked any in¬ terest in speculative thought. In contrast with the growing luxury of life, the men and women of these groups advocated strict renun¬ ciation of the world and what was in it and relied upon the Proph¬ et’s word: “If ye knew what I know ye would laugh little and weep much.” Therefore they were known as “those who constantly weep” (1 al-bakkafmi ), for both the miserable state of the world and the meditation of their own shortcomings made them cry in hope of divine help and forgiveness. Ibn ar-Rumi, the Iraqi poet of the ninth century, has dramatically described them in one of his poems, and Kharaqani, in the eleventh century, attests that “God is fond of His servant’s crying” (N 299). It is, therefore, not surprising that one of Hasan al-Basri’s disciples founded a settlement of ascetically inclined people in Abbadan on the Persian Gulf: that disciple was c Abdu 3 l Wahid ibn Zayd (d. 794), described as a typical representa¬ tive of the virtue of warn ', “abstinence,” and of permanent sadness. Through him, Hasan’s ideals reached Syria, where Abu Sulayman ad-Daranl (d. 830) and his disciple Ahmad ibn AblTHawar! (d. 851) are the best-known members of the Basrian ascetic movement. A new chapter in the history of Islam was opened when the Ab- basids—related to Muhammad’s uncle 'Abbas—came to power in 750. According to the traditional interpretation, the long rule of this dynasty (their last member was killed by the Mongols in 1258) marks the high tide of Muslim culture and civilization. Arts and sciences, law and philology, theology and philosophy were develop¬ ing; every branch of human knowledge was cultivated. The legal injunctions of the Koran were brought into a more systematic form by the scholars who are considered the founders of the four orthodox law schools: Abu Hanifa (d. 767), Malik ibn Anas (d. 795), ash- Shafi'i (d. 820), and Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855). They took into account legal points ranging from obscure matters pertaining to 32 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM laws of inheritance to the smallest details for the correct perfor¬ mance of the ritual prayer or the pilgrimage. The four schools dif¬ fered from each other only on minor points; they were all founded upon the Koran and the sunna, i.e., the Prophetic tradition, and made the ijmd c , the consensus of the “doctors of law’’ on a certain point, an instrument for introducing innovative legal decisions. They differed on the degree of personal judgment that was granted to the jurist in making his decisions. As early as the late tenth cen¬ tury, the possibility of free investigation into the sources of law ( ijtihad ) in matters that previously had been decided was no longer permitted; this led to a fossilization of jurisprudence, and the ijma c , once a force for creative change in Islam, became the cause of its stagnation. Although Islamic law was never codified, the classi¬ cal handbooks, along with their commentaries and scholia, were handed down verbatim through the generations—and the Sufis have often raised their voices against the spiritless legalism that stifled free development of the personal spiritual life. Theological issues were widely discussed, mainly in connection with the problem of the legitimacy of the leader of the community, which embraces the question of predestination as well as the prob¬ lem of whether or not a grave sinner can remain within the pale of Islam. The first attempts at defining the central theme of Islam, the unity of God, were made at approximately the same time, with theologians gradually learning the skills of dialectical disputation and logic. They fought relentlessly against any trace of Manichaean dualism, of Christian trinitarianism, or of whatever seemed to con¬ stitute shirk, “associating anything with God,” i.e., worship of any¬ thing besides the sovereign ruler Allah. Defense of God’s absolute unity led to discussions concerning the attributes of God, from which ensued the problem of whether the Koran, as God’s own word, was created (according to the Mu c tazila) or uncreated (ac¬ cording to the followers of Ahmad ibn Hanbal and the majority of the faithful). But here, too, the zeal for accuracy of definition led the scholars into hairsplitting discussions—as had been the case with the legalists—and Ma c ruf al-Karkhl, a leading Sufi of the early ninth century in Baghdad, sighed: “When God loves His servant, He opens for him the door of actions [i.e., religious and pious acts] and closes the door of theological disputations.” 8 The theological 8. c Abdur Rahman as-Sulaml, Kitab tabaqat as-Sufiyya, ed. Nuraddin Shariba (Cairo, 1953), p. 87. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 33 discussions had repercussions upon religious thought in general, as, indeed, was the case with the new interest in Greek science and phi¬ losophy. The reign of the caliph Ma’mun (813-33) marks the begin¬ ning of that remarkable activity of Arab translators (many of whom were non-Muslims) who made Greek science and philosophy avail¬ able to Muslim scholars; these, in turn, elaborated the given data, adding many new practical insights. The noteworthy results of their scholarship deeply influenced Western thought and science in the later Middle Ages. All these currents helped develop the language; the jurists, the theologians, and the translators gave Arabic a greater pliability, adding new dimensions to an already rich and beautiful language. The mystics, too, made considerable contributions in this regard— Paul Nwyia, noting the “adventures of the mystics” in language, has highlighted the fact that, “thanks to the mystics, in the Arabic lan¬ guage, an authentic language, that of experience, was born” (W 4). The writings of the early Sufis show not only variety of expression but an increasing profundity of thought as the mystical experience is refined. In the prayers of some of the Sufis in the tenth century, or in certain poems by Hallaj, the ineffable experience has been ab¬ stracted in words of unforgettable beauty. A similar development is visible, in later times, in the non-Arab countries: the literary language of Iran owes much to writers who gave voice to mystical yearnings in Persian; Turkish was trans¬ formed by the mystical poet Yunus Emre (d. circa 1321) into a de¬ lightful literary idiom. Likewise the Indo-Muslim languages (Sin- dhi, Panjabi, and to a great extent Urdu and Pashto) are in large part the result of the speech and song of mystical leaders who could not address their simple disciples in high-flown theological Arabic or poetical Persian; in order to express the mysteries of divine love and devotion, they were obliged to use the vernaculars, making them vehicles of the most lofty thought. Then they emerged as lan¬ guages well able to serve as a literary medium for nonmystical writers. The expansion of the Islamic Empire during the late Omayyad and early Abbasid periods had brought the Muslims into contact with large groups of non-Muslims representing different cultural levels and varied traditions. The presence of Zoroastrian influences must certainly be accepted from the beginning of the Abbasid pe¬ riod, when the capital was shifted from Damascus to Baghdad. Per- 34 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM sian noblemen served at the court; Persian traditions from the “Book of Kings” were incorporated into the Arabic narrative litera¬ ture, helping to shape the image of the ideal ruler; and Persian mythology was to become a substitute for the weak pre-Islamic Ara¬ bic tradition. In Eastern Iran and Transoxania, the Muslims met Buddhists whose ascetic practices were of some interest to them. Their contacts with Hinduism as a religion were negligible in this period, although India contributed extensively to the development of Islamic mathematics and astronomy. But India in general was considered the country of the sage, and the home of magical prac¬ tices performed by blackish, ugly people. Manichaeism, so wide¬ spread in the Near and Middle East, and in Central Asia, attracted the interest of the theologians, and more than one mystic was ac¬ cused of Manichaean inclinations. Mandaeans and Jews constituted a small, but active, minority. The most significant contacts of the early Abbasid Muslims were with Christians, split into numerous groups ranging from the Nes- torians to the many Monophysite sects and churches. 9 Christian ascetics and hermits who inhabited places in Iraq and the moun¬ tains of Lebanon are mentioned frequently in Sufi stories—and in pre-Islamic poetry there were already allusions to the light shining forth from the Christian hermit’s cell. A meeting with a Christian ascetic or with a wise monk is a fictional element in Sufi legends of early times: such a person usually explains some mystical truths to the seeker; or the disciple admires his austerity but is informed by a heavenly voice that all his asceticism will not gain him salvation since he has no faith in Muhammad. Jesus, the last prophet before Muhammad according to Koranic revelation, appears to the Sufis as the ideal ascetic and also as the pure lover of God. A homeless pil¬ grim, wandering without knowing where to put his head, he in¬ structs the devout about the importance of modesty, peace, and charity, for “just as the seed does not grow but from dust, so the 9. There are several studies devoted to the mystics of the first three centuries: Henry Frederick Amedroz, “Notes on Some Sufi Lives,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1912; Margaret Smith, Studies in Early Mysticism in the Near and Middle East (Lon¬ don, 1931), deals with the relationships between Christian and Islamic mysticism. The same problem has been discussed by Tor Andrae, “Zuhd und Monchtum,” Le monde oriental 25 (1931), and in several other studies by this Swedish theologian. His post¬ humously published book I Myrtentradgarden (Uppsala, 1947), translated into English by Birgitta Sharpe as In the Garden of Myrtles (Albany, N.V., 1988), is an excellent introduction to the pre-Hallajian development of Sufism. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 35 seed of wisdom does not grow but from a heart like dust.” 10 It is the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount whose image is reflected in say¬ ings of the first generations of Sufis, and he continued to be a fa¬ vorite figure in later Sufi poetry as well: he and his virgin mother become exalted symbolic figures—the woman unspoiled by worldly concern, the pure receptacle of the divine spirit, and the prophet born out of the divine command, surnamed “Spirit of God,” be¬ came models of the pure spiritual life. It is even possible that the first Sufis adopted from the Christian ascetics the woolen garment from which their name derives. These Sufis were people who meticulously fulfilled the words of the law, prayed and fasted, constantly recollecting God, and were absolutely bound by Koran and tradition. Thus says one of them: “Sometimes Truth knocks at my heart for forty days, but I do not permit it to enter my heart unless it brings two witnesses, the Koran and the Prophetic tradition” (L 104). The country of incomparable ascetic achievement was Khurasan in the northeastern part of the Abbasid Empire. A saying ascribed to one of the ninth-century Khurasanian ascetics serves well as an introduction to the mentality typical of this remarkable group: “Who wants to attain to the highest honor should prefer seven to seven: poverty to wealth, hunger to satiety, the low to the elevated, humiliation to honor, modesty to pride, sadness to joy, death to life” (N 45). As late as the thirteenth century Jalaluddln Rum! alludes in one of his verses to the ascetics of Herat and Merw-i Taliqan, declaring that even they would be intoxicated if the scent of the wine of love were to reach them from the Ma¬ ghreb, the far west (D 1966). But this scent very rarely reached them, though perhaps more true mystical love is hidden beneath their outward austerity than a modern reader can realize. 11 One of the most famous conversion stories in early Sufism is that of Fudayl ibn c Iyad. He was a highwayman, albeit a magnanimous one, between the cities of Abiward and Sarakhs. One day, on the way to his beloved, he happened to hear a verse from the Koran and immediately gave up banditry, thereafter devoting himself to the study of the Prophetic tradition in Kufa. He died in Mecca in 803. 10. Abu Talib al-Makki. Qut al-qulub fi mu'-amaldt al-mahbub, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1310 h./1892-93), 2:74. 11. Early ascetic Sufism has beeen treated by Paul Klappstein, Vier turkestanische Heilige, ein Beitrag zum Verstdndnis der islamischen Mystik (Berlin, 1919), and Jakob Hallauer, Die Vita des Ibrahim ibn Edhem in der Tedhkiret al-Ewlija des Ferid ed- Din Attar (Leipzig, 1925)—both rather superficial. 36 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM Fudayl is a typical representative of early orthodox asceticism, “and when he died, sadness was taken away from the world” (Q 9). This sadness is reflected in many of his sayings. He disliked the com¬ pany of people, and in words reminiscent of his contemporary Ra- bi c a, the woman saint, he said: “When night comes I am happy that I am alone, without separation, with God, and when morning comes I get distressed because I detest the view of those people who enter and disturb my solitude” (T 1:31). Although Fudayl was married, he considered family life one of the greatest obstacles on the way to God; he was seen smiling only once in thirty years—when his son died. This event was, for him, a sign of divine grace: “When God loves His servant, He afflicts him, and when He loves him very much He takes hold of him and leaves for him neither family nor wealth” (G 4:282). (The feeling of happiness at the death of family members was not unknown among medieval Christian mystics either, as the story of Angela di Foligno shows). 12 Even Jalaluddin Rum! wrote, quite without feeling, in a verse of his Mathnawi: “The death of his children was for him like sweetmeat” (M 3:1927); and the indifference of some Indo-Muslim Chishti saints of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the death of family members is well known. On the other hand, many of the great Sufis and founders of mystical fraternities were married and had large fami¬ lies—Ahmad-i Jam had forty-two children (N 357), and ‘AbduT Qadir GllanI had forty-nine sons. Yet so rare is it to find any ap¬ proval of happy family life in Sufi sayings that one is quite unpre¬ pared for the exception one meets in Mir Dard, the saint of Delhi in the eighteenth century, who exclaimed in one of his books: “I love my wife and my children dearly.” 13 Among the early ascetics, a preference for celibacy was common in spite of the Prophet’s example of married life and his advice to raise a family. But, as Darani says, “the sweetness of adoration and undisturbed surrender of the heart which the single man can feel the married man can never experience” (G 2:22). The restlessness caused by marriage, the distraction from God, has often been de¬ scribed by the Sufis (N 217), and the sorrows of family life might be regarded as “punishment for the execution of legally permitted lusts” (N 185). Fudayl’s elder contemporary, Ibrahim ibn Adham 12. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (1911; paperback ed., New York, 1956). p. 216. 13. Khwaja Mir Dard, “Nala-yi Dard," no. 70, in Chahdr risdla (Bhopal, 1310 h./ 1892-93). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 37 (d. circa 790), whom he met at Mecca, expressed such a notion in a striking sentence often quoted in Sufi poetry and prose: “When a man marries he embarks on a ship, and when a child is born he suf¬ fers shipwreck’’ (L 199). Ibrahim ibn Adham—“the key of mystical sciences,” as Junayd called him (H 103)—has become, in Islamic tra¬ dition, one of the proverbial examples of true poverty, abstinence, and trust in God. According to the legend, he renounced the princely life in Balkh, the old Buddhist capital where he was born (a story embellished with echoes of the Buddha legend). He later be¬ came the subject of many pious tales in Eastern Islamic lands. A ro¬ mance was even composed about his adventures and was known particularly in the Malayan archipelago. Although his residence was Balkh, Balkh became corrected, namely talkh [“bitter”], says c Attar (U 264), with a pun: by changing the diacritical dots of the first letter of Balkh, he implies that the former seat of power and wealth became bitter for the young, highborn ascetic. Ibrahim is credited with making the first classification of the stages of zuhd, “asceticism.” Because of its tripartition, which was common after the ninth century, it looks like a word from some la¬ ter source, for it discerns: (a) renunciation of the world, (b) renun¬ ciation of the happy feeling of having achieved renunciation, and (c) the stage in which the ascetic regards the world as so unimpor¬ tant that he no longer looks at it. The stories of the degree of asceticism achieved by these early Sufis sound somewhat incredible to a modern mind; yet they counted it happiness to live completely free of worldly things, even though they might use only a brick for a pillow (N 49) and a worn- out mat of straw for a bed (if they did not prefer to sleep in a seated position or refrain from sleep at all). They cared neither for their outward appearance nor for their attire, and although they strictly observed the ritual purity required for prayer, Ibn Adham was proud of the huge number of lice living in his coat, and as late as 900, a maidservant of a Sufi from Baghdad exclaimed: “O God, how dirty are Thy friends—not a single one among them is clean!” (N 621). One of Fudayl’s disciples was Bishr, called al-Hafi, “the bare¬ footed one,” who considered even shoes to be a “veil” on the path to God. Bishr, like his master, came from Merw and, also like Fudayl, 38 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM was converted by a miracle: on the road he found a piece of paper, which he took with him because the name of God was written on it —this pious act of the otherwise worldly man was soon recompensed when, by divine grace, he was transformed into a Sufi. He settled in Baghdad, where he died, after a perfectly scrupulous life, in 841. Bishr is said to have dwelt upon the concept of ikhlas, “absolute sin¬ cerity,” in every thought and action, an attitude that was elaborated to perfection by his younger contemporary in Baghdad, al-Harith al-Muhasibl. Among the early Khurasanian Sufis, the former merchant Shaqiq al-Balkhi (d. 809) is worthy of mention. Recent research has shown that he was not only an expert on tawakkul, “absolute trust in God” —a path taken up by his disciples Hatim al-Asamm (d. 851) and Hatim’s pupil Abu Turab an-Nakhshabl (d. 859)—but that he was also the first to discuss the “mystical states” and was deeply con¬ cerned with what he calls “the light of pure love of God” (W 228). With this idea he comes close to the saint of Basra, Rabi c a al- c Adawiyya, who died only a few years before him (801). 14 Rabi c a was “that one set apart in the seclusion of holiness, that woman veiled with the veil of sincerity, that one enflamed by love and longing .. ., lost in union with God, that one accepted by men as a second spotless Mary ... ” (T 159). Rabi c a is generally regarded as the person who introduced the element of selfless love into the austere teachings of the early ascetics and gave Sufism the hue of true mysticism. Jam! has beautifully explained the difference between these ascetics and the genuine Sufis: “The ascetics regard the Beauty of the Otherworld with the light of faith and certitude and despise the world, but are still veiled by a sensual pleasure, namely the thought of Paradise, whereas the true Sufi is veiled from both worlds by the vision of the Primordial Beauty and Essential Love” (N 10). Rabi c a was a slave girl, set free by her master. The most famous story illustrative of the singlemindedness of her devotion is this: Once, in the streets of Basra, she was asked why she was carrying a torch in one hand and a ewer in the other, and she answered: “I want to throw fire into Paradise and pour water into Hell so that these 14. Margaret Smith, Rabi'-a the Mystic and Her Fellow-Saints in Islam (Cambridge, ig28), is a fundamental study that also deals with the role of women in Sufism in general. c Abdur Raliman Badawi, Shahidat al-Hshq al-ildhl, Rabi'-a al- c Adawiyya (Cairo, 1946). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 39 two veils disappear, and it becomes clear who worships God out of love, not out of fear of Hell or hope for Paradise.” 15 This love for love’s sake has become the central topic of Sufism; almost every mystical poet in Islam has expressed the idea that ‘‘the lover must be in the way of love so that he does not remember Hell or Paradise” (N 597). For ‘‘a few houris and castles” that are prom¬ ised to the pious in Paradise are mere veils hiding the eternal divine beauty—“when He fills your mind with Paradise and houris know by certain that He keeps you far from Himself” (MT 204). It would certainly be better if God took away Paradise or cast the ascetic who feared hellfire into that very fire, for both Paradise and Hell are created, and thus distinct from God (T 1:73). Rabi c a’s love of God was absolute; there was no rqom left for any other thought or love. She did not marry, nor did she give the Prophet a special place in her piety. The world meant nothing to her. She would shut the windows in spring without looking at the flowers and become lost in the contemplation of Him who created flowers and springtime. This story has often been retold by the mys¬ tical poets of Iran. Every true mystic should know that “the gardens and the fruits are inside, in the heart,” as Rumi says in his version of Rabi c a’s story (M 4: 1357; see also U 198). Rabi c a seems to have been the first Sufi to speak about the jealous God—a concept not unknown to prophetic piety; but whereas the jealous God of the orthodox does not allow anybody to worship anything besides Him, Rabi c a’s God “will suffer none to share with Him that love which is due to Him alone.” 16 And so she addresses Him in small poetical effusions: O Beloved of hearts, I have none like unto Thee, therefore have pity this day on the sinner who comes to Thee. O my Hope and my Rest and my Delight, the heart can love none other but Thee. 17 In such perfect love, the mystic has “ceased to exist and passed out of self. I am one with Him and altogether His.” 18 Rabi c a had medi¬ tated upon the Koranic statement that God’s love precedes man’s 15. Smith, Rabi c a, p. 98. 16. Ibid., p. 108. 17. Ibid., p. 55. 18. Ibid., p. 110. 40 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM love: “He loves them and they love Him” (Sura 5:59): “Love has come from Eternity and passes into Eternity and none has been found in seventy thousand worlds who drinks one drop of it until at last he is absorbed in God, and from that comes the saying: He loves them and they love Him” (T 1:67). It was this Koranic passage that provided the Sufis of the following generations with proof for their theories of the mutual love between the Creator and the creature. There is nothing left to distract the lover from God—the spiritual eye sees nothing but Him when the eye of the body is closed. He is enough for the loving soul: “O my Lord, whatever share of this world Thou dost bestow on me, bestow it on Thine enemies, and whatever share of the next world Thou doest give me, give it to Thy friends—Thou art enough for me” (T 1:73). Rabi c a’s prayer has been repeated, with variations, by Sufis of all ages, probably in the most shocking form by Shibli (d. 945), the mystic of Baghdad whose paradoxes are famous in Sufi history: “O God, hand this world and the Otherworld over to me so that I may make a morsel from this world and throw it into a dog’s mouth, and make a morsel of the Otherworld and put it into a Jew’s mouth, for both are veils before the true goal” (T 2:165). For Rabi c a the only thing that mattered was the hope of God and the word of His praise, which was sweeter than any other word. The nightly prayer, one of the pivots of early ascetic life, becomes, with her, a sweet and loving conversation be¬ tween lover and beloved: O God, the night has passed and the day has dawned. How I long to know if Thou hast accepted my prayers or if Thou hast rejected them. Therefore console me for it is Thine to console this state of mine. Thou hast given me life and cared for me, and Thine is the glory. If Thou want to drive me from Thy door, yet would I not forsake it, for the love that I bear in my heart towards Thee . 19 It was a daring prayer, often repeated by the early Sufis, that the true lover would not leave the door of the beloved even if driven away. Rabi c a was not the only woman saint in the eighth century; sev¬ eral women chose the mystical path, sighing for the heavenly be¬ loved who, though absent from their sight, is never absent from their hearts. Because of her intense feelings Rabi c a was accepted as the model of selfless love even by those who otherwise despised ig. Ibid., p. ay. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 41 women—but since in the unity of God the lovers no longer have a separate existence, no distinction can be made between man and woman (T 1:59). During the ninth century different trends in the mystical teach¬ ings and the approach to God emerged, and religious experiences were expressed in various styles and forms. But the roots of these de¬ velopments went back to an earlier period. That has been shown very clearly in Pere Nwyia’s research. He has emphazised that Ja c far as-Sadiq, the sixth imam of the Shia (d. 765), was certainly one of the greatest teachers of early Sufism. His commentary on the Koran, part of which is preserved in Sulami’s tafslr, shows an exceptional insight into mystical phenomena (W 161). Ja c far discerned the four different aspects of the Koran: expression, for the common people; allusion, for the privileged or elite; touches of grace (Jatffif), for the saints; and finally the “realities,” for the prophets (W 167). This pluralistic structure of the holy book led Ja c far to sketch a hier¬ archical structure of the faithful according to the degree of their interior knowledge—a principle developed by later Sufis when they identified the “stages” and “stations” and then divided them into those for the common people, for the elect, and for the elite of the elite. The hierarchical principle is also found in later theories of saintship, and it is a typical facet of Shia thought as well. Imam Ja'far alluded to a structure of mystical experience that leads in twelve stages from source to source, which looks like a preparation for the stations through which the Sufi initiate has to pass on the Path. Some of Ja'far’s hermeneutic principles seem to contain thoughts that were, until recently, ascribed to later mystics; he even analyzed the “theopathic locutions,” the so-called shathiyat, in which the mystic utters words that he should not say. Ja'far’s model case for such an experience is the conversation between Moses and God on Mount Sinai (Sura 20:11-21). Moses was the prophet who heard God—heard His voice speaking in him and through him; but Muhammad was blessed with the vision of God during his ascension—he entered the intimate prox¬ imity of the beloved, and here, as Ja c far’s modern interpreter states, “the language of experience becomes the language of love” (W 187). That means that before the time of Rabi c a the first steps were taken in the direction of an authentic love mysticism. The definition of divine love as given by Ja'far, and often repeated by later mystics, is this: “a divine fire that devours man completely” (W 187). 42 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM SOME MYSTICAL LEADERS OF THE LATE NINTH CENTURY The discoveries about the earliest Sufis show that some of the definitions attributed to mystics of the ninth century can prob¬ ably be dated much earlier. They also show how Shia and Sufi ideas were, at that early stage, interdependent. But many problems still await solution. The thoughts of Ja c far and, perhaps, other early mys¬ tical thinkers must have been at work beneath the surface, per¬ meating the mystical life until they appeared in the sayings of a number of Sufis, all near contemporaries, who reveal the potential variety within the mystical life. I refer to Dhu 3 n-Nun the Egyptian (d. 859), Bayezld Bistami the Iranian (d. 874), Yahya ibn Mu'adh from Rayy (d. 871), and al-Harith al-Muhasibl the Iraqi (d. 857). Dhu’n-Nun is one of the most attractive and intriguing figures in the history of early Sufism, aptly called “one of the most eminent of their hidden spiritualists” (H 100). Thauban ibn Ibrahim, sur- named Dhu’n-Nun, “he with the fish,” was born of Nubian parents in Ikhmim in Upper Egypt; he studied religious sciences and is re¬ ported to have transmitted traditions from Malik ibn Anas, the founder of the Maliki law school. Dhu’n-Nun was “the unique [au¬ thority] of his time in scholarship and piety and mystical state and culture” (Q 8). During the Mu c tazilite persecution of the orthodox he, too, was imprisoned, because of his belief in the doctrine that the Koran was uncreated; the caliph Mutawakkil, however, deeply impressed by one of his sermons, set him free. He was accused of being a philosopher and an alchemist, and the genuineness of his mystical state was sometimes doubted; Ibn an-NadlnTs Fihrist (2: 862) in the tenth century mentions two of his works among alchem- istic scriptures. We know little about his life, and his teachings are still scattered in the hagiographic books. Ibrahim al-Qassar, who saw him in his childhood, remembers that he was disappointed by the great mystical leader who was outwardly so humble and meek, but DhuYi-Nun reproached the boy, whose thoughts he had read by means of his inner power (N 166). Many miracles are ascribed to him, and in strange legends he figures as a kind of magician whom men and jinn obeyed. It is said that “he traveled the road of blame.” But when he died, legend asserts, “it was written on his forehead: ‘This is the friend of God, he died in love of God, slain by God’ ” (H 100). This love of God has been expressed in one of his HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 43 sayings (which has also been attributed to other mystics because it shows very well the inclination of the early Sufis to speak in allu¬ sions without divulging the secret of their loving intimacy with God): “O God! Publicly I call Thee ‘My Lord,’ but in solitude I call Thee ‘O my Beloved’!” (A 9:332). According to the tradition, DhiLn-Nun formulated for the first time a theory of ma c rifa, intui¬ tive knowledge of God, or gnosis, as opposed to c ilm, discursive learning and knowledge; many sayings about “love” and “intimacy” are also attributed to him. However, we would scarcely agree with Edward G. Browne, who considers him “the first to give to the ear¬ lier asceticism the definitely pantheistic bent and quasi-erotic ex¬ pression which we recognize as the chief characteristics of Sufism.” 20 Nicholson was inclined to accept Neoplatonic influences upon Dhu 3 n-Nun. Since this mystic lived in Egypt, where Neoplatonic and hermetic traditions were in the air, and was regarded by some of his contemporaries as a “philosopher,” he may well have been acquainted with some Neoplatonic ideas. In a famous passage, he has described the gnostic ( c drif ), the true mystic with spiritual in¬ sight; but we do not find a “philosophical” approach in these words of his: The gnostic becomes more humble every hour, for every hour is drawing him nearer to God. The gnostics see without knowledge, without sight, without information received, and without observation, without de¬ scription, without veiling and without veil. They are not themselves, but in so far as they exist at all they exist in God. Their movements are caused by God, and their words are the words of God which are uttered by their tongues, and their sight is the sight of God, which has entered into their eyes. So God Most High has said: “When I love a servant, I, the Lord, am his ear so that he hears by Me, I am his eye, so that he sees by Me, and I am his tongue so that he speaks by Me, and I am his hand, so that he takes by Me .” 21 This last-quoted hadith qudsl , 22 an extra-Koranic word attributed to God, forms one of the cornerstones of mystical teaching in Sufism: man is, through acts of supererogatory piety, slowly lifted above his own base qualities and instead distinguished by the good qualities seen in God, until he completely lives in Him and through Him. Dhir’n-Nun’s alleged “philosophical-gnostic” character is not re- 20. Edward G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, 4 vols. (1902; reprint ed., Cambridge, 1957), 2:505. 21. Margaret Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam (London, 1950), no. 20; see A 9:385 ff. s2.Sahth al-Bukhdrt, ed. L, Krehl and IV. Juynboll (Leiden, 1862-1908), 4:231. 44 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM fleeted in another of his sayings either: “I knew God by God, and I knew what is besides God by the Messenger of God” (L 104). “The sign of the lover of God is to follow the Friend of God, i.e., the Prophet, in his morals, and his deeds and his orders and his cus¬ toms” (T 1:125). Stories connected with the Greatest Name of God are toldabout this mystic; but his reply in the following anecdote reveals the pious Muslim rather than a man ivho relies upon magical practice: “One said to Dhu’n-Nun: ‘Show me the Greatest Name of God.’ He said: ‘Show me the smallest one!’—and scolded him” 23 Dhu’n-Nun em¬ phasized God’s incredible majesty and power and, inspired by two of the Koranic names of God, al-muhyi, “He who bestows life,” and al-mumit, “He who kills,” he appropriately described the state of the mystic: “Nothing sees God and dies, even as nothing sees God and lives, because His life is everlasting, and who ever sees Him, re¬ mains in Him and is made everlasting” (A 9:373). The theories of fana and baqd, “annihilation, extinction,” and “everlasting life, duration” in God, central topics of Sufism, are developed here out of the Koranic context. Dhu’n-Nun, like most of the mystics, often juxtaposed the divine qualities and names. Jamal, “eternal beauty,” and jalal, “eternal majesty,” coinciding in kamal, “eternal perfection,” are the quali¬ ties of Him who must be addressed as “Thou art who Thou art, eternally, in eternity.” 24 God, the eternal perfection to which no created being has access, reveals Himself to man under the aspects of beauty and fascination, kindness and mercy, or under the aspects of majesty and wrath, power and revenge. More than a thousand years after Dhu’n-Nun, the German theologian Rudolf Otto has built up a theological system based upon the contrast between the mysterium tremendum and the mysterium fascinans, which consti¬ tute the two main qualities of the Numen; he has, thus, expressed in scientific language a truth that had been known to every Sufi in the world of Islam for centuries. Dhu’n-Nun frequently dwelt upon the quality of majesty, jalal, the tremendum, in God—an approach typical of early Islamic thought. That is why he believed affliction to be indispensable to man’s spiritual development; it is the “salt 23. c Ahdul Wahhab ash-Sha c rani, Lawaqih al-anwar al-qudsiyya (Cairo, 1311 h./ 1893-94). P- > 44 - 24. Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam (1914; reprint ed., Chester Springs, Pa., 1962), p. 183. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 45 of the faithful, and when the salt lacks, the faithful becomes rotten” (A 9:373). The faithful lover enjoys the tribulations sent by his beloved, as Dhu’n-Nun has said; but the great mystic disliked those who turned this attitude into a mere show: “When one of his brethren, a so-called lover, was boasting during his illness: ‘Who suffers from the pain which God sends him, does not love God,’ he replied: ‘I would rather say: “He who boasts of his love of God, does not love Him” ’ ” (T 1:123). One of the most attractive aspects of Dhidn-Nun is his poetic talent and his wonderful command of the Arabic language. He composed small, charming poems—a new development in Sufism, although Rabi c a is credited with a few poetical exclamations. He praised the Lord in long, hymnlike poems and popularized a kind of romantic mystical story, a literary type often found in later hagio- graphic works. He told how he wandered along the Nile, or strolled alone in the desert, when suddenly he would meet a strang¬ er who revealed to him mysteries of the Path: “He met a woman at the sea shore and asked her: ‘What is the end of love?’ And she answered: ‘O simpleton, love has no end.’ And he asked: ‘Why?’ She said: ‘Because the Beloved has no end’ ” (T 1:123). This story is typical of Dhidn-Nun’s tendency to introduce a dramatic element into the discussion of complicated problems that cannot be re¬ solved through intellectual efforts. The answer of the unknown woman (in other cases it may be a slave girl, a negro, or an old anchorite) points immediately to the heart of the matter: since love is the essence of the divine, it is, like God Himself, without beginning and without end. The romantic and poetic aspect of DhiPn-Nun can be understood best from his prayers. The Koran asserts that everything created worships God; everything utters praise and thanks to its creator in its own tongue, which may be the human voice, the humming of the bee, the growing of the leaves, the scent of the flower, or just the lisan ul-hal, the “state of speaking by itself,” someone’s whole attitude. The created world gains, thus, a religious meaning—a meaning that the early ascetics had lost sight of because they con¬ sidered it to be a detestable veil that distracted them from God. But for DhiTn-Nun and the generations of Sufis following him, the worth or worthlessness of the world is determined not by itself, but by man’s relation to it. It is again regarded as God’s creation and 46 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM thus as something dependent upon Him and belonging to Him. That is how Dhu 5 n-Nun felt: O God, I never hearken to the voices of the beasts or the rustle of the trees, the splashing of the waters or the song of the birds, the whistling of the wind or the rumble of the thunder, but I sense in them a testimony to Thy Unity, and a proof of Thy incomparability, that Thou art the All-Prevailing, the All-Knowing, the All-True. (A 9:342) Such psalmlike prayers of praise, in beautiful, rhythmic rhyme- prose are unforgettable, and they deeply impressed the mystical writers of later centuries. The great poets of Iran understood the language of the flowers and birds as clearly as Dhir’n-Nun; the proems of c Attar’s epics translate this praise of the creatures into human poetical language, and he was able to express the silent yearning of all creatures in the forty chapters of his Musibatnama. Dhu’n-Nun’s compatriot Sha'ranI, the last great mystic of Egypt in the sixteenth century, tells a story that reminds the reader immedi¬ ately of Dhu^n-Nun’s hymnic praise: Whoever recollects God in reality, forgets all else besides Him, because all the creatures recollect Him, as is witnessed by those who experience a revelation ( kashf). I experienced this state from evening prayer until one third of the night was over, and I heard the voices of the creatures in the praise of God, with elevated voices so that I feared for my mind. I heard the fishes who said: Praised be the King, the Most Holy, the Lord. 25 The late thirteenth-century mystical poet Yunus Emre, who de¬ clared that he would praise the Lord together with the stones and the fountains, with the gazelles and with the prophets, was just as faith¬ ful an interpreter of the Koranic words that everything was created in order to worship and praise the Creator as was his seventeenth- century compatriot Merkez Efendi, about whom a charming story was told to me by Turkish friends: The sheikh of the Khalvati order in Istanbul, Siinbul Efendi, in looking for a successor, sent his disciples forth to get flowers to adorn the con¬ vent. All of them returned with large bunches of lovely flowers; only one of them—Merkez Efendi—came back with a small, withered plant. When asked why he did not bring anything worthy of his master, he answered: “I found all the flowers busy recollecting the Lord—how could I inter¬ rupt this constant prayer of theirs? I looked, and lo, one flower had finished its recollection. That one I brought.” It was he who became the successor of Siinbiil Efendi, and one of the cemeteries along the Byzan¬ tine wall of Istanbul still bears his name. The poetic aspect of Dhfr’n-Nun has been highlighted because 25. Ash-Sha c ranl, Lawdqih, p. 156. See also the description of Kazaruni in T 2:295. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 47 that is most conspicuous in his sayings. A detailed study of his life and work would, in all probability, reveal many previously un¬ known aspects of his teachings and show whether he was, indeed, the first “theosophist” among the Sufis or rather the hymnodist who rediscovered the divine glory as praised by the creatures. In later times Dhu 3 n-Nun became a subject of tales and legends. Another early saint has been almost completely transformed into a kind of Sufi symbol—Abu Yazid (Bayezld) Bistami (d. 874). 26 His personality looms large on the horizon of early Persian Sufism. Few mystics have impressed and perplexed their contemporaries and successive generations as much as this ascetic from the little place known as Bistam (Bastam) in northwestern Iran. Strange experiences and great faith are ascribed to him. His theopathic locutions and paradoxes attracted another, though very different, mystic, Junayd (d. 910), the leader of the Baghdad school, who, however, held that Bayezld had not reached the final goal of the seeker. Numerous attempts at explaining Bayezid’s personality and his enigmatic utterances have been made in Europe. The finest one is the short and penetrating study by Hellmut Ritter. R. C. Zaehner has stressed the possibility of Indian influences upon Bayezld. The import of the story that Bayezld’s mystical master was a certain Abu C A 1 I as-Sindi, i.e., from Sind, is still doubtful; even if this man had been from the lower Indus valley and not from a village called Sind close to Bistam, it seems scarcely possible to draw far-reaching consequences from this geographical fact: not. every man from Sind could be expected to know all the intricacies of Hindu monistic philosophy. It is, of course, tempting to imagine such an acquaint¬ ance with Vedantic speculations on the part of Bayezld, and some of the equations brought forth by Zaehner seem very plausible; yet it seems more likely that the mystic of Bistam should have reached his goal by means of the Islamic experience of fana, annihilation, as he formulated it for the first time, rather than by an experience 26. Hellmut Ritter, “Die Ausspriiche des Bayezld Bistami,' 1 in Westostliche Abhand- lungen, Festschrift fur Rudolf Tschudi, ed. Fritz Meier (Wiesbaden, 1954). Reynold A. Nicholson, “An Early Arabic Version of the Mi c raj of Abu Yazid al-Bistami,” Islainica 2 (1925). On possible Indian influences see Robert C. Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysticism (London, i960), and the critical article by M. c Abdur Rabb, "The Problem of Possible Indian Influence on Abu Yazid al-Bistami,” Journal of the Pakistan His¬ torical Society, January 1972. c Abdur Rahman Badawi, Shatahdt as-sufiyya, I: Abu Yazid al-Bistami (Cairo, 1949). 48 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM that, in the Vedantic sense, would have led him to an extension of the atman, “the innermost self,” until it realizes its unity with the essence of everything as expressed in the words tat twain asi, “that is you.” Bayezid hoped for a complete extinction of the traces of self, not for an extension of anything created (cf. MM 56). The negative way is his; but he was also the first to describe the mystical experience in terms of the image of the mi c raj, the heavenly journey of the Prophet. His sayings burn with hopeless longing and possess a weird beauty, and they are often frightening in their powerful imagery. His yearning is absolute, and so is his disappointment. Bayezld’s nephew, to whom we owe the transmission of many of his sayings, once asked him about his renunciation, and he answered: Renunciation ( zuhd ) has no value. I was three days in renunciation, on the fourth day I had finished it. The first day I renounced this world, the second day I renounced the Otherworld, the third day I renounced everything save God; when the fourth day came, nothing was left to me but God. I reached a desperate longing. Then I heard a voice addressing me: “O Bayezid, you are not strong enough to endure with Me alone.” I said: “That is exactly what I want.” Then the voice said: “You have found, you have found!” (T 1:167) God is so overwhelming that man becomes nothing even when thinking of His name or pronouncing the word A llah with proper awe: “Bayezid once uttered the call to prayer and fainted. When he came to his senses he said: ‘It is amazing that a man does not die when uttering the call to prayer.’ ” 27 But then, how are we to under¬ stand his description of his flight beyond space three times thirty thousand years—until eventually he found nothing but Bayezid in the divine throne and behind the veil that hides God? And again there is his reply to someone who asked him: When does man reach God? “O you miserable one—does he reach Him at all?” 28 One of his mystical friends—the traditions about the name differ—sent him a prayer rug on which to pray; but he answered: “I have put to¬ gether the worship of the inhabitants of the heavens and the seven earths and put it into a pillow and put that pillow under my cheek” (T 1:144). And at other times, when somebody came to see him, he replied: “I myself am in search of Bayezid.” 29 His sentences are paradoxes, wrapped in wonderful imagery: for 27. Ritter, "Bayezid,” in Westostliche Abhandlungen, ed. Meier, p. 234. 28. Ibid., p. 240. 29. Ibid. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 49 twelve years he was the blacksmith of his self until he made of himself a pure mirror (T 1:139); he saw “longing” as a palace in which the sword “horror of separation” is placed and a narcissus stem “union” given in the hand of hope—but even after seven thousand years the narcissus is fresh and green, for no one has ever attained it (T 1:166). Bayezid might acknowledge at one moment that he eventually found that God had remembered him before he remembered God, knew him before he had known Him, and that God’s love of man precedes man’s love of God (A 10:34); but at another moment the same Bayezid sighs: As soon as I attained to His Unity I became a bird with a body of One¬ ness and wings of Everlastingness, and 1 continued flying in the air of Quality for ten years, until I reached an atmosphere a million times as large, and I flew on, until I found myself in the field of Eternity and I saw there the Tree of Oneness.... And I looked, and I knew that all this was a cheat. Then again, he exclaimed, with the pride of one who had found his goal: He got up once and put me before Himself and addressed me: “O Baye¬ zid, my creatures desire to behold thee.” So I said: “Adorn me with Thy Unity and dress me with Thy I-ness and raise me to Thy Oneness so that, when Thy creatures see me, they may say: We have seen Thee, and it is Thou and I am no longer there.” (L 382) It must have been in such a state of rapture that Bayezid said: “Subhdnl —Praise be to Me, how great is My Majesty!” This typical shath has puzzled many later mystics and has often been repeated by the poets of Iran and Turkey and Muslim India as proof of the unitive state reached by the perfected mystic. Sarraj, to give one example of moderate Sufi interpretation, understands Bayezid to be talking “as if he were reciting the Koranic word: ‘I am God, there is no God besides Me’ ” (Sura 20:14) (L 390)—which is certainly a mild explanation. Bayezid came to attain this state by an austere via negationis and constant mortification, by emptying himself of himself, until he had reached, at least for a moment, the world of absolute unity where, as he said, lover, beloved, and love are one (T 1:160), and where he himself is the wine, the wine-drinker, and the cupibearer (T 1:159)—a formulation used by later Persian poets in their hymns praising the purifying and transforming power of divine love. 50 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM A strange figure of dark fire, Bayezid stands lonely in early Ira¬ nian Sufism. His paradoxes constantly yield new meaning, yet they continue to be elusive—unless the reader were to share the mystic’s experience. Or would one, then, return and claim with Bayezid that "everything was a cheat”? Whatever the experiences of the mystic from Bistam were, his personality inspired many later writers. His name occurs, in poetry, more frequently than that of any other mystic, with the exception of “Mansur” Hallaj, with whom he was sometimes associated, al¬ though Hallaj believed that “poor Abu Yazid” had arrived only at the threshold of the divine (P 250). The poets could easily contrast his unflinching faith and deep religious engagement with the “infidelity of Yazid” (playing on the similarity of their names); the second Omayyad caliph Yazid was responsible for the tragedy of Kerbela, in which the Prophet’s grandson was killed, together with his family, in 680, and his name has become anathema to every pious Muslim. Thus Sana 3 ! asks: Who ever agreed with the Yazid “base soul,” how could he know the state of Bayezid? (S 632) For the “soul that inspires evil” is similar to the cruel enemy of the Prophet’s family and thus stands in contrast to the great mystical leader. “Bayezid of his time” has become an honorary epithet for a man of outstanding mystical piety, and Sufi pretenders have been warned “not to make themselves Bayezlds” (M 6:2548). In his Mathnawi, RumI tells the legend that Bayezld’s disciples rebelled against him when he exclaimed: “Under my garment there is noth¬ ing but God!” But when they tried to kill him, the strokes of their knives wounded themselves (M 4:2102-40), for the perfect saint is a pure mirror who reflects the attributes of others to them. In an¬ other passage he relates the story of a Zoroastrian who refused to accept Islam because he felt too weak to embrace a religion that had produced spiritual heroes like Bayezid (T 1:149; M 5:3358)—a story that has been taken over, in our day, by Muhammad Iqbal in his Jawidname (1932), where it serves to assert the spiritual strength of the Islamic religion and the true Muslims. There are still sacred places dedicated to the memory of the lonely mystic of Bistam in the remotest corners of the Islamic HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 51 world: in Zousfana in the Maghreb and in Chittagong in Bangla Desh, where huge, whitish turtles inhabit a tank to which people come to obtain blessings for themselves and for their children. Sufi hagiography often mentions a letter sent to Bayezld by Yahya ibn Mu c adh, who wrote: “‘I am intoxicated from having drunk so deeply of the cup of His love.’—Abu Yazid wrote to him in reply: ‘Someone else has drunk up the seas of Heaven and earth, but his thirst is not yet slaked: his tongue is hanging out and he is crying “Is there any more?”’” (A 10:40). Bayezid’s metaphysical thirst has never been quenched; he belongs to those who, even if they would drink every day seven seas of union from this goblet, they would say from thirst to thirst: Standing in the water, athirst and not being granted a drink . . . . (B 442) His correspondent Yahya ibn Mu c adh ar-Razi was a completely different type, personifying another major trend in early Sufism. Yahya came from Rayy (near present Tehran), lived for a while in Balkh, and died, in 871, in Nishapur, “and he spoke constantly about hope” (Q 16). According to Hujwlri, he was the author of many books—which seem to be lost—and his sayings “are delicately moulded and pleasant to the ear and subtle in substance and profit¬ able in devotion” (H 122). Indeed, the scattered words and short poems that have come down to us from the “preacher Yahya” are pleasantly different in style from the utterances of the Khurasanian and the Baghdadian Sufis. He was mainly a preacher who called people to God, and, although a number of Sufis are related to have preached in public, he is the only one to be distinguished by the title al-wcfiz, “the preacher.” He also talked about divine love, and to him is ascribed the famous saying: “Real love does not diminish by the cruelty of the beloved, nor does it grow by His grace, but is always the same” (A 10:58)—an idea that has been worked out by the Persian poets to its final consequences. Yahya held that “one mustard seed of love is better than seventy years of worship without love” (T 1:306). Religion is, for him, hope in God, whose mercy is infinite and who listens to the prayer of the human heart, The preacher from Rayy once spoke about the difference between 52 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM the person who comes to attend a banquet for the sake of the ban¬ quet and the one who attends in the hope of meeting his friend; such is the difference between the ascetic who longs for Paradise for the sake of joy and bliss and the lover who hopes for the beatific vision of his eternal beloved (P 516). Yahya spoke the oft-repeated word: “Death is beautiful, for it joins the friend with the Friend!” (T 1:308). The most characteristic expression of Yahya’s piety is the reflection, in a number of his prayers, of an almost “evangelical” trust in the compassionate God. In dialectical form, they show the contrast between the helpless sinner and the Almighty Lord who can forgive His miserable creatures out of His inexhaustible trea¬ sure of mercy: O God, Thou hast sent Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh the rebel and said, “Talk mildly with him”—O God, this is Thy kindness towards one who claimed to be God; how, then, is Thy kindness towards one who is Thy servant out of his innermost soul? . .. O God, I fear Thee because I am a slave, and I hope in Thee because Thou art the Lord! . . . O God, how should I not hope in Thee, while Thou art merciful, and how should I not fear Thee because Thou art powerful? O God, how can 1 call upon Thee, being a rebellious slave, and how could I not call upon Thee who art a merciful Lord? (T 1:309-10) Yahya deeply trusted in God’s forgiveness, which can cover every sin, for no matter how near perfect a man may be, sinning is part of human nature: “O God, though I can not refrain from sin, Thou canst forgive sins” (T 1:310). And this God will lead him eventually to the place that He chooses out of His loving-kindness: “O God, I have done nothing for Paradise, and I have no strength to endure Hell—everything is left to Thy mercy!” (T 1:310). The preacher from Rayy stands amazed and overwhelmed before the mystery of divine love—is it not the greatest miracle of grace that God, the ever rich who needs nothing, should love men? How, then, should man, who is so much in need of God, not love Him? He sums up his whole feeling in one short prayer: “Forgive me, for I belong to Thee” (T 1:310). Among Yahya’s successors—though not exclusively his disciples— there are two main ones in central and western Iran who are men¬ tioned by later authors. His disciple in Nishapur was Abu TJthman al-HIri (d. 910), who had been educated in part by Shah KirmanI in the spiritual tradition of Khurasan. Al-Hiri is regarded as one of the great leaders of his time, who established Sufism in Nishapur; but he was criticized by some contemporaries for thinking too HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 53 much of the purification of the soul without turning his views exclusively to God. He is regarded as one of the first to introduce a strict system of education for his disciples, a trend that developed finally into the perinde ac cadaver obedience that distinguishes later Sufi education. 30 The second master of Rayy is Yusuf ibn Husayn ar-Razi (d. 916), who belongs to the line of the ascetic Abu Turab and who seems to have met Dhu 3 n-Nun in his early years. He is credited with sayings about ikhlas, “perfect sincerity,” as well as with sentences about the constant recollection of God. Rabi c a ushered in a new and productive period in the develop¬ ment of the mystical life in Iraq. Among the many Sufis who lived and worked in the capital, Baghdad, as well as in other Iraqian cities, mention must be made of Rabi'a’s younger contemporary Ma c ruf al-Karkhl (d. 815). Legends speak of his strong mystical power; his prayers were heard, and after his death people from Baghdad would cross the Tigris to the section of Karkh and pray for rain at his tomb. He was among the first to speak about divine love, and his teaching that one cannot learn love, for it is a divine gift and not an acquisition (T 1:272), has had a great impact on mystical thought. QushayrI attributes to Ma c ruf special strength in rida, perfect contentment with God’s decrees (Q 9). Ma c ruf’s disciple Sari as-Saqati, “the huckster” (d. circa 867), gratefully acknowledged that his teacher’s blessings had enabled him to achieve high spiritual rank. The biographers claim that Sari was the first to discuss the various mystical states ( ahwal ), a central topic of mystical writers. His piety and scrupulosity are reflected in the remark that he was afraid that his nose might turn black because of his sins. In his meetings he used to discuss topics of mystical love, which he was apparently the first to define as “real mutual love between man and God”—a scandal to the orthodox, who accepted “love of God” only in the sense of obedience. Also attributed to Sari are sayings about the problem of tauhld, “to de¬ clare that God is one,” which was later elaborated by his disciple and nephew Junayd. A delightful episode preserved in the Nafahdt al-uns reveals the great Sufi leader in a very human light: “During his illness people used to visit him and would ask him for his bless¬ ings and prayers, and he, eventually exhausted, taught them to 30. For the whole problem see Fritz Meier, "£Iurasan und das Ende der klassischen Sufik,” in La Persia net medioevo (Rome, 1971). 54 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM pray: ‘O God, teach us how to behave when visiting the sick’ ” (N 54; A 10:122). During those years when Sari was discussing the mystical stages, his compatriot al-Harith al-Muhasibl (d. 857) was writing his fun¬ damental books on mystical psychology. 31 Born in Basra in 781, he was probably influenced by the teachings of Hasan al-Basrl’s fol¬ lowers. Muhasibi belonged to the Shafi'i school of law, as did Ju- nayd, Rudhbari, and many other Sufis; but he also acquired the theological and philosophical vocabulary of the Mu'tazila—which brought criticism from the Hanbalites. Yet the study of Mu'tazilite theological methods gave him greater eloquence, and it is he who gave Sufism a highly developed technical language. Muhasibi—whose surname is derived from muhasaba, the con¬ stant analysis of even the most secret motions of the soul and the heart—taught the relentless fight against man’s lower nature, not just the outward struggle of the ascetic against the “flesh,” but a subtle psychological analysis of every thought as well as uninter¬ rupted spiritual training. Such training, of course, goes along with utmost scrupulosity. Muhasibi claimed to have a nerve in his finger that would warn him whenever food was not perfectly clean legally (N 572). He has described very eloquently the state of the seeker of the path to God: God has appointed self-mortification for the seeker, for the training of his soul. Men are ignorant of the high station of that one who is preoccu¬ pied with his Lord, who is seen to be thinking little of this world, who is humble, fearful, sorrowful, weeping, showing a meek spirit, keeping far from the children of this world, suffering oppression and not seeking revenge, despoiled, yet not desiring requital. He is dishevelled, dusty, shabby, thinks little of what he wears, wounded, alone, a stranger—but if the ignorant man were to look upon the heart of that seeker, and see how God has fulfilled in him what He promised of His favor and what He gives Him for exchange for that which he renounces of the vain glory of the world and its pleasure, he would desire to be in that one’s place, and would realise that it is he, the seeker after God, who is truly rich, and fair to look upon, who tastes delight, who is joyous and happy, for he has attained his desire and has secured that which he sought from his Lord . 32 Muhasibl’s subtle analysis of riya, “hypocrisy,” and his whole meth- 31. Margaret Smith, An Early Mystic of Baghdad (London. 1935). Joseph van Ess, Die Gedankenwelt des Harit al-Muhasibi, anhand von Obersetzungen aus seitien Schriften dargestellt und erldulert (Bonn, 1961), is an excellent analysis of Muhasibl’s teachings. Some of Mufiasibl’s works have been edited; these are listed under his name in the Bibliography. 32. Smith, Readings, no. 12. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 55 odological approach became fundamental and indispensable to the early Sufis; Ghazzall, the master of moderate medieval mysticism, depends largely upon him. Among the disciples of Sari as-Saqatl, Abu Bakr al-Kharraz (d. 899) is known in the West through Arberry’s translation of his Kitab as-sidq, “The Book of Truthfulness.” 33 His mystical hints, ishardt, seem to have influenced Junayd. Tradition credits him with having been the first to discuss the theory of fund, “annihila¬ tion,’ and baqa, “permanent life in God.” Recently discovered documents reveal that he can be regarded as one of Junayd’s masters and that he contributed to mystical psychology in his Kitab al- faragh, which has been analyzed by Pere Nwyia (W 240 ff.). Nwyia has also brought to light Kharraz’s importance for the definition of tauhid, in which he anticipates some of Junayd’s and even Hallaj’s ideas: “Only God has the right to say ‘I,’ for whoever says T will not reach the level of gnosis.” That is why Satan was punished, for he said, “7 am better than Adam,” and that is why the angels had to prostrate themselves before Adam, for they had claimed, "We are higher than he.” The only true subject is, in fact, God. Kharraz goes even further by showing that this divine “I” is ontologically connected with the divine name al-Haqq, “the Real¬ ity”—this seems to be the nucleus of Hallaj’s famous phrase ana?l- Haqq (W 249). From these theories we can understand how c Abdul- lah-i Ansari, the leading mystic and hagiographer of Herat in the eleventh century, could make the remark: “Abu Sa c Id [sic] Kharraz would have needed a trifle lameness, for nobody could walk along with him” (N 74). Kharraz was writing a treatise on saintship at almost the same time that Sahl at-Tustarl (d. 8g6) was discussing the problem of saintship and TirmidhI was working on his book Khatm al-auliya 5 , “The Seal of Saints.” This coincidence indicates that during the last two or three decades of the ninth century the necessity for a systematization of mystical thought was being felt, and that the problem of sanctity and saintship was one of the central ones at the time. Sahl’s name stands for a certain tendency that was rejected in part by subsequent generations. It is, however, difficult to find heterodox trends in the teachings of this apparently introverted 33. Abu Bakr al-Kharraz, Kitab as-sidq. The Book of Truthfulness, ed. and trans. A. J. Arberrv (Oxford, 1937). 56 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM ascetic, who was praised by Junayd as “the proof of the Sufis” (QR 59). He had spent a couple of years in the ascetic settlement at Abbadan and was eventually exiled to Basra. His most frequently cited theory is that of the obligatory character of repentance, which should be a permanent state in the faithful. This austere outlook fits the ascetic life in which Sahl tried to combine tawakkul and work; for, as he thought, it would be an offense to the Prophetic tra¬ dition to avoid or condemn work as a means of gaining one’s liveli¬ hood, but an offense against the faith to neglect “trust in God.” 34 Sahl tried to remain aloof from the theological discussions that had shaken the Muslim community in the preceding decades; he advocated the duty of obeying the political ruler. Instead, he retired into the sweetness of his inner life and found there the peace that the disturbed outward world could not give him. He wrote an ex¬ tensive commentary on the Koran in which he discussed the four¬ fold meaning of each verse. His theories of saintliness are highly interesting: he spoke of a pillar of light formed from the souls of those who are predestined to become saints—it was the time in both Sufi and Shia circles that theories about the preexistent light of Muhammad were being developed, and other mystics had put forth the theory that the souls of the true lovers belong to a divine light. According to Sahl, only the saints are predestined to attain the mystery of lordliness, sirr ar-rububiya —here lies, probably, one source of Hallaj’s similar theories, for Hallaj had lived with Sahl for a while. Sahl’s teaching was continued by his disciple Ibn Salim (d. 909); hence their school was known as the Salimiyya. The author of the first comprehensive manual of Sufism, Abu Talib al-Makkl, be¬ longed to this group. Sahl’s younger contemporary at-Tirmidhi developed peculiar ideas about sainthood. 35 Tirmidhi is surnamed al-Hakim, “the phi¬ losopher,” which points to the fact that through him Hellenistic philosophical ideas were penetrating Sufism. Tirmidhi died early in the tenth century in Mecca, where he lived after the study of 34. Cihad Tunc, "Sahl ibn c Abdullah at-Tustarl und die Salimiya” (Ph. D. diss., University of Bonn, 1970). Tunc is a Turkish theologian; his discussion of Sahl is not fully satisfactory. 35. Osman Yahya, “L’oeuvre de Tirmidi, essai bibliographique,” Melanges Louis Massignon, 3 vols. (Damascus, 1956-57), 3:41 iff.; Nicholas Heer, “Some Biographical and Bibliographical Notes on al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi,” in The World of Islam: Studies in Honour of Philip K. Hitti, ed. R. Bailey Winder and James C. Kritzeck (London, i960). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 57 Shafiite law in Balkh and a prolonged stay in Iraq. He, too, wrote a commentary on the Koran “in the light of the questions which his own experience posed to him and which he interpreted in a vocabulary enriched by the philosophical rapport and the experi¬ ences of the earlier mystics” (W 156). He thus gave the words a more profound meaning, and it is significant that the founder of the Naqshbandl order in the fourteenth century attributed to him a particular power when the disciple undergoes the process of di¬ recting his concentration toward the spirit of one of the great mas¬ ters (N 119). Tirmidhl’s main contribution to the theory of Sufism is probably his “Seal of the Saints,” in which he developed the terminology of sainthood that has been used since that time. The leader of the Sufi hierarchy is the qutb, “pole” or “pivot,” or ghanth, “help.” The saints govern the universe, certain groups of three, seven, forty, or three hundred saints being entrusted with various duties in maintaining the world order (see Chapter 4). Like the prophets, whose seal is Muhammad, the saints have their seal, the last and culminating figure in the hierarchy. The degrees of sainthood as sketched by TirmidhI are related to the degree of illumination and gnosis reached by the person in question—it is not a “hierarchy of love.” With him, the emphasis upon gnosis, mcfrifa, becomes more explicit; he thus prepares the way for later theosophic speculation. But while Sahl and TirmidhI wrote about saintship and gnosis, c Amr al-Makkl (d. 909) was probably the first to compose a system¬ atic treatise on the degrees of love, intimacy, and proximity. The undisputed master of the Sufis of Baghdad was AbuTQasim al-Junayd, who is considered the pivot in the history of early Su¬ fism. 36 The representatives of divergent mystical schools and modes of thought could refer to him as their master, so that the initiation chains of later Sufi orders almost invariably go back to him. Like many other mystics, Junayd came from Iran; born in Niha- wand, he settled in Baghdad and studied law according to the Shafi¬ ite rite. In Sufism he was educated by his uncle Sari as-Saqatl; 36. A. J. Arberry, "Junaid,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1935, p. 499: A. H. Abdel Kader, The Life, Personality and Writings of al-]unayd, Gibb Memorial Series, n.s. 22 (London, 1962). See the review of Abdel Kader's book by Joseph van Ess, Oriens 20 (1967). A fine analysis is given in Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysti¬ cism, pp. 135 ff. 58 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM Muhasibi's psychological insight seems to have impressed him, and the influence of Kharraz on his formation is apparently greater than has been proved at the moment. One of his fellow Sufis, al-Haddad, is reported to have said: “If intellect ( c aql ) were a man, it would have the form of Junayd” (N 80), a saying that alludes to the seri¬ ousness, sobriety, and penetrating mind of the master. Junayd—faithful to the Muhasibi tradition—sees in Sufism a way of constant purification and mental struggle: “We did not take Sufism from talk and words, but from hunger and renunciation of the world and cutting off the things to which we were accustomed and which we found agreeable’’ (Q 19). The mystical life meant, for him, the permanent striving to return to one’s origin, that origin that was in God and from which everything proceeds, so that eventually the mystic should reach the state “in which he was be¬ fore he was.” That is the state of the primordial covenant (Sura 7:171), when God was alone and what is created in time was not yet existent. Only then can man realize perfect tauhld; only then can he witness that God is one from eternity to eternity. The tremendous majesty of God in His aloneness and unity permeates every thought of Junayd; he feels that majesty whose will must be accepted in every moment of life, and before whom the servant becomes nothing through constant obedience, worship, and permanent recollection of His name, until he reaches the “annihila¬ tion in the object mentioned,” when the recollecting human is no longer separated from the object of his recollection, God. Unifica¬ tion means, for Junayd, “the separation of the Eternal from that which has been originated in time by the Covenant” (H 281); and it also means “to go out of the narrowness of temporal signs into the wide fields of eternities” (L 29). Like other mystical leaders, Junayd spoke about the different stations and stages on the Path; he praised poverty, faqr, which is “an ocean of affliction, yet its affliction is completely glory” (L 174). Mystical love means, to him, “that the qualities of the Beloved replace the qualities of the lover” (L 59); it is a transformation of the lover on the level of attributes. A major aspect of Junayd’s teaching is his emphasis on the state of sobriety ( sahw) as contrasted to intoxication ( sukr). Bayezld Bistami preferred mystical intoxication because it obliterates the human attributes and annihilates man completely in the object of adoration, taking him out of himself. Junayd and his followers, however, considered the “second sobriety” the highest and prefera- HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 59 ble state: after the ecstatic intoxication man becomes once more aware of himself in the “life in God,” when all his attributes, trans¬ formed and spiritualized, are restored to him. Fana, “annihilation,” is not the ultimate goal, but baqa, “remaining,” a new life in God. Junayd’s claim, like that of Bayezld, is absolute; he concentrated every thought, every love, every inclination, every admiration, every fear, and every hope on God and asked Him to annihilate everything that might exist outside this perfect concentration (A 10:28a). Junayd knew very well that mystical experience and thought cannot be rationalized and that it is dangerous to speak openly about the deepest mysteries of faith in the presence of the uniniti¬ ated (particularly since orthodox circles viewed the activities of the Sufis with growing suspicion). It was for this reason that he had rejected Hallaj, who was to become the model for all who are pun¬ ished because they speak openly about the mysteries of love and unity. Junayd, therefore, refined the art of speaking in isharat, sub¬ tle allusion to the truth—a trend, attributed first to Kharraz, that became characteristic of later Sufi writings. His letters and short treatises are written in a cryptic style: their language is so dense that they are difficult to understand for one not acquainted with his peculiar way of thinking and teaching. This language of ex¬ quisite beauty rather veils than unveils the true meaning. One of Junayd’s friends in Baghdad was Ruwaym (d. 915); in fact, the Baghdad Sufis were divided in their preferences between these two masters. Ansar! admitted 150 years later that he “would prefer one hair of Ruwaym to a hundred of Junayd” (N 95). Ruwaym is remembered by later hagiographers mainly because he did not practice the same extraordinary austerities as many of his contemporaries and did not overemphasize tawakkul, absolute trust in God. “He disguised himself in the attitude of a rich man” (N 95). Ibn Khaflf, the Shirazi Sufi leader, relates how Ru- waym’s little daughter, prettily dressed in red, ran into her father’s arms, and he caressed her and explained to his surprised visitor that he liked to care for his family and would not leave everything to tawakkul (X 85). For him, tawakkul meant trust in God’s eternal promise to look after His creatures (L 52), but it did not mean to turn completely away from worldly concerns. Two more figures of the Baghdad circle should be mentioned, both of them famous for their love. They are AbuTHusayn an- 60 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM Nuri (d. goy) and Sumnun, whose sobriquet was al-Muhibb, “the lover” (d. after goo). Nuri had been a disciple of Sari as-Saqati and was, thus, a con¬ frere of Junayd; after having spent some years in Raqqa in north¬ ern Iraq, he had returned to the capital. He is the greatest repre¬ sentative of that pure love that had been introduced by Rabi c a, a disinterested love for which God has not asked and for which He will not recompense the lover. That his love—a love that rejoices in suffering—was not only theoretical was proved when Ghulam Khalil brought charges against the Sufis of Baghdad in 885. Ac¬ cused of heresy, and likely to be sentenced to capital punishment, Nuri offered his life to save his companions; the caliph, touched by such magnanimity, investigated the case, found the Sufis to be good Muslims, and set them free. Brotherly love was, for Nuri, the perfect expression of truthfulness as well as of genuine spiritual poverty, which meant preferring others to himself. Nuri was considered a heretic ( zindiq) by the orthodox because he spoke of being a lover ( c ashiq ) of God, a strong term that was misinterpreted by the theologians (see B 38g). His love was over¬ whelming, and in his enthusiasm he tended to “tear the veils” (L 5g) and therefore expose himself to blame and danger. He was, however, not only the representative of a love that overflows all borders and tempts man to seemingly blameworthy acts; he also composed a number of theoretical works that have only recently come to light. Like Shaqlq, he speaks of the light of God, which is the first thing to appear when God wants to guide a person on the mystical path (W 348). His Maqamat al-qulub “The Stations of the Hearts,” contains a fine analysis of the psychological stages and their “seats” in the human heart. Nwyia (W 326) has drawn the attention of scholars to Nurl’s colorful imagery, which until recent¬ ly was known only from his short musical poems and some frag¬ ments of prose. But to truly appraise his power of expression, one should read Nurl’s elaborate comparison of the heart to a house in which a king, Certitude, resides, assisted by two viziers, Fear and Hope, and surrounded by ten chiefs, which are the main duties of a pious Muslim. Another description of the cleaning of this house reminds us immediately, in its consequences, of Jalaluddln Rumi’s famous verses about the lover who is admitted to the abode of the beloved only after he has become annihilated, for “there is no room for two I s in this narrow house” (M 1:3056-63)—an echo of a basic HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 6l mystical experience through the centuries. Nun's description of the seven citadels, surrounded by seven ramparts and a wall, as God has built them in the heart, is somewhat reminiscent of St. Theresa’s Interior Castle, though the Baghdad Sufi does not reach the psycho¬ logical depth of the great Carmelite nun. Nun's definition of the heart as a garden prefigures later Per¬ sian garden poems: the garden of the heart is either blessed or de¬ stroyed by rain—rain being, in the East, a symbol of divine activity and, generally, of divine mercy. Nuri speaks of the two-fold rain, one of grace and mercy and one of divine wrath and revenge; the first one is revealed by thunders of majesty in the hearts of those who repent, by the lightning of desire in the hearts of the ascetics, by the showers of generosity in the hearts of the lovers, and by the breeze of appeasement in the hearts of the gnostics. But the thun¬ derstorm of revenge sends the thunder of rupture into the hearts of the idolaters, the lightning of hatred into the hearts of the hypo¬ crites, the rains of enmity into the hearts of the oppressors, and the wind of the veiling screen into the hearts of those who transgress the law. Nuri was, as can be understood from these few details, indeed a forerunner of the later poets, who never tired of express¬ ing their mystical experiences in the imagery of gardens, flowers, rains, and fruits—those poets who would symbolize the word coming to them from the beloved by the life-bestowing morning breeze, or the advent of the Prophet by a merciful rain that quickens the parched hearts of mankind. Nuri seems not to have been a conforming member of the Bagh¬ dad Sufi circles. There are stories that recount Junayd’s criticizing him for exuberant words and startling miracles. Indeed, his way of educating his lower soul was quite peculiar: he was afraid of lions and therefore stayed in the lion-infested forests along the Tigris to conquer his fear. 37 Does he not remind us of the age-old mytho¬ logical tales in which the hero goes into the forest, the symbol of his unconscious, in order to overcome the animals, which represent his lower instincts? Nurl’s death, too, occurred in a strange way: enraptured by the recitation of a verse, he ran into a nearby reedbed where the reeds had just been cut; the razor-sharp edges of the stumps hurt his feet without his being aware of the pain; soon afterward he died from the wounds. 37. Ibn al-Jauzi, Talbis iblls (Cairo, 1921-22), p. 381, dwells intensely upon this frequently told story. 62 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM Among the friends who had been tried and imprisoned with Nurl was Sumnun the Lover, who called himself “the Liar”: “He, without fear, and completely love, he without reason and complete¬ ly heart, that moth of the candle of Beauty, that man confused by the dawn of union”—that is how 'Attar introduced him in lovely rhyming sentences (T 2:82). He told touching stories about the Lover: the lamps in the mosque shattered when Sumnun began preaching about disinterested and selfless love, and birds killed themselves while listening to his heart-rending sermons. Before 'Attar, Hujwfri had said that Sumnun “held a special madhhab in love and considered love the root and the foundation of the way towards God” (H 398). Later, JamI related that men and women gave up their spirits during his preaching. Sumnun considered love superior to gnosis (P 39)—a problem much discussed at that time among the Sufis. The solution finally depends upon the personal attitude of each traveler on the mystical path. Sumnun knew, like Dhu 3 n-Nun and all those who had ex¬ perienced divine love, that it is always connected with affliction. When he was asked why, he replied: “In order that not every ordi¬ nary person may claim love, for he will run away when he sees afflic¬ tion” (T 2:85). Love is the true religion of the spiritual elite, and its subtlety and depth cannot be conveyed by words. The meta¬ phors that Sumnun the Lover used to express the ineffable experi¬ ence of this love, of which he was only a fragile vessel, are not taken from the vocabulary of worldly love. Rather, they are perfectly chaste, lucid, almost immaterial: I have separated my heart from this world— My heart and Thou are not separate. And when slumber closes my eyes, I find Thee between the eye and the lid. (A 10:310) There is a direct line from the verses of Sumnun to the sublime poems being written at the same time by the most famous mystic of Baghdad and of the whole early period of Sufism, al-Hallaj. AL-HALLAJ, MARTYR OF MYSTICAL LOVE When Hallaj was in prison, he was asked: "What is love?” He an¬ swered: “You will see it today and tomorrow and the day after tomor¬ row.” And that day they cut off his hands and feet, and the next day they The Martyrdom of al-Hallaj, from a manuscript of Amir Khosrau’s Dlwan, seventeenth-century India. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore 64 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM put him on the gallows, and the third day they gave his ashes to the wind .... This story, told by c Attar (T 2:142), conveys in a nutshell the secret of Hallaj’s life, love, and death. With the intuition of a great psychologist, c Attar has condensed into these words the tragedy of a man who deeply influenced the development of Islamic mysticism and whose name became, in the course of time, a symbol for both suffering love and unitive experience, but also for a lover’s greatest sin: to divulge the secret of his love. European scholars have been attracted by Hallaj’s fate since his name was first discovered in Arabic sources. After the British scholar Edward Pocock (d. 1691), it was the German protestant theologian F. A. D. Tholuck who drew attention to him whom he calls “the Sufi most famous ( inclytissimus) by fame and fate” 38 who “removed the veil of pantheism publicly with incredible audacity.” The quotation that Tholuck then gives is both wrongly spelled and wrongly interpreted so that Hallaj’s image was seriously dis¬ torted in subsequent times. Tholuck regarded Hallaj as a pantheist; that became the opinion of the nineteenth-century scholars, and it was, and to some degree still is, accepted by a number of theologians. Some have accused Hallaj of blasphemy, while others considered him a secret Chris¬ tian. This latter view was taken up in the late nineteenth century by August Muller and lingers on in the minds of some scholars. Other orientalists, in the light of the sources at hand, tended to regard him as a neuropath or as a pure monist. Alfred von Kremer tried to locate the source of Hallaj’s famous word ana’l-Haqq, “I am the Absolute Truth,” in Indian sources, and Max Horten drew the comparison between this mystical statement and the aharn brahmasmi of the Upanishads, in which a number of oriental schol¬ ars have also concurred. Max Schreiner and Duncan Black Mac¬ donald regarded Hallaj as a full-fledged pantheist; contrary to them, Reynold A. Nicholson stressed the strict monotheism and the very personal relation between man and God in Hallaj’s thought. Fi¬ nally, Adam Mez dwelt upon possible connections between the great Sufi and Christian theology. Now, thanks to the lifelong w T ork of Louis Massignon, the en¬ vironment and influences on Hallaj have been explored so that his 38. Friedrich August Deofidus Tholuck, Ssufismus sive theosophia persarum pantheistica (Berlin, 1821), p. 68. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 65 life and teachings have become better known and better understood in the West. 39 Massignon has edited the difficult rhyming prose of the Kitab at-tawasin and has collected Hallaj’s scattered poems, which, in marvelous density, give utterance to the transcendence of God and His immanence in the human heart. The mystery of loving union is celebrated in verses free of any trace of the symbol¬ ism of profane love. Massignon devoted his whole life to the explo¬ ration of the spiritual world of Hallaj, adding more and more details, which he set forth in a monumental biography of the martyr- mystic that first appeared in 1922—just one thousand years after Hallaj’s execution. In fact, Hallaj is, as Hans Heinrich Schaeder says in his review of Massignon’s book, the martyr of Islam par ex¬ cellence because he exemplified the deepest possibilities of personal piety to be found in Islam; he demonstrated the consequences of perfect love and the meaning of submission to the unity of the divine beloved—not with the aim of gaining any sort of private sanctity but in order to preach this mystery, to live in it and to die for it. Who was this man who has been the object of both hatred and love, the model of suffering, the arch-heretic of orthodox writings, the ideal of enraptured Sufis? Ibn an-Nadlm, relying upon certain inimical sources, said of him in the tenth century: Al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj was a crafty man and a conjurer who ventured into the Sufi school of thought, affecting their ways of speech. He laid claim to every science, but nevertheless [his claims] were futile. He even knew something about the science of alchemy. He was ignorant, bold, obsequious, but courageous in the presence of sultans, attempting great things and ardently desiring a change of government. Among his adherents he claimed divinity, speaking of divine union . . . . 40 This—together with the paragraphs that follow in Ibn an-Nadxm’s book—articulates the conventional reading of Hallaj’s personality. Sober historical facts, however, though sometimes not too clear, reveal something close to the following picture of his life: 39. Louis Massignon, La passion d’Al-Hosayn ibn Mansour Al-Hallaj, martyr mystique de I’Islam execute a Bagdad le 26 Mars 922, 2 vols. (Paris, 1922); see Hans Heinrich Schaeder’s review, Der Islam 15 (1926). Massignon, “Le diwan d’al-Hallaj, essai de reconstitution," Journal asiatique, 1931; new edition as separate book (Paris, 1955). Massignon and Paul Kraus, Akhbar al-Hallaj, texte ancien relatif d la predica¬ tion et au supplice du mystique musulman al-Hosayn b. Mansour al-Hallaj, 3d ed. (Paris, 1957). See the Bibliography for other works by Massignon. Roger Arnaldez, Hallaj ou la religion de la croix (Paris, 1964). 40. The Fihrist of al-Nadim, ed. and trans. Bayard Dodge, 2 vols. (New York, 1970), 1:474. 66 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, bora in the province of Fars in 858, grew up in Wasit and Tustar, where cotton was cultivated and where cotton carders (that is the meaning of hallaj) like his father could pursue their occupation. The young man attached himself to Sahl at-Tustari and accompanied him to Basra. Later he became a disciple of 'Amr al-Makki in Baghdad and also of Junayd. He be¬ came estranged from c Amr when he married another mystic’s daugh¬ ter. She remained his only wife, and much information about Hal¬ laj’s later life is given on the authority of their son Hamd. After a short while, Hallaj’s father-in-law began to regard him as a “cun¬ ning sorcerer and miserable infidel.” In connection with his first pilgrimage, Husayn stayed in Mecca for a year, undergoing terrible hardships in asceticism. After his return to Baghdad, Junayd fore¬ told—according to the legends—an evil end for his former disciple. At this point the tradition contains the following anecdote: When he knocked at Junayd’s door, the master asked: “Who is there?” and he answered: "ana?l-Haqq, I am the Absolute [or Creative] Truth [or the True Reality].” This sentence has become the most famous of all Sufi claims. In fact, it appears in a chapter of Hallaj’s Kitdb at-tawasln and was probably taken from this source very early. In this chapter Hallaj discusses his own claim together with that of Pharaoh and Satan, Pharaoh having asserted, according to the Koran, “I am your highest Lord” (Sura 79:24) and Satan, “I am better than Adam” (Sura 7:12). Hallaj, then, asserts his own claim, “I am the Absolute Truth.” This passage led later mystics into deep speculations about the two different “I’s,” that of Pharaoh and that of the loving mys¬ tic; the solution is given in the divine revelation that “Pharaoh saw only himself and lost Me, and Husayn saw only Me and lost himself” (N 444), so that the “I” of the Egyptian ruler was an expression of infidelity but that of Hallaj expressed divine grace (M 2:2522). Whatever the reason for the statement ana^l-Haqq may have been, Junayd uttered his verdict against his former disciple, accusing him of propagating an unsound religious claim. The antagonism of the other mystics of the Baghdad school, especially of c Amr al-Makki and his group, mounted. Hallaj left the capital. For five years he traveled, ultimately reaching Khurasan, where he discussed reli¬ gious problems with the people; it was there, his son thinks, that he was surnamed hallaj al-asrar, “the cotton carder of the innermost HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 67 hearts,” since he knew all things hidden in the human heart and soul. During a second pilgrimage to Mecca, 400 disciples accompanied him, and eventually, in 905, Hallaj took a boat to India. His ene¬ mies ascribed this journey to his desire to learn magic, specifically, the rope trick. But he told his family that his aim was to call the heathen to God. From Gujerat he wandered through Sind, the lower Indus valley, which had been a part of the Muslim Empire since 711. The seeds he sowed there grew in later centuries in the mystical poetry of this province. From Sind, Hallaj traveled to the northern borders of India, then to Khurasan, to Turkestan, and eventually to Turfan—Massignon has suggested that he may have gone with the caravans that brought brocade from his home town of Tustar to the East and returned with Chinese paper to the Islamic countries. Some sources say that his words were written down on precious paper decorated in the style of the Manichaean manu¬ scripts from Central Asia. In the eyes of the Baghdad government these externals drew suspicion upon him. An even greater cause for suspicion was his supposed relations with the Carmathians, who ruled not only Bahrain but also northern Sind and Multan—places that the mystic had just visited. Did he not, after all, receive letters from distant Eastern lands in which he was addressed by strange names? The Akhbar al-Hallaj, a collection of anecdotes about Hallaj, gives a vivid impression of his life in Baghdad before and especially after his return from this last long journey. He is described preach¬ ing and calling people to God, in intense love and excessive asceti¬ cism. But in spite of his constant preoccupation with prayer and ascetic practices, Hallaj was sure that he had not completely fulfilled his duties toward God. In his ascetic mood he would prefer to feed the black dog at his side, the image of his lower nature, instead of taking food himself. At the same time he claimed miraculous pow¬ ers; in Mecca he produced sweetmeat from Yemen, and he sent down heavenly food in the middle of the desert. One can understand how his behavior encouraged opposition on the part of both political and religious circles. Because of that Hal¬ laj performed the pilgrimage once more, this time staying for two years in the holy city of Mecca. Then he bought a house in Baghdad, but soon Muhammad ibn Da 3 ud, the son of the founder of the Za- 68 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM hirite school of law, denounced him, inciting other scholars to join in attacking the man who claimed to have reached real union with his divine beloved, an idea that the representatives of platonic love could not accept. Aside from the subtle problems of mystical love, political and so¬ cial problems were at stake. Hallaj was a friend of the chamberlain Nasr al-Qushuri, who favored better administration and juster taxa¬ tion, dangerous ideas in a time when the caliph was almost power¬ less and the viziers, though all-powerful for a short period, changed frequently. The Shia groups who supported the vizier Ibn al-Furat considered Hallaj as dangerous as did the Sunni orthodox wing sur¬ rounding the “pious vizier” c AlI ibn c Isa. All of them were afraid that the effect on the people of spiritual revival might have reper¬ cussions on the social organization and even on the political struc¬ ture. The idea of converting the hearts of all Muslims and teaching them the secret of personal sanctification and not just of blind ac¬ ceptance would certainly have been dangerous for a society whose religious and political leaders lived in a state of stagnation with neither the strength nor the intention to revitalize the Muslim community. At the end of 912 Hallaj was apprehended while traveling near Sus; for three days he was set in a pillory, then imprisoned. Both the caliph’s mother and the chamberlain Nasr—who called him “a righteous man”—tried to make his imprisonment as comfortable as possible; but his situation grew worse during the financial crisis of 919, when the vizier Hamid tried by every means to have him exe¬ cuted. Searching the houses of his disciples, the police found frag¬ ments of correspondence in cryptic letters, partly decorated with picturesque forms, probably calligraphic signs representing the name of c Ali and some of the divine names. But years passed before the vizier could force the highest judge of Iraq to sign Hallaj’s death sentence. On 26 March 922 he was put to death. The story goes that Hallaj went dancing in his fetters to the place of execution, reciting a quatrain about mystical intoxication; then he asked his friend Shibli to lend him his prayer mat and performed a prayer during which he once more touched the mystery of the in¬ effable unity and separation of man and God. When people began to throw stones at him, Shibli—so the legend has it—threw a rose, and Hallaj sighed. Asked the reason for his sigh, he answered: “They do not know what they do, but he should have known it.” HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 69 And the saying that “the rose, thrown by the friend, hurts more than any stone” has become a Turkish proverb. Hallaj’s last words were: “ hash al-wajid ifrad al-wahid lahu— it is enough for the lover ['who has found in ecstasy’] that he should make the One single”—i.e., that his existence should be cleared away from the path of love (H 311). That is genuine tauhid, fully interi- orized, and paid for with the lover’s blood. Hallaj’s hands and feet w r ere cut off, and he was put on the cross or, more probably, on the gallows, then decapitated; his body was burned and the ashes thrown in the Tigris. This was the death for which his whole life had been a preparation. He had often urged the people of Baghdad to kill him so that he might be united with God and they might be recompensed for defending their simple and sincere faith. One of his most touching hymns begins with the words: Uqtulunl yd thiqdti—inna fl qatll hayati. Kill me, o my trustworthy friends, for in my being killed is my life- words that have been repeated by mystics throughout the ages as a basis for their meditations. Hallaj’s comprehensive work—of which the Fihrist gives a list—is preserved only in fragments. Mention has already been made of his Kitab at-tawasin, probably written during his imprisonment. 41 It contains eight chapters, each of them called tasin, after the myste¬ rious letters at the beginning of Sura 27, which are said to indicate divine majesty and power. This little book deals with problems of divine unity and with prophetology. It contains a discussion be¬ tween God and Satan, in which the latter refuses to obey the divine order to prostrate himself before Adam and, true muwahhid (con¬ fessor of divine unity) that he is, is caught in the dilemma between God’s eternal will that nobody should worship any being save Him and His explicit order to fall down before a created being. This situation has sometimes served to explain Hallaj’s own hopeless di¬ lemma. Hallaj’s satanology inspired a number of later mystics to develop these ideas (see Chapter 4). Portions of the Kitab at-tawasin are beautiful hymns in honor of the Prophet. Among the traditions that he personally affirmed, Hal- 41. Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, Kitab at-tawasin, texte arabe . . . avec la version persane d’al-Baqli, ed. and trans. Louis Massignon (Paris, 1913). 70 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM laj included the saying that “God has not created anything he loves more than he loves Muhammad and his family” (B 639). If there is any doubt as to whether Hallaj was a faithful Muslim, one need only read his description of Muhammad in the “Tasln as-siraj” of the Kitab at-tawasin. These short, rhyming sentences achieve new heights in the veneration of the Prophet: All the lights of the Prophets proceeded from his light; he was before all, his name the first in the book of Fate; he was known before all things, all being, and will endure after the end of all. By his guidance have all eyes attained to sight.... All knowledge is merely a drop, all wisdom merely a handful from his stream, all time merely an hour from his life .... In another chapter, Hallaj describes the fate of the moth that ap¬ proaches the flame and eventually gets burned in it, thus realizing the Reality of Realities. He does not want the light or the heat but casts himself into the flame, never to return and never to give any information about the Reality, for he has reached perfection. Who¬ ever has read Persian poetry knows that the poets choose this story of the moth and the candle as one of their favorite allegories to ex¬ press the fate of the true lover (SD 311; an almost word-for-word Persian poetical paraphrase is found in c Attar’s Mantiq at-tayr, when the poet speaks of the seventh and last valley of the mystical journey [MT 258]). Through the medium of Persian poetry the same symbol reached Europe. Goethe’s famous poem “Selige Sehn- sucht,” in his West- 0 stlicher Divan, reflects this very mystery of dying in love and reaching a new, higher life in union. The Goe- thean Stirb und werde, “die and become,” translates very well the Prophetic tradition “die before ye die” (in order to gain new life), which formed one of the cornerstones of Sufism and, of course, of Hallaj’s theories. 42 Hallaj's poetry is a very tender and intense expression of mystical yearning. Its language is chaste; the favorite symbols are the wine cup, the crescent, the goblet of intoxicating mystical joy, the virgin, the soul bird, and similar images. He sometimes uses cabalistic word plays and relies on the secret meaning of the letters of the alphabet; alchemistic expressions are also found at times. All of his verses are weighted with deep theological and mystical meaning and filled with enigmas, but so great is their beauty that they can be enjoyed even by those who do not care for deep religious interpretation but 42. Al-Hallaj, "Tasin al-fahm,” Kitab at-tawasin, pp. i6ff. Hans Heinrich Schaeder has studied the symbolism of the moth and the candle in his essay "Die persische Vorlage von Goethes Seliger Sehnsucht,” in Festschrift E. Spranger (Berlin, 1942). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 71 do enjoy Arabic poetry at its best—an extremely refined art with many overtones that evoke strange and fascinating echoes in the reader (see P 904). One can understand from his poems what Hal¬ laj meant when he declared that God is visible in every trace of His creation, and although the common folk, the blind and dumb, animal-like creatures, do not recognize Him, the mystic drinks not a single drop of water without discovering His vision in the cup. God is He “who flows between the pericardium and the heart, just as the tears flow from the eyelids.” Some of Hallaj’s great hymns reveal abysses of loneliness, like his threnody for all things on earth that are left blind and hopeless because the witness has gone and left them alone. A small part of Hallaj’s theology can be reconstructed from the scattered fragments of his commentary on the Koran preserved in the Tafslr of SulamI (d. 1021), one of the leading authorities on the mystical theology of his time. The Riwayat —collected by Ruzbihan Baqli in the late twelfth century—allow some insight into the work¬ ing of Hallaj’s mind. They consist of traditions that are not very dif¬ ferent from, and are often verbally congruent with, the generally accepted hadith; yet they are introduced not by a chain of human transmitters, as is the rule in hadith transmission, but by a chain going back to cosmic and supernatural powers, to stars and sun, to angels and spirits. That is the way Hallaj authenticated these tradi¬ tions for himself. This personal acceptance and realization of the religious truth was, perhaps, one of his most original contributions to Muslim spiritual life; it even led him to the doctrine of the isqat al-fara'id, i.e., that certain religious duties can be exchanged for other acts that are more useful at the moment. Instead of performing the pilgrimage, he advised people to invite orphans and to feed and dress them and make them happy for the day of the Great Feast. Such ideas, of course, were not acceptable to the legalists. Some of Hallaj’s letters have been preserved, as have a few of his prayers and a small number of isolated sayings, which often have a dialectical form that seems to be typical of the mystical mind: “Do not let yourself be deceived by God, nor cut off your hope from Him; do not wish His love, and do not resign from loving Him.” By such paradoxes the ineffable mystery of the love relation between man and God is disclosed. And this love relation is, in fact, the central theme of Hallaj’s prayers and sermons. Love, for Hallaj, w^as certainly not sheer obedience: “Love is that you remain standing in 72 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM front of your beloved, when you are deprived of your qualities and when the qualification comes from His qualification.” This love is realized through suffering—man can be united with the divine will by accepting suffering and even longing for it: “Suffering is He Himself, whereas happiness comes from Him.” That is one of the decisive sayings of Hallaj. But this suffering is not a means of de¬ humanizing man and bringing him back into his first state, “as he was before he was,” as was held by the followers of Junayd. Hallaj did not advocate destruction for the sake of destruction; he saw in suffering a positive value by means of which man might understand that c ishq, “love,” is the essence of the essence of God and the mys¬ tery of creation. The word c ishq, with its connotation of “passionate, overflowing love,” came to mean, for him, dynamic divine love; but this term was considered dangerous, if not illicit, even by moderate Sufis. In Hallaj’s theory, the compensation for having offered God unconditional love was the beatific vision, without an interven¬ ing “I.” The sentence anffl-Haqq, “I am the Absolute Truth,” or, as it was translated later, “I am God,” led many mystics to believe that Hal¬ laj was a pantheist, conscious of the unity of being. Hallaj’s theory, however, maintains the absolute transcendence of God beyond the dimensions of created things, his qidam, the preeternity that sepa¬ rates Him forever from the hadath, “what is created in time.” How¬ ever, in rare moments of ecstasy the uncreated spirit may be united with the created human spirit, and the mystic then becomes the liv¬ ing personal witness of God and may declare ana’l-Haqq. We must remember that, according to Hallaj, God’s nature contains human nature within it. This human nature was reflected in the creation of Adam, and Adam became huwa huwa, “exactly He.” This theory has led many critics to the assumption that the Christian dogma of the incarnation influenced Hallaj, an assumption seemingly sup¬ ported by his use of the Christian terms lahut, “divine nature,” and nasiit, “human nature.” But his theories are too complicated to be reducible to this or that influence. Indeed, they so intimately reflect the uniqueness of Hallaj’s thought that it is useless to trace each one back to its source. Hallaj was willing to suffer for himself and for others. The mys¬ tery of his death is aptly described in £mile Dermenghem’s words about the true Muslim saint: HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 73 The saint is he who takes upon him the sins and the pain of the world; the unjust death is, for him, one of his means of accomplishments. He is the “great Help” and the consolation of the people. He is a living accu¬ sation for the world: his existence insults the tyrants, his death makes tremble his executioners, his canonisation is a victory of faith, of love, and of hope. 43 This is the spirit in which Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj went to the gallows. Since he was put to death by the government—or the estab¬ lishment—his influence became even stronger after his execution than it had been during his lifetime. 44 About the year 1000 the Syri¬ an poet Ma c arr! wrote that in his day people still stood on the banks of the Tigris awaiting Hallaj’s return. Persian poetical tradition has praised Hallaj; the founders of the mystical fraternities as well as the theoreticians of Sufism frequently referred to him—sometimes in terms of pity, sometimes in admira¬ tion, and sometimes rejecting him or declaring him to be merely a beginner on the mystical Path. The fact that he proclaimed the se¬ cret of love openly made him appear to more sober mystics as one who had not reached his goal: for them he resembled the kettle that sings as long as the water is not yet boiling; when the water boils and evaporates, the kettle becomes silent. Other mystics have accused him of believing that the human and divine natures can be united, resulting in the heretical doctrine of hulul, “incarnation.” Even Hujwiri, in a book written in the mid-eleventh century—unfortu¬ nately no longer extant—in spite of all his admiration for Hallaj, felt obliged to declare him “not firmly settled.” A great number of Sufi poets, however, have shown their predilec- 43. Emile Dermenghem, Le culte des saints dans I’Islam maghrebin (Paris, 1954). P- 94 - 44. Louis Massignon, “La survie d'al-Hallaj," Bulletin d’etudes arabes Damns 11 ( | 945-4f>); Massignon, "La legende de Hallace Mansur en pays turcs,” Revue des Etudes islamiques, 1941-46; Massignon, "L’oeuvre Hailagienne d’Attar,” Revue des etudes islamiques, 1941-46; Massignon, “Qissat Husayn al-Hallaj,” Donum Natalicum H. S. Nyberg, ed. E. Gren et al. (Uppsala, 1954). Annemarie Schimmel, ed. and trans., Al-Halladsch, Mdrtyrer der Gottesliebe (Cologne, 1969), an anthology compiled from Hallaj’s writings and from poetry and prose by Muslim authors from different coun¬ tries; Schimmel, "The Martyr-Mystic Hallaj in Sindhi Folk-Poetry,” Numen 9 (1962): 3; Abdulghafur Rawan Farhadi, “Le majlis de al-Hallaj. de Shams-i Tabrezi et du Molla de Roum,” Revue des etudes islamiques, 1954, a Persian passion play, ta z ziya\ Salih Zeki Aktay, Hallac -1 Mansur (Istanbul, 1942), a Turkish tragedy; M. Salih Bhatti, Mansur Hallaj (Hyderabad, Sind, 1952); Salah 'AbduVSabur, Ma^sat al- Halldj ( Beirut, 1964), trans. K. J. Semaan as Murder in Baghdad (Leiden, 1972). Almost every collection of modern Arabic poetry contains some poems in honor of al-Hallaj, for example, the works of Adonis and al-Bayati. 74 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM tion for Hallaj, and the Persian tradition largely follows the exam¬ ple set by Ibn Khafif of Shiraz, who had visited him in prison and defended him, even to the extent of calling him an c dlim rabbdnl, “a divinely inspired master.” Some of Hallaj’s disciples sought shelter in Iran during the critical years of Hallaj’s persecution, and there they secretly transmitted his ideas. We owe the preservation of the most important Hallajian texts to Ruzbihan Baqli, the mystic of Shiraz who stands in the Ibn Khafif tradition; Ruzbihan’s com¬ mentaries on the Kitab at-tawasln and on many other sayings of the master are the most valuable source for our understanding of large parts of Hallaj’s theology. Another leading representative of the Hallajian tradition in Iran—though from a different point of view— is Farlduddin ‘Attar, the poet (d. 1230 in Nishapur). He had ao cepted Hallaj as his spiritual guide in a vision, and Hallaj’s name recurs often in ‘Attar’s lyrical and epic poetry. ‘Attar’s description of Hallaj’s suffering, found in his hagiographical work Tadhkirat al-auliya 3 , has deeply influenced almost all later mystics who wrote about the martyr-mystic in the Persian-speaking lands—Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and India. The details of his account of Hallaj’s execution are repeated in nearly every subsequent book; they have been poetically elaborated in many languages—Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Sindhi, Panjabi, and Pashto—but in substance they remained unchanged. The work of the greatest of the mystical poets to write in Persian, Jalaluddln RumI, contains numerous allusions to the fate of Man¬ sur, “tire victorious,” as Hallaj is often called after his father; some of his utterances and verses have been embellished by RumI in an entirely ingenious way. Turkish Sufi tradition also shows a strong penchant for Mansur. In the Bektashi order, his name is connected with the central place of initiation, which is called dar-e Mansur, “the gallows of Mansur”; Bektashi poets from the fourteenth cen¬ tury onward have often imitated the “unitive cry,” ana’l-Haqq, and have heard echoes of these words everywhere. And one ought not fail to mention Neslml, the Huruf! poet (executed in 1417) who considered himself “a new Mansur” and reenacted in his own life the passion and death of Hallaj. Most recently Turkish literature has borne witness to the abiding inspiration of Hallaj with the appearance of a play called Mansur-e Hallaj ; its author tries to establish his hero as an heir to Zoro- HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 75 astrian ideas. The date of the play is especially significant: it was written in 1940, at a time when Islamic religious instruction was banned from Turkish schools and laicism had reached its apex. In Iran, the name of the martyr-mystic has become a common¬ place in the verses of almost all poets; they allude to the gallows and the sa d fate of the lover, sometimes even likening the tresses of their beloved to the rope of Mansur’s gallows. They see the red rose on its bough as a symbol of Hallaj on the gallows tree, and they find the word ana’l-Haqq manifest in the heart of every atom and every drop of water. Even among the ta c ziyas, the plays written in commemora¬ tion of Husayn ibn 'All’s martyrdom at Kerbela on the tenth of Muharram 680, Enrico Cerulli has discovered one piece that deals with the fate of Hallaj, who is here in strange juxtaposition with Maulana RumI and his mystical preceptor and beloved Shams-i Tabriz (the combination of Hallaj and Shams is also known from IndoMuslim folk poetry). The tragic figure of Mansur occurs in modem Persian drama, too. The poets in Iran and Afghanistan were outdone in their de¬ votion to the Hallajian tradition by the Indian poets writing in Persian who made use of the figure of Hallaj from the eleventh cen¬ tury on. The images and forms they used are almost identical with those found in classical Persian poetry. An even stronger predilec¬ tion for Mansur is to be found in the mystical folk songs composed in the vernaculars of Muslim India and adjacent areas. The Pathans knew the name of the martyr of love (who is even mentioned in their proverbs), as did the Panjabis. His name occurs in most of the mysti¬ cal Panjabi songs as the representative of love, contrasted with the dry asceticism of the theologians and the bookishness of the mol- lahs. Hallaj is mentioned just as frequently in Sindhi poetry: one can scarcely find any book of mystical verses in Sindhi or its north¬ ern dialect, Siraiki, that does not contain allusions to him or his fate. He is the great lover; he plays “the drum of unity” (a modern Turkish poet, Asaf Halet C^elebi, has also written a fine poem on the “drum of Mansur”); his goblet is filled with the primordial wine of unity; and he is one of those who must suffer because of their overflowing passion and because God loves them too much. He is the model for every loving soul who will gladly suffer and die for the sake of his love; but he is also in constant danger because it is not permitted to proclaim the word of love openly— 76 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM The secret that is hidden in the breast is not a sermon; you cannot utter it in the pulpit, but on the gallows. That is—since the days of Sana 3 !—one of the central ideas in Persian and Indo-Muslim poetry, which has found its finest expression in the verse just quoted by Ghalib (d. 1869). Or is the poet, perhaps, declaring that death is the only legitimate way to express the secret of loving union? And does he aver that the ultimate experience is communicable through the silent language of martyrdom, for in the martyr [shahid) God has His true witness (shahid)} There is nothing more touching than to hear the plaintive Sindhi folk songs in a remote corner of the Indus valley through which the great mystic had wandered in order to call the people to God a thousand years ago: When you want to know the way of love, ask those who are like Mansur. In our day, there is renewed interest throughout the Islamic world in the figure of Hallaj, thanks, in large part, to Massignon’s comprehensive work. Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), who in his youth described the great mystic as a pantheist—as he had seen him through hundreds of Persian, Urdu, and Panjabi poems—later recognized Hallaj’s strong personal religious commitment and saw in him one of the few who had attained to an experience of the divine higher than that of ordinary people. He recognized that Hallaj had called the slumbering Muslims to a personal realization of the truth, thus coming into conflict with the religious authorities who were afraid of any ardent witness for the living God. In the scene in Jupiter-Heaven in the Jawidname that depicts his spiritual journey through the spheres, Iqbal has even treated Hallaj as a sort of medieval forerunner of himself and has emphasized his dynamic concept of love and faith as an ideal for every free Muslim. Even in the Arab lands, in which Hallaj was less renowned than in those areas influenced by the Persian mystical tradition, he has gained fame recently: the philosopher 'AbduT-Rahman Badawi has likened Mansur’s experience to that of Kierkegaard, seeing in him a true existentialist. Poets like Adonis in Lebanon and 'Abdu’l Wahhab al-Bayatl in Iraq have written sensitively of the secret of his personality; and a young socialist writer from Egypt, Salah c AbduVSabur, has composed a Tragedy of Hallaj. Its form shows HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 77 influences of Eliot’s dramatic technique. The interesting aspect of the work is the intensity with which the author highlights the social side of Hallaj’s message. Hallaj’s name has found its way into the remotest corners of the Islamic world. It can be discovered in the folklore of East Bengal and the Malayan archipelago; it has been used by some Sufi fraterni¬ ties in their celebrations, and a Tunisian order has an entire litany in honor of the martyr-mystic. Mansur’s suffering through “gallows and rope” has become a symbol for the modern progressive writers in India and Pakistan who underwent imprisonment and torture for their ideals like “the victorious” of old. In Salah 'AbduVSabur’s tragedy the members of the chorus sing about the words of Hallaj: —And we will go, to scatter in the plough furrows of the peasants what we have stored up from his words .... —And we will preserve them among the merchants’ goods. —And we will give them to the wind that wanders o’er the waves. —And we will hide them in the mouths of singing camel- drivers who traverse the desert. —And we will note them down on papers, to be kept in the folds of the frock. —And we will make them into verses and poems. All of them: Tell me—what would become of his words, if he were not martyred? THE PERIOD OF CONSOLIDATION: FROM SHIBLI TO GHAZZALI Hallaj represents the culminating point of early Sufism; but the mystical impetus of the early Baghdad school continued in a number of Sufis who lived shortly after him and represented, again, different aspects of Sufism. Hallaj’s most faithful friend, Ibn 'Ata 3 —with whom he had exchanged some beautiful poetical let¬ ters—was killed in connection with Hallaj’s execution and, thus, paid for his friendship with his life. Another friend, Abu Bakr ash- Shibli, survived Hallaj by twenty-three years. Shibli had been a high governmental official before his conver- 78 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM sion to the mystical life. When he died in 945 at the age of eighty- six, he left behind a considerable number of sayings and paradoxes upon which following generations often pondered. His strange be¬ havior resulted from time to time in his confinement in an asylum; thus he was spared, according to his own statement, the fate of Hal- laj, for he tried to express some of Hallaj’s lofty ideas in more com¬ prehensible language. In one poem he compares himself to a frog: Now praised be God, that like a frog am I Whose sustenance the watery deeps supply. It opens its mouth, and straightway it is filled. It holds its peace, and must in sorrow die. Shibli’s contemporaries and later Sufis are divided in their feel¬ ings about him—Junayd called him “the crown of these people” (N 180), whereas others, acknowledging his strong mystical “state,” yet held that he was not a proper interpreter of tauhid (N 145). The sayings and short, delicately expressed verses attributed to him 45 show his overwhelming feeling of God’s unity and of the love that removes from the heart all but the beloved or consumes all but the will of the beloved (Q 190). “To love Him for His acts of grace means to be a polytheist” (A 10:369), for, in the tradition of Rabi c a, God has to be the only goal for the lover who not only loves Him with his heart but all of whose limbs “are hearts pointing to Thee” (L 91). Similarly, “the best recollection is to forget recollection in vision” (L 220). God, the ever living and everlasting, should be the only object of love: “Shibll saw somebody weeping because his be¬ loved had died and blamed him: ‘O fool, why do you love someone who can die?’ ” (T 2:172). God’s face, i.e., His essence, is the proof for the lover on the day “when proofs are required” (L 209). Like Nuri, Shibll sometimes used the kind of imagery that be¬ came commonplace in later Persian poetry. Thus he describes the “gnostics,” those who know God by intuitive knowledge and are, therefore, the nearest perfect of men: They are comparable to springtime: thunder clashes and the clouds pour rain, the lightning flashes and the wind blows, the buds open and the birds sing—such is the state of the gnostic: his eye weeps, his mouth smiles, his heart burns, he gives away his head, he mentions the name of the Beloved and walks around His door. (T 2:177) Such a description could have come from any of the later Persian 45. Abu Bakr Shibll, Dtwan, ed. Kamil M. ash-Shaybl (Cairo, 1967). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 79 mystics, who so often compared their condition to clouds and light¬ ning; they knew that the weeping of the cloud is indispensable for the growth of a flower out of a heart that should be like soil. When mentioning Muhammad’s name in the call to prayer, Shibli is reported to have said: “If Thou hadst not ordered it, I would not mention another name besides Thee” (Q 17). He there¬ fore regarded as infidel and polytheist anyone who might think of the angels Michael and Gabriel—-for, according to the Prophetic tradition, in the moment of closest proximity there is no room even for Gabriel, who is pure spirit; lover and beloved are alone, without separation (B 413). Ruzbihan Baqli preserved many of Shibli’s paradoxes, which foreshadow trends that became explicit in later mysticism. When he told his disciples to go away and to know that wherever they were they were under his protection and he would be with them, he points to the power of himma, that “high spiritual ambition,” or “power,” that is strong enough to keep safe those who believe in the master. Being united in perfect tauhid with God, he can protect his disciples wherever they may wander about (B 322), since he himself works and walks through God. The claim of the sheikh to possess this strong himma is reflected in many legends about saints of later times. Another story told about Shibli is typical of the so-called muna- qara , “quarrel,” of saints: He threw one of his fellow mystics into the Tigris, saying, “If he is sincere, he will be saved, like Moses; if not, he will be drowned, like Pharaoh.” A few days later he was challenged by that very person to take live charcoals from an oven without being hurt (B 494). It seems that this kind of contest was not uncommon among the early Sufis; later sheikhs used to settle questions of priority in a similar way. Baqli explains Shibll’s exclamation that “fire of Hell will not touch me, and I can easily extinguish it,” when he says, faithfully interpreting the genuine mystical experience, that “in the world those who have been drawn close to God are burnt by the fire of pre-eternal love so that it is for them that God ordered the fire to be ‘cool and pleasant’ [Sura 21:69], as He did for Abraham” (B 460). In another saying, Shibli claimed that hellfire could not burn even a single hair on his body. Baqli sees here a manifestation of what he calls iltibas, the envelopment of the human being in the light of preeternity: the divine uncreated light is incomparably 8o / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM stronger than the created fire of Hell. For, according to a hadith of which the Sufis were particularly fond, Hell addresses the true believer with the words: “Thy light has extinguished my flames” (B 452). The mystic who has been surrounded by the primordial and everlasting divine light is no longer subject to the change of mystical states, to death, Paradise, and Hell. Such a person may leave the early station of renunciation and abstinence and become a perfect lover; by love he becomes “like a lion in the forest of affliction” (B 154). Shibli’s daring paradoxes find a counterpart in the less often quoted but extremely interesting sayings of his contemporary Abu Bakr al-Wasitl, who came from Farghana, settled for a while in Baghdad, and then returned to Khurasan. He too belonged to the group of Junayd and Nuri, but his sayings bear the stamp of a very independent personality. “He would have needed a trifle of mercy” (N 74), says Ansari, who praises him as the “leader of tauhid” and “the master of the East in the science of subtle allusions” (N 175). Complete isolation and absolute concentration upon Him who is recollected are expressed in his sentences. According to him, the utterance of the formula Alldhu Akbar, “God is greater” (than everything), during the act of ritual prayer is “as if one said ‘Thou art too mighty to be joined by prayer, or to be separated from by omitting to pray’: for separation and union are not personal no¬ tions, they follow a course preordained in eternity” (K 144). The overwhelming greatness of God, who teaches man how to pray and who addresses him before man dares to address Him, is visible through every word written by Niffari. 46 This Iraqian mystic, who died in 965, left writings, called Mawaqif and Mukhatabat, that seem to have been studied carefully by later Sufis. Even Ibn c ArabI may have been inspired by the daring ideas of this mystical thinker. Niffari spoke of the state of waqfa, “standing,” during which he was addressed by God, who inspired him to write down His words either during or after this experience. Niffari’s whole work, thus, is presented as a replica of Muhammad’s experience, a dialogue in which man becomes the confidant of God (W 358), 46. Muhammad ibn C AbdPl-Jabbar an-Niffari, The “Mawaqif” and “Mukhatabat" of Muhammad ibn Q AbdPl-Jabbar al-Niffari with Other Fragments, ed. A. J. Arberry, Gibb Memorial Series, n.s. 9 (London, 1935). Of special importance are the texts re¬ cently discovered and edited by Pere Nwyia: Paul Nwyia, Trois oeuvres inedites de mystiques musulmans: Saqiq al-Balhi, Ibn c Atd, Niffari (Beirut, 1973). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 8l as it is described by Pere Nwyia (whose study on Niffari opens previously undiscovered perspectives in the experiences of the mys¬ tic). Such a dialogue between God and the mystic is not alien to later Sufis, who not infrequently claimed that God spoke to them, and a. comparison between Niffarfs experiences as set forth in his books with those of the eighteenth-century Indo-Muslim mystic Mir Dard (contained in his c Ilm ul-kitdb) would yield significant similarities. Niffarfs sayings are full of paradoxes. They show the perfect passing away of the mystic, who has passed beyond all the veils between the human and the divine; at the same time they make clear the impossiblity of expressing mystical experience at all. The center of Niffarl’s experience is that of prayer; over and over he is taught by God to recollect Him, and then again the impossibility of this task is put before him: “Thoughts are contained in letters, and fancies in thoughts; the sincere recollection of Me is beyond letter and thoughts, and My name is beyond recollection.” 47 God wants His servant to rest in His recollection, but; "Do not speak, for he that reaches unto Me does not speak.” 48 How, then, is recol¬ lection to be performed? And what meaning does it have? “My recollection is the electest thing I have manifested, and My recollec¬ tion is a veil.” 49 For this recollection is contained in letters, and Niffari “unmasked the idolatry of the letter” (W 370) at a time when Muslim orthodoxy was going more and more by the letter and becoming increasingly intellectualized. It was he who spoke of the hijab al-ma^rifa, “the veil of gnosis” (W 380), which, tender and subtle as it may be, can constitute the greatest barrier between man and God. Niffari clearly formulated the theory—probably known to mys¬ tics before him—that prayer is a divine gift: “To Me belongs the giving: if I had not answered thy prayer I should not have made thee seeking it.” 50 It is an idea well known in Christian tradition, where it found its most famous expression in the words of Pascal: “You would not seek Me if you had not found Me.” Much earlier, it became a cornerstone of the Muslim theology of prayer and was most poetically expressed by Jalaluddln RumI (see Chapter 3). 47. Maui., no. 55/20. 48. Mukh., no. 22/5. 49. Maw., no. 49/2. 50. Mukh., no. 42/10. 82 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM Niffarl also expressed the feeling of the persistent love with which God follows man in a divine address that can be compared, as his modern commentator has in fact done, to Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven . 51 In certain aspects the late tenth century was the period of organiza¬ tion and consolidation for Sufism. It was the time during which, on the political level, the influence of different Shia groups grew in every part of the Muslim Empire. Since 945—the year of Shibli’s death—Baghdad had been under the control of the Iranian Buwai- hids, a Shia dynasty; Northern Syria was ruled by the Hamdanite dynasty, which was also Shia—Aleppo for a short time rivaling Baghdad as a gathering place for poets, philosophers, and musicians. Central Arabia had been conquered, in 930, by the Carmathians, an extreme Shia group whose capital was located in Bahrain and whose branches extended to the Indus valley; there, at Multan, Hallaj had been in touch with them, according to the tradition. In North Africa, the Shiite Fatimid dynasty was gaining in power; in 969 they conquered Egypt, there to establish a splendid rule that was to last for two centuries. It is a well-known fact that many of the Sufis—and many of the pious Sunnites in general—felt a kind of sentimental allegiance to the family of the Prophet without believing in Shia doctrines. The veneration of C A 1 I was widespread among the Muslims, and he was often regarded as an important link in the spiritual chain leading the Sufi masters back to the Prophet. Widespread, too, was the veneration of the sayyids, Muhammad’s descendants through C A 1 I and Fatima. Even in our day some of the sayyid families in countries like Muslim India or Pakistan consider themselves exalted above the common Muslim, surrounded by a sanctity or transmit¬ ting a baraka (spiritual power, blessing) that gives them a peculiar status. This veneration shown to the ahl al-bayt, the Prophet’s family, constitutes in later times a very important aspect of popular Sufism. The relationship between Shia thought as it crystallized in the ninth and tenth centuries and the theories of Sufism that emerged at about the same time has not yet been completely elucidated; 52 51. Maw., no. 11/16. 52. Kamil M. ash-Shaybl, As-sila bayn at-tasawwuf wa?t-tashayyu'' (Cairo, ca. 1967). See Seyyed H. Nasr, "Shi c ism and Sufism,” in Sufi Essais (London, 1972). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 83 but some of the Sufi teachings about the primordial light of Mu¬ hammad and the theories of saintship seem to correspond very closely in their hierarchical structure to Shiite theories about the imamate and the gradual initiation of adepts into the deeper realms of faith, into new levels of spiritual interpretation. The role played by Ja c far as-Sadiq’s commentary on the Koran in the formation of some Sufi ideas has already been mentioned. In later times, the con¬ nections between these two forms of Muslim spirituality became visible once more in the development of the Sufi fraternity located in Ardebil in Northwestern Iran—from a regular Sufi order it turned into the cell of Shia propaganda in Iran. The activities of this group resulted eventually in the victory of Shah Ismail the Safawid in 1501, and at that time Shiism became the official creed of Iran. It seems symptomatic that both in Arabic and in early European sources the Safawid ruler is often called “Sufi” or the “Grand Sophi.” Yet from that time onward Sufism and the Shia creed were rarely combined, and only a few Shia orders exist to¬ day. In spite of the relatively close relationship between the two movements in the period of formation, the Sufi congregations usually supported the Sunni case and often became defenders of the official Sunnite creed under the later Abbasid caliphs (MM 86). During the Abbasid period the need was felt to formulate some of the main lines, a Leitbild, of moderate Sufism. The case of Hallaj had confronted the Sufis with the danger of persecution, and even without his tragic death one might well have felt that the Path had to be made accessible to people who could never reach the abysses of mystical experience Hallaj had reached, or who could not be compared in sobriety to Junayd, in burning love to Nurl, or in paradoxical speech to Shibli. It was left to men like Ibn Khafif of Shiraz (d. 982, at about 100 years of age) 53 and similar mystics to teach the Path, to make it understandable—at least in part—to the intellectuals, and to set an example to larger groups of the faithful. It would, however, be wrong to speak of a real “reconciliation” between Sufism and orthodoxy. For the Sufis were, on the whole, 53. c Ali ibn Ahmad ad-Dailaml, Sirat-i Ibn al-Haftf ash-Shirazi, ed. Annemarie Schimmel (Ankara, 1955). See Annemarie Schimmel, “Zur Biographie des Abu ‘■Abdal¬ lah ibn Chafif aS-STrazi," Die Welt des Orients, 1955; and Schimmel, "Ibn Khafif, an Early Representative of Sufism,” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, 1959. N 600 mentions that the famous poet Sa c di (d. 1292) lived close to Ibn Khafifs tomb (which is now in a rather dark quarter of Shiraz, close to the charcoal sellers). 84 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM as good Muslims as the rest of the community in Baghdad, Nisha- pur, or Egypt. They did not reject the religious law but rather added to it—additions that made more exacting demands on their personal lives. The genuine mystical practices, like the performance of the dhikr, the constant recollection of God, occupied only part of their time. Many Sufis followed normal professions to earn their livelihoods. The surnames of some of them point to these profes¬ sions: saqatl, “huckster”; hallaj, “cotton carder”; nassaj, “weaver”; warraq, “bookseller” or “copyist”; qawarirl, “glassmaker”; haddad, “blacksmith” were among them. Some would work regularly and use a trifle of their gain for themselves, distributing the main part to the Sufis, so that it could be said, for example, that a person “veiled his saintliness under the modest shape of a cupper” (N 572). Some left their original professions after they had gained fame as mystical leaders and attracted a few disciples. Others were trained as theologians, traditionalists, or jurists in one of the four schools of law. Still, it was considered important to prove to the world the perfect orthodoxy of Sufi tenets, and therefore a num¬ ber of books were composed almost simultaneously in the last quarter of the tenth century. The oldest authority is Abu Nasr as-Sarraj, from Tus in eastern Iran (d. 988), whose Kitab al-luma c fft-tasawwuf is an excellent ex¬ position of the doctrines of the Sufis, with numerous quotations from the sources. The matters at stake are lucidly laid before the reader. 54 Sarraj, who was for a while a disciple of Ibn Khafif, is close enough to the great masters of the Path to understand and interpret their sayings and their way of life. His definitions of the different states and stations, his long quotations from Sufi prayers and letters, his words about the behavior of the Sufis at home and on their jour¬ neys, and his explanations of difficult expressions are of great value to the student of Sufism, though his book apparently has not been as widely read as other handbooks. Sarraj himself had reached a high rank in practical Sufism; according to one story, he was dis¬ cussing some mystical problems with his friends on a cold winter day, “and the sheikh got into a ‘state’ and put his face on the fire¬ place and prostrated himself before God in the midst of the fire without being hurt” (N 283). 54. Kitab al-luma c fpt-tasawwuf, ed. Reynold A. Nicholson, Gibb Memorial Series, no. 22 (Leiden and London, 1914); A. J. Arberry, ed., Pages from the “Kitab al- luma'-" (London, 1947). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 85 A near contemporary of Sarraj, al-Kalabadhi, who died in Bu¬ khara about 990, wrote his Kitab at-tcfarruf in an effort to find a middle ground between orthodoxy and Sufism. 55 His book is, on the whole, the somewhat dry exposition of a Hanafi jurist and not as enjoyable as Sarraj’s study. Yet the work contains valuable material for the study of early Sufism; it was widely read, along with a commentary, in medieval Muslim India. A commentary of 222 Prophetic traditions is also ascribed to Kalabadhi. The study of Mu¬ hammad’s sayings was regarded as essential by the Sufis, who tried to follow their beloved Prophet’s example as closely as possible. The third book written during this period was Abu Talib al- Makki’s comprehensive Qut al-qulub, “The Food of the Hearts.” 56 Though Makki (d. 996 in Baghdad) was considered a follower of the Salimiyya school, his book had a pronounced influence on later Sufi writings. Ghazzall relied heavily upon this work, and quota¬ tions in later sources—in Ruml’s Mathnawl and in medieval Indian books—show how widely it was used. Shortly after the composition of these three theoretical books on the tenets and doctrines of Sufism, two attempts were made to deal with the Sufis in the same way as Arab historians had dealt with scholars, heroes, philologists, and other groups: by dividing them into “classes” belonging to succeeding periods. Sulami (d. 1021) called his work simply Tabaqdt as-sufiyya, “The Classes of the Su¬ fis.” Abu Nu'aym al-Isfahani (d. 1037) chose for his ten-volume work the more romantic title Hilyat al-auliya 3 , “The Ornament of the Saints.” 57 Beginning with the Prophet and his companions, Abu Nu c aym brought together every available bit of information about the pious and their deeds; his book is a storehouse of information, which, however, must be used with caution. Yet even in its present edition, which is not free from mistakes, the book is indispensable for the study of the biographies of early Sufis. Sulaml’s Tabaqdt has constituted a source for later hagiogra- phers. 58 Half a century after his death, the book was expanded and 55. Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Kalabadhi, At-ta c arruf li-madhhab ahl at-tasawwuf, ed. A. J. Arberry (Cairo, 1934), trans. A, J. Arberry as The Doctrine of the Sufis (Cam¬ bridge, 1935). 56. Abu Talib al-Makki, Qut al-qulub ft mu'-amalat al-mahbub, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1310 h./1892-93). 57. Abu Nu c aym al-Isfahani, Hilyat al-auliya 10 vols. (Cairo, 1932-38). 58. c Abdur-Rahman as-Sulami, Kitab tabaqdt as-Sufiyya, ed. Johannes Pedersen (Leiden, i960), has an extensive introduction; Sulaml's Kitab has also been edited by Nuraddln Shariba (Cairo, 1953). For other editions see the Bibliography under 86 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM translated into Persian by c AbdulIah-i Ansari, the patron saint of Herat; his translation, in turn, was revised and brought up to date in the late fifteenth century by Jam!, also in Herat, in his Nafahat al-uns. Sulami dealt not only with the biographies of the mystics, but also with the different strands of Sufism as they had developed by his time. He thus concerned himself with the group of the Mala- matiyya, to whom he devoted a special treatise. 59 He distinguishes between the orthodox people, the ahl al-marifa, “gnostics,” i.e., the true Sufis, and the malamatiyya, “those who draw blame (ma- lama) upon themselves.” The ideal of the Malamatiyya developed out of a stress on ikhlas, “perfect sincerity”; Ansari sometimes praises a person for his “per¬ fect malama and sincerity” (N 340). Muhasibi had taught that even the slightest tendency to show one’s piety or one’s religious behavior was ostentation. Thus the Malamatis deliberately tried to draw the contempt of the world upon themselves by committing unseemly, even unlawful, actions, but they preserved perfect purity of heart and loved God without second thought. Typical is the story told by Jam!: “One of them was hailed by a large crowd when he entered a town; they tried to accompany the great saint; but on the road he publicly started urinating in an unlawful way so that all of them left him and no longer believed in his high spiritual rank” (N 264). These pious relied upon the Koranic words, “and they do not fear the blame of a blaming person” (Sura 5:59), and probably also thought of the nafs lawwama, “the blaming soul,” the conscience that warned them at every step in the religious life (Sura 75:2). But the attitude itself is not novel—Marijan Mole (MM 72-74) has shown that, particularly among the early Syrian Christians, there was a similar trend to hide one’s virtuous actions; stories about some of these Christian saints, who would rather live as actors or rope- dancers than show their deep religious concern, at once call to mind anecdotes about the Malamatiyya. Sulami. Suleyman Ate§, Siiletni ve tasawufi tefsiri (Istanbul, 1969), is a Turkish study of the famous commentary on the Koran by Sulami, a work that still awaits a critical edition. 59. Richard Hartmann, "As-Sulaml’s ‘Risalat al-Malamatlya,’ ” Der Islam 8 (1918), is a fine analysis of Sulaml’s treatise. For the whole problem see Abdiilbaki Golpinarh, Meldmilik ve Melamiler (Istanbul, 1931); Abu 3 l- c Ala 3 Affifi, Al-maldmatiyya wals- sufiyya wa ahl al-futuwwa (Cairo, 1945); Morris S. Seale, “The Ethics of Malamatiya Sufism and the Sermon of the Mount,” Moslem World 58 (1968): 1; and the discussion in Nwyia, Ibn c Atd D Allah, p. 844. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 87 Al-malama tark as-salama, “blame is to give up well-being,” says Hamdun al-Qassar, one of the first among the Khurasanian Sufis to adopt this way of life (H 67). SulamI sees them as veiled from the vulgar by God's jealousy: He has granted them all kinds of spiritual graces, but does not expose them to the view of the common people; their outward behavior is that of people who live in separation from God, but inwardly they dwell in the sweetness of divine union. They thus prefigure the lover in Persian poetry, who was to describe himself in terms of a detestable creature, calling the hatred of the “others” upon himself, but never revealing the secret of his intense love. Hujwiri, half a century after Sulami, is more critical of the ma¬ lamati attitude, for even in the actions of those who want to attract blame upon themselves he sees a trace of subtle hypocrisy: “The ostentatious men purposely act in such a way as to win popularity, while the malamati purposely acts in such a way that people reject him. Both have their thought fixed on mankind and do not pass beyond that sphere” (H 6). That may sound hard, but from the viewpoint of a perfect mystic every interest in people’s reaction—be it positive or negative—is a sign of selfishness, and therefore of imperfection. Jam! regarded the malamati as sincere, mukhlis, whereas the true Sufi is mukhlas, made sincere by God (N 10), not by an act that can be attributed to himself. But Jami, writing in the mid-fifteenth century, saw the problem that was involved in the whole malamati attitude more clearly than his predecesssors had. The problem had arisen when people affiliated themselves with the Malamatiyya or claimed to be one of them without accepting the difficult burden of genuine malamati practices: “Now a group has brought forth licen¬ tiousness and treating lightly of the Divine law and heresy and lack of etiquette and respectlessness—but malamat was not, that some¬ body would act by showing no respect to the law: it was, that they did not care for the people in their service of God.” Thus complains Ansari as early as the eleventh century, not long after Sulami, in a discussion of the life of Hamdun al-Qassar (N 61). Jami accepted Ansari’s assessment and went on to contrast the malamati, who ad¬ heres to the duties and performs many supererogatory acts of piety in secret, and the qalandar, the wandering dervish who performs only the absolute minimum in religious duties. The qalandar, in his description, is the less rigorous mystic, who enjoys his unfettered 88 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM life. The qalandar is chiefly known in the West as a kind of free thinker—even a charlatan—without deeper religious concern; but this, JamI asserts, is not true of the genuine qalandar (N 15). SulamI influenced successive generations mainly as teacher and biographer. Through his disciple, NasrabadI, the mystical chain reaches Abu Sa'Id ibn Abi’l-Khair, to whom the first Persian mysti¬ cal quatrains are, erroneously, ascribed and who was the first to draw up a simple monastic rule for his Sufi community (see Chapter 5). The spiritual chain from Sulami also leads to al-Qushayri (d. 1074) through his father-in-law Abu C AH ad-Daqqaq. QushayrI took up once more the task of writing a treatise on Sufism. 60 His Risala describes Sufi teachings and practices from the viewpoint of a full- fledged Ash c arite theologian; this school—to which Ibn Khafif had belonged as well—flourished in Iran and elsewhere under the Sel- jukids. Qushayrl’s Risala —written in 1046—is probably the most widely read summary of early Sufism; it was analyzed in the West prior to most other books on Sufism. It is comparable, in some ways, to Sarraj’s Kitdb al-luma c , beginning with short biographies of the Sufis and containing detailed chapters on Sufi terminology and ex¬ pressions. Some of the author’s shorter treatises give a good insight into his own spiritual experiences, especially into his prayer life. 61 One of Qushayri’s colleagues, who had attended his meetings and had visited almost every leading Sufi of his time, was Hujwiri from Ghazna. He later came to Lahore, the capital of the Ghaznawids in India, and he died there in 1071. His shrine, called that of Data Ganj Bakhsh, is still a popular place of pilgrimage in Lahore. 62 Hujwiri’s important innovation is that he wrote his Kashf al- mahjub, “Unveiling of the Hidden,” in Persian and thus ushered in a new period in mystical literature. A monument of early Persian and noteworthy for its expressiveness, the Kashf, “which belongs to the valid and famous books” (N 316), contains much interesting information rarely found in other sources. Although the author’s 60. AbiVl-Qasim al-Qushayri, Ar-risdla fi Him at-tasawwuf (Cairo, 1330 h./1911-12). Richard Hartmann, Al-Kuschairis Darstellung des Sufitums (Berlin, igi4), is a very useful analysis of the Risala. 61. Abu J l-Qasim al-Qushayri, Ar-rasPil al-qushayriyya, ed. and trans. F. M. Hasan (Karachi, 1964). The most important treatise was edited and analyzed by Fritz Meier, “Qusayris Tartib as-suluk,” Oriens 16 (1963). 62. C AII ibn c Uthman al-Hujwiri, Kashf al-mahjub, ed. V. A. Zukovskij (Leningrad, 1926; reprint ed., Tehran, 1336 sh./i957); al-Hujwiri, The “Kashf al-Mahjub," The Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism by al-Hujwiri, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson, Gibb Memorial Series, no. 17 (1911; reprint ed., London, 1959). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 89 inclination toward systematization sometimes goes too far, it is singularly valuable in its approach and its balanced discussion. The eastern provinces of Iran have always been proud to be a fer¬ tile soil for mystically inclined souls. A contemporary of Qushayri and Hujwlrl was c AbdulIah-i Ansari (1006-89), whose work, like that of Hujwiri, was written in part in his Persian mother tongue. 63 It proves the breadth of spirit of Sufism that two masters so totally different in their outlook as Qushayri and Ansarl could live at close proximity during the same politically restless period. While Qu¬ shayri followed the Ash'arite creed of the ruling Seljukids, Ansarl belonged to the stern Hanbalite school of law. The traditional idea that Hanbalite rigorism and mystical emotion are mutually exclu¬ sive can no longer be maintained—not only was Ansarl an energetic representative of this school, but 'AbduTQadir Gilani, the founder of the most widespread mystical fraternity, also belonged to this madhhab. Perhaps it was precisely the strict adherence to the out¬ ward letter of the God-given law and the deep respect for the divine word that enabled Ansarl and his fellow Hanbalites to reach a deeper understanding of the secrets of the revelation. Ansari’s father had been a mystic, too; when the boy was still small, his father had left his family to join friends in Balkh. The young scholar pursued his studies in Herat and Nishapur. He tried several times to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca but was detained because of confused political circumstances in the eastern provinces occasioned by the untimely death in 1030 of Mahmud of Ghazna, the conqueror of northwestern India and supporter of the caliph and of Muslim orthodoxy. Although young Ansarl did not reach Mecca, his life was changed by his meeting with the distinguished mystic Kharaqani in 1034, shortly before the master died at the age of eighty. Kharaqanls sayings, preserved in the Tadhkirat al-auliya and elsewhere, show tremendous force, but are devoid alike of any learnedness or theo¬ logical systematization. This illiterate peasant, who could not pro¬ nounce Arabic correctly (N 336, 353), was a typical uwaysi, initiated not by a living master but by the powerful spirit of Bayezid Bistami. Legends dwell on the spiritual relation between these two men: it is said that the scent of Kharaqani reached Bayezid long before his 63. Serge de Laugier de Beaureceuil, Khwadja Abdullah Ansari, mystique hanbalite (Beirut,1965), is a fine study of Ansari and his work. Pere Beaureceuil has also edited some of Ansarl’s works with their commentaries. 90 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM spiritual disciple was born (M 4:1802-50) and that Kharaqani used to pray every evening in Kharaqan, then mysteriously be trans¬ ported to Bistam—a typical miracle of “rolling up space”—pray there, and then perform the morning prayer back in his own vil¬ lage (T 2:201). Kharaqani’s prayers burn with intense love and yearning, as when he swore that he would not give his soul to the angel of death, for he had received it from God, and only to Him would he return it (T 2:212). Longing for God made him melt away, but the Lord told him, in one of his rare dreams after long periods of sleeplessness, that the longing he had endured for sixty years was nothing, “for We have loved thee already in the pre-eternity of eternities” (T 2:253). And he was sure that he would be resurrected among the martyrs, “for I have been killed by the sword of longing for Thee” (T 2:229), as he asserts. This enthusiastic and demanding master caused a spiritual change in c Abdullah-i Ansari, with the result that Ansari began to write his commentary on the Koran, which was, unhappily, never finished. The advent of the Seljuks in eastern Iran in 1041 brought affliction on Ansari; he was persecuted, spent years in destitution, and endured much suffering at the hands of the authorities in their defense of Ash c arite theology. The grand vizier Nizamulmulk even exiled him from Herat in 1066, but he was soon called back. Shortly afterward the caliph himself honored the famous orator and mighty preacher whose fame had spread around Herat. Eventually Ansari lost his sight and spent the last eight years of his life in darkness and under the threat of another expulsion. He died in Herat on 8 March 1089. Ansari’s productivity is amazing in light of the difficulties he had to face during his career. Among the great number of books written in both Arabic and Persian, the Manazil as-sa’irin, “The Stations on the Way,” has had several commentators. 64 The mystic of Herat also translated Sulami’s Tabaqat into the Persian vernacular of his region. But in spite of his many works in theoretical Sufism, his smallest book has won him the greatest admiration: the Munajat, “Orisons,” a prayer book in rhyming Persian prose, interspersed with some verses, in which he pours out his love, his longing, and his 64. Hellmut Ritter, "Philologika VIII: Ansari Herewi.—Sena-’i Gaznewi," Der Islam 22 (1934); Vladimir Ivanow, “Tabaqat of Anjart in the Old Language of Herat,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, January-July 1923. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / gi advice. 65 Its simple and melodious Persian prose makes this small book a true vade mecum for anyone who needs a devotional aid for meditation in lonely hours. Nothing shows better the change in emphasis and style, in Sufi outlook and expression, than a comparison of Ansari’s Munajat with another small book written in the same mixture of poetry and prose in the same city of Herat 400 years later, by the author who re¬ worked Ansari’s hagiographical book and relied heavily upon him, namely the Lawa’ih, by Maulana Jami. This book has become one of the most widely used manuals of later Sufi teachings—but how far is its intellectual and rational approach to the divine truth, its high- flown technical expression about absolute existence and relative being, from the intense earnestness and simplicity of Ansari’s orisons! At the same time that Ansar! was being persecuted by the Seljuk government, another mystic was cooperating with that regime and lending it support through his writings. That was Abu Hamid al- Ghazzali, Ash c arite theologian and, later, mystic, who has often been called the greatest Muslim after Muhammad. An anecdote told by Jam! illustrates how highly esteemed he was in most moder¬ ate Sufi circles: “The North African Sufi leader AbuTHasan ash- Shadhili (d. 1258) saw in a dream vision that the Prophet of Islam was extolling himself with Ghazzali before Moses and Jesus . . . and he had ordered the punishment of some who had denied him, and the marks of the whip remained visible on their bodies until they died” (N 373). Ghazzali was born in Tus, near present-day Meshed, in 1058, three years after the Seljuks had taken over the rule in Baghdad. His life was closely connected with the fate of this dynasty, whose power grew in the ensuing years to extend over all of Iran and parts of eastern Anatolia. Abu Hamid, along with his younger brother Ahmad, followed the usual course of theological studies; the teacher to whom he owed most and with whom he worked closely was al- Juwainl, sumamed the imam al-haramayn (d. 1083). Nizamulmulk, the vizier, appointed Ghazzali professor at the Nizamiyya madrasa in Baghdad. With the zeal of an ardent adherent of Ash c arite the¬ ology, the vizier had founded colleges ( madrasa) all over the Seljuk 65. c Abdullah-i Ansari, Munajat u nascPih (Berlin, 1924); this little book has been reprinted many times. Ansari, The Invocations of Shaikh Abdullah Ansari , trans. Sir Jogendra Singh, 3ded. (London, 1959); Singh's translation lacks the rhyming patterns, which are essential, and the poetic flavor. 92 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM territories. They served as training institutions for theologians and proved to be models for later colleges in the Muslim world. The school at Baghdad, the seat of the caliphate, was without doubt the most important among the institutions founded by Ni- zamulmulk. It therefore caused great amazement when the success¬ ful professor Ghazzali, after a breakdown in 1095, left his teaching position to enter the spiritual life. After long journeys that led him to Syria, Jerusalem, and perhaps Egypt, Abu Hamid returned to his home and family and once more taught in his hometown of Tus. There he died in December 1111. 66 Ghazzali’s literary activity was as great as that of any of his col¬ leagues; his books cover different branches of learning, but mainly theology and its confrontation with philosophy. We are fortunate enough to possess his spiritual autobiography, written after his “conversion.” It is called Al-munqidh min ad-dalal, “The Deliverer from Error,” and has often been translated; 67 it has even been com¬ pared to Augustine’s Confessions, though it conveys nothing of the author’s earlier external life. Rather it shows his attempts at coping with the various elements of Islamic intellectual life that confronted him in the course of his studies and his teaching. He had studied the works of the philosophers who, inspired by Greek thought, had de¬ veloped the logical tools required for scholarly discussion, but who had nevertheless remained, in the opinion of the faithful, outside the pale of orthodox Islam. Ghazzali’s works refuting the philo¬ sophical doctrines were in turn refuted by Averroes (d. 1198), the 66. The literature about Ghazzali is almost inexhaustible; some major works and translations are; Duncan Black Macdonald, “The Life of al-Ghazzall,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 20 (1899); Arend Jan Wensinck, La pensee de Ghazzali (Paris, 1940); W. Montgomery Watt, Muslim Intellectual: A Study of Al-Ghazali (Edin¬ burg, 1963). The first independent study on Ghazzali appeared in Berlin in 1858: Reinhard Gosche, Vber Ghazzalis Leben und Werke ; later, the Spanish scholar Asm Palacios devoted a number of books and articles to him. Philosophical investigations of problems of Ghazzall’s thought and faith were introduced by Julius Obermann, Der religiose und philosophische Subjektivismus Gazzalis (Leipzig. 1921), a book the main thesis of which can no longer be accepted. Pere Farid Jabre has devoted several important books to Ghazzall's theology. A good introduction into particular problems of Ghazzall’s theological approach is Fadlou Shehadi, Ghazali's Unique Unknowable God (Leiden, 1964); The Ethical Philosophy of al-Ghazzall has been studied by Muhammad Umaruddin (Aligarh, 1951). The Dutch scholar Arend Theodor van Leeuwen sees Ghazzali, correctly, as apologist: Ghazali as apologeet van den Islam (Leiden, 1947). 67. Abu Hamid al-Ghazzall, Al-munqidh min ad-dalal, ed. A. Mahmud (Cairo, 1952); translated by W. Montgomery Watt as The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali (London, 1953); other translations have been done by Claud H. Field (London, 1910); J. H. Kramers (Amsterdam, 1951); and Barbier de Meynard, in Journal asiatique, 1877. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 93 greatest Arabic commentator on Aristotle; some of them served medieval Christian theologians in their fight against the Averroist school. The main source of danger for the Seljuks was, in Nizamulmulk’s and in Ghazzali’s view, the Ismaili movement, a branch of Shia thought that had gained a firm footing in various parts of the Mid¬ dle East. Egypt was still ruled by the Fatimid caliphs. During Ghaz¬ zali’s lifetime, in 1094, the Persian Ismaili leader Hasan-i Sabbah took the side of the younger son of the Fatimid caliph during the struggle for succession, with the result that an Ismaili spiritual es¬ tate was built up around this Nizar on the mountain castle Alamut near Kazvin. From there the Ismailis threatened orthodox Muslims and, later, the Crusaders; Nizamulmulk fell victim to one of Hasan-i Sabbah’s disciples, knowm as the Assassins. Ghazzall wrote several treatises against these batiniyya, “the people of esoteric meaning,” and in his autobiography tried once more to explain the dangers in¬ herent in the Ismaili system, especially in the doctrine of the neces¬ sity of the guidance of an infallible imam, which seemed to him particularly dangerous to the Sunnite community. Another group with which the medieval scholar concerned him¬ self was his own colleagues, the theologians and lawyer divines— that class of learned men who practically ruled the life of the Mus¬ lims by their interpretation of the divine law. Their concern with the outward details of the law had always been a point of criticism for the pious, and particularly for the Sufis. Their worldliness and their many connections with the government aroused those who, acutely conscious of the danger of fossilization of the revealed word under the crust of legal formalism, strove after the interioriza- tion of religion. Ghazzall wrote: “Those who are so learned about rare forms of divorce can tell you nothing about the simpler things of the spiritual life, such as the meaning of sincerity towards God or trust in Him.” 68 Acquainted with all aspects of Muslim intellectual life, and having proved his philosophical and logical adroitness in many defenses of orthodox Islam, Ghazzalx eventually turned to mysticism. Perhaps this was a response to his long-standing skepti¬ cism; perhaps a sudden conversion led him to the mystical quest. Whatever the reason, it was typical of Ghazzall that he approached the mystical Path first from the intellectual side. As he says: “Knowl¬ edge was easier for me than activity. I began by reading their books 68. Watt, Muslim Intellectual, p. 113. 94 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM . . . and obtained a thorough intellectual understanding of their principles. Then I realized that what is most distinctive of them can be attained only by personal experience, ecstasy, and a change of character.” 69 We may understand this change to “gnosis because of agnosticism” and agree with W. H. Temple Gairdner’s fine remark: “What saved God for him from his obliterating agnosticism was the experience of the mystic leap, his own personal mi c raj.” n And there it does not matter very much that we do not know who his mystical guide was nor to whom his chain of initiation goes back. We only know that out of his experience came his greatest work, the Ihya? c ulum ad-din, “Revival of the Religious Sciences,” a comprehen¬ sive work of forty chapters—forty being the number of patience and trial, the number of days of seclusion that the adept undergoes at the beginning of the Path. The number forty is often identical with “multitude” and is thought to comprise an almost infinite number of items; therefore collections of forty hadith (arbaHri) or of forty pious sentences are very common in the Muslim world. It seems to me typical of Ghazzali’s way of thought that the center of the book, the twentieth chapter, is devoted to the central figure in Islam, the Prophet Muhammad. 71 The first quarter of the Ihya? is entitled c Ibdddt , “Matters of Wor¬ ship and Service”; it begins with a chapter on knowledge but deals, in general, with ritual questions like purity, prayers, and devotional acts. Each prescription is preceded by Koranic verses and Prophetic traditions and is explained by the practice of the early faithful and Sufis. The second part of the book deals with the “Customs,” and corresponds, to an extent, to the teachings as laid down in the adab- books: how to eat and drink, how to lead a married life, and the like 69. Ibid., p. 135. 70. W. H. Temple Gairdner, The Niche for Lights (London, 1915), p. 51. 71. Abu Hamid al-Ghazzall, Ihya? '-uliim ad-din, 4 vols. (Bulaq, Egypt, 1289 I1./1872); commentary by the Indian-born scholar Sayyid Murtada az-Zabidi, Ittyaf as- sadat al-rnuttaqin, 10 vols. (Cairo, 1311 h./1893-94). The Ihya? has been analyzed in G. H. Bousquet’s useful book "Ilv’ya c ouloum ad-din’’ ou vinification des sciences de la foi (Paris, 1955), which contains summaries of all forty chapters. Part translations are: Hans Bauer, lslamische Ethik, 4 vols. (Halle, 1916); Hans Wehr, Al-Ghazdli's Buck vom Gottvertrauen (Halle, 1940); Herman Henry Dingemans, Al-Ghazali's boek der liefde (Leiden, 1938), not fully satisfactory; Leon Bercher and G. H. Bousquet, Le livre des bon usages en matiere de manage (Paris, 1953); Susanna Wilzer, “Untersuch- ungen zu Gazzall’s 'kitdb at-tauba,”’ Der Islam 32-33 (1955-57); William McKane, Al- Ghazali’s Book of Fear and Hope (Leiden, 1962); Nabih A. Faris, The Book of Knowl¬ edge (Lahore, 1962); Leon Zolondek, Book XX of al-Gaidli's “Ihya? c ulum ad-Din" (Leiden, 1963); Heinz Kindermann, Vber die guten Sitten beim Essen und Trinken (Leiden, 1964); Nabih A. Faris, The Mysteries of Almsgiving (Beirut, 1966). HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 95 —problems that the modern Western reader does not readily relate to religion but that are, in the Islamic (as in the Jewish) view, as much subject to religious rules as is the act of worship. For man should feel every moment that he is in the presence of God, even when occupied by the most worldly activities, and he should be pre¬ pared to meet his Lord at any moment of his life. After the central chapter on the Prophet and his exalted qualities, the third section of the book deals with “Things Leading to De¬ struction” and the last one with “Things Leading to Salvation.” This final part is closest to what we would expect from a mystical writer: it discusses the different stations and states of the wayfarer, like poverty and renunciation, patience and gratitude, love and longing. Here we find some of the finest passages of the whole book, all of which is written in a lucid style with simple, logical argu¬ ments. In the chapter on “Love and Longing,” Ghazzali has ex¬ pressed some of his personal experiences of the Path to God, which never ends but leads to ever new depths. The whole Ihya P may be called a preparation for death: its last chapter is devoted to death in its terrible and its lovable aspects: terrible, because it brings man into the presence of the stern judge at Doomsday, which may be the beginning of everlasting punish¬ ment; lovable, since it brings the lover into the presence of his eternal beloved and thus fulfills the longing of the soul, which has finally found eternal peace. All that Ghazzali teaches in the preced¬ ing thirty-nine chapters is only to help man to live a life in accor¬ dance with the sacred law, not by clinging exclusively to its letter but by an understanding of its deeper meaning, by a sanctification of the whole life, so that he is ready for the meeting with his Lord at any moment. This teaching—a marriage between mysticism and law—has made Ghazzali the most influential theologian of medieval Islam. 72 To fully appreciate his achievement one must remember that during 72. Of Ghazzali's other works the following translations have been published: Margaret Smith, “Al-Ghazzali, ar-risala al-ladunnlya,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1938: Hellmut Ritter, Das Elixir der GliXckseligkeit, aus den persischen und arabischen Quellen in Auswahl ubertragen (Jena, 1923); Mohammed Brugsch, Die kostbare Perle im Wissen des Jenseits (Hannover, 1924), an eschatological treatise: Ernst Bannerth, Der Pfad der Gottesdiener (Salzburg, 1964), the spurious Minhaj al- c abidin; R. R. C. Bagley, Ghazali’s Book of Counsel for Kings (nasiftat al-muliik) (Ox¬ ford, 1964), a politico-ethical treatise; Franz-Elmar Wilms, Al-Ghazaiis Schrift wider die Gottheit Jesu (Leiden, 1966), a translation of Ar-radd al-jamil, a polemic work against Christian theology. Others who have edited or translated some of Ghazzali’s 96 / HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM his lifetime the first signs of Sufi theosophy became visible; certain mystics were more interested in gnostic knowledge than in the prac¬ tical way of life as taught by the early Sufis. Since Ghazzall was ap¬ prehensive of the dangers of esoteric and gnostic currents inside Islam (as he had shown in his struggle against Ismaili theories) and at the same time scorned the rigidity and pedantry of the scholars and jurists, he undertook in his book to “live through the verities of faith and test those verities through the Sufi experimental method.” 73 It is the life of the heart that matters, and Ghazzali’s method of combining the life of the heart in strict accord with the law and with a theologically sound attitude made even orthodox theologians take the Sufi movement seriously. The moderate Sufi outlook began to color the life of most average Muslims. On the other hand, Ghaz¬ zali’s struggle against Hellenistic influences and a more or less Neo¬ platonic philosophy was probably instrumental in repudiating these currents for a while. During that time, however, they crystallized anew and came back as Sufi theosophy, a new development destined to take shape in the century after Ghazzalx’s death. One of the most puzzling questions among the many unsolved problems for the scholar is where to place Ghazzali’s Mishkat al- anwar, “The Niche for Lights,” in the whole body of his writings. It may be regarded as an expression of that set of opinions that the perfected mystic “believes in secret between himself and Allah, and never mentions except to an inner circle of his students.” 74 In this book he reaches heights of mystical speculation that are almost “gnostic” when he interprets the Light verse of the Koran (Sura 24:35) and the tradition about the seventy thousand veils of light and darkness that separate man from God: in his fourfold classifica¬ tion he does not hesitate to put most of the pious orthodox behind the “veils mixed of darkness and light,” whereas even certain phi¬ losophers are “veiled by pure light.” The Mishkat al-anwar shows a highly developed light metaphysics—God is the Light—and many later mystics have relied upon this book rather than upon his lhya' c ulum ad-din. works are Ignaz Goldziher, Otto Pretzl, Samuel van den Berghe, Heinrich Frick, and Duncan Black Macdonald. There is a good bibliography in Peter Antes, Das Prophe- tenwunder in der friihen As'ariya bis al-Gazali (Freiburg, 1970). 73. Fazlur Rahman, Islam (London, ig66), p. 144. 74. Gairdner, Niche for Lights, p. 19; see Arend Jan Wensinck, “Ghazali’s Mishkat al-anwar ,” Semietische Studien, 1941. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF CLASSICAL SUFISM / 97 No thinker of medieval Islam has attracted the interest of West¬ ern scholars more than Ghazzali. Numerous translations of his works are available in Western languages. Discussions about Ghaz- zali’s true character have been going on for decades. Was he a sub¬ jectivist, or a faithful member of the Muslim community who ac¬ cepted the given religious fact? How can the divergent viewpoints on the several issues of philosophy and theology be explained? To what extent was he sincere in his conversion? Many aspects of his thought have been studied in recent years, but much remains to be done. Will the admiration reflected in ShadhilT’s dream continue? Many a Western scholar, though in milder words, would subscribe to it. Or will Pere Anawati’s criticism prove right: “Though so brilliant, his contribution did not succeed in preventing the an¬ chylosis that two or three centuries later was to congeal Muslim religious thought”? 75 Or was his greatness itself the reason for the congealing of moderate Islam? 75. G.-C. Anawati and Louis Gardet, Mystique musulmane (Paris, 1961), p. 51. 3 . THE PATH THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE PATH Mystics in every religious tradition have tended to de¬ scribe the different steps on the way that leads toward God by the image of the Path. The Christian tripartite division of the via purga- tiva, the via contemplativa, and the via illuminativa is, to some ex¬ tent, the same as the Islamic definition of sharFa, tariqa, and haqiqa. The tariqa, the “path” on which the mystics walk, has been de¬ fined as “the path which comes out of the sharfa, for the main road is called shar c , the path, tariq.” This derivation shows that the Sufis considered the path of mystical education a branch of that high¬ way that consists of the God-given law, on which every Muslim is supposed to walk. No path can exist without a main road from which it branches out; no mystical experience can be realized if the binding injunctions of the sharfa are not followed faithfully first. 1 The path, tariqa, however, is narrower and more difficult to walk and leads the adept—called salik, “wayfarer”—in his suluk, “wandering,” through different stations ( maqam ) until he perhaps l.Qutbaddin al- c lbadl, At-tasfiya ft ahwal as-sitfiya, or Sufmame, ed. Ghulam Muhammad Yusufi (Tehran, 1347 sh./ig68), p. 15. 98 THE PATH / 99 reaches, more or less slowly, his goal, the perfect tauhld, the exis¬ tential confession that God is One. The tripartite way to God is explained by a tradition attributed to the Prophet: “The sharFa are my words [aqwall], the tarlqa are my actions [a c mdli], and the haqlqa is my interior states [ahivdli].” Shared, tarlqa, and haqlqa are mutually interdependent: The law without truth is ostentation, and the truth without the law is hypocrisy. Their mutual relation may be compared to that of body and spirit: when the spirit departs from the body, the living body becomes a corpse, and the spirit vanishes like wind. The Muslim’s profession of faith includes both; the words “There is no god but Allah” are the Truth, and the words “Muhammad is the apostle of God” are the Law. Any one who denies the Truth is an infidel, and any one who rejects the Law is a heretic. (H 383) “To kiss the threshold of the sharfa ’’ 2 was the first duty of anyone who wanted to enter the mystical path. The poets have often spoken in verses, and the mystics in poignant sentences, of the different aspects of these three levels (sometimes ma c rifa, “gnosis,” would be substituted for haqlqa, “truth”). Thus it is said in Turkey: Sharl c a : yours is yours, mine is mine. Tarlqa: yours is yours, mine is yours too. Ma^rifa: there is neither mine nor thine. The meaning is this: in the tarlqa, the mystic should practice Ithdr, i.e., preferring others to himself, but in the unitive stage the differ¬ ence between mine and thine has been subsumed in the divine unity. Once the mystics had identified these three main parts of religious life, they began to analyze the different stages and stations that the wayfarer has to pass on his way. They distinguished between maqam, “station,” and hal, “state”: “State is something that descends from God into a man’s heart, without his being able to repel it when it comes, or to attract it when it goes, by his own effort” (H 181). Or, as Rumi puts it more poetically: The hal is like the unveiling of the beauteous bride, while the maqam is the [king’s] being alone with the bride. (M 1:1435) The maqam is a lasting stage, which man reaches, to a certain ex¬ tent, by his own striving. It belongs to the category of acts, whereas 2. Abu-’l-Majd Majdud Sana 3 !, SanaPv’abad, line 39. lOO / THE PATH the states are gifts of grace. The maqamdt, “stations,” define the different stages the wayfarer has attained in his ascetic and moral discipline. He is expected to fulfill completely the obligations per¬ taining to the respective stations, e.g., he must not act in the station of respect as if he were still in the station of repentance; he also must not leave the station in which he dwells before having completed all its requirements. The states that come over him will vary according to the station in which he is presently living; thus the qabd, “con¬ traction,” of someone in the station of poverty is different from the qabd of someone in the station of longing. The mystical theoreticians w'ere not certain whether a state could be appropriated and kept for a while or whether it was a passing ex¬ perience; they also differ in their classification of the stations and in their description of certain experiences that are seen sometimes as stations, sometimes as states. Even the sequence of the stations is not always clear; it varies according to the capacity of the adept, and God’s activity can change stations or grant the wayfarer a state with¬ out apparent reason. Three of the early classifications show the variability of the sequence. DhtEn-Nun speaks of faith, fear, reverence, obedience, hope, love, suffering, and intimacy; he classifies the last three stations as confusion, poverty, and union (A 9:374). His younger contemporary in Iran, Yahya ibn Mu c adh, gives a spiri¬ tual chain closer to the generally accepted form—repentance, asceticism, peace in God’s will, fear, longing, love, and gnosis (A 10:64). And the Iraqian Sahl at-Tustari, again a few years younger, defines the sequence as follows: response to God’s call, turning toward Him, re¬ pentance, forgiveness of sins, loneliness, steadfastness, meditation, gno¬ sis, discourse, election, and friendship (G 4:43). The manuals of Sufism enumerate still other stations; but the main steps are always repentance, trust in God, and poverty, which may lead to contentment, to the different degrees of love, or to gnosis, according to the mental predilection of the wayfarer. In order to enter the spiritual path, the adept—called murid, “he who has made up his will” (to enter the Path)—is in need of a guide to lead him through the different stations and to point the way toward the goal. Ad-din nastha, “religion consists of giving good advice,” was a Prophetic tradition dear to the mystics, who saw in the constant supervision of the disciple’s way by the mystical guide a conditio THE PATH / lOl sine qua non for true progress, though the image of the sheikh at- tarbiya, who acutely supervised every breath of the murid, has de¬ veloped only in the course of time. A later mystic has compared the master—sheikh in Arabic, plr in Persian—to the prophet (for a tradi¬ tion says that “the sheikh in his group is like the prophet in his people’’): “All the prophets have come in order to open people’s eyes to see their own faults and God’s perfection, their own weak¬ ness and God’s power, their own injustice and God’s justice . . . . And the shaikh is also there for the purpose of opening the eyes of his disciples” (N 441). The master who had to teach the method and the exercises had first to test the adept to determine whether he was willing and able to undergo the hardships that awaited him on the Path. The newcomer was sometimes made to wait for days at the sheikh’s door, and sometimes as a first test was treated very rudely. Usually three years of service were required before the adept could be formally accepted in a master’s group—one year in the service of the people, one in the service of God, and one year in watching over his own heart. The methods of humiliating future Sufis were numerous. If they were ordered to beg so that they would be rebuked by the people, the intent was not the material profit derived from begging, but the discipline. Shibll, once a high government official, eventually reached the point of saying: “I deem myself the meanest of God’s creatures” (H 359), and only then was he accepted by Junayd. A story that illustrates this attitude very well is told about Majduddin Baghdadi in the twelfth century: When he entered the service of a sheikh, he was made to serve “at the place of ablution,” i.e., to clean the latrines. His mother, a well-to-do lady physician, asked the master to exempt the tender boy from this work, and sent him twelve Turkish slaves to do the cleaning. But he replied: “You are a physician—if your son had an inflammation of the gall bladder, should I give the medicine to a Turkish slave instead of giving it to him?” (N 424) The disciple would probably not have undergone these trials had he not had absolute trust in his master. It was, and still is, a rule that a preformed affinity has to exist between master and disciple. Many Sufis wandered for years throughout the Islamic world in search of a plr to whom they could surrender completely; and a number of sheikhs would not accept a new disciple unless they had seen his name written on the Well-preserved Tablet among their 102 / THE PATH followers (N 536, 538). Did not the Prophet say that the spirits are like armies—those who know each other become friendly with each other? After the adept had performed the three years of service he might be considered worthy of receiving the khirqa, the patched frock, “the badge of the aspirants of Sufism’’ (H 45). The relation of the novice to the master is threefold: by the khirqa, by being instructed in the formula of dhikr (recollection), and by company ( suhbat ), service, and education (N 560). In investing the murid with the patched frock, Sufism has preserved the old symbolism of garments: by donning a garment that has been worn, or even touched, by the blessed hands of a master, the disciple acquires some of the baraka, the mystico-magical power of the sheikh. Later Sufism knows two kinds of khirqa: the khirqa-yi irada, which the aspirant gets from the master to whom he has sworn allegiance, and the khirqa-yi tabar- ruk, the “frock of blessing,” which he may obtain from different masters with whom he has lived or whom he has visited during his journeys—if a master considered him worthy of receiving some of his baraka. The khirqa-yi irada is bestowed upon him only by his true mystical leader, who is responsible for his progress. The khirqa was usually dark blue. It was practical for travel, since dirt was not easily visible on it, and at the same time it was the color of mourning and distress; its intention was to show that the Sufi had separated himself from the world and what is in it. In Persian poetry the violet has often been compared to a Sufi who sits, his head on his knees, in the attitude of meditation, modestly wrapped in his dark blue frock among the radiant flowers of the garden. In later times in certain circles mystics would choose for their frocks a color that corresponded to their mystical station (CL 166), and sabzpush, “he who wears green,” has always been an epithet for those who live on the highest possible spiritual level —be they angels, the Prophet, or Khidr, the guide of the mystics (cf. V 52). The patched frock was, of course, often interpreted in a spiritual sense; warnings against attributing too much importance to this woolen dress were not infrequent: “Purity (. safa ) is a gift from God, whereas wool ( suf) is the clothing of animals” (H 48). Some of the Sufis invented complicated rules for the sewing and stitching of their patched frocks, disputing whether to use thin or coarse thread in putting the patches together, and for some of them these exter- THE PATH / lOg nals were so important that others might accuse them of worship¬ ing the khirqa like an idol. The mystical interpretation of the dervish garb is given in a fine passage by Hujwlri: Its collar is annihilation of intercourse [with men], its two sleeves are observance and continence, its two gussets are poverty and purity, its belt is persistence in contemplation, its hem is tranquillity in [God’s] presence, and its fringe is settlement in the abode of union. (H 56) The novice who has entered the master’s group becomes “like the son of the sheikh”; he is considered part of him according to the tradition, “the son is part of the father.” The sheikh helps him to give birth to a true “heart” and nourishes him with spiritual milk like a mother, as it is often repeated. The Sufis have always been tvell aware of the dangers of the spiritual path and therefore attributed to the sheikh almost un¬ limited authority: “When someone has no sheikh, Satan becomes his sheikh,” says a tradition, for the satanic insinuations are mani¬ fold: the murid may even feel uplifted and consoled by certain experiences that are, in reality, insinuations of his lower self or of a misguiding power. Here the sheikh has to control him and lead him back on the correct path, for whoever travels without a guide needs two hundred years for a two days journey. (M 3:588) One might read all the books of instruction for a thousand years, but without a guide nothing would be achieved (Y 514). The master watches every moment of the disciple’s spiritual growth; he watches him particularly during the forty-day period of meditation ( arbcfin, chilla) that became, very early, a regular insti¬ tution in the Sufi path (derived, as Hujwlri says, from the forty-day fast of Moses, when he hoped for a vision from God, as related in Sura 7:138). The sheikh interprets the murid’s dreams and visions, reads his thoughts, and thus follows every movement of his conscious and subconscious life. In the first centuries of the Sufi movement the idea was already being expressed that in the hands of the master the murid should be as passive as a corpse in the hands of an un¬ dertaker. Ghazzali, the main representative of moderate Sufism in the late eleventh century, also maintained that complete and abso¬ lute obedience is necessary, even if the sheikh should be wrong: “Let him know that the advantage he gains from the error of his 104 / THE PA TH sheikh, if he should err, is greater than the advantage he gains from his own rightness, if he should be right.” 3 This attitude in later times lent itself to dangerous consequences; indeed, it is one of the reasons for modernist Muslims’ aversion to Sufism. But the original intent was genuine: the master should act like a physician, diag¬ nosing and healing the illnesses and defects of the human soul. The image of the master (who is often identified with the true mysti¬ cal beloved) as the physician who cures the lover’s heart occurs frequently in Persian poetry throughout the centuries. Visiting his master is a religious duty of the disciple (N 115), for he will find from him what he will not find elsewhere. And to serve a master is the highest honor of which a disciple can boast- even if it were only that he “cleaned Junayd’s latrines for thirty years” (N 222). Even to have met a leading sheikh at once endows a man with a higher rank (N 115). Under the guidance of such a trusted master, the murid could hope to proceed in the stations on the Path. The sheikh would teach him how to behave in each mental state and prescribe periods of seclusion, if he deemed it necessary. It was well known that the methods could not be alike for everybody, and the genuine mystical leader had to have a great deal of psychological understanding in order to recognize the different talents and characters of his murids and train them accordingly. 4 He might exempt a disciple for a time from the forty-day seclusion, for instance, because he was spiritually too weak, or because his spiritual ecstasy might overwhelm him. The isolation of the murid for a period of forty days necessitates a deep change in consciousness, and some of the Sufi theoreticians were aware—as every good sheikh in fact was—that the seclusion might constitute, for weaker adepts, a source of danger rather than of elevation. If he were to concentrate too much upon himself rather than upon God, or if passions might overcome him and make him nervous and angry, it might be better to have him live in the company of other people for his spiritual training 5 because of the mutual influence and good example (L 207). Generally, the disciple should consider the dark room in which 3. Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Mohammedanism: An Historical Survey ('London, 1949), p. 150. 4. See Shihabuddin c Umar as-Suhrawardi, c Awarif al-ma c drif (Printed at the margin of Ghazzali’s Ihya?, Bulaq, 1289 h./1872—73), chaps. 26-28. 5. Sufiname, p. 108. THE PATH / 105 he observes his seclusion as a tomb, and his frock as a shroud (N 418). Mystics would often retire into seclusion for periods of medi¬ tation and were praised if, at the time of their death, they had completed thirty or forty chilla. Sometimes they would construct a special chillakhdna, a room for seclusion, which might even be subterranean (N 325), close to the center of the fraternity or in a blessed place nearby. The mystical path has sometimes been described as a ladder, a staircase that leads to heaven, on which the salik slowly and pa¬ tiently climbs toward higher levels of experience. But the Muslim mystics knew that there is another way of reaching higher experi¬ ences: it is the jadhba, “attraction,” by which a person can be exalted, in one single spiritual experience, into a state of ecstasy and of perfect union. However, it seems typical that the name of majdhub, “the attracted one,” was usually given to people who were mentally deranged and who were, in a sense, thrown out of the way of normal behavior by the overwhelming shock of an “unveiling.” The sources often described such “attracted” people, who are completely lost and submerged in the divine unity, their eyes “like two cups fdled with blood” (N 479), inspiring awe, and at times shocking people by their behavior. One should not forget, too, that certain Suits claimed to be traveling the Path without formal initiation. They were called uwaysl, recalling the Prophet’s contemporary Uways al-Qarani in Yemen. But even in his case, some legally inclined mystics would hold that he was “spiritually” initiated by the Prophet despite the distance, for initiation by a nonvisible master or by a saint who had died long ago was considered possible in Sufi circles. Thus, Kha- raqani was introduced into the Path through the spirit of Bayezid BistamI, while 'Attar was inspired by Hallaj’s spirit. The spirit of the saint is thought to be alive, able to participate actively in the affairs of this world, often appearing in dreams and guiding the wayfarer on his Path, for “the friends of God do not die.” Later Sufis—particularly the Naqshbandiyya—practiced a concentration upon the “spiritual reality” of the great masters in order to be strengthened in their mystical pursuits. A final possibility of initiation from a source other than a human master was through Khidr. Khidr, identified with the mysterious companion of Moses mentioned in Sura 18, is the patron saint of 106 / THE PATH travelers, the immortal who drank from the water of life. Sometimes the mystics would meet him on their journeys; he would inspire them, answer their questions, rescue them from danger, and, in special cases, invest them with the khirqa, which was accepted as valid in the tradition of Sufi initiation. Thus they were connected immediately with the highest source of mystical inspiration. Ibn c ArabI, the theosophist (d. 1240), is one of those who claimed to have received the khirqa from Khidr. The mystical Path is long and hard for the murid and requires constant obedience and struggle. The correct initial orientation of the adept is decisive for the success of the journey: who begins in God will also end in Him (L 241). Under the spell of some poetical utterances of later Persian poets, or impressed by dervishes, who were anything but observant of Muslim law, westerners have often regarded the Sufis as representatives of a movement that has freed itself from the legal prescriptions of Islam, no longer caring for religion and infidelity. Sufi became almost an equivalent for “free thinker” with many Europeans. That is, however, not correct. One should not forget that the shari c a, as proclaimed in the Koran and exemplified by the Proph¬ et (L 27), together with a firm belief in the Day of Judgment, was the soil out of which their piety grew. They did not abolish the rites but rather interiorized them, as it was said: “The people who know God best are those who struggle most for His commands and follow closest the tradition of His Prophet” (N 117). The performance of ritual prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca constituted, for the majority of the early Sufis, the minimal religious obligation with¬ out which all possible mystical training would be useless and meaningless. Many of them performed the pilgrimage to Mecca frequently—up to seventy times, if we can believe the hagiogra- phers. They knew that the true seat of the divine spirit was not the Kaaba made of stone but the Kaaba of the faithful worshiper’s heart (U 43), in which God might reveal Himself to those who completed the Path. When you seek God, seek Him in your heart— He is not in Jerusalem, nor in Mecca nor in the hajj, says Yunus Emre (Y 520), voicing the conviction of many of his contemporaries and followers. Yet the pilgrimage remained a central point in the Sufi life, and Mecca was not only a place where THE PATH / 107 the Sufis would meet and join in discussion, but where many of them were blessed with revelations and illuminations. The recitation of the Koran was another important duty of the mystic: “A disciple who does not know the Koran by heart is like a lemon without scent” (N 131). The divine word is the infallible source of spiritual uplifting; it inspires joy and awe and leads to secret conversations with God, for “God reveals Himself to His servants in the Koran,” as C A 1 I reportedly said (B 584). Even though Paradise and Hell did not matter to the devotees of mystical love, they were well aware that their deeds would bear fruit, and one of the favorite sayings attributed to the Prophet was constantly repeated by the moderate mystics: “This world is the seedbed for the Otherworld.” Every act bears fruit by helping or hindering the adept in his progress toward his goal, and “if you plant colocynth, no sugarcane will grow out of it” (D 1337). An interesting variation of the hadith just quoted is found in the Persian mystical tradition. Rum!, following Sanaa’s example, held that every thought that becomes embedded in the heart will turn into a form visible to everybody at the Day of Judgment, just as the thought of the architect becomes visible in the plan of the house, or as the plant grows out of the seed hidden in the soil (M 5:1791-1803), and death will meet man like a mirror, which shows either a beautiful or an ugly face according to his good or evil deeds. The Zoroastrian idea of the witness in Heaven who meets the deceased soul has clearly inspired these ideas. Sana 3 ! went even further—he thought that evil thoughts might completely transform man at the end of time so that some people might even appear as animals because they followed bestial instincts and animal lusts in their lifetime (SD 618). One has to work day and night, to plough and to clean the field of the soul. (U 264) And what has been sown during the winter—in the darkness of this material world—will be apparent in the springtime of eternity (M 5:1801). In this constant watching over one’s actions and thoughts, the greatest danger is that the adept may neglect, for a moment, his spiritual duties (ghaflat), that he may become entranced by the “sleep of heedlessness,” as later poets liked to call this state. The 108 / THE PATH story of Sassui, the loving wife who found that her husband had been carried away from her while she was asleep, is (in later Sindhi poetry) a perfect illustration of the sleep of heedlessness and negli¬ gence that deprives the soul of the company of its Lord and beloved. And while the ordinary believer repents his sins, the elite repents heedlessness (L 44). The adept should turn with his whole being toward God— ikh- las, “absolute sincerity,” and giving up selfish thoughts in the service of God are the basic duties of every mystic. A prayer without ikhlas is of no avail; a religious thought that is not born out of this sincerity is meaningless, even dangerous. Praise and blame of the crowd do not mean anything to one who has turned wholly and without any qualification to the Lord; and though he will constant¬ ly be acting virtuously, he will forget his good and pious actions in his attempt to act solely for God. He forgets, of necessity, the thought of recompense for his works in this world and the world to come. It is told that Warraq, one of the early Sufis, was seen wearing a long coat on which he had written the letter kh on one side, the letter m on the other side, so that he could always remember the kh of ikhltif and the m of muruwwa, “virtue.” (N 125) An act of perfect sincerity, done for God’s sake, might result in spiritual progress even though it might appear outwardly foolish. Typical is the story of a not very bright murid whom some mischievous people teased, telling him that he would gain spiritual enlightenment by hanging himself by his feet from the roof and repeating some mean¬ ingless words they taught him. He followed their advice in sincerity and found himself illuminated the next morning. (N 320) An overstressing of the ideal of ikhlas has led to the attitude of the malamatiyya, “those who are blamed,” those who conceal their virtuous deeds in order to perform their religious duties without ostentation (see chapter 2). For the greatest sin is riya, “hypocrisy” or “ostentation,” and the master of psychological analysis in early Sufism, MuhasibI, dealt extensively with this danger. Suli texts tell many stories about people whose hypocrisy was revealed, and they were put to shame. A famous example is this: A man ostentatiously prayed the whole night through in a mosque he had entered at dusk and where he had heard a sound that seemed to in¬ dicate the presence of a human being. But when the call for morning prayer was heard, he discovered that his companion in the mosque was a dog, thus rendering all his prayers invalid and himself impure. THE PATH / 109 STATIONS AND STAGES The first station on the Path, or rather its very beginning, is tauba, “repentance”; tauba means to turn away from sins, to ab¬ jure every worldly concern. 8 As the poet says: Repentance is a strange mount— it jumps towards heaven in a single moment from the lowest place. (M 6:464) Tauba can be awakened in the soul by any outward event, be it a profane word, which is suddenly understood in a religious sense, a piece of paper on which a relevant sentence is written, the recita¬ tion of the Koran, a dream, or a meeting with a saintly person. One of the several stories about Ibrahim ibn Adham’s conversion is particularly well known: One night, he heard a strange sound on the roof of his palace in Balkh. The servants found a man who claimed, in Ibrahim’s presence, to be looking for his lost camel on the palace roof. Blamed by the prince for having undertaken such an impossible task, the man answered that his, Ibrahim’s, attempt at attaining heavenly peace and true religious life in the midst of luxury was as absurd as the search for a camel on top of a roof. Ibrahim repented and repudiated all his possessions. (Cf. M 6:82gff.) The “world” was considered a dangerous snare on the way to God, and particularly in the time of the old ascetics harsh, crude words were uttered to describe the character of this miserable place, which was compared to a latrine—a place to be visited only in case of need 7 —to a rotting carcass, or to a dunghill: “The world is a dunghill and a gathering place of dogs; and meaner than a dog is that person who does not stay away from it. For the dog takes his own need from it and goes away, but he who loves it is in no way separated from it” (N 65). Most of the Sufis, however, would speak of the transitoriness of the world rather than of its perfect evil; for it was created by God, but it is perishable since nothing but God is everlasting. Why should the ascetic bother about it at 6. See Ignaz Goldziher, “Arabische Synonymik der Askese,” Der Islam 8 (1918), a study of the technical terms of early Sufism. 7. Abu Talib al-Makkl, Qut al-qulub fi mu'dmalat al-mahbub, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1310 h./i892—g3), 1:244. Andrae, in In the Garden of Myrtles, however, proves that Ibrahim was of Arab descent. 110 / THE PATH all, since compared to the glory of God, the world is nothing more than a gnat’s wing (A 10:84)? When the disciple leaves this world in his act of repentance, the problem arises as to whether or not he should remember his former sins. Sahl at-Tustari demands that even after repentance sins should never be forgotten (L 43), for remembrance constitutes a remedy against possible spiritual pride. However Junayd, his contempo¬ rary, defined true repentance as “the forgetting of one’s sins” (L 43), and Junayd’s colleague Ruwaym defined tauba as “repenting from repentance,” i.e., complete obliteration of the thought of sin and penitence. Junayd’s idea is taken up by Hujwlrl: “The penitent is a lover of God, and the lover of God is in contemplation of God: in contemplation it is wrong to remember sin, for recollection of sin is a veil between God and the contemplator” (H 296). In keeping with his inclination to systematization, Hujwiri speaks of tauba as return from great sins to obedience; inaba is the return from minor sins to love, and auba the return from one’s self to God (H 295). This tripartition is not found elsewhere. The Sufis knew how often “repentance was broken”—an expres¬ sion connected, in later Persian poetry, with the breaking of the wine bottle, which induced people to sin again and required re¬ newed repentance. But the mystical leaders were sure that the door of repentance remains open; it is a door from the West until the day when the sun rises in the West (M 4:2504) i.e., until Doomsday, says Rumi, on whose mausoleum in Konya the famous lines are written: Come back, come back, even if you have broken your repentance a thousand times. In the primary stages of the Path, the adept has to increase in abstinence ( wara c ), caused by fear of the Lord, and in renunciation (zuhd). The latter word means, again in the traditional tripartite arrangement of concepts, to give up whatever is ritually and re¬ ligiously allowed, to give up this world, and eventually to give up everything that distracts the heart from God, even to renounce the thought of renunciation. That includes, of course, giving up the hope for heavenly reward or the fear of Hell. THE PATH / 111 It was easy for the ascetic to renounce things declared doubtful by Muslim law; but the tendency to renounce even things con¬ sidered lawful by the community of the faithful sometimes reached absurd degrees. Pious women would not spin in the light of a neighbor’s candle; a mystic whose only sheep had grazed on some¬ one else’s lawn by mistake would no longer drink its milk, declaring it to be illicit for him after such a transgression. Food or anything belonging to or coming from the ruling classes was regarded as suspect. It is well known that in the old days the most pious scholars refused to accept government offices; even in later periods relations between the Sufis and the rulers were often cold, if not strained, since the mystics were not interested in any contact that might pollute their pure intentions. That is why in anecdotes and in poetry, and so often in 'Attar’s epics, the dervish is made the mouthpiece of social criticism: he puts his finger on the wound of society and points to the corrupt state of affairs. For the early considerations of renunciation and “eating the licit,” a seemingly characteristic story is told by Hujwiri in con¬ nection with the problem of whether or not a mystic should be a celibate (which he advocates); but the anecdote shows even better the exaggerated zuhd and the punishment that follows a single moment of heedlessness: One day, when Ahmad ibn Harb was sitting with the chiefs and nobles of Nishapur who had come to offer their respects to him, his son entered the room, drunk, playing a guitar, and singing, and passed insolently without heeding them. Ahmad, perceiving that they were put out of countenance, said “What is the matter?” They replied: “We are ashamed that this lad should pass by you in such a state.” Ahmad said: “He is ex¬ cusable. One night my wife and I partook of some food that was brought to us from a neighbour’s house. That same night this son was begotten and we fell asleep and let our devotions go. Next morning we inquired of our neighbour as to the source of the food that he had sent to us, ana we found that it came from a wedding-feast in the house of a government official. (H 365) In later Sufi texts stress is laid not so much on zuhd as on its negative counterpart, hirs, “greed,” a quality opposed to both renunciation and true poverty. The Persian poets have never ceased warning their readers of greed, which is “a dragon and not any small thing” (M 5:120). This quality was found, as history shows, not only in the worldly leaders but also in many of those who claimed to have attained the highest spiritual rank and who used outward zuhd to cover their inner greed. The zahid-i zahirparast, the ascetic who 112 / THE PATH still worships outward things, i.e., who has not reached sincere selflessness and loving surrender, has been ridiculed in many Persian poems. The forward movement on the Path, as initiated by repentance and renunciation, consists of a constant struggle against the nafs, the “soul”—the lower self, the base instincts, what we might render in the biblical sense as “the flesh.” The faithful had been admon¬ ished in the Koran (Sura 79:40) to “fear the place of his Lord and hinder the nafs from lust.” For the nafs is the cause of blameworthy actions, sins, and base qualities; and the struggle with it has been called by the Sufis “the greater Holy War,” for “the worst enemy you have is [the nafs] between your sides,” as the hadith says (L 12). The Koranic expression an-nafs al-amrnara bPs-su 3 , “the soul com¬ manding to evil” (Sura 12:53) forms the starting point for the Sufi way of purification. The holy book contains also the expression an-nafs al-lawwama, “the blaming soul” (Sura 75:2), which cor¬ responds approximately to the conscience that watches over man’s actions and controls him. Eventually, once purification is achieved, the nafs may become mutma^inna (Sura 89:27), “at peace”; in this state, according to the Koran, it. is called home to its Lord. 8 The main duty of the adept is to act exactly contrary to the nafs’ s appetites and wishes. There is nothing more dangerous for the disciple than to treat the nafs lightly by allowing indulgences and accepting (facilitating) interpretations, says Ibn Khafif. 9 It is in¬ cumbent upon every traveler on the Path to purge the nafs of its evil attributes in order to replace these by the opposite, praise¬ worthy qualities. Sufi hagiography is full of stories about the ways in which the masters of the past tamed their appetites and, if they failed, the manner of their punishment. The nafs is something very real, and many stories tell of its having been seen outside the body. Sometimes it took the form of a black dog that wanted food but had to be trained and sent away; other mystics saw their nafs coming out of their throats in the form of a young fox or a mouse (H 206). The nafs can also be compared to a disobedient woman who tries to seduce and cheat the poor way¬ farer (the noun nafs is feminine in Arabic!). A recurrent image is that of the restive horse or mule that has to be kept hungry and 8. A. Tahir al-Khanqahl, Guzida dar akhlaq H tasawwuf, ed. Iraj Afshar (Tehran, 13.17 sh-/>968), p. 224. g. c Abdur-Ral.nnan as-Sularal, Kilab tabaqat as-Sufiyya, ed. Xuraddin Sharlba (Cairo, 1953), p. 465. THE PATH / 1 13 has to undergo constant mortification and training so that, eventu¬ ally, it serves the purpose of bringing the rider to his goal (H 202- 204). 10 Sometimes it is likened to a disobedient camel—RumI com¬ pares the struggle of the intellect with the nafs to the attempts of Majnun to turn his camel in the right direction, toward the tent of his beloved (M 4:1532)—and it is only natural that poets all over the desert areas, like Shah ‘AbduTLatif in Sind, are particularly fond of this comparison. Even the comparison of the nafs to a pig is not rare. It is found mainly in c Attar’s poetry; like Sana’! before him, he felt that those who obeyed their piglike nature would themselves be changed into pigs (U 236-37; R 102-3). Sometimes the nafs has been likened to Pharaoh, the self-centered ruler (U 16; M 4:3621) who did not listen to the call to faith uttered by Moses but claimed a divine rank for himself and consequently was drowned in the Red Sea; or to Abraha, who intruded in the holy city of Mecca and should be scared away with stones (SD 313; cf. Sura 105). Old, popular beliefs were revived when the nafs was said to take the form of a snake; but this serpent can be turned into a useful rod, just as Moses transformed serpents into rods. More frequent, however, is the idea that the power of the spiritual master can blind the snake; according to folk belief, the snake is blinded by the sight of an emerald (the connection of the pit’s spiritual power with the green color of the emerald is significant). Thus, his in¬ fluence renders the na/j-snake harmless (M 3:2548). The image of training the horse or the dog conveys the most near¬ ly accurate impression of the activity of the Sufi: the lower faculties are not to be killed, but trained so that even they may serve on the way to God. A story told about the Prophet Muhammad well ex¬ presses this faith in the training of the base soul; the expression used here for the “lower qualities, instincts,” is shaytdn, “Satan”: “When asked how his shaytdn behaved, he answered: ‘Aslama shaytani; my shaytdn has become a Muslim and does whatever I order him,’ ” i.e., all his lower faculties and instincts had been turned into useful tools in the service of God. Provided that man obeys God in every respect, the lower soul will obey its master, as everything in the world will obey the one who has completely sur¬ rendered his will to the will of God. io. Anneraarie Schimmel, “Nur ein storrisches Pferd,” in Ex Orbe Religionism Festschrift Geo Widengren (Leiden, 197a). 114 / THE PATH The struggle against the nafs has always been a favorite topic of the Sufis, and they have never tired of warning their disciples of its ruses, not only in the crude forms of sensual appetites but in the guises of hypocrisy and false piety, which must be carefully observed and obliterated. The nafs has a rosary and a Koran in its right hand, and a scimitar and a dagger in the sleeve, (M 3:2554) says RumI, taking up a warning formulated four hundred years earlier by Dhu’n-Nun. Even to indulge in constant acts of worship or prayer can become a pleasure for the nafs ; the mystic, therefore, has to break every kind of habit, for otherwise his nafs will over¬ come him in a subtler way (N 98). The “pleasure derived from works of obedience” should be avoided (N 83), for that is fatal poison. One of the great dangers for the wayfarer is laziness or leisure; as long as he has not yet reached his goal, it would be better for him to occupy himself with seemingly useless things, like digging one pit after the other (N 156, 90), than to spend a moment in leisure, for “leisure ( faragh ) is an affliction” (N 90). The chief means for taming and training the nafs were, and still are, fasting and sleeplessness. The first ascetics have often been de¬ scribed as qa’im al-lail wa sadim ad-dahr, “spending their nights upright in prayer and maintaining a perpetual fast by day.” The old saying that the three elements of Sufi conduct are qillat at-ta'am, qillat al-manam wa qillat al-kalam, “little food, little sleep, little talk” (to which often “loneliness, keeping away from men,” was added) is still as valid as it was a thousand years ago. Lack of sleep was considered one of the most effective means on the mystical Path—“the eye is weeping instead of sleeping” u —and the caliph 'Umar (634-44), who was certainly not a Sufi, reportedly said: “What have I to do with sleep? If I slept by day, I would lose the Muslims, and if I slept by night I would lose my soul” (G 1:318). The ascetic spent his nights at prayers recommended in the Koran, which gave him time to enjoy blessed conversation with his Lord through prayer. Many of the mystics would avoid stretching out their legs or lying down when slumber overcame them, for all of 11. Muhammad GIsudaraz, Dtwan anis al~ z ushshaq (n.p., n.d.), p. 18. THE PATH / 115 them hoped for some revelation after the long nights of sleepless¬ ness, which extended over years, if we can believe the sources. The most beautiful story pertaining to this attitude has been told and retold for centuries: Shah Kirmanl did not sleep for forty years, but eventually he was overwhelmed by sleep—and he saw God. Then he exclaimed: “ ‘O Lord, I was seeking Thee in nightly vigils, but I have found Thee in sleep.’ God answered: ‘O Shah, you have found Me by means of those nightly vigils: if you had not sought Me there, you would not have found Me here’ ” (H 138). These ascetics and Sufis were hoping—as later poets have expressed it so excellently—to have the vision of a sun that is neither from east nor from west but rises at midnight, and thus to enjoy a spiritual enlightenment not comparable to any worldly light (cf. U 160). For practical purposes, however, the qillat at-ta^am, “to eat little,” is even more important than to avoid sleep. The Sufis would fast frequently, if not constantly. Many of them extended the fasting in Ramadan observed by every Muslim; but in order to make fast¬ ing more difficult, they invented the so-called saum da’udl, which meant that they would eat one day and fast one day, so that their bodies would not become accustomed to either of the two states. “Fasting is really abstinence, and this includes the whole method of Sufism” (FI 321). The first mystic to speak of the “alchemy of hunger” was, as far as we can see, Shaqiq al-Balkhl from the Khurasanian ascetic school. Fie claimed that forty days of constant hunger could transform the darkness of the heart into light (W 216), and many sayings of the early Sufis praise this hunger, which “is stored up in treasure- houses with Him, and He gives it to none but whom He particular¬ ly loves” (L 202). “Hunger is God’s food by which He quickens the bodies of the upright” (M 5:1756), says RumI, who also argues that, just as the host brings better food when the guest eats little, God brings better, i.e., spiritual, food to those who fast. But “hun¬ ger is the food of the ascetics, recollection that of the gnostics” (N i 57 )- The accounts of the extended periods of fasting of Muslim mystics are astounding, and we have little reason to doubt their authenticity. The wish to die in the state of fasting may induce the Sufi even to throw away the wet piece of cotton that his friends put in his mouth to relieve him in his state of agony (N 11 6 / THE PATH 245). It would be worth investigating to what extent this restriction to extremely small quantities of food contributed to the longevity of the Sufis. It is astonishing how many of them lived to be very old. Like the early Christian monks who lived exclusively on the host, the Muslim saints considered hunger the best way to reach spiritu¬ ality. To be empty of worldly food is the precondition for enlight¬ enment. “Could the reedflute sing if its stomach were filled?” Rum! asks repeatedly. Man can receive the divine breath of inspiration only when he keeps himself hungry and empty. Ruzbihan Baqli tells about a saint who totally fasted for seventy days, during which he remained in the contemplation of samadiyyat, “eternity”: “In this state food comes to him from the word ‘I stay with my Lord who feeds me and gives me to drink’ ” (Sura 26:79). “This is no longer the station of struggle, but that of contempla¬ tion” (B 364). In cases of this kind, hunger is no longer a means for subduing the nafs but a divine grace: adoration is the food for the spiritual man (H 303), and the Sufi is nourished by the divine light (M 4:1640-44). Some mystics, like Ibn Khafif, have confessed that their goal in permanent fasting and diminishing their food was to be like the angels, who also live on perpetual adoration (X 107). Gabriel’s food was not from the kitchen, it was from the vision of the Creator of Existence. Likewise this food of the men of God is from God, not from food and dish. (M 3:6-7) And why care for the body, which is, as the Sufis liked to say, only “a morsel for the tomb” and should therefore be bony and lean (D 777)? Some of the ascetics exaggerated fasting and hunger in the pre¬ paratory stages to such an extent that one can almost speak of an “idolatry of the empty stomach” (W 216). There are known cases of Sufis who starved to death (L 417). Others not only fasted and restricted their diet to the absolute minimum but, in addition to that, took a purgative on every third day. 12 Yet the great masters have always acknowledged that hunger is only a means to spiritual progress, not a goal in itself. Just as Abu Sa c Id ibn AbEl-Khair, after years of incredible ascetic hardships, eventually enjoyed food—and good food!—many of the later mystics 12. Umar Muhammad Daudpota, Kalam-i Girhori (Hyderabad, Sind, 1956), p. 23. THE PATH / 117 would agree that “the soul-dog is better when its mouth is shut by throwing a morsel into it.” 13 Strangely enough, as early as the tenth century, the fondness of the Sufis for halvah, sweetmeat, is mentioned; and in the eleventh and later centuries poets often speak in derogatory terms of the Sufi with milk-white hair who has made the recollection ( dhikr) of sugar, rice, and milk his special litany (SD 149). This derogatory attitude is echoed in the poetry of Bedil (d. 1721), who criticized the Sufis whose only dhikr, recollection, is to constantly mention food. And Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) made the fake murid ex¬ plain that God, though “closer than the jugular vein” (Sura 50:16), is not closer to man than his stomach. Many later orders taught that the middle way, between excessive hunger and excessive eating, was safest for the disciple’s progress (N 395). According to the later Naqshbandiyya and other moderate orders, the people who truly fast are those who keep their minds free from the food of satanic suggestions and so do not allow any impure thoughts to enter their hearts: “Such people’s sleep is worship. Their walking and going and resting are glorification of God, and their breathing praise of God.” One of the most important stations on the Path is tawakkul, complete trust in God and self-surrender to Him. The Swiss scholar Benedikt Reinert has devoted to this subject a book that must be regarded as a model for future research into the concepts of early Sufism. 14 The definition of tawakkul is of central impor¬ tance for an understanding of classical Sufi thought. DaranI, the spiritual descendant of Hasan al-Basri, defined it as the apex of zuhd, “renunciation.” The problem was soon posed as to whether taivakkul was an attribute of the faithful or a consequence of perfect faith. Thus MuhasibI, representative of orthodox views, holds that the degree of tawakkul can vary in accordance with the degree of faith a person has. Throughout the ninth century—probably be¬ ginning with Shaqlq al-Balkhl—the pious discussed the different aspects of this attitude, which Dhuhr-Nun defined as “complete certitude.” According to these definitions, real tauhid demands tawakkul : God, in His absoluteness, is the only actor, and there¬ fore man has to rely completely upon Him. Or, to define it different¬ ly. Dara Shikoh, Saklnat al-auliya D , ed. M. Jalali Xa’inI (Tehran, 1334 sh./1965), p. 238. 14. Benedikt Reinert, Die Lehre vom taivakkul in der dlteren Sufik (Berlin, 1968), an excellent study of the development of ‘ trust in God” and its ramifications. 11 8 / THE PATH ly: since the divine power is all-embracing, man must have complete trust in this power. The same end is reached if the problem is approached from the angle of predestination. Rizq, “our daily bread,” has been guaran¬ teed from preeternity. Why worry, then? Is not one of God’s names, ar-Razzaq, “He who bestows sustenance”? And He has shown His kindness to every being from his birth, even from the moment of conception, by nourishing him first with blood, then with milk. Since everything is created by and belongs to God, man possesses absolutely nothing of his own; therefore it would be vain to strive to attract or refuse anything. The Muslim creed expressly states that “what has been destined for man cannot possibly miss him,” be it food, happiness, or death. The overwhelming feeling of God’s all-encompassing wisdom, power, and loving-kindness is reflected in the Muslim tradition as fully as in some of the Psalms and in the Christian tradition. The word ascribed to the Prophet, “if ye had trust in God as ye ought He would feed you even as He feeds the birds,” sounds almost evangelical. This deep trust in God’s promise to feed man and bring him up, as it developed out of the Koranic teaching, has permeated Muslim life. Sana’! said about 1120: If your daily bread is in China, the horse of acquisition is already saddled, and either brings you hurriedly to it, or brings it to you, while you are asleep. (S 106) And even today Muslim intellectuals may say: “Wherever your rizq is, there you will find it, and it will find you.” The Muslim mystics often use the expression husn az-zann, “to think well of God,” which may sound strange to modern ears, but which means once more the absolute, hopeful trust in God’s kind¬ ness. God definitely knows what is good for man and gives bread and death, punishment and forgiveness according to His eternal wis¬ dom. This attitude has been a source of strength for millions of Muslims, but it is not to be confused with the stoic acceptance of a blind fate, as it is usually understood in terms of predestinarian ideas. The faith in the rizq that will reach man was certainly carried too far by an early mystic who forbade his disciple to stretch out his hand to grasp a dried-up melon skin. THE PATH / lig Tawakkul in its interiorized sense means to realize tauhld; for it would be shirk khafi, “hidden associationism,” to rely upon or be afraid of any created being. This aspect of tawakkul is one of the basic truths in Sufi psychology: as soon as every feeling and thought is directed in perfect sincerity toward God, without any secondary causes, neither humans nor animals can any longer harm the mystic. Thus tawakkul results in perfect inner peace. The numerous stories about Sufis who wandered “in tawakkul” through the desert with¬ out fear of lions or highway robbers, without any provisions, reflect this attitude in a somewhat romantic fashion. Ironically, one of the leading masters of tawakkul, Abu Turab an-Nakhshabi, was de¬ voured by lions in the desert (Q 17). But exaggerated tawakkul might induce man into perfect pas¬ sivity. Then it might produce strange figures like the dervish who fell into the Tigris; asked whether he wanted to be saved, he said “no,” and asked whether he would rather die, he again said “no”— “for what have I to do with willing?” God had decreed at the time of creation whether he was to be drowned or saved. Another story that deals with the unhealthy exaggeration of tawakkul is told about Ibrahim ibn al-Khawass, an Iraqian Sufi who used to wander in the deserts without any provisions ( c alcft-tawakkul ). But a colleague of his thought even this too lax, since “his Sufi dress begged for him”; he made him wear luxurious attire and then sent him to the desert to practice real trust in God (X 105). This same wayfarer would re¬ fuse the company of Khidr, the patron of pious travelers, because his graceful company seemed to negate his perfect trust in God alone—had not Abraham, after all, refused help even from Gabriel when Nimrod cast him onto the blazing pyre? And he was rewarded for this act of tawakkul by God’s changing the fire into a cool rose garden. How, then, could the Sufi ascetic even think of danger if everything was in the hands of God? And why should he get in¬ volved in a profession to gain his livelihood if God would send him his food in any case, if there was food predestined for him? The ascetic regarded everything worldly as contaminated; noth¬ ing was ritually clean enough for him to occupy himself with. He would rather spend his days and nights in worship than pollute him¬ self by “practical” work. And even if he did work, why should he try to gain more than was needed just for one day? To store money or goods was regarded as a major sin—did the pious know whether he would still be alive within an hour, or by the next morning? “Ex- 120 / THE PATH tension of hope,” tul al-amal, is one of the most disliked attitudes in Sufism; Ghazzali’s chapter on “Fear and Hope,” in his Ihyff c uliim ad-dln, echoes these feelings and gives a lucid picture of the austere outlook of early Sufism. Even mystics who cannot be regarded as typical representatives of strict tawakkul often distributed all their money in the evening or gave away everything they had on Friday. They also refused any medical treatment. The importance of the problem of tawakkul for early Sufi thought and practice can be understood from the fact that the earli¬ est standard work on mysticism, Abu Talib al-Makki’s Qut al-qulub, contains sixty pages (big folio with very small print) about this topic, more than about any other aspect of Sufism. Through Ghazzall, who drew heavily upon Makkl’s book, these ideas became widely known in medieval Islam. However, neither strict Hanbalite orthodoxy nor the moderate Sufis accepted the notion of tawakkul in an over¬ stressed form; exaggerations like those just mentioned were criti¬ cized by many of the leading pious. They considered this exag¬ gerated attitude a violation of the Prophetic tradition—did not Muhammad himself advise a bedouin: “First tie your camel’s knee, and then trust in God”? Sahl at-Tustari is the perfect example of a mystic who tried to combine a life in the “world” with complete tawakkul, and his contemporary Junayd taught his disciples how to regard earning: “The proper method of earning ... is to engage in works which bring one nearer to God, and to occupy oneself with them in the same spirit as with works of supererogation commended to one, not with the idea that they are a means of sustenance or ad¬ vantage” (K 73). In the course of time, tawakkul came to be regarded more as a spiritual attitude than as an external practice. If everybody had lived according to the ideals promoted by some of the early ascetics, the whole economic and social fabric of the Muslim Empire would have collapsed. However, as a basic station on the mystical Path and as a spiritual force, an unshakable trust in divine wisdom and power, tawakkul is still an important element of Muslim piety. The central attitude in Sufi life is that of faqr, “poverty.” The Koran (Sura 35:16) has contrasted man in need of God with God, the ever Rich, the Self-sufficient, and here lies one of the roots of the Sufi concept of poverty. In fact, the main names under which the mystics have been known in the West—though often in distorted THE PATH / 121 images—are faqir, “poor,” and dervish, “poor, mendicant.” Pov¬ erty was an attribute of the Prophet, who claimed, according to the tradition, faqri fakhri, “poverty is my pride.” There are numer¬ ous legends about the destitute state and the poverty of his house¬ hold and the members of his family. The Sufis considered outward poverty a necessary station at the beginning of the Path, and they tried to preserve it as long as possi¬ ble, often throughout their lives. There is no reason to doubt the validity of the stories in which the utter destitution of some of the great mystics is dramatically described. The reed mat on which the mystic slept, and which often constituted his only worldly posses¬ sion, became in later Persian poetry a symbol of spiritual wealth, since it gives its owner a rank higher than that of Solomon on his air-borne throne: Everyone who has to write the manuscript of the etiquette of Poverty puts a ruler from the strips of the reed-mat on the pages of his body. 15 Poverty interpreted in a spiritual sense means the absence of de¬ sire for wealth, which includes the absence of desire for the blessings of the otherworld. One of the aspects of true faqr is that the mystic must not ask anything of anyone—Ansari, though utterly poor, never asked his wealthy friends even for a blanket, though he knew that they would have wanted to give him one, but “since they did not perceive my misery, why ask them?” (N 347). For to ask would mean to rely upon a created being, and to receive would burden the soul with gratitude toward the giver, a burden that was considered most embarrassing and heavy; both in poetry and in everyday speech this feeling of minnat, “gratitude,” has a negative value for the faithful. If man has no wish for himself in this world and the next, then he may be called a genuine faqir (N 111). To possess anything means to be possessed by it—the world enthralls those who possess some of its goods, whereas “the true faqir should not possess anything and thus not be possessed by anything” (L 108). He needs God, nothing else. 15. Abu Talib Kalim, Diwan, ed. Partaw Baida 3 ! (Tehran, 1336 SI1./1957), ghazal no. 316. 122 / THE PATH Later Sufis have stretched this concept of absolute poverty so far that even Jesus, the ideal of poverty for the early ascetics, was re¬ garded as imperfect in his poverty; he used to carry a needle with him, which proved that his relation with the world was not yet com¬ pletely severed, and that is why he was assigned a place only in the fourth heaven, not in the proximity of the Lord. This story belongs among the favorites of Persian poets in their praise of poverty (cf. SD85). Hujwirl spoke, correctly, about the form and the essence of pov¬ erty: “Its form is destitution and indigence, but its essence is for¬ tune and free choice” (H 19). The dervish, the Sufi, may be rich if he has the right attitude, which means that his outward wealth and power are of no interest to him and that he would be willing to give them up at any moment. The final consequence—after quitting this world and the next—is to “quit quitting” ( tark at-tark), to com¬ pletely surrender and forget poverty, surrender, and quitting. About the year 900, there was discussion in Baghdad and elsewhere about the superiority of the poor or the rich. Most of the Sufis agreed that faqr was superior and preferable to wealth, provided that it was combined with contentment (N 417)—and this is the general solu¬ tion found in later medieval Sufism, as in Abu Najib as-Suhrawar- dl’s Adab al-muridin. Many of the early sources are filled with praise for the true faqlr and sometimes equate him with the genuine Sufi. Yet JamI, follow¬ ing Abu Hafs c Umar as-Suhrawardl’s distinction among “ascetic,” “poor,” and “Sufi,” as explained in the c Aivarif al-mcfarif, regarded the faqir, in the technical sense, as inferior to the real Sufi, for whom faqr is nothing but a station on the Path. If he makes poverty a goal in itself, the faqlr is veiled from God by his very “will to be poor” (N 11). That is basically an elaboration of a saying by Ibn Khafif: “The Sufi is he whom God has chosen ( istafa) for Himself, out of love, and the faqlr is he who purifies himself in his poverty in the hope of drawing near [to God]” (N 12). Others have praised faqr as the central quality of the mystic, as RumI says in an interesting comparison: It is like the highest sheikh, and all the hearts are murids, the hearts of the lovers turn around it. (D 890) Hujwirl has described this kind of poverty very beautifully: THE PATH / 123 Dervishhood in all its meanings is a metaphorical poverty, and amidst all its subordinate aspects there is a transcendent principle. The Divine mysteries come and go over the dervish, so that his affairs are acquired by himself, his actions attributed to himself, and his ideas attached to him¬ self. But when his affairs are freed from the bonds of acquisition, his ac¬ tions are no more attributed to himself. Then he is the Way, not the wayfarer, i.e., the dervish is a place over which something is passing, not a wayfarer following his own will. (H29) Faqr, here, is almost equated with fana, “annihilation in God,” which is the goal of the mystic, as RumI said once in the Mathnawl (M 5:672). For c Attar poverty and annihiliation constitute the seventh and last vale on the Path leading to God, after the traveler has traversed the valleys of search, love, gnosis, independence, tau- hid, and bewilderment (MT). Along this line of interpretation a phrase was invented that be¬ longs among the standard sayings of later Sufism: al-faqr idhd tamma huwa Allah, “when faqr becomes perfect (complete), it is God.” The heart, annihilated in absolute poverty, lives in the eternal richness of God, or, rather, absolute poverty becomes abso¬ lute richness. That may be what the author of this sentence felt. Its origin is not known. Sometimes it is called a hadith. It has been attributed to Uways al-Qaranl, but that is impossible; Jam! (N 267) ascribes it to a disciple of KharaqanI, which would be historically possible. Whatever its source may be, the sentence was used fre¬ quently among the mystics after the eleventh century; RumI (D 1948) was fond of it, as was Jami; and the Sufi orders—Qadiriyya and Naqshbandiyya—made it known as far as Malaysia. 16 The equation of faqr with annihilation, and the emphasis on the negative, nonexistent aspect of things is expressed, in Islamic art, by the large empty hall of the mosque, which inspires the visitor with numinous grandeur. It is also reflected in the negative space in the arabesques or in calligraphy. Only by absolute faqr can the created world become a vessel for the manifestations of God, the eternally rich. There is another Prophetic tradition, however, in which Mu¬ hammad claims that “poverty is the ‘blackness of face’ [i.e., shame] 16. See Hasan Lutfi §u§ut, Islam tasawufunda Hacegan Hanedam (Istanbul, 1958), p. 156; Maulana 'Abdurrahman Jami, LawSTi)} (Tehran, 1342 SI1./1963), no. 8. See al-Attas, The Mysticism of Hamza al-Fansuri (Kuala Lumpur, 1970), pp. 46, 226, 462. An inscription from a Qadiriyya tekke in Konya, dated 1819, in my possession, contains a Persian quatrain ending with these words. They are also quoted by the Indo-Persian poet Mirza Bedil (d. 1721), Kulliyat, 4 vols. (Kabul, 1962-65), 1:1009. 124 / THE PATH in both worlds.” 17 How is one to interpret this statement after so much praise of faqr ? Baqli saw in it a condemnation of the claim to be a faqlr (B 605); but Sana 3 ! had invented an ingenious interpreta¬ tion nearly a century before him: just as the Negro—proverbially cheerful in classical Arabic literature—is happy and smiling in spite of his black face, so the true poor person is filled with spiritual hap¬ piness and permanent joy in his state of poverty (S 88). This sounds farfetched but is a typical example of the art of interpretation as practiced by the Sufis. It shows, at the same time, the central place attributed to the happiness of poverty among the Sufis, who are the nihil habentes omnia possedentes. There is still another interpre¬ tation of the ‘‘blackness of face”: perfect poverty is the state of reach¬ ing the pure divine essence, which is the Black Light by which one sees and which itself remains invisible (CL 168, 176)—another inter¬ pretation that emphasizes the close relation between faqr and fanci. Another station on the Path, which has often been described, is sabr, “patience,” taught by the Koran as the attitude of Job and of Jacob—“and God is with those who show patience” (Sura 2:103). “Sabr is to remain unmoved before the arrows of the divine de¬ crees,” says Muhasibi (W 283). Others would change the words “divine decrees” into “affliction,” but the meaning remains the same: perfect patience is to accept whatever comes from God, even the hardest blow of fate. With their tendency to classify the stations and stages, the Sufis divided patient people into three classes: the mutasabbir, who attempts to be patient: the sabir, who is patient in afflictions: and the sabur, who is perfectly patient under any con¬ dition. “To be patient before God’s orders is more excellent than fasting and prayer” (N 164). The old Arabic saying, “patience is the key to happiness,” has been repeated thousands of times by mystics and poets, who never tired of inventing new parables to show the necessity of patience: only through patience does the fruit become sweet; only through patience can the seed survive the long winter and develop into grain, which, in turn, brings strength to the people, who patiently wait for it to be turned into flour and bread. Patience is required to cross the endless deserts that stretch before the traveler on the Path and to cross the mountains that stand, with stone-hearted breasts, between him and his divine beloved. 17. Al-Khanqahi, Guzida, p. 17. THE PATH / 125 Patience, O father, is an iron shield, on which God has written “victory has come.” (M 5:2479) Yet patience, indispensable as it is, is only “a messenger from the divine beloved”— Patience always says: “I give glad tidings from union with Him.” Gratitude always says: “I am the possessor of a whole store from Him!” (D 2142) Patience is an important milestone on the Path, but a person who has reached the station of gratitude ( shukr ) is already blessed by divine grace. There is no doubt that gratitude is superior to pa¬ tience; the problem posed by the Sufis of the old school is only whether a patient, poor or a grateful, rich man is closer to God. One might say that patience is more praiseworthy than gratitude, for patience goes against one’s body, whereas gratitude conforms to the body, or that the dichotomy of the two states is resolved in the state of rida, “contentment,” which makes man whole. Gratitude is divided into different ranks: gratitude for the gift, gratitude for not giving, and gratitude for the capacity to be grate¬ ful. For though the common man deserves to be applauded when he expresses his gratitude at receiving a gift, the Sufi should give thanks even if his wish is not fulfilled or a hope is withheld. A famous story about patience and gratitude, repeated in almost every book about early Sufis, appears in Sanaa’s Hadiqa in the fol¬ lowing form: An Iraqian Sufi visited a sheikh from Khurasan and asked him about real Sufism as taught in his country. He replied that, when God sent them something they would eat it and be grateful, if not, they would en¬ dure patience and take the wish out of the heart. Whereupon the Ira¬ qian Sufi replied: “That kind of Sufism is what our dogs do in Iraq— when they find a bone they eat it, otherwise they are patient and leave it.” Being asked by his companion how he, then, would define Sufism, he answered: “When we have anything we prefer others to ourselves [i.e., give it away], if not, we occupy ourselves with thanks and pray for for¬ giveness.” (S 495) This story, which has been attributed to various people, clearly shows the higher rank of those who offer thanks even when de¬ prived of everything. It is reminiscent of the prayer of Job, the 126 / THE PATH great model of patience in Christian and Islamic lore: “The Lord gave, and the Lord took away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” On the highest level the Sufis understood that even the capacity for thanking is a divine gift, not a human act (cf. Q 80 ff.), and there¬ fore “it behooves to be grateful for the gratitude” (B 515). The Sufi who acts in this way has before him the example of the Prophet, “who in the highest bliss of being drowned in the ocean of the bounty of gratitude wanted to express his thanks in the tongue with¬ out tongues and found himself incapable and said la uhsl thana'an c alaika, ‘I cannot count the praise due to Thee’ ” (B 514). This say¬ ing is one of the cornerstones of mystical gratitude. Gratitude, in its deepest sense, is an insight into the wise working of God. As c Attar expressed it in his poetical description of the mystical states: What is gratitude? To imagine the rose from the thorn, and to imagine the nonvisible part to be the whole. (U41) Gratitude toward God teaches man to see with the heart’s eye the blessings veiled in affliction. Yet “gratitude is a wild bird the which to catch and to fetter is difficult.” 18 Patience, however, is a mount that never fails on the difficult road. Shukr, gratitude, is related to rida, which is not a patient bearing and suffering of all the vicissitudes of life, but happiness in poverty and affliction. “Rida is the joy of the heart in the bitterness of the divine decree” (L 53), says DhuYi-Nun. Hujwiri is probably right in his statement that rida is a result of love, inasmuch as the lover is content with what is done by the beloved (H 180). It is definitely the attitude of a loving heart, but the Sufis disagree about whether to define it as a station or a state. A verse by Sana 3 ! defines the mufarrih, a medicine to make the heart more cheerful and to calm down ner¬ vous tension, a kind of tranquilizer: The mufarrih that the saints make is prepared in the hospital of contentment. (S 340 The story of Husri, an early tenth-century mystic, points to the es¬ sence of contentment: “Husri once said in prayer: O God, art Thou content with me that I am content with Thee?’ And the an¬ swer came: ‘O liar—if you were content with Me, you would not 18 . Sana^Pabad, line 317. THE PATH / 127 ask whether I am content with you’ ” (T 2:290). In perfect rida the mystic should not think about whether or jiot God has accepted his act of resignation and contentment; he should accept every divine decree, be it wrath or grace, with equanimity and joy. This interior joy, this perfect agreement with God’s decrees, transforms the beg¬ gar into a king and opens the way toward a participation in the divine will, toward love and “higher predestinarianism.” The mystics differ in their opinions as to whether “fear” and “hope" (khauf and raja?) are stations or states (Sarraj feels that they are states). Psychologically, one would prefer that they be classified among the stations, for they belong to the essential and long¬ standing aspects of mystical life in its primary stages, and even at later levels. To feel fear is essential for every pious Muslim. Did not the Koran speak often of the fear of God, or fear of the Judgment, and does it not contain enough warnings to make the heart of even the most pious tremble with fear? But hope is just as essential, for life would be impossible without hope, and “fear and hope are the two wings of action without which flying is impossible” (L 62). Or, as Sahl saw it: fear is a masculine element, hope a feminine one, and the two together engender the deepest realities of faith (K 89). The early ascetics emphasized the aspect of fear more than that of hope. They even went so far as to attest that a man who lives in fear inspires his neighbors’ trust, for they know that they are secure from his machinations and need not suspect him of meanness (W 223). But even a representative of pure love mysticism, like Ruzbi- han Baqli, praises fear of God as the “whip of divine power [ jaba- ruti ], which hits the soul that commands to evil with the lash of ‘decent behavior’ [ adab ]” (BA 223). The chapter on “Fear and Hope” in Ghazzall’s Ihya? c ulum ad-din reflects very well the differ¬ ent attitudes of the faithful in regard to these states and demonstrates the strength of the feeling that an equilibrium between both forces is absolutely necessary for a sound religious life (G 4:288). 19 In the course of time, hope proved stronger than fear, though the advanced mystics knew fear as well and even rejoiced in it. But in their case it is no longer the fear of God’s judgment or the terrors of Hell that keeps them on the watch, but rather the fear of God’s 19. Al-Makki, Qut, 8:58ft. See the definition in al-Khanqahi, Guzida, p. 22: “Who worships God only by fear, is a haruri (i.e., Kharijite), who worships him only by hope is a murjpite, and who worships him by love, is a zindiq, heretic’’; only a balanced combination of the three elements constitutes a true Muslim. 128 / THE PATH makr, His “ruses.” In the moment of perfect happiness the mystic can never be sure that God will not use this exalted state as a snare to capture him, to tempt him once more to worldly thought, pride, hypocrisy, to distract him from his highest goal. Miracles, for in¬ stance, could be interpreted as divine ruses, for they are still con¬ nected with the world; even the small joys of daily life might hide ruses of God that should be feared. And who can be sure that he will be saved or accepted by God? One can hope for it, but never without fear. However, the notion of “thinking well” of God, i.e., of trusting in His promise to forgive the sinner, proved stronger in mystical life. Did not the tradition attest that God’s grace precedes His wrath? Out of this faith grew the whole prayer life of the Sufis. Just as the firm belief in God’s unending mercy and the hope for His loving-kindness permeate the prayers of an early Snfi like Yahya ibn Mu c adh, later mystics always relied upon the principle of hope, as RumI put it in a lovely comparison: [Is there anyone] who has sown the corn of hope in this soil to whom the spring of His grace did not grant hundred¬ fold [fruit]? (D 1253) But neither fear nor hope is required any longer once the wayfarer has reached his goal: The seaman is always on the planks of hope and fear— when the plank and the man become annihilated, there remains only submersion. ( D 395) The stations of fear and hope correspond, in the states, to what is called bast and qabd. Bast, from the root “to get wider and en¬ large,” means an extension of enthusiastic feeling, a perfect joy and ease that may develop, in some cases, into true “cosmic conscious¬ ness,” into the feeling of partaking of the life of everything created, into that rapture of which the intoxicated poets of Iran and Turkey have sung so often. It is this state that inspired them to invent long lines of anaphora circling around the beauty of the divine beloved —verses that tried to describe His ineffable, sparkling glory or con¬ vey to others the state of happiness in which the whole world is seen THE PATH / 129 in a changed light, transparent and filled with opaline colors of exquisite beauty. What is bast ? To leave off the two worlds in one rapture, to cast oneself on a hundred new worlds! (U 42) But whereas bast is the experience of extension and perhaps inten¬ sification of the self, qabd, “constraint,” means the compression of the soul—“to make one’s home in a needle’s eye” (U 42)—darkness, the oppressing desert of loneliness in which the mystic spends days and sometimes months of his life. Nevertheless, qabd has been re¬ garded as superior to bast by some leading mystics, for, as Junayd says, “when He presses me through fear he makes me disappear from myself, but when He expands me through hope He gives me back to myself” (G 33). In qabd, the “I” disappears, which is prefera¬ ble to the extended self-consciousness produced by bast. In the state of qabd, the “dark night of the soul,” man is left completely to God, without any trace of himself, without strength to want any¬ thing; and it is out of this darkness that the light of unitive experi¬ ence, or of vision, may suddenly appear—like the “sun at midnight.” It is clear, from the previous definitions, that the mystics were fond of the juxtaposition of corresponding states. The manuals enumerate long lists of such mystical states, the true implications of which are difficult for the uninitiated to understand. They speak of hudur wa ghaiba, “presence and absence,” which can be defined as “presence near God and absence from oneself,” or vice versa. Jam c , “collectedness” and “perfect unification,” goes together with taf- riqa, “separation after union.” Sukr, “intoxication,” is combined with sahw, “sobriety.” Eventually the complementary stages of fana, “annihilation,” and baqa, “duration, remaining in God,” are reached. The pair sukr and sahw is of special importance to mystical terminology and has been mentioned in connection with Junayd’s criticism of Bayezid. True sobriety is defined by Hujwiri as “reach¬ ing the goal” (H 230), and the same author says that one of his mysti¬ cal masters said: “Intoxication is the playground of children, but sobriety is the death-field of men” (H 186). Before a discussion of the last stations and states on the Path and its goal, a definition that enables a better understanding of some Sufi formulations should be mentioned. It is the word waqt, liter¬ ally, “time,” which came to designate the “present moment,” the 130 / THE PATH moment in which a certain mystical state is granted to the Sufi. “Time is a cutting sword’’; it cuts whatever is before and after it and leaves man in absolute nakedness in the presence of God. The Sufi has therefore been called ibn al-iuaqt, “the son of the present mo¬ ment,’’ i.e., he gives himself completely to the moment and receives what God sends down to him without reflecting about present, past, and future (cf. N 285). But on the highest level of experience, when the Sufi turns into a safi, “pure,” it may be said: The Sufi is “son of the Moment” .. . The Safi is submerged in the Light of the Majestic, not the son of anything, and free from “times” and “states.” (M 3:1426, 1433 - 34 ) LOVE AND ANNIHILATION The last stations on the mystical path are love and gnosis, mahabba and ma c rifa. Sometimes they were considered complemen¬ tary to each other, sometimes love was regarded as superior, and at other times gnosis was considered higher. Ghazzali holds: “Love without gnosis is impossible—one can only love what one knows” (G 4:254). The Sufis have tried to define the different aspects of ma c rifa, knowledge that is not reached by discursive reason but is a higher understanding of the divine mystery. In later times the term c <m/, “gnostic,” has often been used for the advanced mystic in gen¬ eral, for “the faithful sees through God’s light, the gnostic sees through God” (L 41). Most of the mystics would agree with the mys¬ tical interpretation of Sura 27:34, “Rings destroy a town when they enter it”; the “king” is interpreted as mafrifa, for this divinely in¬ spired knowledge empties the heart completely of everything so that nothing but God is contained in it (W 170). The scholars and theoreticians of Sufism, like Hujwiri (H 267), have written many definitions of ma c rifa, but the most poignant formulation is that of Junayd: “Gnosis ... is the hovering of the heart between declar¬ ing God too great to be comprehended, and declaring Him too mighty to be perceived. It consists in knowing that, whatever may be imagined in thy heart God is the opposite of it” (K 133). We shall dwell here mainly upon those mystical currents in which love was praised as the highest possible state, following St. Augustine’s dictum, res tantum cognoscitur quantum diligitur. THE PATH / lgl “one can know something only insofar as one loves it.” 20 The prayer ascribed to the Prophet is a good starting point: ‘“O God, give me love of Thee, and love of those who love Thee, and love of what makes me approach Thy love, and make Thy love dearer to me than cool water” (G 4:253). In early Sufism the problem of love was the central point of divergence. Orthodoxy accepted mahabba only as “obedience,” and even some of the moderate mystics would say that “to love God means to love God’s obedience” (T 1:287) or, “true love is to act in the obedience of the beloved” (N 55). Abu Talib al-Makki sums up the ideas of moderate Sufism: “The Proph¬ et of God made love of God a condition of faith by saying that God and His messenger should be more beloved to the faithful than anything else.” 21 And the Sufis were certain that “nothing is dearer to God than that man loves Him” (T 1:321). When Dhu’n-Nun expressed the thought that “fear of Hellfire, in comparison with fear of being parted from the beloved, is like a drop of water cast into the mightiest ocean,” 22 he stated very well the main object of this early love mysticism. His younger con¬ temporary, Sari as-Saqati in Baghdad, who had first formulated the idea of mutual love between man and God, uttered the same feeling in a prayer that has been preserved by Hujwiri: It is the custom of God to let the hearts of those who love Him have vision of Him always, in order that the delight thereof may enable them to endure every tribulation; and they say in their orisons: We deem all torments more desirable than to be veiled from Thee. When Thy beauty is revealed to our heart, we take no thought of affliction. (H 111; cf. A 10:120) It was apparently Sari’s nephew Junayd who discovered the truth: “Love between two is not right until the one addresses the other, O Thou I’ ” (T 2:29). The whole complex of love was so inexhaustible that the mystics 20. See “Love, Muhammadan,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, 13 vols. (1908-27), 8:176; Ignaz Goldziher, “Die Gottesliebe in der islamischen Theologie,” Der Islam 9 (1919), a fundamental study of the early development of mystical love in Islam. Annemarie Schimmel, Studien zum Begriff der mystischen Liebe im Islam (Marburg, 1954); Schimmel, “Zur Geschichte der mystischen Liebe im Islam,” Die Welt des Orients, 1952. A number of scholars have maintained that “love" constitutes the essence of Sufism; see, for example, Mir Valiuddin, Love of Cod (Hyderabad, Deccan, 1968), or the anthology by Rend' Khawam, Propos d’amour des mystiques muslumanes (Paris, i960), and many popular writings. 21. Al-Makki, Qu(, 2:50. 22. Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam (1914; reprint ed., Chester Springs, Pa., 1962), p. 116. 132 / THE PATH invented different stages and used different terms to classify it; yet the definitions given for hubb, mahabba, wudd, and mawadda are by no means clear. The usual classification of the stages in love dates back to early times. Bayezld spoke of the fourfold nature of love: “It has four branches: one from Him, that is His grace, one from you, that is to obey Him, one for Him, and that is your recollecting Him, and one between both of you, and that is love” (A 10:242). Abu Talib al-Makkl knew nine aspects of love, and Hujwiri gives a classification of the lovers, which Ghazzali adopted as well, in slightly elaborated form: “Those who regard the favor and benefi¬ cence of God toward them and are led by that regard to love the Benefactor, and those who are so enraptured by love that they reckon all favors as a veil and by regarding the Benefactor are led to [consciousness of] His favors” (H 308). As in most of the mystical states, some reach love by more or less rational arguments, ascending from the created to the creator, whereas others are completely lost in the vision of the creator and are brought to contemplate created things only because they are witnesses of His greatness. Among the different stages of love, the Sufis have mentioned uns, “intimacy”; qurb, “proximity”; shauq, “longing”; and others. The sequence differs according to their personal experiences. The ascending steps are charmingly described in the saying: “The hearts of the gnostics are the nests of love, and the hearts of the lovers are the nests of longing, and the hearts of the longing are the nests of intimacy” (A 10:362). Complete submersion in intimacy is illustrated in the story of a Sufi whose master placed him in a lonely corner. The master then completely forgot him for a week, but when he came and asked his guest to forgive him, the Sufi answered: “Do not worry, God has taken away the fear of loneliness from His friend” (N 94)—the intimacy with God leaves no room for wahshat, “feeling frightened by loneliness.” The term wahshat is usually meant as a complementary term to uns— it includes the feeling of loneliness in the wilderness, far away from the intimacy and tran¬ quility of home, but also the estrangement from everything created that the Sufi feels in his intimacy with God (G 4:291). Uns, on the other hand, is connected with the aspects of divine jamdl, the mani¬ festation of God’s loving and consoling qualities, and, as such, it is contrasted with hayba, “reverence, awe,” which awakens in the Sufi’s heart at the manifestation of God’s grandeur and power (cf. a 9 : 377)- THE PATH / 133 As to qurb, “proximity,” the Sufis have always been eager to define it other than spatially; it is an ethical proximity, brought forth by the fulfillment of God’s orders, the opposite of separation from God, caused by man’s disobedience (H 148). Later mystics invented a complicated system of different grades of qurb, like “proximity of the attributes” and “proximity of the names,” which refer to the degree to which one is invested with higher, loftier divine attributes. The term qurb an-nawdfil, “proximity caused by supererogative works of worship,” goes back to a hadith qudsl that must have been in circulation in very early times. God says: My servant ceases not to draw nigh unto Me by works of devotion, until I love him, and when I love him I am the eye by which he sees and the ear by which he hears. And when he approaches a span I approach a cubit, and when he comes walking I come running. (L 59) The Naqshbandiyya school in India, however, prefers the qurb al-farcfid, caused by the punctual performance of the prescribed ritual duties and as such the “state of the prophets,” to the qurb an-nawdfil, which is, for them, the station of the saints. It should be added that some mystics would not accept the term qurb at all, since it presupposes a duality between lover and beloved, while true Sufism consists of realizing unity (N 222). This same feeling has led some mystics to deny the station of “longing,” for one longs for someone absent, and God is never absent (N 222). Contrary to those who considered longing unneces¬ sary, if not illicit, for a true lover lives constantly with Him who is “closer to you than your jugular vein” (Sura 50:16), others would boast of their longing, like Bayezid: “If the eight Paradises were opened in my hut, and the rule of both worlds were given in my hands, I would not give for them that single sigh which rises at morning-time from the depth of my soul in remembering my long¬ ing for Him ...” (T 1:159). Others, again, would claim that genuine longing has no end, since the beloved has no end. The more the mystic approaches the divine beloved, the more he apprehends the fathomless depth of His qualities, the abyss of His essence: therefore his longing to plumb deeper and more wonderful mysteries can never end. Ghaz- zali has described this state perfectly in the relevant chapter in the IhycP c ulum ad-dln (G 4:277). It is this dynamic force of love and longing that has inspired so many Persian poets. 134 / THE PAT H Every moment this love is more endless, in every time people are more bewildered in it, (U 9) says c Attar, and Hafiz continues: The adventure between me and my beloved has no end— That which has no beginning cannot have an end. How could this love, inspired by God, be adequately described? It is greater than a hundred resurrections, for the resurrection is a limit, whereas love is unlimited. Love has got five hundred wings, each of them reaching from the Divine Throne to the lowest earth. (M 5:2189-90) That is how Rum! tries to explain the grandeur of love, and c Urfi, in the late sixteenth century, admonishes the lover not to be heed¬ less, “for in that sacred station of love there are a hundred places, the first of which is resurrection!” 23 The only means of drawing near to the divine beloved is by constant purification and, in exchange, qualification with God’s attributes. Junayd has defined this change brought forth by love: “Love is the annihilation of the lover in His attributes and the confirmation of the Beloved in His essence” (H 40). “It is that the qualities of the Beloved enter in the place of the qualities of the lover” (L 59). Many centuries later, Shah Waliullah of Delhi (d. 1762) invented an apt symbol for this spiritual purification, using the traditional image of the fire of love: man, like a piece of ice, will be put in a kettle on the flames; thus he will melt, become warm, boil, and eventually, evaporating as steam, be as close as possible to the quality of heat inherent in divine love. 24 Ghazzali has compared this purifying love to the “good tree whose root is firm and whose branches are in the sky,” as described in the Koran (Sura 14:24); the fruits show themselves in the heart, on the tongue, and on the limbs (G 4:282). These fruits are obedi¬ ence to the orders of God and constant recollection of the beloved, which fills the heart and runs on the tongue—the importance of 23. '■Urfl-yi ShirazI, Kulliyat, ed. Ali Jawahiri (Tehran, 1336 sh./ig57), p. 305. 24. Shah Waliullah, Sata Q at, ed. Ghulam Mustafa Qasiral (Hyderabad, Sind, 1964), no. 40. THE PATH / 135 recollection for the development of love has often been emphasized by the mystics (see pp. 167-78). This love is a flame that burns every¬ thing except the beloved (M 5:588), just as longing is God’s fire, which He kindles in the hearts of His friends to burn down every¬ thing that may occupy their hearts (L 64). Obedience, as the Sufis understood it, is complete surrender- acceptance of the will of the beloved whether it manifests itself in kindness or in wrath. Love neither diminishes by cruelty nor in¬ creases by kindness (H 404); and the lover has to remain at the door of the beloved even if driven away—he has “to make his soul a broom at His door” (T 2:193). But even that degree of surrender was not enough for later generations, since it implies a shade of self-will: I want union with him, and he wants separation; thus I leave what I want so that his wish comes true (G 4:117) —that is how the true lover should act. Pain and death are welcome if the beloved decrees it. If you would say “Die!” I would die in full obedience, and would say “Welcome to him who calls me to death.” (N 96; A 10:301) For death means the annihilation of the individual qualities, the lifting of the veil that separates the primordial beloved from the lover created in time. “There is nothing good in love without death” (G 4:300); death may be understood as dying to one’s own qualities or even as cor¬ poreal death, since this leads the lover toward the beloved (A 10:9). The tradition “die before ye die” gave the Sufis the possibility of pondering the implications of the slaying of the lower qualities and the ensuing spiritual resurrection in this life (cf. U 10). But “out¬ ward” death was also an aim in itself, as the case of Hallaj shows— to lift the disturbing “I” that stands between lover and beloved. Ghazzalx relates a touching story about Abraham, who was called by the angel of death and refused to follow him, since he could not believe that God would kill someone who had loved him so much. But he was addressed: “Have you ever seen a lover who refuses to go to his beloved?” Upon hearing this, he gladly submitted his soul to the angel (G 4:253). The lover who has learned to accept death 136 / THE PATH as a bridge to the beloved should “give his soul with a smile like a rose’’ (M 5:1255); that is why Hallaj danced in fetters when he was led to execution. The idea that the martyr is granted special heaven¬ ly privileges, as the Koran attests, has, perhaps, helped in shaping the idea of the “martyr of love,” who enjoys a special position with God when he is killed by the sword of longing or has died on the thorny path that leads toward the beloved, where thousands of hearts and livers adorn the thornbushes like red flowers, as Ghalib depicts the way of love. The mystics would rely on the Koranic word: “Do not call them dead who have been slain for God’s sake- nay, they are alive” (Sura 3:163; B 281). It is the sword of Id, the first half of the profession of faith, that slays the lover (M 3:4098), and then there remains nothing “but God” (M 5:589). The rec¬ ompense of those slain by love is more precious than anything else. The Sufis know a wonderful hadlth qudsi, which was revealed to Shibli when he asked God about the meaning of Hallaj’s martyr¬ dom: “Whom My love kills, for him shall I be blood money.” The martyr of love will be rewarded by God Himself, no longer sepa¬ rated from Him for whose love he has shed his blood. Ideas such as these have led the mystics to accept willingly all kinds of tribulations, which were even regarded as signs of special kindness from God. “He is not sincere in his love who does not enjoy the stroke of the friend” (L 50). But even that was not enough —the sincere person is the one who forgets the stroke when looking at the friend. 25 Out of these ideas about suffering, later Sufi poetry developed the motif of the physician who wounds the patient and heals him, the wound being healed only by the one who caused it (A 10:273). Tribulations and afflictions are a sign that God is near, for, to quote Hallaj’s daring sentence again, “Suffering is He Him¬ self.” The more He loves a person, the more He will test him, taking away from him every trace of earthly consolation so that the lover has only Him to rely upon (A 9:345). It is small wonder that a hadlth about this suffering was very common among the Sufis: “The most afflicted people are the prophets, then the saints, and then so forth.” The prophets, being nearest to God, have to suffer most, as is attested to by many Koranic stories, which were embel¬ lished in the course of time; and the list of suffering lovers becomes longer from century to century. Affliction, baled, is ingeniously combined with the word bald, “Yes,” that the souls spoke at the 25. Al-MakkI, Qiit, 2:67. THE PATH / 137 Day of the Covenant, thus accepting in advance every tribulation that might be showered upon them until Doomsday (SD 41; U 133). Just as grape juice is purified by the constant “tribulation” of fermenting until it becomes pure wine, and just as wheat is ground and kneaded and apparently mistreated until it becomes bread, thus the human soul can mature only through suffering. And when the ascetic seeks God’s loving-kindness and forgiveness ( rahma), the lover seeks his pain (za/ma)—a meaningful pun of Persian poets. This indulgence in suffering, the feeling that affliction is the fastest steed to bring man to perfection (as Meister Eckhart said just at the time that the greatest Sufis expressed these views)—this attitude has contributed to the development of a certain imagery in later Sufi poetry that is difficult for uninitiated Western readers to appreciate and that has even caused misunderstanding among modern Islamic thinkers. It is an imagery that compares, for ex¬ ample, the lover to the polo ball, rolling without head and feet wherever the friend’s polo stick drives him. Before the tenth century, however, discussions about mystical love and longing were conducted mainly on the theoretical level. The question was one of semantics. The word mahabba had been objected to by the orthodox, but when the first attempts were made to introduce the word z ishq, “passionate love,” into the relation between man and God, even most of the Sufis objected, for this root implies the concept of overflowing and passionate longing, a quality that God, the self-sufficient, could not possibly possess; nor was it permissible that man should approach the Lord with such feelings. Nuri, who probably introduced the use of the word ' ishq , defended himself by declaring that “the Q ashiq ‘lover’ is kept at a distance, whereas the muhibb ‘lover’ enjoys his love” (B 289). It was left to Hallaj openly to express by this term the inner dy¬ namics of the divine life—“le desir essentiel,” as Louis Massignon calls it—an idea that was to influence later Sufi thought decisively until Fakhruddin 'Iraqi poetically changed the words of the pro¬ fession of faith into la ilaha ilia 0 7 - c ishq, “there is no deity save Love,” a formulation that I often heard from Turkish Sufis. The discussions on mystical love became more complicated in the Baghdad circles about 900, with the introduction of the notion of hubb c udhri, “platonic love.” Jamil, a noted poet from the tribe of c Udhra in the late seventh century, had sung of his chaste love for Buthayna in delicate verses that almost foreshadow the love lyrics 138 / THE PATH of Spanish and French troubadours; and soon a hadith was coined, according to which the Prophet had said: “Whoever loves and remains chaste, and dies, dies as a martyr.” It was Muhammad ibn Da 3 ud, the son of the founder of the Zahirite law school who composed, in Hallaj’s day, a book on the ideal chaste love, containing one hundred chapters of poetry about hubb c udhrl and stressing the necessity of the “martyrdom of chas¬ tity.” He and his followers denied the possibility of mutual love between man and God and excluded every human object from mystical love. Yet two centuries later the two currents merged in the verses of some of the greatest Persian mystical poets. Another accusation brought against the love theories of the Sufis was that they represented Manichaean ideas. Worship of God by love is the sin of the Manichaeans, the heretics par excellence who imagine that their souls are particles of the eternal divine light, imprisoned in the body, and that a magnetic attraction from the origin of this love will attract them to become united with their origin again. This interpretation is incorrect for the early stages of mystical love, but it points to a development that was inherent in Sufi love theories: love became, with many of the later Sufis, the “growing power” that causes the possibilities of perfection in every¬ thing to unfold. 26 The “essential desire” of Hallaj’s God often turns into a more or less magnetic force that has caused emanation and draws everything back to its source. 27 But love as experienced by the early Sufis is a strong personal and existential commitment. Hallaj did not even hesitate to place it higher than faith ( iman ): “It is a primordial divine grace without which you would not have learned what the Book is nor what Faith is” (P 610). The mystics felt diat the love they experienced was not their own work but was called into existence by God’s activity. Did not the Koran attest: “He loves them, and they love Him” (Sura 5:59)—a word that shows that God’s love precedes human love? Only when God loves His servant can he love Him, and, on the other hand, he cannot refuse to love God, since the initiative comes from God (A 10:7). Love cannot be learned; it is the result of divine grace—“If a world would draw love into it, it could not do it, and if they would strive to reject it, they could not do it, for it is a 26. Ibn Sina, "Risdla fPl-Hshq": Traitee sur I’amour, ed. August Ferdinand Mehren (Leiden, 1894). 27. Fritz Meier, “Das Problem der Natur im esoterischen Monismus des Islams,” Eranos-Jahrbuch 14 (1946), p. 218, on Nasafi’s theories. THE PATH / 139 gift, notan acquisition. It is divine” (H 398). The Sufis, deepening the general Muslim knowledge that the divine greatness overpow¬ ers everything, have always felt that man is far too weak to seek God. Not a single lover would seek union if the beloved were not seeking it, (M 3:4394) sings RumI, three hundred years after these ideas had been formu¬ lated for the first time. The idea that God was “a hidden treasure that longed to be known” has grown out of this feeling of God’s desire to love and to be loved. He is, as Muhammad Iqbal has said in our day, “like us, a prisoner of Desire.” 28 The Sufis have often tried to describe the state of the true lover in poetical images. Bayezld saw the springlike quality of love: “I walked in the steppe, it had rained love, and the soil was moist- just as the foot of man walks in a rose garden, thus my feet walked in love” (T 1:155). And Shibli takes up this spring imagery, which was to become a central theme of Persian poetry: “The ‘time’ of the gnostic is like a spring day, the thunder roars and the cloud weeps and the lightning burns and the wind blows and the buds open and the birds sing—this is his state: he weeps with his eyes, smiles with his lips, burns with his heart, plays with his head, says the friend’s name and roams around his door” (T 2:177). In descrip¬ tions like this, technical treatises on Sufism suddenly turn into sheer poetry. Many of these descriptions are couched in the form of a hadlth, which declares, “verily God has servants who . . or take the form of a hadith qudsl, like the one quoted by Ghazzali: Verily, I have servants among my servants who love Me, and I love them, and they long for Me, and I long for them and they look at Me, and I look at them ... And their signs are that they preserve the shade at daytime as compassionately as a herdsman preserves his sheep, and they long for sunset as the bird longs for his nest at dusk, and when the night comes and the shadows become mixed and the beds are spread out and the bedsteads are put up and every lover is alone with his beloved, then they will stand on their feet and put their faces on the ground and will call Me with My word and will flatter Me with My graces, half crying and half weeping, half bewildered and half complaining, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting, sometimes kneeling, sometimes prostrating, and I see what they bear for My sake and I hear what they complain from My love. (G 4:278) 28. Muhammad Iqbal, Zabur-i c ajam (Lahore, 1927), part 2, no. 29; trans. A. J. Arberry as Persian Psalms (Lahore, 1948), part 2, no. 2g. 140 / THE PATH These lovers will be granted a special place at Doomsday, beyond the communities of the various prophets, and those who love each other in God will be on a pillar of red garnet and will look down on the inhabitants of Paradise. 29 But a description of mystical love is altogether impossible—no one could put this truth better than Sumnun, surnamed “the Lover”: “A thing can be explained only by something that is subtler than itself. There is nothing subtler than love—by what, then, shall love be explained?” (H 173). Science would be of no avail on this Path—only the light of gnosis, the light of certainty gained through intuitive knowledge, could help in approaching the mystery of love. The sciences are like eye¬ glasses, which cannot see by themselves but stand between the eye and the objects, as a seventeenth-century mystic from Sind said, using a modern image but remaining, in substance, faithful to the traditional view. He explains by this image an alleged hadlth that calls c ilm, “knowledge,” the “greatest veil” separating man from God. On the way of love, intellect is like the donkey that carries books (Sura 62:5); it is a lame ass, whereas love is like the winged buraq that brought Muhammad into the presence of God (D 1997). The contrast between love and discursive reason provided an inexhaustible topic for later poets; they would like to hang intellect like a thief when love becomes the ruler of the country. (D 420) Thus the figure of Majnun, the demented lover, lost in his con¬ templation of Laila, might serve as a model for the mystical lover. Love is the most genuine quality of the human race. God created Adam out of love; Adam bears in himself the divine image, and no other created being can follow him in the way of love. When the angel falls in love, he is the perfect human. (U 96) The mystics did not hesitate to give people who do not know love names such as “cow,” “jackass,” “hard stone,” or “animal,” based on the Koranic sentence, “they are like beasts, nay, even more 29. Abu-THasan ad-Daylaml, Kittib c atf al-alif al-ma?luf ila?l-lam al-maHuf, ed. Jean-Claude Vadet (Cairo, 1962), § 101, § 363. THE PATH / 141 astray” (Sura 7:178). The expression “lower than a dog” occurs (M 5:2008), for even animals know at least one aspect of love. The most charming story in this respect, probably told first by 'Attar (U 129) and retold by 'Iraqi, deals with a preacher in Shiraz who spoke so poignantly about love that everybody dissolved in tears. A man had inquired of him before the sermon whether by chance he knew where his lost donkey had gone. After the sermon, the preacher asked the community if there was anybody who had never experienced love. A certain fool ill-favored as an ass in sheer stupidity sprang to his feet. “Art thou the man, the elder asked, whose heart was never bound by love?” Yea, he replied. Then said the sage: “Ho, thou that hadst an ass, lo, I have found thine ass. The cropper, quick!” 30 The genuine lover is the most honored person in both worlds, for the Prophet said: “Man is with him whom he loves.” Thus the lover is constantly with God, whom he loves to the exclusion of every¬ thing else (T 2:85). Love is, for the Sufis, the only legitimate way to educate the base faculties. The rules of asceticism in themselves are purely negative; as indispensable as they are, they have to be performed out of love. Only by this method can the shay tan, the lower soul, be transformed —he becomes like Gabriel, and his demonic qualities die (M 6:3648). Having reached this stage, which may be called “loving tauhld,” man sees with the eye of intuitive knowledge and understands the ways of God. Loving acceptance of God’s will can resolve the enigma of free will and predestination in a higher unity. Whether the final station be seen as love or as gnosis, the disciple has to continue in his preparatory activities, like dhikr and con¬ centration, which may eventually lead him to the goal, fana and baqa. sl He should concentrate on perfect collectedness in contem¬ plation ( muraqaba ), and from this point he may attain vision ( mushahada ). But it is a vision that can be described only approxi¬ mately as presence or proximity, combined with z ilm al-yaqln, 30. Fakhruddln c IraqI, The Song of the Lovers ( c ushshaqname), ed. and trans. A. J. Arberry (Oxford, 1939), pp. 30 ft. 31. Reynold A. Nicholson, "The Goal of Muhammadan Mysticism,’’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1913. 142 / THE PATH “knowledge of certitude’’ (L 69). The station of sincere c ilm al- yaqln leads further to c ayn al-yaqin, “vision of certitude” or “essence of certainty”—the station of the gnostics—until it is consummated in haqq al-yaqln, the “real certitude” or “reality of certainty,” which is the place of God’s friends. 32 These terms are taken from Sura 102 and Sura 56:95, where they have, however, no mystical connotations at all. Haqq al-yaqin is attained in fana; it has been symbolized, in Hallaj’s Kitdb at-tawasin, as the w r ay of the moth, which experi¬ ences c ilm al-yaqin when it sees the light of the candle, c ayn al-yaqin when it draws near and feels its heat, and haqq al-yaqin when it is, finally, burned and consumed by the flame. The true meaning of fana has been one of the controversial topics in the study of Sufism. The German term Entwerden, as used by the medieval mystics, is closer to its meaning than words like “annihilation,” “being naughted,” or “passing away,” since it is the opposite of “becoming,” werden. Some scholars have tried to equate fana with the Hindu or Buddhist concept of nirvana, but this is incorrect. It is not the ex¬ perience of being freed from a painful circle of existence, since Islam lacks the idea of karma and accepts the reality of the indi¬ vidual soul. Fana is, in the beginning, an ethical concept: man becomes annihilated and takes on God’s attributes—it is the place of the alleged hadith takhallaqu bi-akhlaq Allah, “qualify yourself with the qualities of God,” i.e., through constant mental struggle exchange your own base qualities for the praiseworthy qualities by which God has described Himself in the Koranic revelation. The next stage is annihilation in vision, when the soul is surrounded by the primordial light of God. The third and final stage, then, is “an¬ nihilation from one’s vision of annihilation,” in which one is immersed in the wujud, the “existence” of God or, rather, the “finding” of God. For the word wujud, which is usually translated as “existence,” means, originally, the “being found”—and that is what the mystic experiences. There is a well-known verse that points to existence as created in time: When I said: What have I sinned? she answered: Your existence is a sin with which no sin can be compared. (L 59) 32. Al-Khanqahl, Guzida, p. 208. THE PATH / 143 Man should recover the state he had on the Day of the Primordial Covenant, when he became existentialized, endowed with individ¬ ual existence by God, which, however, involved a separation from God by the veil of createdness (cf. MM 65). This veil cannot be lifted completely during one’s lifetime. The mystic cannot com¬ pletely and substantially be annihilated in God, but he may be lost for a while in the fathomless ocean of bewilderment, as it has been defined by Kalabadhi: “Fana . . . may consist of being absent from his own attributes, so that he appears to be really mad and to have lost his reason .... For all that he is preserved to perform his duties to God .... On the other hand he may be a leader to be followed, governing those who attach themselves to him” (K 131). The prob¬ lem is whether or not the mystic can return to his own qualities after this experience: ‘‘The great Sufis ... do not hold that the mystic returns to his own attributes after a passing away. They argue that passing-away is a divine bounty and fit for the mystic, a special mark of favour, not an acquired condition: it is a thing which God vouchsafes to those whom He has chosen and elected for Himself” (K 127). The best interpretation of fana and the following stage, baqa, has been given by the Japanese scholar Toshihiko Izutsu, 33 who explains fana as “the total nullification of the ego-consciousness, when there remains only the absolute Unity of Reality in its purity as an absolute Awareness prior to its bifurcation into subject and object”—the state the Sufis would call jam c , “unification, collected¬ ness.” The Sufi experiences the return to the moment when God was, and there was nothing else. Fana is “certainly a human ex¬ perience . . . but man is not the subject of this experience. The subject is rather the metaphysical Reality itself”—we may think of Rumi’s attempt at clarifying the same state with an example taken from grammar: mata Zayd, “Zayd died,” a sentence in which Zayd is the subject, but not the acting subject (M 3:3683). Then man may reach the state of baqa, “persistence” or “subsis¬ tence” in God, and experience the “second separation” or “gather¬ ing of the gathering,” jam c al-jam c : “Man is resuscitated out of the nothingness, completely transformed into an absolute Self. The multiplicity becomes visible again—but in a changed form, namely 33. Toshihiko Izutsu, “The Basic Structure of Metaphysical Thinking in Islam," in Collected Papers on Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism, ed. Mehdi Mohaghegh and Hermann Landolt (Tehran, 1971), p. 3gf., an illuminating article. 144 / THE path as determinations of the one Reality.” In this state, the mystic acts completely through God. When you seek baqa, request it from the dervishes— the dervishes are the warp and woof of the garment (qaba ) of baqa, (SD 186) says Sana 3 !, with a fine pun; but for most of the mystics baqa is connected particularly with the prophetic activity. God, who has promised the loving soul that he will “become his eye by which he sees,” has shown this aspect of religious life, which is turned toward the world in the acts of the prophets. For after the Battle of Badr (624), Muhammad was addressed: “Ma ramayta idh ramayta, ‘you did not cast when you cast, but God did it’ ” (Sura 8:17). And al¬ though many Sufis claimed to have attained baqa, the distinction between the “saintly” and “prophetic” aspects of fana and baqa gained new importance in later Sufi theories, mainly with the Naqshbandis. Fana is not to be confused with ittihdd, “union,” a term that presupposes the existence of two independent beings and has, there¬ fore, been regarded as heretic, as has hulul, “indwelling,” which means the incarnation of the divine in man. Orthodox Muslims accused not only the Christians, but also Hallaj and the represen¬ tatives of love mysticism, of accepting the concept of hulul. Fana, however, is the nullification of the mystic in the divine presence. Later mystics tried to explain the state of fana and baqa in won¬ derful images. The metaphors of Islamic mysticism and philosophy are not merely poetic ornaments but are indicative of a peculiar way of thinking. The Sufis have, for instance, spoken of the ex¬ perience of the Black Light—the light of bewilderment: when the divine light fully appears in the mystic’s consciousness, all things disappear instead of remaining visible (medieval and Renaissance mystics in Germany would speak of the uberhelle Nacht). Such is the experience of fana—a blackout of everything until the mystic perceives that this blackness is “in reality the very light of the Abso- lute-as-such,” for existence in its purity is invisible and appears as nothing. To discover the clarity of this black light is to find the green water of life, which, according to the legends, is hidden in the deepest darkness— baqa, persistence in God, is concealed in the very center of fana. THE PATH / 145 Hallaj had used the allegory of the moth and the candle to allude to the state of extinction. Rumi, in order to explain Hallaj’s unitive expression ana'l-Haqq, compares the mystic in this state to a piece of iron that is thrown into the furnace and becomes so hot that it regards itself as fire (M 2:1445), though a substantial union cannot be achieved. This imagery, known from Christian mysticism as well, is also found in the terminology of the NurbakhshI mystics in Iran (MM 129). The same Rumi has also interpreted Kharaqani’s saying—“there is no dervish in the world, and if there be a dervish, that is non¬ existent”—in a line that perhaps comes closest to elucidating the mystery of fana: Like the flame of the candle in the presence of the sun, he is (really) non-existent, (though he is) existent in formal calculation. (M 3:3669-73) One of the strangest symbols for the experience of fana and baqa has been used by mystics from 'Attar to the eighteenth-century In¬ dian Mir Dard: The divine essence is compared to a salt mine, into which a dog, or a donkey, falls; thus, losing its low qualities, the ani¬ mal is transformed into this element and preserved in it. The com¬ parison is all the more fitting since ba-namak, “saltish,” also means “cute, charming,” and can thus be used to describe the charming beloved in whom the lover becomes completely absorbed. 34 It is in this state of absorption that the mystics have sometimes uttered expressions that do not fit into the orthodox views, or even into moderate Sufism. The so-called shathiyat (plural of shath), like Hallaj’s ana'l-Haqq or Bayezid’s “Glory be to Me! How great is My Majesty!” are among the most famous of these “theopathic locutions” or paradoxes, to which Ruzbihan Baqll has devoted a whole book. Their study is one of the most interesting, but also most difficult, topics in the history of Sufism, and the daring, partly jubilant, partly bewildered words that Ruzbihan has put together and interpreted in an existential, authentic way allow a glimpse into the depths of mystical experience, which, however, can never be appropriately expressed in human words. 34. The same expression has also been used tor the tomb. For the imagery see Farlduddln c Attar, Diwan-i qasa?id. wa ghamliyat, ed. Sa c id Naflsi (Tehran, 1339 sh./ig6o), no. 515; Jalaluddin Rumi, D 3041, M 2:1344, and M 6:1856; Khwaja Mir Dard, "Dard-i Dil,” no. 161, in Chahdr risala (Bhopal, 1310 h./i8g2-g3). 146 / THE PATH Just as the mystics have constantly invented new symbols to describe the state of fana and baqa, they have also attempted to show what tauhld is. Tauhld, “to declare that God is One,” is the goal of religious life for the Muslim in general and for the Sufi in particular. Hujwiri speaks of three kinds of tauhld: “God’s unifica¬ tion of God, i.e. His knowledge of His Unity; God’s unification of His creatures, i.e. His decree that a man shall pronounce Him to be one, and the creation of unification in his heart; man’s unifica¬ tion of God, i.e. their knowledge of the Unity of God” (H 278). For the orthodox mystics, tauhld meant, first of all, the recognition that there is no agent but God and that everything and everybody are dependent upon Him. This idea could easily lead to the ac¬ knowledgment that only He had real existence and that only He had the right to say “I”—that God is the only true subject. In the chapter on love in the lliycd c ulum ad-din, Ghazzali defines the orthodox way of reaching tauhld very clearly: Whoever looks at the world because it is God’s work, and knows it be¬ cause it is God’s work, and loves it because it is God’s work, does not look save to God and does not know save God, and does not love save God, and he is the true unifier ( muwahhid) who does not see anything but God, nay who does not even look at himself for his own sake but because he is God’s servant—and of such a person it is said that he is annihilated in unification and that he is annihilated from himself. (G 4:276) This is an elaborated formulation of what an earlier Sufi, quoted by Hujwiri, had said: “Unification is this: that nothing should oc¬ cur to your mind except God” (H 158). Junayd, in turn, has taken the idea of tauhld back to the Day of the Primordial Covenant: Unification is this, that one should be a figure in the hands of God, a figure over which His decrees pass according as He in His omnipotence determines, and that one should be sunk in the sea of His unity, self- annihilated and dead alike to the call of mankind to him and his answer to them, absorbed by the reality of the divine unity in true proximity, and lost to sense and action, because God fulfils in him what He hath willed of him, namely that his last state become his first state, and that he should be as he was before he existed. (H 282-83) True tauhld, then, means to forget tauhld (B 383). It is a state in which the sharp-sighted are blinded and men of reason are con¬ fused (L 33). The poets have often repeated Abu I-Atahiya’s verse: And in everything there is a witness for Him that points to the fact that He is One. THE PATH / 147 The all-pervading presence of God as witnessed by the muwahhid has often been expressed by the Sufis in the saying, “I did not see anything without seeing God before it and after it and with it and in it.” Some parts of this sentence can be traced back to early Sufism and have been attributed by some later writers to the first four caliphs of Islam as representing the four different approaches of one who confesses tauhid , 35 But Hujwiri has given the more correct version—Muhammad ibn Wasi' said: “I never saw anything without seeing God therein,” which indicates an advanced stage of contem¬ plation in which the mystic sees only the agent. This insight can be developed through perfect faith and is istidlali, “gained through inference.” Shibll, however, exclaimed: “I never saw anything except God.” Enraptured ( jadhbi ), he sees only God, nothing else (H 91, 330). It was easy to move from Shibll’s statement to the feeling ex¬ pressed in so many Persian and Turkish verses: “In mosques and taverns, in pagan and Muslim only God I saw!” The mystics could support such expressions from the Koran: “Whithersoever ye turn, there is the Face of God” (Sura 2:109), a sentence that forms one of the cornerstones of later mystical theories, supplying the Sufis with the proof that God, the only agent, the only true existent, is visible, to the enlightened mystic, in every shape and behind every disguise. As Sanaa’s famous lines attest: The word that you speak about faith may be Hebrew or Syrian, The place that you seek for God’s sake, may be Jablaqa or Jablasa. (SD 52) From here it is only one step to the feeling of God’s all-embracing presence that Persian poets since 'Attar (U 223) have condensed in the sentence hama ust, “Everything is He”—an interpretation of tauhid that has always been attacked by the more orthodox Sufis because it apparently denies the transcendence of God. It is from these enthusiastic expressions of unity, found in most of the Persian mystics in more or less outspoken form, that Western scholars have gained the impression that Sufism is nothing but measureless pantheism. Sarraj, though rather close to the beginnings of Sufi speculation, 35. Al-Attas, The Mysticism of Hamm al-Fansuri, p. 265. 148 / THE PATH is certainly right when he says that the manifold definitions of tauhld defy explanation and convey only a weak shade of the reality—“and if one enters into explanation and expression, then its splendour becomes hidden and disappears” (L 31). FORMS OF WORSHIP 36 Ritual Prayer One of the five pillars of Islam is the ritual prayer (salat; in Persian and in Turkish, namaz) to be performed five times a day at prescribed hours between the moment before sunrise and the beginning of complete darkness. In the Koran, night prayer was recommended but not made obligatory for believers. Early Muslim ascetics and mystics regarded ritual prayer, in accordance with the Prophet’s saying, as a kind of ascension to Heaven, as a mfraj that brought them into the immediate presence of God. “Ritual prayer is the key to Paradise,” says a tradition; but for the mystics, it was even more. Some of them connected the word salat with the root wasala, “to arrive, be united”; thus, prayer became the time of connection, the moment of proximity to God (L 150). Did not the Koran repeatedly state that all of creation was brought into being for the purpose of worshiping God? Thus, those who wanted to gain special proximity to the Lord, and prove their obedience and love, were, without doubt, those who attributed the most impor¬ tance to ritual prayer. They might even be able to make the angel of death wait until their prayer was finished (T 2:113). One of the prerequisites of ritual prayer is that ritual purity (tahdra) be performed according to the strict rules laid down in the Prophetic tradition. The mystics laid great stress on the meticulous performance of the ablutions, which became, for them, symbols of the purification of the soul (H 293). A good translator of the feelings of his fellow mystics, Shibll said: “Whenever I have ne¬ glected any rule of purification, some vain conceit will rise in my heart” (H 293). Hagiographical literature is filled with stories about 36. Friedrich Heilcr, Das Gebet, 5th ed. (Munich, 1923); translated by Samuel Mc- Comb as Prayer (1932; paperback ed.. New York, 1958), condensed and without the extensive critical apparatus of the original. Heiler's book is the best introduction to the problem as seen by a historian of religion. Edwin Elliot Calverley, Worship in Islam, Being a Translation, with Commentary and Introduction, of al-GhazzalVs Book of the “Ihya?" on the Worship (Madras, 1925). THE PATH / 149 Sufis who indulged in ritual purification to the extent that they would perform the great ablution ( ghusl) before every prayer or before visiting their spiritual director (N 292), which was, for them, a religious duty comparable to prayer. Some would purify them¬ selves in a river even in the middle of the Central Asian winter; others would become enraptured at the very moment the water for ablution was poured over their hands. 37 And a number of Sufis boasted of being able to perform the morning prayer while still in ritual purity from evening prayer, meaning that they had neither slept nor been polluted by any bodily function. Some of them even reached a state of remaining in ritual purity for several days. As for the details of ritual prayer, the early Sufis followed the prescriptions of the law exactly. They tried to imitate the model of the Prophet even in the smallest details. Since one tradition holds that Muhammad once performed the salat of tiptoe, some Sufis wanted to follow him in this peculiar way; but a dream vision informed one of them that this was reserved exclusively for the Prophet and that the normal believer need not imitate it (X 24). If confined to bed, they would repeat each prostration and move¬ ment twice, since, according to the tradition, “the prayer of the sitting man is worth only half that of the standing person” (X 39; cf. S 144). Stories are told about mystics who, though unable to walk or move at all, regained their strength the very moment the call to prayer was heard, but returned to their state of weakness as soon as they had performed their religious duty. At the moment the mystic utters the niya (the intention to per¬ form his prayer) with the correct number of rak Q as (units of prostra¬ tion, genuflection, etc.), he expresses the intention to turn away from everything created. During prayer he feels as if he were waiting before God at Doomsday. MuhasibI has described well this feeling of overwhelming awe: What predominates in the heart of the mystic while he is at prayer is his sense of the mystery of Him in Whose Presence he stands and the might of Him Whom he seeks and the love of Him Who favours him with familiar intercourse with Himself, and he is conscious of that until he has finished praying, and he departs with a face so changed that his friends would not recognise him, because of the awe that he feels at the Majesty of God. It is so that one who comes into the presence of some king, or someone for whom he yearns and whom he fears, stands in his 37. Mir c Ali Shir Qani c , Tuhfat ul-kiram (Hyderabad, Sind, 1957), p. 386. 150 / THE PATH presence, with a different attitude from what was his before he entered and goes out with an altered countenance. And how should it not be so with the Lord of the world, Who has not ceased to be nor will cease to be, He Who hath no equal? 38 Muhasibi’s younger contemporary Kharraz, “in a book in which he describes the etiquette of ritual prayer’’ (L 152 f.), makes us sense even more intensely the mystic’s attitude as required in his salat: When entering on prayer you should come into the Presence of God as you would on the Day of Resurrection, when you will stand before Him with no mediator between, for He welcomes you and you are in confiden¬ tial talk with Him and you know in whose Presence you are standing, for He is the King of kings. When you have lifted your hands and said “God is most great” then let nothing remain in your heart save glorification, and let nothing be in your mind in the time of glorification, than the glory of God Most High, so that you forget this world and the next, while glorifying Him. When a man bows in prayer, then it is fitting that he should after¬ wards raise himself, then bow again to make intercession, until every joint of his body is directed towards the throne of God, and this means that he glorifies God Most High until there is nothing in his heart greater than God Most Glorious and he thinks so little of himself that he feels himself to be less than a mote of dust. 39 The most touching description of this state of awe, in which every limb joins in the worship until body and mind alike are directed toward God, is Rumi’s story of Daquqi and his congregational prayer (M 3:2140-44, 2147-48): Daquqi advanced to perform the prayer: the company were the satin robe and he the embroidered border. Those [spiritual] kings followed his leadership, [standing] in a row behind that renowned exemplar. When they pronounced the takblrs, they went forth from this world, like a sacrifice. O Imam, the [real] meaning of the takblr is this: “We have become a sacrifice, O God, before Thee.’’ At the moment of slaughtering you say Alldh akbar : even so [do] in slaughtering the fleshly soul which ought to be killed .... Whilst performing the prayer [they were] drawn up in 38. Margaret Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam (London, 1950), no. 16. Al-Harith al-Muhasibi, Kitab ar-ri c aya li-huquq Allah, ed. Margaret Smith (London, 1940), p. 28. 39. Smith, Readings, no. 26. Image Not Available Woman in trance at a saint’s tomb in Pakistan. Photograph by Dr. Jan Marek, Prague 152 / THE PATH ranks before God as at Resurrection, and engaged in self-examination and orisons. Standing in God’s presence and shedding tears, like one who rises erect on [the day of] rising from the dead. Notwithstanding their eagerness to perform the salat punctually, some Sufis reached such a state of absolute absorption or rapture that ritual prayer seemed to constitute for them an interruption of their mystical state. Hujwiri has defined the various types of mystics by their attitudes toward the salat: some hold that it is a means of obtaining the presence of God; others regard it as a means of obtaining absence (H 301). Some would pray hundreds of rak c as a day in order to remain in constant communion with God; others had to ask somebody else to count their rak c as during the act of prayer because they themselves were not capable of doing it, since, in their enraptured state, time could expand into thou¬ sands of years in one hour (N 455), so that the correct timing would escape them. Some mystics regarded salat as an ascetic discipline that was absolutely necessary to preserve and that the disciples had to follow carefully; others saw and experienced it as an act of divine grace. The Sufi who experienced mystical union through prayer would certainly prolong his salat by adding long litanies of supere- rogative rakcas to the basic, prescribed form, whereas the mystic whose rapture or contemplation was more or less interrupted by the prescribed ritual would certainly not perform more than the minimal requirements. When a Sufi was completely lost in ecstasy for a period of days, or even weeks, he was exempt from praying. There were mystics who were transported into an ecstatic state as soon as they pronounced the word “Allah” in the beginning of the call to prayer, without even reaching the next word, akbar, “most great” (N 281). And the mystical poets—beginning with Hallaj— often spoke of the state in which intoxication and perfect love would make them forget morning and evening and the times of ritual prayer. 40 The Sufis have interpreted the meaning of the salat differently. Most of them would probably agree with Najmuddln Kubra’s defi¬ nition that prayer according to the sharfa is service, according to 40. Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, " Dlwan , Essai de reconstitution by Louis Mas- signon," Journal asiatique, January-July 1931, Muqatta c a no. 20; see Shibll in N 181. THE PATH / 153 the tarlqa, proximity, and according to the haqiqa, union with God! 41 An esoteric interpretation might see in the different movements of the praying Muslim a representation of the movement of wor¬ ship found throughout creation: the prostration reminds him of the vegetable state, the ruku z , “genuflection,” of the animal state, and the upright position is the prerogative of human beings. Every¬ thing worships God in its own way. The angels spend eternities worshiping the Lord in a single attitude, according to their rank; only man can represent, in his different prayer movements, the full¬ ness of adoration that is the duty of everything created. 42 This idea underlies a Bektashi poem in which the forms of prayer are con¬ nected with the name of Adam, the model of humanity: When you stand up, an alif is formed, | In bending behold: a dal is made; j When you have prostrated, a mlm takes shape: ^ That is, I tell you, to perceive man—Adam. ^ * ( (BO 207) Other interpreters have seen in the Arabic letters of the name of Muhammad (ju^,) the figure of man, prostrate before God. And Bedil, in the late seventeenth century, compares the human life to the movements of ritual prayer: Youth is standing upright, old age genuflection, and annihilation prostration. In existence and nonexistence one can do nothing but perform the ritual prayer. (Divan 1:386) “The prostration of the body is the proximity of the soul” (M 4:11), for God Himself said in the Koran: “Prostrate and draw near” (usjud wcdqtarib’, Sura 96:19). The formulae used during the ritual prayer were also interpreted according to their esoteric meaning—especially the fatiha, the first Sura of the Koran, which is recited in Islam as often as, or perhaps even more than, the Lord’s Prayer in Christianity: 41. Najmuddln Kubra, Risala fi fadilat as-salal (Istanbul Universitesi Kutiiphanesi, Arab. 4530), 2b, 42. Henri Corbin, “Imagination creatrice et pric're creatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn Arabi,” Eranos-Jahrbuch 25 (1956), p. 195. !54 / THE PATH Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds! The Compassionate, the Merciful! King on the day of reckoning! Thee only do we worship, and to Thee do we cry for help. Guide Thou us on the straight path, The path of those to whom Thou hast been gracious; with whom Thou art not angry, and who go not astray. A hadith qndsl makes God declare that He has divided this prayer between Himself and His servant. Relying on this sentence, Ibn 'ArabI found in the seven lines of the fatiha the perfect expression of the relation between man and God: the first three lines are the action of the faithful directed toward the Lord, the fourth line is a reciprocal action, and the last three lines express the divine activity acting upon man. 43 The different interpretations the Sufis give of the ritual prayer and its details would fill a large volume. They range from the simple act of obedience to the feeling that God himself performs the prayer, as Ibn al-Farid says in the Ta’iyya: Both of us are a single worshipper who, in respect to the united state, bows himself to his own essence in every act of bowing. None prayed to me but myself, nor did I pray to any one but myself in the performance of every genuflexion. 44 Even the mystical interpretations of ritual pTayer were not suffi¬ cient to satisfy the mystic’s thirst for more and more intimate dis¬ course with his beloved. The problem of how such prayer might reach God has been posed more than once—perhaps most impres¬ sively by Niffari, who was graced by God’s address: Thou desirest to pray all night, and thou desirest to recite all the sections of the Quran therein; but thou prayest not. He only prays all night who prays for Me, not for any known rosary or comprehended portion of scripture. Him I meet with My face, and he stays through My Self-subsis¬ tence, desiring neither for Me nor of Me. If I wish, I converse with him: and if I wish to instruct him, I instruct him. The people of the rosary depart when they have achieved it, and the people of the portion of the Quran depart when they have read it; but my people depart not, for how should they depart ? 45 43. Ibid., p. 187. 44. Reynold A. Nicholson, The Idea of Personality in Sufism (1921; reprint ed., Cambridge, 1967), p. 19: verse 153-54 of the TaPiyya. 45. Niffari, Mukh., no. 50.1-2. THE PATH / 155 True prayer is constant. It cannot be limited to a number of rak z as and portions of the Koran, but permeates man’s whole being—an idea that in our day has been expressed once more by Muhammad Iqbal, who follows Ruml’s example. 46 Free Prayer 47 In part, the longing for more and more intense conversa¬ tion with God was satisfied by the possibility of uttering free prayers. Adoration, as well as supplication, is an important part of the mystical prayer life, and if the classical rule lex orandi lex credendi can be applied anywhere, it certainly applies to the mystical circles in Islam. “To be deprived of prayer (difa) would be a greater loss for me than to be deprived of being heard and granted” (T 1:56). These words of one of the very early Sufis form a keynote for our under¬ standing of the moderate Sufi viewpoint concerning prayer. Prayer can be classified as an intimate conversation, munajat, between man and God, as an exchange of words of love that console the af¬ flicted heart even if they are not immediately answered. It is “the language of yearning for the beloved” (Q 121). From this viewpoint, the importance of night prayer in mystical circles can be properly understood. According to the tradition, Hasan ibn C AH, the Proph¬ et’s grandson, was once asked: How is it that those people are most beautiful who pray at night? He said: Because they are alone with the All-Merciful who covers them with light from His light. (G 1:323) And another mystic who neglected nightly prayer was accused by God: “He lies who claims to love Me, and when the night comes sleeps away from Me” (H 458). Night prayer, though perhaps worth¬ less in the eyes of the common people, is “like a radiant candle” in God’s eyes (M 3:2375). Only the stern, quietistic mystics—in Islam as well as in other re¬ ligions—doubted whether it was lawful to utter a prayer at all: God, 46. Anneraarie Schimmel, “The Idea of Prayer in the Thought of Iqbal," Moslem World 48 (1958): 3. 47. Annemarie Schimmel, “Some Aspects of Mystical Prayer in Islam,” Die Welt des Islam, n.s. 2 (1952): 2. 156 / THE PATH they thought, is “too mighty to be joined by prayer, or to be sepa¬ rated from by omitting to pray” (K 144). They thought that silent patience in affliction was more suitable than prayer. One of the leading Khurasanian ascetics and author of a book on renunciation (Kitdb az-zuhd), 'Abdallah ibn Mubarak, said: “It is about fifty years since I have prayed or wished anyone to pray for me” (Q 144). Since everything is p