The Wine-Song (al-Khamriyyah) of Umar Ibn al-Frid

(Translated and annotated by Martin Lings)

Source: Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 14, Nos. 3 and 4 (Summer-Autumn 1980) World Wisdom, Inc. www.studiesincomparativereligion.com

The Egyptian Sufi Umar ibn al-Frid (11811235 A.D.) was revered as a Saint already in his life-time, and his much visited tomb at the foot of the Muqattam range of hills is held to be one of the seven holy places of Cairo. He ranks unquestionably among the greatest of all Arab poets. Unlike his eminent Andalusion contemporary Muhyid-Dn Ibn Arab, Ibn al-Frid wrote only poetry. His odes have been amply commented, in particular by the Damascene Sufi Abd al-Ghan an-Nbulus (1641 1731 A.D.) But since the poet himself chose to give them to the world without any commentary, we will here reduce our notes to a minimum. Wine is the symbol of Gnosis and Love in their Essential Oneness, the Divine Radiance whereby all things exist and the Divine Attraction whereby all existence is reabsorbed into its Principle. This Gnosis-Love is both Transcendent and Immanent; its Subject as well as its Object is God. Being Absolute, pure Wine is only accessible to man in virtue of the Divine Self in the depth of his heart. The full moon, its cup, is the Logos, the Spirit of Muhammad ( ar-Rh al-Muhammad), and by extension the Spiritual Master, the Shaykh. The crescent is a disciple of promise who is growing towards the perfection of plenitude. The tavern is the Zwiyah where the Sufigatherings are held, and the people of the tavern, are the initiates of the Tarqah, that is, the order or brotherhood. Each generation of Sufis has lamented the spiritual decadence of the present as compared with the past. The poet complains of his times by dwelling on the absence or hiddenness of the wine. This poem, here translated into blank verse, was translated into prose by Nicholson in his Studies in Islamic Mysticism, (pp. 184-188) and by Arberry in The Mystical Poems of Ibn al-Frid (Chester Beatty Monographs, No. 6, pp. 81-84). Remembring the belovd, wine we drink Which drunk had made us ere the vines creation. A sun it is; the full moon is its cup; A crescent hands it round; how many stars Shine forth from it the moment it be mixed! But for its fragrance neer had I been guided Unto its tavern; but for its resplendence Imagining could no image make of it. Time its mere gasp hath left; hidden it is. Like secrets pent in the intelligence, Yet if it be remembered[1] in the tribe, All become drunkno shame on them nor sin. Up hath it fumed from out the vessels dregs. Nothing is left of it, only a name; Yet if that name but enter a mans mind, Gladness shall dwell with him and grief depart. Had the boon revelers gazed upon its seal,[2] That seal, without the wine, had made them drunk. Sprinkle a dead mans grave with drops of it,

His spirit would return, his body quicken. If in the shadow of the wall where spreads Its vine they laid a man, mortally sick, Gone were his sickness; and one paralyzed, Brought near its tavern, would walk; the dumb would speak, Did he its savor recollect. Its fragrance, If wafted through the East, even in the West, Would free, for one berheumed, his sense of smell; And he who stained his palm, clasping its cup, Could never, star in hand, be lost by night. Unveil it[3] like a bride in secrecy Before one blind from birth: his sight would dawn. Decant it, and the deaf would hearing have. If riders[4] rode out for its native earth, And one of them were bit by snake, unharmed By poison he. If the enchanter[5] traced The letters of its name on madman's brow, That script would cure him of his lunacy; And blazoned on the standard of a host,[6] Its name would make all men beneath it drunk. In virtue the boon revelers it amends, Makes perfect. Thus by it the irresolute Is guided to the path of firm resolve. Bountiful he, whose hand no bounty knew; And he that never yet forbore forbeareth, Despite the goad of anger. The tribes dunce, Could he but kiss its filter, by that kiss Would win the sense of all its attributes. Describe it, well thou knowest how it is, They bid me. Yea, its qualities I know: Not water and not air nor fire nor earth, But purity for water, and for air Subtlety, light for fire, spirit for earth Excellencies that guide to extol its good All who would tell of it, and excellent Their prose in praise of it, excellent their verse. So he that knew not of it[7] can rejoice To hear it mentioned, as Nums lover doth To hear her name, whenever Num is named. Before all beings, in Eternity It is, ere yet was any shape or trace. Through it things were, then it by them was veiled, Wisely, from him who understandeth not. My spirit loved it, was made one with it, But not as bodies each in other merge. Wine without vine: Adam my father is. Vine without wine, vine mothereth it and me.[8] Vessels are purer for the purity Of truths which are their content, and those truths Are heightened[9] by the vessels being pure. Things have been diffrenced, and yet all is One: Our spirits wine are, and our bodies vine.[10] Before it no before is, after it No after is; absolute its privilege To be before all afters. Ere times span It pressing was, and our first fathers[11] age

Came afterwardsparentless orphan it! They tell me: Thou hast drunk iniquity. Not so, I have but drunk what not to drink Would be for me iniquitous indeed. Good for the monastery folk, that oft They drunken were with it, yet drank it not, Though fain would drink. But ecstasy from it Was mine ere I existed, shall be mine Beyond my bones decaying. Drink it pure! But if thou needs must have it mixed, twere sin To shun mouth-water[12] from the Loved Ones lips. Go seek it in the tavern; bid it unveil To strains of music. They offset its worth, For wine and care dwelt never in one place, Even as woe with music cannot dwell. Be drunk one hour with it, and thou shalt see Times whole age as thy slave, at thy command. He hath not lived here, who hath sober lived, And he that dieth not drunk hath missed the mark. With tears then let him mourn himself, whose life Hath passed, and he no share of it hath had.

NOTES

[1] The reference is to the dhikr, the remembrance or invocation of the Name of God, the basic rite of Islamic mysticism. It is to this Name that every mention of the wines name refers throughout the poem. The tribe is the brotherhood. [2] The Prophet is not only the cup, but also, as Seal of the Prophets, the seal upon the wine-jar. [3] Literally unveil her, for khamr (wine) is feminine. As Arberry remarks in the notes to his translation, the comparison of the unveiling of a becobwebbed wine-jar with the unveiling of a bride is frequent in bacchic poetry. [4] The riders are the advanced initiates, slikn (travelers), who are immune from the effects of poison which, according to Nbulus, is the passionate attachment to worldly things. [5] Again according to Nbulus, the enchanter is the Spiritual Master and the madman is one who takes appearances for reality. [6] Another reference to the brotherhood, this time as an army whose warriors are engaged in the Greater Holy War (al-jihd al-akbar), the war against the soul. [7] Every human being is in love with the wine even if he be not conscious of it. The descriptions of it serve to awaken that latent love. Num, like Layl, is one of those womens names by which Sufis denote the Divine Essence. Love of Num and love of the wine may therefore be said to coincide. [8] At the level of my oneness with the principial wine in Eternitywine which, being absolutely independent, is therefore in no need of grape or vine for its existenceI am a true son of Adam who, as Logos, prefigures my union by his. The vine is Najas ar-Rahmn (the Breath of the All-Merciful) which is also termed at-Tabah (Universal Nature), the feminine or maternal source of all manifestation.

[9] Reading tasmu as in the oldest manuscript. It is for the mystic to ensure, by the ritual means at his disposal, that his soul is filled with spiritual presences or truths. These presences have a purifying effect upon the soul which is their vessel, and this increase of purity qualifies the vessel to endure a heightening of the truths. If we read tanmuhave increase, as in the other manuscripts, the meaning is not basically changed. [10] But, as Nbulus remarks, the vine contains the spiritual juice which will ultimately be transmuted into wine. We may compare the lines of Ibn al-Frids younger contemporary, Al ash-Shushtar: Behold My In Like the The One water In many hues. beauty, every water sap drink they, witness flowing of yet they of Me man, through branches. flower

[11] It is not the spiritual or winal nature of Adam which is referred to here but his human or vineal nature, of which the Prophet said: I was a Prophet when Adam was yet between water and clay. [12] If you have not the spiritual strength for oneness with the Divine Essence Itself, then let the water that you mix the wine with be nothing less than the saliva of God, that is, the Supreme Spirit, which, if it be not fully Him, is not other than Him. The mixing of the wine thus signifies the emergence of the Logos, ar-Rh al-Muhammad, and this explains the mention of stars in line four. The manifestation of the Spirit of Muhammad precipitates the existence of the Spirits of his Companions, whom he likened to stars: My Companions are even as the stars. Whichsoever of them ye follow, ye shall be rightly guided. By extension the words how many stars may be taken to include those Saints who are the heirs of the Companions in subsequent generations. PERJALANAN SEMINAR (TENTATIF) HARI PERTAMA [30 Disember 2009 (RABU)] 08.00 08.30 Pendaftaran 8.45 10.00 Pembentangan Selari 1 : SESI 1 BALAI ILMU Tajuk: Persepsi Pensyarah Fakulti Pengajian Quran dan Sunnah USIM Terhadap Penggunaan Laman Web al-Durar al-Saniyyah Dalam Mentakhrijkan Hadis Pembentang: Syed Najihuddin Bin Syed Hassan* Tajuk: The Contribution of Syeikh Dawud bin Abdullah al-Fathani towards Hadith Works and Writings in Fiqh Muamalat al-Maliyyah in the Malay Archipelago: An introduction to Nahjur Raghibin wa SESI 2 BILIK SEMINAR 2 Tajuk: Penawaran Kursus Takhrij AlHadith Kepada Pelajar Pengajian Islam Di Universiti, Di Antara Keperluan Dan Halangan Pembentang: Dr Rohaizan Baru Tajuk: Keperluan Takhrij Terhadap Buku Teks Sirah Di Negeri Sembilan Pembentang: Prof Madya Dr. Adel M. Abdul Aziz* SESI3 MOOT COURT Tajuk: Pemikiran Dr. Muhammad Baltaji Dalam Isu Sebatan Terhadap Peminum Arak: Reaksi Kritis Dari Aspek Riwayah Dan Dirayah Pembentang: Nordi Achie Tajuk: Pemakaian Hadis Syeikh Nik Mat Kechik Fatani Di Dalam Kitabnya Wisyah Al-Afrah Wa Isbah Al-Falah Pembentang:

Sabil al-Muttaqin, Takhrij and Analysis. Pembentang: Mohd Khairul Nizam Zainan Nazri* Tajuk: Keistimewaan Maktabah Syamilah Dalam Mentakhrij Hadis Pembentang: U. Margono Muhadi 10.00 10.15 Rehat/ Minum 10.15 11.45 Pembentangan Utama 1 TAJUK PEMBENTANGAN Keperluan Takhrij Hadith, Dulu, Kini dan Selamanya ( :) Isu-Isu dan Cabaran Takhrij Hadith di Malaysia 11.50 12.50 Pembentangan Selari 2 SESI 1 BALAI ILMU Tajuk: Riwayat Berkaitan Amalan Bacaan Pembuka dan Penutup Majlis: Kajian Dari Aspek Riwayah dan Dirayah Pembentang: Anwar Ridwan Zakaria Tajuk: KeAdalahan Sahabat: Studi Kritis Terhadap Kedudukan Abu Hurairah Dalam Periwayatan Hadis Pembentang: Ardiansyah Tajuk: Keperluan dan Kepentingan Takhrij al-Hadith Kepada Semua Displin Ilmu Agama Pembentang: Zulhilmi Bin Mohamed Nor* SESI 2 BILIK SEMINAR 2 Tajuk: Asas Pemikiran Ilmu Takhrij Dalam Bidang Kewartawanan: Realiti Dan Cabaran. Pembentang: Nik Yusri Musa Tajuk: Aplikasi Takhrij Al-Hadith Dalam Penulisan Ilmiah: Penyelarasan Di Institusi Pengajian Tinggi, Institusi Agama Dan Media Cetak Di Malaysia Pembentang: Fadlan bin Mohd. Othman* Tajuk: Kepentingan Takhrij Al-Hadith Terhadap Penulisan Al-Sirah AlNabawiyyah Bahasa Melayu : Sorotan Terhadap Kisah Dan Karya Terpilih Pembentang: Prof. Madya Dr. Fauzi Deraman*

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12.50 1.50 1.50 02.50

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Tajuk: )( Pembentang: *

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" " Pembentang: Tajuk: Pembentang: Muhammad Abdul Rauf Muhammad

Tajuk: Pembentang:

Kalam and Islam

Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller

Most of us have met dedicated and otherwise intelligent Muslims who have made themselves "`aqida police" to confront the rest of us with their issues in tenets of faith. We are told that this group, or that group, or most Muslims, or we ourselves are kafirs or "non-Muslims" on grounds that are less than familiar, but found in some manual of Islamic creed. Before going to hell on a trick question, or sending someone else there, many Muslims today would do well to cast a glance at the history of traditional Islamic theology (kalam), and the real creedal reasons that make one a Muslim or non-Muslim. Nuh Keller examines them in the following address given at the Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Amman, Jordan.

Few would deny today that the millions of dollars spent worldwide on religious books, teachers, and schools in the last thirty years by oil-rich governments have brought about a sea change in the way Muslims view Islam. In whole regions of the Islamic world and Western countries where Muslims live, what was called Wahhabism in earlier times and termed Salafism in our own has supplanted much of traditional Islamic faith and practice. The very name Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jama'a or "Sunni orthodoxy and consensus" has been so completely derailed in our times that few Muslims even know it is rolling down another track. In most countries, Salafism is the new "default Islam," defining all religious discourse, past and present, by the understanding of a few Hanbali scholars of the Middle Ages whose works historically affected the tribes and lands where the most oil has been found. Among the more prominent casualties of this "reform" are the Hanbalis' ancient foes, the Ash'ari and Maturidi schools of Sunni theology. For over a thousand years Ash'ari-Maturidi theology has defined Sunni orthodoxy. When I visited al-Azhar in Cairo in 1990 and requested for my library the entire syllabus of religious textbooks taught by Azhar High Schools in Egypt, one of the books I was given

was a manual on Islamic sects, whose final section defined Ahl al-Sunna as "the Ash'aris, followers of Abul Hasan al-Ash'ari, and the Maturidis, followers of Abu Mansur alMaturidi" (Mudhakkara al-firaq, 14). This is not an isolated assessment. When the Imam of the late Shafi'i school Ibn Hajr alHaytami was asked for a fatwa identifying ashab al-bida' or heretics, he answered that they were "those who contravene Muslim orthodoxy and consensus (Ahl al-Sunna wa alJama'a): the followers of Sheikh Abul Hasan al-Ash'ari and Abu Mansur al-Maturidi, the two Imams of Ahl al-Sunna" (al-Fatawa al-hadithiyya, 280). Few Muslims today know anything about the Ash'ari and Maturidi schools or their relation to Islam. So I shall discuss their theology not as history, but as orthodoxy, answering the most basic questions about them such as: What are the beliefs of Sunni Islam? Who needs rational theology anyway? And what relevance does it have today? We mention only enough history to understand what brought it into being, what it said, what it developed into, what its critics said of it, and what the future may hold for it. I. Islamic theology is based on an ethical rather than speculative imperative. Many Qur'anic verses and hadiths show that iman or "true faith" is obligatory and rewarded by paradise, and that kufr or "unbelief" is wrong and punished by hell. Every Muslim must know certain matters of faith, be convinced of them himself, and not merely imitate others who believe in them. The faith God requires of man is expressed in the words: "The Messenger believes in what has been revealed to him from his Lord, as do the believers. Each believes in Allah, His angels, His books, and His messengers. We do not differentiate between any of His messengers, and they say: We hear and obey, O Lord grant us Your forgiveness, and unto You is the final becoming"
(Qur'an 2:285).

This verse defines the believer as someone who believes in the Prophet's revelation ( Allah bless him and give him peace) in general and in detail. The details have to be known to be believed, for as Allah says, "Allah does not tax any soul except in its capacity" (Qur'an 2:286), and it is not in one's capacity to believe something unless it is both known to one and not unbelievable, meaning not absurd or self-contradictory. Moreover, "belief" means holding something to be true, not merely believing what one's forefathers or group believe, such that if they handed down something else, one would believe that instead. That is, "belief" by blind imitation without reference to truth or falsity is not belief at all. Allah specifically condemns those who reject the message of Islam for this reason, by saying: "When they are told: 'Come to what Allah has revealed, and to the Messenger,' they say, 'It suffices us what we found our forefathers upon' But what if their forefathers knew nothing, and were not guided?"
(Qur'an 5:104).

In short, Islamic kalam theology exists because belief in Islam demands three things: (1) to define the contents of faith; (2) to show that it is possible for the mind to accept, not absurd or inconsistent; (3) and to give reasons to be personally convinced of it. "Very well," one may say, "these are valid aims, but what proof is there that rational argument, the specific means adopted by traditional theology, is valid or acceptable in matters of faith?" to which the first answer is that the Qur'an itself uses rational argument; while the second is that nothing else would have met the historical threat to Islam of Jahm and the Mu'tazila, the aberrant schools who were obligatory for Ash'ari and Maturidi to defeat. The Qur'anic proof is the verse "Allah has not begotten a son, nor is there any god besides Him, for otherwise, each would have taken what they created and overcome the other how exalted is Allah above what they describe!" (Qur'an 23:91), whose premises and conclusion are: (a) a "god" means a being with an omnipotent will; (b) the omnipotent will of more than one such being would impose a limit on the omnipotence of the other, which is absurd; (c) God is therefore one, and has not begotten a son, nor is there any god besides Him. A second proof is in the Qur'anic verse "Were there other gods in [the heavens and earth] besides Allah, [the heavens and earth] would have come to ruin" (Qur'an 21:22), whose argument may be summarized as: (a) a "god" means a being with an omnipotent will, to whom everything in the universe is thus subject; (b) if the universe were subject to a number of omnipotent gods, its fabric would be disrupted by the exercise of their several wills, while no such disruption is evident in the universe; (c) God is therefore one, and there are no other gods. The historical proof for rational argument unmentioned in kalam literature but perhaps even more cogent than either of the Qur'anic proofs just mentioned is that nothing else could meet the crisis that Ash'ari and Maturidi faced; namely, the heretical mistakes of the two early proto-schools of `aqida, the Jahmiyya and the Mu'tazila. We say "nothing else" because a chess player cannot be defeated by playing checkers, and the only way to refute the arguments of the Jahmiyya and of the Mu'tazila was by intellectual means. Mere political suppression would have but hardened their party spirit into sectarian obstinacy, so it was necessary to defeat them with rational argument.

10

II. The challenge facing Abul Hasan al-Ash'ari and Abu Mansur al-Maturidi was thus threefold: (1) to define the tenets of faith of Islam and refute innovation; (2) to show that this faith was acceptable to the mind and not absurd or inconsistent; and (3) to give proofs that personally convinced the believer of it. Though not originally obligatory itself, kalam became so when these aims could not be accomplished for the Muslim polity without it, in view of the Islamic legal principle that "whatever the obligatory cannot be accomplished without is itself obligatory." As we have seen, the specific form of the response, rational argument, was used by the Qur'an, mandated by human reason, and necessitated by history. We now turn to the concrete form of the response, which was the traditional tenets of faith (`aqida) of the two schools, after which we will look at how the response was conditioned by their historical predecessors, the Jahmiyya and Mu'tazila schools. III. The heart of traditional kalam theology is that after the shahada "there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah," and after acknowledging Allah's infinite perfections and transcendence above any imperfection it is obligatory for every Muslim to know what is (a) necessarily true, (b) impossible, or (c) possible to affirm of both Allah and the prophets (upon whom be peace). These three categories traditionally subsume some fifty tenets of faith. (a) The twenty attributes necessarily true of Allah are His (1) existence; (2) not beginning; (3) not ending; (4) self-subsistence, meaning not needing any place or determinant to exist; (5) dissimilarity to created things; (6) uniqueness, meaning having no partner (sharik) in His entity, attributes, or actions; (7) omnipotent power; (8) will; (9) knowledge; (10) life; (11) hearing; (12) sight; (13) speech; such that He is (14) almighty; (15) all-willing; (16) all-knowing; (17) living; (18) all-hearing; (19) all-seeing; (20) and speaking through His attributes of power, will, knowledge, life, hearing, sight, and speech, not merely through His being. (b) The twenty attributes necessarily impossible of Allah (21 40) are the opposites of the previous twenty, such as nonexistence, beginning, ending, and so on. (c) The one attribute merely possible of Allah (41) is that He may create or destroy any possible thing. The attributes of the prophets (upon whom be peace) similarly fall under the three headings: (a) The four attributes necessarily true of the prophets (42 45) are telling the truth, keeping their trust, conveying to mankind everything they were ordered to, and intelligence. (b) The four attributes necessarily impossible of them (46 49) are the opposites of the previous four, namely lying, treachery, concealing what they were ordered to reveal, and feeblemindedness. (c) The one attribute possible of them (50) is any human state that does not detract

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from their rank, such as eating, sleeping, marrying, and illnesses not repellant to others; although Allah protected them from every offensive physical trait and everything unbecoming them, keeping them from both lesser sins and enormities, before their prophethood and thereafter. When one reflects on these fifty fundamental tenets of faith, which students memorized over the centuries, it is not difficult to understand why Ash'ari-Maturidi kalam was identified with Islamic orthodoxy for over a millennium; namely, they are the tenets of the Qur'an and sunna. IV. We find however in the history of kalam that authors sometimes urged the distinctive doctrines of their school, particularly against opponents, as if they were basic principles of Islam. Now, "basic principles" are what every Muslim must know and believe as a Muslim, while "distinctive doctrines" may include virtually any point that controversy has brought into prominence. The two are not necessarily the same. A number of points of `aqida were not originally central to the faith of Islam, but entered the canon of "orthodoxy" by celebrity acquired through debate among schools. To take but one point for example: the question of "whether man is obligated to know God by revelation or whether by human reason alone" has been treated by Ahl al-Sunna, Mu'tazila, and Jahmiyya theologians as a point of `aqida, though it does not personally concern one single Muslim for all Muslims know Allah through the revelation of the Qur'an but rather concerns Allah's own judgement of human beings who have never been reached by the Islamic revelation, a judgement Allah is unlikely to consult anyone else about, whether believer or unbeliever. Something so devoid of practical consequences for Muslims could not have become prominent except through faction and debate. Treating distinctive doctrines as basic tenets of faith, however, was not always the result of mere controversy, but because Sunni theologians had to distinguish truth from falsehood, the latter including the many mistakes of the Mu'tazila and Jahmiyya. All falsehoods are rejected by Islam, and in matters of faith most are serious sins, but some are more crucial than others. In other words, in the spectrum from right to wrong beliefs, there are four main categories: (1) central beliefs that one must hold or one is not a Muslim; (2) beliefs that are obligatory to hold, but denying them does not make one a non-Muslim; (3) beliefs that are unlawful to hold, but affirming them does not make one a non-Muslim; (4) and beliefs that no one can hold and remain a Muslim. For many Muslims today, greater knowledge of these four necessary distinctions would bring about greater tolerance, and teachers of Islamic theology must explain that while

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"orthodoxy" reflects what Sunnis believe, only some of their issues spell the difference between faith and unbelief, while others are things that Muslims may disagree about and still remain Muslim. To say it again, a particular point of `aqida could be contrary to another, even heretical school of thought and hotly debated, yet not directly concern kufr or iman, faith or unfaith. Indeed, the longer and harder the historical debate, the less likely the point under discussion is a matter of salvation or damnation, for it is inconsistent with Allah's mercy and justice to create men of widely varying intelligence and then make their salvation depend on something that even the most brilliant of them cannot agree upon. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 606/1210) acknowledges this by writing: One should know that theologians have had considerable difficulty defining kufr(unbelief) ... Kufr consists in denying the truth of anything the Prophet ( Allah bless him and give him peace) is necessarily known to have said. Examples include denying the Creator's existence, His knowledge, power, choice, oneness, or perfection above all deficiencies and infirmities. Or denying the prophethood of Muhammad ( Allah bless him and give him peace), the truth of the Qur'an, or denying any law necessarily known to be of the religion of Muhammad ( Allah bless him and give him peace), such as the obligatoriness of prayer, of zakat, fasting, or pilgrimage, or the unlawfulness of usury or wine. Whoever does so is an unbeliever because he has disbelieved the Prophet ( Allah bless him and give him peace) about something necessarily known to be of his religion. As for what is only known by inference from proof to be his religion, such as "whether God knows by virtue of His attribute of knowledge or rather by virtue of His entity," or "whether or not He may be seen [in the next life]," or "whether or not He creates the actions of His servants"; we do not know by incontestably numerous chains of transmission (tawatur) that any of these alternatives has been affirmed by the Prophet ( Allah bless him and give him peace) instead of the other. For each, the truth of one and falsity of the other is known only through inference, so neither denial nor affirmation of it can enter into actual faith, and hence cannot entail unbelief. The proof of this is that if such points were part of faith, the Prophet ( Allah bless him and give him peace) would not have judged anyone a believer until he was sure that the person knew the question. Had he done such a thing, his position on the question would have been known to everyone in Islam and conveyed by many chains of transmission. Because it has not, it is clear that he did not make it a condition of faith, so knowing it is not a point of belief, nor denying it unbelief. In light of which, no one of this Umma is an unbeliever, and we do not consider anyone an unbeliever whose words are interpretable as meaning anything besides. As for beliefs not known except through hadiths related by a single narrator, it seems plain that they cannot be a decisive criterion for belief or unbelief. That is our view about the reality of unbelief (Mafatih al-ghayb, 2.42).

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Such breadth of perspective was not unique to Razi, the lifelong defender of Ahl alSunna `aqida and implacable foe of its opponents, but was also the view of Imam Ash'ari himself. Dhahabi says: Bayhaqi relates that he heard Abu Hazim al-'Abdawi say that he heard Zahir ibn Ahmad al-Sarkhasi say, "When death came to Abul Hasan al-Ash'ari in my home in Baghdad, he called me to him and I came, and he said, 'Be my witness: I do not declare anyone an unbeliever who prays towards the qibla, for all direct themselves to the One who alone is worshipped, while all this [controversy] is but different ways of speaking" [1] (Siyar ala'lam, 15.88). These passages show that both Ash'ari and Razi, the early and late Imams of their school, implicitly distinguished between the central `aqida of Islam, and the logical elaboration upon it by traditional theology. Clearly, their life work brought them to the understanding that kalam theology had produced a body of knowledge that was, if important and true, nevertheless distinct from the `aqida that is obligatory for every Muslim to believe in order to be Muslim. The difference however, between `aqida or "personal theology," and kalam or "discursive theology" was perhaps most strikingly delineated by Imam Ghazali (d. 505/1111). V. According to Ghazali, kalam theology could not be identified with the `aqida of Islam itself, but rather was what protected it from heresy and change. He wrote about his long experience in studying kalam in a number of places in his Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din, one of them just after his beautiful `aqida al-Qudsiyya or "Jerusalem Creed." After mentioning the words of Imam Shafi'i, Malik, Ahmad, and Sufyan al-Thawri that kalamtheology is unlawful by which they meant the Mu'tazilite school of their times, the only example they knew of Ghazali gives his own opinion on discursive theology, saying: There is benefit and harm in it. As to its benefit, it is lawful or recommended or obligatory whenever it is beneficial, according to the circumstances. As to its harm, it is unlawful whenever and for whomever it is harmful. Its harm is that it raises doubts in minds and shakes a student's tenets of faith from certitude and conviction at the outset, while there is no guarantee that he will ever get it back again through proofs, individuals varying in this. That is its harm to faith. It has another bad effect, namely that it hardens heretics' attachment to their heresy and makes it firmer in their hearts by stirring them up and increasing their resolve to persist. This harm, however, comes about through bigotry born of argument, which is why you see the ordinary unlearned heretic fairly easy to dissuade from his mistakes through affability; though not if he has grown up in a locale where there is arguing and bigotry, in which case if all mankind from beginning to end were to join together, they would be unable to rid his heart of wrong ideas. Rather, his prejudice, his heatedness, and his loathing for his opponents and their group has such a grip over his heart and so blinds him to the truth that if he were asked, "Would you like Allah Most High Himself to

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raise the veil so you can see with your own eyes that your opponent is right?" he would refuse, lest it please his opponent. This is the incurable disease that plagues cities and people: the sort of vice produced by bigotry when there is argument. This also is of the harm of kalam. As for its benefit, it might be supposed that it is to reveal truths and know them as they truly are. And how farfetched! kalam theology is simply unable to fulfill this noble aim, and it probably founders and misguides more than it discovers or reveals. If you had heard these words from a hadith scholar or literalist, you might think, "People are enemies of what they are ignorant of." So hear them instead from someone steeped in kalam theology, who left it after mastering it in depth and penetrating into it as far as any scholar can, and who then went on to specialize in closely related fields, before realizing that access to the realities of true knowledge was barred from this path. By my life, theology is not bereft of revealing and defining the truth and clarifying some issues, but it does so rarely, and about things that are already clear and almost plain before learning its details. Rather, it has one single benefit, namely guarding the ordinary man's faith we have just outlined [the Jerusalem Creed] and defending it by argument from being shaken by those who would change it with heresies. For the common man is weak and susceptible to the arguments of heretics even when false; and the false may be rebutted by something not in itself especially good; while people are only responsible for the creed we have presented above (Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din, 1.86). In this and other passages of Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din, al-Munqidh min al-Dalal, and Faysal alTafriqa which summarize his life experience with kalam theology, Ghazali distinguishes between several things. The first is `ilm al-`aqa'id or the knowledge of basic tenets of faith, which we have called above "personal theology," and which he deems beneficial. The second is what we have called "discursive theology," or kalamproperly speaking, the use of rational arguments to defeat heretics who would confuse common people about tenets of faith. Ghazali believes this is valid and obligatory, but only to the extent needed. The third we may call "speculative theology," which is philosophical reasoning from first principles about God, man, and being, to discover by deduction and inference the way things really are. This Ghazali regards as impossible for kalam to do. VI. The scholars of kalam certainly did not agree with Ghazali on this latter point, and history attests to their continued confidence in it as a medium of discovery, producing what has subsequently been regarded by almost everyone as a period of excess inkalam literature. Taj al-Din al-Subki (d. 771/1370) who was himself steeped in kalamtheology wrote: Upon reflection and no one can tell you like someone who truly knows I have not found anything more harmful to those of our times or more ruinous to their faith than reading books of kalam written by latter-day scholars after Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and others. If they confined themselves instead to the works of the Qadi Abu Bakr al-

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Baqillani, the great Abu Ishaq al-Isfarayini, the Imam of the Two Sanctuaries Abu alMa'ali al-Juwayni, and others of those times, they would have nothing but benefit. But truly I believe that whoever ignores the Qur'an and sunna [defended by these scholars] and instead occupies himself with the debates of Ibn Sina and those of his path leaving the words of the Muslims: "Abu Bakr and 'Umar (Allah Most High be well pleased with them) said," "Shafi'i said," "Abu Hanifa said," "Ash'ari said," "Qadi Abu Bakr said"; and instead saying: "The Sovereign Sage (al-Shaykh al-Ra'is) said" meaning Ibn Sina, or "The Great Master (al-Khawaja) Nasir said," and so on that whoever does so should be whipped and paraded through the marketplaces with a crier proclaiming: "This is the punishment of whoever leaves the Qur'an and sunna and busies himself with the words of heretics" (Mu'id al-ni'am, 79 80). For Subki, it showed how far kalam had strayed for latter-day authors to call heterodox figures such as Ibn Sina[2] or Tusi[3] "Sovereign Sage" or "Great Master" in works supposedly explaining the faith of Islam. The reason he found nothing "more harmful to those of our times or more ruinous to their faith than reading the books of kalam theology written by latter-day scholars" was that they had vitiated the very reason for kalam's existence: to defend the truth. By widening its universe to include heretics and giving them titles of authority, kalam literature had become a compendium of wrong ideas. To summarize, although Sunni theology first defined orthodoxy and rebutted heresy, it afterwards swelled with speculative excesses that hearkened back those of the Jahmiyya and Mu'tazila. At this juncture, it met with criticism from figures who knew it too well to accept this, such as Imam Ghazali, Taj al-Subki, Nawawi, and others, whose view was that kalam was a medicine useful in moderation, but harmful in overdose. Their criticisms were valid, for when theology obeys a speculative rather than an ethical imperative, it ceases to give guidance in man's relationship to God, and hence is no longer a science of the din. What has been forgotten today however by critics who would use the words of earlier Imams to condemn all kalam, is that these criticisms were directed against its having become "speculative theology" at the hands of latter-day authors. Whoever believes they were directed against the `aqida or "personal theology" of basic tenets of faith, or the "discursive theology" of rational kalam arguments against heresy is someone who either does not understand the critics or else is quoting them disingenuously. We conclude our remarks with a glance at kalam's significance today. What does traditional theology have to offer contemporary Muslims? VII. With universal comparison, the door today is open to universal skepticism, not only about particular religions, but belief in God and in religion itself. It is hence appropriate to consider the legacy of kalam proofs for the existence of God. At the practical level, most people who believe in God do not do so because of

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philosophical arguments, but because they feel a presence, inwardly and outwardly, that uplifts hearts, answers prayers, and solves their problems. Yet Muslims and others find their faith increasingly challenged by an atheistic modern world. The question becomes, can traditional kalam arguments answer modern misgivings? Now, philosophy as taught today in many places dismisses traditional proofs for the existence of God as tautological, saying that they smuggle in the conclusions they reach by embedding them in the premises. A young American Muslim philosophy student asked me, "How can we believe with certainty that there is a God, when logically speaking there is no argument without holes in it?" He mentioned among the arguments of kalam that (a) the world is hadith or "contingent"; (b) everything contingent requires a muhdith or "cause"; (c) if there is no first cause that is "necessary" or uncaused, this entails an infinite regress, which is absurd; and (d) therefore the world must ultimately have an uncaused or "necessary" cause as its origin. While scholars like Majid Fakhry in his History of Islamic Philosophy point out that saying that "the 'contingent' (hadith) requires a 'cause' (muhdith)" is a mere play on words, one can answer that while the form of this argument does contain a play on words, if we penetrate to the content of these words, they express an empirical relationship so basic to our experience that science regards it as axiomatic. That is, to provide a scientific explanation for something is to suggest a probable cause for it, and then present evidence for the particular cause being adduced as its "explanation." In cosmology, for example, the origin of the universe must be explained causally, and most scientists currently believe that the universe began about fifteen billion years ago in a cosmic cataclysm they term the Big Bang. And yet this most interesting of all events, indeed the effective cause of all of them, is somehow exempted from the scientific dictum that to explain something is to suggest a cause for it. Why the Big Bang? What urged its being rather than its nonbeing? This is no trivial enigma, still less a play on words. If to explain an event is to find a cause for it, then the Big Bang is not an scientific "explanation" for the origin of the universe in any ordinary sense of the word. Here, the kalam argument that the contingent must return to the necessary is still relevant today, and has been cited by name in works such as Craig and Smith's Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology. The prevailing cosmological view among scientists is that the universe did have a beginning, and this requires an explanation. Another traditional kalam argument vitally relevant to the teaching of Islam is the "argument from design," namely that the complexity of many natural phenomena is far more analogous to our own intentionally planned processes and productions than to ordinary random events. That is, the perfection of design in nature argues for the existence of a designer. As in the previous example, to teach this argument directly from kalam would seem to many intellectual Muslims today, particularly those scientifically literate, to be a mere tautology or play on words. But when filled in with examples drawn from scientific literature, its cogency becomes plain. Examples abound. One of them forms the central thesis of the work Just Six Numbers by

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the British Astronomer Royal Martin Reese of Cambridge. He has determined that the fabric of the universe depends on the coincidence of six basic physical number ratios, two of them related to basic forces, two fixing the size and texture of the universe, and two fixing the properties of space itself. These six numbers, in Reese's own words, "constitute a 'recipe' for a universe. Moreover, the outcome is sensitive to their values: if any of them were to be untuned [the slightest bit different in numerical value], there would be no stars and no life" (Just Six Numbers, 4). If any of these six numbers were dependent on the others, the fact that they allow for the existence of the universe would be less astonishing, but none of them can be predicted from the values of the others, and each number compounds the unlikelihood of the others. The only consequence mathematically inferable from this is that the universe that we know and live in is unlikely to an absurd degree. The statistical probability of the confluence of just these numbers is, to borrow the expression of astronomer Hugh Ross, about as likely as "the possibility of a Boeing 747 aircraft being completely assembled as a result of a tornado striking a junkyard" (Discover , 21, no. 11). The shocking improbability of ourselves and our universe is no play on words, and shows the relevance of the kalam argument for the existence of God from design. Another example of the argument from design is the origin of life, especially with what is known today, after the advent of the electron microscope, about the tens of thousands of interdependent parts that compose even the simplest one-celled organism known. The probability of such an entity not only assembling itself, but also simultaneously assembling a viable reproductive apparatus to produce another equally complex living reality does not urge itself very strongly according to anything we know about empirical reality. That is, the origin of perfectly articulated functional complexity argues for a design, and a design argues for the existence of a designer.[4] A third example of the relevance of the argument from design is what physicist Paul Davies has called in his Mind of God "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in describing and predicting the phenomena of the physical world. The "unreasonableness" in it is that if, as scientism avers, the structure of our brains that determines the way we view reality is only an evolutionary accident, which would presumably be much different if we were, say, a race of aliens who had evolved on different planet, why is it that so much of the mathematics that was first worked out as an abstract exercise in the minds of pure mathematicians has been so spectacularly effective in explaining the physical world? If man were hundreds of times larger than he is or hundreds of times smaller, his perceptual reality would be so completely different that he might well not have developed the integers or other mathematical tools that he did. But because man has turned out just so, by an uncannily improbable coincidence, the mathematical rules formulated by pure mathematicians which should be a mere accident of man's evolutionary and cultural history turn out, often years after their discovery, to be exactly the same rules nature is playing by. The enigma here is that, while there is a distinct evolutionary advantage in knowing the world by direct empirical observation, we have been equipped with a second faculty, of

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no selective evolutionary advantage at all, which can incorporate quantum and relativistic mathematical systems into our mental model of the world. For Davies these facts suggest that a conscious Being has encoded this ability within humanity, knowing that one day they would reach a degree of comprehension of the universe that will bring them to the realization that the unreasonable correspondence of nature to pure thought is not a coincidence, but the outcome of a great design. There are many other examples of the argument from design, particularly in the complexity of symbiotic and parasitic relationships between species of the natural world, which, if too long to detail here, also strongly attest to the relevance of thekalam argument for the existence of God. VIII. As for the role of kalam in defending Islam from heresies, Jahm and the Mu'taziites are certainly less of threat to orthodoxy today than scientism, the reduction of all truth to statements about quantities and empirical facts. The real challenge to religion today is the mythic power of science to theologize its experimental method, and imply that since it has not discovered God, He must not exist. Here, the task of critique cannot be relegated to traditional proofs drawn from the literature of a prescientific age. Rather, it belongs to scientifically literate Muslims today to clarify the provisional nature of the logic of science, and to show how its epistemology, values, and historical and cultural moment condition the very nature of questions it can ask or answer. Omniscience is not a property of science. In physics today, at the outset of the twentyfirst century, we do not yet understand what gives physical matter its mass, its most basic property. In taxonomy, estimates vary, but probably less than 3 percent of the living organisms on our own planet have been named or identified. In human fertility, many fundamental mechanisms remain undiscovered. Even our most familiar companion, human consciousness, has not been scientifically explained, replicated, or reduced to physical laws. In short, though we do not base our faith on the current state of science, we should realize that if science has not discovered God, there is a long list of other things it has not discovered that we would be ill-advised to consider nonexistent in consequence. In short, attacks today on religion by scientism should be met by Muslims as Ash'ari and Maturidi met the Mu'tazilites and Jahmites in their times: with a dialectic critique of the premises and conclusions thoroughly grounded in their own terms. The names that come to mind in our day are not Ash'ari, Baqillani, and Razi, but rather those like Huston Smith in his Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, Charles Le Gai Eaton in his King of the Castle, Keith Ward in his God, Chance, and Necessity, and even non-religious writers like Paul Davies in The Mind of God and John Horgan in his The End of Science and The Undiscovered Mind. Answering reductionist attacks on religion is a communal obligation, which Muslims can only ignore at their peril. This too is of the legacy ofkalam, or the

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"aptness of words to answer words." IX. A final benefit of kalam is to realize from its history that there is some range and latitude in the beliefs of one's fellow Muslims. In an Islamic world growing ever younger with the burgeoning population, there is a danger that those quoting Qur'anic verses and hadiths without a grasp of the historical issues will stir up the hearts of young Muslims against each other in sectarian strife. People like to belong to groups, and the positive benefits of bonding with others in a group may be offset by bad attitudes towards those outside the group. The Wahhabi movement for example, recast in our times as Salafism, began as a Kharijite-like sect that regarded nonmembers, including most of the Umma, as kafirs or unbelievers. Here, a working knowledge of the history and variety of schools of Islamic theology would do much to promote tolerance. The figures we have cited, from Ash'ari to Razi to Dhahabi to Ibn Taymiya, were men who passionately believed that there was a truth to be known, and that it represented the beliefs of Islam, and that it was but one. They believed that those who disagreed with it were wrong and should be engaged and rebutted. But they did not consider anyone who called himself a Muslim to be a kafir as long as his positions did not flatly deny the truthfulness of the Prophet ( Allah bless him and give him peace). Imam Ghazali says in Faysal al-tafriqa: "Unbelief" (kufr) consists in asserting that the Prophet ( Allah bless him and give him peace) lied about anything he conveyed, while "faith" is believing that he told the truth in everything he said (Faysal al-tafriqa, 78). There is wide scholarly consensus on this tolerance of Islam, and we have heard from Imam Ash'ari that he did not consider anyone who prayed towards the qibla to be an unbeliever, from Razi that he did not consider anyone to be an unbeliever whose words could possibly mean anything besides, and from Ibn Taymiya that he considered everyone who faithfully prays with ablution to be a believer. None of them believed that a Muslim can go to hell on a technicality. X. To summarize everything we have said, the three main tasks of kalam consist in defining the contents of faith, showing that it contradicts neither logic nor experience, and providing grounds to be personally convinced of it, and these three are as relevant today as ever. First, the substantive knowledge of the `aqida each of us will die and meet Allah upon will remain a lasting benefit as long as there are Muslims. Second, demographers expect mankind to attain close to universal literacy within fifty years. Members of world faiths may be expected to question their religious beliefs for coherence, logicality, applicability, and adequacy, and the work of Ahl al-Sunna scholars

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will go far to show that one does not have to hang up one's mind to enter Islam. Third, universal communication will make comparisons between religions inevitable. Blind imitation of ethnic religious affiliation will become less relevant to people around the globe, and I personally believe Islam has stronger theological arguments for its truth than other world religions. Indeed, Islam is a sapiential religion, in which salvation itself rests not on vicarious atonement as in Christianity, or on ethnic origin as in Judaism, but on personal knowledge. Whoever knows that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God is by that very fact saved. So in the coming century, three areas of kalam's legacy will remain especially relevant for Muslims: first, the proofs for the existence of God from necessity and design, second, the rebuttal of the heresy of scientistic reductionism and atheism, and third, promoting tolerance among Muslims. The latter is one of the most important lessons that the history of kalam can teach; that if Muslims cannot expect to agree on everything in matters of faith, they can at least agree on the broad essentials, and not to let their differences descend from their heads to their hearts.

Notes 1 Dhahabi goes on: "This is my own religious view. So too, our sheikh Ibn Taymiya used to say in his last days, 'I do not consider anyone of this Umma an unbeliever,' and he would relate that the Prophet ( Allah bless him and give him peace) said,'No one but a believer faithfully performs ablution' [Ahmad, 5.82: 22433. S], saying, 'So whoever regularly attends prayers with ablution is a Muslim'" (Siyar al-a'lam, 15.88). 2 Ibn Sina, the "Sovereign Sage" referred to by latter-day kalam authors here, had a number of heterodox beliefs. First, he believed that the world is beginninglessly eternal, while Muslims believe that Allah created it after it was nothing; second, he believed that Allah knows what is created and destroyed only in a general way, not in its details, while Muslims believe that Allah knows everything; and third, he held that there is no bodily resurrection, while Muslims emphatically affirm in it. Taj al-Subki's above passage continues: "Is he [such a latter-day kalam author] not ashamed before Allah Most High to espouse the ideas of Ibn Sina and praise him while reciting the word of Allah "Does man not think We shall gather together his bones? Indeed, We are well able to produce even his index finger" (Qur'an 75:7) and mention in the same breath Ibn Sina's denial of bodily resurrection and gathering of bones?" (Mu'id al-ni'am, 80). Imam Ghazali, despite his magisterial breadth of perspective in `aqida issues, held it obligatory to consider Ibn Sina a non-Muslim (kafir) for these three doctrines (al-Munqidh min aldalal, 44 45, 50). 3 The "Great Master" Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was the traitor who betrayed Baghdad and its whole populace to their Mongol slaughterers out of sectarian malice against the Sunni caliphate. In tenets of faith, he introduced philosophy into Shiism, reviving Ibn Sina's thought in a Twelver Shiite matrix, and authored Tajrid al-'aqa'id, the preeminent work of Shiite dogma to this day, in which he describes man as "the creator of his works" (Encyclopedia of Religion, 6.324, 7.316, 13.265) while the Qur'an tells us that "Allah

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created you and what you do" (Qur'an 37:96). 4 The Associated Press on Thursday 9 December 2004 carried the story "Famous Atheist Now Believes in God," in which religion writer Richard Ostling mentions that a British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a halfcentury has now changed his mind. "At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. 'A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature,' Flew said in a telephone interview from England." He also recently said that biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce [life], that intelligence must have been involved" (U.S. National AP Website, 9 December 2004). Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller is a writer and translator of the traditional Islamic sciences who lives in Jordan. He took the Shadhili tariqa from Shaykh 'Abd al-Rahman alShaghouri in Damascus in 1982. He teaches a circle of students in Amman.

Nuh Ha Mim Keller, All rights reserved. The above is the text of a talk given to the Aal al-Bayt Institute of Islamic Thought on 4 January 2005 in Amman, Jordan. The article was first published in Islamica Magazine (www.IslamicaMagazine.com ), with permission.

The Tasawwuf of alBistami

Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem was-salaat was-salaam `alaa Rasul-illah wa 'alaa alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam

Shaykh al-Islam, Imam Muhyiddin al-Nawawi said in his book Bustan al-`arifin fi al-zuhd wa al-tasawwuf (The garden of the gnostics in asceticism and self-purification) (Beirut: dar al-kitab al- `arabi,1405/1985) p. 53-54: I shall mention in this book a chapter, Allah willing, in which you will see a type of wonder that will cool your eyes. To illustrate the

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great extent of the concealment of hypocrisy we only need relate the following from the Teacher and Imam Abu al-Qasim alQushayri, may Allah have mercy on him, from his Risala with our isnad previously mentioned. He said: "I heard Muhammad ibn al-Husayn say: I heard Ahmad ibn `Ali ibn Ja`far say: I heard al-Hasan ibn `Alawiyya say: Abu Yazid [AL-BISTAMI], may Allah be well pleased with him, said: I was for twelve years the blacksmith of my ego (haddadu nafsi), then for five years I became the mirror of my heart (mir'atu qalbi), then for a year I looked at what lay between the two of them and I saw around me a visible belt [i.e. of kufr = the vestmentary sign of a non- Muslim subject of the Islamic state]. So I strove to cut it for twelve years and then looked again, and I saw around me a hidden belt. So I worked to cut it for five years, looking to see how to cut. Then it was unveiled for me (kushifa li) and I looked at creation and saw that they were all dead. So I recited the funeral prayer over them." I say: That hypocrisy should be as inscrutable as this to the peerless master in this path [i.e. tasawwuf] is enough to show how greatly hidden it lies. His phrase: "I saw them dead" is the apex of worth and beauty, and seldom do other than the Prophet's words, Blessings and Peace be upon him, gather up such wealth of meanings. I shall touch upon its meaning briefly. It means that after he had struggled long and hard and his ego had been disciplined and his heart illumined, and when he had conquered his ego and subdued it and achieved complete mastery over it, and it had subjected himself to him totally, at that time he looked at all created beings and found that they were dead and completely powerless: they cannot harm nor can they benefit; they cannot give nor can they withhold; they cannot give life nor can they give death; they cannot convey nor can they cut off; they cannot bring near nor can they take away; they cannot make happy nor can they make sad; they cannot bestow nor can they deprive; they possess for themselves neither benefit nor harm, nor death, nor life, nor resurrection.

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This, then, characterizes human beings as dead: they are considered dead in all of the above respects, they are neither feared nor entreated, what they have is not coveted, they are not shown off to nor fawned upon, one does not concern oneself with them, they are not envied nor disparaged, their defects are not mentioned nor their faults pursued and exposed, one is not jealous of them nor thinks much of whatever Allah-given favors they have received, and they are forgiven and excused for their shortcomings, although the legal punishments are applied to them according to the Law. But the application of such punishment does not preclude what we have mentioned before, nor does it preclude our endeavoring to cover up their faults without disparaging them in the least. This is how the dead are viewed. And if someone mentions human beings in a dishonorable manner we forbid him from probing that subject in the same way that we would if he were going to examine a person who died. We do not do anything for their sake nor do we leave Him for them. And we no more stop ourselves from fulfilling an act of obedience to Allah on their account than we do on account of a dead person, and we do not over-praise them. And we neither love their own praise for us nor hate their insults, and we do not reciprocate them. In sum, they are as it were non-existent in all the respects we have mentioned. They are under Allah's complete care and jurisdiction. Whoever deals with them in such a way, he has combined the good of the next world with that of the lower world. May Allah the Generous grant us success towards achieving this These few words are enough to touch upon an explanation for Abu Yazid al-Bistami's saying, may Allah be well pleased with him. End of Nawawi's words. Blessings and peace on the Prophet, his Family, and his Companions. G Fouad Haddad

AL-JUNAYD ALBAGHDADI
[12 Jun 1997]

by Sh. G. F. Haddad
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Al-Junayd ibn Muhammad ibn al-Junayd, Abu al-Qasim al-Qawariri al-Khazzaz alNahawandi al-Baghdadi al-Shafi`i (d. 298). The Imam of the World in his time, shaykh of the Sufis and "Diadem of the Knowers," he accompanied his maternal uncle Sari alSaqati, al-Harith al-Muhasibi, and others. Abu Sahl al-Su`luki narrates that as a boy al-Junayd heard his uncle being asked about thankfulness, whereupon he said: "It is to not use His favors for the purpose of disobeying Him." He took fiqh from Abu Thawr - in whose circle he would give fatwas at twenty years of age - and, it was also said, from Sufyan al-Thawri. He once said: "Allah did not bring out a single science on earth accessible to people except he gave me a share in its knowledge." He used to go to the market every day, open his shop, and commence praying four hundred rak`as until closing time. Among his sayings about the Sufi Path: "Whoever does not memorize the Qur'an and write hadith is not fit to be followed in this matter. For our science is controlled by the Book and the Sunna." To Ibn Kullab who was asking him about tasawwuf he replied: "Our madhhab is the singling out of the pre-eternal from the contingent, the desertion of human brotherhood and homes, and obliviousness to past and future." Ibn Kullab said: "This kind of speech cannot be debated." His student Abu al-`Abbas ibn Surayj would say, whenever he defeated his adversaries in debate: "This is from the blessing of my sittings with al-Junayd." Al-Qushayri relates from al-Junayd the following definitions of tasawwuf: * "Not the profusion of prayer and fasting, but wholeness of the breast and selflessness."1 * "Tasawwuf means that Allah causes you to die to your self and gives you life in Him." * "It means that you be solely with Allah with no attachments." * "It is a war in which there is no peace." * "It is supplication together with inward concentration, ecstasy together with attentive hearing, and action combined with compliance [with the Sunna]." * "It is the upholding of every high manner and the repudiation of every low one." When his uncle asked him to speak from the pulpit he deprecated himself, but then saw the Prophet in his dream ordering him to speak. Ibn Kullab once asked al-Junayd to dictate for him a comprehensive definition of tawhid he had just heard him say. He replied: "If I were reading from a record I would dictate it to you." The Mu`tazili al-Ka`bi said: "My eyes did not see his like. Writers came to hear him for his linguistic mastery, philosophers for the sharpness of his speech, poets for his

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eloquence, and kalam scholars for the contents of his speech." Al-Khuldi said: "We never saw, among our shaykhs, anyone in whom `ilm and hal came together except al-Junayd. If you saw his hal you would think that it took precedence over his `ilm, and if he spoke you would think that his `ilm took precedence over his hal." Like the Sunni imams of his generation, al-Junayd hated theological disputations about Allah and His Attributes: "The least [peril] that lies within kalam is the elimination of Allah's awe from the heart. And when the heart is left devoid of Allah's awe, it becomes devoid of belief." Once a young Christian asked him: "What is the meaning of the Prophet's hadith:'Beware the vision of the believer for he sees with the light of Allah' ?"2 Al-Junayd remained immersed in thought then lifted his head and said: "Submit, for the time has come for you to accept Islam." The young man embraced Islam on the spot. Al-Junayd defined the Knower (al-`arif) as "He who addresses your secret although you are silent." Ibn al-Jawzi cites another example of Junayd's kashf in his Sifa al-Safwa: Abu `Amr ibn `Alwan relates: I went out one day to the market of al-Ruhba for something I needed. I saw a funeral procession and I followed it in order to pray with the others. I stood among the people until they buried the dead man. My eyes unwittingly fell on a woman who was unveiled. I lingered looking at her. Then I held back and began to beg forgiveness of Allah the Exalted. On my way home an old woman told me: "My master, why is your face all darkened?" I took a mirror and behold! my face had turned dark. I examined my conscience and searched: Where did calamity befall me? I remembered the look I cast. Then I sat alone somewhere, asking Allah's forgiveness assiduously. I decided to live austerely for forty days. [During that time] the thought came to my heart: "Visit your shaykh al-Junayd." I travelled to Baghdad. When I reached the room where he lived I knocked at his door and heard him say: "Come in, O Abu `Amr! You sin in al-Ruhba and we ask forgiveness for you here in Baghdad."3 About the Sufis al-Junayd said: * "They are the members of a single household that none other than they can enter." * "The Sufi is like the earth: every kind of abomination is thrown upon it, but naught but every kind of goodness grows from it." * "The Sufi is like the earth: both the righteous and the sinners walk upon it. He is like the clouds: they give shade to all things. He is like the raindrop: it waters all things." * "If you see a Sufi caring for his outer appearance, then know that his inward being is corrupt." Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya related from al-Sulami that al-Junayd said: "The truthful seeker (al-murid al-sadiq) has no need for the scholars of knowledge" and: "When Allah desires

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great goodness for the seeker, He makes him flock to the Sufis and prevents him from accompanying those who read books (al-qurra')."4 This is similar to al-Junayd's saying reported by al-Dhahabi: "We did not take tasawwuf from what So-and-So said and what So-and-So-said, but from hunger, abandonment of the world, and severance of comforts." Al-Junayd also said: "Among the marks of Allah's wrath against a servant is that He makes him busy with that which is of no concern to him."5 Ibn al-Qayyim in al-Fawa'id asserts the superiority of the struggle against the ego (jihad al-nafs) over all other struggles and quotes al-Junayd: Allah said: {Those who have striven for Our sake, We guide them to Our ways}(29:96). He has thereby made guidance dependent on jihad. Therefore, the most perfect of people are those of them who struggle the most for His sake, and the most obligatory of jihads (afrad al-jihad) are the jihad against the ego, the jihad against desires, the jihad against the devil, and the jihad against the lower world. Whoever struggles against these four, Allah will guide them to the ways of His good pleasure which lead to His Paradise, and whoever leaves jihad, then he leaves guidance in proportion to his leaving jihad. Al-Junayd said: "[The verse means] Those who have striven against their desires and repented for our sake, we shall guide them to the ways of sincerity. And one cannot struggle against his enemy outwardly except he who struggles against these enemies inwardly. Then whoever is given victory over them will be victorious over his enemy. And whoever is defeated by them, his enemy defeats him."6 Ibn `Abidin related in his fatwa on the permissibility of dhikr gatherings: The Imam of the Two Groups,7 our master al-Junayd was told: "Certain people indulge in wajd or ecstatic behavior, and sway with their bodies." He replied: "Leave them to their happiness with Allah. They are the ones whose affections have been smashed by the path and whose breasts have been torn apart by effort, and they are unable to bear it. There is no blame on them if they breathe awhile as a remedy for their intense state. If you tasted what they taste, you would excuse their exuberance."8 In his Kitab al-Fana' ("Book of the Annihilation of the Self") al-Junayd states: As for the select and the select of the select, who become alien through the strangeness of their conditions - presence for them is loss, and enjoyment of the witnessing is struggle. They have been effaced from every trace and every signification that they find in themselves or that they witness on their own. The Real has subjugated them, effaced them, annihilated them from their own attributes, so that it is the Real that works through them, on them, and for them in everything they experience. It is the Real which confirms such exigencies in and upon them through the form of its completion and perfection.9 Al-Junayd went on pilgrimage on foot thirty times. On his deathbed he recited the Qur'an incessantly. Al-Jariri related that he told him: "O Abu al-Qasim! Put yourself at ease."

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He replied: "O Abu Muhammad! Do you know anyone that is more in need of Qur'an at this time, when my record is being folded up?" He finished one khatma then started over until he recited seventy verses of Sura al-Baqara, then he died. Ibn `Imad al-Hanbali said: "If we were to speak of his merits we could fill volumes." Main sources: al-Qushayri, Risala 148-150; Ibn `Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab 2:228230; al-Dhahabi, Siyar A`lam al-Nubala' 11:153-155 #2555; Ibn al-Subki, Tabaqat alShafi`iyya al-Kubra 2:260-275 #60. NOTES 1In al-Qushayri, Kitab al-Sama` in al-Rasa'il al-Qushayriyya (Sidon and Beirut: alMaktaba al-`Asriyya, 1970) p. 60. 2Narrated from Abu Sa`id al-Khudri by al-Tirmidhi (gharib) with a weak chain, Abu Imama by al-Tabarani with a fair (hasan) chain according to al-Haythami in the chapter on firasa in Majma` al-Zawa'id, Ibn `Adi, al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, and al-Quda`i in Musnad al-Shihab (1:387). Also narrated by al-Bukhari in his Tarikh, Ibn al-Sani, and from Ibn `Umar by Ibn Abi Hatim, al-Tabari, and Ibn Kathir in their commentaries of the verse (Therein lie portents for those who read the signs( (15:75). Ibn al-Jawzi includes it in the forgeries. Al-Sakhawi in al-Maqasid al-Hasana (#23) rejects Ibn al-Jawzi's grading of mawdu`, but considers its chains all weak, as do al-Albani in his Silsila Da`ifa (4:299302) and al-Ahdab in Zawa'id Tarikh Baghdad (4:340-343 #687). However, al-Suyuti declares it hasan in al-La'ali' al-Masnu`a (2:329-330) as do al-Shawkani in al-Fawa'id (p. 243-244) and al-Zuhayri - Albani's student - in his edition of Ibn `Abd al-Barr's Jami` Bayan al-`Ilm (1:677 #1197). The purported weakness of al-Tabarani's chain revolves around the narrator `Abd Allah ibn Salih al-Juhani. Cf. al-Dhahabi, Mizan (2:440-445 #4383). Al-Sakhawi cites another narration whereby the Prophet said: "Allah has servants who know (the truth about people) through reading the signs" (tawassum). Narrated from Anas with a fair chain by al-Bazzar in his Musnad, al-Tabarani, and Abu Nu`aym in alTibb al-Nabawi as stated by al-`Ajluni in Kashf al-Khafa'. 3In Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifa al-Safwa 1(2):271, chapter on al-Junayd (#296). 4Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Madarij al-Salikin (2:366). 5In Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifa al-Safwa, chapter on al-Junayd. 6Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, al-Fawa'id, ed. Muhammad `Ali Qutb (al-Iskandariyya: Dar alDa`wa, 1992) p. 50. 7I.e. Sufis and fuqaha'. 8Seventh Letter in Shifa` al-`Alil wa Ball al-Ghalil fi Hukm al-Wasiyya bi al-Khatamat wa al-Tahalil (p. 172-173).

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9Translation communicated to the author by Michael Sells, Haverford College. Blessings and peace on the Prophet, his Family, and his Companions GF Haddad [1999-07-07]

29

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35

 ( " .

Rm and the Sufi Tradition

by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Spring 1974) World Wisdom, Inc. www.studiesincomparativereligion.com

Wine in ferment is a beggar suing for our ferment, Heaven in revolution is a beggar suing for our consciousness. Wine was intoxicated with us, not we with it; the body came into being from us, not we from it. (Mathnaw, I, 1811, trans. by R. A. Nicholson).
LIKE a majestic peak that dominates the countryside around it near and far, the figure of Mawln Jall al-Dn Rm, that supreme Sufipoet of the Persian language, dominates the whole of the later Sufi tradition in the eastern lands of Islam. He stands out as a spiritual pole not only for the Persian people to whom he belongs by origin but also for the Turkish world where his earthly remains are interred and even for the Muslims of the Indo-Pakistani sub-continent whose soul still reverberates to the music of his poetry. Moreover, the message of this towering figure which has remained alive to this day in the Islamic world is now sought ever more eagerly in the West beyond the circle of orientalists by those who have become tired of the rapidly passing fashions of the day, of the supposedly timely and pertinent new ideas which in the twinkle of an eye turn into stale thought no longer possessing any actuality or relevance. Rm is fast becoming a leading spokesman in the West for the philosophia perennis, for that eternal wisdom which is timely precisely because it is timeless. Rm is the bearer of a message that is most relevant and timely for modern man because it concerns the real man within all of us, the man who has always been and will always be the same, but who has been stifled by the veil of negligence and forgetfulness with which modern civilization has shrouded him, a veil which is now suddenly rent asunder by the colossal failures of this very civilization.[1] To the extent that this veil is removed and the fallacies of the modern world are seen to be what they really are, Rm and sages like him will become ever more timely, and their message will be heard ever more clearly across the barrier of many centuries even by Western man who has been heir to another civilization than the one which brought Rm into being.[2] Rm is indeed a major peak in the tradition of Sufism, but like every peak which is related to a mountain chain of which it is a part Rm is inextricably linked to the Sufi tradition, to the sacred tradition which as a result of the possession of sacred teachings and the grace (barakah) present within its spiritual means was able to produce a saint and poet of this dimension.

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The appearance of Rm was not an accidental affair. Rather, he was the flower, albeit an outstanding one, of a tree that was at that time in full bloom. He appeared at a moment when six centuries of Islamic spirituality had already molded a tradition of immense richness. And he lived during a century which was like a return to the spiritual intensity of the moment of the genesis of Islam, a century which produced remarkable saints and sages throughout the Islamic world, from Ibn Arab, who hailed from Andalusia, to Najm al-Dn Kubr from Samarqand. Rm came at the end of this period of immense spiritual activity and rejuvenation which in fact molded the subsequent spiritual history of the Islamic peoples. By the time Rm appeared upon the stage of history the Islamic tradition of which Sufism is like the heart or marrow had already crystallized into its classical form.[3] The various Islamic sciences from Quranic commentary to philosophy and theology had already produced their Fakhr al-Din al-Rzs, Ibn Sins, and Ghazzls. Sufism itself had also left its early period of relative silence and heroic asceticism to enter into the phase of eloquent expression of love and gnosis. The cycle of fear, love and knowledge (makhfah,mahabbah and ma'rifah) which is present in every religion and in a sense is to be seen within the Abrahamic tradition itself in the successive appearance of Judaism, Christianity and Islam[4], had already appeared within the Sufi tradition. The early Mesopotamian ascetics emphasized above all else that reverential fear before the Divine Majesty which is the origin of wisdom according to the famous prophetic saying ( ras al-hikmah makhfat Allh the origin of wisdom is the fear of God) and which is itself the source of majesty and nobility within men. The era of these saints, such as D'd al-Antk, who spoke of the fear of God, in turn led to the period in which the love of God was openly expressed, most of all in exquisite poetry by such Sufi masters as al-Hallj and Ab Sa'd Ab'l-Khayr. And finally the explicit formulation of marifah or gnosis which was begun to a certain extent by al-Ghazzl and Ayn al-Qudt al-Hamadn reached its peak with Ibn Arab, that supreme master of Islamic gnosis whose formulation of Islamic metaphysics has dominated all later Sufism.[5] Rm, who had undergone a long period of training, both formal and initiatic, was fully acquainted with the long tradition before him both in Sufism and in other Islamic sciences. Although his father was a Sufi, Rm became first an authority in the exoteric sciences before becoming a Sufi master. He was deeply immersed in the Quranic sciences and the numerous Quranic commentaries that had come before him. Careful study of his works reveals not only the truth of his own assertion that his Mathnaw is a commentary upon the Quran but that even his Dwn flows like a vast river which has come into being from the mountain springs of the Quranic revelation.[6] Likewise in the case of the Hadth literature and the early sacred history of Islam, Rm shows himself to be a full master of his subject. Over and over again he cites various traditions as the source for his doctrines and his inspiration. In fact one of the most sublime and profound descriptions of the personality of the Prophet of Islam is to be found in the Mathnaw and the Dwn. If one were to assemble those parts of Rm's works which deal with the Holy Prophet one would come into the possession of an incomparable spiritual biography, which is in fact so much needed today especially in a European language.[7] Likewise, Rm draws from both Quranic accounts of other prophets and Hadth sources to provide a new life for the sacred history of the Abrahamic prophetic chain as a reality within the souls of men. The stories connected with such patriarchs and prophets as Abraham, Solomon, David, Moses, Joseph and Christ as well as the Virgin Mary are interpreted esoterically to reveal the spiritual personality of these figures not only in history but also in the ever-living firmament through which the spiritual man journeys on his way to ultimate beatitude and union. All of Rm's works are in the profoundest sense what he considers his own Mathnaw to be, namely The principles of the principles of the principles of religion concerning the unveiling of the mysteries of union and certitude.[8]

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Rm began to acquire his knowledge of the religious sciences through their formal study, but he did not stop at this stage. Rather he continued by penetrating into their inner meaning until he reached that pearl of wisdom which is the origin of all sacred tradition, or the principles of the principles of the principles of religion" to use his own words. Herein he attained that knowledge which is the origin of both the exoteric religious sciences and the esoteric sciences associated with Sufism.[9] Rm was intimately associated with the Sufi tradition both through formal and external contact with earlier Sufi writings and as a result of the vastness of his own spiritual personality and the breadth of his spiritual experience, which in a sense embraced all that had come before him. He had already experienced and lived the reverential fear of a D'd al-Antk, the Divine love of an Ab Sa'd and the gnosisof an Ibn 'Arab. He was like a vast sea into which all the streams of earlier Islamic spirituality had flown so that his rapport with the earlierSufi tradition was not merely scholarly and formal. It was "existential and "experiential. In a sense be contained within himself the earlierSufi tradition because he had lived and experienced the various spiritual possibilities inherent in Sufism within himself. As far as the early Sufis are concerned, Rm was well acquainted with the spiritual personality of nearly all these masters and must have made an intimate study of their writings and their biographies in the standard Sufi hagiographies, from such early works as the Hilyat al-awliy' of Ab Nu'aym to the Tadhkirat al-awliy' of 'Attr.[10] Moreover, he had an intimate inner knowledge of these figures which can only be the result of his vision of their celestial reality beyond their earthly form. The early saints of Islam, particularly Byzd al-Bastam, Hallj, Dhu'l-Nn al-Misr, Marf al-Karkh and Ab'lHasan al-Kharraqn, gain such transparency and shine with such luminosity in the Dwn and the Mathnaw that one might say that through Rm they re-enter upon the stage of Islamic history. Like the prophets whom they follow both in time and in the spiritual hierarchy, the saints of Sufism shine through the writings of Rm as so many living poles of spirituality, as so many living norms and prototypes which concern the seeker of the truth here and now. Even the concrete barakah of some of these earlier saints can be felt in various poetical utterances of Jll al-Dn, while their spiritual experiences are invoked by him to resuscitate within the soul of the reader an awareness of the ever present landscape of the world of the spirit. The following ghazal from the Dwn-i Shams is a clear example of how Rm makes use of various incidents of sacred history (here the story of the taking of refuge of the Prophet and Ab Bakr during the night of the hijrah in the cave) and episodes in the life of earlier Sufisaints (here Mansr al-Hallj and Fard al-Dn Attr) to re-awaken in man the nostalgia for the Divine.[11]

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Awake, the time hath arrived, awake, awake! Without union with Him, detest thyself, detest thyself! The heavenly proclamation hath arrived, the healer of lovers hath arrived, If thou wilt that He visiteth thee, become ill, become ill! He shall remove the thorn from thy hand; become a garden of roses, become a garden of roses! Consider thy breast as a cave, the place for the spiritual retreat of the Friend; If thou art really the "companion of the cave", then enter the cave, enter the cave! Once time hath brought ruin upon thee, laments will be of no avail, If thou wilt that he restore thee, become a restorer, become a restorer! See the world filled with tumult, see the dominion of the victorious(mansur). If thou wilt to become victorious (mansur), hang on the gallows, hang of the gallows! In as much as each early morn the zephyr entangles Her Hair, If thou wilt to benefit from its scent, become a druggist ('attar), become a druggist! As far as later Sufism, especially of the school of Ibn Arab, is concerned, there is again an intimate relation between this form of gnosisand Rm. There is still a great deal to be said concerning the rapport between Ibn Arab and Rm, these two giants of Sufism who were destined to live within a generation of each other and in each other's proximity. There is no doubt that Rm knew directly of the teachings of the master from Murcia through Sadr al-Dn al-Qunyaw, who was at once the foremost expositor of Ibn Arab's doctrines in the East and Rm's most intimate friend, behind whom Rm performed his daily prayers. Some have in fact called the Mathnaw theFuthat al-makkiyyah in Persian verse. No doubt Rm accepted Ibn Arab's fundamental doctrine of wahdat al-wujd, the transcendent unity of Being, which is the central axis of all Sufi doctrine. In several poems of exquisite beauty Rm describes this doctrine, as for example in the well-known verses of the Mathnaw.[12]

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We and our existences are non-existent: Thou art the absolute appearing in the guise of morality That which moves us is thy Gift: our whole being is of thy creation Thou didst show the beauty of Being unto not-being, after Thou hadst caused not-being to fall in love with Thee. Take not away the delight of Thy Bounty: take not away Thy dessert and wine and wine-cup! But if Thou takest it away, who will question Thee? Does the picture quarrel with the painter? Look not on us, look on Thine own Loving-kindness and Generosity! We were not: there was no demand on our part; yet Thy Grace heard our silent prayer and called us into existence. No poet could depict in more moving words the utter nothingness of all existing things before the One who alone is. Here is the doctrine of wahdat al-wujd shrouded by the theophany of its own beauty.

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Likewise Rm follows Ibn Arab in believing that the existence of everything is identical with the relation of that particular being to Being Itself, that existents are nothing but the relation they possess to the Absolute. This fundamental metaphysical doctrine whose intricacies and implications were later developed by such theosophers as Mull Sadr is summarized in a deceivingly simple couplet by Rm when he states, referring to the relation between beings and Being Itself:

There is a link beyond all description and comparison between the Lord of creatures and their inner being. As for the complementary doctrine of the universal man ( al-insn al-kmil), which, like the doctrine of wahdat al-wujd, was also formulated for the first time by Ibn Arab,[13] its meaning is reflected throughout Rm's writings, but he does not use the term insn-i kmil. Rather when wishing to refer to the idea he uses such terms as the macrocosm ( lam-i akbar), which he considers the spiritual man to be in contrast to profane man, who is the microcosm. For example he addresses the man whom he wishes to awaken to his own spiritual possibilities in these terms:

Therefore in outward form thou art the microcosm While in inward meaning thou art the macrocosm. Rm, however, was not simply a continuator of the school of Ibn Arab, as were such masters as Sadr al-Dn al-Qunyaw, Abd-al-Razzq al-Kshni and D'd al-Qaysar. In fact, in certain matters such as the meaning of evil he departed from Ibn 'Arabi and his followers. Rm must rather be considered as another peak of Sufism, as the perfection of a type of spirituality that is akin but distinct from that of Ibn Arab. Throughout the later history of Sufism, the type of spirituality represented by each master has remained distinct, each with its own fragrance and form of radiance, while at the same time some like Jm and Hjj Mull Hd Sabziwr have sought to bridge the gap between the two types of spirituality in question. As far as Rms rapport with the Persian Sufi poets is concerned, there is no doubt that he stands directly in the line of those like San and Attr and before them Ab Sad Abi'l-Khayr and Khwjah Abdallh al-Ansr of Herat who prepared the Persian language as a vehicle for the expression of Sufism. Of the earlier Sufi poets San and Attr have already been noted by numerous historians of Persian literature such as Ethe, Browne, Rypka, Numn and Saf as predecessors of Rm, and the relation between these three masters is too obvious to need elucidation.[14] But what is not as well known is the relation between Nizm and Rm on the one hand and Firdaws and Rm on the other. As far as Nizm is concerned, his work is like a body into which Rm breathed the spirit and which he endowed with spiritual life. As for Firdaws, his Shh-nmah is in a sense the complement of the Mathnaw. The first is the supreme epic poem of the Persian people of the pre-Islamic period and the second the supreme epic of the Islamic period, but an epic whose field of battle has now become transformed to the world within the soul of man. The Shh-nmah is in a sense an account of the "lesser holy war" ( al jihd alasghar) and the Mathnaw the tale of the "greater holy war" ( al jihd al-akbar) to use the terminology of the well-known prophetic hadth. In the same way that Suhraward sought through esoteric

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interpretation to interiorize the heroic tales of the Shh-nmah,[15] Rm on a much larger scale sought to create a vast canvas in which the supreme epic of the spiritual hero in quest of the Fountain of Life was depicted with the finest detail. To achieve this end, Rm drew from all the resources of the Persian language and benefited from all the literary masters who preceded him. He was at once an excellent story teller, sacred historian, lyricist and above all poet. Yet, he was not a poet like other poets, even the great Sufi poets before him. For Rm the meaning predominated over the form in such a way that in the Dwn he broke nearly all the rules of classical Persian prosody. Yet, because the meaning came from the world of the Spirit and not from his own whims and fancies, it always created forms of beauty. In the Dwn even those metrics which are described as unpleasing in classical handbooks of prosody possess the power to attract the soul of man to the vast empyrean beyond the confines of its earthly imprisonment and to create in man an ecstatic joy for union with the Infinite. It is, therefore, strange that this supreme poet whose tongue was touched by the wing of the angels should consider himself not to be a poet at all. In the Diwn he writes:

What is poetry that I should boast of it, I possess an art other than the art of the poets. Poetry is like a black cloud; I am like the moon hidden behind its veil. Do not call the black cloud the luminous moon in the sky.[16] Rm, like Shabistar after him, was an outstanding poet in spite of himself. The beauty of his verses is like the beauty of a sanctuary which is there of necessity as the existential condition for all authentic manifestations of the sacred. But despite this disregard for poetry, Rm could not cease to compose poetry. The ocean within his being could not spew forth its waves except in the rhythms and rhymes which have appeared in the nearly sixty thousand verses of the Mathnaw, the Dwn and the Rubiyyt and have made of Rm, who did not consider himself a poet, perhaps the greatest mystical poet the world has ever seen. * * *

It is, needless to say, a tribute to the spiritual personality of Rm that the 700th anniversary of his death should be celebrated now on such a wide scale in both East and West. This celebration is not only appropriate because it is recognized internationally and celebrated on a world-wide scale, but also because it concerns the date of his death. It was characteristic of Rm to combine the idea of death with joy and felicity. It is, therefore, most appropriate that today the anniversary of his death should also be an occasion for joy and celebration. Rm saw in death the supreme ecstatic moment of life, for he had already died before dying according to the famous prophetic saying, "Die before you die.

For him death could only be entrance into the world of light, according to his own well-known poem:

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Go die, oh Sire, before thy death, So that thou wilt not suffer the pain of dying. Die the kind of death which is entrance into light, Not the death which signifies entrance into the grave. Rm had already entered the world of light before encountering physical death. Consequently physical death could not but be the moment of celebration when the last obstacle was lifted and he was able to return fully to the ocean of light from which he had become momentarily separated. Rm had already realized that amors est mors; through the love of God he had tasted death while physically alive and was a resurrected being shrouded in the light of Divine knowledge when still discoursing and walking among men. What had made it possible for Rm to look upon the encounter with death as a moment of supreme ecstasy was of course the kind of life he had led in this world, a life which had already led him into the state of sanctity before passing through the gate of death. We do not intend to deal with his life in detail. There are already numerous studies on his life in various languages.[17] But a few points of special interest need to be mentioned here. The life of Mawln can be divided into three periods: from birth until the age of twenty-five, from twenty-five until about forty and from forty until his death. During the first period Jall al-Dn learned the Quranic sciences, Arabic and Persian and advanced in the domain of religious studies until he became an authority in various exoteric sciences.[18] Although he studied extensively with his father Baha' al-Dn Walad Sultn al-Ulam', who was himself a Sufi and author of the Marif, which has left so much influence upon the Mathnaw, during this period Rm was not as yet attracted to Sufism. This was the period of formal instruction for him which made of him a respected religious scholar in Qonya, an authority who taught the religious sciences and gave opinions on questions pertaining to the Sharah. At the age of twenty-five this period came to an end and Rm met Burhn al-Dn al-Tirmidh, a student of Rm's father, who initiated him into Sufism and who guided him for nine years until his death. He bestowed upon Rm his father's esoteric teachings and made of Rm a Sufi well-versed in the intricacies of the path. After his death Rm continued to practice the Sufi way and was in fact already an accomplished spiritual personality by the time he met Shams al-Dn Tabrz at the age of thirty-nine. Rm had also known other Sufis at this time such as Salh al-Dn Zarkb, who later became Rm's close friend and disciple. But the dominant figure of this second period of his life was Burhn al-Dn, whose spiritual fragrance is also reflected in certain parts of the Mathnaw. The third period of Rm's life begins with his meeting with the mysterious Shams al-Dn Tabrz, is witness to the composition of his major works, the Mathnaw and the Dwn, and terminates with the death of Rm. Few figures in Sufism are as mysterious as Shams al-Din Tabrz, a learned qalandar type of Sufi who appeared across the sky of Rm's life like a comet and disappeared with almost the same suddenness with which he came. Shams al-Dn must be considered at once a Sufi master with a human form, the inner light of Rm's own being and the spiritual sun itself. In this remarkable man the supernal reality and the human form were fused in such a way that often it is difficult to distinguish about which aspect Rm was speaking. For example when he says,

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Shams-i Tabrz, who is the absolute Light, Is the sun and a ray of the lights of Divine Truth, One is left in a state of bewilderment as to whether Rm is speaking about a man or a spiritual function. It is our view that although Shams-i Tabrz was a human master and the author of the remarkable Maqlt,[19] which resemble Rm's Fhi m fhi (Discourses)and have influenced the Mathnaw, he was a person of such exalted spiritual station that the spiritual reality which shone within him in a sense obliterated the confines of his human individuality. Moreover, Rm refers to him at once as a human master, the initiatic function of the master as such, the Divine Light, the uncreated and also created Intellect, and even as the sun which rises in the Western horizon at the time of the eschatological event identified as the Day of Judgment and which the seeker of the Truth experiences at the moment of the spiritual death and resurrection. It is symbolic of the particularly mysterious personality of Shams-i Tabrz that after his death several places were claimed as his tomb and to this day the saint possesses several mausoleums which are centers of pilgrimage for the faithful. Whatever may have been the actual identity and personality of Shams-i Tabrz, there is no doubt that he was not simply a spiritual master for Rm. By the time he met Shams-i Tabrz Rm was already an accomplished Sufi. What in fact Shams did was to act as a pole of attraction for the manifestation and externalization of an aspect of Rm that had not manifested itself until that time. Like the fleeting comet that he was, his sudden appearance upon the firmament of Rm's being created vast tidal waves in the ocean of Rm's soul, waves which were then crystallized into poems of immortal beauty in the Dwn. The voluminous Dwn is the response of Rm to the sympathia (hamdam in Rm's own words) created between Shams and Rm. It seems that this great saint-poet needed spiritual and intellectual companionship in order to force him to leave the world of silence and to have recourse to poetry to explain that which cannot but issue from holy silence.[20] In a sense Husm al-Dn Chalab played the same role for Rm vis-a-vis the Mathnaw. In the same way that if there is no appropriate disciple, the initiatic function retires within the being of a master, the lack of spiritual companionship and discourse can lead the most artistically creative of Sufis into silence. To quote the well-known verse of Sad:

If there were no rose the nightingale would not be singing in the grove. It was the hands of destiny that brought Shams and Husm al-Dn, like two roses that attract the nightingale, into the life of Rm and thus bestowed upon the world the two great masterpieces which have made of Rm the supreme mystical poet of the Persian language. But these two works could not not have come into being, for such a perfect wedding between wisdom and beauty was a possibility that had to be realized. Rm was one of those rare beings who possessed a kind of "sensual awareness" of spiritual beauty, a person for whom things appeared as transparent forms reflecting the eternal essences.[21] For him the very existence of beauty was the most direct proof of the existence of God. It can also be said that for the perceptive reader the beauty of Rm's poetry itself is the most powerful proof of the reality of the world of the spirit. Rm bathed in beauty like an eagle soaring in the light of the sun and he left in his poetry as well as in the spiritual music and dance of the Mawlaw Order something of this beauty for posterity. The beauty of Rm's poetry, music and dance is a way of bringing about recollection and of awakening within man an

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awareness of that supreme Beauty of which all terrestrial beauty is but a pale reflection, for as Rm says:

Kings lick the earth whereof the fair are made, For God hath mingled in the dusty earth A draught of Beauty from His choicest cup. 'Tis that, fond lovernot these lips of clay Thou art kissing with a hundred ecstasies, Think, then, what must it be when undefiled![22] Complementary to Rm's sensitivity to beauty is his awareness of the sacred in all things and his ability to provide keys for the spiritual solution of practically every problem man faces in any age or situation. The Prophet of Islam was given the possibility of experiencing everything that a human being can experience, from losing his only son to uniting all of Arabia under the banner of Islam. He was given this mission in order to be able to sanctify all of human life. Rm, who is one of the outstanding fruits of the tree of Muhammadan poverty ( al-faqr al-Muhammad) was able to accomplish this same task on of course a smaller, yet vast, scale. He was able to express the fullness and diversity of human existence in such a way as to reveal the fact that behind every possible kind of experience there lies a door towards the Invisible. Rm is able to address every man and to lead him from where he is towards the spiritual realm, provided he is willing to be guided and to open his eyes to see beyond every situation that man faces the Hand of God, with whose aid alone can any situation be solved in an ultimate sense. That is why Rm has continued to rule over the hearts of men to this day. During the seven centuries that have passed since his death Rm has left such an immense impact upon the Persian, Turkish and Indian worlds that volumes would be needed to track down the visible traces of his influence. In the Turkish world the Mawlaw Order founded by him has played such a dominant role in the history of the Ottoman Empire that even from an external point of view no account of Ottoman and even modern Turkish history would be complete without mention of it. Moreover, the Turks extended the influence of Rm to the Balkans, as far as Albania, as well as to Cyprus, Syria and Lebanon where Mawlaw centers are to be found to this day. The people of Anatolia also wrote numerous commentaries upon the Mathnaw, beginning with Ahmad Rm and continuing to this day. His tomb in Qonya, moreover, remains until the present day the spiritual centre of the Turkish world. In Persia, likewise, numerous commentaries have been and continue to be written on the Mathnaw, from the Jawhir al-asrr of Kaml al-Dn Khwrazm to the present day commentaries of Jall Hum, Bad al-Zamn Furznfar and Muhammad Taq Jafar.[23] There is practically no Persian speaker who does not know some verses of the Mathnaw by heart, while the art of singing the Mathnaw has become a recognized musical form of a most delicate and profound nature whose continuing influence upon the cultural and artistic life of the Persians is immense.

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In the Indian subcontinent Rm was appreciated among the Naqshbandiyyah Order already in the 9th/15th century and his influence has grown ever since. Not only have numerous commentaries been written upon him, such as those of Abd al-Latf al-Abbs and Shh Mr Muhammad Nrallh alAhrr, but also there developed in the subcontinent, as well as in Persia and the Ottoman worlds, a particular musical genre which is associated solely with the singing of the Mathnaw, a form that again remains popular to this day. More particularly certain of the Sufis of that region, especially Shh Abd al-Latf, the great Sindhi poet and mystic who was also an outstanding musician, may be said to be direct emanations of Rm's spirituality in the Indian world.[24] It is not without reason that many have compared Shh 'Abd al-Latf's Risalo with the Mathnaw. Today in the Western world, impoverished of spirituality and suffocating in an ambience where ugliness has become the norm and beauty luxury, Rm is discovered by many as the antidote to the ills from which the modern world suffers. And indeed he is a most powerful antidote provided his teachings are followed, however bitter might be the medicine he proposes. In order to draw aid from Rm in the spiritual battle at hand one must read him not as a mere poet but as the porte-parole of the Divine mysteries who like the birds could not but sing in melodies that move the spirit. It is our hope that the occasion of the seven-hundredth anniversary of the death of this master will also be an occasion for recollection and for the coming into being of a new yet ancient awareness of the Truth which is always wedded to beauty and of the beauty which is an aspect of Divine Mercy and which leads to the Truth. The works of Rm and his ever living spiritual presence stand as a strong beacon to guide men by means of beauty to that Truth which alone can liberate them from the illusory prison of deprivation and ugliness that they have created around themselves, a prison whose confines cannot be eradicated save by means of the message of men like Rm in whom the vision of the Truth and its expression in the most perfect human form are combined. Verily it must be said of the works of Rm that:

These words are the ladder to the firmament. Whoever ascends them reaches the roof Not the roof of the sphere that is blue, But the roof which transcends all the visible heavens.

NOTES

[1] See S. H. Nasr, Contemporary Man, Between the Rim and the Axis, Studies in Comparative Religion, vol 7, Spring 1973, pp. 113-26; also F. Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds, trans by Lord Northbourne, London, Perennial Books, 1965. [2] It is of interest to note that already the selection of the poetry of Rm translated by R. A. Nicholson as Rm, Poet and Mystic, London, 1950, has sold many more copies than works of most European thinkers who were supposed to be very progressive and timely at the moment when they first appeared. [3] In the strict sense one should refer to the Islamic tradition and not to the Sufi tradition, because the first is an integral tradition and the second a part of the first and inseparable from it. In using the term "Sufi tradition", therefore, we have the more limited sense of the word in mind and do not wish in any

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way to imply that Sufism can be practiced in itself without reference to the Islamic tradition of which it is a part. [4] In the Abraham family the dominant aspect of Judaism can be said to be related to the fear of God, of Christianity to the love of God and of Islam to the knowledge of God, although of necessity in every integral tradition all three elements must be present. See F. Schuon, Images d'Islam," Etudes traditionnelles, vol. 73, Nov.-Dec. 1972, pp. 241-43. [5] See S. H. Nasr, Three Muslim Sages, Cambridge (U.S.A.), 1946, chapter 3; S. H. Nasr, Sufi Essays, London, 1972, chapter 7. [6] One of the greatest living authorities on Rm in Persia today, Hd H'ir, has shown in an unpublished work that some six thousand verses of the Dwn and the Mathnaw are practically direct translations of Quranic verses into Persian poetry. [7] Despite numerous biographies of the Prophet in Western languages very few succeed in underlining his spiritual grandeur. One remarkable and exceptional work in European languages which does succeed in illuminating the contours of the Prophet's spiritual personality is F. Schuon, Understanding Islam, trans. by D. M. Matheson, London, 1963 and Baltimore 1972, chapter 3; see also S. H. Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, London, 1967, and Boston 1972, chapter 3, with an annotated bibliography at the end. [8] This is the very first statement with which the preludium of the Mathnaw begins. [9] Like many of the greatest spiritual poles of Islam, such as al-Ghazzl, 'Abd al-Qdir al-Jln and Ibn Arab before him and Shaykh al-'Alaw after him, Rm was a master and authority in both the exoteric and the esoteric sciences. [10] On the early Sufis, especially those in Persia who were directly connected to the line of Rm, see S. H. Nasr, "Sufism" in theCambridge History of Iran, vol IV, (in press); also A. J. Arberry, Sufism, London, 1950; and J Spencer Trimingham The Sufi Orders in Islam, Oxford, 1971. [11] Rm, Diwn-i Shams-i Tabrz, ed. by B Furznfar, vol. 5, Tehran, 1339, ghazal, No. 2133, trans. by S. H. Nasr. In this ghazal Rm plays upon the name of Hallj and Attr. The first name of Hallj was Mansr, which means victorious, while Attr means druggist in the traditional sense of one who sells both drugs and perfumes. [12] Mathnaw, I. 602ff. English translation by R. A. Nicholson, Rm, Poet and Mystic, p. 107. [13] For an analysis of Sufi doctrine upon the basis of the two fundamental doctrines of wahdat alwujd and al-insn al-kmil, see S. H. Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam, Cambridge, U.S.A., 1968, New York 1970, chapter 13. For an exposition of the meaning of al-insn al-kmil, see the introduction of T. Burckhardt to al-Jl, De-l'homme universal, Lyon, 1953. [14] Extensive discussions in the histories of Persian literature of these and other scholars have been devoted to the link between San, Attr and Rm, and there is no need to repeat them here. [15] See H Corbin, En Islam iranian, vol. 2, Paris, 1971, pp. 82ff. [16] Here as elsewhere in this essay, wherever the name of the translator is not indicated, the translation has been made by ourselves.

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[17] In Persian there have been numerous studies, from the Manqib al-rifn of al-Aflk to B. Furznfar's Rislah dar tahqq-i ahwl wa zindigni-yi Mawln Jall al-Dn Muhammad , Tehran, 1315 (A. H. Solar). As for European languages the studies of Browne, Nicholson, Arberry, Harry and Meyerovitch contain detailed material on his biography. [18] Rm was also well acquainted with the intellectual sciences, such as philosophy and cosmology, as well as Kalm, and often gives a masterly account of these disciplines, even when rejecting certain views of this or that philosopher or theologian. He was in fact also well acquainted with Greek philosophy as his many references to Plato and Galen demonstrate. But here as in the domain of sacred prophetic history he uses the personality and ideas of these philosophers as a means of expounding and illustrating his own metaphysical doctrines. [19] The text of the Maqlt has been edited recently by A Khushniws (Imd), Tehran 1349 (A. H. Solar). [20] It is of interest to note that Rm's pen-name (takhallus) was "silent" (khamush). [21] The teleological proof also embraces the aesthetic proof, in the profoundest sense of that term. Under this aspect it is perhaps even less accessible than under the cosmological or moral aspects; for to be sensitive to the metaphysical transparency of beauty, to the radiation of forms and sounds, is already to possessin common with a Rm or a Ramakrishnaa visual and auditative intuition capable of ascending through phenomena right up to the essences and the eternal melodies. F. Schuon, Concerning the Proofs of God, Studies in Comparative Religion, Winter, 1973, p. 8. [22] Mathnaw, V, 372-75. English translation by R. A. Nicholson, Rm, Poet and Mystic, p. 45. [23] The immense commentary of Jafar has already reached eight long volumes and many more are to follow. This popular commentary alone shows to what extent Rm is still alive for the Persians. [24] See N. A. Baloch, Maulana Jalaluddin Rm's Influence on Shah Abdul Latif , International Mavalana Seminar, Ankara, 1973.

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