On the "Path of Love" Towards the Divine:
A Journey with Muslim Mystics
Omid Safi,
Colgate University
Introduction and Positioning
There is a strong tendency among many scholars of
Islam, and other observers and scholars, to treat the
legacy of Islamic thought through the trite lens of a
"Golden Age", followed by the inevitable "decline."
This favoring of "Classical" Islam usually translates
into a favoring of Muslims who lived from 632-1258,
lived in what today we would call the Middle East,
and wrote primarily in Arabic. While my focus in this
essay will be the notions of love, human and Divine,
as espoused in the earliest and most foundational
sources, let us begin with a 20th century Muslim
mystic expressing these same ideas. He was in many
ways a typical figure of 20th century globalism: a
young Indian man who was sent to Europe, performed
classical Hindustani concerts, and then brought his
message of universal mysticism to the United States.
His languages were Gujarati and English, not Arabic.
Here is one of his most well known poems on the theme
of love:
I have loved in life
and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison
from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and
sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love,
set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent
and joined again;
My heart has been broken
and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded
and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died,
and thanks be to love,
it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw
there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of
love.
I wept in love
and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love
and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks,
the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood
caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled,
and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in
humility,
and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy
secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the
earth,
and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one,
thou thyself art love, art lover, and thyself art the
beloved
whom thou hast adored."
(Hazrat Inayat Khan)[1]
Hazrat Inayat Khan's heartfelt poem in many ways
stands in a thousand-year-old line of what has been
referred to as the madhhab-i 'ishq, or "Path
of Love" in Islam. What holds this thousand-year old
"path" together is neither creedal statements nor
particular initiatory rituals, but rather an
aesthetic, a "mood", a rasa: the intuitive
experience of love, which must be tasted personally.
This is what the Sufis of this path referred to as
the "taste" (dhauq) of love:
Of love one can only speak with lovers. Only a
lover knows the true value of love. One who has not
experienced it considers it all a legend. For such
a person, even the claim of love, even the name of
love, are forbidden![2]
In offering a genealogy of the madhhab-i
'ishq, it is also important to point out that
there were important pre-Islamic and early Islamic
strands of love discourse (such as the 'udhri
love tradition[3]) that would be soon woven
into this path. Still, my focus in this essay will be
on the Islamic articulations of the Path of Love.
There is another tendency that I would like to
avoid in this presentation. In order to fully situate
Islamic mysticism (tasawwuf) as an
unmistakably Islamic discourse, the early Sufis
present Sufism as largely emerging out of the Qur'an
and the statements of the Prophet Muhammad
(ahadith, sing. hadith). This approach
has also been followed by many contemporary scholars
of Islam and Sufism. It is, surely, a well-respected
practice. There is no doubt great merit in going
through the passages of the Qur'an, identifying all
the many verses that talk about the great intimacy
between humanity and the Divine: one could point to
the very identification of the Divine as both
Rahman and rahim, often translated as
"compassionate, merciful", or perhaps even more
accurately, "Infinite Tenderness, Eternal Kindness."
One could point to the passages that talk about God
as being closer to the believers than their own
selves, as well as the ones that emphasize the
quality of God's being overflowing in love towards
those who have faith.
One could easily take that time-honored approach,
yet in this essay I would like to proceed in a
slightly different fashion. Rather than starting with
the jewels of the Qur'an and the highlights of the
Prophetic tradition before moving on to the
statements of the Sufis, I would like to propose that
we undertake a more historical study of the Sufis
themselves. In my examination of particular Sufis and
their teachings, I will of course bring up the key
Qur'anic passages and ahadith that they bring
up. My reason for this is to acknowledge that there
is no direct teleology between the Qur'an and
Love-Sufism. These verses can and have been
interpreted in a thousand and one ways, and indeed
many earlier Sufis (9th, 10th century ones) do not
make the frequently cited verses of the Qur'an the
cornerstone of their teachings. In other words, I am
not arguing here that the Qur'an "really" focuses on
these love teachings to the exclusion of other
interpretations, as that would be a partial and even
polemical view that denigrates other interpretations
of the Qur'an. Rather, I wish to come to the
foundational sources as interpreted by the later
sources. It is not a difficult task to identify
passages in the Qur'an that lend themselves to "love
readings", but I urge us to consider that it is
imperative to identify interpretive communities that
have identified the same verses before us. In other
words, whether the question to which we are tending
is Divine love or jihad or gender
constructions, it is important to avoid what some
have called a naïve protestant reading of the Qur'an,
and focus as well on the interaction of particular
interpretive communities with the Sacred text
throughout history. That, it seems to me, is perhaps
a grander but much more sincere project from the
perspective of both a scholar and an admirer of the
richness of meanings contained in the Qur'an.
My concern in this essay
is with that loosely affiliated interpretive
community that identifies itself as walking on the
"path of Love". This hermeneutic community appeared
fully in the early 12th century, and continues down
to today. If we accept Ibn 'Arabi's (d. 1240) premise
that the human heart is by nature synthetic and
dynamic rather than discursive,[4] there is
surely a problem with offering a static "list" of
traits to identify the Sufis of the Path of Love. It
is important to point out that any such list is
merely suggestive, and not exclusionary. Furthermore,
many "Path of Love" Sufis meet some but not all of
the criteria in the "typology" offered below. Still,
it might help us in getting a better sense of how
these loosely affiliated Sufis differed from other
Sufis, many of whom were also likely to give a high
place of prominence to love in their teachings.
As simple as it might seem, there are a large
number of Sufis who have chosen to identify
themselves as following the madhhab-i 'ishq.
In doing so, they have privileged passionate love
('ishq) as the foremost means of approaching
God. These Sufis elaborated upon the conventional
dichotomies posed by earlier Sufis between 'ishq-i
haqiqi ("Real" Love, that directed to God) and
'ishq-i majazi ("metaphorical" love, that
directed toward other creatures,), and at times
distanced themselves from it. Their conception of
love was a more fluid and even mysterious
one,[5] and they sought to explore
the various nuances of the manifestations of love. In
their explorations of love, they utilized well-known
imagery which had been first developed in the context
of human love, such as themes of the Cruel Beloved
and affliction in love, to talk about the Divine.
In speaking of the Divine (and humanity), these
Sufis demonstrated a particular fascination, even
obsession, with beauty (jamal) as the
paramount manifestation of the Beloved. This often
led them to envisage particular humans as
manifestations (tajalli) of the Divine, though
not in the sense of incarnations, which they
dismissed as hulul. They would also see many
Divine manifestations in the natural realm: a rose
could be a reminder of Divine Glory, the beauty mark
on a beloved's face a reminder of Divine Unity.
Perhaps most importantly, they have explored the
consequences of God being revealed in phenomenal
beings, including of course humanity. The fascination
with beauty often led them to intricate examinations
of the beloved as a shahid, "witness", which
comes from the same root as shahada, or
witnessing to Divine Unity. The Unity of God and
Prophethood of Muhammad that most Muslims witnessed
through repeated La ilaha illa 'l-lah, these
mystics would testify to through an immersion in
love's baffling aesthetics.
Since they sought the Divine inside humanity,
these Sufis connected the path of God,
from God, to God (inna lilahi wa
inna ilayhi raji'un) [Qur'an 2:156], and even
in God,[6] as something distinct from
the conventional journey from here to Hereafter. Its
Ultimate aim is found neither in this world, nor even
in Paradise. It is not to be found simply through
intellection and what the seeker knows and sees: the
path of the seeker is inside his/her own self. One
must search inside one's own self; as the Qur'an
commands: "Do they not contemplate in their own
selves (fi anfusikum afala tubsirun)?" [Qur'an
51:21] It is above all with this inward path of love
that the madhhab-i 'ishq has been concerned
with. The first aim of this path is to point out to
the thirsty seeker that he, parched lips and dying of
thirst, stands knee deep in a river, even an
ocean:
You!
always traversing the world
searching...
tell me:
what benefit has come of it?
That
which you are seeking
is with you;
and you seek
elsewhere[7]
('Ayn al-Qozat)
Consistent with seeking the Divine inside their
own being, the Sufis of the Path of Love consistently
valued spiritual experience over theoretical
knowledge. It is important to point out that they did
not wish to abolish theoretical knowledge: indeed
they themselves have left some of the richest
theoretical works in all of Islamic history. Rather,
they wished to emphasize that ultimately it is
personal experience that will lead one down the path,
not theoretical knowledge. As 'Ayn al-Qozat (d. 1131)
said, it is honey in the mouth which is sweet, not
the letters h-o-n-e-y.
As a general rule, the madhhab-i 'ishq
developed in the Persian and Persianate regions. Its
teachings were easily passed on to the emerging Urdu
and Turkish literary traditions.[8] Perhaps as much
as anything else, it seems to be the non-gender basis
of these Persianate languages which allows for
deliberately delicious ambiguities where a love poem
can be taken as referring to a poet's spouse,
spiritual teacher, Prophet Muhammad, or God — and
often times simultaneously to all of them!
Many writers of the madhhab-i 'ishq favored
the use of poetry and music as a means of spiritual
exercise. These meticulous performances provided the
contexts for some of the first concerts of spiritual
music, to achieve ecstasy, or what is referred to as
sama' sessions, in these societies.
Many, though not all, of these Sufis favored using
paradoxical statements to encourage the listeners to
attain to a self-critical level of their own
presupposed categories. At times these statements
assumed the genre of shathiyat, or ecstatic
utterances.[9] It is perhaps important to
recall that not all of their utterances are to be
read in a straightforward theological, legal, or
philosophical fashion, all separate discourses in
Islamic thought. The playfulness of such mystics
vis-à-vis the blessed yet cursed medium of language
should never be forgotten.
Perhaps a surprising aspect of madhhab-i
'ishq has been the willingness of these Sufis to
recognize ways in which many people's adherence to
Islam has become more rote than personal realization.
Therefore, they have developed sophisticated ways in
which they call for people to give up their
"metaphorical Islam", and transcend to a higher level
of God-realization. There is no question here of
abandoning religiosity altogether or of advocating a
"spirituality" disconnected from particular religious
traditions, notions that would have been
anachronistic to any pre-modern Sufi. Rather, they
would invert symbols which in popular Muslim
imagination represented "inferior" forms of belief
ranging from infidelity and idol-worship to Magian
sages, wine drinking, and even Christianity to
represent this type of God-actualization that has
transcended the norms and the public acknowledgment
of these norms. Naturally the Sufis would not become
idol-worshippers and Christians any more than they
became wine-drinkers. Perhaps the most deliberately
shocking of the "inversions" of symbols were
occasions when some Sufis on the Path of Love
depicted Iblis (Satan) as the perfect lover of
God, and "True Infidelity" as superior to
"metaphorical Islam."[10] As it might be expected,
these hermeneutical exercises earned them the wrath
of many religious scholars, and even some Sufis.
In a related move, they often moved to
de-exceptionalize Islam in their treatment of other
religious traditions: one of them, 'Ayn al-Qozat,
freely acknowledged that just as all religious
traditions become "worn out", Islam too was becoming
worn out in his own day.[11] They often saw this
message of God-realization primarily through love of
humanity and Divine as the means of reviving and
rejuvenating all religious traditions. A concurrent
aspect of this teaching was their emphasis on the
possibility of many spiritual paths to lead one to
salvation and enlightenment. This universality earned
them the affection of many different followers, even
as it raised the ire of stricter theologians.
To the Sufis of madhhab-i 'ishq, if any
path brings humanity to the Divine, then that path is
Islam, "Submission." Likewise, a path that does not
bring enlightenment (agahi) is worse than
infidelity in the sight of God. The seeker is
concerned with the One who instituted the path, not
the path itself.
I will incinerate this creed and
religion, and burn it.
Then I will put your love in its place.
How long must I hide
this love in my heart?
What the traveler seeks
is not the religion
and not the creed:
Only You.[12]
Another tendency occasionally displayed in the
Sufis of madhhab-i ishq has been their
transcending of conventional master-disciple
hierarchy. Close examinations of the relations
between 'Ayn al-Qozat and Ahmad Ghazali on one hand,
and Rumi (d. 1273) and Shams (among the two most well
known pairs of Sufi masters in history of Islam) on
the other reveals the extent to which each mystic
became a mirror in which the other contemplated
himself.
Concurrent with transcending conventional
master-disciple hierarchies, these Sufis often
thought that the first step on this path of love was
the abandoning of conventions and habits, tark-i
'adat.[13] They hold that the
majority of people approach the Divine through the
path of their ancestors, not one that they have
realized for themselves. In a real sense, this
critique is not a new one, but a reiteration of the
Qur'anic message:
When they are told to follow the (Revelation) that
God has sent down, they say: "Nay, we shall follow
the ways that we found our fathers (following).
[Qur'an 31:21]
The majority of the occasions where the Qur'an
refers to following the ways "of our fathers", it is
to emphasize the dichotomy between recognizing the
truth that is before one to the conventional ways of
error that one's forefathers have always followed. To
underscore this point, Ahmad Ghazali quotes a
Prophetic hadith in one of his sermons:
bu'ithtu li-rafzi 'l- 'adat; "I was sent to
remove customs."[14] 'Ayn al-Qozat even
connected the reading of the Qur'an to this
transcending of norms:
O chivalrous youth…If you want to see the beauty of
the Qur'an, abandon the worship of habits
('adat-parasti). Forget everything you have
heard![15]
Theirs was not a call towards "spiritual anarchy."
One can only transcend what one has mastered,
 and these Sufis were already masters of
the normative religious sciences (law, theology,
etc.). There is no indication that they intended to
abandon their religious affiliations. Such an
assertion is in fact a common misreading of these
teachings in our own age. The dynamic Sufi tradition
has never abandoned wholesale what has come before,
but rather selected those elements that seem to
address the contemporary situation, and
re-articulated them in a fresh way. It is a sign of
this "conservative" yet dynamic nature of Sufi
teachings that many statements of the madhhab-i 'ishq
— to abandon conventions and norms, to give up
"metaphorical Islam" and enter into "Real
infidelity", to adorn oneself with the Christian
zunnar, etc. — all became tropes in due time! The aim
of those on the "Path of Love" was to invest their
religious tradition with a spirit of focusing on the
Ultimate, and not the means towards the Ultimate.
Time and time again the Sufis of the "Path of
Love" begged their disciples, readers and spiritual
communities to transcend the conventions and norms in
which they were steeped, to obtain a personal
realization of God:
The people of the world have contented themselves
with worship of habits ('adat-parasti). How
far are they from this tale? …The others have so
many veils before them that prevent them from
comprehending: blind immitationism (taqlid),
bigoted partisanship (ta'assub), haughtiness
(kibr), conceit, and pride.[16]
The Path of Love Sufis remind us that those who
have fanatically attached themselves to their own
experiences, their own communities, and their own
fixed and limited articulations of The Truth have
limited God to their own intellectual conceptions.
Hafez's aching rejoinder echoes this:
Excuse all the seventy-two
sects[17] at war.
They did not see the truth,
and took the road of fable.[18]
In a poignant poem, full of the compassion of a
living sage who has insight into the lives of those
around him, Rumi cries out to the pilgrims setting
out for Mecca:
O you who have left for
Hajj,
where are you?
where are you?
The beloved is here!
Come, come!
The Beloved is your neighbor
what are you doing,
lost in the wilderness?
If you could see the formless
face
of the Beloved
you'd know that you are the lord,
the house, and the Ka'ba![19]
So many times you set out on
that road to that house;
Just once...
come to the roof of this house.[20]
Yes, that house [Ka'ba] is
subtle,
you've told me about it.
But show me something
about the Lord of that house!
If you saw that garden,
where are the flowers?
If you dove in God's ocean,
where is a single soul-jewel?[21]
Having a fairly fluid typology of the path of love
at hand, we will proceed to examine the legacies of
the two key terms madhhab and 'ishq
before undertaking a chronological examination of the
seminal figures of the Path of Love.
On Madhhab and 'Ishq:
The term madhhab had a multi-faceted usage
in Islamic thought. When the Sufis of the Path of
Love used this term, they intended the meaning of
"path." In the story of Moses and the Shepherd, Rumi,
that supreme falcon of love, states:
The spiritual community of
love
is apart from all faiths.
The lovers' community and path (madhhab)
is God.[22]
It is precisely this term, the madhhab-i
'ishq, which has also been rendered as "Creed of
Love" and "Religion of love." We will return to the
discussions of 'ishq later. The term
madhhab has been previously translated as
"school", "sect", "creed", or "religion" — leading to
such terms as "School" or "Religion" of Love. This
can be a bit misleading, as theirs was by no means an
attempt to start a new religion, or add yet another
"school" to the already crowded field of pre-modern
Islamic intellectual thought. In using the term
madhhab, they were returning to the root
meaning of the word: As with many other words used by
Sufis such as tariqa and shari'a, the
literal meaning of the word madhhab is that of
a trodden path. This was to be a path to be walked on
not alone, but with fellow seekers. Madhhab
had been previously used to refer to the various
Islamic theological and legal schools: One could talk
about the Shafi'i, Hanafi or Ash'ari
madhhab [pl: Madhahib]. The titles of
these "schools" were eponyms after a significant
founder. These Sufis sought to set themselves apart.
Their "path" was named not after a founder, but after
"love", and even God! Their claim was as radical as
it was simple:
God-willing, I shall expound upon the lover and the
beloved. . .
I mentioned the madhhab (path) and community
of the lovers of God. They follow the path and
community of God; not that of Shafi'i, Abu Hanifa,
and others.[23] The lovers of God
follow the madhhab-i 'ishq (path of love)
and madhhab-i khuda (God's path).[24]
The Path of Love is God's own path. The path
to God, and the path of God (as both
are possible translations of madhhab-i khuda)
is in fact the path of love. Only love delivers
humanity to the Divine. Rather than identifying the
path with a noted theologian or jurist, they
identified the path with love, and even more,
directly with God:
They asked Husayn Mansur [Hallaj]: "Which path are
you on?"
He said: "I am on God's path." (ana 'ala madhhab
rabbi).[25]
It is important to point out that these Sufis were
not abrogating the established theological and legal
schools, nor were they dismissing their relevance. In
fact, many of the Sufis we are about to discuss were
themselves important members of these other "schools"
as well.[26] At the same time, the
Sufis of the "Path of Love" asserted that those
scholars who denied the primacy of love — and limited
themselves to the "externals" — were "highway robbers
and immature children"! 'Ayn al-Qozat stated:
O precious one… If Shafi'i and Abu Hanifa, who were
leaders of the community, were alive in this age,
praise be to God they would find many benefits,
Divine sciences, and traces of spiritual words;
they would all turn to these words…and would utter
nothing but this![27]
The Sufis of the Path of Love were presenting not
a new religion, but a fresh, dynamic, and ever
transforming understanding of themselves, the world
around them, and the Divine based primarily on love.
Rumi, directly quoting from an earlier poem of
Sana'i,[28] stated:
Love is nothing,
Save felicity and grace.
Love is nothing,
save opening the heart
and guidance.
Abu Hanifa?
Did not teach about love.
Shafi'i?
Does not narrate about it.[29]
Their aim was to re-invigorate religion and revive
it from a tradition of sectarianism and blind
immitationism (taqlid) to one reaching a
dynamic understanding of God not as an "idea", but as
the Real. The first step on this path towards
God-realization (tahqiq) was one of
transcending conventional norms in which people had
come to conceptualize God and their relationship with
the Divine.
We can now move on to an examination of the second
term, 'ishq. These Sufis did not invent the
terms for "love" (mahabba, 'ishq,
etc.), yet they made them the focal point of their
teachings in a way that was never done before. Many
earlier Sufis had held that the term 'ishq was
too radical to be applied to a human-Divine
relationship, and preferred to use the Qur'anicly
based term of "loving-kindness", mahabba. When
the important early Sufi writer, Abu Bakr
al-Kalabadhi (d. 385/995) was discussing "their [i.e.
the Sufis'] sayings on love", he used the term
mahabba. In this context, he cited many
statements from early Sufis such as al-Junayd ("Love
is the inclination of the heart"), and Abu 'Abd Allah
al-Nibaji ("Love for creatures is a pleasure; love
for the Creator means annihilation.").[30]
While al-Kalabadhi does not use the term
'ishq, Qushayri (d. 1072) is a good
representative of those who use both terms, while
preferring mahabba. In his famous
Risala, he pleads — to no avail — that: "When
the scholars use the term mahabba, by this
term they mean 'desire.' But the Folk [i.e., the
Sufis] mean something other than desire when they use
this term. Desire can not be said to belong to the
Ancient One [God]."[31] This seems to have been
the main objection to attributing 'ishq to the
Divine. Another objection, relating to both the human
being and the Divine was the following:
The master Abu 'Ali al-Daqqaq (may God grant him
mercy) asserted, "Love is a sweetness, but its
inner reality is bewilderment." He also said,
"Passionate love ['ishq] is exceeding all
limits in mahabba. God [may he be exalted]
cannot be described as exceeding limits, so He
cannot be characterized as possessing passionate
love for anything. If the love of all mankind were
joined together in one man, this would not come
close to the measure of love due to God.
Let it not be said, 'This person has exceeded all
limits in the love of God.' God cannot be described
as having the quality of passionate love, nor can
the servant be described as having it in his
relation to God. Passionate love cannot be used [as
a description of the relations between man and God]
because there is no way for it to be related to
God, either from Him toward the servant or from the
servant to God."[32]
Interestingly enough, Daqqaq's statement starts
from the premise that God's  love is so
infinite that in describing it as "exceeding limits
in love" (mujawizat al-hadd fi
'l-mahabba)[33], one is doing injustice
to it. Yet the floodgates had been opened too wide
for many Sufis to heed these cautionary words: The
next centuries saw an effervescence of expressions
describing this passionate love. Their words of love
at times attained to such power that it was said: "I
was present when Samnun spoke on love, and all the
lamps (qanadil) in the mosque
shattered."[34]
It is precisely this notion of 'ishq as a
passionate and extreme variety of love which was to
be the subject of the first text written on love in
Persian, the Sawanih of Ahmad Ghazali (d.
1126). It is to this founding member of the
madhhab-i 'ishq that we now turn.
The "virgins" of
love-ideas:
One of the more
powerful insights articulated by the Sufis is that
the reality of love is not the same thing as
the words chosen to express that reality. The
full meaning of the words of love are open to those
who have had direct experience of it. Ahmad Ghazali
made a beautiful comparison to elucidate the
disjunction between the reality of love and words
that seek to convey that reality in the very
beginning of his masterpiece, the Sawanih. He
stated that the "ideas of love are like virgins, and
the hand of words can not reach the hem of their
skirt." Using a particularly erotic language, Ghazali
went on to suggest that the task of one who writes on
love is precisely to "marry" the "men of words" to
the "virgins of ideas" in the "private chambers of
speech."[35]
Ghazali states the reader should perpetually
remember that his treatise does not belong to any
specific view in terms of the realities, modes, and
aims of love: the love he is presenting is not to be
attributed to (either) the Creator (khaliq) or
the creature (makhluq). In doing so, Ghazali
is bypassing the much-discussed categories of "Real
Love" ('ishq-i haqiqi) and "Metaphorical Love"
('ishq-i majazi). According to those who would
favor such a dichotomy, only God is worthy of Real
love, and all the loves experienced on this
terrestrial realm can be called love only in a
metaphorical sense. Interestingly enough, while the
perspective of Ahmad Ghazali in general is worlds
removed from the metaphysical framework of Ibn
'Arabi, the two saints seem to be in agreement with
respect to this point: Ibn 'Arabi also has a notion
that rather than "binding" our selves to certain
fixed understanding of God, our approach should be
one of "perpetual transformation" (taqallub).
Through an ingenious word play, he points out that
such a synthetic and dynamically integrative approach
can only take place in the heart (qalb). Our
conceptions of the Real need to be open to perpetual
transformations so that we do not make an idol of the
Real.[36] Ahmad Ghazali concurs
with this: rather than limiting our understanding to
static, fixed notions of "human love" and "divine
love", we must allow our own perspective towards
these notions to be constantly open to change and
transformation.
It is after these introductory remarks that
Ghazali moves on to the Qur'anic verse which might
legitimately be said to be the ocean into which all
the Sufis of the "Path of Love" have dived for
centuries in search of pearls:
God Almighty has said:
"He loves them,
and they love him." [Qur'an 5:54]
It might even be said that the whole of love
mysticism in Islam is a meditation upon the above
verse: yuhibbuhum wa huhibbunahu. It is no
accident that in this verse, God's love for humanity
is mentioned first. Humanity's response to God's love
can be nothing but love itself. In a subtle language,
Ahmad Ghazali related these two terms to one
another:
The root of love grows out of the infinite
pre-existence. The diacritical dot of (the letter)
ba' (ب) of yuhibbuhum (He, i.e., God, loves
them) was cast as a seed on the soil of
yuhibbunahu (they love Him); nay, that dot
was on hum (them) until yuhibbunahu
(they love Him) grew out. When the narcissus of
love grew out, the seed was of the same nature as
the fruit and the fruit had the same nature as the
seed.[37]
Human love is thus described as being
hamrang, "of the same nature" [lit: of the
same color] as the Divine love. The language of
"real" and "metaphorical" love — with all the
suggested facile dichotomies and static definitions
it can contain — is thus circumvented.
These marvelous Qur'anic verses have been for
centuries the objects of meditation and practice for
Sufis: One is hard pressed to find Sufi writings
after this period in which the verse "He loves them
and they love Him" is not featured. Yet, it is fair
to say that the legacy of love mysticism in Islam is
much more extensive than the brevity of the above
verses would tend to suggest. Immediately after
quoting the above Qur'anic lines, Ghazali moves on to
a quatrain which identifies the madhahb
followed by him and other members of the Path of
Love:
From before existence
our steed set out with love.
Our night,
forever illuminated
from the lamp of Union.
Until we return to
non-existence
you will not find our lips dry
from that wine
un-forbidden in our path (madhhab).[38]
Ghazali continues the theme of existence and
non-existence: when the spirit crossed over from the
realm of "non-existence" to that of "existence", love
was there waiting. There could be no spirit in this
realm, without love. It is this emphasis on this love
that has accompanied us in the deepest core of our
being, that distinguishes the madhhab-i 'ishq,
"Path of Love."
The Affliction-in-Love:
The theme of the afflictions that all lovers
undergo was not a new one, even reaching back to
Pre-Islamic poetry where the poet lamented the
passing of the departed caravan.[39] Some of the
early Sufis, such as Junayd, had also explored this
theme.[40] The Sufis of the
madhhab-i 'ishq explored this theme further,
and stated that no Prophet ever suffered affliction
the way Muhammad, Peace be upon him, did.[41]
With the rise of Sufi mysticism, they used all the
imagery of the Qur'an to underscore the
affliction-in-love. In one of the more ingenious
re-interpretations, the Qur'anic verse: "When kings
enter a village, they decimate it" [Qur'an 27:34] was
re-interpreted as the afflictions sent by God upon
the heart of a seeker to the point that the servant
becomes the affliction.[42] In the
Sawanih, Ahmad Ghazali connected this
affliction to a sophisticated love theory:
Love, in its true nature, is but an affliction
(bala'), and intimacy (uns) and ease
are something alien to it and are provisionally
borrowed. This is because separation in love is
indeed duality while union is indeed oneness.
Everything short of this is a delusion of union,
not its true reality. This is why it is said,
Love is an affliction and I am not about to abstain
from affliction,
(In fact) when love falls asleep I turn to it and
raise it.
My friends tell me to abstain from affliction
Affliction is the heart, how can I abstain from the
heart?[43]
The above theme of affliction-in-love was
elaborated upon by Ahmad Ghazali's disciple, 'Ayn
al-Qozat, to a hauntingly sublime height: "whoever
distinguishes between grace and wrath, is still in
love with grace, or with wrath — but he is not yet a
lover of the beloved!"[44] He detected a
relationship between love and affliction in the very
orthography of one of the words for love,
Mahabbat. In a simple pun involving
transferring the diacritical dot under the letter
ba (ب) in mahabbat to over it, he
pointed to the transformation of ٹبحم
(mahabbat, "love") to ٹفحم (mihnat,
"suffering").[45]
Furthermore, rather than seeing affliction as
merely the trial that the lover has to endure,
affliction (bala') was the "jewel of God's
treasury.":
Take heed…You think that they give affliction to
just anyone? What do you know of Affliction? Remain
[on this path] till you get to the point where you
will buy God's affliction [at the price] of your
life-soul.
It was from this same perspective that Shibli said:
"O God! Everyone seeks you for grace and ease, and
I seek you for affliction.
We do not destine anyone for affliction
until we list him amongst the saints.
This affliction is the jewel of our treasury
We do not bestow jewels to just any unrefined
soul.[46]
The early Chishti master Shaykh Nizam al-Din
Auliya' took this metaphor of affliction-in-love to
yet another level by simply stating:
Even though He says He'll kill me,
That He says it can't but thrill me![47]
In offering this sophisticated explanation, the
aim of the Sufis of the Path of Love was to offer a
profound engagement with and acknowledgment of the
emotions felt by a soul. Emotions, whether positive
or negative, joyous or painful, were not seen as
illusory. Rather, their realness was admitted
and acknowledged: the aim of a mystic was to utilize
the power of the emotions to recognize the
trans-mundane origin of these sentiments, and remain
ever-mindful of the beloved. Much of the nuance of
Sufi teaching here is concerned with the sublimation
of sentiments.
Each blind to his/her own beauty:
One of the amazing insights provided by Ahmad
Ghazali, indeed one that he calls a "great secret",
is that each beloved's eye is blind to her own
beauty. None can perceive his own beauty, "except in
the mirror of the lover's love." As Ahmad
elaborates:
Therefore, beauty necessitates a lover so that the
beloved can take nutriment from her own beauty in
the mirror of the lover's love and quest. This is a
great secret….[48]
Through this amazing vision of love, the
hierarchical nature of master-disciple, lord-servant
relationships are converted to a highly nuanced dance
of reciprocity: for all of the charming claims to
self-sufficiency and coquetry (naz), the
beloved needs the lover. It has been
well-known how the lover is utterly dependent
(niyaz) on the beloved; but now the beloved is
exposed for being caught up in this net of
reciprocity. Through many anecdotes, he demonstrated
that the beauty of the beloved in herself is not the
same as the beauty she has when a lover treats her as
beautiful:
The glance of loveliness (kirishmah-i husn)
is one thing and the (amorous) glance of
belovedness (kirishmah-i ma'shuqi) is
something else. The glance of loveliness has no
"face" turned towards anything "other" (than love
itself) and has no connection with anything outside
(of love). But as to the glance of belovedness and
the amorous gestures, coquetry, and alluring
self-glorification (naz), they are all
sustained by the lover, and without him they will
have no effect. Therefore, this is why the beloved
is in need of the lover. Loveliness is one thing
and belovedness is something else.[49]
The above notion, the distinction between
"loveliness" and "belovedness" was also seen as a
powerful way to explore the relationship between God
and creation: whereas God in his dhat
(Essence) was seen to be completely transcendent and
independent of all creation, some Sufis asserted that
the Divine Attributes (sifat) were part of
God's relationship with creation. In other words, for
the Divine to assume attributes of Mercy and
Compassion there has to be someone or something to
receive the mercy. In this perspective, one could
almost state that creation is needed for the
Divine to realize the potential of all His
attributes.[50] Naturally Sufis were
extremely careful not to appear as if they suggesting
that the Divine was somehow needy or less than
perfect. Perhaps an analogy might clarify the matter:
it is one thing to state that a person contains the
potential of being a good parent, and contains that
quality in a latent form. However, it is when that
person actually becomes a mother or a father that the
latent quality is made manifest. In this way, one
might be able to state that the child enables the
full expression and manifestation of that quality
which had been there all along. In a similar manner,
one could state that the creation enables the full
manifestation of Divine Attributes.
In this view of creation, as with the previous
theme of the positive appreciation of emotions, the
Cosmos is seen as an inherently positive force, not a
negative one: this view of the Divine purpose of
Creation is far away from the pessimistic gnostic
view in which the dunya is merely a veil or a
distraction. It is in this light that the Sufis of
the Path of Love have repeated the well-known sacred
hadith, communicated by God directly to
Prophet Muhammad:
I was a Hidden Treasure,
and loved to be known intimately,
so I created the Heavens and the Earth,
so that they may come to intimately know
Me.[51]
The very purpose of creation, these Sufis remind
us, is for the Divine to manifest Himself in utter
fullness, and for the creation to come into that
intimate relationship of knowledge and adoration with
the Divine.
The foremost relation in which the Sufis of the
Path of Love chose to elaborate the relationship
between the Cosmos and the Divine was as that between
a lover and a beloved. According to the Sufis of the
School of Love, the foremost quality of the lover is
that of niyaz "needfulness." This forms a
perfect contrast to the naz of the Beloved.
Ahmad-i Ghazali expressed the relationship between
these two most eloquently:
The beloved said to the lover,
"Let yourself become me, for if I become you, then
the beloved will be in a state necessity, and the
lover will become greater; thereby need and
necessity will increase."
�������������� "But if you become me, then the
beloved will become greater. Thereby all will be
the beloved, and the lover will not be. There will
be no more need (niyaz); instead, all will
be the expression of self-sufficiency (naz).
There will be no more necessity; all will be there,
already attained. It will be all richness and no
poverty, all remedy and no helplessness."[52]
It is in this sense that the lover turns to the
beloved in all of his needfulness, niyaz. And
yet, the situation is far from bleak: the proud yet
humble lover can indeed claim that he is bringing the
one quality that the Beloved "lacks": needfulness.
Rumi's spiritual mentor, Shams-i Tabrizi, raises this
point his Discourses (Maqalat):
What good is it if you take your soul at hand, and
present it [to God]? What use is it to take cumin
to Kirman?[53] How will this add any
value, or price, or cultivation to what is there?
Since there is such a royal court, he is now
without need (bi-niyaz), so take your
needfulness (niyaz) there. Since the one
without need likes needfulness.
Using that needfulness, you can suddenly leap out
of the midst of all these creatures. Something from
the Ancient One [God] will be joined to you, and
that is love ('ishq). The trap of
love has been set, and you are wrapped up in it,
since "they love him" (yuhibbunahu) is the
impression of "He loves them"
(yuhibbuhum).[54]
The beloved might be able to carry on with the
game of self-sufficiency, even if the lover presents
heart and soul on a silver-platter. After all, does
she not have a thousand hearts and souls offered to
her each second? She does not, however, have
"needfulness." What she "needs", paradoxically, is
the lover's needfulness. What the Lord "needs" to be
able to assume the quality of a "lord" is someone to
assume the role of the servant. Theologically
speaking, this is dangerous ground, no doubt, but a
powerful message of reciprocity that the Sufis have
explored with great delicacy and insight. Among the
Sufis, perhaps none has explored these dangerous
grounds more persistently than the martyred youth,
'Ayn al-Qozat, and it is to him that we now turn.
Loving God, loving all:
A major theoretical debate among the Sufis in this
time period dealt with the relationship between the
love for God and the love for Creation. A number of
early Sufis — such as Hujwiri — had asserted that the
term 'ishq is not appropriate in referring to
humanity's love for the Divine, and instead one
should use terms such as mahabbat.[55]
Other Sufis — such as Ruzbihan Baqli — who wished to
redeem the usage of the term 'ishq in
referring to both human and Divine love stated that
human love was a "ladder", as it were, leading to the
[higher] Divine Love.[56] Later Sufis, and indeed
many contemporary scholars of Sufism, have preferred
to refer to the love for God as "Real Love"
('ishq-i haqiqi) and relegate love for
creation (which would obviously include love for and
between human beings) to a "metaphorical" or
"borrowed" (majazi) status.[57] Without
entering into a polemical exchange with the above,
the Sufis of the madhhab-i 'ishq distanced
themselves from the above categories, and stated
instead that the love of God is an 'ishq which
would enfold the whole of creation.
Whoever loves God
should also love His messenger, Muhammad,
his own spiritual teacher
and his own life.
He also loves food and drink
which extends his life
that he may spend in obedience [to God].
He loves women
so that the progeny will not be interrupted.
He loves silver and gold
so that through them he can attain to food and
drink.
He loves the cold, and the
heat,
the snow and the rain
Heaven and Earth
since if not for them, sustenance would not grow.
Like this, he also loves the farmer.
He loves the Heaven and the
Earth
since they are God's handcraft:
A lover loves the handwriting
and every action of the Beloved.
All the creatures are His handcraft and action.
Loving them for the sake of following His love
is no polytheism.[58]
Both of the above themes, that of human love as a
pedagogical device for mastering divine love, as well
as that of love as a unitary force which flows from
the Divine to humanity and back up to the heavens,
are to be traced all the way to contemporary Sufis
such as Hazrat Inayat Khan. Given the prominence of
love in these teachings, it came as no surprise that
'Ayn al-Qozat spoke of love in terms of an
"obligation."
Love as obligation:
It has already been pointed out that many of these
Sufis had training in other normative Islamic
sciences. 'Ayn al-Qozat earned his honorific — being
the 'ayn ("source", "spring", "essence") of judges —
through his training as a juridical master of Islamic
law (shari'a). Given this training, he
introduces legal terminology in a most shockingly
refreshing way into his discourse on love. A critical
feature of legal discussions in Islamic thought is
discerning among acts classified as "religious
obligations", "meritorious acts", and
"forbidden."[59] It is with great
subtlety, humor, and irony that 'Ayn al-Qozat invokes
the juridical category of "religious obligation"
(fard) to talk about love.
O precious one! Arriving at God is a [religious]
obligation (fard). To those on the
[spiritual] quest, whatever through which one
arrives at God is a religious obligation. What
delivers the servant to the Divine is Love. In this
sense, love has become an obligation (fard)
on the Path....[60]
One can almost see the smile — even a smirk — on
the young mystic's face, as he (being invested with
juridical authority) declares passionate love a
religious  obligation for all on the spiritual
path. Earlier on, some Hanbali scholars had spoken of
love from a legal perspective.[61] Here 'Ayn
al-Qozat seems to be returning the favor, deploying
legal terminology from the perspective of the
madhhab-i 'ishq.
Sufis like 'Ayn al-Qozat did not limit their
analysis of phenomenon to terrestrial realities: one
of the most intriguing teachings of the madhhab-i
'ishq was their radical teaching on celestial
phenomena, such as paradise. One such teaching was
'Ayn al-Qozat's concept of a paradise which was
beyond the conventional conceptions of paradise.
Since the time of
Rabi'a (d. 801), it had become customary for Sufis to
express the merits of seeking God for His own Sake,
beyond the wish to attain to the joys of paradise and
avoiding the torments of hell-fire: surely many are
familiar with the great narrative of Rabi'a running
down the alleys of her town with a bucket of water in
one hand and a blazing torch in the other. Asked
about this strange practice, she said that she was
looking to quench the fires of hell with the water,
and to burn down paradise, so that people have no
reason left to worship God other than God
Himself.[62] 'Ayn al-Qozat extended
these teachings to another level: He offers
perceptive remarks on the conventional conceptions of
paradise, which he describes as a "prison for the
[spiritual] elite." He cites Yahya Ma'adh Razi in
support of this: "Paradise is the prison of the
gnostics, as the world is the prison of the
believers." He articulates a radical conception of
"God's paradise" beyond the conventional
paradise:
The [spiritual] elites are with God. What do you
say? That God Almighty is in paradise? Yes, He is
in Paradise, but in His own paradise — in that
paradise that Shibli spoke of: "There is, and will
never be, anyone in Paradise except God Almighty.
If you like, hear it also from Mustafa: "Verily God
has a paradise, in which there are no
houris, no palaces, no milk, and no honey."
And what is in this "God's own Paradise"? That
"which no eyes have seen, no ears have heard, and
thought of which has not occurred to people's
heart." For one who thinks of this as
paradise, to seek the paradise of the masses is an
error. If this group is dragged to paradise in
chains of light and grace, they do not go and do
not accept…[63]
What is being rejected here is not so much the
Qur'anic imagery of the Paradise, as the tendency of
the ordinary believers to fixate on these
descriptions to the neglect of the One beyond the
Paradise, the Cup-bearer beyond the Wine. Concurrent
with the trend towards transcending the symbols of
salvation (paradise), the Sufis of Path of Love also
sought to transcend the attachment to particular
means of salvation. It is to this explicit
universalism of the Path of Love that we now
turn.
All paths are stations towards God:
Many Sufis have taught that Truth (haqq)
must be identified with God's own Being, and not with
any intellectual conception of God or path leading to
God. This idea, radical and Qur'anic, is affirmed in
the passage:
We shall show them our signs
(ayat) on the farthest horizons,
And inside their own selves
Until it becomes clear to them
That He is haqq, "The Truth." [Qur'an
41:53]
From this perspective, "Truth" is not to be
equated with any religious tradition or path, but
rather with He who is the Destination of the path.
Indeed, given that Truth is one of the most common
Divine Names, to label a religious tradition (even
Islam) as "Truth" is to commit the great sin of
"Association-ism" (shirk, "polytheism")!
'Ayn al-Qozat continues the same theme from
another angle. Rather than arguing that all paths
lead to the same Truth (God) in an abstract level, he
approaches it from a refreshingly new angle: that of
the followers on the path. In a passage, he mentions
Muslims, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and
Idol-worshippers — the entire spectrum of religiosity
known to him:
O friend!
If you would see what the Christians see in
Jesus,
you too would become a Christian!
And if you would see what the Jews see in
Moses,
you too would become a Jew!
Even more, if you would see what idol-worshippers
see in idol-worship,
you too would become an idol-worshipper!
The seventy-two paths (madhhab) are all way
stages on the road to God.[64]
Once again, the choice of words used by 'Ayn
al-Qozat is both profound and deliberate: he depicts
the spiritual paths (madhhabs) using the
traditional Sufi imagery of stages (manazil)
on a path, in which a caravan would find shelter. The
important point about a manzil, of course, is
that one would not wish to stay put at one, but to
move on to the final Destination, which may be
described as the Presence of God.
The same universalism is also expounded upon by
later mystics, such as the famed Ibn 'Arabi. It would
be a clear mistake to label Ibn 'Arabi's teaching a
metaphysical system bereft of the tenderness of love.
Ibn 'Arabi's well-known poem cited below alludes to
the same motifs of universality and love,
comprehensible only through the synthetic and dynamic
quality of the heart, that have characterized the
Path of Love:
Wonder,
a garden among the flames!
My heart can take on
any form:
a meadow for gazelles,
a cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred
ground,
Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim,
the tables of the Torah,
the scrolls of the Qur'an.
My creed is love;
wherever its caravan turns along the way,
that is my belief,
my faith.[65]
'Ayn al-Qozat has a remarkable section in his
tamhidat which states:
Do you know what I am saying? I say that the
spiritual seeker has to search after God not in
Paradise, not in the world, and not in the
Hereafter. He has to stop seeking God in everything
that he has seen and everything that he has known:
the path of the seeker is inside his own self. He
has to find the path in herself, as the Qur'an
says: "[We shall show them our signs...] and inside
their own selves, do they not reflect [on
this]?"....There is no path to God better than the
path of the heart. This is the meaning of "the
heart is the house of God."[66]
Although there is some debate about the
authenticity of the poem, one of the most well-known
poems attributed to Rumi in the English-speaking
world is the following:
I was,
even before the Names came to be.
no hint was there that anything with a name
existed.
I was.
The named and names came to be
through me
on the day when there was no me.
A hint came in the revelation of the tip of
the Beloved's tress
when the tip of the Beloved's Tress was
not.
I searched the Cross and Christians from end
to end
He was not in the Cross.
To the idol-house I went,
the ancient monastery.
No trace of him.
went to the mountain of Herat and
Kandahar;
I looked.
He was not in the depths or the heights
there.
On a mission,
I ascended to the summit of Mount Qaf;
in that place was naught but the 'Anqa.
I turned towards the Ka'ba;
searching
seeking
He was not in that place to which old and young
aspire.
I questioned Avicenna about him;
He was beyond even the sage's grasp.
I journeyed to the scene of "the two
bow-lengths' distance";
Where Muhammad went on the night journey.
He was not in that sublime Court.
I looked into my own heart.
There I saw him;
He was nowhere else.[67]
Ultimately, this is perhaps the greatest legacy of
the mystics of "path of love": a hermeneutics not
just of the sacred text, but of the sacred heart of
humanity — one that through the "glance of love"
reveals the Divine in power and intimacy, linking
together the human and the Divine from pre-eternity
(azal) to post-eternity (abad).
Somewhere in the stretch of infinities we stand in
this present moment (waqt), bewildered by the
effusion of Divine Love that makes breath possible,
intellect a tool, Scripture a Love-letter, and love
the greatest of God's mysteries.
[1] Hazrat Inayat Khan,
“Vadan/Alankaras”, in The Complete Sayings,
(New Lebanon: Omega Publications, 1978/1991),
83-4.
[2] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, ‘Afif ‘Usayran, ed., (Reprint;
Tehran: Kitabkhana-yi Manuchihri, 1373/1994),
111.
[3] Louis Massignon, “�Udhri”,
E.I.2
[4] For a brilliant analysis of
this profound teaching, see Michael Sells,
Mystical Language of Unsaying, (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994), 90-92.
[5] An example of the
“mysterious” nature of love is ‘Ayn al-Qozat’s
insistence that there are three types of love: the
Great Love, which is God’s love for us; the Small
Love, which is our love for him; and what he will
only call the Middle Love. He refuses to offer any
definitions for this mysterious middle term, perhaps
wishing to frustrate those who would want a neat
schematization.
[6] This was the insight of Mulla
Sadra, who a few centuries later suggested a
four-tiered spiritual journey in Asfar
al-arba’a: 1) The journey from God to Creation;
2) The journey from Creation to Creation 3) The
journey from Creation to God; and 4) The journey from
God to God.
[7] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 23.
[8] There is no reason to
attribute this to the trite divisions between Arab
and Persian “mentalities”, problematic divisions
deeply rooted in 19th century European racial
theories.
[9] On the controversial genre of
Shathiyat, see Carl Ernst, Words of Ecstasy
in Sufism, (Albany: SUNY, 1988).
[10] For such notions, one can
refer to both Hallaj’s Tawasin and Ayn
al-Qozat’s Tamhidat. Peter Awn has a fine
study of this, in his Satan’s Tragedy and
Redemption.
[11] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Nama-ha-yi ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani, ‘Ali-Naqi
Munzawi and ‘Afif ‘Usayran, eds., 3 vols, (vols. 1
& 2, Tehran: Intisharat-i Bunyad-i Farhang-i
Iran, 1969; Reprinted, Kitabfurushi-yi Manuchihri,
1362/1983), 2:301-2.
[12] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 23.
[13] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 21.
[14] Ahmad Ghazali,
Majalis, Ahmad Mujahid, ed. (Tehran:
Intisharat-i Danishgah-i Tehran, 1376/1997), 22.
[15] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Nama-ha, 2:102.
[16] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Nama-ha, 2:92.
[17] According to a Prophetic
tradition, the Muslim community would be split into
seventy-two sectarian groups. This number became a
trope representing the entire spectrum of
factionalism in later literature.
[18] Elizabeth, T. Gray, Jr.,
Trans. The Green Sea of Heaven: Fifty Ghazals from
the Diwan of Hafiz, (Ashland: White Cloud Press,
1995), 98-99. [Slightly modified]
[19] The allusion is to: “So let
them worship the Lord of this House.” [Qur’an
103:6]
[20] The roof of a house was a
common metaphor in Sufi poetry, a place reserved for
rendezvous with one's beloved. Significantly, the
roof metaphor is often used along that of a ladder,
mi’raj, the term used to identify the
Prophet’s Heavenly Ascension.
[21] Rumi, Kulliyat-i Shams,
ya Divan-i Kabir [henceforth: Divan-i Shams-i
Tabrizi], Badi’ al-Zaman Foruzanfar, ed., 10
vols., (Tehran:Danishgah-i Tehran, 1336/1957;
Reprint, 3rd edition, 1363/1984), 2:65; lines
6762-6768.
[22] Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi,
Masnavi, Muhammad Isti’lami, ed.,7 vols.
(Tehran: Kitabfurushi-yi Zavvar, 1362/1983), 2:82;
line 1774.
[23] Shafi’i (d. 820) was the
founder of a legal school of thought (madhhab)
which was named after him. The Hanafi madhhab
traces itself to Abu Hanifa (d. 767).
[24] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 115-6.
[25] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 22.
[26] For example, ‘Ayn al-Qozat
and Ahmad Ghazali followed the Shafi’i
madhhab; Rumi was a Hanafi; ‘Abd al-Qadir
Gilani and Khwaja ‘Abd Allah Ansari were Hanbali
Sufis. Likewise, there were other Sufis who followed
the Malaki and Ja’fari madhhabs.
[27] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 198-199.
[28] Hakim Sana’i, Divan-i
Hakim Abu ‘l-Majd Majdud [i]bn Adam Sana’i
Ghaznavi, Mudarris Radawi (Razavi), ed., (Tehran:
Intisharat-i Sana’i, 4th reprint, n.d.), 827.
[29] Jalal al-Din Rumi,
Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi], 1:289. Shafi’i and
Abu Hanifa were of course important jurists whose
name provided the titles of the two legal schools
that the majority of Sufis belonged to. Another
manuscripts adds the names of the other two founders
of Sunni schools of legal thought:
“Hanbali?
Has no tradition dealing with love.
Malaki?
Does not narrate about it.”
[30] Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi,
al-Ta’arruf li-madhhab ahl al-tasawwuf, Mahmud
Amin al-Nawawi, ed., (Cairo: al-Maktabah
al-Azhariyya, 1412 A.H./1992), 128. The first quote
is taken from A. J. Arberry’s masterful translation
of this text, The Doctrine of the Sufis,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935;
reprinted 1991), 102.
[31] Qushayri, al-Risalat
al-qushayriyya, edited by ‘Abd al-Halim Mahmud,
two volumes (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub, 1972?), 2:611. For
an English translation of this text see Barbara Von
Schlegell’s Principles of Sufism, (Berekley:
Mizan Press, 1999), 326. [henceforth Qusharyi-Von
Schlegell]
[32] Qushayri-Von Schlegell,
330-1.
[33] Qushayri, 2:615.
[34] Qushayri-Von Schlegell,
335.
[35] Ahmad Ghazali,
Sawanih, 2; Ghazali-Pourjavady,
Sawanih, 15.
[36] For a brilliant and
insightful presentation of this teaching, see Michael
Sells, “Ibn ‘Arabi’s Garden Among the Flames”,
Mystical Language of Unsaying, 90-92.
[37] Ghazali-Pourjavady,
Sawanih, 68-9.
[38] Ghazali, Sawanih,
4.
[39] These themes have been well
explored by the “Chicago school” of scholars of
Arabic literature, including Suzanne P. Stetkevych,
Jaroslav Stetkevych, Michael Sells, Th. Emil Homerin,
etc.
[40] The Life, Personality
and Writings of al-Junayd, edited and translated
by Dr. Ali Hassan Abdel-Kader, (London: E. J. W. Gibb
Memorial Series, n.s., XXII, 1976), 152-159.
[41] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 203.
[42] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 244.
[43] Ghazali-Pourjavady,
Sawanih, 36.
[44] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 179.
[45] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 245.
[46] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 243-3.
[47] Nizam ad-Din Awliya:
Morals of the Heart, translated by Bruce
Lawrence, (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 63.
[48] Ghazali-Pourjavady,
Sawanih, 33.
[49] Ghazali-Pourjavady,
Sawanih, 31.
[50] See Henry Corbin,
Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn
‘Arabi, trans. Ralph Manheim, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969), 115: “Thus the
divine Names have meaning and full reality only
through and for beings who are their
epiphanic forms…”
[51] Badi’ al-Zaman Foruzanfar,
Ahadith-i masnavi, (Reprint; Tehran: Amir
Kabir, 1366/1987), 29.
[52] Ghazali-Pourjavady,
Sawanih, 35.
[53] The city of Kirman was
known as the main producer of Cumin (zira) in
Iran, so there is no sense in taking a product to a
locale where it is already found in plenty. The
American equivalent would be taking sourdough to San
Fransisco, or as R. A. Nicholson, Tales of Mystic
Meaning, (Reprint, Oxford: Oneworld Press, 1985),
57, n. 1, puts in a charmingly British English:
“carrying coals to Newcastle.”
[54] Shams-i Tabrizi,
Maqalat-i Shams-i Tabrizi, Muhammad ‘Ali
Muwahhid, ed., (Tehran: Intisharat-i Khwarazmi),
69.
[55] Hujwiri-Nicholson,
Kashfal-mahjub, 310.
[56] Ruzbihan Baqli, ‘Abhar
al-‘ashiqin, Henry Corbin and Muhammad Mu’in,
ed., (Reprint; Tehran: Intisharart-i Manuchihri,
1366/1987), 88: ‘ishq al-insan sullam ‘ishq
al-rahman. As I will emphasize later, these
divisions are to some extent arbitrary. Even in the
writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, who is moving in a
direction of transcending these facile divisions, one
still comes across statements which reinforce the
pedagogic nature of human love: “When one has risen
above human love, divine love springs forth.” (the
Complete Sayings, 115)
[57] William Chittick, Sufi
Path of Love, 200-1.
[58] Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 140.
[59] For these legal
classifications, and distinctions between farz
and wajib, refer to Mohammad Hashim Kamali,
Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence,
(Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1991), 324-7.
[60] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 97.
[61] For an examination of these
themes, see Joseph Bell, Love Theory in Later
Hanbalite Islam, op. cit.
[62] Farid al-Din ‘Attar,
Tadhkirat al-auliya’, 87.
[63] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 136.
[64] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 285.
[65] Michael Sells, “Ibn
‘Arabi’s Garden among the Flames: The Heart Receptive
of Every Form”, in The Mystical Language of
Unsaying, 90.
[66] ‘Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani,
Tamhidat, 23.
[67] Modified from Selected
Poems from the Divani Shamsi Tabriz, R. A.
Nicholson, ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1898, 1977), 70-72.
© 2003, Society for
Scriptural Reasoning
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