Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition

The Art of Spiritual Flight

L. Lewisohn, C. Shackle, L. Lewisohn, C. Shackle

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781786720184
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient Poetry
• Index: Literature

Farid al-Din 'Attar (d. 1221) was the principal Muslim religious poet of the second half of the twelfth century. Best known for his masterpiece "Mantiq al-tayr", or "The Conference of Birds", his verse is still considered to be the finest example of Sufi love poetry in the Persian language after that of Rumi. Distinguished by their provocative and radical theology of love, many lines of 'Attar's epics and lyrics are cited independently of their poems as maxims in their own right. These pithy, paradoxical statements are still known by heart and sung by minstrels throughout Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and wherever Persian is spoken or understood, such as in the lands of the Indo-Pakistani Subcontinent. Designed to take its place alongside "The Ocean of the Soul", the classic study of 'Attar by Hellmut Ritter, this volume offers the most comprehensive survey of 'Attar's literary works to date, and situates his poetry and prose within the wider context of the Persian Sufi tradition.
The essays in the volume are grouped in three sections, and feature contributions by sixteen scholars from North America, Europe and Iran, which illustrate, from a variety of critical prespectives, the full range of 'Attar's monumental achievement. They show how and why 'Attar's poetical work, as well as his mystical doctrines, came to wield such tremendous and formative influence over the whole of Persian Sufism.

III

The Poetics of Passion: ʿAṭṭār’s Lyric and Epic Poetry

10

Some Remarks on Forms and Functions of Repetitive Structures in the Epic Poetry of ʿAṭṭār

JOHANN CHRISTOPH BÜRGEL

Repetition is rooted in human experience. Day and night, sleeping and waking, the seasons of the year, the rites of passage through life: birth, adolescence, maturity and death – all these cycles of shorter or longer duration form the structure of human life. As long as we are alive we cannot escape these repetitive structures. The natural environment, too, is full of repetitive phenomena, such as the waves of a lake or a sea, etc. So it is not surprising that repetition should form one of the oldest structures in the works in the plastic arts such as ceramics or carpet-making, or in the sacred visual and oral performances of religious rites and ceremonies, as in prayers, liturgies and so on. Nor should we forget music, which, both at the folkloric and the highest artistic levels, is unthinkable without repetitive elements. It has been said that these repetitive structures have or may have an archaic layer of magical origin as is still apparent in the inscriptions of amulets, magical formulations, etc.¹ However it may be, it is a fact that the cosmic order rests on constantly repeating movements. It is these cosmic and natural structures that encourage order and avert chaos, creating in man a certain degree of confidence in the laws of nature. Such magical influences as well as this element of order, this hope and confidence, are all reflected in the use of repetitive structures in the fine arts.

Repetitive Structures in the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth

Our current topic invites us to look just at literary forms. But, before talking of repetitive structures in the work of ʿAṭṭār, let us cast a brief glance at the use of repetition found in the sacred texts of Islam, because it is from there that this otherwise profane structure gathers its particular sacred power. Both the Qurʾān and ḥadīth literature demonstrate a rich variety of repetitive structures. The Qurʾān as a whole with its 114 sūras, each of which – with the exception of the ninth – begin with the formula bismillāhi l-raḥmāni l-raḥīm, as well as rhymed prose (sajʿ), is subject to such structures. Its text is pervaded by the mention of God’s beautiful names (al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā), which verbalize the Divine Presence. But apart from that, there are many other forms of repetitive structures to be found in the holy book. One major manifestation is the refrain-like repetition of formulas, the most conspicuous example of which is offered in the fifty-fifth sūra entitled al-Raḥmān, where the phrase fa-biʾayyi ālāʾi rabbikuma tukadhdhibān (‘Which of your Lord’s bounties will you deny?’) is repeated thirty-seven times in a text of just seventy-eight verses. Ibn Rashīq, a medieval Arabic authority on rhetoric and poetics, pointed to this phenomenon in his al-ʿUmda as a fine example for the figure of takrār, meaning ‘repetition’. Other forms of repetition in the Qurʾān include the repetition of a motif, notably in the structure of short tripartite parables or tales about prophets. A fascinating example is the threefold appearance of the shirt at decisive narrative junctures in the tale of Joseph in the twelfth sūra. The function of such repetitions is to underscore an idea, to intensify a certain motif, or to charge the text with sacred power. In fairy tales this kind of repetition may lead to a deadlock in the story, which is then gradually resolved in the final part of the tale.²

These particular functions are illustrated in two ḥadīth, describing two metaphysical events in the life of Muḥammad, both of which are used by ʿAṭṭār as models for two of his long narrative poems. These are the ḥadīth al-shafāʿa or ‘Report on the Intercession’ and the ḥadīth al-miʿrāj or ‘Report about the Ascension’. These two reports, even though transmitted in various forms, have a common trait in their amplified versions which consists of a bipartite structure with an ascending movement in the first part, leading to a certain critical culmination point, or even a deadlock, a descending movement in the second part, leading to the gradual solution.

Let us first look at the ḥadīth al-shafāʿa, and its importance for ʿAṭṭār. The report tells us that, on the Day of the Last Judgement, man will ask various prophets to intercede for him with God. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus will be ad-dressed; but their responses will be negative. Each of them will answer to the effect that he is not capable of interceding on man’s behalf because of this or that sin (with the exception of Jesus, who is without sin also according to Muslim belief). On each occasion man will be sent on to another prophet, and finally, it will be Jesus who will advise man to ask Muḥammad, who will then intercede for him.

In the version of this ḥadīth cited by al-Bukhārī in the Kitāb al-tawḥīd, the report has a second part, in which Muḥammad describes his dialogue with God. In response to each successive intercession, God orders him, first of all, to remove from hell those in whose hearts there is as much belief as a grain of barley; then, those in whose hearts there is as much belief as a mustard seed; and finally, after the last intercession, those in whose heart there is the tiniest grain of a mustard seed of belief.³ Here we encounter the repetitive structure of a sacred Islamic text showing its typical intensification, each successive degree surpassing the preceding one.

ʿAṭṭār has made use of the ḥadīth al-shafāʿa in his Muṣībat-nāma , or ‘Book of Adversity’, or rather, this particular ḥadīth inspired him to create a much more extensive repetitive structure. In this epic poem, the mystic’s soul or thought is presented as a pilgrim (sālik-i fikrat) traversing the cosmos with its astral spheres, and then the metaphysical cosmos of the Islamic tradition. Accompanied and instructed by a spiritual teacher, he passes through forty stations corresponding to the forty days of a mystical retreat (chilla). On his way, he encounters and converses with various cosmic beings, physical and mythical, to whom he puts various questions: the Archangels, the Bearers of the celestial Throne, the Throne itself, the Footstool (kursī), the Table of Destiny, the Writing Reed (qalam), Paradise and Hell, Heaven, Sun and Moon, the Four Elements (Fire, Wind, Water, Earth), the Mountain, the Ocean, the three Kingdoms of Nature (Minerals, Plants, Animals, with special sections for birds and wild animals), Satan, the Spirits, Man, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, Muḥammad, the Senses, Imagination, Reason, the Heart and the Soul.

On each occasion, the pilgrim starts with a captatio benevolentiae, enumerating the merits of the being or the person addressed, then he formulates his wish and receives a negative response; each addressee explains its/his incapacity to help with its/his own difficulties.

As in the ḥadīth which serves as a model, it is only through the encounter with Muḥammad that things change. The deadlock gives way as the impasse opens: instead of giving a confused answer, the Prophet refers the pilgrim back to his own interior being. It is there, in his own soul that he will finally find what he has been searching for.⁴ The repetitive structure of this narrative reflects the lived repetition of outer or inner experiences, whether during the so-called dhikr, the meditation of Sufi groups where certain formulas are repeated possibly several hundred times, or during the forty days’ retreat, which in a way is an extended dhikr. However, the fasting that is normally practised during a chilla may produce quite extraordinary psychic states, in fact, forms of ecstasy, with experiences that one is tempted to call para-psychological.⁵

The second ḥadīth that is mentioned above, which is the report about the ascension of Muḥammad, functions as a substructure to the best of ʿAṭṭār’s epic poems, the Manṭiq al-ṭayr, ‘The Language of the Birds’, or as this Qurʾānic expression is now usually translated, ‘The Conference of the Birds’.⁶ Let us first recall that in the Islamic tradition, two types of spiritual journey are known. The first is an ascension or vertical voyage through the spheres of the Ptolemaic cosmos, the prototype of which is the miʿrāj of the Prophet. The second is, as it were, a horizontal voyage, based upon an interior or metaphysical geography.

In the case of the Manṭiq al-ṭayr, ʿAṭṭār drew his inspiration from two narrative sources to do with an allegorical voyage of birds. One is the ‘Tale of the Birds’ by Ibn Sīnā, the other a somewhat similar work by Muḥammad Ghazālī, translated from Arabic into Persian by his brother Aḥmad Ghazālī....