Category: Culture

Neighbors, Strangers, and Travellers

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

Sufi exegesis of the Qur’an was often quite divergent with the broad consensus of ‘exoteric’ exegetes: Sufis ‘heard’ different things in the Qur’an, and looked for more ‘esoteric’ depths to the established meanings other exegetes worked within. Yet at the same time Sufi exegetes did not reject those meanings. In fact, they very much operated within the wider exegetical scheme. This exegetical scheme could manifest itself in quite subtle ways, ways that remind us that in late antique and medieval ‘scriptural communities’ scripture was never read in isolation from exegesis or from the wider religious and cultural life of the community. Rather, scripture and scriptural exegesis became deeply integrated in the thought-worlds of writers across the spectrum, almost to the level of an automatic ‘reflex’. This reflex shows up quite well in comparing two seemingly quite different exegetical approaches to the same verse.

In the first example, a citation in al-Sulami’s tafisr of the great formative Sufi teacher Sahl al-Tustari, what we would probably call ‘allegory’ is clearly being deployed. The second example is a much longer and much more ‘traditional’ passage from the voluminous al-Tabrisi, an eleventh century author who consolidated much previous material and recrafted it according to his particular literary scheme. At first glance the two passages seem to have little in common, save a shared reference. Al-Tabrisi does not point out any allegorical or mystical significance; al-Tustari gives no ‘literal’ meaning. However, informing al-Tustari’s interpretation, in fact making it understandable, is the ‘literal’ exegesis that lies in the background. The verse in and of itself is relatively unclear, especially the odd term ‘adjacent neighbor.’ It is only with an exegetical unpacking that the various terms can be differentiated and explained. It is this unpacking that al-Tustari’s exegesis takes advantage of. Knowledge of this ‘literal’ exegetical background also gives an unspoken, deeper significance to al-Tustari’s symbolic equivalences. To explain: if the heart is the nearby neighbor, we know from the ‘literal’ exegesis that it has the most ‘rights’ and is, according to some commentators, to be understood as a kinsmen: someone related by blood, and not merely physical proximity. The adjacent neighbor, understood by al-Tustari to be the ‘lower self’, retains rights as well, but is essentially foreign: either distant geographically or unrelated in terms of blood. The companion, understood by literal exegetes to be someone you are traveling with, is the intellect: a helper in the way, essentially. Finally, the bodily limbs, if equated with the traveller (who is by definition a foreigner to be treated with hospitality), are for the spiritual adept not truly essential, but still important and to be treated with care. All of these meanings depend upon two levels of background knowledge: knowledge of the wider exegetical apparatus for this verse, and knowledge of Sufi terminology. Once again we see the importance of approaching Sufism- especially early Sufism- as a movement very much embedded in and interacting with the wider Islamic tradition, and not as an exogenous thing grafted onto ‘orthodox’ Islam.

The Texts

His saying, exalted and glorious is He: [And show kindness to] to the neighbor who is close [to you], and to the adjacent neighbor [or: unrelated neighbor], and to the companion nearby, [and to the traveller].

Sahl [al-Tustari], God be merciful to him, said: the neighbor who is close is the heart, and the adjacent [or distant, see below] neighbor is the self (al-nafs), and the companion alongside is the intellect (al-‘aql), which comes to know the imitation of the Way and the Law. The traveller is the bodily limbs that are obedient to God, exalted and glorified is He.

Tafsir al-Sulami, Q. 4.36

The neighbor who is close and the adjacent neighbor: it is said: its meaning is the neignbor who is close through kinship, and the adjacent neighbor is one with whom you and he have no kinship, according to ibn ‘Abbas, Mujahid, Qatada, Dahak, and ibn Zayid. It is said that the intended meaning here is a neighbor close to you through Islam, while the adjacent neighbor is the non-believer distant in terms of religion. It is related that the Prophet, peace and prayers be upon him, said: ‘There are three sorts of neighbors: a neignbor who possess three rights (huquq)- the right of the neighborhood, the right of kinship, and the right of Islam; a neighbor who possess two rights- the right of the neighborhood, and the right of Islam; and a neighbor who possess the right of the neighborhood, [namely], unbelievers among the People of the Book.’ Al-Zajaj said: the neighbor related to you is he who is close to you and you are close to him, and who knows you and you know him. And the adjacent neighbor: the stranger [or simply the one who is more distant]. It is related that the limit of a neighborhood runs out to forty houses, and it is related that it is forty dhara’ [approx. eighty feet]. He said: it is not possible that the intented meaning is the neighbor who is close through kinship, because mention of kinship and the commanding of good deeds towards them came earlier, through His saying and to those nearby. It is possible to answer him that [this meaning] is possible. Mention of kinship had come before because a neighbor, if related by kinship, possesses the right of both kinship and neighborship. The relative who is not also a neighbor still has the right of kinship reckoned to him, while the singularities of the related neighbor are presented as preferable through this mentioning [?].

And the companion nearby: in its meaning are four intepretations: the first of them: that he is a comrade on a journey, according to ibn ‘Abbas, Sa’id ibn Jabir, and others. And good deeds towards him are by way of benifience and proper companionship. The second of the interpretations: that it is one’s spouse, according to ‘Abdallah ibn Sa’ud, ibn Abu Layla, and al-Nakha’i. The third of the interpretations: that he is one cut off from his journey, hoping for some benefit from you, according to ibn ‘Abbas in one of the reports [he relates], and according to ibn Zayd. And the fourth of the intepretations: that he is a servant who serves you. However, the first interepretation makes allowance for the other two [to be correct also].

And the traveller: its meaning is the traveler on the road, and there are two ideas contained therein: that he is the traveling stranger, according to Mujahid and al-Rabi’. And it is said: he is a guest, according to ibn ‘Abbas. He said: Showing hospitality to a guest for up to three days is a commonly acknowledged good deed (ma’ruf), and every such good deed is an act of almsgiving. And Jabar related that the Prophet said: ‘Every commonly acknowledged good deed is an act of almsgiving. It is concordant with the good deed that you meet your brother with a joyful face, and that you empty your bucket into the vessel of your brother.’

Tafsir al-Tabrisi, Q.4.36

On Teaching and Education I: Learning and Coercion

On By JonathanIn Culture, Current Events, Philosophy, Politics, University Life1 Comment

I’ve been in the education industry now, off and on (but mostly on) since 2007, in a range of capacities: substitute teacher in public high schools, teacher’s assistant in a large public research university, an instructor in a tiny historically black private college, and, in a couple months, a grad student and TA at a wealthy private research university. Besides my work as a teacher I have experienced a wide range of educational settings as a student: a small private school (kindergarten, though because of my family moving, I never officially graduated), followed by a couple of years in public school. I disliked school and my parents, thanks be to God, didn’t compel me to continue a compulsory public education, and instead let me be homeschooled. Homeschooled is a bit of a misnomer, since my childhood and adolescent education took place in lots of different settings and with lots of different teachers, besides my day-to-day ‘formal’ curriculum. I learned painting and woodcarving under the relatively informal and very personal tutelage of wonderful, experienced teachers; I spent a great deal of time hiking and exploring and camping; I participated in a (rather disorganized and not very badge-driven) Boy Scout group and in 4H; I joined a railroad history group; sat in on graduate classes in history my father was taking (and used the university library); and so on. That I have turned out a market anarchist is not really a surprise when I reflect on it: had I been forced to spend most of my waking hours in a state institution of mass education, my political, economic, cultural, and religious views would probably be much more ‘mainstream’ and malleable to State and Capital. Which is, I suppose, the point, whether intentional or unintentional. But more on that question later.

Now that I’ve briefly set out the history of my own experience with teaching and education, I’d like to reflect a little on some of the lessons I’ve learned (pun intended) over the past several years, focusing primarily on my experiences as a teacher. First, my experience in public primary-school education, the most limited of my experiences, lasting for a semester plus a few extra weeks in the second semester. I had recently finished my bachelor’s degree and wanted to begin grad school, but knew that I needed to begin learning Arabic. I also wanted to do some more traveling, so I decided to go abroad to study Arabic. In order to pay for said expedition, I took up a couple of jobs and lived with my parents; in addition, my father was deployed to Iraq so I felt a certain imperative to stay at home with my mother and youngest brother. Anyway, I took a job working for a shoestring budget skating rink; once the school year rolled around I signed up for substitute teaching, which in Mississippi at least does not require any rigorous training. I ended up teaching at a couple of schools on a regular basis: a semi-rural, semi-urban high school, and the so-called alternative school, the holding cell for ‘troubled’ students, which as often as not meant the less nasty alternative to jail. I briefly subbed at another high school but lost out on that after pissing off a rabidly militaristic and neocon civics teacher, in my first taste of being blacklisted. But that’s another story.

What follows are some of my observations from this period; none are groundbreaking (as I would later discover, much of what I learned has already been uncovered and discussed by other radical thinkers, Ivan Illich chief among them), yet the entire structure is generally accepted as a given in industrialized Western society, despite the almost blindingly obvious harms inherent in it. I cannot of course hope to list more than fraction of these harms- there are plenty of others I could enumerate. Rather I will stick to those I saw up-close, and even was forced to participate in. Also, do realize that I do not aim to incriminate any one individual, even those who were, even by the standards of the system, particularly atrocious. Rather, it is the system as a whole that I have come to condemn, the structures and procedures whose operation is not dependent upon any one person’s will or intentions.

To preface the particulars: my overall conclusion was that compulsory education is an incredibly anti-social method. Students, far from being encouraged to interact in anything resembling a free environment, find themselves, day after day, in an environment that is at once highly structured and regimented, from arriving on the bus to processing into classrooms to the punctual division of the day into timed blocks, with brief interludes of liberty in between. Students are sorted into age groups, evaluated according to performance on (increasingly centrally directed and evaluated) tests, ranked further within their age groups. Disciplinary figures are everywhere, threatening some form of more direct coercion or another. This does not mean that the students respect these impositions of authority and regimentation: in fact, they tend to resent it, and try to find ways of evading it at all turns, all the while both fearing this authority and internalizing its inevitability (as they see it, as they are drilled to see it). Students organize themselves within the interstices of the regimented day, and they extend these organizations beyond the school day. Sometimes the pent-up aggression at continual coercion bursts into open acts of belligerence, even violence, usually against each other, sometimes directed at teachers. Far from creating order, the system tends towards barely contained disorder. Substitute teachers are soft targets for strategies of evasion, though I was able for the most part to at least keep my classrooms civil, if not exactly engaged in meaningful learning.

Which brings me to another consistent pattern: the amount of ‘busy work’ designed to keep students occupied, and the complete lack of instruction in some classes. The latter reflects what I imagine, though don’t know to be, a regional variation: football and to a lesser extent basketball coaches who also teach are notoriously exempt from any standards. But neither of these problems strikes at one of the central, maybe the central, evil of the entire system, an evil that I dealt with while subbing and one I continue to deal with in colleges and universities. Simply put, students are taught to associate learning with coercion. The things that we in the humanities hold dear- literature, history, philosophy, music- become, for the average student, weapons in the hands of a power structure that operates on them day after day, year after year. I know because I had to yield them as such for this job- certainly, I was able to engage the students voluntarily, more or less, on many occasions; I tried as often as I could to avoid the tactics I saw being employed by full-time faculty. Yet even I, in order to keep things moving through the day, to go from one period to the next, as often as not had to effectively compel students to read their Shakespeare (which most of them did not understand at all, but it was on the day’s schedule) or whatever it was at hand.

For the especially bright students, or the well-connected and favored ones, all of this may not be an especially terrible experience. For them- especially the brighter kids- it is the broader anti-social atmosphere of high school that chafes them: asinine teachers, bullies, the grind of busy work, of confinement to a standardized (industrialized!) curriculum, the creation and clashing of cliques. They manage to disassociate learning with the coercive structure, or discover ways of learning that lie outside of the school’s control. For the rest, learning is physically imprinted in them (through these bodily actions, day after day after day) as an activity imposed from the outside, a method of control, humiliation even. That they reject all semblance of ‘higher culture’ upon escaping from the educational structure is not surprising; even for those who do not reject all learning, their further experiences with educational structure are forever imprinted by their years of experience in school. It is not that they reject the necessity of school: they’ve had it drilled into them, year after year; nor do they reject the authority, which they have also had drilled into them year after year. Rather, they resent it, chafe under it, and, crucially, do not desire learning. The world of learning has little or no wonder available to it; the discipline and tests and ranking and regimentation have crushed it out of them.

It is this crushing of desire and wonder, this awful associate of learning with a system of continual coercion, that I find most destructive. Certainly, for those of us teaching in colleges and universities, we face student bodies that are often times close to functional illiteracy, or who are at the very least incapable of most of the skills necessary for basic humanities courses (I can say nothing of math and science, but I would not be surprised if a similar situation obtains there as well). Opening discussions in class (which is a primary task among teacher’ assistants) is doubly difficult: the students have rarely read the assigned material nor do they especially comprehend it. If one can get them to discuss, it is nearly impossible to engage them, since they will not- in class at least!- counter-say a teacher, not without lots of urging. They do not love the authorities over them, nor do they respect them, but they will not gainsay them. For a teacher’s assistant trying to stimulate a discussion about the Venerable Bede, it’s a depressing scenario, but one repeated over and over again. But for an operator of the authority of state or corporate capital, it’s the perfect scenario: unhappy subservience, but unquestioning subservience.

But before I spin off another tangent, let me return to, and end with, the most troubling environment in which I worked, the alternative school. These were students who had been caught in the teeth of the system, and were being slowly shredded to bits. The threat of actual prison- juvie, then adult- was always over their heads. Many of them- freshmen, sophomores, mind you- had lost count of the number of times that had been hauled in by the cops or disciplinary officers. The roots of their problems were various: most came from deeply troubled homes, nearly all had been caught in the crossfire of the drug war, all, so far as I could tell, were from chronically poor backgrounds. Their lives were chronicles of all the state institutions that wage war on the poor: prisons, judges, schools, welfare programs, the projects, cops, alongside the ugly constant of disordered families and utterly fragmented communities, wracked by drugs, poverty, and violence. None of these programs had ‘helped’ them, nor were they supposed to, of course. The alternative school, as I mentioned above, was for the most part a last stop, a last ditch effort. Certainly, in terms of school structure and daily procedure, it heightened the coercive nature of schooling: pat-downs, metal detectors, locks on everything, constant surveillance. Not that I entirely minded it, mind you- some of these kids had committed violence in the past, and for a skinny white twenty-something guy having backup nearby gave a measure of reassurance. That said, the environment in the actual classrooms was, in some ways, less coercive and oppressive than in ‘normal’ schools. Certainly, some of the teachers seem to have missed out on a career as prison-guards, but they were the exception- the teachers were, for the most part, genuinely kind and decent. Classes were relatively loosely organized, compared to ‘normal’ school, and since classes were (for reasons of security probably more than anything) small I got to know the students and other teachers pretty well. Some of my most enjoyable times of teaching took place there, in large part I think because my class periods gave the students a little glimpse outside of their otherwise deeply disordered lives shuttling between one coercive authority after another, with stops in utter disorder and violence in between. Teaching tended to be relatively informal; sometimes I would just read passages from books to my students, stopping to gloss difficult bits. It was also a heartbreaking experience: here were kids who had already been passed through the larger educational and judicial mills, and- I knew in the back of my head- were almost certainly going to end up behinds bars, or murdered, or dead from an overdose or cop’s bullet or alcohol, or living in cyclical poverty. I could offer my miniscule cup of compassion, but that was it.

To be sure, all is not terrible: I came across plenty of bright spots as well, smart and engaged students, students who refused to simply swallow everything fed them, teachers who genuinely loved to teach and even managed to impart some of their love of learning to their students. Certainly the anti-social and anti-learning tendency of compulsory, centralized education does not always destroy learning and creativity and so on- it’s not an utterly total system, nor an always consistent or homogenized one, thank God. Some components are far more negative than others, and individual teachers, students, and others can make a considerable difference. But for all of the particular and personal examples one can summon the overall system looms supreme and ultimately dominating, operating just as well- perhaps better- with these positive blimps in the radar existing. The system does not need mere reforms, as politicians of both statist parties will content: it needs to be demolished, and teaching and learning need to be re-imagined and re-built from the ground up.

Layering Meaning: Two Sufi Tafsir Excerpts

On By JonathanIn Arabic, Culture, East & West, History, Islam, ScriptureLeave a comment

The following are two selections from the formative Sufi Qur’an commentary of al-Sulami (whom I have written about previously here and here). There are several interesting hermeneutical moves that al-Sulami makes in these two selections, moves that will be familiar to anyone conversant with Patristic and medieval Christian commentary. In the first selection, of Quran 2.158, al-Sulami has selected exegetical thoughts concerning the two hills al-Safa and al-Marwa, two small peaks that form part of the rituals of the Hajj (here is a decent overview of the two hills and their role in the Hajj)- pilgrims move around the two at one point in the pilgrimage’s rituals. It is this ritual significance that our exegetes here have in mind when addressing the verse in question. What, in fact, is the significance of these two hills, and how do they relate to the wider goals of the Sufi? Al-Sulami (and his sources) answer in two ways. First, they emphasize the importance of inner transformation and sight when carrying out the rituals of the Hajj- they do not negate the outward performance, but, as with formative Sufism generally, call for a carrying out of the outward acts alongside one’s inner acts.

Second, our exegetes look to the names of the hills themselves and mine them for significances that would resonate within Sufism. This is a type of exegesis that appears frequently in Christian Patristic commentary (East and West, Latin, Greek, Syriac, and others), enough so that by the early Middle Ages entire treatises devoted to etiologies and etymology could be found- with place names being particularly popular sites of examination. Keep in mind when reading this sort of commentary that for these writers, Christian or Islamic, names are not accidental occurrences, but have the capacity of representing deeper realities, of conveying multiple levels of meaning.

Finally, a note on the word I have translated godly manliness: al-muru’a is a tricky term, one that I have yet to find a good translation for. It has a whole web of meanings and connotations that develop around it through Sufi thought and a little later in futuwwa treatises and other genres. The Latin concept of virtus is perhaps the closest thing to muru’a, although the two ideas are not synonymous. Here it has a specifically religious sense, hence my tentative translation.

As for the second selection, it is fairly straightforward. The unstated question of our exegetes is: how is one to remain devotedly in mosques (or anywhere else)? The answer: this verse can be understood, with a little exegetical tweaking, to command not just devoted seclusion in a literal, physical place of prayer, but the transformation of one’s self into a continual site of prayer and devotion to God. Hence the command given in the scripture passage becomes broader and deeper, enjoining a state of secluded devotion not just at certain times or places, but at all time, and in all places.

*

Q. 2.158: His saying, exalted is He: ‘Verily, al-Safā and al-Marwa are among the rites [or symbols] of God.’

It is said: whoever climbs al-Safā and does not unite his secret to God, nothing of the rituals of the Hajj are clear to him; and whoever climbs al-Marwa and the realities of the Unseen are not clear to him, perceives nothing of the rituals of the Hajj.

And it is said: al-Safā is the place of concord (al-musāfāh) with the Truth, and whoever does not devote himself singularly to the concord of God, let him understand that he has squandered his days and the running of his course in his Hajj. I heard Mansur speak a tradition related back to Ja’afar, who said: ‘Al-Safā: the spirit, due to its being clean (safā’) of the filth of divergences [from God]. Al-Marwa: the self (al-nafs), due to its employment of godly manliness (murū’a) in standing to service of its Lord.’ And he said: ‘Al-Safā is the purification of spiritual knowledge, and al-Marwa is the godly manliness of the knower. Al-Safā is cleansing from the turbidity of this world and the passions of the self, while the running of the course [between the two hills] is fleeing to God, and when one unites his running of the course to fleeing to God, he is not rendered empty by looking to something other than God.’

Q. 2.187: His saying, exalted is He: ‘Remain devotedly in the mosques.’

Al-Wasitī said: the devoted remaining is the imprisoning of the self (al-nafs) and the binding of the limbs and attention to the time- then, wherever you are, you are remaining devotedly.

One of them said: The Sufis are remain devotedly through their inner secrets before God- nothing from temporal occurrences effects them due to their total immersion in divine witnessing.

Al-Sulami, Haqa’iq al-Tafsir

The Story of Jonah in Qur’an Tafsir

On By JonathanIn Arabic, Culture, East & West, History, Islam, Scripture2 Comments

The classical tafsīr (Qur’an commentary) tradition contains, in addition to the grammatical, mystical, theological, philogical, and other disciplines we tend to think of as ‘high-brow’ and befitting religious discourse, material drawn from the (so-called) stratum of ‘popular’ religion. Of course, as my use of scare-quotes should make clear, dividing any religious discourse, oral or written, into ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ components is immediately problematic, and reflects more on twentieth and early twenty-first century presuppositions about culture and religion than the realities of medieval religion and culture. For instance, the reading and extemporaneous composition of tafsīr by imams and others seems to have been a feature of public life in mosques and perhaps even in the streets and markets- a movement of ‘elite’ culture into the world of the non-elite. We should also keep in mind that particularly for medieval Islam, the social and economic distinctions between ulama and others was not quite as bright a line as between Christian clergy, East and West. And in addition to the ulama proper there were other figures, existing somewhere between the learned religious realm and the realm of the non-ulama, who drew upon both the scriptural traditions (of Jews, Christians, and Muslims), their interpretative traditions, and a collection of stories and elaborations upon those traditions. These figures- story-tellers, popular preachers, demagogues according to some- have an ambiguous place in the discourse of the ulama proper and their works of exegesis. The stories of the Prophets that formed the canon of the ‘popular preacher’ are often censured by more learned religious figures- yet they also appear in those figures’ works. So we see ‘popular’ and ‘elite’ crossing back and forth into each other- distinguishable, perhaps, yet refusing to abide by strict hierarchies of cultural value and location.

The other ‘site’ of ‘popular’ religion is one that feels considerably more foreign and perhaps uncomfortable to us moderns, but was arguably more integral and accepted than ‘popular’ story-telling in exegesis. ‘Magic’ and the use of scripture as talisman is not only widespread in the exegetical tradition, it is as much a component of ‘elite’ culture as ‘popular.’ In fact, any distinction that can be drawn is in measure, not in kind. Mystical and other-world oriented ‘benefits’ transmute easily- in a single text- into very this-world oriented, almost automatic effects. Recitation of a given verse will ensure victory over enemies. Swallowing water that has soaked a written copy of a verse will cure stomach illness. And so on. Granted, there were critics of this approach to this sort of thing- the benefits of verses, for instance, elicited some displeasure- but they remained, firmly part of the ulama’s way of working with scripture. And, we may rightly assume judging from the proliferation of talismanic renderings of Qur’an verses, some of which are still with us (and in use in the Islamic world to this day), such usages cannot be pinned into ulama and poplar quarters, but were equally common to both- the ulama, perhaps, acting as the rightly-guided suppliers for popular consumption.

Below is an example of the first phenomenon, the use of popular stories about the Prophets to elucidate a verse. In this case we have a classical scenario of Qur’anic exegesis: the verse in question, Q. 10.98 (Surah al-Yunus), contains a frustratingly elliptical allusion to Jonah (Yunus in Arabic) and his mission (but not his famed encounter with the whale, which is elucidated elsewhere in the Qur’an, sans a description of his prophetic mission): ‘So if it were not so, no rural community (qarīa) believed so that its faith benefited it, except the people of Yunus [Jonah]- when they believed, we lifted from them the torment of shame in this life below, and we made them to enjoy good things for a while.’ That’s it- the reader must supply the details of Jonah’s life, using the handful of other Qur’anic details alongside non-Qur’anic material- which in this case forms the bulk of the story. Our exegete, the generally accessible al-Tabrisī, has made sure to supply several versions of the Jonah story. In its outlines it will be familiar to those used to the Biblical story of Jonah; but it also- in both the versions I translate here- includes elements that do not show up on Sunday School (or the Veggie-Tales version, though some of the second story could easily have been in a cartoon). Like the Veggie-Tales version, parts of these stories have the feel of elaboration for the sake of entertaining elucidation- not simply entertainment, mind you, but purposeful entertainment. When God tells the whale that Jonah is not his food, but a prisoner in his belly, we are probably meant not only to find it a little humorous, but to understand that God can communicate His will to anyone and anything- including great whales. If we understand these stories as drawn from the ‘popular preacher’ milieu, there is no reason not to think that such preachers crafted their stories with ‘proper’ exegetical goals and techniques in mind- such as moral edification. We know that Christian writers, from the Syriac to the Anglo-Saxon traditions, re-worked scripture along ‘popular’ veins for the purpose of moral edification. A similar process seems to be at work here.

*

From the Tafsīr of al-Tabrisī: The story (al-qissa): this is part of the story of Yunus, as it was told by Sa’īd ibn Jabīr, al-Sadī, Wahab, and others. The people of Yunus were in Nineveh, in the region of Mosul. He called them to Islam, but they rejected him, so he reported to them that tormenting punishment would dawn on them in three days if they did not repent. So they said: verily, we have not attempted to deceive him. So behold- if he [Yunus] passes the night amongst you then nothing will happen, but if he does not then you will know that the punishment will dawn upon you. So when it was midnight, Yunus left from their sight, and when morning dawned on them the punishment descended. Wahab says: the skies were overcast with a black cloud, a strong dark smoke smoking, and it descended until their city was covered in it, making their roofs black. And ibn ‘Abbas says: The punishment was right above their heads- when they saw that they knew for sure that the promised destruction was true, so they looked for their Prophet [Yunus], but did not find him. So they went out to a high hill- themselves, their wives, their children, and their animals. And they dressed in sackcloth, made manifest their faith and repentance, making their intention [to repent] sincere, and they set apart each mother from her son- both humans and animals- so that each one longed for the other. And they [the mothers] lifted up their voices and the voices of [the mothers] mixed with the voices of [the men], and they humbled themselves towards God. They said: we believe in what Yunus brought [i.e. his prophetic message]. So their Lord had mercy on them, and answered their call, and lifted from them the punishment, after they humbled themselves.

…

It is related … Abū ‘Abdallah said: there was among them [the people of Nineveh] a man named Malikha, a servant, and another man, named Rūbīl, a scholar, and the servant paid attention to Yunus’s call to the people, and the scholar informed him, saying to him: ‘Do not set this against them! Truly, God will answer your prayer and will not desire the destruction of His servant.’ And Yunus accepted the speech of the servant, so he [Yunus] called to them, and God inspired him with the message that punishment would come upon them in such-and-such month on such-and-such day. When the time approached, Yunus, with the servant, left them, but the scholar remained among them. And when it was the day of the descent of the punishment, the scholar said to them: ‘Take refuge in God, and perhaps He will have mercy on you and remove the punishment from you.’ So they went out to the desert, and separated the women from the children and the animals and their young. Then they wept and called out, acting and turning aside from them the punishment [which] had descended to them and drew near to them. And Yunus passed angrily over the face [of the city] just as God had related to him, until he ended up at the shore of the sea, where there was a ship which was all loaded and the [sailors] desiring to shove off. Yunus asked them to carry him aboard, so they did. When they were in the middle of the sea, God sent a giant whale (al-hūt) against them, and it held back the ship. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Yunus. Then they expelled him and cast him into the sea, and the whale swallowed him and Yunus went through the water inside it.

And it is said: the sailors said [before Yunus was thrown to the whale]: we will cast lots, and whoever the lot strikes, we will throw him into the water. For there is surely a disobedient runaway slave (‘abadan) here. So the lot fell seven times to Yunus. So he stood up and said: ‘I am the runaway slave!’ So he threw himself into the water, then the whale swallowed him. And God spoke to the whale lest he harm one of Yunus’ hairs, [saying]: ‘I have put a prisoner in your belly- he is not your food!’ So he lingered in its belly for three days (or, it is said, seven days, or forty days) … So he entered a sea and remained until he went out to the sea of Egypt [the Nile], then traveled from it to the sea of Tabaristan [the Caspian], then went out through the Tigris.

‘Abdallah ibn Masa’ūd said: the whale swallowed another whale, so it made off with it to the depths of the earth, and it was in its belly for forty nights. So [Yunus] cried out in the darkness: ‘There is no god but God! You are glorified, while I am in the deep darkness!’ So God answered his prayer, and commanded the whale so that he spit him out onto the beach of the sea, and he was like a plucked baby bird, so God made to grow a squash-tree, making shade under it. And God entrusted [Yunus] with a mountain-goat whose milk he drank. Then the tree dried up, and [Yunus] wept over it. God spoke to him: ‘You weep over a tree which dried up, but you don’t weep over a hundred thousand or more people who were going to be destroyed!’ So Yunus left, and there was a servant-boy whom he espied. He said to him: ‘Who are you?’ He replied: ‘I am of the people of Yunus.’ So [Yunus] said to him: when you return to them, report to them that you encountered Yunus.’ So the servant-boy reported to them. And God restored to [Yunus] his body, and he returned to his people and they believed in him. And it is said: that he was [also] sent to other people, but his people were first.

*

From the Tafsīr of al-Baydawī: So were it not so, no rural communities believed: Is there not a community that believes before seeing the destruction [of God’s judgment], from among the communities which We destroyed? And He did not wait for them as He waited for Pharoah. So its faith benefited it: In that God turned [His judgment] from it and lifted torment from it. Except the people of Yunus: But the people of Yunus, upon whom be peace. When they believed: Right away- they did not behold the occasion of torment and they did not put off [believing] until the falling apart of things. We lifted from them the torment of shame in this life below: [it is possible that the meaning of the verse, rephrased, is]: no people of any rural community, from among the disobedient rural communities, believed so that their faith benefited them, except the people of Yunus. … [The following story] is told: Yunus [Jonah] was sent [by God] to the people of Nineveh in [the region of] Mosul, and they deceived and mistreated him, so he threatened them with tormenting punishment within three days (though some say thirty, others say forty). And when the threatened occasion drew near, the sky became overcast with a black cloud of strong dark smoke. Then it descended and covered their city, so they were terrified and searched for Yunus but did not find him, and they knew for sure that he was telling the truth. So they put on sackcloth and went out together to a high hill- themselves, their wives, their children, and their animals, and they set apart every mother from her son and each one longed for each other. And their voices and loud cryings were lifted up, and they sincerely repented, manifested their faith, and humbled themselves towards God. So He had mercy on them and lifted [the punishment] from them. And it was on a Friday…

To Speak, To Think, To Remember

On By JonathanIn Culture, East & West, Gospel, History, Patristics, Prayer, ScriptureLeave a comment

In secular usage, meditari means, in a general way, to think, to reflect, as does cogitare or considerare; but, more than these, it often implies an affinity with the practical or even moral order. It implies thinking of a thing with the intent to do it; in other words, to prepare oneself for it, to prefigure it in the mind, to desire it, in a way, to do it in advance- briefly, to practice it… To practice a thing by thinking of it, is to fix it in the memory, to learn it. All of these shades of meaning are encountered in the language of the Christians; but they generally use the word in referring to a text. The reality it describes is used on a text, and this, the text par excellence, the Scripture par excellence, is the Bible and its commentaries. Indeed, it is mainly through the intermediary of ancient biblical versions and through the Vulgate that the word (meditation) has been introduced into the Christian vocabulary, particularly into monastic tradition, where it was to continue to retain the new shade of meaning given it by the Bible. There, it is used generally to translate the Hebrew hāgā, and like the latter it means, fundamentally, to learn the Torah and the words of the Sages, while pronouncing them usually in a low tone, in reciting them to oneself, in murmuring them with the mouth. This is what we call “learning by heart,” what ought rather to be called, according to the ancients, “learning by mouth” since the mouth “meditates wisdom”: Os justi meditabitur sapientiam. In certain texts, that will mean only a “murmur” reduced to the minimum, an inner murmur, purely spiritual. But always the original meaning is at least intended: to pronounce the sacred words in order to retain them; both the audible reading and the exercise of memory and reflection which it precedes are involved. To speak, to think, to remember, are the three necessary phases of the same activity.

To express what one is thinking and to repeat it enables one to imprint it on one’s mind. In Christian as well as rabbinical tradition, one cannot meditate anything else but a text, and since this text is the word of God, meditation is the necessary complement, almost the equivalent, of lectio divina… For ancients, to meditate is to read a text and to learn it “by heart” in the fullest sense of this expression, this is, with one’s whole being: with the body, since the mouth pronounced it, with the memory which fixes it, with the intelligence which understands its meaning, and with the will which desires to put it into practice.

Jean Leclercq, O.S.B., The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, pp. 16-17

Surah al-Kawthar, Part One

On By JonathanIn Arabic, Culture, East & West, History, Islam, Scripture3 Comments

Introduction

Surah al-Kawthar is one of the short, somewhat enigmatic final surahs of the Qur’an. Despite its brevity, it contains several matters that proved to be of abiding interest to medieval exegetes: curious vocabulary (including two hapax legomenons), somewhat odd syntax, and the common Qur’anic problem of what feels like a background narrative informing the surah. However, as is so often the case in the Qur’an, no narrative is actually supplied by the text; no context at all is forthcoming in the text itself. It was the task of medieval exegetes to supply an informing narrative to explain the ambiguity of these short verses. Thus within a short space the exegesis of Surah al-Kawthar provides an excellent example of many of the concerns and techniques of medieval Muslim commentators. It also presents a concise introduction to the problems of translating and interpreting the Qur’an, and how those two concerns intersect. I will be presenting here, over the next few weeks, several samples of medieval exegesis dealing with this surah, drawn from a wide range of commentary styles. My hope is that this selection of material will provide interested readers with a taste of some of the many ways in which medieval Muslims interacted with their sacred text. And while I am not as conversant with contemporary Muslim approaches to the Qur’an as I am with medieval approaches, modern Islamic commentary on the Qur’an tends to be much more in continuity and in conversation with the medieval tradition than, say, most contemporary Christian approaches to the Bible. Hence an understanding and appreciation of medieval Islamic exegesis is arguably key for better understanding between contemporary Muslims and non-Muslims, particularly between those of us who also have sacred scripture and its community-based interpretation at the center of our faith and practice.

My choice for an introduction comes from the Qur’an tafsīr (commentary) of Fadl ibn al-Hasan al-Tabrisī (b. 470/1077-8, d. 548/1154), the Majma’ al-Bayān fī al-Tafsīr al-Qur’ān. Al-Tabrisī (sometimes vocalized al-Tabarsī) was an Imani Shi’a, but his tafsīr drew extensively upon ‘mainstream’ Sunni traditions, and represents a culmination of the classical Sunni tafsīr tradition that had been taking shape for several centuries before. His tafsīr makes for a good introductory text due to both its mid-point location in the medieval exegetical tradition, and because of his acute sense of organization. Helpfully, al-Tabrisī divides his material into sections according to the exegetical content. Hence particular grammatical or syntactical issues are given their own section; differences in voweling of the text are assigned a section; and the overall ‘meaning’ of the text is given the (usually) longest section. I have done my best at rendering the grammatical explanations into English; these are, for me, more difficult both to understand and even more so to translate. Nonetheless, these somewhat obtruse matters are vital parts of Qur’an tafsir. Indeed, grammatical exegesis was, for some medieval exegetes, the chief function of tafsīr, a concern that becomes more understandable in light of the emerging doctrine of the inimitability of the Qur’an. In contrast, in some ways, to the concerns of many medieval Christian exegetes, the specific linguistic content and nature of the Qur’an was generally of extremely high importance to Muslim commentators, resulting in very close attention to the intricacies and obscurities of the text’s grammatical and syntactical workings. The fact of the Qur’an’s being in Arabic was not incidental for the Muslim exegete; rather, it was fundamental to his understanding and interpretation of the text.

Closely related to concerns of grammar and syntax, issues of vocabulary are somewhat easier to convey in English, but still present a challenge. For instance, in this surah, the stand-out word is the eponymous term al-kawthar, which I have left untranslated everywhere it appears. My reason for doing so should become clear: there is no consensus what this Qur’anic hapax logomen means. According to some authorities, it means ‘abundance [of good]’; for others, it is a place in paradise- either a river, or a basin of water. And then there are more interpretations: by the fifteenth century, al-kawthar had been assigned almost every imaginable signifaction from the conceptual world of Islam. Al-Tabrisī provides the reader with many of them, instead of trying to reduce the tradition to a manageable homogeny, he presents the somewhat over-grown feeling diversity of interpretations. This ‘decentralized,’ multivalenced quality is in fact central to the nature of the tafsīr tradition, and is not simply due to editorial timidity on the part of a given exegete.

As for the other issues that arise in the context of this sample of tafsīr, I will address them point-by-point in my ‘super-commentary’ on the tafsīr. My comments appear in {brackets}. I have divided al-Tabrisī’s exegesis into two halves, the first of which is below, the second of which I will post in the next day or two. Also, in conjunction with this project, I am developing a bibliography and a glossary of terms, both of which will address the history of Qur’an interpretation and wider issues of medieval exegesis, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish. And as always, if you have a question, comment, or correction, please let me know.

Fadl ibn al-Hasan al-Tabrisī. Majma’ al-Bayān fī al-Tafsīr al-Qur’ān. Volume 4. Qum: Maktabat Āyat allāh al-‘uzma al-Mar’ashī al-Najafī, [1983]. 548-550.

Surah al-Kawthar

[This surah is] Mekkan, according to ibn ‘Abās and al-Kalbī. [It is] Medinan according to ‘Akrima and al-Dahāk, and it is three verses in toto.

{Surahs, fairly early on, came to be grouped according to their reputed place of revelation: either Mekka or Medina. However, as evident from what al-Tabrisī tells us, there was often lack of agreement on the correct provenance.}

On Its Virtue (fadluhā):

According to the hadīth of my father, whoever recites it [the surah], God will give him to drink from the rivers of Paradise, and He gives of the wage according to the number of each sacrifice the servant presents Him in the day of ‘Eid, and they draw near to the people of the Book and the associators. Abū Basīr, on the authority of Abū ‘Abd Allāh, said: whowever recites ‘Verily, we gave you al-kawthar…’ in his obligatory prayers and in his superogatory prayers, God will give him to drink on the day of resurrection from al-Kawthar, and his spokesman is Muhammad.

{The ‘virute’ of a surah is a relatively late component of the tafsīr tradition that seems to have become ‘mainstream’ in the eleventh century, though not without dispute. The shorter surahs especially would come to be associated with all sorts of gracious benefits that God would bestow upon whoever recited them. Some of the benefits, as here, are directly related to the content of the verse; others, particularly the final very short surahs, would convey the same spiritual (and perhaps temporal) benefits as reciting the entire Qur’an. This somewhat magical use of the Qur’an was not limited to recitation: amulets and other incantational devices were prescribed by quite orthodox ‘ulama, including as rigorous a man as ibn Kathīr, disciple of the hardline reformist ibn Taymiyya.}

On Its Interpretation (tafsīruhā)

God condemns in this surah the one who abandons ritual prayer and forbids almsgiving, and He mentions in this surah that those who did that lied to him [Muhammad], so He gave to [Muhammad] plenteous good things and commanded him with the observance of the ritual prayer, saying: ‘In the name of God the compassion, the merciful: Verily, we gave to you al-kawthar, so pray to your Lord and offer sacrifice; verily, the one who hates you- he is cut off.’

On the Vocabulary (al-lugha)

Al-kawthar is [of the pattern] fū’al from [the word] al-kathira, and it is the thing which is, in this matter, in abudance- al-kawthar is abudance of good things and gifts, in two aspects: the gift of conveyance of property, and the gift of other than the conveyance of property. So He gave him al-kawthar, [that is] He gave him conveyance of property just as He gave the wage, and it originated in a gift which one gives when one receives [something]. And the one who hates (al-shānī’) is the hateful one, and the ‘one cut off’ (al-abtar), it originated from the ‘cut-off’ donkey. And he is cut off, sinful. And in the hadīth of Zīyād: he delivered a cut-off address, because he did not praise God in it and did not pray for the Prophet, peace and prayers be upon him.

On the Expression (al-a’rāb)

And [the imperative verb] ‘sacrifice,’ its object is omitted, that is, [it would be] ‘Sacrifice your animal intended for sacrifice,’ just as the pronoun is omitted in his saying ‘They are the clan that envy slows down,’ that is, envy slows them down, that is, that they are connected to slowness. As for the His saying: ‘The one who hates you, he is cut-off’: the missing syntactical element is ‘not you,’ that is, ‘he is the one cut off, not you,’ because he mentioned you, significantly, in the nominative. ‘I mentioned:’ I mentioned with me [?] and ‘divided, cut-off,’ are predicates of a nominative clause.

{I am unclear on the final sentence of this passage; however, the basic gist of this passage should be clear. Al-Tabrisī senses that for some of the surah’s clauses certain elements seem to be missing, a common occurrence in the Qur’an. Hence supplying missing syntactical elements (taqdīr) would become a central concern of most exegetes; sometimes the missing elements are fairly obvious and unproblematic. Elsewhere the exegete can considerably modify the sense of the text by supplying what he deems to be missing- which may or not be the case here.}

On the Sending Down (al-nazūl)

It is said that this verse descended regarding al-‘As ibn Wā’al al-Sahmī, that he saw the Prophet of God, peace and prayers be upon him, leaving the mosque (al-masjid), then the two encountered each other at the door of the Banu Sahm and spoke with each other. And people of Quraysh were sitting in the mosque and when al-‘As entered they said, ‘Who were you talking with?’ He replied, ‘The cut-off one (al-abtar).’ Before this, ‘Abd Allāh, the son of the Propeht of God, peace and prayers be upon him, had died (and he was the offspring of Khadīja). And they used to call whoever did not have a son ‘cut-off’ (abtar), so Quraysh called him ‘cut-off’ and ‘one who cuts off’ due to the death of his son, according to ibn ‘Abās.

{As I mentioned above, many verses of the Qur’an seem to have a story of some sort behind them, either as part of the structure of the verses, or as a story lurking behind them, as here. Medieval exegetes sensed a need for narrative in both the narrative absences and elipses, and in the seeming narrative behind a verse’s revelation. The latter- the ‘why’ of a verse’s revelation- fits in a particular category, asbāb al-nuzūl, ‘causes of revelation.’ In this case, the story about Muhammad’s mocker al-‘As explains why the enigmatic third verse was revealed: as a clever rebuke. Not all verses, or even most verses, have asbāb al-nuzūl, and as we will see in the next installment, there are other ways a verse can be inserted in a narrative.}

Films & Music in Review

On By JonathanIn Culture, East & West, Film, Islam, Music, Orthodoxy, PoliticsLeave a comment

First, the music: if you’ve never heard of Lee Bozeman, well now you have, and you ought to go and listen to his work, all of which you will find linked to on his blog. His project from a few years back All Things Bright and Beautiful is one of the loveliest, lushest art-rock/post-rock albums to have come down the pike in a while. Besides being beautiful to listen to, Bozeman is a skillful lyricist, weaving the malaise of contemporary society, reflections from Western Christian thought and Orthodox theology and liturgy (Bozeman is currently attending St. Vladimir’s). It’s not a combination you get everyday in any genre of music, to be sure.

Next, two films, neither of which are especially recent, but I only lately got a chance to see them. First, Jafar Panahi’s 2006 film Offside works through a very straight-forward storyline: several Tehrani girls want to watch the World Cup qualifier game but are barred from the stadium by Iranian law. Their attempts to sneak in and blend into the all-male crowd fail, and they are placed in an impromptu holding pen just out of sight of the game. The rest of the film focuses a tight lens on their interactions with their guards. There is a lot of potential for straight-up propaganda here, and the film does engage in some rather obvious castigation of the quite ridiculous law and the young soldiers’ participation in it. However, what saves the film is its willingness to humanize the soldiers, revealing them to be more or less unwilling agents, drafted and stuck and not wanting to get stuck deeper in. The film’s final scene takes place in a police van with the girls being driven to the Vice Squad headquarters, accompanied by two of the soldiers. The journey is interrupted by the joyful anarchy of the post-victory celebration, and the film ends on a decided high-note.

Also hailing from an Iranian director, Majid Majidi’s Baran is in many ways a quite different creature: it is on one level an extended allegory of the path of the Sufi aspirant to the Divine, and is suffused with imagery taken from Rumi and others. The plot revolves around a young Iranian, Lateef, who is presented, ‘pre-repentance,’ as a hot-headed, vindictive kid who deeply resents Rahmat, the young man (or so he initially thinks) who replaces his position as tea-wallah on a Tehran construction site. Upon discovering the young man’s secret- he’s no young man at all, but a girl disguised as such in order to support her family, Afghani refugees from that country’s endless conflicts. Upon the discovery- the initial ‘tasting’ of the divine in the allegory- Lateef is transformed, and the rest of the film is devoted to his devotion to the Beloved, whom he does not truly ‘draw near’ to until the end of the film, and then only briefly. In between, Majidi paints a beautiful picture of the aspirant’s spiritual journey, concluding with Lateef’s losing of his identity for the sake of the Beloved (in this case, selling his precious ID card) and his transformation after the moment of fana’ in meeting the Beloved.

As you might have gathered, a prior knowledge of Sufi themes and practices (and, I ought to add, themes and practices also found in Shi’a Islam, whose relationship with Sufism is long and complicated), especially as revealed in Persian poetry, helps a lot in enjoying this movie. This is a philosophical, ‘mystical’ even film, and much of the pleasure of watching it comes from an awareness of the multiple layers of meaning and significance at work. That said, it is not as philosophically challenging as, say, an Abbas Kiarostami film. The story is straight-forward enough and can be appreciated on the external- zahir- level. Like Majidi’s other films, this one is visually beautiful, especially the scenes shot in the countryside around Tehran. There is also a political undertone- Afghan refugees and their struggle with immigration law (and anti-immigrant sentiments) is central to the film, and will strike American (or European or South African or Mexican or…) viewers as terribly familiar. While Majidi does not assault state power as head-on as Panahi, the critique is certainly still there, and quite effective. But at heart this is a film about something that transcends any particular political situation: the love of man for God, the love of one person for another, (the two having a way of mingling together and overlapping) love that both transforms and consumes, love that is not safe but all-consuming.

On Cultural Relativity, Scripture Exegesis, and the Rule of Love

On By JonathanIn Culture, Gospel, History, Orthodoxy, Patristics, PhilosophyLeave a comment

Re-reading St. Augustine of Hippo’s On Christian Teaching, I have been struck- again- at just how much the great North African saint is able to cover in a relatively small space, and within what seems like a fairly circumscribed and particular topic- the proper technique of scripture exegesis. Yet St. Augustine covers everything, it seems like, and it’s a joy to read: he works through sign-theory of language, how to confront the Zeitgeist and come out the richer, the role of art and science in the life of the Christian, the healing power of Christ- along with the expected exegetical techniques. It’s a little breathless at times, as he weaves in and out of topics while continually drawing the conversation back to exegesis and scripture. He often times manages to feel remarkably contemporary to our own concerns, while also quite clearly transcending (well, transcending is obviously anachronistic) our usual categories for thinking about scripture, exegesis, epistemology, and so on. St. Augustine is neither a ‘fundamentalist’ nor a ‘liberal’ in thinking about scripture: scripture is inspired, inspired through the writing of the human authors, who are clearly agents and not mere autodidacts. Scripture can have multiple, simultaneous senses, and St. Augustine is remarkably comfortable with conflicting translations even, on some levels (some translations are just bad, he suggests, and easily enough corrected). The ultimate rule for exegesis is a little startling: whatever encourages love of God and other people, is the best- the true- interpretation. And if an exegete arrives at an edifying meaning not intended by the original author- well, that’s good too.

Over all is the rule of love, as exemplified in the passage I present below. Love of God is the centering point for human life, and when we love God we will love ourselves and others properly, not dominating and controlling them but embracing them in kindness and knowledge of our mutual places in God’s divine economy. There is, I think, an implicit critique of pretty much all forms of human authority and domination of each other going on here, even if St. Augustine does not fully articulate it. He envisions life lived under the sign, the rule of Love, in which human relationships are properly ordered, not through the pride and lust of the powerful and dominating (or ourselves attempting to be powerful and dominating), but through a love-centered orientation towards God. Even the task of exegesis, as he argues at the beginning of this work, is a love-centered task. The very existence of exegesis forms community, as we need each other to truly understand the sacred text; we are not to boast over our special knowledge of the text nor hoard it or lord it over others. Even commentary ought to be done under the rule of love- agaparchy, we might call it- though of course there is no ‘system’ here, since love is particular, is oriented first towards the Person of God, then to those we live with, our neighbors.

But anyway- one could spend pages (and plenty of people have!) on the many things St. Augustine is doing and saying in these pages and in others. I am always amazed at the scope, and the frequent bursts of beauty and sense of love, even as in other places St. Augustine’s fallibility and limitations are equally in sight. But throughout I find that he presents possibilities and points of thinking- and doing, loving, acting- that continue to be full of potential and possibility, and, I suspect, will be for years to come.

This example comes from Book Three, and in it we see a good instance of St. Augustine’s welding of seemingly extra-exegetical concerns- here, what we might identify as ‘cultural relativism’- with explicitly exegetical and theological concerns. The exegetical concern is to explain the seemingly odd or even shocking behavior of Old Testament figures; the theological concern, so far as it is separate from the exegetical, is to reconcile the apparent relativism of cultural convention with an over-arching moral order. Obviously, St. Augustine’s words do not fully sum up the issues we might raise here- but they’re remarkably deft and penetrating, and within a quite short space. There is lots to think about, and not just to think about- the rule of Love, St. Augustine would tell us, is not a political program or an abstract problem. It is a way of life, realized in the love of Christ, and lived out day-by-day, step-by-step.

*

‘Whatever accords with the social practices of those with whom we have to live this present life- whether this manner of life is imposed by necessity or undertaken in the course of duty- should be related by good and serious men to the aims of self-interest and kindness, either literally, as we ourselves should do, or also figuratively, as is allowed to the prophets. When those who are unfamiliar with different social practices come up against such actions in their reading, they think them wicked unless restrained by some explicit authority. They are incapable of realizing that their own sort of behavior patterns, whether in matters of marriage, or diet, or dress, or any other aspect of human life and culture, would seem wicked to other races or other ages. Some people have been struck by the enormous diversity of social practices and in a state of drowsiness, as I would put it- for they were neither sunk in the deep sleep of stupidity nor capable of staying awake to greet the light of wisdom- have concluded that justice has no absolute existence but that each race views its own practices as just. So since the practices of all races are diverse, whereas justice ought to remain unchangeable, there clearly is no such thing as justice anywhere.

To say no more, they have not realized that the injunction “do not do to another what you would not wish to be done to yourself” can in no way by modified by racial differences. When this injunction is related to the love of God, all wickedness dies; and when it is related to the love of one’s neighbor, all wrongdoing dies. For nobody wants his own dwelling to be wrecked, and so he should not wish to wreck God’s dwelling (which is himself). Nobody wants to be harmed by anybody; so he should not do harm to anybody. So when the tyranny of lust has been overthrown love rules with laws that are utterly just: to love God on his account, and to love oneself and one’s neighbor on God’s account. Therefore in dealing with figurative expressions we will observe a rule of this kind: the passage being read should be studied with careful consideration until its interpretation can be connected with the realm of love. If this point is made literally, the no kind of figurative expression need be considered.’

St. Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Teaching, Book Three, XII-XIV

Bees, the Power of Music, and Other Wonders

On By JonathanIn Arabic, Culture, East & West, History, Islam2 Comments

I decided- yesterday, in fact- to add to my term paper on Qur’an tafsir material from Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s (543/1149- 606/1210) massive Qur’an commentary, Mafatih al-Ghayb– Key to the Unknown, also known as al-Tafsir al-Kabir, the Great Tafsir. The later appellate is especially apt- al-Razi’s commentary is not only huge, stretching to some thirty printed volumes in one edition, but is also both wide and deep in subject matter. For the limited little bit that I am covering for my paper- verses 66-69 of Surah al-Nahl– al-Razi has a regular field day talking about the wonders of animal physiognomy and the marvels of bees. While he touches on grammatical issues, the bulk of his commentary is taken up with descriptions of digestion, blood and milk production and transportation within the body, the details of beehive construction, and where honey comes from (which, for al-Razi, is an odd mix of traditional Aristotelian speculation on ‘honeydew’ and the, as it has turned out, more accurate Qur’anic idea of honey as bee secretion). Among the wonders of the bees that al-Razi includes is one ‘wonder’ that no other commentator I have examined includes, and is a practice I have in fact never encountered anywhere else. Here is the relevant passage, first in Arabic, then in my translation:

والرابع: أنها إذا نفرت من وكرها ذهبت مع الجمعية إلى موضع آخر، فإذا أرادوا عودها إلى وكرها ضربوا الطنبور والملاهي وآلات الموسيقى وبواسطة تلك الألحان يقدرون على ردها إلى وكرها، وهذا أيضاً حالة عجيبة

‘And the fourth [wonder]: That whenever they flee from their nest and go as a group to another place, and they [the beekeepers] desire their return to their nest, they play the tanbur, music-makers, and [other] instruments of music, and in the midst of these tunes [the beekeepers] are able to return them to their nest- and this also is a wonderful case!’

Well. What appears to be going on here is a dislocated swarm, and beekeepers who wish to return the errant swarm to their nest. Such a situation in itself is not unusual, but the means our Khurisani (presumably) beekeepers employ is one I am not familiar with. It would seem that the music al-Razi describes is meant to make the bees sedate and thus manageable, similar to the use of smoke to calm bees. But beyond this brief passage, I have so far been unable to find any other examples of music being used in bee-management (I suppose that’s the right word), in any part of the world.

If you, dear reader, happen to have knowledge of a similar case, either in ‘folklore’ or Classical science or mythology or whatever, or in actual practice, please share. Besides the fact that this is a fascinating little anecdote, I am interested in uncovering al-Razi’s sources for his tafsir– is this something he has himself observed or otherwise heard about, or is it something one might find in a written source, perhaps even a translation from the Hellenistic world? God knows best…

* N.B.: My use of al-Razi, whose commentary is not available in my university’s library, has been made possible by the truly wonderful website Altafsir.com, which has a massive collection of classical tafsir online, free and easily accesible. Most are in Arabic, but there are also a few English translations. For the struggling graduate student, this is a particularly welcome resource- tafsir are usually expensive and bulky; though, nothing awes vistors to your office like an enormous Arabic tome opened on your desk…

Four Things

On By JonathanIn Culture, History, IslamLeave a comment

Four things ruin the body: anxiety, grief, hunger, sleeplessness. And four things bring joy to the body: looking at greenery, at running water, at the beloved, and at fruits.

Four darken the sight: walking barefoot; keeping company with one hated, or disliked, or an enemy; excessive weeping; and too much looking at fine script.

Four strengthen the body: wearing soft clothes; taking a moderate bath; eating sweet and fatty food; and smelling sweet scents.

Four darken the face and conceal its honour, its beauty and its radiance: lying; insolence; arguing without knowledge; and indulging in immorality. Four illuminate the face and increase its dignity: chivalry; loyalty; generosity; and piety; and four bring on hatred and loathing: pride; envy; lying; and slander.

Four bring one’s sustenance: standing for prayer at night; asking forgiveness before dawn; habitual almsgiving; and remembrance of God at the beginning and end of the night. And four prevent sustenance: sleep in the morning; insufficient worship; laziness; and treachery.

Four harm the understanding and intelligence: excessive eating of sour foods and of fruits; sleeping upon the nape of the neck; anxiety; and worry. And four increase the intellect: protecting the heart (from distractions); reducing intake of food and drink; careful organisation of the diet with sweet and fatty things; and expulsion of superfluities which make the body heavy.

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzia (d. 715/1350), Medicine of the Prophet (al-Tibb al-Nabawi), trans. by Penelope Johnstone (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1996), 286-287.