Even When He Chatters a Lot
One can never be faulted who speaks of Love and Beauty,
For however far his speaking goes, it will never reach the end.
A child speaks to his parent with love,
While his father listens affectionately to all that he says to him.
And when he hears the questions that are posed to him,
He accepts them just as if someone were speaking of serious things.
Even when he chatters a lot without making clear what he is saying,
He is happier with his speech than he would be the speech of philosophers.
So I, like the child before his father,
I am going to speak now before God with great love.
Now I am going to speak, and if I say too little- oh, I will not say too little!
For it is easier for love to speak too much, as much as it desires!
Jacob of Serug (d. 521), Homily on the Judgment of Solomon, ll. 37-48, trans. by Stephen A. Kaufman
Distance From You is Death and Nearness to You is Life
The world confines us when You are absent from us,
And our souls abandon us because of desire.
Distance from You is death and nearness to You is life,
Were You absent for but the moment of a breath we would die.
Far from You we die and in nearness to You we live,
And if good tidings of reunion reach us from You we revive.
We remain alive in remembrance of You when we do not see You,
For only remembrance of the Beloved enlivens us.
Were it not for the quintessence of You that our hearts perceive,
In wakefulness or sleep, when we are absent,
We would surely die from grieving and yearning out of separation from You;
Yet, in reality, Your essence is within us.
Remembrance motivates us without need for word of You;
Were it not because of the desire for You within us our limbs would not move.
So say to one who would forbid ecstasy from those who experience it,
‘If you have not tasted the draught of Desire with us, be off!
‘When souls tremble, desirous of reunion,
‘Even phantoms dance, oh uncomprehending one!’
Do you not see how a cage bird, oh youth,
Breaks into song when it recalls its ancestral home?
With its chirping that which is in its heart bursts forth,
And its extremities are agitated with feeling and spirit.
It dances in the cage, desirous of reunion,
So that even sentient beings are moved when it sings.
Such are the souls of lovers, oh youth,
Desires propel them to the most sublime world.
Are we to force patience upon souls when they are enraptured?
Is one who has perceived the Quintessence able to be patient?
If you have not tasted the desire that true human beings have tasted,
Then by God, oh empty husk, do not defame us!
Concede to us what we advocate, for
When our desires overcome us we are likely to cry aloud.
Our hearts vibrate during sessions of invocation,
And when we cannot hide our ecstasies we lose control.
In the Divine Mystery are fine and subtle secrets
That perceptibly surrounds us. If only we could utter them!
Oh Distractors of Lovers, arise and openly proclaim!
Fill us to the brim and refresh us with the Name of the Beloved!
Because of our gratitude, preserve our secret from those who envy us,
And if Your eyes disapprove of something, then forgive us.
When we have become light-headed and carefree,
And the wine of Love intoxicates us, we are exposed.
Do not blame the drunkard for his state of drunkenness,
For in our drunkenness we have been absolved of responsibility.
Abu Madyan Shu’ayb ibn al-Husayn al-Ansari (1115-1198), Qasida in Nun, trans. By Vincent J. Cornell
Friday Roundup
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‘m starting today what I’d like to be a weekly feature of this blog, though we’ll see how long I keep it up… I don’t do a lot of link posting here anymore, having largely relegated that to my Facebook feed. However, Facebook does not allow for much analysis, nor can I group a cluster of links together at once, so I thought I’d start putting together some links to articles dealing with politics/economics/radical type stuff, on a weekly basis, along with some of my market-anarchist flavoured analysis. Enjoy.
Groves of Luxury and Idleness?: Roderick Long’s response to this article. ‘It’s true, of course, that professors have much more control of their time than is the case in most other jobs. (Actually it ought to be the case in a lot of those other jobs too.) But having more control of your worktime doesn’t mean it’s not worktime.’
Food Safety for Whom?: In sum: The take-over of agriculture by centralized entities is not a result of free markets, despite the rhetoric of neoliberalism; rather, as with so much of the corporatized global economy, it has been facilitated by a regime of rules, regulations, and other forms of government support, often hiding under the label of ‘food safety.’ Big capital and big government are working together across the planet to finish off smallholders, fully centralize markets, destroy independent producers, and concentrate profits and power in fewer hands. The process is partially directed by the ‘hidden’ mechanisms of state power; it is also- even in the early twenty-first century- supported by the direct and brutal application of force against recalcitrant peasantry:
Land Grabbing in Peru: ‘Years later, in 1974, the Law on Native Communities recognized the right of indigenous peoples in Peru’s Amazon region to collective ownership of their territories, although this was limited to the lands immediately surrounding established settlements. In 1977, however, the Forestry and Wildlife Law prohibited the titling of land designated as “suited to forestry” within the area of indigenous communities; this land would instead be transferred to state ownership. This measure totally undermined the rights of Amazon indigenous communities, since practically all of the land in the vast forested plain of the Amazon basin is “suited to forestry” and consequently, the indigenous peoples living there would be denied access to the forest, on which they largely depend for their livelihoods.’
And: Lengthy Prison Terms and Heavy Fines for Baihutou Village Chief and Land Rights Activist: ‘Xu, Gao, and Zhang were active in resisting the local government’s requisition of village land. Villagers believe that their prosecution is an act of revenge by the local authorities in Baihutou Village.’
U.S. Drug-War Policy Planting the Seeds of Civil-Society Destruction: ‘The rising death toll, more than 40,000 lives to date, in Mexico’s drug war has clearly been inflamed by President Felipe Calderon’s U.S.-appeasing militaristic policies, but many of the weapons fueling that war were put on the ground years ago via the vast quantities of arms shipped into Mexico and Central America, often covertly, during the civil and proxy wars waged in Latin America during the Cold War.’
How to Lower the Price of Prescription Drugs: A still somewhat statist, but headed in the right direction approach to liberating a crucial part of the medical industry. If drugs were released into a genuinely free market, people the world over would suddenly find health care affordable and accessible without state or corporate healthcare intervention. Which is why, naturally, it hasn’t happened…
An Interview With Eric Miles Williamson: ‘Being “educated” has never in human history been a “right.” Being minimally educated, since the onset of the industrial revolution, has been a requirement. Industrialized nations needed to have a minimally competent work force, and a work force that was civically loyal. Hence, public education, sponsored by the state. Not great education, but public education. The idea that public education should do anything more than produce responsible and competent citizens sounds like something that would come out of the mouth of a hippy.’
Digging
To-day I think
Only with scents- scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot’s seed,
And the square mustard field;
Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;
The smoke’s smell, too,
Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.
It is enough
To smell, the crumble, the dark earth,
While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth.
Edward Thomas (1878-1917), ‘Digging’
The House of Worship Was Also a House of Learning
Adult education is a modern term and carries with it the connotation of something exceptional: normally, we adults are satisfied with sending our children to school, while we regard ourselves free from the obligation of pursuing formal studies, except for professional purposes. The attitude of the society described in this book was approximately the opposite of our own. The elementary school was considered merely as a preparatory stage, and certainly was so in practice. Study, that is, the regular, habitual reading and expounding of the Bible and other sacred texts, was a duty incumbent on everyone and therefore could never be regarded as completed. The house of worship was also a house of learning, and the weekly and seasonal days of rest and prayer were devoted in the main to study. Particular care was taken to keep the synagogue illuminated during the night so that everyone who cared could study as long as he liked. In the introduction to an epistle of the Jewish community of Alexandria to that of Fustat the members of the latter are praised for studying throughout the night until daybreak…
The attainments of laymen must sometimes have been impressive. We are able to recognize their achievements in several business letters that have been preserved, on the reverse side of which the recipients- merchants whose handwriting is well known to us- discuss theoretical problems or actual cases to be decided according to the sacred law. Their discussions are on a high level and do not differ in character from legal opinions written by a scholar. These instances should not be regarded as exceptional. Many letters contain quotations from the Bible, and sometimes also from postbiblical literature, which are by no means mundane, and the poetical proems frequently preceding letters are seldom confined to conventional phrases. Thus, the general standard of adult education, or rather of the regular study by middle-class adults, cannot have been low. It seems that the studies of laymen and of professionals differed in quantity rather than in essence.
S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 192, 195.
On the Ravens and Elijah
The following is a translation of two short exegetical texts by Mar Jacob of Edessa, a Syriac Christian bishop, ascetic, and exegete who lived and wrote in the second half of the 600s. The texts are fairly self-explanatory: Mar Jacob is examining the story of Elijah and the ravens, found in 1 Kings 17. Jacob’s approach is two-fold: first, he looks at what was apparently a disputed question about the ‘literal’ or ‘fleshly’ meaning of the passage, namely, whether the food brought by the angels was from the ‘common’, pre-existing creation of God, or whether it was a new creation equivalent to God’s initial act of creation. A similar question was in play concerning the ram that replaces Isaac in the famous mountain-top sacrifice story. If I am remembering correctly, this was a question that occupied Jewish exegetes as well; I am not sure if similar issues show up in Islamic exegesis or not. The second question Mar Jacob is interested in is the ‘typological’ significance of the story, or, as he also phrases it, the spiritual or mystical meaning. If you will, this meaning lies ‘deeper’ in the text, connecting the story to the larger story of Christ. Typology runs throughout Mar Jacob’s exegesis, which of course is not unusual: typology is arguably the uniting theme in ancient and early medieval Christian exegesis, Syriac, Greek, Latin, Armenian, Ge’ez, and so on.
My translation here is more provisional than usual; my Syriac skills are not up to par with my Arabic, at least not yet, and a couple of lines here still leave me stumped as to their exact meaning. As with any text in any language, and exegetical texts particularly, full comprehension only comes through entering into the complex, multifaceted thought-worlds that inform even as short a text as this. I am still very much in the process of exploring those vast late antique and medieval thought-worlds that writers like Mar Jacob helped created and inhabit.
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From the Fifteenth Scholium: On the Ravens Who Brought Sustenance to Elijah the Prophet
The ravens brought sustenance to Elijah the Prophet who was hiding before the Jordan- meat in the evening and bread in the morning. The [following] question precedes spiritual interpretations (ta’uria– from Gk. theoria– ruhnita) that are manifest by these words, speaking the literal word on account of these, investigating the ineffable on account of this which people ask: whether it was a new creation commanded by God, namely, the bringing of sustenance to the Prophet who had fled and was persecuted: or whether it was from the pre-existing and common creation of God, Maker of all that is. And we say: that the bread and the meat, which were brought by the ravens, were from this common creation, created by Him who is creator of all. They were not a new creation that was created, each day, one by one, through a command of God, as is the surmise of [some] men. And these [the meat and bread] were from a man who feared God and the prophet. By the command of God he placed them before the ravens, so that they took them up and transported them to Elijah- in the morning bread made from grains baked and toasted by fire; and in the evening meat of animals that had been boiled with fire. These ravens were winged ceatures that ate meat, but were servants due to the command of God, who is powerful over all. And they were not angels, as [some people] say foolishly. And the story is thus [known] from history.
Demonstration of the Depicted Likeness of the Ravens, the Bread, and the Meat Brought to the Prophet:
There is also spiritual significance that comes from these typological words. The meat that in cloudy times and in the evenings was brought to the prophet, is for us an announcement: the action [of bringing the meat] is a type of the sacrifice of animals, that was until then by means of the shadowing darkness of the law obscured, and that was given to the community hidden beyond the physical Jordan. The bread that was by morning given to the prophet hidden beyond the Jordan is depicted for us as a type of the heavenly, divine bread that is quickened in the dawn of the new creation: for the set-apart community of the Messiah, which has crossed over this and the spiritual Jordan. Ravens are impure beasts, yet are ministers [of God] which are appointed as symbols for us: of those priests of the Church of the Messiah, although from the [impure] nations, [are priests] of the Body and Blood the Messiah, a lamb with no spot, no sin: heavenly, vivifying bread. This is the significance of these words.
Death in the Mihrab
As I’ve written before, medieval fatwas often contain quite surprising material, dealing as they do with all the contingencies- possible and otherwise- of medieval life. Below is my translation of a short question and answer dealing with what I don’t imagine was an every-day occurrence, or at least something one would hope wasn’t a normal occurrence… The selection is from a compilation of fatwas isssued by muftis in al-Andalus, and hence reflects the prevailing Maliki school of jurisprudence. Though note that in this case our mufti does not support his opinion with citations or scripture: rather, he is working from a probably shared assumption that even if the imam drops over dead, the canonical prayer must go on…
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Mahmud ibn Umar ibn Libaba asked about a man who was a prayer-leader (imam) of the people, was praying with the people the second raka’a, then suddenly died in the mihrab– what is to be done with him? And how are they to finish their canonical prayers?
Answer: If there is a section of the mihrab fenced-off in some way from the people, place him in this section. Otherwise, let the people in the first row remove him to the people of the second row, and the people of the second to the third, passing him along backwards via the people of each row. [In this way] they will not turn their faces from the qibla.
Neighbors, Strangers, and Travellers
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
Thicket & Thorp 