Islamic Spirituality

Foundations

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415442626
• eBook ISBN: 9781134539024
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Originally published 1987.

The first part of the volume is concerned with "The Roots of the Islamic Tradition and Spirituality". These are seen to include the Qu'ran as the central theophany of Islam, the Prophet who received the word of God and made it known to mankind and the rites of Islam.

The second part examines the divisions of the Islamic community with their distinctive pieties and emphases: Sunnism and Shi'ism and female spirituality.

Part III is devoted to Sufism – its nature and origin, its early development, its various spiritual practices and its science of the soul.

Part One

THE ROOTS OF THE ISLAMIC TRADITION AND SPIRITUALITY

1

The Quran as the Foundation of Islamic Spirituality

SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR

IF THE SOUL OF THE PROPHET is the fountainhead of Islamic spirituality, the Quran is like that lightning which having struck the human receptacle caused this fountainhead to gush forth or like the water descending from heaven which made streams to flow from this fountainhead. The Quran is the origin and source of all that is Islamic, including, of course, spirituality and the Muḥammadan grace (al-barakat al-muḥammadiyyah); and the whole of the spiritual path that emanates from the very Substance of the Prophet owes its existence to the descent of the Word of God upon the virgin soul of His Messenger. If there had not been a Night of Power (laylat al-qadr), when the Quran descended from the Divine Empyrean to the human plane, there would have been no Night of Ascension (laylat al-miʿrāj), when the Prophet ascended from the earth to the Divine Throne, an ascension that is the model of all spiritual realization in Islam.

The Nature of the Quran

The Quran is the verbatim revelation of the Word of God, revealed in Arabic through the archangel Gabriel to the Prophet during the twenty-three-year period of his prophetic mission. The first verses were revealed when the Prophet was meditating in the cave of Ḥirāʾ on the Mountain of Light (jabal al-nūr) near Mecca, and the last shortly before his death. The verses were memorized by many of the companions and gradually set to writing by such companions as ʿAlī and Zayd. Finally, during the time of ʿUthmān, the third caliph, the definitive text based on these early copies and the confirmation of those who had heard the verses from the mouth of the Prophet was copied and sent to the four corners of the Islamic world. The text of the Quran is thus not based on long periods of compilation and interpretation by human agents.¹ Rather, the Quran is the actual Word of God as revealed to His Messenger and is like Christ for Christians, who is himself the Word of God brought into the world through the Virgin Mary. She, therefore, plays a role analogous to that of the soul of the Prophet; both are pure, immaculate, and virginal before the Divine Word.² Consequently, not only the meaning of the Quran but also its form—and, in fact, all that relates to it—is of a sacred character. The written words as calligraphy, the sounds of the recited text, the very physical presence of the Book, as well as, of course, the message contained therein, are sacred and spiritually important.

To understand the spiritual significance of the Quran, it is essential to remember that the Quran was a sonoral revelation. The first words of the Sacred Text revealed by Gabriel surrounded the Prophet like an ocean of sound as the archangel himself filled the whole of the sky. The sound of the Quran penetrates the Muslim’s body and soul even before it appeals to his mind. The sacred quality of the psalmody of the Quran can cause spiritual rapture even in a person who knows no Arabic. In a mysterious way, this sacred quality is transmitted across the barrier of human language and is felt by those hundreds of millions of non-Arab Muslims, whether they be Persian, Turkish, African, Indian, or Malay, whose hearts palpitate in the love of God and whose eyes are moistened by the tears of joy upon simply hearing the Quran chanted. It can be said that the Muslim lives in a space defined by the sound of the Quran and that the sonoral character of the Quranic revelation remains central to the spiritual life of Islam.³

It must, furthermore, be remembered that the soul of the Muslim is composed of Quranic formulas and quotations which the faithful recite in the language of the Quran whatever might be their mother tongue. The Muslim begins every action with bismiʾLlāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm (“in the Name of God Most Merciful, Most Compassionate”), ends every action with al-ḥamd^u liʾLlāh (“praise be to God”), resigns himself to what has passed by placing it in God’s hand with the statement māshāʾ Allāh (“what God has willed”) and, in planning all future action, realizes that the future is determined by God’s Will by asserting inshāʾ Allāh (“if God wills”). The attitudes embedded in these and many other Quranic formulas determine the framework of the spiritual life for the Muslim. Through them he places his action in God’s hand and the past and future in the care of His Will and Providence.⁴ The power of these phrases over the soul and mind of Muslims depends upon the spiritual presence inherent in the sacred sound of these and other verses of the Sacred Text as well as their meaning. It is the sound of the Quran which the newly born child first hears as the Shahādah is chanted into his or her ears. The Quran is thus the very first sound that welcomes the Muslim to the first stages of his journey in this world. And it is the Quran that is chanted at the moment of death and accompanies the soul in its posthumous journey to the Divine Presence. The chanted Quran is the prototype of all sacred sound. It is the divine music that reminds man of his original abode and at the same time accompanies him in his dangerous journey of return to that abode; for the Quran, although chanted in this world, reverberates through all the cosmic levels to the Divine Presence from which it has issued.

Presence of the Quran

The language of the Quran is the crystallization of the Divine Word in human language, which seems to be shattered by the “weight” of the revelation from on high.⁵ The supreme miracle of Islam is, in fact, considered to be the eloquence (balāghah) of the Quran, which is for the Muslim the prototype of language. This eloquence, much debated and discussed by Muslim scholars over the ages,⁶ does not reside so much in the ordering of the words into powerful poetic utterance as in the degree of the inspiration as a result of which every sentence, every word, and every letter scintillate with a spiritual presence and are like light congealed in tangible form.

This presence is to be found in the written as well as the sonoral Quran. The art of writing the text of the Quran is the sacred art of Islam par excellence. The art of calligraphy, which is so central to Islamic civilization, is inseparable from the Quran; for it was for the purpose of writing the Sacred Text that this art was developed, the earlier styles such as Kufic being nearly completely and solely identified with the writing of the Quran.⁷ Moreover, the art of illumination, which came into its own and reached its peak of perfection in the Il-khānid and Mamlūk periods, is the visualization of the spiritual inspiration related to the writing and recitation of the text of the Word of God. To understand the reverence that Muslims show toward the Quran, it is necessary to take cognizance of the spiritual presence in the calligraphy of the words as well as in the sounds that surround and penetrate man when the text is chanted. It is this presence that every faithful Muslim feels instinctively. As a result, he finds comfort and protection even in the physical book itself and carries the Sacred Text with him wherever and whenever possible. The sage finds the same protection in carrying the quintessence of the Quran, which is God’s Name, in his heart. According to a ḥadīth, “He who protects the Name of God in his heart, God protects him in the world.”

The Quran possesses a mysterious presence, which might be called “magical,” in addition to the Book’s being the source of Islamic doctrine, ethics, and sacred history. It is this “magic” that is untranslatable and can only be experienced in the language of the revelation, while the doctrinal content, ethical injunctions, or accounts of the prophets and peoples of old can be rendered into other tongues. This “magic” is inseparable from the spiritual presence of the sonoral revelation, which captures the soul of man as a net cast into the sea in order to return the soul from the domain of multiplicity to Unity.

The Quran is, like the world, at the same time one and multiple. The world is multiplicity which disperses and divides; the Quran is a multiplicity which draws together and draws to Unity. The multiplicity of the holy Book—the diversity of its words, sentences, pictures and stories—fills the soul and thus absorbs it and imperceptibly transposes it into the climate of serenity and immutability by a sort of divine “cunning”. . . . The Quran is like a picture of everything the human brain can think and feel, and it is by this means that God exhausts human disquiet, infusing into the believer silence, serenity and peace.⁸

The Quran is a “world,” but one that leads man to Unity and prevents the soul from being scattered and dispersed.⁹

The Names of the Quran

The sacred Book of Islam has many names, of which al-Qurʾān, meaning “recitation,” is the best known. If this name refers to the essentially auditory and sonoral nature of the Text as that which is read and recited,¹⁰ some of the other well-known...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• PREFACE TO THE SERIES
• INTRODUCTION
• LIST OF TRANSLITERATIONS
• Part One: The Roots of the Islamic Tradition and Spirituality
• 1 The Quran as the Foundation of Islamic Spirituality
• 2 The Spiritual Significance of the Quran
• 3 Traditional Esoteric Commentaries on the Quran
• 4 The Spiritual Significance of the Substance of the Prophet
• 5 The Life, Traditions, and Sayings of the Prophet
• I. The Life of the Prophet
• II. Sunnah and Hadith
• 6 The Inner Meaning of the Islamic Rites: Prayer, Pilgrimage, Fasting, Jihad
• 7 The Spiritual Dimension of Prayer
• Part Two: Aspects of the Islamic Tradition
• 8 Sunnism
• 9 Twelve Imam Shi’ism
• 10 Isma’illism
• 11 Female Spirituality in Islam
• Part Three: Sufism: The Inner Dimension of Islam
• 12 The Nature and Origin of Sufism
• 13 The Early Development of Sufism
• 14 The Spiritual Practices of Sufism
• 15 Sufi Science of the Soul
• Part Four: Knowledge of Reality
• 16 God
• 17 The Angels
• 18 The Cosmos and the Natural Order
• 19 Man
• 20 Eschatology
• GLOSSARY
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• CONTRIBUTORS
• PHOTOGRAPHIC CREDITS
• INDEXES