Voices of Islam (102 page)

15. Ibid., 92. 16. Ibid., 118.

1. Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj an-Nisaburi (d. 875
   CE
   ),
   Sahih Muslim bi-sharh al-Nawawı
   (Beirut, n.d.), vol. 1, 152–160.
   

2. Sulami,
   Dhikr an-niswa,
   244. 19. Ibid., 246.
   

17
‌

F
ATIMA AL
-Y
ASHRUTIYYA
: T
HE
L
IFE AND

P
RACTICE OF A
S
UFI
W
OMAN AND
T
EACHER

•

Leslie Cadavid

INTRODUCTION

The following autobiography is taken from the writings of a twentieth- century woman saint and scholar from Palestine. Fatima al-Yashrutiyya (1891–1978) was the daughter of the Shadhili Sufi Shaykh ‘Ali Nur al-Din al-Yashruti (d. 1899
CE
), whose spiritual center (
zawiya
) was in Acre, Palestine (now part of the State of Israel). As one of Shaykh al-Yashruti’s few surviving children, Fatima was the object of much affection and atten- tion. When she was two years old, her father began to take her with him to attend meetings of theologians and Sufis. She was evidently gifted, for when the Shaykh died in 1899 at the venerable age of 108, and Fatima was but eight years old, she resolved to undertake the search for the knowledge that she had begun to taste, and took it upon herself to read as many books as she could on all aspects of Sufi m and Islam. She continued these studies for the greater part of her life and used to meet regularly with scholars and Sufi throughout the Middle East. It was exceptional for a Muslim woman living in the early part of the twentieth century to meet in this way with men and to converse freely on scholarly topics. However, Fatima’s behavior can be explained by her exceptional gifts in the fi s of learning and also by the fact that she had already been well acquainted with the scholars of the day as a child. A popular legend says that the early Muslim theologian Hasan al-Basri (d. 728
CE
) related of the woman saint Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya (d. 801
CE
), ‘‘I passed one whole night and day with Rabi‘a speaking of the Way and the Truth, but it never occurred to me that I was a man nor did it occur to her that she was a woman.’’
1

Fatima al-Yashrutiyya never married, nor does she mention any possibility of marriage. This, too, was unusual and can perhaps be explained by her wholehearted devotion to the pursuit of knowledge and spiritual realization,

176
Voices of the Spirit

which took precedence over all else in her life. She died in 1978 in Beirut at the age of 87. She wrote four books:
Rihla ila al-Haqq
(A Journey Toward the Truth),
Masirati fi Tariq al-Haqq
(My Journey on the Path of the Truth),
Mawahib al-Haqq
(Gifts of the Truth), and
Nafahat al-Haqq
(Breaths of the Truth). It is rare to find among the Sufis a woman who wrote of her path to God for later generations to read. Indeed, few women Sufi wrote at all; for the most part we must content ourselves with later writings about them by their male followers or admirers. This rarity makes Yashrutiyya’s writings all the more valuable.

In
A Journey Toward the Truth
we fi the life story of Fatima’s father, recounting his travels from his home in Tunisia, where he was born in 1791, to his final residence in Acre, Palestine. His life spanned more than a century and saw great changes in the Muslim world as so-called ‘‘progress’’ and Westernization crept in. Fatima al-Yashrutiyya would perhaps never have written her first work were it not for the fact that several disciples and friends had requested it of her, and she was then divinely inspired to write. This first book and the rest of her works were written primarily for the disciples of the Yashrutiyya Sufi order and not so much for outsiders unfamiliar with the world of the
tariqa
(Sufi spiritual path). In her works,
Sayyida
Fatima (‘‘Lady Fatima,’’ a term of respect) is full of praise for the Sufi way; she explains what the Sufi way is and how one must follow it, depending on the predisposition of one’s soul. The last work she wrote was
My Journey on the Path of the Truth,
which contains her autobiography as well as descriptions of many members of her family.
Gifts of the Truth
and
Breaths of the Truth
tell about life in the Yashrutiyya Sufi order and record numerous miracles that graced her father and his disciples. The most important of Sayyida Fatima’s works are
A Journey Toward the Truth
and
My Journey on the Path of the Truth,
and it is almost exclusively from these that the selections reproduced below have been taken. In translating these selections, I excluded the customary formulas following the mention of the Prophet Muhammad (‘‘may peace and blessings be upon him’’) or following the name of a deceased saint or relative (‘‘may God be pleased with him’’), to ease the experience of the reader in English. I also use parenthetical notes to define or explain a word, such as
tariqa
(spiritual brotherhood), to minimize the need for endnotes.

The Yashrutiyya Sufi order (
tariqa
) is a branch of the Shadhiliyya
tariqa
founded by Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili (d. 1258
CE
), a spiritual master of Moroccan-Tunisian origin who spent the latter half of his career in Alexandria and is buried on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. Shaykh al-Yashruti’s master was Shaykh [Muhammad ibn Hasan Zafi al-Madani (d. 1847
CE
), and Shaykh al-Madani’s master was Mulay al-‘Arabi al-Darqawi (d. 1823
CE
), the founder of the Darqawiyya Sufi order, one of the most prominent branches of the Shadhiliyya in North Africa.
2
The Yashrutiyya Sufi order has many adherents throughout Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as in East Africa and even as far as South America.

Fatima al-Yashrutiyya
177

Although more than one shaykh was elected to succeed Shaykh al-Yashruti during Sayyida Fatima’s lifetime, it is safe to say that it was she who carried the
baraka
(blessing) of the order. Although she did not have a formal leadership role in the order, she was authorized to initiate others into it. Visiting disciples were interested in meeting her above everyone else. An acquaintance that knew her related to me that on one occasion some visiting African disciples lifted her onto their shoulders out of joy and reverence for her. She was, according to all accounts, very beautiful. Even when she was in her eighties, her inner radiance shone forth, making her seem like a young woman. Jean-Louis Michon, a Swiss architect and Muslim scholar, met Sayyida Fatima in the late 1970s in Beirut. He recounted that the meeting was ‘‘marvelous, she was nearly eighty, without a wrinkle. She had a radiant face like a young girl, full of life yet very serene.’’ This account makes one think of the famous Andalusian Sufi Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240
CE
), who was taught by an elderly woman saint named Fatima in Cordoba. He related that despite her great age, she possessed the beauty of a young girl. Ibn ‘Arabi accorded women a very high spiritual position and saw them as a manifestation of the mercy (
rahma
) of God. He was not the only man in Islam to venerate women in this way. Throughout its history, the Muslim world has known many saintly women, whose
baraka
has survived down to the present. Fatima (d. 632
CE
), the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, is one to whom some Muslims turn for intercession. Despite the fact that she was the mother of the Prophet’s grandsons, Hasan and Husayn, she was given the honorific title of ‘‘virgin’’ (
batul
) because of her great purity of soul. Fatima al-Yashrutiyya was named after none other than this great woman of early Islam.

Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya, who was mentioned earlier, is famous throughout the Islamic world as the master of the Sufi path of Love. For Rabi‘a, love for God was the motive behind every act, as her most famous and oft-quoted words reveal: ‘‘I have not served God from fear of Hell, for I should be like a wretched hireling if I did it from fear. Nor have I served God from love of Paradise, for I should be a bad servant if I served for the sake of what was given. Instead, I have served God only for the love of Him and desire for Him.’’
3
The love spoken of by Rabi‘a is the highest station of Islamic mysticism and is equivalent, in its essence, with the station of gnosis, the intimate knowledge of God. In like manner, Ibn ‘Arabi said in a famous poem: ‘‘My heart has opened to every form. It is a pasture for gazelles, a cloister for Christian monks, a temple for idols, the Ka‘ba for the pilgrim, the tables of the Torah and the book of the Qur’an. I practice the religion of Love. In whatsoever direction its caravans advance, the religion of Love shall be my religion and my faith.’’
4
One could interpret the meaning of love as Rabi‘a used it in a similar manner. Thus, it becomes the supreme state of union with the Spirit, where all individuality has melted away and there remains only the consciousness of God in His Essence.

178
Voices of the Spirit

The fact that so many scholars from both East and West came to visit Fatima al-Yashrutiyya during her lifetime demonstrates the importance of her position in the world of Islam and Sufi Indeed, her education in the disciplines of jurisprudence, theology, and Sufi was unrivalled for a woman of her background. In 1973, she wrote a paper as a contribution to a conference in Houston, Texas, that refl her status as both a learned scholar and a profound thinker. In it she wrote:

The salvation of the soul and the attainment of knowledge of God is the legacy of purification. We maintain, therefore, that Sufism is the most noble and excellent of all the sciences because its subject is the knowledge of God, His names, His qualities, and His deeds. While the virtue of acquiring knowledge in all fields is the duty of every Muslim, every branch of knowledge derives its honor from the level of that which it seeks to know and the fruits thereof. The study of the physical world as the handiwork of God Almighty is a natural and noble activity of man. It is obvious that man’s finite intellect, if he is on the right path, is drawn by and moves toward the Infi te. Thus, the knowledge of God is more noble and complete than the knowledge of anything else knowable, and the fruits of it lead to felicity in this world and the next. Moreover, the seeker of knowledge is usually affected by that which he seeks, such that gradually his life and soul are molded by the qualities and attributes of the ‘‘known.’’ Thus, the knowledge of every attribute of God leads to a spiritual state.
5

When asked about the vitality of the Yashrutiyya Sufi order at the end of the 1970s, Sayyida Fatima said: ‘‘Ours is a materialistic age, but there
are
those who follow the Way. Good men are always in the minority. But that does not matter. Numbers are not what count. One person can be worth more than thousands. Many thousands are not worth one good man.’’