Voices of Islam (52 page)

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The Pillars of Islam.
New Delhi, 2002–2004.

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Islamic Messianism: The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shi‘ism.

Albany, New York, 1981.

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Religion in the Middle East.

Cambridge, 1969, vol. 2, pp. 285–301.

al-Shahrastani, Muhammad b. Abd al-Karim.
Kitab al-milal wa’l-nihal,
partial English trans. A. K. Kazi and J. G. Flynn as
Muslim Sects and Divisions.
London, 1984.

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Sobhani, Ja‘far.
Doctrines of Shiite Islam,
trans. and ed. R. Shah-Kazemi. London, 2001.

Tabataba’i, S. Muhammad Husayn.
Shi‘ite Islam,
ed. and trans. S. H. Nasr. London, 1975.

Walker, Paul E.
Early Philosophical Shi‘ism,
Cambridge, 1993.

Watt, W. Montgomery.
The Formative Period of Islamic Thought.
Edinburgh, 1973. Wellhausen, Julius.
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trans. R.C. Ostle and

S.M. Walzer. Amsterdam, 1975.

16
‌

B
EGINNING THE
P
RAYER

•

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

I stand facing Mecca

the house all around me parallel with everything hands up to my ears

the Prayer begins

Hands across chest

time-space capsule surrounds me no god but Allah

all other forgotten here’s eternity’s signature

signed through space with severe strokes

Parallel lines on the prayer mat past actions cast behind me

trees in linear groves stand straight in the Prayer in

this world bend from the

waist into the Next

There are parallel lines to the limits

past the

edge of the

earth are darknesses

246
Voices of Tradition

the body stands straight then prostrates

what does it bow to but Absence

Absence that is a Presence

we can’t see with our bare eyes but Know

eyes don’t see Allah physically but are themselves

proof by

pure seeing

We prostrate in parallel lines we stand straight with

angels in the prayer line

rows of Mediterranean Cypresses tall silhouettes against white sky

favorites of foggy graveyards

We stand with

arms at our sides against the

beating chests of our turmoils

eyes half-slitted not staring

Gaze made to fall on the

inside

last actions done cast behind me

dead while alive standing still

concentrated by praying

From the

Next world we rise into

This one

Beginning the Prayer
247

NOTE

Reprinted by permission of the author.

17
‌

W
HAT
I
S
S
UFISM
?

•

Ahmet T. Karamustafa

Both ‘‘Sufi’’ and ‘‘Sufism’’ are terms adopted from their Arabic originals.
1
In Arabic texts dating from the fi t few centuries of Islam, one can fi the terms
sufi
and
mutasawwif,
which refer to devotees of a particular type of piety. This mode of pious living was most commonly referred to by the name
tasawwuf,
which is the Arabic equivalent of the modern English word ‘‘Sufi There was controversy over the origins of the term
sufi
among the authors of these early texts, and modern scholars have reproduced this controversy at different levels in their own writings. However, there is con- siderable agreement among both early authors and modern scholars that the word
sufi
most probably comes from
suf,
the Arabic word for ‘‘wool,’’ and that it was originally used to designate ‘‘wearers of woolen garments.’’
2
It is likely that the word
sufi
was coined as early as the eighth century
CE
to

refer to some renunciants and ascetics who wore wool as a sign of their renunciation of this world as opposed to other renunciants and the majority of Muslims who wore linen and cotton.
3
The practice of wearing wool as a sign of moral and political protest was bound up with social and cultural negotiations that took place around the concepts of renunciation, earning a living, and trust in God that were prevalent among Muslims during the sec- ond half of the eighth century
CE
. The details are hard to assemble, but some renunciants, though not all, expressed their renunciation by wearing wool, and hence the term ‘‘wool-wearer’’ came to carry the connotation of ‘‘renun- ciant’’ or ‘‘ascetic.’’

During the first century of Abbasid rule (ca. 750–850
CE
), renunciation was a widespread form of piety in Muslim communities. Whether they wore wool or whether they were referred to as Sufi or not, renunciants of this period were not organized into a single homogenous movement but came in different colors and stripes. Those renunciants who were designated by the term
sufi
shared an aversion to worldly life but diverged in the way they translated their renunciation into social and spiritual terms. The collective term
sufiyya,
which first appeared in this period, designated not one distinct

250
Voices of Tradition

social group but several different social types. Most properly understood, it was the name of a particular orientation toward piety marked by the socially unconventional, and thus remarkable, habit of donning woolen garments.
4

In this same period, a remarkable development was under way among renunciants. Whatever their approach to renunciation and to the question of how far to detach themselves from mainstream social life, some prominent renunciants and the communities that formed around them began to direct their energies increasingly to the cultivation of the inner life. This inward turn manifested itself especially in new discourses on spiritual states, stages of spiritual development, closeness to God, and love. It also led to a clear emphasis on knowledge of the inner self acquired through the examination and training of the human soul. The proponents of this inward turn explored the psychological aspects of the renunciant themes of repentance, turning toward God, and placing one’s trust in God through the scrupulous observa- tion of divine commands. They reached the conclusion that true repentance could not be achieved without a rigorous examination of the conscience and the soul. For these ‘‘interiorizing’’ renunciants, the preoccupation of eschewing this world in order to cultivate the other world was transformed into a search for the other world within the inner self.
5

Interestingly, the ‘‘discovery’’ and cultivation of the inner dimensions of the person was concomitant with a similar inward reorientation among the same circles of renunciants in an attempt to achieve a deeper understanding of the divine revelation. The concern with attaining knowledge of the inner self was accompanied by a parallel effort to discern the inner meaning of the Qur’an and the Sunna by using a method of interpretation based on infer- ence and allusion. Moreover, in a further intriguing twist, these interiorizing developments were bundled up with a doctrine of selection, whereby knowl- edge of the soul and the understanding of the inner meanings of divine speech and the example of the Prophet were thought to be ‘‘God-given’’ as opposed to being the fruit of human effort. According to this doctrine, only God’s elect, designated most notably as ‘‘friends’’ and ‘‘prote´ge´s’’ of God (
wali,
pl.
awliya’
), could attain ultimate self-knowledge and thus have access to aspects of divine knowledge. This idea of divine selection, later expressed by the interrelated terms
walaya
and
wilaya,
was most prominent among Shi- ites. However, it also seems to have been in circulation among all Muslims, especially in the form of Hadith reports about various categories of God’s
awliya’.
6

The exact origin and trajectory of these trends are obscure, but some of the pioneering figures in this process, who were not all renunciants, can be iden- tified. These include the female renunciant Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya (d. 801
CE
) in Basra, Shaqiq al-Balkhi (d. 810
CE
) in northeastern Iran, Abu Sulayman al-Darani (d. 830
CE
) in Syria, Dhu’l-Nun al-Misri (d. 860
CE
) in Egypt, al-Harith al-Muhasibi (d. 857
CE
) in Baghdad, Yahya ibn Muadh al-Razi (d. 872
CE
) in central Iran, and Bayazid al-Bastami (d. 848 or 875
CE
) in

What Is Sufism?
251

northeastern Iran. Since the historical record on these figures is ambiguous, it is not always possible to establish associations between particular trends and specifi figures. Nevertheless, we can be more specifi about the legacy of some of these ‘‘interiorizing’’ renunciants and early mystics. By way of illus- tration, let us review briefl the case of Bayazid (a contraction of ‘‘Abu Yazid’’).

Little is known about the biography of Bayazid, who seems to have spent his life in his native Bastam, to the east of Nishapur in northeastern Iran.
7
He was the earliest mystic to have left behind a substantial number of ‘ecstatic utterances’ (
shath
), most famously ‘‘Glory be to me! How great is my maj- esty!’’ and ‘‘I am he.’’
8
Bayazid explained how he thought God could talk through him in such a fashion in the following statement:

Once [God] raised me up and caused me to stand before Him and said to me, ‘‘O Abu Yazid, My creatures desire to behold you.’’ I answered, ‘‘Adorn me with Your unity and clothe me in Your I-ness and raise me to your oneness, so that when Your creatures behold me they may say that they behold You, and that only You may be there, not I.’’
9

Bayazid evidently thought that this request was granted, since many of the sayings attributed to him evince a complete erasure of his human subjectivity and its total replacement with God, conceived as the absolute ‘I,’ the only true subject in existence. In an early Arabic text of uncertain attribution, Bayazid reportedly recounted his ‘‘heavenly ascent’’ (
mi‘raj,
thus paralleling the celebrated night journey and ascent of Muhammad) through the seven heavens to the divine throne, where he experienced such intimacy with God that he was ‘‘nearer to him than the spirit is to the body.’’
10
His often shock- ing, even outrageous, utterances became the subject of commentary by later mystics, who considered them the verbal overflow of experiential ecstasy.
11
Departing from Qur’anic usage, where reciprocal love between God and humans is expressed by the word
mahabba
(Qur’an 5:59), Bayazid character- ized the relationship of love between the mystic and God as
‘ishq
(passionate love), a term normally used for love between humans. Through his powerful expressions of love for God, Bayazid later came to symbolize the insatiable, intoxicated lover:

Yahya ibn Muadh [al-Razi, d. 872
CE
] wrote to Abu Yazid [Bayazid], ‘‘I became intoxicated by the volume that I drank from the cup of his love.’’ Abu Yazid wrote to him in his reply, ‘‘You became intoxicated and what you drank were mere drops! [Meanwhile] someone else has drunk the oceans of the heavens and the earth and his thirst has still not been quenched; his tongue is hanging down from thirst and he is asking, ‘‘Is there more?’’
12

We possess no clues as to how Bayazid achieved his experience of proximity to God. Reportedly, he was scrupulous in his observance of regular Islamic

252
Voices of Tradition

rituals, but he apparently rejected renunciation as an option. He said, ‘‘This world is nothing; how can one renounce it?’ and advocated inner detachment from everything other than God instead.
13
In spite of the obscurity that sur- rounds his thought and practice, Bayazid achieved lasting fame as the clearest example of the possibility of direct, mystical communication with God even after the completion of the mission of Muhammad.
14

Although similar portraits can be drawn for each of the other interiorizing figures listed above, here it will be sufficient to point to their connection with the major themes of the inward turn that characterized early Sufi The tradition of examining the soul seems to have been especially strong in Basra among the followers of Hasan al-Basri (d. 728
CE
), and it culminated in the thought of Muhasibi in Baghdad (Muhasibi was originally from Basra). The attempt to fathom the inner meaning of the Qur’an also had deep roots in Basra among the same circles, but it was cross-fertilized by similar trends originating from the sixth Shiite Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 765
CE
) in Medina and perhaps was further developed by Dhu’l-Nun. The idea of spiritual states and of a spiritual path consisting of different stages was nurtured by Darani in Syria, Shaqiq in Khurasan, and Dhu’l-Nun in Egypt. Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya and Bayazid exemplified love of God as a central preoccupation. Moving outside the boundaries of ‘‘sober’’ renunciation, Yahya ibn Muadh epitomized joyful- ness as an outcome of reliance on God’s mercy. The experience of closeness to God was, as noted above, famously verbalized in the ecstatic utterances of Bayazid. The idea that God appoints special agents from among the believers is not clearly connected with any early renunciant or mystic of this period.