Mystical Dimensions of Islam

Annemarie Schimmel

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780807899762
• eBook ISBN: 9780807869338
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Thirty-five years after its original publication, Mystical Dimensions of Islam still stands as the most valuable introduction to Sufism, the main form of Islamic mysticism. This edition brings to a new generation of readers Annemarie Schimmel’s historical treatment of the transnational phenomenon of Sufism, from its beginnings through the nineteenth century.

Schimmel’s sensitivity and deep understanding of Sufism — its origins, development, and historical context — as well as her erudite examination of Sufism as reflected in Islamic poetry, draw readers into the mood, the vision, and the way of the Sufi. In the foreword, distinguished Islam scholar Carl W. Ernst comments on the continuing vitality of Schimmel’s book and the advances in the study of Sufism that have occurred since the work first appeared.

1. WHAT IS SUFISM?

In recent years many books have been published on Sufism and the spiritual life in Islam. Each of them has touched upon a different facet, for the phenomenon usually called Sufism is so broad and its appearance so protean that nobody can venture to describe it fully. Like the blind men in Rūmī’s famous story, when they were made to touch an elephant, each described it according to the part of the body his hands had touched: to one the elephant appeared like a throne, to another like a fan, or like a water pipe, or like a pillar. But none was able to imagine what the whole animal would look like (M 3:1259–68).¹

Such is the case with Sufism, the generally accepted name for Islamic mysticism. To approach its partial meaning we have to ask ourselves first, what mysticism means. That mysticism contains something mysterious, not to be reached by ordinary means or by intellectual effort, is understood from the root common to the words mystic and mystery, the Greek myein, “to close the eyes.” Mysticism has been called “the great spiritual current which goes through all religions.” In its widest sense it may be defined as the consciousness of the One Reality—be it called Wisdom, Light, Love, or Nothing.²

Such definitions, however, merely point our way. For the reality that is the goal of the mystic, and is ineffable, cannot be understood or explained by any normal mode of perception; neither philosophy nor reason can reveal it. Only the wisdom of the heart, gnosis, may give insight into some of its aspects. A spiritual experience that depends upon neither sensual nor rational methods is needed. Once the seeker has set forth upon the way to this Last Reality, he will be led by an inner light. This light becomes stronger as he frees himself from the attachments of this world or—as the Sufis would say—polishes the mirror of his heart. Only after a long period of purification—the via purgativa of Christian mysticism—will he be able to reach the via illuminativa, where he becomes endowed with love and gnosis. From there he may reach the last goal of all mystical quest, the unio mystica. This may be experienced and expressed as loving union, or as the visio beatifica, in which the spirit sees what is beyond all vision, surrounded by the primordial light of God; it may also be described as the “lifting of the veil of ignorance,” the veil that covers the essential identity of God and His creatures.

Mysticism can be defined as love of the Absolute—for the power that separates true mysticism from mere asceticism is love. Divine love makes the seeker capable of bearing, even of enjoying, all the pains and afflictions that God showers upon him in order to test him and to purify his soul. This love can carry the mystic’s heart to the Divine Presence “like the falcon which carries away the prey,” separating him, thus, from all that is created in time.

One can find these essentially simple ideas in every type of mysticism. The mystics of all religions have tried to symbolize their experiences in three different groups of images: The never-ending quest for God is symbolized in the “Path” on which the “wayfarer” has to proceed, as in the numerous allegories dealing with Pilgrim’s Progress or the Heavenly Journey. The transformation of the soul through tribulation and painful purification is often expressed in the imagery of alchemy or similar processes from nature and prescientific science: the age-old dream of producing gold from base material is realized on the spiritual level. Eventually, the nostalgia of the lover and the longing for union was expressed by symbols taken from human love; often a strange and fascinating combination of human and divine love permeates the verses of the mystics.

Notwithstanding similarities of description of mystical experiences, it is advisable to distinguish between two main types, which have been classified as Mysticism of Infinity and Mysticism of Personality. The former type has found its highest and purest expression in the system of Plotinus and in the Upanishads, particularly as elaborated in Shankara’s advaita philosophy. Sufism comes close to it in some of the forms developed by the Ibn ʿArabī school. Here, the Numen is conceived as the Being beyond all being, or even as the Not-Being, because it cannot be described by any of the categories of finite thought; it is infinite, timeless, spaceless, the Absolute Existence, and the Only Reality. By contrast the world possesses only a “limited reality,” which derives its conditioned existence from the Absolute Existence of the Divine. It may be symbolized as the boundless ocean in which the individual self vanishes like a drop, or as the desert, which shows itself in ever new sand dunes that hide its depths, or as the water out of which the world is crystallized like ice. This type of mysticism was often attacked by prophets and reformers, because it seemed to deny the value of the human personality and to result in pantheism or monism, thus constituting the greatest threat to personal responsibility. The idea of continuous emanation in contrast to the unique divine act of creation was considered, by both Muslim and Christian mystics, to be incompatible with the Biblico-Koranic idea of a creatio ex nihilo. In the so-called Mysticism of Personality, the relation between man and God is perceived as that of creature and Creator, of a slave in the presence of his Lord, or of a lover yearning for his Beloved. This type is more commonly found in earlier Sufism.

These two types of mystical experience, however, are rarely met with in their purest forms. Especially in mystical poetry, an author may describe God in terminology taken from a pure love relation and a few lines later use language that lends itself to an exclusively “pantheistic” interpretation.

A differentiation between the “voluntaristic” and the “gnostic” approaches to mystical experience is somewhat easier. The mystic of the voluntaristic type wants to “qualify himself with the qualities of God,” as the Prophetic tradition says, and to unite his own will completely with God’s will, thus eventually overcoming the theoretical difficulties posed by the dilemma of predestination and free will. This mysticism can be seen as a practical life process. The mystic of the gnostic type strives for a deeper knowledge of God: he attempts to know the structure of His universe or to interpret the degree of His revelations—although no mystic could ever dare to “know” His Essence. Did not Dhūʾn-Nūn (d. 859), usually regarded as one of the founders of speculations about maʿrifa, or gnosis, warn his fellow mystics: “To ponder about the Essence of God is ignorance, and to point to Him is associationism (shirk), and real gnosis is bewilderment” (N 34)? Despite this bewilderment, the gnostic approach often led to the building of theosophical systems with its adherents tending to interpret every aspect of mysticism in the light of their own particular theories, sometimes even denying the simple experience of loving submission. In Islamic mysticism, both aspects are equally strong, and in later periods they are intermingled.

In their formative period, the Sufis admitted of a twofold approach to God. As Hujwīrī (d. circa 1071) says in his discussion of the states of “intimacy” and “respect”:

There is a difference between one who is burned by His Majesty in the fire of love and one who is illuminated by His Beauty in the light of contemplation. (H 367)

There is a difference between one who meditates upon the Divine acts and one who is amazed at the Divine Majesty; the one is a follower of friendship, the other is a companion of love. (H 373)

One might also recall the distinction made by Jāmī in speaking of the two types of advanced Sufis: some are those

to whom the Primordial Grace and Lovingkindness has granted salvation after their being submerged in complete union and in the wave of tauḥīd [unification], [taking them out] of the belly of the fish “Annihilation” on the shore of separation and in the arena of permanent subsistence, so that they might lead the people towards salvation.

The others are those who are completely submerged in the ocean of Unity and have been so completely naughted in the belly of the fish “Annihilation” that never a news or trace comes to the shore of separation and the direction of subsistence . . . and the sanctity of perfecting others is not entrusted to them. (N 8–9)

The distinction that modern history of religions makes between the so-called “prophetic” and the “mystic” spirit is clearly visible in Jāmī’s description of the two types of mystics—those who practice complete reclusion (Weltabkehr) and are solely concerned with their own salvation in the first “flight of the one toward the One,” and those who return from their mystical experience in a higher, sanctified state of mind and are able to lead other people on the right path.

Approaches to the phenomenon “Sufism” are manifold. To analyze the mystical experience itself is next to impossible since words can never plumb the depths of this experience. Even the finest psychological analysis is limited; words remain on the shore, as the Sufis would say. It would be easier to understand Sufism through an analysis of given structures: the French scholar Henry Corbin, in his book on Ibn ʿArabī, has shown to what depths such a study of structure underlying a specific mystical-philosophical system can lead. Analyses of the language of mysticism and the development of the “mystical lexicon” (Louis Massignon and, more recently, Paul Nwyia) can help illuminate the formative period of Sufi thought. The study of symbols and images used by the mystics and of the degree of their interdependence belongs to this field; it opens the way to an examination of the contribution of Sufism to the development of Islamic languages, literatures, and arts.

Since Sufism is to a very large extent bui...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise for Mystical Dimensions of Islam
• MYSTICAL DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• FOREWORD: to the 35th Anniversary Edition
• ABBREVIATIONS
• FOREWORD
• THE ARABIC ALPHABET AND NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTION
• THE MUSLIM YEAR
• Epigraph
• 1. WHAT IS SUFISM?
• 2. HISTORICAL OUTLINES of CLASSICAL SUFISM
• 3. THE PATH
• 4. MAN and HIS PERFECTION
• 5. SUFI ORDERS and FRATERNITIES
• 6. THEOSOPHICAL SUFISM
• 7. THE ROSE and the NIGHTINGALE: Persian and Turkish Mystical Poetry
• 8. SUFISM IN INDO-PAKISTAN
• 9 EPILOGUE
• APPENDIXES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, INDEXES