Mystical Islam

An Introduction to Sufism

Julian Baldick

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857735904
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Islamic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Sufism is Islam's principal mystical tradition. To its followers it provides the inner, esoteric or purely spiritual dimension of the faith. It is a centuries-old path to spirituality with devotees throughout the Islamic world, fundamentally influencing Muslim belief. To non-Muslim observers it remains exotic, mysterious and little-understood. Mystical Islam is an accessible introduction that encompasses the history of the Sufi spiritual tradition, ranging from the great Mughal and Safavid empires of India and Persia to the Whirling Dervishes of Ottoman Turkey. Julian Baldick reveals the continuing relevance of the Sufi spiritual experience and introduces some of the great figures of Sufism: al-Ghazali, Ibn Arabi, Hafiz of Shiraz and Rumi. It is the writings of such masters that reveal the inner beauty of Sufism, while offering followers the most profound insights in their quest for delivery from the narrow confines of the material world. At the same time, the author's reflections on recent Sufi scholarship, and his fresh perspectives on this tradition of belief and devotion, will prove essential for students and highly stimulating for general readers.

1 SUFISM’S BEGINNINGS

BACKGROUND AND ORIGINS

In order to study the origins of Islamic mysticism one must first of all examine the historical background to the rise of Islam in the seventh century CE. This is a most exciting subject today, since considerable changes have recently taken place in the attitudes of western scholars. There has been much controversy, largely related to the respective roles played in the emergence of the new religion by Arabia on the one hand and the rest of the Middle East on the other. An older generation of academics still continues to concentrate on archaeological and anthropological evidence in Arabia itself, regarding it as likely to shed light on the influence of tribal life on the beliefs and practices of the earliest Muslims. Younger specialists are more inclined to look for a continuity of patterns from the ancient civilizations in the countries which the Arabs invaded, in circumstances which are seen as particularly significant.

The Middle East, in the early seventh century, was dominated by two great empires: the later Roman (or early Byzantine) Empire, which had for long governed Egypt, Syria, Palestine and what is now Turkey; and the Persian (or Iranian) Empire, which consisted mainly of Iran and Iraq. Both these states had been seriously weakened by a number of factors, notably war, bad government and the persecution of religious minorities. Conditions were as favourable as could be imagined for the onslaught which came from the Arabian peninsula. As for this peninsula itself, very little is known about it before Islam. The literary sources are of a later period and appear to reflect Muslim efforts to create an idealized picture of the religion’s beginnings. This picture minimizes the probability that the Arabs were already heavily influenced by the peoples whom they were about to conquer. Moreover, it is likely that the Muslims projected back into the Arabian past developments which really took place within the conquered territories.

According to Islamic historical tradition, as preserved in works of the eighth and ninth centuries, the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, was born around 570 at Mecca, in central western Arabia. About 610 he began to receive revelations, which, he came to believe, were brought to him by the Archangel Gabriel. These called on him to start a rigorously monotheistic practice of worship. The revelations were later collected as the Qur’an (‘Recitation’ or ‘Reading’). After encountering much opposition, in 622 Muhammad moved to Medina, some 200 miles to the north. There he founded a new state, and, by his own example and a vast number of oral instructions, instituted the religion of Islam. He died at Medina in 632.

After Muhammad’s death most of the Middle East was conquered by his successors, the caliphs (khulafa’, ‘deputies’). Under the leadership of one of these, ‘Umar (reigned 634–44), the Arabs quickly overran Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Then internal dissension arose, before one family, the Umayyads, were able to establish control over most Muslims in the conquered territories and centralize government in Damascus. This family extended the new empire in both the west and the east, so that by the early eighth century it embraced most of Spain and part of what is now Pakistan.

The Islamic historical tradition, in its presentation of the religion’s beginnings, has to be seen as reflecting subsequent political and doctrinal bias. The main biography of the Prophet, composed in the mid-eighth century and edited in the ninth, is so far removed from Muhammad’s lifetime as to make the historian wonder if it can be used at all. For our present purpose, the search for the origins of Islamic mysticism, its value must remain doubtful. Inevitably, modern writers produce versions of it in which the miracles are omitted and Muhammad emerges as a mystic and visionary. More serious scholarship indicates that the biography is the result of long regional rivalries; of the projection into one man’s life of developments which must have taken place much later; and of the transposition into an Arabian setting of processes which belong to the Fertile Crescent in the north. As for the traditional picture of events between Muhammad’s death and the fall of the Umayyads in 750, here too there has been much disagreement about whether it should be accepted or replaced, and whether it is possible for the historian to make any positive contribution in this field. Scholars have taken conflicting positions on the question of using the records of the communities conquered by the Muslims. Differing views have also been expressed about the geographical location of Muhammad’s activities. No attempt is made here to resolve these differences, however, since our concern is not with events, but with the continuity of configurations of religious ideas.

The influence of earlier religious traditions

The peoples of the territories conquered by the Arabs, as they converted to the new religion, must have continued to express certain motifs and modes of thought which contributed to the developing Islamic creed, and in particular to its spiritual dimensions. In examining the religious background to the rise of Islam there are elements and configurations which seem to have been preserved within Sufism; it will sometimes be necessary to look ahead to Sufi themes when analysing the pre-Sufi evidence. A number of themes have already been mentioned as characteristic of Sufism, and these have their antecedents in the various religions of the pre-Islamic Middle East.

Greatest attention needs to be given to eastern Christianity. In recent years more weight has been accorded to the view that Islamic mysticism, and in particular Sufism, grew out of Christian spirituality. In particular, the very word sufi has usually been seen as reflecting a Christian influence, being derived from the Arabic word for wool (suf), which was the characteristic clothing material of eastern Christian monks, and was taken over by the early mystics of Islam. Other styles of dress adopted by the Sufis are also anticipated in pre-Islamic Christianity: the patchwork frock made from rags, and the use of the colour of mourning, black for the Christians, dark blue for the Muslims.

When we look for Christian antecedents of aspects of Sufism it is the doctrines and practices of the monastic life which are most striking. On the doctrinal side one expects Christianity to anticipate Sufism in such areas as the contemplation of God, the adaptation of Greek philosophy to a devotional framework, and the delineation of the mystic’s progress through a hierarchy of stages. On the practical side one is led to focus on the mortification of the flesh, the espousal of poverty and the repetition of special prayers.

Arthur Vööbus, the greatest historian of Christian asceticism in Syria, Iraq and Iran, notes the particular emphasis, in the Christian literature of these countries (which was composed in Syriac, and consequently has a distinctive and unified character of its own), on a Covenant between God and men: this we shall find stressed in classical Sufism. Of special interest, in the eastern Christian communities, are the ‘Sons of the Covenant’, who are not members of the clergy, or monks, but live among fellow believers while pursuing mortification of the flesh and devotional exercises. Here we see ‘solitaries’ within society, in an anticipation of the Sufi mystics; the latter perceive themselves as bound in a Covenant with God, and belong to a religion which has neither priests nor (in theory at least) monks, but only Muslims. Thus Sufis are often in the midst of other men while rejecting the world.

One dominant motif in early Christian spirituality is comparatively rare in Sufism: the characteristically Christian veneration of celibacy. Vööbus notes the use of the root q-d-sh in Syriac, both to denote sexual continence and, in effect, to designate sanctity itself. This helps us to understand the absence of a concept of sainthood in Sufism: as eastern Christians pass from Syriac to Arabic they will use the term qiddis, ‘saint’, but the Muslims, along with their refusal to accept the ideal of celibacy, will not. There are no ‘cut-off points’ in Islam, at which a man is consecrated and set apart as a priest, or canonized and seen as a sanctus, a saint. The Muslims do, in a very different perspective, perpetuate the early Christian idea of friendship with God (an idea made familiar in recent years by Peter Brown). Here friendship means not what it does today, but rather a finely balanced understanding of mutual obligations: the ‘friend of God’ (wali Allah) is both his client, in the Roman sense of a dependant, and also the patron, in the Roman sense of a protector, of lesser men, possessing and channelling freedom of access to the highest source of power. Early Islam inherited from the Roman Empire a temporal institution of clienthood, by which a non-Arab convert to the Muslim faith acquired dependent legal status, and became a sort of second-class, associate member of the community.¹ Here one sees a striking counterpart to the spiritual concept.

Islam also mirrors the regional varieties of eastern Christian devotionalism. Egypt, although the legendary birthplace of Christian monasticism, engaged in moderate abstinence but did not proceed to higher speculation. Syria, punishing the flesh more severely, with its ‘browsers’ who ate nothing but plants and its wearers of heavy iron chains (another element continued among Muslim extremists on the fringes of Sufism), produced visionary experiences and ecstasy. Iraq was the most sophisticated of all, in its academic adaptations of the Greek philosophical tradition.

One particular Christian expression continues to play a major role in Sufism: that of ‘remembrance of God’, in Greek mneme Theou, which is found first among the Stoic philosophers and is also connected with the use, in the Hebrew Bible, of the term zakar, ‘remembering’. This is a form of prayer, but not in the sense of asking for something. It is connected with the celebrated ‘Jesus prayer’, the continually repeated invocation of the name of Jesus, a distinctive feature of eastern Christianity. In Islam the term is the same, dhikr Allah, ‘remembrance of God’, in the repetition of a short formula.

The specialists have demonstrated beyond doubt that another Sufi practice comes from early Syrian Christianity: that of deliberately incurring ‘blame’ (Syriac shituta; Arabic malama) through apparently reprehensible conduct: pretending to engage in illicit sexual relations, behaving like a madman, sitting on a dunghill, and so on. This has remained an important facet of Sufi poetry and teaching up to our own day: the mystic puts himself in a position where he is indifferent to the opinions held by others about him, or indeed prefers to be despised.

This doctrine of blame, already old, is repeated in the works of Isaac of Nineveh, the most important Christian mystical writer of seventh-century Iraq. Isaac is a representative of the Nestorian Church, which, through its emphasis on the humanity of Jesus, came close to Islam’s rejection of his divinity, and enjoyed good relations with the early Muslims. He also teaches the doctrine of trust or confidence in God to provide one’s sustenance: this too continues as a major topic in Sufism. Isaac is the most useful thinker in our search for a pattern, configuration or structure which is reproduced in Islam. Up to now we have encountered only isolated themes, but Isaac provides a fair amount of systematization, which corresponds with Sufi theory and clearly establishes the Christian character of Islamic mysticism. His teachings are repeatedly set out according to a threefold model, which consists of (1) the body; (2) the lower soul (known in Sufism as the nafs, the ‘self’); (3) the higher soul or spirit (known in Sufism as the ruh). This triad is a dominant feature in Isaac’s portrayal of the Path. In Islam the concept of the Path (tariqa) is often identified with Sufism itself. Isaac uses the term in the Sufi manner to indicate the mystic’s upward progress. His version of the Path consists of three phases: (1) repentance; (2) purification; (3) perfection. The description of the Sufi Path always begins with repentance. Isaac gives an enumeration of the virtues and the degrees upon which the mystic ascends. In the first phase there are works of righteousness, performed with the body: fasting, alms-giving and vigils. In the second phase are neighbourly love, humility and other virtues of the lower soul. These two phases involve labour on the part of the mystic. Now, in the third phase instead of labour, at the level of the higher soul or spirit, are the gifts bestowed by God: delight, exultation and love.² In the same way, the classical descriptions of the Sufi Path distinguish, among the various stages of ascent, between those at the bottom, which are obtained through the mystic’s own efforts, and those at the top, which are given by God alone. To be sure, neither Isaac and his Christian contemporaries nor the early Sufis possess fully developed systems. Different writers not only have different patterns, but are also often self-contradictory. However, the ordered correspondence between Isaac’s explicit arrangement of his triads and the mainstream of classical Sufi theory demonstrates a repeated configuration.

In the past scholars expressed great hopes that light could be cast upon the origins of Sufism through further research into one peculiar Christian sect or grouping, known as the Messalians or ‘Prayerites’ because of their apparently continuous praying. Unfortunately, very little is known about them, and we are dependent upon biased and hostile references from outsiders. Immense caution is needed when evaluating these, especially when they include accusations of libertinism. Isaac of Nineveh asserts that the Messalians claim to be perfect, and consequently above normal restrictions. Such accusations are made by fairly early Sufi writers against extremists on the fringes of Sufism, and it is only later that mainline Sufi thinkers support the idea that perfection puts the mystic above the law. Even then, they will not advocate committing actual violations of Islamic legality. Given the correspondence between Isaac of Nineveh and mainstream Sufism, it is unlikely that the latter would owe much to some ‘Messalian’ libertines. Moreover, it is not clear that references to the Messalians by seventh-century authors represent more than a literary tradition of attacking a sect already dead. They were probably extinct (if indeed they ever existed as a separate grouping) by the end of the eighth century, when Sufism was yet to emerge. As for works in which authors put forward their own ideas, and which were previously labelled as ‘Messalian’ by scholars (the famous Book of Degrees and the Homilies of Pseudo-Macarius), recent research has shown this label to be inappropriate. The word ‘Messalian’ may just have been a pejorative epithet.

A much more promising perspective, not only for studying the roots of Sufism, but for finding the origins of Islam itself, is provided by ‘Jewish Christianity’. This term is also riddled with difficulties. Here it will be used in the sense of observing the Jewish law while recognizing Jesus as the Christ. Such a combination brings with it a number of practices and beliefs, resulting from its own internal logic, and also false accusations from outsiders that more practices and beliefs existed. Scholars have argued that a wide range of early ‘Jewish-Christian’ opinions and observances were misleadingly attributed to one particular sect, the Ebionites, whose name means ‘the poor’.

This designation is highly relevant to the subject of mysticism in early Islam. ‘A poor man’ is the literal and original meaning of the words which have passed into English as ‘fakir’ and ‘dervish’ (Arabic faqir; Persian darwish). These words acquired the connotations of ‘a man of the spiritual life’ or ‘a mystic’. We shall often use the term ‘dervish’ below. Like ‘fakir’, it has a wider meaning than the word ‘Sufi’: not all dervishes are Sufis. Moreover, the term ‘dervish’ indicates more the dimension of practice, while ‘Sufi’ designates more that of theory: the dervish is a Sufi in action, and the Sufi is a dervish in the abstract.

Reliable evidence shows that the Jewish Christians of the first few centuries CE (if not the Ebionites themselves) adopted a number of positions later taken over by Islam: retaining Jewish law in religious matters, and thus insisting on circumcision and rejecting Saint Paul; believing that Jesus was the Messiah, but just as a man, not as the Son of God; seeing Adam as a prophet; insisting on ablutions before worship and after sexual intercourse; and, in their later development, rejecting sexual continence and insisting on marriage. Some of them lived in the north of the Arab world, in Syria, before the Muslim conquest. It seems probable that they had a great influence at an early stage of Islam’s development. Even if this is not the case, it would appear that from fairly early on the Muslims adopted their main pattern of belief and practice.

On the other hand Judaism itself does not seem to have made much of a direct contribution to Islamic mysticism, but rather to have provided the legal boundaries within which the expression of spirituality had to be confined. The Sufis are often accused of erring by using expressions which belong to Christianity, while Muslim lawyers are sometimes criticized for being too much like Jewish rabbis. While Sufis frequently think that Christians hold important secret opinions, the praiseworthy aspects of Judaism are found by Muslims to lie in the straightforward observance of ritual purity. Thus one Sufi observes that Syriac (as the language of eastern Christians) represents what is highest and most hidden, whereas Hebrew (as the language of Judaism) represents what is lowest and most obvious, and Arabic (as the language of Islam) unites the two extremes.³ There does not appear to be any significant presence of specifically Jewish asceticism or mysticism in the background to the rise of Sufism. The time of Philo Judaeus (fl. 40 CE), the great exponent of symbolic interpretation of the scriptures, had long since passed. Only the ‘Merkabah’ or ‘Throne of God’ type of mysticism flourished before Islam. Here the description of the soul’s journey to God’s Throne, with its crossing of seven planetary spheres, resembles the visionary accounts in the Greek philosophical tradition as continued in the Muslim world rather than what is found in Sufism. Moreover, the sources show us not so much Judaism as Gnosticism (which will be discussed shortly) in Judaic dress. As the late Gershom Scholem, the greatest specialist in the study of Jewish mysticism, observed, there was no authentically Judaic mystical tradition in the lands of Islam before the Kabbalah arose in southern France around 1200. This is underlined by the fact that up to the thirteenth century Jews in Muslim countries just imitated Sufi writings.⁴

Christianity’s contribution to the rise of Sufism is further apparent in the obvious influence from the neo-Platonist school of Greek philosophy. Plato himself had already provided a firm basis for early Christian spirituality: the doctrines of the contemplation of eternal Ideas and intimate knowledge of them; the soul’s ascent from the false reality of the senses; and the love of true Beauty. The neo-Platonist school of Plotinus (d. 270 CE) and his followers had developed these doctrines into a great system, dominated by the triad of the One,...