Category: Arabic

Popular Unrest, Elite Machinations, and Ottoman Political Processes in 17th Century Damascus

On By JonathanIn Arabic, Culture, History, Islam, PoliticsLeave a comment

Bribery, looting, civil unrest; public meetings and unresponsive government officials; tangled lines of communication, competing stories: these things are the stuff of many a contemporary political struggle, but they are hardly unique to the modern world, or any period, probably. As the story below reveals, these ‘key words’ could be quite apt in describing provincial Ottoman power struggles and governance. This particular story, of a ‘unjust’ Ottoman governor of Syria and the repercussions of his apparent ‘crossing the line’ in and around Damascus, comes from the ‘notebook’ of Ismā’il al-Maḥāsinī, briefly described in the post preceding this one. As a member of the ‘ulama, the body of learned, elite men who constituted one of the key political and economic power groupings of the Damascene body politic, Ismā’il was not a disinterested observer, unsurprisingly. In this story the ‘ulama are seen uniting around the qadi, the Ottoman-appointed judge (and one of the most respected and powerful, though by no means unchallengeable, public figures in any Ottoman city); alongside the ‘resident’ military class (here probably one of the two groupings of janissaries stationed in Damascus) they support the qadi in his attempt to bring the rapacious governor and his lieutenant to bay.

Yet there are other political groupings as well- significantly, the heads of the craft guilds, presumably supported by the larger body of craftsmen, rally against the governor, going so far as to participate in (and perhaps initiate) a general strike across Damascus, shutting down their shops and joining in the chorus of discontent with the governor. In other words, it was not just the ‘ayān, the so-called ‘urban notables,’ who participated in politics. Others could have a voice (indeed, the irregular soldiery should also be seen as political participants).

Things proceed from the strike and ‘public meeting,’ growing more complicated as the governor’s faction- which in this story seems to consist solely of a few lackeys and a mob of irregular soldiery- tries to ‘control the narrative’ at the seat of imperial power in Edirne and Constantinople, against efforts by the qadi and others to do the same. In Ismā’il’s somewhat breathless and sometimes hard to follow account things eventually work out: justice is eventually had through the intervention of the imperial center, or so it would seem from the somewhat abbreviated conclusions (this is, after all, someone’s personal diary, albeit probably with a semi-public intention). In read it, we should keep in mind that it represents one particular perspective- the governor would no doubt have had a different view of things, as would his followers, such as they may have been (and he may indeed have been isolated- a crucial factor in his downfall).

In my translation I have tried to retain as much of the tone of the original as possible. I ran up against some difficulties, noted in brackets, due to my limited knowledge of colloquial Syrian in the period; there are also what appear to be either errors in the original text or in the editing of the printed text. Words of Turkish origin I have presented in their Turkish rendering for clarity.

Stained-Glass Window, 17th century [Egypt or Syria]. (93.26.3,4) In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Stained-glass window, 17th century [Egypt or Syria]. (93.26.3,4) In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Praise be to God. When Ḥusayn Pasha Yek Shasham was Pasha [governor] of Syria [al-Shām—here also simply Damascus] in the middle of the year 1085 [1674], he had a katkhudā [steward] named Ḥasan Agha who had previously been kutkhudā for Ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥīm Efendi, previously Shaykh al-Islām. Ḥusayn was ordered to accompany the pilgrimage, [but before leaving] and he carried out the utmost oppression upon the subjects (ra’īya) and the villages, and he took from the heads of the craft-guilds (arbāb al-ḥiraf) many things which would have been worth a great deal had they been sold on the market, and he left Syria and did not pay anyone anything. He left in his place the aforementioned Ḥasan Agha. He undertook oppression, transgressions, the reception of bribes and refused to listen to the command of the Qāḍī Shahlā ‘Abd al-Bāqī Efendi. And he had in his service a man whom the pasha used to send as a mutasalim [a deputy of the governor, and often a tax-collector], named Aḥmad Agha. The aforementioned Ḥasan sent him to around five or six households [? jihāz] in the eyalet [province] of al-Shām, and he killed unjustly, plundered, and the community was ashamed, he not fearing God at all. When the pasha returned, this Ḥasan kept on with what he had been doing, and the pasha likewise, as he no longer listened to the qadi’s commands and prohibitions. And things become dire for the Muslims to the extent that the pasha had saricas and sekbans [locally-raised irregular cavalry and infantry] who would interfere with the property of the people of al-Shām and the villages, and with their very lives, obliterating public safety. Then they went so far as to begin meddling with the sacrosanct households of the Muslims—and the people could not tolerate that. So, on Friday, Rabī’ al-Ākhir 4, 1086 [June 28, 1675], the people of the city gathered together, shut down their shops, and came to the qadi in order to complain about their condition. The ‘ulama and the soldiers (al-‘askar) also gathered together in the place of the court, and the qadi sent a contingent drawn from the ‘ulama and the soldiers to the pasha, who reported on behalf of the people the injustice against the people and the injustice of Ḥasan and [called for] his dismissal. But nothing came of their visit to quench the burning thirst of the Muslims [i.e. no remedy to the oppression was forthcoming].

So they sought from the qadi, and the ‘ulama and soldiers who were present, a petition to the exalted Sultan with all the relevant information contained therein. So the qadi, with the ‘ulama and soldiers, wrote the petition and handed it over to Muḥammad Agha ibn ‘Abdī Agha, previously a regimental commander, for him to take it to the Threshold of the sublime Sultan— God grant him victory! So he took the two of them [sic—two separate petitions?] and went out from al-Shām covertly, at night, on the night of Monday, Rabī’ II 7, 1086 [July 1, 1675]—may God make the Muslims heard through him so as to gladden them, and repel from us and from them what afflicts us and them, amen.

Then the pasha sent the aforementioned Katkhudā Ḥasan to the Sultan also in order to defend himself—may God rather defend those who believe! Ḥasan Agha went via postal-horse and overtook Muḥammad Agha in reaching the place of the exalted Sultanic abode, Edirne, by many days. And by embellishing his speech he gave off impressions in order to derive benefit. He sent out a report the pasha. He went out with it on al-Jumādī I 7. He came to Istanbul and it just so happened through the divine decree that He beheld the matter of the judgment of al-Shām. And he came to Mīrzā Muḥammad Efendi, and he took the report and went with it to al-Shām, reaching the city at noon on Saturday, Jumādī II 9. And Mīrzā Muḥammad Efendi sent a letter to Aḥmad Efendi Bakrīzāde delegating him for duty, so he sat for judgment in a courtyard in the place of the court, and on Sunday in the Nūriyye. On this day the pasha summoned the aforementioned qadi ‘Abd al-Baqi and all of the ‘ulama to the Ṣālihiya, [then] to the palace of Ḥusayn Efendi ibn Qarnaq, and he showered the qadi and the rest with great hospitality and kindness. After the hospitable reception was over, he sent the qadi a horse as a gift.

As for Muḥammad Agha, report came from him to al-Shām that that he entered Edirne on Jumādiī I 12, and the cause of his delayed coming was that he went to Edirne from al-Shām upon a different route from Ḥasan Agha, and that he was riding his own mount, not upon a postal-horse.

And ‘Abd al-Bāqī travelled from al-Shām on Monday, Rajab 2, 1086. And on the night of that Tuesday an agha, named Ḥasan Agha, a qapuju [warden-officer] of the Sublime Porte, entered al-Shām, in order to adjudicate regarding the truth of what the qadi and the people of al-Shām reported, and the truth of the words of Ḥasan Agha and his pasha. Then our lord Mīrzā Muḥammad Efendi entered al-Shām on Monday, Rajab 16 of the aforementioned year [October 6, 1675]. On the second day [after his arrival] the notables (‘ayān) of the land from among the ‘ulama and soldiers gathered together in the place of the court, and the Qapuju Ḥasan Agha came and read the sultanic order which he had brought, and its gist was that the petition of the Qadi of al-Shām and of the people present with him had risen to the Sublime Porte, and his complaint had arrived, they mentioning that Ḥusayn Agha took many things from them. ‘So We sent Ḥasan Agha so that for everyone from whom something had been unjustly taken he might restore what had been taken from him, after establishing the matter in accordance with the Shari’a, in the presence of the qadi.’ He specified that the qadi would listen to the claim, and specified that the commanding and the realization of the supplication be the affair of the Sultan—God grant him victory! And the people came out, as everyone who had a complaint came to the place of the exalted Shari’a.

Then Ḥusayn Agha assigned Kutkhudā Ḥasan Agha to listen to the complaints of the supplicants from among the assembly. And they laid charge [upon him and the pasha] with some eight of the specific points written out in the petition of the qadi and the people. So Ḥasan Agha [the qapuju] acknowledged that and the qadi wrote his report and put in six items of authorized evidence, and the veracity of the petition of ‘Abd al-Bāqī and the people of the land present was made manifest. The qapuju sent the authorized evidence along with the written report of the qadi to the Sublime Porte on Ramaḍān 2, 1086; he himself left al-Shām on Ramaḍān 27. Then on the second of Shuwwal [December 12, 1675] Ḥusayn Agha turned away from al-Shām, in the company of our lord Vezier Ibrahīm Pasha, who had previously governed al-Shām distant from Ikrīd [this last line’s meaning is unclear to me].

Ismā’il Maḥāsinī, Kunnāsh Ismā’il Maḥāsinī, ed. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Munjad (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Jadīd, 1965), 111-113.  

The Great Comet of 1680

On By JonathanIn Arabic, East & West, HistoryLeave a comment

The little excerpt of translated text below is from the Kunnāsh, or notebook, of a scholarly resident of Damascus, Ismā’il al-Maḥāsinī, who died in 1690. In his notebook he records matters of local, regional, and even empire-wide importance, as well as various things and events that concerned or interested him. The events described range from an excursion to some neighboring towns to take in the country air, to the appointments and removals of various Ottoman officials in Damascus. In this entry he notes the occurrence of what in Western Europe would become known as Kirch’s Comet, as illustrated below in a painting from Rotterdam. Read Ismā’il’s description after the image:

comet

It befell that the first of the month of Ramaḍān, in the year 1091 [1680], was a Tuesday, and the Day of the Sacrifice likewise, and likewise the first of Muḥarram in the year 1092. And from the beginning days of the month of Dhū al-Ḥijja in the year 1091 [December 1680] a star went out which was seen in the lower third of the heavens in the direction of the qibla, and there extended out from it light like a solid column, around a cubit wide, inclining towards the west. And it remained like that every night for around a month.

Ismā’il Maḥāsinī, Kunnāsh, entry no. 25

Journeying Through the Veils

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The below passage is from an introductory ‘handbook’ of Sufism in Arabic by the seventeenth century Aleppine Sufi Qāsim al-Khānī (d. 1697). His description here is hardly original, rather, it represents the shifting through and representation of centuries of Sufi thought and practice. At times his writings reflect a concern with theological ‘deviance,’ a particularly acute concern for Sufis like him who sought to defend and perpetuate the long tradition of Sufism- including the many theo-philosophical developments of the thirteenth century, such as those associated with Ibn ‘Arabi. Many of these beliefs and practices came under increasing scrutiny in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere from the sixteenth century onward, even if such critiques did not become truly mainstream until much closer to our own age. al-Khānī seeks to defend such beliefs as ‘oneness of being,’ while also decrying allegedly incorrect interpretations of such beliefs, for instance here:

That which benefits the wayfarer in his journey is witnessing (shuhūd) of oneness of being not its gnosis. Witnessing is a state (ḥāla) necessarily realized from struggle, privation, successive exercise, lowliness, poverty, and need. And this state does not benefit the wayfarer unless there is with it following of the Shari’a, for if there is not with it following of the Shari’a, then it is damning zandiqa [heresy or deviance].

The passage below is less concerned with fending off theological error; rather, it presents a pretty traditional Sufi understanding of spiritual journeying: the passage through successive ranks of ‘veils’ preventing human cognizance and connection with God. As it is written in a straight-forward, pedagogically-inclined manner, I will leave off further commentary of this fine example of early modern Sufi teaching.

And the greatest of the veils that are between the servant and his Lord are the veils of sins, because they are darkness. As for veils other than them, to be sure the servant should hasten to dispel them, although they are luminescent, not totally veiling the servant. For the likeness of the veil constituted by sins is the likeness of an encompassing wall between you and your goal, and you cannot see essence or trace, due to its preventing, nor shape—which is different from the luminescent veils. They are like glass, with what is behind them being seen, obscuring and revealing by their increase or decrease. If the glass is increased greatly, then the intended object behind it is hidden, though the hiddenness of what is behind the wall is not the case here—at least the shape of the object can be discerned. All of this is what can be seen with the eye of the senses.

The heart is likewise. So long as its eye, which is called discernment (al-baṣīra) is veiled by the darkness of disobedience, which is called overcoming, imprinting, and sealing, it does not see anything of the lights of the Unseen, and has no awareness of what sin and evil does to it.

Then if one turns from what one is in, the veils of sins are lifted from his heart, and he beholds divine things, and begins to feel fear concerning his punishment, and hopes for reward, and persists in obedience to God, and turning away of evil deeds. Now he is veiled with luminescent veils, which are his dependence upon these deeds, for he now believes that he is the one who brings them into existence.

Then, after that, God lifts this veil from him, through the blessing (baraka) of acts of obedience, and he sees that the grace upon him belongs to God, for God causes him to be successful in these deeds, and that he is insufficient in giving thanks for them, and that the effective Giver is God. If God desires of someone good, he invests him with the garment of pious fear (taqwa) so as to make sound his presentation before His presence—and nothing of good or evil is by the hand of the servant, rather, all is by the hand of God.

Then, when this veil is lifted from his heart, he imagines that he has attained to God, for there is spiritual delight in this station. But if the hidden subtleties encompass him, this veil too is raised from him, and he does not cease cutting through the veils, one after another, as per the arrangement of stations and gates as in this book, until he attains to true station, the stopping place of the Most Veiled—so understand!

Do not believe, because of the likeness of the veils to panes of glass, that God is a thing which can be seen by the perceiving eye—for He is free of that. God take in hand your guidance!

Qāsim al-Khānī, al-Sayr wa al-sulūk ilā malik al-mulūk

Moses and Pharaoh in Mystical Exegesis

On By JonathanIn Arabic, Islam, ScriptureLeave a comment

By the late medieval period, the study and explication of the Qur’an in Muslim communities across the world had given rise to a vast range of approaches and texts. Some exegetes examined individual surahs; the Fatiha, the opening surah of the Qur’an, and Surah Yusuf, the longest single sustained narrative in the Qur’an, were particularly popular in this regard. Other writers examined the entire Qur’an from particular perspectives, be it legal, grammatical/philological, or with an eye to moral development. Some such specialized commentaries were comprehensive, verse by verse, while others dealt only with those portions deemed relevant to the particular concern of the commentary. Among ‘specialized’ commentaries were those produced by Sufis, either incorporating ‘mystical,’ Sufic interpretations as part of a larger more ‘conventional’ commentary, or focusing exclusively on interpretations and concerns especially salient to Sufi thought and practice. Of these latter, specialized commentaries, one of the more widely reproduced and read was a tafsīr known by the name (among other names) of al-Ta’wilāt al-Najmiyya, which was possibly composed by the famous Sufi master Najm al-Dīn al-Kubrā (1145-1220), or, more likely, by his close disciples and successors, including Najm al-Dīn al-Rāzī Dāya (1177-1256). At any rate, the tafsīr is reflective of the developed Sufism of al-Kubrā and his ‘school,’ itself a culmination of centuries of Sufi practice and thought. I have excerpted and translated a short excerpt from this commentary below.

The commentary is distinctive for its highly cohesive style: while it unfolds verse-by-verse, the author (or authors) maintains consistent analytical and narrative threads through the examined passages, consistently treating the material from a ‘mystical,’ indeed allegorical, perspective. To use the author’s own term, his interest is in the ‘inner’ meaning of the Qu’ran, a concern shared by previous esoteric-minded exegetes. He is careful, early on in the commentary, to point out that his exclusive treatment of the ‘inner meaning’ of scripture is not meant to deny the ‘outer meaning,’ or what a contemporary medieval Christian exegete would have probably called the ‘historical’ or ‘literal’ sense of scripture. A quick perusal of the commentary reveals why a more exoteric-minded critic might believe the author was denying the literal sense: the contents of the admonitions, the stories, the theological pronouncements are all shifted and resignified, sometimes subtly, sometimes rather dramatically. As in the passage below, historical events are removed from the finality of historical time and instead become universal, recurring spiritual ‘events.’ Moses, for instance, is not a historical figure—or rather, is not merely a historical figure—but is the human heart, arrayed in struggle against the passions of the lower world. The story of the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt becomes the cyclical story of the heart’s exodus from the oppression of the lower self and the snares of the world, crossing the sea of passions to the meeting with God.

This is not to say that our author wishes to negate the ‘outer’ significance of the words, however; Sufis very rarely rejected the ‘literal’ or exoteric, and were often in fact particularly rigorous in their adherence to the ‘external’ religious law and rites. Indeed, for him—and for many, many other medieval exegetes, Muslim and Christian—scripture was not mere ‘allegory,’ in the modern sense, whereby the text really means something else than it appears on the surface, making the surface meaning superfluous. For these exegetes, scripture—and indeed history as a whole, especially as recorded in scripture and sacred tradition—was capable of simultaneous significances, equally important and ‘real,’ and mutually interdependent. To use a metaphor popular with Sufis, scripture is a sea, with many ‘submerged’ meanings, but all part of one single sea. Hence different exegetes might come to different conclusions when searching for the ‘inner’ meaning of a given passage—a perfectly acceptable outcome, given the boundless nature of the text. Similarly, for medieval Christian exegetes, the ‘mystical’ valences of scripture, be they typological, allegorical, or moral, were manifold, with different people in different spiritual states finding different meanings and spiritual nourishment in them, though all participating in both the shared ‘external’ meaning and the shared language and practices of in the ‘internal’ path. On the whole, this sort of interpretation tended to make the sacred text more intimate, more personal, as it was now reflective, not just of some universal salvation history, but also of the individual spiritual journey to God. Such a focus on the individual spiritual journey was not meant to negate or detract from the ‘historical,’ universal story, but rather to illuminate its ‘inner’ aspects, and bring it to the level of the individual seeker, the daily struggle against the passions, and the personal experience of God’s grace and illumination. Nor was such a focus meant to exist in isolation, or as mere individual discovery, but rather as part of a larger, older tradition of spiritual masters and seekers, speaking a shared language and sharing common symbols.

*

Then He related concerning the various sorts of His benefaction and the types of His grace with them, through His words: And when We delivered you from the house of Pharaoh (Q.2.49). The subtle indication (al-ishāra) in this [verse] is that the delivery from the house of Pharaoh, [who is] the lower self (al-nafs) commanding to evil,[1] while they [the house of Pharaoh] are its blameworthy attributes and rebellious characteristics, on the day of They treated you unjustly with evil torment, slaughtering your sons and shaming your women. [That is], the spirit and the heart,[2] by the slaughtering of the sons of the spiritual praiseworthy attributes, and the shaming of the women of one of the attributes of the heart, due to their making use of them for bestial, base deeds—[the aforementioned salvation] exists only through the deliverance of God, as Muhammad said [in the following ḥadīth]: ‘Not one of you is saved by his deeds! It was said: Not even you, O Prophet of God? He said: Not even me, except God cover me in His grace and mercy!’

And in your abasement: that is: in the overpowering domain of the attributes of the lower self over the spirit and the heart. A great trial from your Lord, in good and ill, for the one whom God guides and keeps safe and sound, He tries him, until he returns to God in seeking deliverance—so God saves him and destroys his enemies. The one whom He leads astray abides forever in the earth below and follows after his fleshly desires in excess, so God rejects him and allows his enemies to overwhelm him.

Then He related concerning His great benefaction on a succeeding occasion, with His words: And when we parted the sea for you: the subtle indication in this verse is that the sea is this world below—its waters are the desires and the pleasures of the world. Moses is the heart, and his people the attributes of the heart. Pharaoh is the lower self commanding [to evil], and his people are the attributes of the lower self, and they are the enemies of Moses and his people, seeking them in order to slay them, while they [Moses and his people] are traveling towards God away from their enemies who are following after them. Now: the sea of this world is before them, and they must certainly cross over the sea in their journey to God. If they heedlessly plunge into the sea without the striking of the staff of No god but God[3] in the hand of Moses, the heart—for he possess a beneficient hand in this matter—then they would drown, as Pharaoh and his people drowned. But, if this staff had been in the hand of Pharaoh, the commanding lower self, it would not have possessed the confirmatory miracle[4] of the cleaving of the sea. And when Moses, the heart, struck with the staff of remembrance [of God], through God’s permission, first the sea of this world below split with the negation of No god, then the water of its desires separated apart to the left and the right. Then God sent the wind of divine providence and the sun of divine guidance over the bottom of the sea of this world below, and it became dry of the waters of the desires. The Moses, the heart and its attributes, plunged in, crossed over, and the divine providence of but God delivered them to the shore of The utmost limit belongs to your Lord (Q. 53.42). It was said to Pharoah, the lower self: Drown, and enter the Fire! (Q. 71.25). So astutely understand—‘Verily, the Qur’an possesses an outer and inner [aspect].’[5]

[1] The ‘lower self (al-nafs)’ or ‘soul’ commanding to evil is a term, Qu’ranic in derivation, that describes the lower, sinfully inclined portion of the human person, that in its corrupted state acts contrary to the human person’s original, exalted nature; it is generally irrational and inclined towards the passions and desires.

[2] The spirit (al-rūḥ) and the heart (al-qalb) are two ‘locii’ of the human person, the spiritual centers through which both the external and internal spiritual senses and locutions are processed. Sometimes the two are presented in a gradated fashion, with the heart being subordinate to the spirit; here, that hierarchy is less in evidence.

[3] This is of course the first half of the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith. In Sufi practice and theory, this phrase is often used in dhikr (prayerful inner and outer remembrance of God), and has also accumulated an immense body of analysis and significances, of which this passage is but one brief instance.

[4] My somewhat clunky translation is an attempt to render the significance of the term mu’jiz, which is a particular sort of miracle, usually considered to be exclusive to prophets, as signs confirming their prophethood. The miracles of saints are, according to most theologians and mystical thinkers, of a different order and significance.

[5] A partial citation of a hadith much quoted, in one form or another, by Sufi exegetes.

Two Brothers

On By JonathanIn Arabic, History, IslamLeave a comment

The following is an excerpt from a seminal Moroccan hagiographic work, the Dawḥat al-Nāshr of Muhammad ibn ‘Askar al-Ḥassanī al-Shafshāwanī. In it, ibn ‘Askar presents biographies of various saintly figures from the course of the tenth century (A.H.), many of whom lived in Fes or in the Rif region, including Chefchaouen, the author’s hometown. This text would be followed with numerous other such literary works, many of which reference the Dawḥat al-Nāshr.

The stories that fill this work provide a fascinating glimpse into the life of sixteenth-cenutry Morocco, both in the cities and in the countryside, as exempified in this short excerpt. It is also a display of the seemingly ever increasing importance saints, living and dead, played in pre-modern Moroccan society (something that has endured, in fact, into the modern age, despite many contrary forces). The power deployed by the saint can be manifest in a variety of ways, in both the natural realm and within the social and political realm. Sometimes that power is subtle, dependent upon the spiritual capital the saint has accumulated and how he chooses to deploy it. Othertimes, it is more spectacular, as in the story below of the interconnection between one anchorite saint and the raw energy of nature. Saintly practice is not monolithic: in this entry, we see two brothers, both powerful saints, living very different sorts of pious, ascetic lives. One is very urban in orientation, both before and after his conversion to the ascetic life; the other is a seeming Islamic analogue of the anchorites of late medieval Europe. How they relate to wider social and political life thus varies: our anchorite rejects marriage and cuts himself off from normal social relations; his brother’s effacious prophecy, however, is driven by a concern for familial honour, a fundamental—and very public—basis of social relations.

This variety, and the variety of responses to saints, both within and without the hagiographic text, run throughout ibn ‘Askar’s work, and indeed in the larger world of Moroccan hagiography and saint-veneration, itself subject, not to stasis and homogeneity, but diversity, divergence, and important changes over time.

The Brothers ‘Abd al-Raḥman and ‘Alī ibn Raysūn

Among them, the two sublime shaykhs, Abū Zayd ‘Abd al-Raḥman and Abū Ḥassan, fathered by Abū Mahdī ‘Īsa al-Sharīf al-‘Alamī, from among the descendants of the Pole of the West, Shaykh Abū Muhammad ‘Abd al-Salām ibn Mashīsh, God be pleased with him.

As for Abū Zayd, he was devout, ascetic, and learned, austerity and reclusion from the world being predominant in him, and miraculous signs were manifest in him. The men of the Banū Rāshid present their daughters to him for marriage without obligation, but he did not accept one of them, but rather abandoned the people, and [abandoned] his possessions in the open space before his house, not resisting those who took and bore them away. His way was the heavens, and perhaps the heavens raised him up until oneness was bestowed upon him, and he became estranged from normal relations with the people until he saw neither closeness nor distance, and his house was always locked upon him, and his bedding was the rinds of oaks.

I saw him once when I was young, and he called out a greeting to me; my father was among his companions.

No one knew about his passing away until the wind whipped up that night in the summer, the darkness deepened, the thunder roared, the lightning flashed from every direction, and lightning  bolts struck, so that the people of Tazroute were frightened, and went out to the mosque, saying, ‘Let us seek this shaykh quickly that he might tell us what is going on!’ They then went to the house and it was locked, so they called out and he did not answer them at all, so they tried to open it but were not able until they smashed up the door. Then they found him, dead, lying upon his right side, facing the qibla, as if he were sleeping, God me merciful to him. When they entered his house, the winds calmed and the thunder ceased.

He passed away at some point in the ‘fifties of this century, and was buried in the cemetery of Tazroute around Jbel al-‘Alm, in the land of the Ghumāra.

As for Shaykh Abū Ḥassan, he had, during his brother’s lifetime, worked as a merchant buying and selling goods in the markets, but when his brother passed away he swore off the world, embarked upon pious devotion, and clung to the holy. He was joyful, outstanding, naturally inclined to have a happy countenance, noble virtues, and peace of heart. He was always immersed in litanies—his was a tongue that did not cease from recitation and remembrance for even an hour.

When Sultan Abū Ḥassūn al-Murīnī entered Fes in the ‘sixties, he seized hold of the Qā’id Muhammad ibn Rāsid al-Idrīsī. Fervent respect for kinship compelled Shaykh Abū Ḥassan to go and intercede on his behalf, but Abū Ḥassūn was not to be interceded with. So [Shaykh Abū Ḥassan] went to the Kairouan Mosque [in Fes], uncovered his head, and said: ‘By God! Abū Ḥassūn shall on no account remain in [Fes], and ibn Rāshi shall go forth safe and sound, through the effacious blessing (baraka) of the People of the House (ahl al-bayt).’ And it was as he said: Abū Ḥassūn died after a month, and ibn Rāshid was related and returned to his former state. [Shaykh Abū Ḥassan] passed away around the year 963, and was buried beside the grave of his brother. I accompanied him, God be merciful to him, for a long time, and I took the way of the people and benefited by him, God be merciful to him.

Muhammad ibn ‘Askar al-Ḥassanī al-Shafshāwanī, Dawḥat al-Nāshr

On the Poor Ones and Why They Are Called Sufis

On By JonathanIn Arabic, Culture, History, Islam1 Comment

While later medieval Sufism is represented in some extremely subtle, sophisticated, and often very complex texts, produced by and for the intellectual elite, writings intended for a less rarified milieu were also very common. Indeed, many prominent Sufis wrote treatises and commentaries designed to make esoteric, philosophical tenets of mystic though and practice more accessible and more widely dissimulated. Treatises and pamphlet from less prominent and indeed unknown writers were also common, often attached to and advocating a particular Sufi ‘order’ (ṭarīqa), with its particular rites, canon, saints, and chain of authorities often stretching back to a semi-legendary eponym. The text I have excerpted and translated below is an example of this less ‘sophisticated’ and generally more accessible strain of Sufi writing, writing that was intended for, if not the masses, at least a relatively broad audience. Furthermore, as the text below especially demonstrates, we can get a better idea of the actual reception of the often difficult, even impenetrable, ideas of mystico-philosophic Sufism, and the ways in which rituals and ritualized behavior and dress (among other things) were perceived and practiced.

This text, entitled the Sirr al-Asrār—‘Secret of Secrets’ is a workable, if imperfect, English translation—is also an excellent example of another phenomenon common in the medieval world: the automatic verification of a text by attaching it to the name of a prominent, respected figure in the past. In this case, at some point in its history (either at the hands of the original author or a later redactor) the Sirr al-Asrār was attributed to none other than the great Sufi-Hanbali preacher of eleventh-century Baghdad, ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jīlānī. This attribution continues to this day, and is almost certainly the reason an otherwise rather unremarkable introductory text can today be found in numerous printed editions and in various translations, including a couple into English (which should be considered devotional paraphrases, not translations, I might add). That it simply cannot in fact be from the Baghdadian preacher’s pen is obvious from even a cursory comparison between the established authentic writings of al-Jīlānī and this text: not only is the Arabic much choppier and less rhetorically powerful, but the ideas and practices expressed here are often derived from a quite different, and chronologically later, mystical milieu than that of al-Jīlānī. That is to say nothing of the now anonymous author’s occasional citation of Persian poetry, including Rumi, who lived long after ‘Abd al-Qadir’s death. Rather, it is likely that the text was either composed by a now anymous author, perhaps a member of the Qadiriyya order (which claimed ‘Abd al-Qadir as its eponym), and then later attributed to the famous Eponym accidentally or otherwise; or it was labeled with ‘Abd al-Qadir’s name from the beginning. The former seems more likely, as other than the initial attribution—an easy thing to modify—the text does not make any further effort to identify with ‘Abd al-Qadir.

As for the content translated and presented here, there are several interesting points. First, our author presents a simplified Sufi cosmology, which curiously emerges as a result of the question of the much debated etymological origins of the term ‘Sufi.’ After establishing a mystical cosmology, our author then continues his discussion of Sufi ‘poverty’ and how the true inner nature of Sufism is reflected in both the practices and clothing of the Sufis. As is often the case with handbooks and introductory treatises such as this, objects and rituals provide an easy locus for allegorical explication and theological teaching. Here, clothing is our author’s springboard for laying out the inner meaning of Sufism. Yet we should not imagine that such connections are incidental for our author: rather, as is indicated by the opening discussion of cosmology, and the constant reference to Qur’an and hadith (especially hadith), the world and all its parts are part of the things symbolized. Allegorical connections are not accidental, but reflective of essential properties, of an essential divine economy linking things together and providing the world with divine significance. Hence while the objects discussed might be mundane, and the language of this treatise not exactly representative of high-style, our anonymous author sought to introduce his readers to a truly rarefied, and wondrous world indeed, one in which they also could participate and partially, at least, understand.

 

The Twelfth Chapter, On the Poor Ones and Why They are Called Sufis

Some of them say because they used to dress in wool (al-ṣūf) or because they purified (ṣafū) their hearts from worldly worrisome affairs or because they purified their hearts from all other than God. And some say because they will stand on the Day of the Resurrection in the first row (al-ṣaff al-awwal) in the World of Proximity (‘ālam al-qurba). For the world is four:[1] the World of Kingship, the World of Sovereignty, the World of Divine Omnipotence, and the World of the Divine Essence, and it is the world of reality. And likewise the knowledges are four: the knowledge of the Shari’ah, the knowledge of the Mystical Way, the knowledge of Gnosis and [the knowledge of] Reality. And likewise the spirits are four: bodily spirit, luminescent spirit, governing spirit, and holy spirit. And likewise the divine manifestations are four: the manifestation of the subtle traces, the manifestations of the acts, the manifestation of the attributes, and the manifestation of the essence. And likewise the intellect is four: the basic intellect, the customary intellect, the spiritual intellect, and the universal intellect.[2]

And in the reception of the four aforementioned worlds, knowledges, spirits, manifestations, and intellects, some of the people are bound to the first knowledge, the first spirit, the first manifestation, the first intellect, in the first Garden, which is the Garden of refuge. And some of them are bound in the second and they are in the second Garden, the Garden of beneficence. And some of them are bound to the third, and they are in the third Garden, the Garden of paradise. And they are heedless of the reality of those things, while the people of the Truth from among the gnostic renunciants flee from all of it and are united to the reality and the proximity; they are not bound to anything other than God, exalted is He, and the follow after His word, exalted is He. So they flee to God, and as he—the most perfect of prayers and peace be upon him—said, ‘This world and the next are ḥarām for the people of God.’ And the intended meaning of ẖarām here is not that the two things are prohibited to them, but rather they have prohibited them from themselves that they would seek them and be attached to love of them. For they say: ‘Verily, we are sinners [?], while those two things are temporally originate—so how can one temporal being seek after another temporal thing? On the contrary, it is incumbent on such a one that he seek the originator.’

And He says in the sacred hadith[3]: ‘My love is the love of the poor ones.’ And he said, peace and prayer be upon him, ‘Poverty is my pride, and I take pride in it.’ The intended meaning of poverty here is not the common meaning of poverty, rather, the meaning of poverty here is dependence upon God, mighty and glorious is He, and abandoning what is other than Him, from the benefits of this world and the next. The [ultimate] meaning from it is is annihilation (al-fanā’) in God, such that nothing remains in the self for the self, and nothing is encompassed within the heart other than God, as God, exalted is He said: ‘Neither My earth nor My heavens encompass me, but the heart of My believing servant encompasses Me.’ The intended meaning of ‘believing’ is he who has purified his heart from human attributes and has emptied [it] of alterities, so the Truth encompasses his heart in reflection. Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī,[4] God be merciful to him, said:’If the Throne and what is around it were cast in a corner among the corners of the heart of the gnostic, he would not sense it.’ So He who loves those beloved ones, He is with them in the Other World. The sign of their love is their companionship and yearning for God, exalted is He, and encountering Him, as He said in the sacred hadith: ‘The desire of the pious stretches out towards encountering Me, and I strengthen desire toward [sic.] them.’

As for their clothing:[5] it is in three types, as we mentioned in chapter three. As for their works: the work of the novice is variegated with the praise-worthy and the blame-worthy. The work of the intermediate is variegated with praiseworthy colours like the light of the Shari’ah, the Mystical Path, and gnosis. Their clothing is variegated likewise, like white, blue, and green. The work of the realized one is emptied of colours entirely like the light of the sun—its light does not receive colours; likewise, his clothing does not receive colours, just as black does not receive colours. It is the sign of annihilation (al-fanā’), and it is the veil of the light of their gnosis, as the night is the veil of the light of the sun. And God, exalted is He, has said: ‘We made the night a garment, and we made the day as livelihood.’ Therein is a subtle indication for one who possesses the inner kernel of the intellect and of knowledge.

And also: the people of proximity are in this world in prison, homesickness, sorrow, distress, trial, testing, and oppression, as he—the best of prayer and the noblest of peace be upon him—said: ‘This world is the prison of the believer.’ So darkness [of clothing] is befitting. The saying of the Prophet, peace and prayer be upon him, has been shown to be true in this regard: ‘Tribulation is entrusted to the prophets and the saints, then those most like [them], then those most like [them].’ And the wearing of black clothes and the putting on of a black turban—this clothing is the clothing of tribulation and of those mourning the affliction of the escape of the reception [of divine things], such as unveiling, witnessing, and realization. And [it is for] the death of the life of eternity, and the like—of desire, tasting, passionate love, the holy spirit, and the degrees of closeness and union. Those [so afflicted] are among the greatest of the afflicted. Without doubt, whoever wears the clothing of mourning for the length of his life, it is because benefit of the Other World escapes him. It is like a woman who, when he husband dies, God commands her to wear the clothing of mourning for four months and ten days due the escape of benefit of this world below. As for the temporal extent of the mourning of the Other World, it is without limits, as he said, peace be upon him: ‘The sincerely purehearted are in possession of a matter of truly grave seriousness.’

So all of this is from the attribute of poverty and annihilation. And in the report (al-khabr), ‘Poverty is black of face in the two Houses,’ meaning, it does not receive colours save the light of the face of God. The descent of blackness totally makes empty the face and increases in it beauty and grace. And if the people of proximity look to the beauty of God, their eyes do not receive afterwards anything other than God, and they do not look with desirious love towards anything else. Rather, their object of love and their object of seeking is God, in the two Houses, not intending anything other than God, because God, exalted and blessed is He, created the human person for true knowledge of Him and union with Him. So it is incumbent upon the person that he seek what he was created for in the two Houses together, lest he waste his life with what will not aid him, and lest he forever rue after his death the wasting of his life.

Pseudo-‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jīlānī, Sirr al-Asrār, Chapter 12.

[1] The four-fold world scheme was, by the time this text was written, a pretty-well established trope in mystical cosmology. Like so many things, it was enumerated in the greatest depth and sophistication by ibn ‘Arabī, but the various ‘spheres’ or ‘levels’ of existence have a much older and broader pedigree. In some ways they can be traced back to Neoplatonic thought, and perhaps elsewhere. Their exact meanings and connotations vary, and anyway are not the issue here: here they simply appear as rather mysterious, esoteric signifiers.

[2] Lists of things, especially corresponding things, are of course a popular pedagogical device, and not just in the Middle Ages. Numerical symmetry is also a rather enduring trope.

[3] Sacred hadith: ḥadith qudsī, a saying attributed directly to God. While never a huge portion of canonical hadith collections, and often seen as dubious in nature, several such hadith attained prominence in formative Sufism. For instance, ‘I was a treasure and longed to be known…’ appears continuously in Sufi writings; it would become a particularly important text for ibn ‘Arabi and his followers.

[4] An important early Sufi, often described as belong to the ‘intoxicated’ ‘school’ of Sufism along with al-Ḥallāj—a description that while obscuring of much, does indicate the often ecstatic and somewhat radical nature of many of Bisṭāmī’s sayings.

[5] Our anonymous author here rather abruptly shifts gears, entering into a discussion of the mystical significance of the garb of particular Sufi orders and ranks: yet another indication that the author is writing during a period of proliferating Sufi orders, not during the period of ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jīlānī.

The Beauty and the Sublimity, Winter and Summer

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The following is a single discourse from a collection of discourses by the seventeenth century Ottoman Sufi mystic and scholar Ismāʿīl Ḥaḳḳī, featured previously on this blog here: Sufi Concision. It is a rather dense little piece, despite only being a couple paragraphs. I will keep my explication short, in part because I am reluctant to put words in the author’s mouth, and do not fully understand the lineaments and depths of his particularly cosmology and symbolic apparatus.

The central motif of this discourse is the contrast between manifestations of God’s beauty (al-jamāl) and His sublimity (al–jalāl), a word that might also be translated as ‘majesty’ or ‘magnificence.’ The concept of a sort of dualism in God’s nature or manifestation of Himself had existed for some time in Sufi thought before Ibn ‘Arabi developed the idea into the form upon which our author here is drawing. The most explicit development of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought on the beauty and the sublimity can be found in, not surprisingly, a short treatise titled Kitāb al–Jalāl wa–l-Jamāl, available in an English translation from the Ibn ‘Arabi Society. Therein Ibn ‘Arabi complicates previous ideas of God’s manifestations of beauty and majesty, arguing against a rather simplistic interpretation of those attributes and the ways in which they might be experienced by humans. Ismāʿīl Ḥaḳḳī picks up this ‘complication’ of the attributes, and extends Ibn ‘Arabi’s original conception into the cosmological interactions of humans, nature, revelation, and God.

There appeared to me regarding [Muhammad’s] words, Winter is the spoils of the believer, that the most important of affairs for the perfect among the believers is the matter of religion, not the matter of this world. And winter aids in the realization of the latter matter, in that days are shorter and nights longer. For the shortening of nights makes fasting easier, while the lengthening of nights makes standing [in prayer] easier—in variance with summer, as the days are longer and the heat stronger, forbidding the aforementioned benefits. Sleep has the ascendency during summer nights due to their shortness and the languor of bodies [due to summer heat].

So know that summer is the site of the manifestation of God’s Beauty (al-jamāl) in deed in regards to outward form (min ḥaythu al-ṣūrah), however, in it is God’s Sublimity (jalāl) in potency in regards to inner meaning (al–ma’inā). But when earthquakes, violent storms, lightning strikes, and their like, occur in the summer, and as for winter in general, then it is the opposite: the Sublimity is manifest exteriorly, while the Beauty is manifest interiorly. Therefore, there does not occur in it what occurs in the summer as aforementioned. And in the nature of winter is a advantageous benefit which points to the fact that the perfect believer, whenever trial or trouble befalls him in regards to himself, to his possessions, or to his family, he takes advantage of that situation and recoups benefit. For if under every misfortune is another misfortune, on the contrary, the perfect one is he who finds sweetness in the Sublimity like that which he finds in the Beauty. And if not, then he is incomplete [in his mystical realization], because all that occurs is from God, and what is from God is not bitter to the true enraptured lover of God. It is the custom (sunnah) of God to first instruct someone through the Beauty, and if the person does not thus become aware of Him, He instructs him through the Sublimity. And if he does then become aware of Him, He uproots him—we take refuge in God from that and from all which is merely exterior.

The one who seeks ascension finds it in repentance and in the manifestation of his incapacity, not elsewhere. God possesses people who serve Him in hardship and ease equally—so look into what leads to Him: their perfect knowledge and complete tranquility of soul.

Ismāʿīl Ḥaḳḳī (1063/1652-1137/1725)

A Moving Experience

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Sufism, particularly in its more ecstatic and speculative forms, was not universally admired in the Ottoman world (or in the contemporary world, for that matter). Opposition to particular Sufi practices and doctrines, or Sufism as a whole, could come from various quarters, whether from the ranks of the learned elite or from the pious masses. In the short story below, taken from Aḥmad ibn Muṣṭafá  Tāshkubrīʹzādah’s biographical dictionary (a frequent contributor to this blog in recent days, regular readers will notice), we see both the tenor this opposition could take, and an instance of a rather dramatic conversion from an anti-Sufi stance (or, at least, anti-ecstatic Sufism). The story mostly speaks for itself. A couple of things are a little less obvious perhaps: one, note that the Sufi shaykh featured here is described as only having a Turkish name, unlike the majority of people featured in Tāshkubrīʹzādah’s collection. Does this indicate a rural origin, or perhaps outsider status vis-a-vis the ‘learned hierarchy’ of Istanbul and the rest of the empire? Why does Tāshkubrīʹzādah give only this one anecdote for substantial content of this shaykh’s life? I’m not sure. Ottoman Sufism and religion in general is an area of study I’m still very much a novice in; I might also add, my transcription of the Turkish shaykh’s name is a contingent guess for now. I have but lately begun studying Ottoman Turkish, and will probably come back and modify my transcription in time to something more accurate.

Among them, the Knower of God, Shaykh Sūndīk known as Qūghejēdede: He was a master of great divine ecstasies, sunnaic states, and performed miracles.

It is related that he met with Mullah al-Karamāsī—the qāḍī of Constantinople[1]—along with Mullah Ḥamīd al-Dīn ibn Afḍal al-Dīn, who was at the time a mufti. Mullah al-Karamāsī complained to him regarding the Sufism of the age, in that they danced and entered trance-states during dhikr,[2] which was in disagreement with the shari’a. So Mullah ibn Afḍal al-Dīn said to Mullah al-Karamāsī that their leader was this shaykh, pointing to Qūghejēdede, and said: If you make him sound, all will be sound. At that Mullah al-Karamāsī stood up and took Qūghejēdede to his house and fetched his disciples [of Qūghejēdede], and prepared food for them. After finishing the food, he said to them: ‘Sit, and practice your remembrance (dhikr) of God in propriety, sobriety, and silence!’ They said: ‘We will do that.’ Then, when they began their dhikr, Qūghejēdede shouted very loudly in Mullah al-Karamāsī’s ear, so that the Mullah stood up, threw off his turban from his head[3] and his outer robe from his shoulders, and began dancing and entered a trance-state until an entire third of the day had passed. When the Mullah’s disturbance had stilled, Qūghejēdede sad: ‘For what were you so disturbed, O Mullah—and you had said it was evil?’ The Mullah replied: ‘I repent! And I revoke before God that rejection [of Sufism], and I will never return to it!’

The aforementioned shaykh died in the city of Constantinople and was buried in it—God hallow his mystery (sirrahu).

Aḥmad ibn Muṣṭafá  Ṭāshkubrīʹzādah, Al-Shaqāʼiq Al-Nuʻmānīyah Fī ʻulāmāʼ Al-Dawlah Al-ʻUthmānīyah (Bayrūt, Lubnān: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʻArabī, 1975), 220-1. Translation by Jonathan P. Allen, 2012. No rights reserved.

[1] That is, the chief judge of Constantinople/Istanbul.

[2] Dhikr—literally, ‘remembrance’—is a Sufi practice in which the name of God or certain short devotional phrases or prayers are uttered (either vocally or silently/mentally) in succession, over and over, sometimes leading up to a trance-like state (though not in all forms of dhikr).

[3] An action strongly indicating abandonment of propriety and self-control.

Sufi Concision

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One of the most prolific Sufi masters and authors to live in the Ottoman Empire was a Turkish mystic and scholar named Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī (1063-1133/1652-1725), who spent his childhood near Edirne, then received his education in Edirne and Istanbul. After several years of traveling to various corners of the empire, he settled down in Bursa, where he lived as a Sufi master and teacher and eventually head of the Jilwatiyya order. Besides his training in the Sufi path, Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī received, and deployed in the course of his career, a broad education, from philosophy and music to Qur’anic exegesis and Persian poetry. He wrote a great deal- some 104 works, a majority in Turkish, though with a sizeable number in Arabic. The excerpt below comes from his primarily Arabic (with a little Persian mixed in) Qur’an tafsīr, the Rūḥ al-bayān, a multi-volume work that stands out as a quite original and often creative endeavor. Philosophy, mysticism, grammatical science, hadith, and many other components all make up this major work, which, so far as I know, has received little notice from Western scholars.

The excerpt below represents an aspect of Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī’s tafsīr that I think might well be unique to him (though of course I could be quite wrong on that, so don’t quote me on this!); if not unique, it still stands out as unusual and rare. After providing a somewhat eclectic but largely ‘exoteric’ interpretation of the first few verse of Sura al-Hūd, Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī presents a lemma-by-lemma ‘mystical’ commentary that is highly abbreviated, similar to the concise, abbreviated ‘exoteric’ commentaries that were especially popular in the Ottoman realms (see Bayḍawī’s relatively short commentary, the Tafsīr Anwār al-Tanzīl wa Asrār al-Ta’wīl, for an example). He titles these sections Stellar Interpretations, a phrase which immediately calls to mind mystical modes of exegesis (see note one below). Whereas most Sufi commentaries dealt with particular verses or blocks of verses, our author works through each lemma and line, integrating the whole of the text into a concise Sufic interpretation. What is the logic of such an approach? Perhaps Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī wishes to demonstrate the complete compatibility of the Qur’anic text with the Sufi path and Sufi doctrine. Against naysayers who might wish to contest the Qur’anic quality of Sufism (and especially the ibn ‘Arabi influenced Sufism someone like Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī espoused), our author presents a lemma-by-lemma reading of the scriptural text that uncovers Sufi belief and practice consistently and clearly, with little metaphysical or rhetorical maneuvering.

Alif-Lam-Ra: A Book whose verses were established, then were set forth in detail, from the Presence, Wise, Knowing. Serve none save God; I am to you from Him a warning, and good news. And you that seek forvgiveness of your Lord, then turn to Him, He gives you enjoyable provision to an appointed term. And there comes to every possessor of grace His grace. And if you turn back, then I fear for you the punishment of a great Day. To God you return, and He is over everything powerful.

And in the Stellar Interpretation [1] (al-ta’wīlāt al-najmiyya): Alif-lam-ra: the alif points to God (Allāh), the lam, to Gabriel, and the ra, to the Prophet (al-rasūl). A Book whose verses were established: meaning the Qur’an, a book whose verse are established by wise ordinance, as His words say: He makes you to know the Book and wisdom. So the Book is the Qur’an, and the wisdom is the realities, the meanings, and the mysteries that are incorporated in its verses. Then were set forth in detail: that is, these realities and wisdoms were made evident to the hearts of the gnostics. From the presence of [the] Wise: He deposited in [the Qur’an] the overwhelming wisdom which no one else is capable of depositing in it, and this is a mystery from among the mysteries of the inimitability (i’jāz) of the Qur’an. Knowing: over the instruction of those things from His presence to whomever He wills among His servants, as His words say: Then they found one of Our servants, unto whom We had brought mercy from Us and had taught him knowledge from Our Presence (Q. 18.65). Pointing out that the Qur’an has an exterior which the grammarians (ahl al-lugha) know about, and an interior which only the lords of hearts whom God has graced with knowledge from the Presence know about. And the summit of wisdom and its mystery is that you say: O Muhammad, what relates to you will not perish [?]. Serve none save God: that is, do not serve Satan, the world, the passions, nor what is other than God. I am to you from Him a warning: I warn you against being cut off from God, you that serve, obey, or love other than God; and the punishment of the servant is in Gehenna. And good news: I give you good news of mystical union and the graces of reunion [with God] in the house of magnificence, you that you serve Him and obey Him and love Him.

And the Prophet is specified by the call to God from among the prophets and the messengers, as indicated by His words: O Prophet, We sent you as a witness, a herald, a warning, and a caller to God by His permission (Q. 33.45). And you that seek forgiveness of your Lord: from what causes you to slip during the days of your lives into seeking other than God and the abandonment of seeking Him, and the occurrence of veiling [from God] and the vanities of people’s natural dispositions—for the seeking of of forgiveness is purification for your souls and cleansing for your hearts. Then turn to Him: return by preceding along the practice of wayfaring to God, so that repentance be a ornamentation for you after the purification of seeking forgiveness, per His words: He gives you enjoyable provision: the raising in stations from the low to the high, and from the high to the presence of the Exalted, the Great. To an appointed time: the termination of the stations of wayfaring (sulūk) and the beginning of the degrees of union. And there comes to every possessor of grace: possessor of truthfulness and struggle in the seeking. His grace: in the degrees of union; the witnessings are in accordance with the measure of the struggles. And if you turn back: to turn away from the seeking and the journey to God. Then (fa-): Say: I fear for you punishment of a great Day: the punishment of the Day of the cutting off from God, the Great—He is the greatest of the great, and His punishment is the hardest of strikings. To God you return: voluntarily or with detestation. If voluntarily, He will draw near to you with the utmost of attractions, as He said [in a ḥadīth qudsī: Whoever draws near to Me an inch, I will draw near to him a cubit. If with detestation, you deserve to be in the fire upon your faces. And He is over every thing: in both kindness and victorious might: powerful.

Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī, Rūḥ al-bayān, Volume 4, 93-94.

[1] Ta’wīlāt is a somewhat ambiguous word: it can mean simply ‘commentary’ or ‘intepretation’; it can mean ‘commentary by personal opinion,’ with a negative sense attached to it; or it can stand for ‘mystical’ interpretation. Here it would seem to entail aspects of all three meanings, though without any negative sense attached to it.

The Traces of Reverent Fear

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The sixteenth-century Ottoman scholar Aḥmad ibn Muṣṭafá Ṭāshkubrīʹzādah‘s biographical work, Al-Shaqāʼiq Al-Nuʻmānīyah Fī ʻulāmāʼ Al-Dawlah Al-ʻUthmānīyah, is full of fascinating lives and vignettes, dealing with all sorts of people within the Ottoman realms, from powerful judges to humble rural mystics. While many of his entries are perfunctory, giving only basic data and usually some nice words about the subject’s piety, other entries include short stories, relate sayings or teachings of the person under discussion, and sometimes include observations from the author’s own personal experience. In the case of the following short life, we get most of those things, albeit in a short space. We see, among other things, the sort of spiritual and social capital and cache a single Sufi could draw upon, touching everyone from a young Ṭāshkubrīʹzādah to a burnt-out scholar to the Sultan himself.

Among them, the Knower of God the Exalted, Shaykh Muṣlaḥ al-Dīn al-Ṭawīl:

He was from the rural district of Naḥḥās in the province of Kastamonu. At first, he busied himself with exalted knowledge (al-‘ilm ash-sharīf)[1] and was well-known by virtue of his reception among the learned men of his time. Then love for Sufism arose in him, and he made the rounds among the shaykhs of his time, until he settled upon Shaykh al-Alhī, and persisted in his service until [the shaykh] died. In his presence he joined the Sufi path and achieved the furthest perfection. He was cut off from the people, stripped of the states of the world, without inclination towards the customs of the people. One saw in his outward visage the traces of reverent fear and sublimity, though he was in companionship kind and beautiful. As a child I saw him, and he brought about in me great reverent fear, and this reverent fear is in my heart up to the present.

He wrote an epistle in the time of the Sultan Bayazīd Khān and sent it to him, mentioning therein relinquishment from the throne and the chair. He mentioned in its conclusion that if there befell injustice in any region among the various regions, the upright people of that region would see in their dreams the Prophet, peace and prayer of God be upon him, sorrowing. And the upright people of the rural district of Naḥḥās saw the Prophet, peace and prayer of God be upon him, sorrowing, so they kept watch and found in that region great injustice. That injustice was described, and Sultan Bayazīd Khān lifted that injustice from the people of that region.

And it is related about one of the members of the learned class, that he said: I went into his [Shaykh Muṣlaḥ al-Dīn al-Ṭawīl] service once, and said: I want to abandon this path. He said: Which path? I replied: [That of] knowledge (‘ilm). He replied: Have you found a better path? Then he was silent. Then he said to those present: Do you know Sinān Jalabī al-Karmiyya’ī? They replied, Yes, we know him. He said: How do you know him? They replied, He’s an excellent judge. He said: He is a most perfect person of the Sufi path—but none of you know this his state! The one who has exalted intention perfects the path, be he a judge or a professor, though no one is aware of it, but he who does not have exalted intention, his lower self spurs him on to abandoning the path of knowledge, but that will not be made possible for him, and he is forbidden from the Path.

Among his many mystical states was [the following occurrence]: he unrolled his mat in a place close to the grave of Shaykh Tāj al-Dīn in the city of Bursa, and he recited Surah Ya-Sin every morning for forty days, and when those forty days were completed, he died, and was in buried in the place of that mat, his secret be sanctified.

Aḥmad ibn Muṣṭafá  Ṭāshkubrīʹzādah, Al-Shaqāʼiq Al-Nuʻmānīyah Fī ʻulāmāʼ Al-Dawlah Al-ʻUthmānīyah (Bayrūt, Lubnān: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʻArabī, 1975), 217-218. Trans. Jonathan Allen, 2012. No rights reserved.

[1] ‘Ilm here means the study of things such as jurisprudence (primarily), hadith, grammar, rhetoric, and so on- the standard curriculum of an Ottoman madrasa; it might most accurately be translated ‘exoteric knoweldge.’It is commonly contrasted with ma’rifa, or esoteric knowledge, also, perhaps most accurately, translated as ‘gnosis,’ which focuses on the personal, experiential nature of this knowledge, as opposed to ‘ilm, which is transmitted and standardized.