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Mysticism in Iran
The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept
Ata Anzali, Frederick M. Denny
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Mysticism in Iran
The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept
Ata Anzali, Frederick M. Denny
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About This Book
An original study of the transformation of Safavid Persia from a majority Sunni country to a Twelver Shi'i realm
"Mysticism" in Iran is an in-depth analysis of significant transformations in the religious landscape of Safavid Iran that led to the marginalization of Sufism and the eventual emergence of 'irfan as an alternative Shi'i model of spirituality.
Ata Anzali draws on a treasure-trove of manuscripts from Iranian archives to offer an original study of the transformation of Safavid Persia from a majority Sunni country to a Twelver Shi'i realm. The work straddles social and intellectual history, beginning with an examination of late Safavid social and religious contexts in which Twelver religious scholars launched a successful campaign against Sufism with the tacit approval of the court. This led to the social, political, and economic marginalization of Sufism, which was stigmatized as an illegitimate mode of piety rooted in a Sunni past.
Anzali directs the reader's attention to creative and successful attempts by other members of the ulama to incorporate the Sufi tradition into the new Twelver milieu. He argues that the category of 'irfan, or "mysticism, " was invented at the end of the Safavid period by mystically minded scholars such as Shah Muhammad Darabi and Qutb al-Din Nayrizi in reference to this domesticated form of Sufism. Key aspects of Sufi thought and practice were revisited in the new environment, which Anzali demonstrates by examining the evolving role of the spiritual master. This traditional Sufi function was reimagined by Shi'i intellectuals to incorporate the guidance of the infallible imams and their deputies, the ulama.
Anzali goes on to address the institutionalization of 'irfan in Shi'i madrasas and the role played by prominent religious scholars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in this regard. The book closes with a chapter devoted to fascinating changes in the thought and practice of 'irfan in the twentieth century during the transformative processes of modernity. Focusing on the little-studied figure of Kayvan Qazvini and his writings, Anzali explains how 'irfan was embraced as a rational, science-friendly, nonsectarian, and anticlerical concept by secular Iranian intellectuals.
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Islamic Theology1 |  | ʿIRFAN IN THE PRE-SAFAVID PERIOD |
In Arabic, the root ʿ-r-f, from which the terms ʿirfan, ʿarif, and maʿrifa* are derived, denotes “recognition” or “knowledge.” Its beginnings in Arabic literature of the Islamic period are humble. The Qurʾan does not contain the terms maʿrifa and ʿirfan, and when other words derived from the root ʿ-r-f appear, they generally correspond to recognition (which is opposed to forgetfulness), rather than knowledge.† Instead, beginning with the Qurʾan, the concept of knowledge (which is opposed to ignorance, or jahl) is denoted by words derived from the root ʿ-l-m, from which come various verb constructions as well as nouns such as ʿalim and ʿilm. In contrast with the nonappearance of ʿirfan, the term ʿilm is used as to denote knowledge more than sixty times in the Qurʾan.‡ Furthermore, it is important to note that constructs from the root ʿ-r-f are never used to denote something about the divine nature, acts, or attributes, whereas al-ʿalim (the Knower) is one of the most commonly used names of God. In accordance with the Qurʾan, Muslim authors have refused to acknowledge al-ʿarif as a divine name, arguing that the latter root signifies a prior knowledge that has been or is susceptible to being forgotten and then remembered. This recognition, they explain, is not applicable to the omniscient God. Hence, Muslim authors have made several attempts to draw a clear line of distinction between ʿilm and maʿrifa. Any substantial discussion of such distinctions, based mainly on philological observations, as interesting as they might be, fall beyond the scope of this book.* What is important for this project is that Sufi authors, even when they theoretically distinguish between the two terms, have largely used them interchangeably.†
Sufis, Philosophers, and the Quest for Maʿrifa
It appears that the term maʿrifa, along with the active participle ʿarif, was first singled out as a distinct category in the Sufi lexicon around the middle of the ninth century.‡ The emergence of this category was connected to an important transformation in the early spiritual landscape of the Islamic heartlands—a shift in popular conceptions of what constituted the ideal religious life. The established mode of spirituality concerned with renunciation, or zuhd, and associated with a pietistic lifestyle centered on worship, or ʿibada, was challenged by a new spiritual vision focused primarily on the cultivation of the inner life.§ This new vision, according to Karamustafa, was an “inward turn [that] 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 interior’ [ʿilm al-batin] acquired through ardent examination and training of the human soul…. For these ‘interiorizing’ renunciants, the major renunciatory preoccupation of eschewing this world [dunya, literally, the lower, nearer realm] in order to cultivate the other world [akhira, the ultimate realm] was transformed into a search for the other world within the inner self.”**
A variety of spiritual movements in the early centuries of Islam contributed to the development of this “inward turn.” Not all who associated with those movements initially identified themselves as Sufis,* but the confluence of these different trends in the early Islamic spiritual landscape eventually led to the emergence of a more unified entity called Sufism (tasavvuf) in roughly the tenth century.† Early figures influential in the development of this “inward turn,” including Zu al-Nun, Yahya b. Muʿaz (d. 871), Sari Saqati (d. circa 866), and others, used maʿrifa, among other concepts, to identify and distinguish the new paradigm of spirituality. For them, the ʿarif as an ideal type stood in contrast and was superior to the previous ideal of the zahid, or renunciant. Zu al-Nun, for example, is recorded as saying that “The renunciants are the kings of the afterlife, and the ʿurafa are the kings of the renunciants.”‡ Similarly, Sari Saqati contrasted the two, saying that “a renunciant’s life is not pleasurable since he is occupied with himself, but the life of a ʿarif is pleasurable because he is occupied with other than himself.”§ In the same vein, Yahya b. Muʿaz said that “the renunciant is pure in appearance but dishevelled [amikhta] inside, [whereas] the ʿarif is pure inside and dishevelled in appearance.”** He is also reported to have said, “The renunciant walks, while the ʿarif flies.”††
In addition to these statements, popular hadith reports were circulated in order to provide a basis of legitimacy and authenticity for the introduction of this new term and, more generally, the new paradigm of the inward turn. The famous hadith “he who knows himself, knows his Lord,”‡‡ which was apparently put into circulation by Yahya b. Muʿaz, is a case in point.§§ The rise to prominence of such statements in Sufi literature in subsequent centuries played an instrumental role in popularizing the terms ʿarif and maʿrifa in later Sufi literature.
From the beginning of its use in the ninth century, the concept of an ʿarif stands out as a descriptor of someone who has reached an advanced level of spiritual achievement. In the spectrum of spiritual stages and layers of inner realization, an ʿarif, to use Zu al-Nun’s terms, “is among the Sufis, yet distinct from them.”* In the sources, advanced levels of spiritual achievement have mainly to do with the realization of a state of union in which the agency of the wayfarer is subsumed and annihilated in the agency of God, who is the only true agent. Accordingly, Zu al-Nun developed a three-level hierarchy of maʿrifa in which the highest level is concerned with the attribute of unity (sifat al-vahdaniyya).† Abu Hafs of Nishabur (d. ca. 874) is reported to have said, “Maʿrifa necessarily entails for the man his absence [ghayba] from himself, in such a way that the memory of God reigns exclusively in him, that he sees nothing other than God, and that he turns to nothing other than to Him. For, just as the man who reasons has recourse to his heart, his reflection, and his memories in every situation presented to him and in every condition he encounters, so the ʿarif has his recourse in God. Such is the difference between he who sees through his heart and he who sees through his Lord.”‡
Likewise, Shibli (d. 946) is believed to have said, “When you are attached to God, not to your works, and when you look at nothing other than Him, then you have perfect maʿrifa.”§ In a similar vein, Bayazid Bistami (d. 875) is recorded as saying, “The creature has its conditions, but the ʿarif does not have them, because his traits are effaced and his essence [huviyya] is abolished in the essence of the One. His features become invisible beneath the features of God.” He is also said to have responded to a question about the station of an ʿarif with “There is no station there. Rather, the greatest benefit of the ʿarif is the existence of his Known.”** Bistami is later remembered in Sufi literature as sultan al-ʿarifin.†† As one of the most celebrated Sufis, he is famous for statements in which he talks about shedding his “I”-ness like a snake’s skin in the state of annihilation, or fana, only to gain a transformed self-consciousness in which there is no self but God. This was, in fact, what a ʿarif was supposed to achieve. Abu Bakr Vasiti (d. 932) is also worthy of quotation in this regard. He said, “An ʿarif is not authentic when there remains in the man an independence which dispenses with God and the need for God. For to dispense with God and to have need of Him are two signs that the man is awake and that his characteristics remain, and this on account of his qualifications. Now the ʿarif is entirely effaced in Him whom he knows. How could this—which is due to the fact that one loses his existence in God and is engrossed in contemplation of Him—be true, if one is not a man devoid of any sentiment which could be for him a qualification, when one approaches existence?”*
What is striking about these quotations is that they emphasize the consequences of attaining maʿrifa rather than focusing on the actual content of it. That is to say, maʿrifa, at least at this level of development, is not about a specific subject of knowledge, about the “what” of “what the mystic knows.” Rather, it is indicative of a mystical station acquired as the ʿarif advances close to God. In such a state, we are told, the ʿarif realizes that what he thought was he himself, his acts and his attributes, are in fact those of God. The literature is thus concerned with what follows from acquiring such a state, rather than what is entailed, in noetic terms, in that knowledge. In fact, the distinction between being and knowing no longer applies at this advanced spiritual station.
As the older and rival paradigm of renunciation weakened and “Sufi” became more prevalent as an umbrella term, the term ʿarif came to be situated and understood in relationship to the term Sufi, rather than renunciant. In this process, however, it retained its elitist connotations, referring to a level of spiritual realization attained only by the select among the saints (awliya). In an early compilation of the sayings of the great Sufi of Khurasan, Abu Saʿid Abu al-Khayr (d. 1049), a certain Khaja Masʿad is said to have praised Abu Saʿid with these words: “I am not going to call you a Sufi or a dervish, but a perfect ʿarif.”† Here, Abu Saʿid is identified as an acco...