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AN INTRODUCTION TO
THE HISTORY OF
SUFISM
♦
The Sir Abdullah Suhrawardy Lectures
for ig42
BY
ARTHUR J. ARBERRY, Litt.D.
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
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WHlSYffy
INTRODUCTION
I T is with great pleasure that I write a few words of
introduction to Dr. Arberry’s Lectures, which form
a history of the progress of Sufi studies in Europe since
the end of the eighteenth century and lay down a pro¬
gramme for future work.
The Sir Abdullah Suhrawardy Lectureship at the
University of Calcutta was founded by me in honour
of the memory of my brother, and in order to stimulate
research into Islamic thought and culture.
It is particularly gratifying to me that the first person
to hold this Lectureship should be a man who is not
only an eminent Islamic scholar, but also a personal
friend of mine. Dr. Arthur J. Arberry ha| had a dis¬
tinguished career in the academic world anil has estab¬
lished himself as one of the leading authorities in
Europe on Islam and Islamic culture. At the Uni¬
versity of Cambridge he fyroke all records by taking
four first classes in Claries Sa-nd Oriental Languages,
and later by attaining'the degree of Doctor of Letters
at the early age of 31. He has travelled widely in the
Middle East and for a time had charge of the Depart¬
ment of Classics in the Egyptian University: since
1934 he has been Assistant Librarian at the India
Office, in which capacity he is a successor to Sir Ihomas
Arnold and Professor C. A. Storey. At the beginning
of the present war he was transferred to undertake
work of great national importance in which his expert
knowledge of Arabic and Persian has had full scope.
It was at the cost of great personal effort that he con¬
sented to write these Lectures, at a time when his
energies are fully extended in patriotic work connected
directly with the war, and I was therefore all the more
INTRODUCTION
ed that he has been able to accede to my rek_
become Sir Abdullah Suhrawardy, Lecturer for
1942. Dr. Arberry’s publications on Islamic culture
in general and on Sufism in particular already run into
many thousands of pages and upwards of a dozen
books, and one can confidently predict for him a career
in which he will prove himself a worthy successor to
Professor E.G. Browne, of whose College he is a former
Fellow, and to his teacher Professor R. A. Nicholson.
In this connexion I should like to quote from a letter
which Professor Nicholson wrote after reading the
manuscript of these Lectures.
‘I have read and re-read your three Lectures, and the word
that sums up my opinion of them is “masterly”. Your grasp of
the subject both as a whole and in detail astonishes even me who
know you toJje—what Voltaire called Habakkuk, though in a f
very d i ffe rerir sense—capable de tout; and you have treated it in
a most interesting and illuminating way. You disclaim originality, t
but these Lectures are certainly original and constructive. The ‘
historical part gives much information that is new to me.
Lecture II on the modern school is one of the finest examples of
appreciative criticism I have ever seen.. . . These Lectures with
the programme laid down in them will inspire enthusiasm and
lead, I hope, to results of the highest value.’
As regards my brother Abdullah, who died in Cal¬
cutta on 13 January 1933, besides being a profound
scholar of Islam, he rendered countless other services to
the Muslim cause. I do not think I can do better, in
describing his brilliant career, than quote the obituary
notice which was printed in The Times of 14 January
1935 -
‘He brought to bear upon his work, as a leader of the Bengal,
Moslems, intense devotion and profound Islamic scholarship....
He won great influence with his people and general respect by
the variety of his services to his community and to his province.
INTRODUCTION
-r^ferWas the son of Bahrul Uloorn Hazrat Maulana Obeidulla
eUObeidi Suhrawardy, a pioneer of Anglo-Islamic studies and
of female education in Bengal. He was educated at Dacca
Madrasa and then at the Government College in that town.
Thence he came to University College, London, and continued
his education in France, Germany, and Austria and at Con¬
stantinople and Cairo, and won the degree of D.Ph., and high
honours in Arabic and Persian. In this country, when studying
for the Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1909, he assisted in the movement
for providing a great mosque in London. Deeply impressed by
his contact with the Moslems of the Near East he founded and
was the first Secretary of the Pan-Islamic Society. He took
some part in the expression of Indian Moslem opinion in this
country on the Morley-Minto Reforms; and on returning to
Calcutta to practise at the Bar he was elected to the reformed
Bengal Legislature. When the further advances associated with
the names of Mr. Edwin Montagu and Lord Chelmsford were
under consideration, Suhrawardy was selected to bp a Member
of the Reforms Franchise Committee which toured in India
under the chairmanship of Lord Southborough. He continued
to serve on the enlarged Bengal Legislature and was Deputy
President from 1923 to 1926. He was then elected to the Indian
Legislative Assembly, of which he continued a Member to the
end. . . . Pie was for many years Secretary of the Indian Moslem
Association of Bengal, and in 1920 succeeded the late Sir
Muhammad Shaft as Secretary of the All-India Moslem Associa¬
tion. . . . Many papers and books came from his busy pen. The
Moslem Law of Marriage and of Inheritance , A History of Moslem
Legal Institutions, and Outlines of the Historical Development of
Muslim Law , were among his best-known works; and he also
wrote historical studies and novels of Moslem life. Tagore Law
Lecturer in 1911, he did an immense amount of important
educational work, and also took a share in Local Self-Govern¬
ment activities and was the first non-official Chairman of
Midnapore District Board. . . . His restless spirit was always
yearning for fresh fields of effort; and his physical powers, sapped
as they were by frequent fevers, were hot equal to the strain
of his emotional temperament and constant mental activities.’
INTRODUCTION
ie obituary notice gives many details of his lit
but it does not mention the little book The Sayings
of Muhammad (first published in February 1905), 1 which
was of all his works nearest his heart. There is also no
reference to the fact that Abdullah was an extraordin¬
arily brilliant student, winning stipends and scholarships
throughout his school and college career. He graduated
with honours in Arabic, English, and Philosophy, ob¬
taining first class in his special subjects and standing
first of his year both in the B.A. and M.A. examinations
of Calcutta University. He was also the first to obtain
the Ph.D. degree of that University. While studying
for the Bar, he took his M.A. degree from the London
University and used to add to his slender allowance
from India by lecturing on Arabic letters and juris¬
prudence, subjects to which he contributed in his later
life and teifchings much of value and freshness.
It seems appropriate here to mention something
about the Mystic Saints of the religious orders of Islam,
also to touch briefly on some of the activities of the
Khandan-i-Suhrawardiyah , the fraternity of the darwtsji
order of Suhrawardl, from which Abdullah Suhra-
wardy claimed descent.
From Iraq, Turkestan, Iran, and Afghanistan came
missionaries belonging to various orders of Sufism.
They brought with them the fervour, devotion, and
piety resulting from long discipline, discipleship with
the spiritual leaders in those lands, and experience
gained in travels and pilgrimages to shrines and holy
places of Islam. The Muslim missionaries were
prompted by a desire to serve God, they had no central
organization like missionary endowments of Christian
churches, nor had they any State backing. Muslim
1 Published with a foreword by Mahatma Gandhi in "The Wisdom
of the East’ series by John Murray, Albemarle Street, London, W. i.
INTRODUCTION
4 pjijvi 4 yignty must nevertheless have ensured protect^ ^
ancl prestige to the missionaries of their faith, as some
of the kings followed the Christian practice of styling
themselves ‘King Defender of the baith’. 1 he suc¬
cesses of the Muslim missionaries, however, were of an
entirely individualistic character based on their per¬
sonality and piety, and they carried on their work by
peaceful means, following the wake of traders and
merchant princes on the routes by sea and by land from
west to east and north to south, and penetrating into
regions where Muslim rule did not exist at all.
°They preached the straightforward religious and
social precepts of Islam which, with supreme grandeur,
exalted the unity of God against the prevailing idolatrous
and polytheistic practices to which the high philosophic
monotheism of the Hindus had degenerated. They
proclaimed and practised the equality of all believers of
the faith, and embraced in the very centre of the social
structure of their society the new Muslim converts even
from the non-caste Hindus, so long despised and con¬
demned by their proud Brahmin and Kshatrya rulers.
The Muslim Sufis made many concessions to Hindu
beliefs and customs in their early converts. The Mus¬
lims showed great honour to new converts; there was
no prejudice against intermarriage nor any colour bar.
Goodness was the only criterion of worth. The Arab,
Turki, Irani, and other saints and missionaries gave
titles of respect to Indian Muslims who embraced
Islam, such as Shaykh, Malik, Khalifa, Mu’min, &c.
The Muslim missionaries won conspicuous success,
and Islamic Sufism with its cognate mystical yearnings
after Union with God received a most hospitable home
on Indian soil. In the A'tn-i Akbari Abu ’ 1 -Fadl mentions
fourteen orders common in his time. 1 To-day, more than
1 Chishtiyah, Suhravf diyah, Habibiyah, Tafyurlyah, Karkhiyah,
in fiuence of some one or other of the darwish orders or
irds of India’s Muslim population are und
INTRODUCTION
fraternities, the principal ones being the' Chishtlyah and
Suhrawardiyah , the Qddiriyah and Naqsjybandiyah.
The spiritual guide known as shaykh in Islamic
countries is commonly known as murshid or pir in India.
The disciple is called a murid , and the practice of Sufism
as a darwish order is known as firi-muridi , and is a
counterpart of the guru-chela relationship among the
Hindus.
The Province of Sind claims the distinction of being
the home of Indian Sufism. According to Khwajah
Hasan Nizami, the Suhrawardl Sufis were the first to
arrive in India and made their head-quarters in Sind.
This must have followed many centuries after the Arab
conquest in a . d . 711 because it is well known that the
Suhrawardiyah order attained great influence in India
under the leadership of the learned divine Baha al-
Haqq Baha al-Din Zakarlya of Multan (1170-1267).
While returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, Medina,
and Jerusalem, he visited Baghdad and became a
favourite disciple of Shaykh al-Shuyukh Shihab al-Din
Suhrawardl, the founder of the order (1144-1235). 1
On the death of Baha al-Haqq in 1267, he was
succeeded by his son-in-law, the mystic poet 'Iraqi, who
had been his disciple for over twenty-five years; later,
disgusted with the petty jealousy and narrow-minded
bigotry of the people around him, 'Iraqi left his son
Kablr al-Din at Multan, bade farewell to India, and
Saqatiyah, Junaydiyah, Kazaruniyah, Tusiyah, Firdawsiyah, Zaydiyah,
'Iyadiyah, Adhamlyah, Hubayriyah.
1 Instead of the usual dome or cupola, Suhrawardi’s tomb is sur¬
mounted by a large, peculiar pineapple-shaped structure. It stands near
Wastanigate, once a busy centre of life but now an area of waste land
and graveyard.
INTRODUCTION
:Wded on a pilgrimage to Mecca. In Oman, Ir ^
and Egypt he was received with great honour
by the sultans and the learned people; he finally died
at Damascus (1289), mourned equally by the Malik
al-Umara and the general public, and was buried in
Salihlya Cemetery.
The spiritual descendants and disciples of the Suhra-
wardl order have produced some of the greatest literary
men in the world of Islam. In India the missionaries
of this Order did conspicuous pioneer work in the
spiritual and educational spheres. They won the
allegiance of multitudes as well as of many influential
Chiefs. Indeed, many of them became the guides, not
only in spiritual but in temporal matters, of the ruling
Princes of the Turki, Pathan, and Sayyid dynasties.
One of them, Sayyid Jalal al-Dln Surkh-p 5 sh_(i 199-
1291), who was born in Bukhara and settled in Uch,
carried extensive spiritual influence throughout Sind,
Gujarat, and the Punjab. His khalifa was his grandson,
Jalal ibn Ahmad Kabir, commonly known as Makh-
dum-i Jahaniyan (d. 1384), who is said to have made
the pilgrimage to Mecca thirty-six times and to have
performed innumerable miracles. One of Makhdum-i
Jahaniyan’s grandsons, Abu Muhammad Abd Allah,
known as Burhan al-Dln Qutb-i 'Alam (d. 1453), went
to Gujarat, where his tomb is still a place of pilgrimage
at Batuwa. Plis son, Sayyid Muhammad Shah Alam
(d. 1475), became still more famous; his tomb is at
Rasulabad, near Ahmadabad.
In Behar and Bengal the existence of definite mis¬
sionary efforts by the - order of Suhrawardi Sufism can
be found in the old records and inscriptions on the
tombs and shrines at Bihar, Manair, Phulwari, Gaur,
and Panduah. One of the celebrities was Jalal al-Dln
Tabriz! (d. 1244): he was a pupil of the saint Shihab
INTRODUCTION
__ Suhrawardl. One of his spiritual descen_
converted to Islam the son of Raja Kans (Ganesh) of
Bengal named Jatmall, commonly known as Jadu Jalal
al-Din; this king’s tomb, under a very great cupola, can
be seen on the way from the English Bazaar, Malda,
to the Adina Mosque in Panduah, where the Bara
Dargah (the chief shrine), erected in honour of a saint of
the Suhrawardl Khandan dynasty, still has rich endow¬
ments attached to it; on the tomb stones of the twelfth-
century cemetery are found many of the names common
amongst the present Suhrawardl family of Bengal. The
present ruling family of Hyderabad and many of the
Paigah nobilities are the spiritual descendants of the
great mystic saints of Islam of the Suhrawardl order.
I he following story of the conversion of the com¬
munity known as Dudekulas in Southern India is given
by 1. W. Arnold, who refers to Baba Fakhr al-Din, a
Sufi saint and missionary of the Suhrawardl and Qadiri
orders, whose tomb lies at Penukonda, nearly ninety
miles north of Bangalore. The legend says that he was
originally a king of Sistan, who abdicated his throne in
favour of his brother, became a religious mendicant,
and set out on a proselytizing mission. He finally
settled at Penukonda in the vicinity of a Hindu temple,
where his presence was unwelcome to the Raja of the
place. Instead of appealing to force, he applied several
tests to discover whether the Muhammadan saint or his
own priest was the better qualified by sanctity to possess
the temple. As a final test he had them both tied up
in sacks filled with lime, and thrown into tanks. The
Hindu priest never reappeared, but Baba Fakhr al-Din
asserted the superiority of his faith by being miracu¬
lously transported to a hill outside the town. The Raja
thereupon became a Muslim, and his example was
followed by a large number of the inhabitants of the
INTRODUCTION I^fT
lourhood, and the temple was converted into! j
ix^oque. In the thirteenth century in the Deccan and
Western India the celebrated Sayyid Muhammad Glsu-
daraz won a number of converts and disciples. Pu
Mahabir Khandayat did successful missionary work in
the kingdom of Bijapur in the early fourteenth century.
The darwtsh fraternity in India which embraces the
largest number of followers, and is the oldest of the
orders to have entered India, is the Ch ishtI order, which
traces its origin to Kh wajah Abu 'Abd Allah ChishtI
(d. 966). It was introduced into India in 1192 by
Khwajah Mu'ln al-Din ChishtI of Sistan (1142-1236).
At Khurasan, Nishapur, Meshed, and other places he
served his apprenticeship as a disciple of noted saints
and became a special pupil of Khwajah Uthman
ChishtI Harunl. During his pilgrimage to Mecca and
Medina and his travels through Iraq he came under
the influence of Shaykh Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi and
Shaykh 'Abd al-Qadir Jllanl. ‘The last of the great
figures of the past, the last of the great masters who
helped to make the name of Baghdad known through¬
out the world, Abdul Qadir and his contemporary Omar
Suhrawardi (the latter of whom devoted himself mainly
to literary labours) have a special interest . 1 In 119 2
Khwajah IVIu'in al-Din Ch i sh tI came to India with the
Imy of Shihab al-Din Churl and went to Ajmir in
1195, which became his permanent residence until
his death in 1236 at the age of 93. His tomb is the
famous dargah of Kh wajah Sahib at Ajmir. Nryatn
al-Din Awliya (1238-1325) is a famous spiritual des¬
cendant of Khwajah Sahib ; the locality in the suburbs oi
Delhi where his tomb stands is known as Nizam al-
Dln. Khwajah Hasan Nizami is the best known among
the living scions of his family. The Ch ishtI fraternity
1 R. Cooke, Baghdad the City of Peace, p.127.
I
INTRODUCTION
lout India, and won rema^
1L
_ favour with the Mughal emperors, just as the
Suhraward! order had with the earlier ruling dynasties.
It was Shaykh Salim Ch i sh tI whose prayers gave a son
and heir to Akbar, and the prince was named Salim
after his godfather. The beautiful buildings at Fatehpur
Sikri (Agra) with the mother-of-pearl walls, doors, and
enclosures around the sepulchre are a symbol of the
affection of his royal disciples.
The famous Qadirl order, founded by Shaykh 'Abd
al-Qadir Jilan! of Baghdad (1078-1166), entered India
through Sind in 1482. Sayyid BandagI Muhammad
Cjhawth, one of the descendants of the founder, took up
his residence in Sind, at Uch, already made famous
in the annals of Muslim saints by the Suhraward!
order. He died in 15x7 in Uch, but through a long
line of descendants, some of whom were saints and
credited with miracles, had a most remarkable spiritual
success throughout India. Shah Muhammad Ghawth
has been canonized as a patron saint of Kashmir, and
throughout Northern India. This order enjoys great
prestige on account of the powerful personality, learn¬
ing, eloquence, and piety of the founder. Innumerable
miracles ( karamat ) are attributed to him and the
honorific titles of al-Ghauth al-'Azam, Plr-i Plran, Plr-i
Dastgir,BarePlr,areusedforhim. The great mosque and
the dome on his tomb form the most attractive features
of the Bab al-Shaykh, a locality so named after him in
Baghdad. Very rich endowments are attached to the
shrine. Shaykh Abdul Qadir Gilani was undoubtedly
mainly responsible for the popularisation of the new note
of passion andemotion in orthodox Islam, which had been
introduced into more intellectual circles by Ghazali.’ 1
The Naqshbandl order, last of the great religious
1 R. Cooke, Baghdad the City of Pence, p. 126.
m
INTRODUCTION
to be introduced into India, was founded ^
[ijah Baha al-Dln Naqshband of Turkestan, who
in 1389 and was buried near Bukhara. Khwajah
Muhammad BaqI billah Berang, who died in 1603 and
is buried at Delhi, seems to have introduced this order
into India. According to T. W. Arnold, however, it was
introduced into India by Shaykh Ahmad Faruql Sir-
hindl (Patiala State) who died in 1625. He is known
as the Mujaddid-i Alf~i Than !, a term which indicates
that he was considered to be a reformer at the beginning
of the second thousand years after the Prophet. This
order does not. seem to have been as much favoured with
success as the earlier ones. Perhaps this is due to the
fact that it appealed to the intellectuals and also came
to India about four centuries after the appearance of the
Chishtls. In recent times there has been a Naqshbandi
revival in the Punjab and Kashmir.
In passing I may mention that apart from the personal
loyalty either to the founders of the order or to the
saint or Sufi under whose personal influence a disciple
works, the organization of the different fraternities or
orders of Sufism mentioned above are much the same
in general principles. Under the guidance of the Pre¬
ceptor certain set rules have to be observed in the
ritualistic practice of repetition of remembrances of the
attributes of Almighty God. For instance, the words
of the repetition are first pronounced audibly, in order
that the faculty of hearing may assist concentration.
From this, the disciple progresses to practising the
repetitions in a whisper audible only to himself: then in
an even later stage, he repeats them mentally with his
eyes shut and his whole attention fixed on his devotions.
All worldly thoughts are banished, the mind is fixed on
thoughts of God above. Membership of one fraternity
does not debar from joining another. A Muslim may
INTRODUCTION
the teachings and practices of different or
lout losing his original standing in his fraternity.
Khwajah Qutb al-Dln Bakhtiyar Kakl, whose shrine in
Qutb Minar at Delhi is the object of universal venera¬
tion, belonged to the Suhrawardl order, received
spiritual gifts from Shaykh 'Abd al-Qadir, and then
became one of the most distinguished Khalifas of
Khwajah Mu'in al-Din Chishtl. The special practices
and directions which the founders enjoined on their
followers are the only distinctive features. For instance,
the rule of the Suhrawardl order is that the devotee
should occupy himself mainly with the recitation of the
Qur’an and expounding of Hadlth (Traditions of the
Prophet); the members of the fraternity who took a
narrow view of things viewed with disapproval music
and dancing accompanying the recitation of hymns and
songs of praise, which are widely practised by Qalandars,
and generally sanctioned by the Chishtl and Qadirl
orders. The popularization of this note of appeal to the
human sense has remarkable results and the rationalistic
Muslims of to-day do not take any exception to these.
It seems to me that this must have been a cause of
winning favour with the multitude by appealing to the
Indian minds with their Aryan emotion. Nothing has
conduced more towards Hindu-Muslim rapproche¬
ment than such performances which are nearest the
Hindu Kirtan devotional songs with music. The back¬
ground of the pantheistic doctrines of Hinduism, the
deep religious fervour underlying the Hindu mind,
make the Hindu respect the piety and personality of
Muslim Sufis, and seek spiritual help from pious persons
irrespective of their denomination. Hindus pay their
devotions at the shrines of Muslim martyrs and saints,
and offer vows and sometimes endow rich property for
the maintenance of Muslim spiritual foundations.
/gL
INTRODUCTION
Muslim can adopt any of the systems of ^
__fers of mysticism, and is entitled to use the dis
tinguishing terminology, Qadirl, ChishtI, Suhrawardl,
Naqshbandl. He need not be a descendant by birth,
but as the founders of the principal orders were either
descendants of the Prophet or of one of his immediate
successors and kinsmen, the Brahmanic tendency of
giving priority to holders of such titles and claiming
descent to be a criterion of status is one of the regret¬
table abuses in Muslim India with its Hindu environ¬
ment. Muhammad did not base the truth of his mission
on the performance of any miracle. Indeed, when
pressed to show a miracle he would say, ‘There did not
come to those before you an apostle but they called him
an enchanter or a madman ( Qur . li. 52). Glory be to
my Lord: am I aught but a mortal apostle? ( Qur .
xvii. 93).’ Zealous followers have attributed many
miracles to him, and indeed to the saints and Sufis, as
manifestations of divine favour. 1. here is no doubt that
solace, improvement in general health, and cure from
disease, even material success in life, have resulted from
association with personalities possessing transcendent
spiritual powers; and this has led to belief in super¬
natural faculties for working wonders and miracles
(karamat). The practice of many Hindu social customs
(bid’at) is an Indian innovation not known in other
Islamic countries. Pilgrimages to shrines of the saint,
giving offerings and making vows, burning chirdgh, the
oil-lamp with a wick, over the tomb of a saint, the par¬
taking of sweets and food given as offerings on tombs (
and shrines of saints as sacred portions (tabarruk ),.are not.
indigenous to Islam, but a result of the influence of Hindu
environment which has also resulted in veneration for
the Muslim saint, gradually merging into such phrases
as are hardly distinguishable from the saint worship
mtsTfy
INTRODUCTION
induism and the animistic phases of pagan ptHr
e religious life. 1 Indeed, the Muslim masses of India
attend the Urs or the annual commemoration prayers at
the tomb of a saint dressed in their best and gayest
attire with more enthusiasm and faith than in the ob¬
servances of the cardinal principles of the faith of Islam.
The ordinary Muslim jaqir of the village is a charlatan.
The practice of pronouncing the remembrances (dhikr)
in a very loud voice has been much abused; so also has
the state of spiritual ecstasy ( hdl ) which immediately
follows it: in these cases it is often a state of physical
exhaustion brought about by the vociferous manner in
which the prayers are shouted, and the violent actions
which accompany them. The village jaqir may be
a begging, singing mendicant, or one living on the
credulity and generosity of the people, telling fortunes,
writing charms, exorcizing evil spirits, performing
miracles, and making capital out of the fact that any¬
thing given in the name of God or of some saint will
repay the giver by great benefits, and a calamity will
befall as a curse on those who refuse the request of a jaqir.
• To return to the three lectures by Dr. Arberry: he has
included some account of the three great Suhrawardls of
the twelfth to thirteenth centuries and has referred to
the need for further research to be conducted into their
writings and teachings. I would like to suggest that
this subject might well engage the attention of a future
lecturer on the Sir Abdullah Suhrawardy foundation.
Dr. Arberry also refers to the family motto, ‘Poverty
is my pride’. The story regarding this was related to
me at Baghdad. The first of the three Suhrawardls
came under official displeasure for refusing to counte¬
nance certain actions. He was reduced to such straits
that he carried water from the Tigris and sold it for a
1 See the section on India in Islam To-day (Faber Sc Faber).
INTRODUCTION
l , but continued his teachings in his free Madras^
quoted the saying of the prophet al-faqr fakhri —
‘Poverty is my pride’. The story relates that the water
was found to have healing virtues and the learned
Shay kh soon returned to opulence.
As regards my brother Abdullah’s family, Maulana
Abul Kalam Azad 1 writes that in the Tahdjjnb al~
akhldq Sir Syed Ahmad Khan mentions that at a time
when he was being assailed from all sides as a heretic on
account of his rationalistic teachings, an unexpected
voice in his support was raised by the head of the
Madrassah at Dacca, Abdullah’s father. These broad¬
minded intellectual attainments are an ancestral heri¬
tage; continuing, the Maulana says, ‘it reflects credit
on a family for a generation if it produces one brilliant
person, but it is the distinction of the Suhrawardy family
to have produced several talented men and women in one
generation’. These have won wide esteem and exercised
considerable influence on contemporary life.
In the third of Dr. Arberry’s lectures it is pointed
out that whereas once Suhraward was a flourishing
town, the very trace of it has now vanished from the
ken of man: only the names of its distinguished sons keep
its memory green. From Suhraward the old Suhraward!
family migrated to Baghdad: from Baghdad a branch
passed to India. Now, after these many centuries,
the Calcutta family of Suhrawardy is gradually dying
out. 2
1 Introduction to Kaukab-i durrl by Suhrawardiya Begum, Calcutta.
3 My son Masood, a student of Aligarh Muslim University, died
at the age of 16 in January 1928, and Shahab, the son of my nephew
(Shaheed), an undergraduate of Christ Church, Oxford, died in London
at the age of 18 in February 1940. They were the last male members of
the family. The spelling Suhrawardy is of course conventional, and
represents the same name as Suhrawardi; both spellings are commonly
found, though the latter is more ‘scientifically’ correct.
NH UlSTffy
INTRODUCTION
<SL
9 0 - -o - ~ *• - o~ *• n - ^ i
V
‘All that is upon the earth must pass away; only the glory and
majesty of thy Lord abide forever.’ (Qur'an, lv. 26-7.)
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ij 4-JI \j\j <U \j) Ipli i^^sA lij JJ \
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‘Such as who, when an affliction visiteth them, say, Verily
we are God’s and unto Him do we return: upon them are
blessings and peace from their Lord, and they are the rightly
guided.’ (Qur'an, ii. 152.)
1 J+J) (J) iftA** 1 ^ *A. j
^ IdJl* j \jA ^ dlL»
‘O breeze of morn, bear unto Alexander and Solomon a
message: Ye possess (worldly) wealth and empire which are
transitory, but mine is the (spiritual) realm of nothingness (which
is everlasting).’ ( f Iraqi.)
HASSAN SUHRAWARDY
THE ATHENAEUM,
PALL MALL, LONDON, S.W. I,
August 1942
PREFACE
A TWENTIETH-CENTURY world-war is not
perhaps the best time in which to write a series of
lectures introductory to the history of mysticism in
Islam. Under the circumstances of total mobilization
of the Empire’s resources for total combat, the scholar
finds himself pressed into service of a kind for which he
never prepared himself: and if He. is to continue his
scholarly studies at all, then it can only be in the most
fugitive manner, literally in moments of respite front
wholly uncongenial but wholly necessafy belligerency.
He is further handicapped by the wise precautions which
wpre taken betimes to rehouse the national treasures of
oriental books and manuscripts in places where they
might be more secure against the malice of the Empire’s
enemies, but at the same time remain inaccessible to the
researcher. As against these material difficulties and
handicaps, however, it is necessary to set one positive
and incalculable advantage. Beset as we have been for
some time now by pressing dangers, in this finest hour
of the nation’s and Empire’s life, and having ex¬
perienced the imminent threat of violence from the
skies on many nights, it would be strange if our
thoughts had not turned automatically to those matters
of an eternal significance, the. nature of life and man
and his relation to God. Weighing these assets against
those debits, it is not doubtful where the balance tilts.
I am all too conscious of the imperfections in these
lectures, and plead the circumstances of their composi¬
tion in extenuation. In other days I hope to be able to
make good the faults apparent in the following pages,
and in particular to prepare a complete bibliography of
Sufi studies and perhsips a catalogue of the original
MINlSr^
PREFACE
^arces, published and unpublished, necessary
^preparation of a definitive history of Sufism.
In dedicating this book to my good friend and
teacher, Professor R. A. Nicholson, I am fortunate in
being able to quote from a letter in which he has
defined for me his own views on the subject of these
lectures:
‘I should not now maintain that Greek philosophy is the only
or even the pre-eminent source from which Sufism was derived,
though I still adhere to the view that the early development
of Sufism was very considerably influenced by infiltration of
Hellenistic ideas, which however are but one of many diverse
elements working within, and gradually transforming, the
mystical movement in Islam. It seems to me that future
research should concentrate, not so much on speculation con¬
cerning origins as on providing full scientific materials for study¬
ing the actual process of development: the marshalling of facts,
and the establishment of their relations to each other, are—as
you have admirably set forth in your third lecture—the only
way of making at least a substantial advance towards the distant,
indefinite, and perhaps ultimately undiscoverable goal. At any
rate it is the beginning that counts.
In conclusion it is my happy duty to thank the
electors to the Sir Abdullah Suhrawardy Lectureship
at the University of Calcutta for the signal honour they
have done me in inviting me to deliver these lectures.
My only regret is that prevailing circumstances have
prevented me from giving them in person.
A. J; A.
OXFORD
18 July 1942
Ml NISTffy.
LECTURE I
XHE BEGINNINGS OF SUFI STUDIES IN
EUROPE
W HEN the invitation to deliver a course of lectures
on Islamic Mysticism on the Sir Abdullah Suhra-
wardy Foundation reached me, in the spring ot this
present year, I accepted the honour with the keenest
pleasure and alacrity for reasons which are, I reel,
sufficiently important and germane, to the general
theme of this course as to warrant setting forth in some
detail here and now. I will, therefore, venture to claim
your attention and indulgence tor a few moments while
I speak of these matters, partly of a private nature,
before enunciating the programme it is my intention to
carry through and then proceeding to a completion ot
the first stage of that programme.
Though it was never my pleasure and privilege to
meet the late Sir Abdullah Suhrawardy, I have of course
always been familiar with the work he did, both m
India and England, to revive the highest traditions ot
the Muslim lite in his own conduct, and to secuie tor
Islam and Islamic culture that recognition and respect
which, after some centuries of misunderstanding, ignor¬
ance, and even hostility, are now general throughout
the civilized world. In particular, his translations of the
Sayings of Muhammad, recently republished, 1 which had
exercised so powerful an influence on the great Russian
writer Leo Tolstoy, introduced not a few of my own
countrymen to that inexhaustible store of spiritual and
practical wisdom which has been the treasured and
carefully transmitted heritage of generations of the
Arabian Prophet’s followers, arid Ras now become the
1 ‘Wisdom of the East’ Series (John. Murray).
B
^BEGINNINGS OF SOFl STUDIES IN EUKOI
ion inheritance of mankind. In the course 7
studies of Sufi life and thought it has, of course,
always been abundantly apparent to me that, without the:
twin foundations of the Quran and the Hadith, the
j whole vast and beautiful structure of Islamic mysticism
could neither have been erected nor preserved;' and Sir
Abdullah Suhrawardy’s work on the Traditions of the
Prophet is therefore a direct contribution to the study
of the fundamentals of Sufism.
Secondly, the very name of Suhrawardy cannot be
heard or spoken by J;he student of mysticism without
his being reminded of the profound influence exercised
by three at least who bore that name on the doctrine
and practice of Tasawzvuf , Of these three men I hope
to say something later; for the moment I desire to place
on record the gratitude and appreciation I feel for the
personal friendship and inspiration of one who now
bears that honoured name, Sir Hassan Suhrawardy/
bi other of Sir Abdullah, whom it has been our honour
and privilege to have in our midst in London during
the dark and difficult days through which the world has
i ecently been passing. If ever there was a time when
the teachings of the great mystics were vitally necessary
for the comfort of men’s hearts and the lifting up of the
spirit of humanity, that time is surely now. As I write
these words, the same sombre shadow which has hung
over my own country since the tragic events of the
summer of 1940 is looming near to you, my distant
audience; and I do not doubt that, as the people of
England were sustained and fortified through the severe
crisis of autumn and winter 1940, so the peoples of
Bengal and of all India wall find strength to endure and
repel the evil threat. That strength and that resolution
Adviser to the Secretary of State for India in London since
x 939-
mtsYfty,
BEGINNINGS OF SUFI STUDIES IN EUROPE
ijbt of the things of the flesh, but of the sf
_ nng but a deep and mystical conviction'that ir
end righteousness and goodness must triumph
make tolerable the passing burden of anxiety, privation,
and sorrow. ‘For those who do good in this world j
there is good, and God’s earth is broad: verily, those 1
who endure with steadfastness shall be repaid, their
reward shall not be measured.’ 1
So it is that I come to the third and last point of my
personal explanation. The motto of the Suhrawardy
house is, as you all know, the noble saying JaJu\
‘Poverty is my pride’. If there is one thing about the
present war that'can be predicted with complete cer¬
tainty, it is that it is going to make us all much poorer.
So vast an expenditure on supplying the material means
of defence, to match the tremendous offensive armoury
of the forces of darkness and to overcome them, neces¬
sarily entails a great impoverishment of the general
material life of the community. In that sense, since
material poverty is an inevitable price that must be paid
for victory over evil, we may all rejoice and be proud
to pay that price. But, of course, this saying has a far
deeper meaning. The poverty which the Prophet made
his pride was a poverty of the spirit, that poverty of
which Junaid said that it was ‘a sea of affliction, but of
an affliction that is all glory’, 2 and which lahya b.
Mu'adh al-Razi defined as ‘a preparedness to dispense
with everything but God, its mark being the denial of
all material means’. 3 The war has wakened the souls |
of many who had become intoxicated by the wine of l
too great material prosperity and fleshly ease, of con- \
quered distances and harnessed nature, so that they
1 Qur. xxxix. 13.
1 al-Sarr£j, Kitab al-Lttmd (ed. Nicholson), p. 221.
3 al-Risa/at a/-Quskairiyak (Cairo, 1330), p. 123.
UhTTuT TV' ' 'v' (jttifcSal® 4, "
V. ■. T ' V * '
BEGINNINGS OF SOFl STUDIES IN EUROP:
jegin to realize that all these things in which
rhys took their pride are worth nothing, and that he
only element of permanence in this impermanent w« Id
is the force of the Spirit. So it may well be, and is
much to be hoped, that our present material pov< ty
will be the occasion of such a poverty of the spirit, s h
a casting down of pride, such a yearning to lean o i!y
on God, that from, the ashes of this vast conflagrat i
will rise the phoenix of renewed faith, renewed ho y
and renewed humanity.
I have called this series of lectures ‘An Introducti
to the History of Sufism’; and this will be the app
priate place to explain what this title means, and w
I have chosen it. A number of desultory attempts ha
already been made by various scholars to write a histo
of Sufism, but it cannot be pretended that anythin
really satisfactory has yet materialized. The reason f
this is not far to seek. I am going to lay it down nov
as a fundamental principle, that no even partially con
plete account of the origins and development of Su
doctrine and practice can be written in our preset
stage of knowledge. It is unhappily the case that a ver
large volume, perhaps even the greater volume, of th
primary and secondary materials indispensable to th
scientific analysis of the Sufi movement is still un
published, being contained in manuscripts scattered
over the libraries of Europe, Africa, and Asia. I shal
be referring in some detail later to the brilliant con
tributions made by Professor Louis Massignon to th<
st idy of our subject: here I would invite your attention
t the bibliography appended to his monumental mono-
ph, La Passion d’al-Hallaj (Paris, 1922), for you
will find that a very high proportion of the documents
us; d in the course of that most fruitful research consists
of unpublished manuscripts. From this it follows that
G INNINGS OF SOFl STUDIES IN EUROPE
^possible for another scholar to form a comply
Pliable independent judgement regarding the con¬
clusions reached by the great French savant, unless he
is prepared to make the same laborious and prolonged
peregrination of libraries and to study afresh the same
materials. Massignon’s work is thus in reality a test
case proving our point. Greatly as I admire the scholar¬
ship and industry of the man whose friendship I have
been proud to claim for many years, I must own to an
even deeper appreciation of the work of those other
scholars, chief among them my own murshid Professor
R. A. Nicholson, who have disciplined their ambitions
to undertake what is perhaps a less spectacular but
certainly a more generally serviceable task, the task
namely of preparing sound editions and accurately
annotated translations of the primary documents of
Sufism. For we orientalists in this generation are still
in many respects in the position of the classical scholars
of the Renaissance: it devolves upon us for our time to
make the greatest possible provision for the require¬
ments of our successors, furnishing them with the
necessary tools wherewith they in their turn will proceed
to construct the well-designed and balanced edifice.
This observation applies with equal truth to all branches
of Islamic studies, and with special force to the study of
Sufism.
When, therefore, I chose as a title for this course ‘.An
Introduction to the History of Sufism’, I had it in mind
to place before you what appear to me to be the neces¬
sary preliminaries, the completion of which must in¬
evitably precede the writing of a complete history of
Islamic mysticism. To some of my audience it may
appear disappointing that my plan is not more ambitious
than this : but I hope to have persuaded you, before the
completion of this brief series of lectures, that more
Sl
faT
ntrtiiMu-I
l||BEGINNINGS,OF SOFl STUDIES IN EUROI
Stable results can be looked for in a concentii
'preparing the materials for our successors to work
with, than in a well-meaning but premature attempt to
dogmatize on the basis of insufficient evidence. My
first lecture will consist of a review of the work of
scholars prior to our times; in my second lecture I shall
summarize the results of the researches conducted by
our contemporaries; for my third lecture I shall reserve
the task of summing up, assessing the total progress
so far made, enumerating the special texts which have
yet to be published or studied, and indicating the lines
of individual inquiry which need to be pursued, and
finally speculating on the form which the complete
History of Sufism will take, when it comes eventually
to be written.
The first reference to the Sufis in English literature
occurs, so far as I am able to trace, in T. Washington's
translation of Nicholay’s Voyages , published in 1585:
and it may well^be that Nicholay is the earliest European
author in modern times to mention Sufism. This does
not mean, of course, that the writings and specula¬
tions of the Sufis were not known much earlier in
the Christian West. The brilliant Spanish orientalist,
Miguel Asm y Palacios, has assembled impressive
evidence in his book Islam and the Divine Comedy to
show that Dante was familiar with Muslim eschatology
and was indebted for many details of his picture of the
next world to the great Murcian theosophist I bn 'Arab!.
This is a single example of what was unquestionably a
general process. It is impossible, for example, to read
the poems of the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross
without concluding that his entire process of thinking
and imaginative apparatus owed much to those Muslim
mystics who had also been natives of Spain. As for the
Catalan Raymond Lull (d. 1314), it is beyond question
NIIN/Sr^
WINNINGS OF SC'Fl STUDIES IN EUROPE
4 mystical writings are influenced by Sufi specif
rjfis, for he was an accomplished Arabic scholar and
founded a school of Oriental Languages at Rome.
‘Concerning the problems of mystical psychology and specu¬
lation’, writes Professor R. A. Nicholson 1 , ‘the West can still
learn something from Islam. How much it actually learned of
these matters during the Middle Ages, when Muslim philosophy
and science radiating from their centre in Spain spread light
through Christian Europe, we have yet to discover in detail, but
the amount was certainly considerable. It would indeed be
strange if no influence from this source reached men like Thomas
Aquinas, Eckhart, and Dante; for mysticism was the common
ground where medieval Christianity and Islam touched each
other most nearly.’
Nor is this by any means all. While much research
yet remains to be done before the whole matter can
become clear, it is already established that the jutuwa
movement in Islam, with its close association with the
Sufi orders, influenced the development of the guilds
in medieval Europe. These matters, however, while
they properly come within the scope of research on
Sufism, only indirectly bear on our present subject,
which is the systematic and scientific study of Islamic
mysticism.
Reverting to our reference in Nicholay’s Voyages , it
is interesting to note that this author is already familiar
with what is undoubtedly the correct etymology of the
term Sufi, for he writes, ‘For that in the Arabian tongue
wool is called Sophy, those which are of this sect are
called Sophians’. We may also quote the Oxford
scholar John Greaves, who writes in 1653, ‘Those
Turks which . . . would be accounted Sofees do com¬
monly read as they walk along the streets’, 2 adding a
' Tie Legacy of Islam (ed. T. W. Arnold and A. Guillaume),
pp, 2I3-II. ' " 2 J. Greaves, Seraglio, p. 178.
§L
win isr#
|\beginnings,of sOfi studies in eurq
jinal note glossing Sofees as Puritans: poi_ / .. i
_ r ing in mind the rival theory which derives the word
Sufi from safe! (purity). At this period there appears to
have been some confusion between this meaning of the
term Sufi or Sofee, and the designation Grand Sophy
commonly applied to the Shah of Persia: it is unneces¬
sary to remark that there is, in point of fact, no connexion
whatever between the two words, for the title Grand
Sophy derives from the Persian Safavl by which the
dynasty owing its origin to Safi al-Dln was known;
though it must be added that there is some excuse for
the confusion in the fact that this Safi al-Dln was him¬
self a well-known Sufi!
The study of Arabic, which had fallen into some
decay following the decline of Arab fortunes and the
expulsion of the Moors from Spain, began in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to revive, while
Persian and Turkish also came now to be studied for the
first time in the West. This meant that a more solid
foundation for Islamic studies existed than mere
travellers’ tales: texts were printed in the languages of
Islam at Rome, Leiden, London, and Oxford, and
Chairs of Arabic were founded at the senior universities
of Europe. But other of the Muslim sciences claimed
the prior attention of scholars, and it was not until the
end of the eighteenth century that the West began once
more to be really curious about Sufism. It is true that
Sa'di’s Gulistan was published with a Latin translation
at Amsterdam in 1651: but George Gentius had no
immediate followers, and for lack of really fundamental
texts the knowledge of Islamic mysticism current in
Europe down, in reality, to the middle of the nineteenth
century remained exceedingly inexact.
It was in India, and in the province of Bengal, and
in the city of Calcutta, that the modern science of
miST/fy
Muslih al-Din Sa'di Shirazi, by a Persian
from a picture in the Haitan built by
Vakil Karim Khan in 1 775 — 79
ltVcZ-iJs.W'
&£&*****
The Haftan near Shiraz is an enclosure 33 by no yards containing the
graves of seven darvishes whose names are unknown; and an imarat or
edifice in which are two oil-portraits—one of Sa'di, half life-size, over the
door on the West side, and the other of Hafiz in a niche, over the door on
the East side. The portrait is in the dress of an 18th century darvish, the
period of the artist. The Persian lines from the Bustdn refer to Sadis
preceptor, the mystic saint, Shjhab al-Din al-Suhrawardl, a successor of
'Abd al-Qadir al-Jllanl
INNINGS OF sOfI STUDIES IN EUROPE
Jm was founded: its chief creator was the k
W vJrated English scholar Sir William Jones. This is
not the occasion for a detailed description of Jones s
encyclopaedic accomplishments and universal know¬
ledge, or of the importance of his pioneering work in
many fields of Indology. Early in his career, while he
•was still at Oxford, he acquired a considerable pro¬
ficiency in both Arabic and Persian, and learned^ to
admire the lyrics of Hafiz, of which he supplied a few
delightful renderings. As soon as he came to Bengal he
applied himself with characteristic energy and en¬
thusiasm to the then little-known study of Sanskrit,^and
was impressed by the similarities between the Vedanta
philosophy and the theosophy of the later Sufis. As it
seems probable that Jones was the first European to
comment on this fact, which had of course been well
known to Dara Shikdh in his day, it will be of interest
to quote the passage from a Presidential Address to the
Asiatic Society which was destined to found a school of
theory that has not since failed to find followers.
‘A figurative mode of expressing the fervour of devotion, or
the ardent love of created spirits towards theii Beneficent
Creator, has prevailed from time immemorial in A stay particu¬
larly among the Persian theists, both ancient .Hushangis and
modern Sufis , who seem to have borrowed it from, the Indian
philosophers of the Vedanta school; and their doctrines are also
believed to be the source of that sublime, but poetical, theology,
which glows and sparkles in the writings of the old Academicks.
‘Plato travelled into Italy and Egypf\ says Claude Fleury, to
learn the “theology of the Pagans at its fountain head”; its true
fountain, however, was neither in Italy nor in Egypt , (though
considerable streams of it had been conducted thither by I y i ha-
goras and by the family of Misra), but in Persia or India, which
the founder of the Italick seat had visited with a similar design. 1
Asiatick Researches, iii, pp. 165-83: ‘On the Mystical Poetry
of the Persians and Hindus’.
BEGINNINGS OF S 0 FI STUDIES IN EUR(
hus Jones speculated, basing his theories
£quaintance with the mysticism of. the Persian poets
only, or very nearly only: for he had no opportunity of
studying those primary documents in Arabic which have
still to be completely explored, and which afford the
only reliable basis for constructing an ancestry of Sufism.
As we shall see, the view that Islamic mysticism was
derived from or was in large measure indebted to the
Vedanta philosophy has not lacked since for learned
advocates, and it yet remains to be finally proved or
rejected.
It so happened that it was a paper on the Afghan sect
of the Raushantya that next stimulated interest in
Sufism. Phis study, almost the last to be published by
that great linguist John Leyden, whose premature death
in 18.11 robbed orientalism of one of its ablest ex¬
ponents, though describing a set of doctrines which has
only a derived relevance to our subject, influenced a
number of contemporary scholars to take up the inquiry
into mystical and semi-mystical sects. 1 It was in
Afghanistan that Mountstuart Elphinstone acquired
his very rudimentary knowledge of Sufism: what he
writes has an antiquarian value as illustrating the state
of knowledge at the beginning of the nineteenth cen¬
tury, and it is therefore relevant to quote it at length.
‘Another sect in Caubul is that of the Soofees, who ought,
perhaps, to be considered as a class of philosophers, rather than of
religionists. As far as I can understand their mysterious doc¬
trine, their leading tenet seems to be, that the whole of the
animated and inanimate creation is an illusion; and that nothing
exists except the Supreme Being, which presents itself under an
infinity of shapes to the soul of man, itself a portion of the divine
essence. T he contemplation of this doctrine raises the Soofees
1 See Asiatick Researches, xi, pp. 363-428: ‘On the Rosheniah sect,
and its founder Bdyezfd Ansdri’.
WNtSrfty,
INNINGS OF SDFl STUDIES IN EUROPE
ost pitch of enthusiasm. They admire God in everj
by frequent meditation on his attributes, and by
tracing him through all forms, they imagine that they attain
to an ineffable love for the Deity and even to an entire union
with his substance. As a necessary consequence of this theory,
they consider the peculiar tenets of every religion as superfluities,
and discard all rites and religious worship, regarding it as a
matter of little importance in what manner the thoughts are
turned to God, provided they rest at last in contemplation on his
goodness and greatness.’ 1
In another passage Elphinstone explains his authority
for what he writes on Sufism :
‘All that is known of it was communicated by a certain
Dervise, who travelled into European countries, and who gave
this account of his initiation in the mystery. He was directed to
enter a particular building, and after passing through winding
passages, and crossing several courts, he reached an apartment
where eight persons were seated. They seemed all transported
and disordered by their own reflections, and their countenances
bore the marks of inspiration. The Dervise there learned un¬
utterable things, and acquired more knowledge on the most
sublime subjects from a moment’s intercourse with those sages,
than could have been gained by years of laborious study.’ 2
In the same year, 1815, as Elphinstone published
these observations, there appeared the first edition of a
most noteworthy book, Sir John Malcolm's History of
Persia . This book contains the first long account,
albeit a garbled account, of the principal doctrines of
the Sufis; though one of Malcolm's two principal
sources was a lecture delivered before the Bombay
Literary Society on 30 December 1811 by James
William Graham, linguist to the 1st Battalion of the
6th Regiment of Bombay Native Infantry. 3 Though
1 Account of the Kingdom ofCaubul pp. 207-8.
2 Ibid., pp. 208-9.
3 J. Malcolm, History of Persia (1829 edition)/ ii, p. 270, fn. 1.
WNISTfty
BEGINNINGS OF S 0 Fl STUDIES IN EURO
am’s lecture was not printed until 1819, 1
^nrevertheless be appropriate to discuss it first, before
passing to analyse what Malcolm himself wrote;
Graham opened his account by referring to what had
already been said on Sufism. ‘Although much has been
said on the celebrated though little known subject of
Sufiism by Sir William Jones the president of the
Asiatic Society, and by the learned and ever-to-be-
lamented Dr. Leyden that universal genius; yet there
is an ample field for further discussion on this curious
and important head.’ Little did the ingenuous Bombay
soldier realize how much discussion was to follow in the
next century. As for his sources, these were sufficiently
meagre; 2 and his whole account scarcely merits the
high praise accorded by Sir John Malcolm. 3 Neverthe¬
less, considering the disabilities under which Graham
laboured, his effort is not.to be despised. After quoting
the usual etymologies offered for the term Sufi, he well
defines Sufism as ‘a total disengagement of the mind
from all temporal concerns and worldly pursuits; an
entire throwing off not only of every superstition, doubt,
or the like, but of the practical mode of worship,
ceremonies, &c. laid down in every religion*. He men¬
tions the theory that the Sufis derived their doctrines
and practices from the Yogis and Dnanis, and then
1 Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay (1819), pp. 89-119.
2 ‘Through my colloquial intercourse with natives of different
classes, I have heard with some degree of pleasure many anecdotes of
this wonderful order, though the greater part of them certainly border¬
ing upon the marvellous’: p. 89. On p. 97 Graham quotes ‘a curious
little treatise in Persian, entitled Tuni zvejood': later he cites Kabir in
Urdu, and Abu 'All Qalandar and Shams-i Tabriz (i.e., JaM al-Din
Rum!) in Persian.
3 ‘There cannot be higher authority than this gentleman, who adds
to great learning a singular knowledge of the opinions and usages of
these remarkable oriental devotees’: History of Persia, loc. cit.
miST/fy.
|GINNINGS OF §tjFl STUDIES IN EUROPE
ds to describe ‘the Different States and Stag^
rds Perfection attainable by Man, as approaching
Divinity’: the maqamat he enumerates as consisting of
Sheryat, Tureequt, Hhqeequt, and Marifut, while his
list of the ahwal embraces Nasoot, Melkoot, Jebroot,
and Lahoot. He gives a curious list of the ‘different
Kinds of Sufis’, whom he divides into ‘Salik, Mejezoob
(i.e., Majdhub) and Mejezoob Salik’: the ‘Salik’ group
includes the names of Khajeh Nizamud-deen, Seyed
Muntijub-ud-deen, Ameer Khosroo, Ameer Hussan,
Khajeh Nusseer-ud-deen, Sheikh Fereed Shiker Gunj,
and Sheikh Sffdi Shirazi, while the epithet ‘MejSzoob’
is given to Shems Tebreez, Munsoor Hulaj, Khajeh
Hafiz, Shah Sherif Boo Aly Qulunder, Sheikh Aboo-
beker Shible, Ainul Koozat Humdani, Sirmud, Shah
Hussein Duddee, and Shah Peim. 1 In a daring con¬
cluding passage, before recounting some anecdotes of
Hallaj and Shams-i-Tabrlz, Graham offers this inter¬
esting suggestion. ‘The beloved, Mahboob , is the Son;
Love itself, Mohbut , is the Holy Ghost; and he who
loves all, Mohib , is evidently the Father. ... I think
there can be no stronger language in the mystery of the
Trinity than this, and no stronger proof, especially
from Mahomedan authority; though 1 am sorry to say
they do not take it as such.’ 2 Finally, even more greatly
daring, he confronts some Sufi sayings with passages
from the New Testament, and seeks to establish the
affinity between Sufism and ‘Christian Spiritualism’;
adding a footnote to disarm the criticism such an
analogy was bound in his generation to provoke. 3
Time prevents me from entering into as full a dis-
1 I quote Graham’s spelling. 2 Op. cit., p. 109.
3 ‘He has not always employed that caution in language, of which
his long residence in the East has prevented him from learning the
usefulness’: p. 119.
WHiST/fy
2§L
EGJNNINGS C 5 F StM STUDIES IN EUROI
Ion of the curious account of Sufism given by 1
m in his History of Persia as I would wish.; it may
indeed be judged that I have already given too great
attention to the imperfect accounts of the subject which
we have been considering: my excuse must be first that
it seemed desirable to draw a clear contrast between the
meagre knowledge current among European scholars
at the beginning of last century and the vast results
now provided by subsequent research, and secondly
that the foregoing papers have been largely forgotten and
are not now generally available. My second point does
not hold good of Malcolm, however, and it is therefore
the less necessary for me to dwell at any length on his
account. Malcolm derived his knowledge of Sufism
from two main sources: Captain Graham’s lecture to the
Bombay Literary Society, and a letter written by ‘Aga
Mahomed Ali, the late Mooshtahed, or high priest of
Kermanshah’, with whom he was well acquainted when
he was in Persia in 1800. 1 He is also able to quote
Shahnawaz Khan, the author of Ma'athir al-umard , and
the Majalis al-mu minirt of Nurallah Shushtarl. Mal¬
colm’s catalogue of the various sects of the Sufis, and
his statistics regarding the diffusion of Sufism in Persia,
are very curious; while I cannot refrain from quoting
his general observations on the nature and origin of
Islamic mysticism,
‘The Persian Soofees, though they have borrowed much of
their belief and many of their usages from India, have not
adopted, as a means of attaining beatitude, the dreadful austerities
common among the visionary devotees of the Hindoos. Prac¬
tices so abhorrent to nature required for their support all the
influences of ignorance and superstition over the human mind.
The most celebrated Soofee teachers in Persia have been men
as famed for their knowledge as their devotion.’ 2
1 History of Persia, ii, p. 271, fa. 1,
2 Ibid., p. 278.
Ml HtSTQy
} INNINGS OF StJFl STUDIES IN EUROPE
deluding passage he writes: ^
Have abstained from any description of the various extra¬
ordinary shapes which this mystical faith has taken in India . . .
nor have I ventured to offer any remarks on the similarity
between many usages and opinions of the Soofees and those of
the Gnostics and other Christian sects, as well as some of the
ancient Greek philosophers. The principal Soofee writers are
familiar with the wisdom of Aristotle and Plato: their most
celebrated works abound in quotations from the latter. It has
often been assumed, that the knowledge and philosophy of
Greece were borrowed from the east: if so, the debt has been
repaid. An account of Pythagoras, if translated into Persian,
would be read as that of a Soofee saint. His initiation into the
mysteries of r the Divine nature, his deep contemplation and
abstraction, his miracles, his passionate love of music, his mode
of teaching his disciples, the persecution he suffered, and the
manner of his death, present us with a close parallel to what is
related of many eminent Soofee teachers, and may lead to a
supposition that there must be something similar in the state of
knowledge and of society, where the same causes produce the
same effects.’ 1
There is an extraordinarily modern ring about these
words.
The interest in oriental studies provoked by the con¬
siderable achievements of British pioneers in India was
not long in spreading to many parts of the European
continent; and it was the turn of France and Germany
to make the next contribution to the investigation of
Sufism. The mystical poetry of Persia had indeed
already for some time been the vogue; its influence on
the mind of so great a genius as Goethe is well known;
and Hammer-Purgstall’s creditable translations of the
poets from 'Umar Kh ayyam to Jam! introduced a large
new public to a still unfamiliar subject. In France the
illustrious Silvestre de Sacy included Sufism within the
Ibid., p. 300.
EGINNINGS O'F SCTFl STUDIES IN EURO
range, of his interests: he published a noteworthy
%
swortny
dition and translation of Farld r al-Din 'Attar’s Pand-
ndmeh in 1819. It is thus not surprising that shortly
after the appearance of Malcolm’s History of Persia the
first monograph devoted exclusively to Sufism was pub¬
lished: this book, F. R. D. Tholuck’s Ssufsmus sive
Theologia Persica pantheistica, though by modern stand¬
ards trivial enough, marked in its day a very serious
and substantial effort, and is of great antiquarian
interest to the historian of Sufi studies. As the volume
is now extremely scarce and little studied, there seems
sufficient justification for examining it with some atten¬
tion. Tholuck aims, in four hundred pages of scholastic
Latin, at convincing his readers of his wide researches
and linguistic gifts, as was the fashion in those days,
and for that matter still is; yet must be convicted of
having definitely failed in his main purpose, and that
because the material with which he chose to construct
his thesis was wholly inadequate. Printed books were
certainly lacking, but even at this time Germany was
not destitute of important collections of oriental manu¬
scripts; and while our author was reading in his native
libraries and examining numerous unpublished texts,
he might have made a better choice of bibliography
than he did. For what is his reading-list? In Arabic,
two books of al-Ghazall, which he certainly did not
study very profoundly; Ibn Khallikan and al-QazwInl;
a history of Cairo by al-Suyutl, a book of Muslim sects
by al-Isfara’inl, and an anonymous treatise on Muslim
theology. His Turkish sources consist of a translation
of ‘Aziz Nasaffs al-Maqsad al-aqsa , later to be popu¬
larized by E. H. Palmer, and a work entitled Miftdh
al-abrdr wa-misbah al-anwar which he ascribes to 'Attar.
His main material is drawn from Persian, and here his
list is more impressive though still very primitive, and
INNINGS OF StJFl STUDIES IN EUROPE
/ms the impression that he had by no means reak
5 ugh all the books he names—the first half of Jalal
al-Din Ruml’s Matjrnawi, the Gulshan-i rdzoi Sh abistar!
which E. H. Whinfield made his special care, Jaml’s
Subhat al-abrar, Tuhfat al-ahrar , and Baharistan , 'Attar’s
Jauhar al-dhat and Tadhkirat al-auliya, the first volume of
Mirkhwand’s Raudat al-safa, and a ‘Kitab Hussniye’ by
one Asad al-Din. A strange collection indeed for a writer
on so vast a subject as Sufism: yet Tholuck suffered from
the handicap under which every pioneer labours—leaving
the beaten track, he had none to guide him through the
pathless jungle of abstruse thought that lay ahead.
After listing his sources the author discusses the origin
of Sufi doctrine. He opts in favour of the derivation of the
term Sufi from suf (wool); then mentions that he formerly
held the view that Sufism was of Magian parentage.
‘For considering the multitude of Magians that had remained
especially in northern Persia, and apprehending that many of the
most eminent Sufi doctors were born in the northern province of
Khorasan; having in mind also how the language had formerly
passed from India to Persia, as well as how, amid the variety of
opinions which even in the time of Agathias had divided Persia,
some portion of Indian doctrine had also migrated thither: I
came at one time to the view that Sufism had been thought out
in about .the time of al-Ma’mun by Magians in Khorasan sur¬
viving, imbued with Indian mysticism. This opinion gained
further support from the fact that, as we often read, the founders
of the sects were either descendants of Magian families or at
least were well acquainted with Magians.’ 1
This theory, however, which has since attracted oc¬
casional support, he had now abandoned for lack of
confirmatory evidence; and he had consequently re¬
verted to the view that Sufism sprang from the wide¬
spread Arab tendency to monasticism. Now Tholuck
1 Ssufismus, pp. 42-3.
BEGINNINGS OF SOFT STUDIES IN EUROPl
hre so remarkably anticipates later opinions far
learned than his, that it will not be a waste of time to
consider the argument he advances.
‘In Mohammedanism the life of the coenobite scarcely ac¬
corded with military dominion, and therefore monasticism was
not only disapproved of but roundly forbidden by Muharunnel,
whence the Tradition so often on the lips of Mohammedans,
“No monkery in Islam”. Yet there are not lacking the clearest:
indications that not only Muhammad himself but the entire Arab
people were earnestly inclined towards the monastic life Feeling
that his followers were so ardently desirous of the coenobite life, a;
not to be readily compelled and coerced to abandon it, lie pro¬
nounced that “Clod Most Glorious had appointed the Pilgrim¬
age to be the monasticism of Muhammad’s community”.’ 1
From this tendency to asceticism Tholuck traces the
development of the mystical outlook through the lead ¬
ing saintly personalities of early Islam: Hasan of Basra,
Rabi'a, Ibrahim ibn Adham, Abu Sa'ld ibn Abl ’1- Kh air
(whom he assigns, following the erroneous lead of
Langlds, to the beginning of the third century a.h.),
Junaid, BistamI, and Hallaj: so he travels a path which,
has subsequently become sufficiently well worn, yet a
path the true and accurate surveying of which yet
remains the most important and difficult task for the
future researcher. Of BistamI he says that by him,
more openly than by any other Sufi prior to his time, the
doctrine of the divinity of man was enunciated, ‘and
many of his sayings and teachings savour of so solid a
fanaticism that they might have led the less instructed
either into Indian quietism or to that contempt for the
law which characterized Carpocratic and BegrinY
After dealing with the Hallajian doctrine of unity with
God, Tholuck makes the observation that even this
extreme development finds its origin in the Prophet’s
Ssufomus, p. 4.5.
Op. cit., pp. 62-3.
mmsT/ty
. JINNINGS OF SUFI STUDIES IN EUROPE i<
Caching, quoting the Tradition beloved of the
Suns, ‘I have’ moments of familiarity (with God) when
neither Cherubin nor Prophet can contain me . f inally
he claims to have firmly and solidly established that
‘Sufi doctrine was both, generated and must be illus¬
trated out of Muhammad’s own mysticism’. 1
The rest of the book consists of an attempt to recon-
struct the mystical theology of Sufism on what we have
seen to be inadequate foundations: the result is suffi¬
ciently unsatisfactory by modern standards, but was a
considerable advance on anything that had been
achieved hitherto. Tholuck does not fail, like a true
child of his age, to trace the spread of Quietism through
Asia from China and India, and its passage via Persia
in pre-Islamic times into Greece and Alexandria where,
taken up by the Iveoplatonists and Gnostics, it filtered
through pseudo-Dionysius into medieval Christianity.
The allure of comparative mysticism is hard to resist,
and few since Tholuck have succeeded in resisting it;
yet let it be clearly understood that so far as the con¬
structing of a history of Sufism is concerned these
attractive generalities make in reality very little solid
matter; and personally I would recommend that a truce
be called to all such speculations for at least a generation,
so that meanwhile all possible energy can be concen¬
trated upon the main task in hand, the only task appro¬
priate to the thorough-going specialist, the description
and analysis of Sufi doctrine and practice on the basis of
Islamic sources and Islamic sources only.
I have gone rather fully into these early writings on
Sufism for reasons already given, and do not propose
in these lectures to attempt anything like an equally
detailed examination of subsequent productions; the
opportunity for this may present itself on another
Op. cit., p. 71.
BEGINNINGS OF SOlT STUDIES IN EUROPl
tasion; in the meantime I must be content to aliow
my foregoing remarks to serve as a model for a future
complete survey. Materials for such a survey are all too
copious, for the silsilah, so to speak, founded by Sir
Williairi Jones and transmitted by Graham, Malcolm,
and Tholuck, has attracted a multitude of enthusiastic
adherents and now has affiliations in all parts of the
world and in almost every language. In what follows,
both of this lecture and the two succeeding lectures,,
only the prominent landmarks are selected and .the
territory mapped out in reference to them.
The crying need, in the last century as now, was for
printed texts: slowly enough that need is being satisfied,
and only during the past forty years has real progress
been made. The publication by A. Sprenger of Abd
al-Razzaq’s Dictionary of the Technical Terms of the Sufis
(Calcutta, 1845), and by W. Nassau Lees of Jaml’s
Nafahat al-uns (Calcutta, 1859), may be regarded in
this respect as of epoch-making significance. Mean¬
while, on the side of Persian mystical poetry really
impressive work had already been done by 1850. 1 he
Bulaq presses were now beginning to produce that
stream of Arabic texts which was eventually to become
a flood: Ibn 'Arabl’s Fusils al-hikam was first printed,
with a Turkish commentary, in 1252/1836 and his
al-Futuhdt al-Makkiyah in 1269/1853, and soon the
most important books of Ghazall, Qushani, Abu Talib
al-Makki, and Sha'ranI were available. Thus it was
that by the time Alfred von Kremer wrote his Geschich, •
der herrschenden Ideen des I slams (Leipzig, 1868) he
was able to draw on printed material of considerable
volume; while the work of cataloguing the collections
of Islamic manuscripts, scattered over the libraries ot
Europe, had made such progress that the researcher no
longer had the sense of taking a leap into the dark when
miSTffy
JIJiSgINNINGS OF SOFl STUDIES IN EUROPE
\^?|<Mr4ssed himself to the task of examini ng unpulP
lished resources. Chapters 5 to 10 of the first part of
this important book of von Kremer are so insti active
for the summary they present of the advance made in
Sufi studies since Tholuck, that I permit myself the
liberty of describing their contents.
In chapter 5 (pp.’ 52-9) von Kremer draws a picture
of Arabia in pre-lslamic and early Islamic times in
which he emphasizes the widespread tendency to
asceticism. ‘The life of the .monk and the ascetic,
which had been evolved in the East some thiee
centuries before Muhammad and had spread in the
most extraordinary fashion, did not fail to make a deep
impression on the Arabs/ 1 Pre-Islamic poets, notably
Imr al-Qais, delighted to describe the solitary monk’s
cell in "the desert; Muhammad’s meeting with a
Christian monk had an important influence on his
spiritual development; his life and teachings exhibit
unmistakable ascetic tendencies, as is indicated by the
well-known Tradition, ‘If ye knew what I know, ye
would laugh little and weep much . I he next phase
(chapter 6, pp. 59-69) is marked by the reaction of the
god-fearing Muslims against the luxury and splendour
in which worldly governors and rulers indulged, flushed
with the sudden access of undreamed-of power. The
Arabs, being desert-dwellers, were by nature highly
nervous and susceptible; long vigils, and the constant
meditation of the Word of God, produced a sense of
religious exaltation. To the motives of fear and awe
was presently added the sentiment of the love of God:
this von Kremer ascribes to feminine influence, in¬
stancing the sayings of Rabi'a, Plemmed in on both
sides by communities among which the life of the
cloister had been practised for centuries, the Arabs
1 Op. cit., p. 52.
'.J BEGINNINGS OF SfJFl STUDIES IN EUROPiN^^
ibuld not help moving towards the monastic rule Mi
seems in fact that Sufism absorbed into itself two
different elements, the one an old Christian-ascetic,
which had had a powerful influence already at the very
beginning of Islam, and then later a Buddhist-con¬
templative that soon won the upper hand, thanks to the
increasing influence of the Persians on Islam.’ 1 Von
Kremer traces these developments through Mphasibl
—whom Sprenger had already studied in the Calcutta
Review — Dh u ’ 1 -Nun, BistamI, and Junaid. The pan¬
theistic character of Sufi doctrine (chapter 7, pp. 69—
78) became more and more pronounced by the end
of the third century of the Hijra, especially under
the influence of Hallaj. Von Kremer interprets the
celebrated ana 'l-haqq as pure apotheosis, and finds
its origins ultimately in India, the media being the
old Persian doctrine of the divinity of the king, and
the extreme Shl'ite teaching regarding 'All and his
house. Henceforward the foreign element of murdqa-
bah (equated with the Vedic dhyana) overshadows the
original ascetic character of Sufism. By the time of
Ghazall (chapter 8, pp. 79-89) it became possible to
attempt a synthesis between orthodoxy and the mystical
love of God and ^Mr-induced ecstasy. As for Suhra-
wardl Maqtul (chapter 9, pp. 89-100), his ishraqt
theosophy in which Neoplatonism and Zoroastrianism
joined forces was so patently anti-Islamic in character
that it was not surprising that orthodoxy rose against:
the heretic and put him to death. In analysing the
doctrines of this great mystic von Kremer was able to
use his Hikmat al-ishraq and Haydkil al-nur , but was not
familiar with those beautiful allegories in Persian which
have in recent years engaged the attention of a number
of scholars. Finally (chapter 10, pp. 100-11) Islam in
1 Op. cit., p. 67,
Ml NI$t#
WINGS OF SUFI STUDIES IN EUROPE
e^nffered a decline, and with it Sufism, now the
aeFvutsn orders commence their separate existence; and
von Kremer ends his illuminating sketch with a descrip¬
tion of Ibn 'Arab! and his system, based mainly on his
al-Futuhat al-Makklyah and the writings of Sha'rani.
It is interesting to compare this, the first really
scientific account of the development of Sufism, with a
little book published one year earlier at Cambridge,
E. H. Palmer’s Oriental Mysticism. Palmer had just
graduated when this volume appeared, and it is there¬
fore only natural that his judgement was still immature.
It was indeed precocious to give so high-sounding a
title to a translation of the inconsiderable little tract of
'Aziz Nasafi which Tholuck had already utilized in a
Turkish version: nevertheless, the digest of Ibn 'Arabi’s
system, which this treatise contains, still forms, a uselul
introduction to Sufism in general. It is incidentally
interesting to read in Palmer’s prefatory note, ‘My
present intention is merely to give an exposition of the
system; its origin and history I reserve for a future work,
in which I hope to prove that Sufiism is really the develop¬
ment of the Primaeval Religion of the Aryan race’. 1 . I his
ambitious project was never realized, however; it may
have formed one of the tasks Palmer intended for those
later years that never came: for he was murdered in the
prime of life by Bedouins of the Egyptian desert.
The same year, 1867, saw the appearance of an
important though rather unscientific book which is still
of great value and interest—sufficiently great to justify
a new edition in 1927: this was John P. Brown’s lhe
Darvishes. Brown was at one time Secretary and Drago¬
man of theUnited States Legation in Constantinople, and
he made good use of the opportunities afforded by Ins
official appointment to investigate very thoroughly the
1 Oriental Mysticism , p. xi.
BEGINNINGS OF SOFT STUDIES IN EURO!
ny Sufi orders which in his time exercised very
influence on Turkish life. His attitude to the problem of
the nature and origins of Sufism is typical of his
period.
"That the Spiritual Principles of the Darvish Orders existed
in Arabia previous to the time of the great and talented Islam
Prophet cannot be doubted. . . . The spiritualism of the Da
vishes differing in many respects from Islamism, and having its
origin in the religious conceptions of India and Greece, perhaps
the information I have been enabled to collect together on the
subject may not be without interest to the reader. Much of this
is original; and having been extracted from Oriental works, and
from Turkish, Arabic, and Persian MSS., may be relied upon is
strictly accurate. In procuring materials from original sources.,
valuable assistance has been rendered me by personal friends,
members of various Darvish Orders in this capital, to whom I
would here express my thanks. Notwithstanding the unfavou r~
able opinion entertained by many—principally in the Christian
world—against their religious principles, 1 must, in strict
justice, add that I have found these persons liberal and intelligent,
sincere, and most faithful friends.’ 1
Such being the noble sentiments entertained by the
author, it is not surprising that the book itself gives a
sympathetic and unbiased account of the various Sul i
orders investigated. As the public activities of these
orders were brought to an end by the Kemalist regime
in Turkey, and as no other book of equal scope exists
that deals with practical Sufism in that country, it goes
without saying that Brown's study will remain a stand
ard work of reference. It marks a great advance on
the pages in E. W. Lane's Manners and Customs of the
Modern Egyptians , describing dervish life in Egypt at
the beginning of the nineteenth century, 2 though from
the strictly scientific standpoint it falls a good deal
1 The Darvishes, 2nd edition, p. v.
2 Modern Egyptians, ist edition (London, 1836), pp. 310-17.
WHISTffy
lNNINGS OF StJFl STUDIES IN EUROPE
. ythe level of subsequent publications, no doua
r&e measure inspired by Brown’s work.
'To complete this survey of the development of Sufi
stv dies before the rise of the modern school of Goldziher,
Nicholson, Macdonald, Massignon, and Asin Palacios,
1 may perhaps be permitted finally to quote the great
Dutch scholar Dozy. Writing in 1879, he summarized
the situation thus:
‘Did mysticism really issue from the bosom of Islam, as has
beeti claimed? There is good reason to doubt it, foi the wit¬
nesses introduced into the debate are too recent to have authority.
Moreover, they themselves consist for the most part of mystics,
Sufis; and they always sought to trace the birth of then doctrine
not only to the earliest period of Islam, by making Sufis for
example of 'All and Muhammad, but even to the age^of the
Patriarchs, saying that Abraham himself was already a Sufi. In
short, the texts in question are to be found in books more dis¬
tinguished for their poetical accounts of miracles than for their
historical authenticity. It is much more natural to believe that
mysticism came from Persia; it actually existed in that country
before the Muslim conquest, thanks to influence from India;
even before this period the idea of emanation and of the return of
every thing to God had wide currency in Persia, and it was com¬
monly said'that the world has no objective and visible existence,
that all that exists is God, and that, apart from God, nothing is.’ 1
These words fittingly sum up the degree of develop¬
ment attained since the first beginnings of D Ohsson
and De Gobineau, Jones and Tholuck and De Sacy.
In a hundred years not a great deal that can be regarded
as really substantial research had taken place. And the
reason for this was, of course, first and last and always,
the lack of published texts and of their scientific analysis.
Between von Kremer and Goldziher a great gulf is
fixed, a gulf measured not so much in years as in avail¬
able research material. To illustrate this point it will be
R. Dozy, Essai sur Vhistoire de P Islamisme (Paris, 1879)* P- 3 1 7 *
"@L
BEGINNINGS OF StlFl STUDIES IN EUROPI
, fficient to mention the names of some of the basic"
Sufi texts which were printed for the' first time during
these intervening years. The Qut al-quliib of Abu Talib
al-Makkl(d. 3^6/996) appeared at Cairo in 1310/1*893;
the kisalah of al-Qushairl in 1284/1867; al- Gh azali’s
Ihyd 'ulum al-din in 1289/1872, his Biddyat al-hiddyah
in 1287/1870, hi&Kmiyd-isdddah (inPersian) at Luck¬
now in 1288/1871, and his autobiography, al-Mungidh
min al-daldl, 1 at Constantinople in 1293/1876; the
Kash[ al-mahjub of Hujwlrl was lithographed for the
first^ time at Lahore in 18745 the 1 'adhkirat al-awliyd
of barld al-.Dln 'Attar also at Lahore in 1306/1889,
though an edition of this work had already appeared in
India before 1857 ; 2 the Futuh al-ghaib of 'Abd al-
Qadir al-Jilan! was lithographed with a Persian para¬
phrase at Lucknow in 1880, his al-Ghunyah li-tdlibi tariq
al-haqq was printed at Cairo in 1288/1871, and his
al-Fath al-rabbdni in 1281/1864. This list, which is by
no means complete, will serve to indicate how im¬
portant for the purposes of research was that enterprise
which inspired publishers in various parts of the Muslim
world to make available to the general public the
fundamental text-books of Sufism, thus setting an
example which their successors will do well to emulate.
We have now completed the first part of our his¬
torical sketch of the development of Sufi studies in the
West. We have already travelled a long way from
Jones and Malcolm to Brown and De Sacy; but the
greater and more important part of the journey still
remains ahead. I his, therefore, will be a convenient
point at which to break off: my next lecture will begin
with the names of Goldziher and E. G. Browne.
1 Translated for the first time into French by Barbier de Meynard
in the Journal Asiatique, s 6 i. vii, t. ix, pp. r-93 (1877).
1 See A. J. Arberry, Catalogue of Persian Books in I.O. Library, p.506.
miStyy.
• GOl-„
the SECOND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO
MASSIGNON
¥ N my last lecture I summarized the results of Euro-
■ pean research into the history and doctrines of Sufism
down to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. e
saw in the course of our examination that while un¬
questionably much progress had been made since the
oioneering work of Tholuck and his contemporaries,
the conception of Sufism current in the West was
still far from accurate. In this second lecture I shall
endeavour to cover the greater part of the researches
prosecuted by scholars of the modern school.
new chapter in the history of Islamic studies
opened when a fifteen-year-old Eton boy, sympathizing
with Sultan as against Czar, resolved to learn I urkish
as a preliminary to enlisting in the Ottoman at my,
Edward Granviile Browne did not fulfil this particulai
ambition, for the war which aroused his youthru
enthusiasm ended before he could get into uniform, but
his chance of visiting the Muslim East came in T887
when Pembroke College, Cambridge, elected him to a
Fellowship and sent him out to Persia. Brownes
record of that adventure is among the worlds great
travel-books, but we mention it in the present context
because it contains several interesting references to
Sufism. Browne’s insight into the heart and core or Sufi
teaching has never been excelled, and almost all his
books are permeated with a deep sympathy and under¬
standing of the true nature of Islamic mysticism, in
particular, his Literary History of Persia , that unsur¬
passable masterpiece of profound research and brilliant
writing, contains by far the best and most complete
%
ECOND PHASE: GGLDZIHER TO MASSIGNO:
unt yet given of the influence of Sufi thought 1
ersian poetry. For our present purpose, however, we
must content ourselves with only one quotation, taken
from Browne’s first book.
‘The renunciation of self is the great lesson to be learned, and
its first steps may be learned from a merely human love. But
what is called love is often selfish; rarely absolutely unselfish.
The test of unselfish love is this, that we should be ready and
willing to sacrifice our own desires, happiness, even life itself, to
render the beloved happy, even though we know that our
sacrifice will never be understood or appreciated, and that we
shall therefore not be rewarded for it by an increase of love or
gratitude. Such is the true love which leads us up to God. We
love our fellow-creatures because there is in them something of
the Divine, some dim. reflection of the True Beloved, reminding
our souls of their origin, home, and destination. From the love
of the reflection we pass to the love of the Light which casts it;
and, loving the Light, we at length become one with It, losing the
false self and gaining the True, therein attaining at. length to
happiness and rest, and becoming one with all that we have
loved—the Essence of that which constitutes the beauty alike
of a noble action, a beautiful thought, or a lovely face.’ 1
It would be well that only those should venture upon
the high research into Sufism who can write of its
teachings with equal appreciation and sincerity.
In 1898 a book was issued by the Cambridge Uni¬
versity Press which attracted much interest and approval
at the time, and was destined to mark the beginning of
a lifetime of work devoted to the elucidation and inter¬
pretation of Sufi doctrine. This book was the Selected
Poems from the Divdn-i-Shams-i-Tabriz\ its author was
R. A. Nicholson. We shall be dealing later at greater
length with the dominating part Nicholson has played
in prosecuting and stimulating research into Sufism,
and we mention this book now in order to place it in its
1 E. G, Browne, A Tear among the Persians , p. 140.
MiN/sr ff> ,
20 ND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNON
, ^1 context. We have seen that I holuck took t
wawl-i manawi as one of his sources when writing
t he thesis Ssufismus : the same author devoted consider¬
able space in a later book to a more detailed study ot
Rum!. 1 * He was, however, by no means the first Luro-
oean scholar to be attracted by the greatest mystical poet
of Islam. Jaques de Wallenbourg (1763-1806), profit¬
ing of his diplomatic posting at the Golden Horn, spent
six years in preparing an edition and annotated french
translation of the entire Mathnawl , but had the great
•ill-luck to see his completed labours perish in the great
fire which devastated Pera in 1799.2 The first printed
edition of the Mati$nai6$ came from Bulaq in 1268/1853,
but meanwhile Georg Rosen had translated into German
verse about one-third of Book I. 3 Riickert (1819) and
von Rosenzweig (1838), among others, made a par¬
ticular study of the Dtwan, but all previous work on the
lyrics was superseded by this book of Nicholson. I he
,A lathnawi was familiar to the British public through the
writings of Sir James Redhouse, the great Turkish
scholar, and E. H. Whinfield: Redhouse translated the
first book in 1881, while Whinfield produced, in 1887,
-.Hi abridged version of the whole poem. W hinfield
further assisted in the formation of the modern British
school of Sufi studies by editing and translating the
Gulshan-i raz of Shabistari (1880): following in the
footsteps of Baron Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall,
whose German version of this little poem had appeared
in 1838, Whinfield prefaced to his text a general
1 Bluthensammlung aus dcr morgenlandischen Mystik (Berlin, 1825),
op. 53-191.
3 See R. A. Nicholson, The Mathnazvi of Jaldlu ddw Rami, vol. 1,
pp. 2—3. a
3 Mesnezol oder Doppeherse des Scheich Mow lan a Dschc/al-ed-din
Riimt, Leipzig, 1849.
3 b|tSECOND PHASE: GOLDZIEIER TO MASSIGNO:
pyount of Sufism. To this theme Nicholson retur:
Selected Poems, there enunciating in its earliest form
his theory of Neoplatonist influence. He has subse¬
quently written a number of important papers in dis¬
cussion of the origins and early history of Sufism, but
of this more later.
The inspiration of John Brown’s The Darvishes
moved O. Depont and X. Coppolani to study the Sufi
orders of North Africa, though it is true that the learned
authors of Les Confreries religieuses musulmanes also
sought to serve a political purpose by writing their
masterly book which appeared at Algiers in 1897: they
argued that it was in French interests to win over the
support of the dervish communities of French North
Africa, but no doubt their contribution to learning far
exceeded their service to politics. The first part of this
work, which can well stand as a model for all subsequent
researches of a similar character, sketches a general
history of Arabia and the rise and development of
Islam, leading into a discussion of the origins and
evolution of Sufism against the particular background
of the Arab conquests of the Maghreb. The major
portion of the book (pp. 193—571) describes minutely
the organization of the Sufi orders, especially in Algeria,
and lists the principal fraternities with all their branches
and affiliations. This production is a very great advance
on Brown’s rather unscientific work, and it would be
well that any scholar planning to write a complete
account of the Sufi orders of India should thoroughly
study the methods of Depont and Coppolani.
The distinguished Hungarian scholar Ignaz Gold-
ziher brought Sufism within the range of his general
and learned studies of Islam, and two of his papers rank
among the classical contributions to our subject. The
first of these,‘Materialien zur Entwickelungsgeschichte
Ml NiSTfy
D PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNON
imus’, appeared in the Vienna Oriental Journh
_* J99 (vol. xiii, pp. 35-56), and has been attentively
studied by all subsequent researchers. In a slight
modification of von Kremer’s theory of the origins of
Sufism, 1 Goldziher isolates two distinct currents, taking
his cue from Ibn Khaldun: the first pure asceticism,
closely cognate with the orthodox doctrine of Islam and
ultimately traceable to Christian influence*, the second a
speculative theosophy derived on the one hand from
Neoplatonism, and on the other from Buddhism. 2 * * The
other important paper of Goldziher is his chapter
'Asketismus und Sufismus’ in Vorlesungen tiber den
him (2nd edition," 1925, pp. 133~ 8 7 ) : this is a more
detailed statement of the same theory, but further
cogent arguments are arrayed in a masterly fashion.
<» adziher’s insistence on a clear division between zuhd
and tasawwuf is his most important contribution to the
whole study of Sufism, and furnishes a clue which must
be closely followed up when the history of mysticism in
Islam comes to be written.
Before embarking on a discussion of the work of the
three great masters of the modern school—Nicholson,
Massignon, and Asm Palacios—it will be convenient if
we pass in review a number of important books and
papers by other scholars which have had a decisive
influence on the development of Sufi studies. It is
noteworthy, in the first place, that a single volume of the
journal Asiatique (9 s serie, t. xix, 1902) contains articles
by two distinguished French scholars which are highly
relevant to our discussion. Carra de Vaux, the historian
of Arab philosophy, contributes a very interesting and
1 See above, p. 22.
2 As far as I can trace, Goldziher was the first to utilize Kalctbadhi,
whose Kitab al-Taarruf I have had the honour to publish and
translate.
SECOND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNO^)^j
portant paper on the Illuminative philosophy of
Suhrawardi Maqtul, taking up the story where von
Kremer had left it off.
‘The philosophy of Illumination is mainly Neoplatonism, but
a Neoplatonism expressed by means of a special nomenclature
based on the use of the metaphorical terms “Light”—“Dark¬
ness”, symbolizing the metaphysical heights and depths, spirit
and matter, good and evil. ... It is worth noting that, according
to oriental tradition, the dualism of Manes was mainly charac¬
terized by this opposition of Light and Darkness. As on the
other hand the philosophy of tshraq often refers to Zoroaster and
the Persian sages, it may be inferred that this philosophy is a
Neoplatonism clothed in a terminology whose flavour is Persian
and perhaps more especially Manichean.’ 1
This main thesis is supported by copious extracts from
the Hikmat al-isjirdq and Hayakil al-nur , and is finally
summed up as follows: ‘According to all appearances,
it must be recognized that ishraq had two ancestors
whose features it reproduces, it is true, with an unequal
fidelity—one Greek, the other Persian: Plotinus and
Manes.’ 2 After Carra de Vaux the great figure of
Suhrawardi Maqtul has continued to engage the atten¬
tion of a number of scholars, and in recent years con¬
siderable headway has been made in the investigation
of the development of his theosophical system, especi¬
ally since the publication of some of his earlier treatises
written in Persian. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that
more than the fringe has been touched of a very vital
and fascinating subject; in particular it yet remains for
Suhrawardi’s immediate sources to be worked out
thoroughly; to this matter we shall be referring in our
third lecture. In the same and the following volume of
the Journal Asiatique, M. E. Blochet published his very
s uggestive ‘Etudes sur l’esoterisme musulman’ which
Journal Asiatique (1902), pp. 63-4.
Ibid., p. 94.
of
; 0 /ND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNON 3'
be read with profit. An interesting discussion 1
jufism occurs in the first volume of E. J. W. Gibb’s
monumental History of Ottoman Poetry, and the same
work is a mine of information on the influence of
mysticism on Turkish literature. I he encyclopaedic
range of D. S. Margoliouth’s interests naturally in¬
cluded Sufism, to which study he made several im¬
portant contributions, among them a translation of the
hostile Talb is Iblis of Ibn al-jauzl: especially to be
mentioned are his paper on the biography of Abd al~
Qadir al-Jllanl, 1 and his note on Muhasibl which bridges
the gap between Sprenger and Massignon and then
Margaret Smith. 2
Duncan Black Macdonald, uniquely qualified as a
philosopher and follower of William James, devoted
many years to the study of Sufism, to which he assigns
.everal chapters in his two important books, Develop¬
ment of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional
Theory (1903), and The Religious Attitude and Life in
Islam (1909). In the former work he supports the
Neoplatonist parentage, but combines this with a special
reference to the Christian ascetics and mystics. ‘There
is a striking resemblance between the Sufis seeking by
patient introspection to see the actual light of God s
presence in their hearts, and the Greek monks in Athos,
sitting solitarily in their cells and seeing the divine
light of Mount Tabor in contemplation of their navels.’ 3
Macdonald suggests that the actual transmission of
Neoplatonist ideas to the Sufis did not take place along
the same channels as those by which they reached al-
Farabi. ‘It was rather through the Christian mystics
and, perhaps, especially through the Pseudo-Dionysius
1 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1907), pp. 267 ft.
2 Third International Congress of Orientalists (Oxford, I9°8)> h
pp. 292-3. 3 Development of Muslim Theology, p. 178.
Si
D
SECOND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGI
Areopagite, and his asserted teacher, Stepht
daili with his Syriac “Book of Hierotheos”;’ 1 Pro¬
fessor Marsh’s edition of this last-named book has now
enabled us to examine this suggestion more closely; in
the meantime A. J. Wensinck followed the same path
in publishing the Book of the Dove and comparing its
contents with the doctrines of Sufism; while Margaret
Smith has written a whole book with the intention of
establishing a Christian ancestry for the Sufis. 2 But
Macdonald looks eastward as well as westward and there
finds the explanation of what he calls the ‘pantheistic
school’ of BistamI and Hallaj.
‘In the East, where God conies near to man, the conception
of God in man is not di fficult.... The half-understood pantheism
which always lurks behind oriental fervors claims its due. From
his wild whirling dance, the dervish, stung to cataleptic ecstasy
by the throbbing of the drums and the lilting chant, sinks back
into the unconsciousness of the divine oneness. . . . Here, we
have not to do with calm philosophers rearing their systems in
labored speculations, but with men, often untaught, seeking the
salvation of their souls earnestly and with tears .’3
Macdonald further gives a useful analysis of the systems
of al-Ghazall and Ibn 'Arab!, and concludes his sketch
of Sufism with a description of the rise of the dervish
fraternities. A more extended study of al-Ghazall forms
the concluding three chapters of The Religious Attitude
and Life in Islam , and constitutes perhaps the best
general account of this supreme figure yet available in
English. The book also contains the novelty of a
lengthy description of Mulla Shah, based on von
Kremer’s translation of Tawakkul Beg’s biography. 4
1 Development of Muslim Theology, p. 181. F. S. Marsh’s edition
and translation of this text was published in 1927.
2 Early Mysticism in the Near and Middle East, London, 1931.
3 Development, p. 182.
4 Published in the Journal Asiatique, Feb. 1869.
NUNISr^
t 6 m PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNON
attitude to the whole problem of Sufis
is summed up in a concluding quotation:
‘From the earliest times there was an element in the Muslim
church which was repelled equally by traditional teaching ant
intellectual reasoning. It felt that the essence of religion lay
elsewhere; that the seat and organ ot religion was in the heart.
In process of time, all Islam became permeated with this con¬
ception, in different degrees and various forms. More widely
than ever with Christianity, Islam became and is a mystical faith.
Lastly, in order to conclude this survey of the work
of those scholars who may, without disrespect, be
termed the minor authorities on Sufism—for many ot
them have, of course, made other subjects their par¬
ticular specialities—it will be convenient to say some¬
thing of the publications of two German orientalists,
each of whom has made a distinctive contribution to
our studies. Richard Hartmann gave us in 1914 a
useful summarized translation ot the Risalah ot a -
Qushairi—I understand that a complete version ot this
most important text has been in preparation for some
years in the United States—a.nd this he followed up
two years later with a painstaking paper on the origins
of Sufism. 2 Though this article naturally includes a
good deal of material borrowed from earlier writers, it
also contains some original thinking_and is in general so
comprehensive a survey of the position up to its date
of compilation that it will be by no means superfluous
to quote some of its author’s findings. In a preliminat y
section Hartmann describes the four main theories, and
then enlarges on Goldziher’s distinction between zahtd
and sufi, pointing out that the letter is distinguished by
his acceptance of the characteristic doctrines oitauhtd-—
the mystical, not the Mu tazilite tciuKid- and ru 1. n
1 Religious Attitude, p. 1 59 -
2 Der Islam, vol. vi (1916), pp. 31-70-
COND PHASE': GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGI
interesting analysis he seeks to establish tha^
any of the most famous figures in early Sufism were
non-Arabs, 1 and concludes: ‘From this brief review of
the most important Sufis of the first period it becomes
clear beyond dispute that Sufism flourished first and
foremost in Khorasan; indeed, it seems that we must
regard as its cradle the eastern legacy of Khorasan.' 2
Hartmann next shows that Turkestan before the coming
of Islam, besides being the cockpit of Central Asia, was
also the melting-pot of Eastern and Western religions
and. cultures, and argues that it is therefore not sur¬
prising that when the province accepted Islam it pro¬
ceeded gradually to colour its new faith with some of th e
mystical hues inherited from the past: Indian mysticism
and ascetic practices in particular returned once more
to the picture. ‘That developed Sufism is inwardly
permeated by Indian theosophy cannot in any way be
doubted. The Muslims themselves felt this later.’ 3
There remains the very important question, whether
this Indian influence made itself felt also in the earliest
stage of Sufi development. Hartmann asserts that the
doctrine of ridd (Quietism) reflects a genuine Indian
ideal; and goes on to instance as other pointers to
Indian inspiration such phenomena as the begging-
bowl, the use of the rosary, and the Gautama theme in
the story of Ibrahim ibn Adhamd He even points to
the.name of Abu 'All al-Sindi, Abu Yazld al-BistSmi’s
teacher, as a clear and irrefutable proof of Indian
origins. I do not know on what grounds Hartmann
assumes that the nisbah Sindi refers to the province of
Sind: it seems to me more natural to derive it in this
1 For example, Ibrahim ibn Adhain, Shaqiq al-Balldy, Dhu ’1-Nun
al-Misri, Abu Yazld al-Bistarni, Yahya ibn Mu'adh al-RazT.
2 Op. cit., p. 44. s Ibid., p. 48.
4 Of course, all these parallels were pointed out long ago.
)ND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNON 3
from Sind, a village in Khorasan not far from
;t Bistam, Abu Yazid’s birthplace, was in the
same province, and there is nothing more natural than
that the native of the one place should study under a
native of the other. However, the sum of the evidence,
in Hartmann’s view, is that Indian influence is proved
even in the earliest period of Sufism; and he further
demonstrates that this contact would not be confined to
Turkestan, but would take place all along the shores of
the Persian Gulf. This is the main upshot of his dis¬
cussion: for the rest, he is convinced that Sufism was
indebted both to ‘Parsismus’ (Mithras and Manes
rather than Zoroaster) and, on the Western side, to
Jewish kabbala, Christian monasticism and asceticism,
the Gnostifs, ‘Enthusiasts’, and Neoplatonists. To the
question, who was responsible for welding all these
heterogeneous elements together and reconciling them
to Islamic orthodoxy, Hartmann replies that, more than
to any other man, the credit belongs to Abu ’ 1 -Qasim
al-Junaid; and he therefore pleads that all the existing
fragments of this great mystic should be collected and
thoroughly analysed, for they might well provide the
concrete evidence to clinch these results of speculative
reasoning. It may be added that since Plartmann wrote
this paper a manuscript was discovered at Istanbul
which contains a considerable number of the Rasail of
al-Junaid: this, together with Abu Nu'aim al-Istahanl’s
Hilyat al-auliya recently published in Cairo, supplies far
more ample material for this study than was previously
known to exist, and I may perhaps be permitted to
refer my hearers to two articles on this subject which I
have published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 2
1 See Yaqut, Mu'jam al-buldan y vol. v, p. 152.
2 ‘Junayd’, J.R.J,S. (1935), pp. 499-507; ‘The Book of the Cure
of Souls’, J.R.d.S. (1937), pp. 219-31,
&
9 SECOND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNOl
No scholar has laboured more industriously^
written more copiously to prove the- Indian origins, of
Sufism than Max Horten: though his methods of argu¬
mentation and the categorical nature of his conclusions
have provoked considerable criticism, it is clear that a
careful examination of his papers is an indispensable
preliminary to the writing of a history of mysticism in
Islam. It is not possible within the scope of the present
lecture to attempt anything so ambitious as this, and we
must confine ourselves to giving a description of two of
his most important and characteristic articles, published
in 1927 and 1928 in the Materialien zur Ktttule des
Buddhismus , under the general title ‘Indische Str 5 mun¬
gen in der islamischen Mystik’. The first of these
papers is an attempt to establish in an analysis, of the
doctrines of Hallaj, BistamI, and Junaid that Sufism was
already thoroughly permeated with Indian thought in
the third century a.h. The attempt is all the more
remarkable in the case of Hallaj, in view of the fact that
Massignon had already published his magnum opus in
which he had been at particular pains to prove the
contrary: when Horten writes, ‘Hallaj is a Brahmanist
thinker of the clearest water’, 1 it is permissible to
wonder whether he had really read what Massignon
had written, or considered seriously Nicholson’s argu¬
ment that Hallaj was a monotheist and that pantheism
did not. really enter Sufi thought until Ibn 'Arabl. ’• The
second of these two papers is a lexicon of the most
important Sufi technical terms in use in Persia about
the year a.d. 900. The intention of this article is again
frankly polemical. ‘From this lexicon there is estab¬
lished, purely objectively and in exact philological
1 Op. cit., p. 5.
2 R. A. Nicholson, The Idea of Personality in Sufism (Cambridge,
1923), p. 27.
PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNON'
The identity of liberal Islamic mysticism wit
^ lilv ,ses of the Higher Vedanta.’ 1 The paper is
extremely technical in character, and for a non-German
not made the more easy of understanding by the auth or’s
indulgence in much of the jargon of German philosophy.
It is now my pleasant but impossible task to sum¬
marize into a necessarily short space the grand contribu¬
tions to Sufi studies made by my own master, Reynold
Nicholson, the man to whose industry and inspiration
our debt is incalculable. We have already referred to
his first work on Ruml’s lyrics, a volume adorned by
examples of that rare felicity of creative translation
which has characterized all his subsequent publications.
I do not know of any rendering from the Persian, Fitz¬
Gerald’s Omar included, which has moved me more
than those profound yet lovely lines in which Nicholson
interprets Ruml’s doctrine of the Unity of Being.
Poor copies out of heaven’s original,
Pale earthly pictures mouldering to decay,
What care although your beauties break and fall,
When that which gave them life endures for aye ?
Oh, never vex thine heart with idle woes:
All high discourse enchanting the rapt ear,
All gilded landscapes and brave glistering shows
Fade—perish, but it is not as we fear.
Whilst far away the living fountains ply,
Each petty brook goes brimful to the main.
Since brook nor fountain can for ever die,
Thy fears how foolish, thy lament how vain!
What is this fountain, wouldst thou rightly know ?
The Soul whence issue all created things.
Doubtless the rivers shall not cease to flow,
Till silenced are the everlasting springs.
1 Op. cit., p. iii.
MINIS Tffy
?/SECOND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIG NO\
he man who attained such perfection, in the rnos
difficult of all arts, the art of the translator, is neverthe¬
less the same profoundly painstaking scholar who has
produced a series of exact and scientific editions of some
of the most important basic texts of Sufism, crowning a
lifetime of unremitting labours with his monumental
work on Ruml’s Mathnawu Merely to mention the
titles of some of his many publications is to indicate the
vastness of their scope and importance: the Kit ah al-
Luma' of al-Sarraj, 'Attar's Tadhkirat alauliya, I bn
'Arabl's Tarjuman al~asjvuuaq, the Kashf al-mahjub of
Hujwlrl; to say nothing of his Mystics of Islam*, Studies in
Islamic Mysticism , The Idea of Personality in Sufism, and
many important papers and articles contributed to
various learned journals and encyclopaedias. To illus¬
trate the central motive which led up to this fruitful and
invaluable work, it will be sufficient to quote the intro¬
duction to the edition (1914) of the Kitdb al-Lima :
‘This volume marks a further step in the tedious but indis¬
pensable task, on which I have long been engaged, of providing
materials for a history of Sufism, and more especially for the
study of its development in the oldest period, beginning with the
second and ending with the fourth century of Islam.,.. M. Louis
Massignon, by his recent edition of the Kitdb al-Taivdsin of
Hall&j, has shown what valuable results might be expected from
a critical examination of the early literature. It is certain that a
series of such monographs would form the best possible foundation
for a general survey, but in the meanwhile we have mainly to rely
on more or less systematic and comprehensive treatises dealing
with the lives, legends, and doctrines of the ancient Stiffs. I am
preparing and hope, as soon as may be, to publish a work on
this subject.’
Of the list of texts mentioned by Nicholson as forming
the basis of such a work, it may be remarked that the
three not published by 1914 have since beer either
completely printed or are in course of publication. But
:OND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO .MASSIGNON
„ i§/also necessary to remark that so unrivalled
'Tcmhority as Nicholson subsequently decided that the
time was not yet ripe for a history of Sufism to be
written: his self-denying ordinance may well be fol¬
lowed by at any rate this and the next generation of
scholars. It is obviously beyond the scope of the present
lecture to attempt even the barest summary of the books
whose titles I have mentioned, but before passing on
to an analysis of the most important of Nicholson’s
papers—important, that is, from our immediate stand¬
point—I should like to call special attention to his
volume of Studies in Islamic Mysticism, for this book
seems to me to be a model of its kind and an indication
of what can be accomplished in specialized fields. It
will be remembered that the work consists of three main
chapters and two appendices: the subjects treated are
the biography of Abu SaTd ibn Abl ’ 1 -Khair, the doc¬
trine of the Perfect Man as contained in Jill’s al-Insdn
al-kamil> and the mystical odes of the Egyptian poet
Ibn al-Farid; there are also some valuable notes on the
Fusils al-hikam of Ibn 'Arab!. No more useful exercise
can be recommended to the young researcher than to
study the methods of this great master as illustrated in
this book.
The article of Nicholson which we have reserved for
detailed analysis is one which appeared in the 'Journal oj
the Royal Asiatic Society in 1906. In this paper the
scholar stated those views on the nature and evolution
of Sufism which, though they have undergone modifica¬
tion since, nevertheless mark an historic stage in the
progress of Sufi studies. 1 Following Goldziher’s isola¬
tion of the original ascetic element in Islam from the
later speculative mysticism, Nicholson writes:
‘The seeds of Sufiism are to be found in the powerful and
1 See above, p. xx.
SECOND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNO *oLi
^J&ely-spread ascetic tendencies which arose within Islam during
The first century a.h. As Goldziher has remarked;, the chief
factors in this early asceticism are (i) an exaggerated conscious¬
ness of sin 5 and ( 2 ) an overwhelming dread of divine retribution,
. . . While recognising that Christian influence,had some part n'i
shaping the early development, of Sufiism, I am inclined to
believe that Sufiism of the ascetic and quietistic type, such as we
find, e.g., in the sayings of Ibrahim b. Adham (f x61 a.h.),
Da’ud al-Ta’i (+165 a.h.), Fudayl b. Tydd (fi87 / m), and
Shaqiq of Balkh (f 194 a.h.), owes comparatively little either to
Christianity or to any foreign source. In other words, it seems
to me that this type of mysticism was—or at least might have
been—the native product of Islam itself, and that it was an
almost necessary consequence of the Muhammadan conception
of Allah.’*
It was not until the third century a.h., in Nicholson’s
view, that non-Islamic influences began seriously to
affect the character of Sufism. The man he names as
being chiefly responsible for this change is Dhu VNxin
al-Misrl.
‘An ascetic, philosopher, and theurgist, living in the ninth
century among the Christian Copts, himself of Coptic or Nubian
parentage—such was Dhu ’1-Nun al-Misrf, from whom, s his
extant sayings bear witness, and as Jamf, moreover, expressly
states, the Sufi theosophy is mainly derived. The origin of this
doctrine has often been discussed, and various theories are still
current; a result which is not surprising, in as much as hardly
anyone has hitherto taken due account of the historical and
chronological factors in the problem. To ignore these factors,
and to argue from general considerations alone, is, in ray opinion,
a perfectly futile proceeding, which can lead to no safe or solid
conclusion. It is obvious that the principles of Sufiism resemble
those of the Vedanta, but the question whether Sufiism is
derived from the Vedanta cannot be settled except on historical
grounds, i.e. (1) by an examination of the influence which was
being exerted by Indian upon Muhammadan thought t the time
1 J.R.A.S. (1906), pp. 304-6.
Ml HlSTftr
§L
)ND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNON
J^hism arose; and (2) by considering how far the asc&
facts relating to the evolution of Sufiism accord with the
hypothesis of its Indian origin. Similarly with regard to the
alternative form of the “Aryan reaction” theory, namely, that
Sufiism is essentially a product of the Persian mind, it must be
shown, in the first place, that the men who introduced the
characteristic Sufi doctrines were of Persian nationality. As we
have seen, however—and I do not think my conclusions will be
disputed by anyone who studies the evidence chronologically—
this was by no means the case. Ma'ruf al-Karkhf came of
Persian stock, but the characteristic theosophica) mysticism of
the Suffs was first formulated by his successors, Abu Sulayman
al-Darani and Dhu ’I-Nun al-Misrf, men who probably had not
a drop of Persian blood in their veins. The remarkably close
correspondence between Neo-Platonism and Sufiism—a corre¬
spondence which is far more striking than that between Sufiism
and the Vedanta system—would not in itself justify 11s in deriv¬
ing the one doctrine from the other. Nevertheless, I am
convinced that they are historically connected, and I will now
state some of the considerations which have led me to this
belief.’ 1
Nicholson then proceeds to put forward his evidence
for the widespread distribution of Neoplatonist ideas
throughout the countries which came to accept Islam.
‘It is not too much to say that the Moslems found Neo-
Platonism in the air wherever they came in contact with Greek
civilisation. Now the lands of Greek civilisation were pre¬
eminently Syria and Egypt, the very countries in which, as we
have seen, the Suff theosophy was first developed. The man who
bore the chief part in its development is described as a philosopher
and an alchemist: in other words, he was a student of Greek
wisdom. When it is added that the ideas which he enunciated
are essentially the same as those which appear, for example, in
the works of Dionysios, does not the whole argument point with
overwhelming force to the conclusion that there is an historical
connection between Neo-Platonism and Sufiism ? Is any other
1 J.R.J.S. (1906), pp. 315-16.
SECOND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNCJN
/ eory of the origin of theosophical Siifiism conceivable in view
of the facts which I have stated ? I am not prepared to go so far
as Merx, who traces the Sufi doctrine back to the writings of
Dionysios, 1 but my researches have brought me to a result which
is virtually the same: that Siifiism on its theosophical side is
mainly a product of Greek speculation.’ 2
I hope to have something to say in discussion of this
passage in my next lecture: in the meantime let me
conclude this very brief survey of Nicholsonh theory
of the origins and development of Sufism by quoting
his nine-point findings:
‘(i) Siifiism, in the sense of “mysticism” and “quietism”, was
a natural development of the ascetic tendencies which
manifested themselves within Islam during the Umayyad
period.
‘(2) This asceticism was not independent of Christian influence,
but on the whole it may be called a Muhammadan pro¬
duct, and the Sufiism which grew out of it is also essenti¬
ally Muhammadan.
‘(3) Towards the end of the second century a.h. a new curre nt
of ideas began to flow into Sufiism. These ideas, which
are non-Islamic and theosophical in character, are dis¬
cernible in the sayings of Ma'riif al-Karkhi (faoo a. it.).
‘(4) During the first half of the third century a.h. the new
ideas were greatly developed and became the dominating
element in Sufiism.
XS) The man who above all others gave to the Stiff doctrine
its permanent shape was Dhu ’ 1 -Nun al-Misrf (f'245 a. h.).
‘(6) The historical environment in which the doctrine arose
points clearly to Greek philosophy as the source from
which it was derived.
\y) Its origin must be sought in Neo-Platonism arid Gnosti¬
cism.
1 A. Merx, Idee und Grundlinien einer allgemeinen Geschichte de?
Mystik (Heidelberg, 1803), p. 320.
2 J.R.J.S. (1906), pp. 318-19.
ND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNON
^ the theosophical element in Sufiism is Greek, so the^
extreme pantheistic ideas, which were first introduced by
Abi: Yazid (Bdyazid) al-Bistami (f26i a.h.) are Persian
or Indian. The doctrine of fund (self-annihilation) is
probably derived from the Buddhistic Nirvana. 1
‘(9) During the latter part of the third century a.h. Sufiism
became an organised system, with teachers, pupils, and
rules of discipline; and continual efforts were made to
show, that it was based on the Koran and the Traditions
of the Prophet.’ 2
Tt: is certainly no coincidence that the generation
.which produced so great a scholar of Sufism as R. A.
Nicholson should have raised up in France and Spam
two men who have made greater contributions to this
high research than any of their countrymen before. It
is a commonly observed phenomenon in all the sciences
that from time to time a most notable progress is made
through the united efforts of a group of contemporaries,
working not necessarily to a common plan, and often
sundered by great distances; so it was that at the Euro¬
pean Renaissance men in many countries suddenly dis¬
covered afresh the glorious heritage of ancient Greece;
so it was that in Bengal at the end of the eighteenth
century a group of Englishmen suddenly created the
modern science of orientalism; so it is that in our own
time, in physics and chemistry, in mathematics and
medicine, researchers working independently, often
unknown to one another, have each discovered a frag¬
ment of the mosaic that forms the pattern of human
knowledge. It must be that there is.a certain germinat¬
ing virtue in human thought that strikes root in this
mind and that, so that these minds, drawing upon a
1 See again The Mystics of Islam, pp. 17-19, for a modified re-
statemeri. of this view, and Carra de Vaux {Encyclopaedia of Islam, ii,
p. 5 2), who derives fana from Christianity.
! J.Ru .S. (1906), pp. 329-30.
ECOND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGN
mon inspiration, so react upon each other if
mterplay of ideas that all are the more stimulated to
productiveness.
As we have seen, Nicholson’s work began with the
lyrics of Rum! and, after ranging through the entire
early history of Sufism, he has now returned full circle
to Ruml’s great Mathnawi. Louis Massignon has con¬
centrated all his Sufi researches upon the single figure
of Hallaj. While making excursions into the history
and archaeology of Islam during extended visits to Iraq
and Egypt, the French scholar was assembling materials
for a complete study of the life, writings, and doctrine
of the ‘martyr mystic’. The first-fruits of this vast
research were an edition of the Kitab al-Tawdsin with
extracts from the Commentary of Ruzbihan al-Baqll
(Paris, 1913), and the publication of four texts illus¬
trating the biography of Hallaj (Paris, 1914). Then
came the First World War: it was not until 1922 that
Massignon’s great masterpiece, La Passion d'al-Hallaj ,
came from the press and revealed itself as a landmark
in the progress of Sufi studies. Time does not suffice
for more than a very cursory survey of the wide
territory covered by this great book which was fifteen
years compiling. The most important lesson it teaches
is this, that in our present stage of knowledge it is
necessary that a whole series of monographs must be
written on this’model, each covering a single leading
personality or significant school. Massignon has set a
very high standard, and it will be for future researchers
not to be satisfied until they have emulated him. The
author’s bibliography is a measure of the thoroughness
with which he has done his work: it covers 74 pages,
and includes every book, every paper, every manuscript
that has a bearing on his subject. As for the thesis itself,
it is printed in no fewer than 942 pages of closely
TO PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNON 4^
1 fully documented text, a veritable Sufi encyclo-
paeOKr. It would be a great service to the cause ot
Islamic research for this magnificent book to be trans¬
lated into English, so that those students who are not
entire!'/ familiar with the French language—and philo¬
sophical French is full of pitfalls for the unwaiy may
not be denied access to what is undoubtedly the most im¬
portant single work that has yet been published on Sufism.
In the same year, 1922, another book of fundamental
significance was published: Massignon’s hssai sur les
orinms du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane.
This work has an interesting history: the greater part
of it was complete and in the hands of the printeis at
Louvain in August 1914, when the Germans invaded
Belgium and in a typical display of native barbarism
not. excelled by the present Nazi generation sacked and
burned that historic university town; the author was
therefore under the necessity of writing the whole book
afresh. This essay is in effect a history of the origins and
development of Sufism to the end of the third/ninth
century: it is based on the same wide reading, and
exhibits the same brilliance of intuition and reasoning
as the Passion. In some respects it is an even more
significant book, for it discusses matters of a more
fundamental character: it will therefore be necessary to
discuss it now at greater length.. _
Massignon begins by establishing the importance ot
the study of the technical vocabulary of the Sufis, as an
essential prelude to the correct elucidation of their
doctrines. ‘One cannot with impunity underrate the
part played by the technical vocabulary in the develop¬
ment pf dogma in Islam. It is thanks to its mysticism
that Islam has become an international and universal
religion.’ 1 The author proceeds to postulate that this
1 Essai, p. 5.
SECOND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGI
rmical study must be conducted on a scientific Ws!§7
\ proposes to examine the mystical vocabulary of
Hallaj from this standpoint. After giving a list of the
words making up this vocabulary, Massignon lays down
the general principles for their examination and states
his findings. First and foremost, it is the Qur’an which
furnishes the central basis of the Sufi terminology. If
it is objected that some of these terms occur only once
in the Qur an, the answer is that ‘these Coranic terms
are mutashabihat, “ambiguous” terms which arrest the
reader and resist primary analysis ; the process of istinbk
. . . leads to the mind hurling itself violently upon these
terms in the course of each new reading’. 1 In the end,
these perplexing phrases are absorbed against the
general background of the text, and their meanings are
crystallized in the mind of the reader. It is not to be
excluded that, in this connexion, a certain number of
foreign mystical ideas grafted themselves on to the body
of Muslim thought. The second source of the Sufi
vocabulary is the general amalgam of purely Arab
sciences—grammar, jurisprudence, traditions—all, of
course, of the earliest period of Islam. Thirdly, there
are the early Arab schools of theology. Fourthly, we
must reckon with ‘the scientific teaching of the time,
presented in a kind of technical lingua franca , namely,
Aramaic, which had been gradually built up during the
first six centuries of the Christian era by the philosophic
oriental syncretism, deriving its terms sometimes from
Greek, sometimes from Persian’. 2 * Such, Massignon
argues, are the sources which influenced the early
development of Sufism: only by a painstaking examina¬
tion of the authentic works of primitive Islamic mysti¬
cism can the important and often discussed question of
the part played by foreign, non-Islamic influences be
1 Essai, p. 29. 2 Ibid., p. 32.
• VIQN\i°
Mosque and Shrine of 'Abd al-Qadir Muhyi ’l-Din al-jfildm , Baghdad
Born Gilan 470 A.H. ( 1078 ). Died Baghdad 561 A.H. ( 1:66)
;D PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNON J
hfvkwered. ‘This philological method is the onl\
v , fitting the provision of serious proofs capable
of securing the agreement ot experts. 1 More rigorous
documentation of alleged ‘borrowings and imitations
must be provided than hitherto. It is not enough to
state baldly that the Sufi doctrine of Jana has been
‘borrowed' from the dhyana of Patanjali, and to leave it
at that: before such a theory can be accepted, it is
necessary to prove certain things, among them the vital
point that actual exchange of ideas was possible and
realizable at this period of history between India and
Islam. Massignon applies these criteria to the other
current theories of the origin of Sufism: the theory of
Iranian influence and the ‘Aryan reaction’; the theory
of Hebrew-Christian influence; the theory of the
oriental syncretism made up of Neoplatonism, Gnosti¬
cism, and Manicheeism. In the end he states his general
conclusions. ‘It is from the Qur’an, constantly recited,
meditated, practised, that Islamic mysticism proceeds,
in its origin and in its development. Based on-the
frequent e-reading and recitation whole of a text con¬
sidered as sacred, Islamic mysticism derived therefrom
Its distinctive characteristics.’* From this everything
else springs: even the curious phenomenon of shath, in
which the meditating mystic exchanges roles with the
Divine Beloved, and appears to speak in the first person
pf such things as became a scandal to the orthodox.
It is in terms of shath that Massignon explains the
currency among Sufi writers of uncanonical traditions,
and names a number of authors as responsible for
putting into circulation for the first time certain of these
iihadltk qudsiyah : here, as elsewhere so often, he originates
a discussion which may have the most important results
when it is energetically pursued.
■ Essai, p. 35. * Ibid., p. 84.
ECOND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGN?
IT
Having established these fundamental principles,
which do indeed form the basis of all future research,
Massignon concludes with a fairly detailed history of
the development of Sufism down to the end of the third
century a.h. Almost all this most important section of
the Essai is based on unpublished manuscripts studied
by the author for the first time: the very fact that his
sources are still not generally accessible makes it quite
impossible for another student of Sufism either to
accept or reject his findings with any degree of finality.
This, in my view, as I have already stated previously,
constitutes a serious drawback; and for my part I
should have been grateful if the great French scholar
had published the passages on which he constructed his
theories, as he has done in the case of Hallaj. But this
would have been a truly herculean labour, and our debt
to Massignon is already so great that it is impertinence
to look for more: except that so rare is the excellence of
his work, that we cannot well have too much of it. The
Recueil de textes inedits , published in 1929, goes a little
way, it is true, towards remedying this defect: but it is
a tantalizing fragment, and falls far short of the purpose
we have in mind. More recently Massignon has pub¬
lished the Di'wan of Hallaj, reconstructed from all the
sources he consulted in the course of his research;
while in 1936 he edited, in association with Paul Kraus,
the Akhbdr al-Hallaj in further elucidation of the
martyr mystic’s biography. Thus, while it is never
possible completely to exhaust any subject, particularly
if that subject be connected with mysticism, it may
certainly be said that after Massignon there remains
little original work to be done on Hallaj, though no
doubt discussion of points of detail and interpretation
will continue for as long as scholars find the interest and
opportunity to write on Sufism.
misty,.
i ND PHASE: GOLDZIHER TO MASSIGNON’
in sum, all too inadequately presented, is the
Louis Massignon’s published work on Islamic
mysticism, without taking account of numerous papers
published in journals and encyclopaedias, as for example
the important articles on Tanka and Tasawwuf in the
Encyclopaedia of Islam . I feel sure, however, that this
great scholar, with whom we have unfortunately lost
contact since the Germans seized Paris, will not refuse
me the pleasure of adding a few personal notes to com¬
plete this impersonal summary. In 1934 I had the
opportunity of a long discussion with him in Cairo, and
I then took up the question of his theory regarding the
origin and early development of Sufism. At that time I
had been working over the Neoplatonist and Hermetic
writers, as well as the early Christian mystics, as a back¬
ground to my edition of Niffarl, and had come to
certain conclusions which were to some extent at
variance with those stated by Massignon in his Essat:
briefly, I found myself in substantial agreement with
Nicholson's views. I had been corresponding with the
.French master for some years, but this was the first time
1 had met him. I was not disappointed of my expecta¬
tions of a gentle, saintly man with a lively wit and a most
penetrating intellect who spoke English fluently and
denied my inadequate attempts to converse in French.
The most important point, in our present discussion,
which emerged from this conversation was Massignon’s
confession that he had changed his mind in certain
particulars; that he was not now so firmly convinced as
formerly that Greek, and above all Christian, influences
were not powerfully at work in the earliest period of
Sufi sue Whether this view has since undergone any
further modification I am not in a position to state, for
reasons already indicated: nothing that may subse¬
quently happen, however, can in any way detract from
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF SUFI STUDF S\
neral, received .from other non-Islamic sou#
chiefly Christian, which have in my opinion been less
explored and elaborated hitherto than they deserved
This statement might indeed be taken as a text on
which all Palacios’s voluminous writings form an
elaborate commentary. Whether we take his Abem ra-
sarra y su escuela (1914), his El mistico murciano Abena-
rabi (1926), his El Islam cristianizado (1931), or,.' above
all, his Login et agrapha Domini Jesu apud moslemicos
scriptores (Paris, 1915, 1926), we find the same unifying
theme; and all these books must be attentively stacked
by the future researcher in order to determine to what
extent the author has succeeded in establishing his case.
It is not my present intention, and, indeed, the scope
of these lectures prohibits any such ambitious under¬
taking, to anticipate the results of such an examination,
and I content myself on this occasion with taking as a
specimen of Palacios’s writings on this subject a paper
contributed by him to the Volume of Oriental Studies
presented to E. G. Browne (Cambridge, 1922).' Phis
paper, inspired as its author declares by an article
written by Goldziher thirty years previously under the
title ‘Influences chr^tiennes dans la litterature rebgieUse
de 1’Islam’, 2 consists of a series of forty-five passages
from Muslim authors, including a number of well-
known traditions, for which Palacios puts forward
parallels in the Gospels and other books of the New
Testament, with, the implication that these parallels
w r ere their ultimate sources. Now it is entirely un¬
objectionable, as I see it, to suggest that the founder of
Islam and his immediate followers may have been to
some extent influenced by the teachings of the founder
1 ‘Influencias evangelicas en la literatura religiosa del Islam’,
pp. 8-27.
2 Revue d'histoire des religions, t. xvm, pp. 180-99,
MINlSr^
ESENT AND FUTURE OF SUFI STUDIES
fistianity: for the Qur’an itself states clearly in
)er of passages that the reyelation vouchsafed to
Muhammad was a confirmation of what had been
revealed to previous Prophets. 1 It would therefore be
in the highest degree extraordinary if the teaching of
Islam failed to coincide in many important particulars
with Christian doctrine; and in point of actual fact
there is a close similarity between the moral and ascetic
codes of the two religions, though their theologies are
of course profoundly different. Divine truth is one and
indivisible, and. on the highest of all spiritual planes
there can be no clash of ideals. But this is one thing: to
argue tendentiously, as I fear not a few non-Muslims
have done, that all that in their view is good in Islam is
of foreign origin, and must be traced to one or other
non-Islamic source, is not so much honest scholarship as
the worst form of sectarian bigotry. The altruism of an
argument can best be tested by the scientific thorough¬
ness with which its premisses have been constructed.
Let us apply this test to Palacios’s article now under
review, taking three of his ‘parallels’ as specimens. He
quotes from Ghazall a saying of Abu Bakr, ‘Let no one
man despise another Muslim, for the least of the
Muslims is accounted much by God’. 2 For this he
puts forward two ‘sources’ in the Gospels: ‘Whosoever
therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the
same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven’, 3 and ‘For
he that is least among you all, the same shall be great’. 4
It had apparently escaped him that in the Qur’an we
read, ‘Let not one people make mock of another people,
who are haply better than they’, 5 which is a much more
likely source of Abu Bakr’s saying. Secondly, he takes
1 Qur. ii. 85, 91, iii. 2, 85, &c.
2 Ghazall, Mukashafat al-quliib , p. 104.
3 Matt, xviii. 4. 4 Luke ix. 48.
5 Qur, xlix. 11.
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF SUFI STUDIE
Certainly a work to be taken into account in all ft
esearch, and it would be a considerable service if its
more original and significant passages were translated
into English. If I describe it as perhaps the second
most valuable book on Ibn 'Arab! written in modern
times, thereby giving precedence to the work of the
Egyptian scholar A. E. Affifi , 1 I am by no means un¬
mindful of the debt it owes to Nyberg’s Klein ere
Schrijten, an edition of three of Ibn 'Arabl’s minor
treatises with an excellent preface on his theosophical
system. When all is said and done, however, it remains
indisputably true that thorough research on this the
greatest mystical genius of Islam is still in its infancy,
and there are few subjects in the whole field of human
studies more attractive to the student or more likely
to yield important results. Ibn 'Arab! may be com¬
pared to an unexplored mountain peak: much of the
territory on all sides is known, but it has yet to be
determined by what precise paths the way to the summit
lies, or in what remote heights those fountains spring
that well into the mighty river of all subsequent
mystical thought, Muslim and Christian alike.
Since Sir William Jones, England has never lacked
for scholars interested in Sufi research, and it can be
claimed without undue presumption that there are now
successors to the tradition of Palmer, Whinfieid, and
Browne who, if still serving their apprenticeship to this
most skilled of trades, need not fear at all events to be
compared with their contemporaries in other countrie s.
But since it is an ungrateful and perhaps ungracious
task to sit in judgement on the personalities of one’s
own generation, and as in any case it is not possible in
this connexion to speak of fully matured work, it will
1 A. E. Affifi, The Mystical Philosophy of Muhyid Dtn-ibnul 'Arabi,
Cambridge, 1939.
r
ESENT AND FUTURE OF SClFl STUDIES 59
if we decline to enter into a detailed discussion
has been and is being done by these scholars,
in England and elsewhere: let us instead now pass
immediately to what in my view is the most important
of all the subjects dealt with in these lectures—the
question of future research.
It will, I trust, have become clear from what we have
already said that the time is past when books containing
sweeping generalizations can serve any useful purpose.
Generalizations are permissible only to the wahreMeister
but it is to be feared that they are all too frequently the
mark of immaturity and a superficial judgement. The
wahre Meister of Sufism has not yet been born: those of
us who seek to explore one or another corner of this vast
territory are bound to realize this fact, and it would ill
become any of us to pretend to anything remotely
approaching universal knowledge of our subject. We
have a very definite task to perform: it is a task hard
enough and in some ways rather uninviting, but it is
the only way we can hope nowadays to build for the
future. That task may consist of choosing, by mutual
arrangement, one leading figure or school of Sufism,
and constructing, after the fashion of Massignon, the
whole of our researches upon that foundation. In the
second place, we may elect to emulate Nicholson by
learning the difficult business of textual criticism, with
all that it involves of minute attention to detail, and so
qualifying to edit those extremely important Sufi texts
which still remain unpublished, and whose printing is
indispensable if real progress is to be made by ourselves
or our successors. Thirdly, we may choose to acquire
an expert background knowledge of either Greek
philosophy, particularly Neoplatonism and the popular
eclectic schools of Alexandria and Byzantium, or early
Christian mysticism including the Syriac writers, or
<SL
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF SOFl STUDIES
e mystery religions of Egypt and Persia, 01 Indian
theosophy; in each case seeking to work out the facts
and possibilities of actual historical contact with Islam:
in this we should have in mind to assemble in an expert
and impartial fashion the evidence on which the next
generation of researchers may decide the real merits of
the theories already put forward concerning the origins
and development of Sufism. Fourthly, we may perhaps
prefer to study the influence of Sufi thought on Islam
in general, or on any of the other great religions:
Palacios’s book on Dante is an instance of what can be
accomplished in this field.
Whichever course we may decide upon, it will be
necessary for us to be equally well qualified in Arabic
and Persian, and we may find it indispensable to acquire
either Greek or Coptic or Syriac or Hebrew or Sanskrit
or other languages in which our background material
is written; on the Islamic side we shall not be able very
well to dispense with Turkish and Pushto and Panjabi
and Urdu; and in any case we shall find it difficult to
do our subject full justice without a working knowledge
of English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, to
which Russian might well be added. It goes without
saying that the most important of all preliminaries must
be a very thorough knowledge of the Qur’an, Traditions,
and the important schools of Muslim theology. Unless
we are prepared to undertake the very arduous mental
discipline imposed by these conditions of our studies,
we cannot hope to produce work that is likely to have a
permanent value, and would be more profitably em¬
ployed in some other study making less exacting
demands. Stern and selfless discipline has ever been
required of all aspirants to the mysteries of the Sufi
way, and it is but appropriate that we who may not be
practising Sufis but rather theoretical investigators
RESENT AND FUTURE OF SUFI STUDIES
find our path no less beset by hardships. Finally^
Tnay perhaps be permitted to say something on the
psychological approach to Sufi studies. Having regard
to the nature of mysticism, which is surely at once the
most, profound and the sublimest of human activities,
it will not be extravagant to require of those intending
its study at least some natural inclination towards the
higher metaphysic, some sincere understanding and
sympathy for the upward strivings of the spirit, so that
their researches may be undertaken not out of mere
curiosity, even the curiosity of the scientist, but because,
believing themselves that mystical knowledge is the
goal of all science, they desire to apprehend how far
the great initiates within Islam have penetrated to the
essence of such knowledge, and thereby to increase their
own inward comprehension of its mysteries. It follows as
a natural consequence that they are not best qualified to
study Sufism whose attitude to religion in general, or to
Islam in particular, is conditioned by hostility or bigotry;
nor, in truth, if I may be allowed to make this point, will
those Muslims be ideally fitted to take up this research
who find themselves unable to appreciate the mysticism
of other faiths than their own. In brief, the student of
Sufism ought himself to be something of a Sufi.
Here, then, we stand, and let us assume for the sake
of further argument that we are not conscious of any
insuperable bar to the pursuit of our studies. What is
the sum of the materials already at our disposal, what
pioneering work still remains to be done, and along
what lines can that work be most efficiently and
economically planned ? Obviously it is impossible in the
short time still at my disposal to make anything ap¬
proaching a comprehensive reply to these questions:
I therefore propose to select one or two typical aspects of
the broad landscape before us, and to illustrate through
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF SOFl STUDIES
ie particular instances the kind of programme wtucti
ay be recommended to future researchers,
first, let us take the most fundamental and fascinat-
ing problem of all, the question of the origins and early
development of Sufism. We have seen how far research
has progressed up to the present: four rival theories
still hold the field, theories which to a considerable
degree are mutually contradictory. This is an intoler¬
able situation, but fortunately it is not beyond remedy.
I venture to suggest that the true reason why these
rival theories can each command substantial support is
because on the purely Islamic side the materials avail ¬
able for tracing the rise of the mystical movement have
not yet been scientifically assembled and examined to
any definitive extent, and because there is still too ready
a disposition to accept with little demur the statements
of comparatively late authorities. Arab writers even
of the fourth century a.h. are already too deeply com¬
mitted by their own theorizings to serve as infallible
guides. Nothing else will serve our purpose but to
publish the entire surviving writings of the earliest
Sufis. Massignon has made a good beginning with
Hallaj; Margaret Smith has now given us Muhasibi’s
Ri'ayah , Hellmuth Ritter has published the' same
author’s Bad ’ man an aba, ms well, by the way, as a some¬
what lengthy essay of Hasan of Basra; Otto Spies has
brought out the Bankipore fragment of Muhasibi’s
Kitdb al-Sabr wa ’ l-rida\ while his Kitab al-Tawahhum
has been edited by myself. I have also made available
the Kitdb al-Sidq of Kharraz, the works of Niffarl, two
short essays of Junaid, and one treatise of Abu .'Abd¬
allah al-Tirmidhl. But all this is little more than a
beginning. The new Brockelmann 1 indicates what a
1 Geschickte der arabischen Litteratur, i Suppl., pp. 349-58: cf.
Massignon, Essai, pp. 154-7, 185— 7 » 2x3-15, 256-8, 273-4.
miST/fy
■ r
( §P)&SENT AND FUTURE OF SOFl STUDIES
N^xMostantial volume of writings of this, the earliest"
period of Sufism, has survived in manuscript, and it is
greatly to be desired that scientifically prepared and
indexed editions of these texts should be published with
the minimum of delay. What has already been pub-
' ;hed of Muhasibl has thrown the most interesting
light on the sources and methods of Ghazall ; 1 the early
compilers, like Qushairl, Kalabadhi, Sarraj, and SulamI,
already acknowledged the great part Junaid played in
the development of theoretical Sufism, and it is tantaliz¬
ing to know that his Rasail have still not been printed;
to mention but one other example, my own preliminary
examination of some of the writings of Abu 'Abdallah
al-Tirmidhi has suggested to my mind that this third-
century Sufi may have played a very important role in
the evolution of the ishraqi school. In the second rank
of basic authorities we may now place Abu Nu'aim’s
Hilyat al-auliya , available at last in a complete if rather
unsatisfactory edition; this massive work is a veritable
mine of information, and it is gratifying to reflect on
the results which may be expected from a proper
marshalling and working-out of the facts with which it
furnishes us; the compiling of a scientific index would
constitute a substantial aid to future students. To com¬
plete the Arab side of this picture, it remains to co¬
ordinate and compare all the information which can be
gleaned from the later Sufi texts, particularly Ghazali’s
Ihyd and Ibn 'Arabl’s al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah-. when
this and the rest of our task has been accomplished, and
we are satisfied that all existing sources have been
exhausted, only then shall we be able with confidence
to essay a final account of the history, on the Islamic
side, of the first three centuries of Sufism. No less
thorough and complete must be our examination of the
1 See Margaret Smith, An Early Mystic of Baghdad, pp. 269-80.
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF SUFI' STUDI
^uon-Islamic sources which have been suggest
influencing the rise and growth of Sufi thought. So
far as Neoplatonism is concerned, it no longer suffices
to quote isolated passages from the Enneads of Plotinus:
it is by no means certain that Plotinus was ever trans¬
lated into Arabic, and in any case it seems that if any
Greek authors exercised a real direct influence on the
Arab mystics, none of whom is known to have been
personally acquainted with Greek, they are more likely
to have been the late syncretists and epitomizers of
Alexandria, Byzantium, and perhaps Harr an and Junde-
shapur, and it is this type of literature, neglected by
Hellenists because from their point of view it has little
value, which must be examined by the student of
Sufism. It is rather probable that these writings will
have passed through Syriac before becoming accessible
in Arabic, and in their Syriac form they must have been
contaminated with Christian mysticism: hence it is
necessary to sift very thoroughly the not inconsiderable
late Syriac literature, especially the lives of the saints
and the theoretical manuals of asceticism, in order to
establish a^ reliable comparison with the sayings and
writings of the early Sufis. My own extremely super¬
ficial survey of this literature has made it very difficult
for me to resist the conclusion that there was a rather
liberal interchange of ideas between the Christian and
Muslim ascetics of the second century a.h., and I do
not think that future research will overthrow the theory
that Sufism was influenced in its earliest period by
Christian mysticism, and that all other Western in¬
fluences—Neoplatonist, Neopythagorean, Hermetic,
and Gnostic—impinged on early Islam through this
medium. As for the alleged Eastern sources, among
which I include Jewish mysticism, this is a question on
which I cannot pretend to speak with any authority,
Mosque and Shrine of Shihab ai-Dtn Abu Haf$ ' Umar al-Suhrazeardi s Baghdad
Born Suhraward 539 A.H. ( 1144 ). Died Baghdad 632 A.H. ( 1235 )
MIN/Sr^
,ENT AND FUTURE OF SUFI STUDIES
obvious that this matter must be investigated
with equal thoroughness: my personal view, which is,
I confess, based on very imperfect knowledge, is that
it will be far more difficult to establish proof or
probability on this head than on the other. However,
the problem is still open for the freest discussion, and
it is by no means an unattractive field of work. It is
almost certainly chimerical to look for exact parallels,
that is, to establish verbal correspondences proving or
strongly suggesting that this particular Sufi actually
read that particular non-Islamic book: we have to deal
with something far more subtle, something far less
susceptible of satisfactory proof—the influence of the
spokeni word or practical example, which, though un¬
recorded in any known annals, may yet be confidently
asserted by inductive and deductive reasoning on the
basis of what is known and firmly established on both
sides. It is well that we should be clear under what
precise limitations we labour; though aeronautical
research has made it possible for us to travel in the
stratosphere, it is highly improbable that man will ever
reach the moon; and we in our Sufi studies must be
content to exploit to the unsurpassable utmost the
possibilities at our disposal. If certain proof cannot, in
the end be established, of what event or logical con¬
clusion can absolute certainty be predicated?
There is a second subject which I would particularly
commend to your attention as a theme for the most
urgent treatment, and one which, can only be in¬
vestigated satisfactorily in India: this is the compiling
of a complete history of Indian Sufism, from its first
origins down to the present day, with special attention
to the multitude of orthodox and unorthodox dervish
orders and their various branches and affiliations. In
making this suggestion I am gratefully aware of the
WNtST/fy
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF SOFl STUDI
tohsiderable volume of work which has already I
tone, especially by M. T. Titus in his Indian Islam ,
and W. Ivanow in a number of papers; but here again
it is a matter of only the fringe having been touched of
a vast unexplored territory. The inquiry naturally falls
into two main divisions, each of which can be sub¬
divided into special sections providing material for
many years’ work. The first division is historical, and
its material is naturally almost wholly confined to
written records, scarcely any of which have been
printed. There is not a major oriental library, whether
in India or Europe, which does not contain a number
of manuscript copies of the Malfuzat of this or that
eminent Indian Sufi, a series of biographies of the
adherents of this or that silsilah. It would seem that
there are few subjects on which so little has been written,
in comparison with the wealth of sources available.
Hand in hand with the purely literary work will go
considerable archaeological research into the history of
the shrines of the Muslim saints. Numerous outstand¬
ing personalities deserve separate treatment on the most
generous and painstaking scale: for instance, Farid al-
Dln Ganj-i Shakar, Nizam al-Dln Auliya, Naslr al-Dln
Chiragh, Baha al-Dln MultanI, Ahmad-i Yahya Mun-
yarl, and Muhammad Gisudaraz. Naturally, also, each
of the main Sufi orders could be made the subject of a
monograph. So much for the historical division and its
branches. Secondly there is the study of the modern
activities of Indian Sufism. It may be—we cannot tell—
that many highly interesting and significant movements
having a long history are dying out before our eyes: it
behoves us in any case to place on record now all that
we can discover and observe of the Sufism of the
twentieth century, for our failure to do so will result
in an irreparable loss to science. We have already
mtsT/t
SENT AND FUTURE OF SUFI STUDIES
to Depont and Coppolani’s book as a model'
kind of study; a recent work on the Bektashi
order affords another excellent example ; 1 by comparison
with the research which has been prosecuted in other
parts of the Muslim world, it must be admitted that
India has not yet been adequately served, and this in
spite of-—or perhaps because of—the fact that the field
in India is far broader and richer than elsewhere. It
is to be hoped, therefore, that among your many
excellent Islamic scholars now coming to the fore, some
at any rate will be sufficiently attracted by this subject
to rectify an unsatisfactory situation. In this connexion
it may be. added that by no means the least important
personality in Sufi history was the late Sir Muhammad
Iqbal, whose significance R. A. Nicholson was among
the first to recognize : 2 it is deplorable that this great
Islamic figure, whose intellectual and spiritual gifts
made of him one of the leading thinkers of our times,
should still not have found biographers able to do him
full justice. Iqbal belongs by right to the history of
Sufism, to which he made both scientific and practical
contributions, and I therefore need make no apology
for mentioning his name in this context.
In the third place, it would not be appropriate to
conclude these lectures on the Sir Abdullah Suhra-
wardy foundation without making a more extended
reference to the part played in Sufi history by those who
have borne the name of Suhrawardl. Suhraward, the
birth-place of the three men whose careers we are now
about to consider, is described by the earliest Persian
geographer as a ‘densely populated town’ in the Jibal
’ J. K . Birge, The Bektashi Order of Dervishes, Hartford (U.S.A.),
19 . 17 -
a Sheikh Muhammad Iqbal, The Secrets of the Self, translated by
R. A. Nicholson. London, 1920.
f 2
fSL
( SI.
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF SUFI STUDIE
ivmce, ‘much favoured by nature, and having a
sociable population’. 1 So it was in the fourth cen¬
tury a.h.: but about the same time, the town fell into
the hands of the Kurds, and the inhabitants, who are
described as heretics, for the most part migrated. 2
When the Mongols came, they destroyed Suhraward,
and in Mustawfi’s time nothing remained but a small
village surrounded by Mongol settlements. 3 4 To-day it
is not possible even to identify the site of the ancient
town for certain. But if Suhraward itself has passed
from the ken of man, its fame is perpetuated in the
immortal names of its distinguished sons.
The senior Suhraward!, Diya al-Dln Abu ’ 1 -Najlb
'Abd al-Qahir ibn 'Abdallah, a descendant of the
caliph Abu Bakr, was born at Suhraward in 490/1097
and died at Baghdad in 562/ x 168. He came to Bagh¬
dad as a youth and studied hadtth under 'All ibn
Nabhan and fiqh under As'ad al-Maihani: later he pro¬
fessed at the Nizamiyah University. During this time
Abu ’l-Najib feli under the spell of Sufism, and at his
order a number of monasteries were built for his fellow-
Sufls: his spiritual preceptors were Hammad al-Dabbas
and Ahmad al-Ghazall; he is also said to have associated
with 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilanl* In 557/1163 he set out
for Jerusalem,' but learned at Damascus, where he was
received with honour by Maljmud ibn Zangl, that war
had brpken out again between the Arabs and the
Crusaders, and he therefore had to return to Baghdad
disappointed of his intention. As Rector of the Niza-
1 Hudud al-alam (tr. V. Min or sky), p. 132.
2 M. Plessner in Encyclopaedia of Islam, iv, p. 506.
3 Nuzhat- al-quhib (tr. Le Strange), p. 69.
4 For a fuller account see Otto Spies, Mu’nis al- ’Ushshaq, pp. 1-4;
C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabiscken Litteratur, i. p. 436; Stippl.
i, p. 780.
i/SENT AND FUTURE OF SC'Fl STUDIES 6
)niversity Abu ’ 1 -Najlb had naturally acquired
considerable fame, while his conversion to Sufism
brought him still wider celebrity: nevertheless he wrote
little, and the only book from his pen which achieved
;>• Hilarity is the small treatise Adab al-muridin which,
though commonly found in manuscript, has not yet
been printed.
Abu ’ 1 -Najlb was the uncle of an even more cele¬
brated nephew, Shihab al-Dln Abu Hafs 'Umar ibn
'Abdallah, born at Suhraward in 539/1145. Like his
uncle he came to Baghdad as a boy, and there studied
under various teachers including Abu ’ 1 -Najlb himself:
he also associated with the great 'Abd al-Qadir. Shihab
al-Din spent most of his life in Baghdad where he
enjoyed the favour of the cal’ al-Nasir: he was ap¬
pointed Shaikh al-shuyukh, and received visitors and
letters from all parts of the Muslim world. A good
story is to' of the practical wisdom which lay under¬
neath his high spirituality. A Sufi wrote to him: ‘If I
give up working, I find myself inclined to a life of
idleness, whereas if I work, I am overcome by pride:
which, had I better do?’ He replied briefly and to the
point: ‘Work, and ask God’s forgiveness for your
pride .’ 1 Shihab al-Dln performed the pilgrimage on a
number of occasions, and in 628/1231, while at Mecca,
he met the great Egyptian poet and Sufi 'Umar ibn
al-Farid: in Baghdad he was visited by Sa'di, who tells
an anecdote about him in his Bustanf and Baha al-Dln
Zakariya al-Multanl, the well-known Indian saint and
teacher of the poet 'Iraqi: 3 it was Baha al-Dln who
brought the Suhrawardlyah discipline to India A Shihab
' Ibn al-Mmad, Shadkardt al-dhahab, v, p. 154.
~ K. H. Graf's edition (Vienna, 1850), p. 150.
! See my edition of'Iraqi’s * Ushsk dq-ndmek , pp. xv—xvi.
4 Brockelmann, G.A.L ., SuppL i, p. 789.
hi.
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF SOFl STUDIE
In died at Baghdad in 632/1234. He was a more
copious writer than his uncle, and his most celebrated
work, 'Avoarif al-ma'arif, has been both printed and
studied: as the edition is now very scarce, however, 1
the book should certainly be re-edited. Carra de Vaux 2
and E. Blochet 3 have both analysed this work, while
Mahmud ibn 'All Kashanl’s Persian version was
translated into English by H. Wilberforce Clarke. 4
Among the minor works ascribed to Shihab al-Din is the
Irshad al-murtdtn, a manual for beginners in Sufism,
which has been shown to be based on Qushairl’s
Risdlahd
Abu ’ 1 -Najlb and Shihab al-Din, stated to be joint
founders of the Suhrawardl order 6 which rapidly spread
to all parts of the world of Islam, for all the profundity
of their mysticism kept within the bounds of orthodoxy
and lived and died respected and honoured by all. Not
so the third Suhrawardl. Shihab al-Din Abu ’ 1 -Futuh
Ahmad (or Yahya) ibn Habash (or Ya'Ish) ibn Amlrak,
called al~Maqtul, born in 549/1155, studied fiqh and
philosophy at Maragha under Majd al-Din al-Jilt, the
teacher of Fakhr al-Din al-RazI. 7 Living the life of a
wandering Sufi, he came first to Isfahan, then to Bagh¬
dad, and finally to Aleppo, where to begin with Saladin’s
son and viceroy, al-Malik al-Zahir, accorded him his
patronage. In the intoxication of his mystical fervour,
however, the young Sufi committed indiscretions which
1 It was printed on the margin of Ghazali’s Ihya at Cairo in
1289/1872.
2 Lcs Penseurs de P Islam (Paris, 1923), iv, pp. 199-207.
3 fit tides sur Pd sot drisme musulman , see above, p. 32.
4 In his translation of the Dvzvdn of Hafiz, Calcutta, 1891.
5 Catalogue of the Arabic manuscripts in the Library of the India
Office, ii, p. x i5.
6 L. Massignon in Encyclopaedia of Islam, iv, p. 671.
7 Ibn al~'Imad, op. cit., iv, p. .290.
miST/fy
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF SUE! STUDIES ^
him to the attacks of the more conservatives,
imped who denounced him to his royal master:
Saladin himself intervened and issued an order for his
execution as a heretic. Regarding the manner of his
death a number of stories soon passed into circulation:
according to some he shut himself up in his room on
hearing that sentence had been passed against him, and
refused food and drink until he died. This version,
however, hardly explains how he came by the epithet
al-Maqtul, given him to make it clear that he was not
a martyr: 1 possibly the tale was invented by his friends.
Other authorities state that he was alternatively either
strangled or crucified. At all events, it is certain that
he died in 578/x 191. Legends soon sprang up about
his miraculous qualities: it is said that he was a pro¬
found alchemist, that he was never killed but dis¬
appeared, and that on the other hand no tree or shrub
would grow on his grave. 2
As we have seen, Suhrawardi Maqtul has attracted
the interest of a number of European orientalists,
notably von Kremer, Carra de Vaux, and Horten: the
Dutch scholar S. van den Bergh has also published an
account of his system as contained in the Hayakil al-
niir .' 3 More recently Massignon called attention to his
profound importance, and urged that his surviving
works should be edited with a view to a general study.
In the meantime the patient industry of Ritter, who
with his unrivalled knowledge of the libraries of
Istanbul and ungrudging generosity has served his
generation as well as any man could, unearthed copies
of Suhrawardi Maqtul’s Persian works and so paved
1 Encyclopaedia of Islam, iv, p. 507.
2 See O. Spies, Midnis al-Ushshaq , p. 10.
3 ‘De Tempels van liet Licht door Soehrawerdi’ in Tijdschrift v.
Wijsbegeerte (1916), x, pp. 30-59.
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF SO’Fl STUDIES
way for the labours of Spies and Corbin. While,
therefore, we still await good editions of his two funda¬
mental Arabic texts, the Hikmat al-ishrdq and // ’ vakil
al-nur , for his other minor writings we are gradually
coming to a satisfactory position. Spies has edited the
Munis al- u shsh ag and, in association with S. K. Khatak,
the Lughat-i miiran> Saftr-i smurg/i, and Risdlat al-tair ,
Corbin has published with Kraus the Jvdz-i pir-i
'Jibril , and alone the Kalimdt al-tasawwuf> while Mahdi
Bayani, using an old manuscript in the National
Library at Tehran, has brought out the Risdlah fi hdh f
al-tujuliyah and Risdlah-i ruzi bd jamd'at-i Sufiydn. A
good deal of preparatory work yet remains to be lone,
before we shall be in a position to give a complete
account of the development and, above all, the sources
of Suhrawardl Maqtul’s ishrdqi theosophy: but already
it is extremely satisfactory that the general public can
now read some of his characteristic writings and pass
judgement on his unique genius.
There is one more matter which we might profitably
discuss, since it is closely germane to our general
theme: this is the question of translating the Sufi
writers. It must in the first place be said that >ur
labours as researchers into Islamic mysticism will be
selfish and, in a larger sense, barren unless the fruits
of our work can be enjoyed by a much wider circle than
that which reads Arabic and Persian. Mysticism is not
an isolated phenomenon confined to one school or one
faith: on the contrary, it is the touchstone which re¬
solves the ancient sectarian controversies and provides a
common inspiration for a common humanity. The
general public, quite unlearned either in Sufi or any
other form of mysticism, can find in the utterances of the
Sufis, when suitably presented in a familiar idiom, great
comfort and sure guidance in the perplexities of this
ESENT AND FUTURE OF StFl STUDIES
alist age. It is clear that for this audience the j
'more technical and recondite side of Sufism can have
little attraction: yet there remains a vast volume of fine
sayings and inspired poetry which it is our duty to
bring to the notice of our fellow men. There is a second
use for translations. If our first and larger audience
can be called the 'awamm, our second public is the
kh awass : they consist of those students of other forms
of mysticism—Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and the rest
—who wish to extend their researches to take in a
universal comparison, and being already familiar with
the jargon of one school of theosophy they will not be
frightened by the technicalities of another. For them
we must prepare translations of those comprehensive
treatises on Sufism, such as Qushairi’s Risalah and
Kalabadhi’s Kitab al-taarruj ., from which they will
obtain a general picture of Islamic mysticism, as well as
the more famous works of individual Sufis. Thirdly,
we have to think of the khawass al-khawass , that is,
the students of Sufism themselves. The time has come
when it becomes possible for a man to spend his entire
life studying a single mystic, and in the course of that
study he naturally acquires a far more profound know¬
ledge of that individual figure than any other scholar
can hope to attain. The writings of the Sufis are not
easy to understand: it takes many years’ concentrated
attention to establish reasonable certainty of interpreta¬
tion for such authors as, for example, Hallaj, Junaid,
Ibn 'Arabl, Ibn al-Farid, Rumi. When, therefore, we
commit ourselves to a lifetime’s seclusion communing
with the spirit of this or that great Sufi, let us remember
to place on record all that we discover, even if it means
producing almost unreadable material, so that the full
fruits of our labours may not wither and die within our
own minds.
PRESENT ANP FUTURE OF S 0 f'I STUDIE
ese reflections came into my mind out of
fering the translations Spies has made of Suhrawardi
Maqtul. Far be it from me to belittle the service to
scholarship rendered by a contemporary with whom in
the days before the modern Attila set out on his bloody
career of world-desolation I enjoyed profitable corre¬
spondence. Yet it is difficult to conceive of anything
more calculated to repel those who seek an indication of
what this great mystic wrote that won him such t une,
than the travesty of a version contained in the Three
Treatises on Mysticism . 1 Few Germans ever succeed in
mastering English completely, and Spies is certainly
not one of those: I therefore find it incomprehensible
that, over and above a very insecure understanding of
Persian, he should have seen fit. to torture the mag¬
nificent imagery of Suhrawardi Maqtul into what is at
times little more than gibberish. I quote Nicholson’s
judgement on this book.
‘While the editors may claim full credit for their industry and
enterprise in collecting all this new material, they cannot be
congratulated on the way they have produced it. Even if we
ignore obvious misprints, the short lists of corrigenda are very
far from being complete.. .. Inaccuracy is a mild term for mis¬
translations such as “He vacated a house for me who am one of
the broken-hearted” (p. 26), ... In other respects too the
English version leaves a good deal to be desired.’2
If I should appear to pillory this book in a manner its
importance does not merit, it may be pleaded that this
being the sole English version hitherto of any of
Suhrawardl’s allegories, it is altogether lamentable"that,
the version is so wretched. We have been discussing
the various uses of translations; these Persian works of
Suhrawardi Maqtul could be translated with profit for
1 Published in 1935.
2 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1937), pp. 716-17.
mtSTfiy
|)esent and future of sOfI studies
>i and khawass alike; the manner and method
Sl
provide a perfect example of what to avoid.
Lest this criticism should appear not only sweeping
but also entirely negative, I venture to make use of the
time remaining at my disposal in order to submit a
small anthology of translated extracts from the writings
of this, the most unorthodox and most poetical of the
Suhrawardls. While the audacity of his imagery and
the beauty of his language can certainly be matched in
the sayings of many other Sufis, few have equalled
Suhrawardl Maqtul in his faculty of combining sub¬
limity of thought with simplicity of allegory.
My first passage is taken from the Lughat-i muran ,
and it is from this anecdote that the treatise derives its
name.
‘A number of ants, fleet of foot, their loins girded, seeking to
provide for their sustenance came forth from the shadowy depths
of their original home and hiding-place and made their way to
the wilderness. Now it so happened that a few shoots of vegeta¬
tion came within the compass of their vision: in the time of the
morning drops of dew settled upon their upper surfaces. Asked
one ant of another, “What is this ?” Some said, “The origin
of these drops is from the earth”; others said, “It is from the
sea.” In this manner dispute arose in the place. A free-thinking 1
ant in the midst of them said: “Have patience a moment, so that
(we may discover) in what direction its inclination lies: for every ■:
one has a tension towards his origin, a yearning to attach himself
to his mine and source. All things are drawn by their own
gravity. Do you not see that when a clod is thrown from (its)
earth centre towards the sea-circumference, 2 since its origin is
stony and the rule ‘every thing returns to its origin’ is estab¬
lished, the clod finally sinks to the bottom ? Whatever ends in
pure darkness, its origin is of the same: with regard to the light
1 This appears to be the meaning of muta$arrif, rather than ‘dex¬
trous’ (Spies-Khatak).
2 A pun on the two meanings of mu hit.
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF StlFl STUD m
mity this proposition in the case of a noble element isP
fer. God forbid (that we should have) any thought (here)
of Union (with God): (but) whatsoever seeks the light is itself
of the light/’ The ants were in the midst of this, when the. sqn
grew warm and the dew was about to rise from the vegetable
body. Then it became clear to the ants that it was not of the
earth: since it was of the air, it departed into the air.’ *
I will choose as my second illustration the majestic
passage towards the conclusion of the Rtsalat al-tair in
which Suhrawardi Maqtul, having described the Bight
of the birds towards the palace of the heavenly King,
attempts to indicate the nature of the King Himself.
‘Some of my friends asked me, (saying), “Tell (us) the quality
of the King’s majesty, and the description of His beauty and
splendour”. Though I am not able to achieve this, yet I will sty
something brief. Know, that whenever ye picture a beautiful
thing in.your thoughts, unadulterated with any ugliness, or a
perfect thing that is hedged about by no imperfection, there ye
will find Him. For all beauties are in reality His: now He is the
loveliness of every (lovely) face, now the generosity of every
(open) hand. Whoever does His service, the same finds eternal
happiness; but he that turns away from Him has lost both this
world and the next.’ 2
In the Risdlah ft hdlat al-tufultyah the author
describes an encounter he had in childhood with a
learned Sufi, the questions he put to him and the answers
he received. The following extract gives some idea of
the style and contents of this very interesting treatise
T said to the shaikh, “When Sufis hold seance, they pass into
a state (of ecstasy). How does this come about?” Fie replied:
“Certain melodious instruments such as the drum, the flute and
the like within the gamut of a musical mode give forth melodies
wherein there is a certain plaintiveness. Then a vocalist also
gives voice thereto in tones as sweet as can be, and in the midst of
1 Spies-Khatak, Three Treatises on Mysticism , pp. 2-3 (text).
2 Ibid., p. 45.
iSENT AND FUTURE OF SCFl STUDIES
yJody speaks verses expressive of the feelings of one wi
entranced. When (the Sufi) hears a tone so plaintive,
plaintive, and in the heart of it perceives the image of his own
entranccment, then, like Hindustan to the mind of the elephant, 1
so the soul’s state is brought to the mind of the soul. Thereupon
the soul takes that mystic fervour out of the ear’s possession,
saying, i hou are not worthy to hear this. The soul banishes the
ear from hearing, and itself hears: but the soul’s hearing is in
the other world, for in that world hearing is not the business of
the ear,”" I said to the shaikh, “What is the explanation of
dancing?” He replied: “The soul strives upward, as a bird that
longs to cast itself forth from its cage. The body’s cage inter¬
venes; the bird of the soul uses force, and provokes the body
out of its place. If the bird has great strength, it breaks the cage
and gne:-, forth: but if it has not that strength, it becomes giddy
and spins the body round with itself. 2 * 4 Even in that pass the true
meaning of triumph becomes apparent: the soul’s bird (still)
strives upward, desiring that, if it cannot escape from the cage,
it may transport the cage itself upward. However much it
strives, more than a little it cannot carry upward: the bird
carries the cage upward, then the cage falls to the ground.” ’3
My last extract is taken from the MiCnis al-u shsh dq
and is remarkable as an example of mystical exegesis.
Love is a house-born slave that has been nurtured in the city
of pre-eternity. The Monarch of pre- and post-eternity has
appointed him to watch over the two worlds: every moment he
is engaged in watching some region, and all the while he is
casting his glance upon some clime. In his letters of credence
it i's written, that upon whatever city he turns his face, the lord
of that ity must sacrifice a cow for him, for “God commands
you to slay a cow”.* Until he kills the cow of the carnal soul,
he will not set foot within that city. The body of man is like a
city: his limbs are the streets thereof, his veins the rivulets that
1 Cf. 'Iraqi, f Ushshaq-ndmek^ v. 742.
2 Apparently explaining the so-called Mevlevi dancing.
Du risdlah-i fdrsi (ed. M. Bayani), pp. 11-12.
4 Qur. ii. 63.
'RESENT AND FUTURE OF SUFI STUDIE
Sl
run through the streets, his senses are the tradesmen,'
pied with (his own) business, his carnal soul is a cow that
makes devastation in that city. It has wo horns, 1 whereof the
one is concupiscence, the other ambition: it is of a fair hue,
golden, and it is lustrous, glittering; all that look upon it rejoice,
“Golden, her colour is very bright, she delights the beholders”.’ 2
We have now completed the task upon which we
embarked; we have traced the rise and progress of Sufi
studies from the end of the eighteenth century to the
present day; we have indicated along what lines future
research should best proceed; and it only now remains
to describe the form which that complete history of
Sufism will take when it comes to be written, which will
incorporate the results of all these vast researches and
digest them in a manner agreeable to both the student
of comparative mysticism and the Sufi specialist. It
will, I think, have become apparent that this history
will be no small book: indeed, it must have something
of the nature of an encyclopaedia. Like an encyclo¬
paedia, it will need to be compiled by a number of
experts, each specializing in a particular aspect of the
subject: but it will also require an editor whose difficult
responsibility it will be to give the whole work balance,
and to resolve such inconsistencies as are bound to
arise from the conflict of expert views. But since ‘the
conflict of the learned is a mercy’, as the Prophet him¬
self sagely observed, it should not be impossible finally
to achieve this goal, though for my part I do not
anticipate that it will be reached much sooner than the
year in which our successors will be celebrating the
bicentenary of the publication of Tholuck’s Ssufismus.
If the world has to wait another eighty years before the
whole story of Sufism can be finally and completely
1 Reading sarun.
2 Qur . ii. 64: Mu’nis al- usksh ag (ed. Spies), pp. 45-7.
UWST/fy
H Resent and future of sOfi studies
^|jw5perhaps it is not too much to hope that the
generation which will produce it will be a generation ot
men and women released from the fear of war and
want, a generation that has returned to the true under¬
standing of spiritual values and to the application of
mystical truths to everyday life.
MIN IST/fy
INDEX
*Abd al-Qadir Jilam, xii, xiv, 26,
33 > 68 .
r Abd al-RazzSq, 20.
Abraham,- 56.
Abu 'Abd Allah ChishtI, xi.
Abu Bakr, 55.
Abu ’ 1 -Fadl, vii.
Abu Nu'aim Isfahan!, 37, 63.
Abu Sa'ld b. Abl ’l-Khair, 18,
41.
Account of the Kingdom of Caubul,
11.
AM, A. E., 58.
Afghanistan, Sufism in, 11.
Ahmad Faruql SirhindJ, Shaykh,
xiii.
A’in-i Akbari, vii.
Akhbdr al-Hallaj, 50.
Algeria, Sufism in, 30.
Aramaic, 48.
Arnold, T. W., iii, x, xiii.
Aryan hypothesis, 23, 43.
Asceticism, 21, 31, 41, 44.
Asm y Palacios, M., 6, 25, 52-7.
Athos, monks of, 33.
'AttSr, Farid al~Dln, 16, 17, 26,
40.
Jvdz-i par-i fibril, 72.
' Azvarif al-md dr if 7 o.
Baba Fakhr al-Dln, x.
Bad' man anaba , 62.
Baha al-Dln Naqshband, Khwa-
jah, xiii.
Baha al-Dln Zakariya, Multan!,
viii, 66, 69.
Bahdristdn , 17.
Bakhtiygr Kaki, Qutb al-Dln,
Khwajah, xiv.
I
Baqli, Ruzbihan, 46.
Bayani, Mahdi, 72.
Biddy at al-kiddy ah , 26.
BistamI, 18, 22, 34, 36, 38, 45.
Blochet, E., 32, 70.
of the Dove , 34.
Brown, J. P., 23-6, 30.
Browne, E. G., iv, 26-7.
Buddhism and Sufism, 31, 36, 38,
44.
ChishtI order, vii, xi.
Christianity and Sufism, 13, 31,
33-4. 37, 42, 44, 5h 53, 4-
Clarke, H. W., 70.
Confrdries religieuses, les 30.
Coppolani, X., 30, 67.
Corbin, H., 72.
Dante, 6, 57.
Dara Shikoh, 9.
Darvishes, 23.
Depont, O., 30, 67.
Development of Muslim Theology ,
33-
dhikr, xvi, 22.
.Dh u ’J-Nun MisrI, 22, 42-4.
dhyandj 22, 49.
Dictionary of technical terms, 20.
Dionysius, pseudo-, 19, 33, 43-4.
Dhvdn al-Halldj , 50.
Diwan Ibn ' Arabi, 57.
Dozy, R., 25.
Egypt, Sufism in, 24.
Elphinstone, 3 VL, 10-ir.
Enneads, 64.
Espiritualidad de Algazel , 53.
jSAtf/ jv/r les origines , 47.
MINIS ^
INDEX
al-rabbani, 26.
Furns al-hikam, 20, 41, 57.
Futuh al-ghaib, 26.
nl-Futuhat al-Makkiyak, 20, 23,
, 57»' ( fe
futiiwa movement, 7.
Gen tins, G., 8.
Gcschichte der herrschenden Ideen,
20 „
GhazftE Ahmad, 68.
■ GhazSli, Muhammad, r6, 20, 22,
26, 34 ? 53 ? 55 ? 63. ,
aF Gh unyahi 26.
Gibb, E. J. W., 33.
(jfcudarSz, Muhammad, Sayyid,
xi, 66.
Gnostics, 19, 37, 44, 49.
Goethe, 15.
Goldziher, L, 25-6, 30-1, 35,
41—2, 54* -
! Graham, J, W., 11-14.
. Greaves, }., 7.
Gu li st a n r 8.
Gulshand raz, 17, 29.
H.idith, xiv, 2, 60.
'jtd'itji qudsi) 49.
' Hafiz, 9.
rlallaj, 18, 22, 34? 3®» 4^> 4^? 4^>
5P> 73*
Hammer 1 hirgstall, J. von, 15 ,
2 9 „
Hartmann, R., 3 5-7.
Hasan Basil, 18, 56, 62.
Hasan NizilmI, KhwSjah, viii, xi.
Hayakil al-nur, 22, 32, 71-2.
\ fenaetic writers, 51.
Hierotheos, 34.
Hi km at aldshrdq, 22, 32, 72.
Hilyat al-auliyd, 37, 63. ^
Hindu environment, vii, xiv-xvi.
History of Ottoman Poetry , 33.
History of Persia, 11, 14.
Horten, M., 38, 71.
Hu j win, 26, 40.
I bn Arab!, 6, 20, 23, 34 ? 3 ^?
40 “i» 53 - 57 - 8 . 63,73.
Ibn al-FSrid, 41, 69, 73.
I bn al-Jauzl, 33.
Ibn Khaldun, 31.
Ibn Kh allikan, 16.
Ibrahim b. Adham, 18, 42.
Idea of Personality in Sufism, 40,
Ikyd'ulum a 1 -din, 26, 53.
Imr al-Qais, 2 r.
India, Sufism in, viii—xvi,. 6 5—7.
al-Insdn al-kdmil, 41.
Iqbal, Muhammad, 67,
'Iraqi, viii, xviii, 69.
Isfara’im, 16.
ishrdqi theosophy, 22, 32, 63, 72.
Islam and the Divine Comedy, 57.
Ivanow, W., 66.
Jadil Jalal al-Din, see Jatmall.
Jalal al-Din Surkh-posh, Sayyid,
ix.
Jalal al-Din Tabriz!, ix.
Ja.m.1, 17, 20, 42.
Jatmall, called Jadu Jalal al-Din,
x.
Jaukar al-dhat, 17.
Jill, 41.
Jones, W., 9, 10, 25-6.
Junaid, 3, 18, 22, 37-8, 62, 73.
Kabir, Jalal b. Ahmad, called
Makhdum-i Jahaniyan, ix.
Kabir al-Din, son of'Iraqi, viii.
Kalabadhi, 31, 63, 73.
INDEX
mat al-tasazvtvuf 72.
y a$hf al-mahjuh, 26, 40.
Kaukab-i durri , xvii.
KhandSn-i Suhrawardiyah, vi, x.
Kharraz, 62.
Khatak, S. K., 72.
Klmiya-i sa ddah, 26.
Kitab al-Luma\ 3, 40.
Kitab al-R'd ayah, 62.
Kitab aPSabr, 62.
Kitab aPSidq , 62.
Kitab aPTdarruf 31.
Kitab aPTazuakhum , 62.
Kitab aPTazoastn, 40, 46.
Kremer, A. von, 20-2, 25, 31, 34,
71-
Lane, E. H., 24.
Lazarus, 56.
Lees, W. N., 20.
Leyden, ]., to.
Literary History of Persia , 27,
Lughat-i murdn> 72, 75.
Lull, Raymond, 6.
Ma'dthir aPumara, 14.
MacDonald, D. B., 25, 33-4.
Magians, 17.
Mahabir Khandayat, Plr, xi.
Majdlis aPmtdmimn , 14.
Majd al-Din Jill, 70.
Makhdum-i Jahaniyan, Xablr,
Makki, Abu Talib, 20, 26.
Malcolm, J., 11—12, 14, 26.
Manicheeism, 37, 49.
aPMaqsad aPaqyd, 16 .
Margoiiouth, D. S., 33.
Ma'ruf Karkhi. 43-4.
Massignon, L., 4, 25,
46-52,59,62.
MathnawPi rndnawi , 17
MazuaqV aPnujum, 57 .
33>
29,
40,
40.
Merx, A., 44.
Miftdh aPabrdr , 16.
Mirkhw’and, 17.
Mithras, 37.
Monasticism, 17-18.
Muhammad, the Prophet, xv, 19,
21 .
Muhammad Baqi billah Berang,
Khwajah, xiii.
Muhammad Ghawth, BandagI,
Sayyid, Shah, xii.
Muhammad Shah 'Alam, ix.
MuhasibI, 22, 33, 62-3.
Mu'in al-Din ChishtI, xi, xiv.
Mulla Shah, 34.
Mu'nis al-'usjhshdq , 72, 77.
aPMunqidh min aPdaldl , 26.
muraqabah , 22.
Mystics of Islam , 40.
I
Nafahdt a Puns, 20.
Naqshbandi order, vii, xii.
Neoplatonism, 19, 22, 30-3,
y
43~4> 49> 5 T > 64.
Nicholay, 6, 7.
Nicholson, R. A., iv, xx, 5, 7,
28-30,38-46,59,67,73.
NifFarl, 51, 62.
nirvana, 45.
Nizam al-Din Awliyl, xi, 66.
Nurallah Shushtari, 14.
I
25.
Oriental Mysticism , 23.
Palacios, w Asm y Palacios.
Palmer, E. H., 16, 23.
Pand-nameh , 16.
Pantheism, 22.
/<z Passion d'aPHallaj , 4, 46-7.
Patanjali, 49.
Plotinus, 64.
Poverty, spiritual, 3.
I
INDEX
QushairJ, 20, 26, 35, 63, 73.
Qiit al-quliib 9 26.
Rsbi'a, 18, 21.
Raudat al-safd, 17.
Raushanlyah, 10.
Recueil de textes inddits , 50.
Redhouse, J., 29.
Religious Attitude and Life , 33-4.
Risdlah ft hdlat al-tufiiliyahy 72,
76.
Risdlah-i ruzt, 72.
al-Risdlat al-Qushairiyah, 3, 26,
35*
Risalat al-fair , 72, 76.
Ritter, H., 62, 71.
Rosen, G., 29.
Rosenzweig, H. von, 29.
Riickert, F., 29.
n 7 i, 35,
RumI, Jalal al-Din, 17, 29, 39,40,
46,73-
Sa'di, 8, 69.
Safa vis, 8.
Saflal-Dln, 8,
Safir-i Simurgh, 72.
St. John of the Cross, 6.
Saint-worship, xv.
Salim ChishtI, Shaykh, xii.
Sarraj, 3, 40, 63.
Sayings of Muhammad , vi, 1.
Seraglio , 7.
Shabistari, 17, 29.
ShahnawSz Khan, 14.
Shams-i Tabrlz, 13,28.
Sha'ranI, 20, 23.
shath, 49.
Stu'a, 22.
Silvestre de Sacy, 15, 25-6.
Sind, viii, 36.
‘ SindhI, Abil 'All, 36.
Smith, Margaret, 33-4, 62-3. .
Sophy, Grand, 8.
Spies, O., 72-5.
Sprenger, A., 20, 22, 3 3.
Ssufsmusy 16-19, 29, 78.
Stephen bar Sudaili, 34.
Storey, C. A., iii.
Studies in Islamic Mysticism ,
40- x.
Subhat al-abrdr, ij.
Suhraward, 67-8.
SuhrawardI order, vi-ix, xiv.
SuhrawardI, Diya al-Din, 68-9.
SuhrawardI, Shihab al-Din, viii,
ix, xvii, 69, 70.
SuhrawardI Maqtul, 22, 32,70-1,
73-7-
Suhrawardy, Calcutta family, xvii,
3*
Suhrawardy, Abdullah, iii—vi, 1,
2.
Suhrawardy, Hassan, 2.
SulamI, 63.
Suyuti, 16.
Syed Ahmad Khan, xvii.
Tabor, Mt., 33.
al-Tadblrat al-ildhiyah, 57.
Tadhkirat al-auliydy 17, 26, 40.
Tahdhtb al-akhlaq^ xvii.
Talbis I bits, 33.
Tarjuman al-asjnodq, 40.
tasazuzouf 31.
taukidy 35.
Tawakkul Reg, 34.
Tholuck, F. R. I),, 16-19, 23,
25, 27, 29, 78.
Three Treatises on Mysticism , 74,
^HTnidhl, 62-3.
Titus, M. T., 66.
Tolstoy, L., 1.
Translation, uses of, 72-3.
Tuhfat al-ahrar , 17.
Turkey, Sufism in, 24, 33-
van den Bergh, S., 71.
Vaux, Carra de, 31, 45, 70-r
Vedanta, 9, to, 22, 39, 42.
INDEX
Wallenbourg, j .
Washington, T., 6 .
Wensinck, A. J., 34.
Whinfield, E. H., 17, '
Yahya b^JVTua dh RazI,
Tear Among the Persians ,
Zoroastrianism, 22, 32,
z.ukd, 31.
Introduction to the history of Sufism: the Sir Abdullah Suhrawardy lectures
Arberry, Arthur J.