Sufi poetry :the real method of propagation

SUFI POETRY: THE REAL
METHOD OF PROPAGATION
PG Dissertation submitted to Darul Huda Islamic University in
fulfillment of requirements for the award of the degree of
Moulavi Fadhil Al-Hudawi
Submitted by
ABDUL VAHAB.P
Guided by
Prof. A.P. MUSTHAFA MUHYIDDIN HUDAWI, AROOR
DEPARTMENT OF DA’WA AND COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS
DARUL HUDA ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY, CHEMMAD
MALAPPURAM, KERALA, 676306
JANUARY 2012
2
SUFI POETRY: THE REAL
METHOD OF PROPAGATION
Submitted by
ABDUL VAHAB.P
Guided by
Prof. A.P. MUSTHAFA MUHYIDDIN HUDAWI, AROOR
DEPARTMENT OF DA’WA AND COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS
DARUL HUDA ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY, CHEMMAD
MALAPPURAM, KERALA, 676306
JANUARY 2012
3
“Like the pupil, you are covered from my sight
You are the light for which the eyes are in seek
Nearer than the veins nevertheless this distance
Oh! Almighty Allah how far you are”
(Akbar Alahebadi)
4
APPROVAL CERTIFICATE
I certify that I have supervised and read this study and that in my opinion; it conforms
to acceptable standards of scholarly presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and
quality, as a dissertation for the award of the degree of Moulavi Fadhil Al-Hudawi
Prof.A.P.Musthafa Muhyiddin Hudawi, M.A. Aroor
Guide
I certify that this dissertation was submitted at the department of “Da’awa and
Comparative Religions” to be considered for the partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the award of degree of Moulavi Fadhil Al-Hudawi
Prof.M.K.Ali Maulavi. Iringalloor
Class in-Charge, Department of “Da’wa and Comparative Religions”
Received to be sent for evaluation on (………………………………)
Office of Academic Affairs (signature and seal)
5
DECLARATION
I hereby declare that this dissertation is the result of my own investigations, except
where otherwise stated. I also declare that it has not been previously or concurrently
submitted as a whole for any other degrees at DHIU or other institutions.
ABDUL VAHAB.P
(Signature) Date: 01/01/2012
6
COPY RIGHT DECLARATION
DARUL HUDA ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY, MALAPPURAM, INDIA
DECLARATION OF COPYRIGHT AND AFFIRMATION OF FAIR USE OF
UNPUBLISHED RESEARCH
Copyright © 2012 by Abdul Vahab. P. All rights reserved.
SUFI POETRY: THE REAL METHOD OF PROPAGATION
No part of this unpublished research may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder except
as provided below.
 Any material contained in or derived from this unpublished
research may only be used by others in their writing with due
acknowledgement.
 DHIU or its library will have the right to make and transmit copies
(print or electronic) for institutional and academic purposes.
 The DHIU library will have the right to make, store in a retrieval
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by other universities and research libraries.
Signature:
ABDUL VAHAB.P
Date: 01/01/2012
7
Dedicated to
Dr. U bapUtty haji
who taught me the lessons of peace and
guided me to coast of consciousness.
abDUrahiMaN and hariS
MY beloved friends who had flown to heaven
in their eelier.
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AKNOWLEDGEMENT
This was a product of research, which held by a keen willing from me
to know about the role of Sufi poems in preaching Islam throughout the world and
inform others about it. When I read the famous kitab‘kashful Mahjoob’ of Ali bin
Othman Hujwiri and looked at his important lines “Sufism was a reality without name
and now Sufism is a name without reality”, I was so eager to find out the role of Sufis
in propagating Islam. When I started my study, I found so many Sufi poets who shined
in the world of Sufism and led lakhs of people into the peaceful coast of Islam
through Sufism. Then I began to research about the reality of Sufi poems and its role
in preaching Islam.
Now I praise the almighty God who blessed me to complete my
research and helped me giving physical and mental energy and dodging me from the
tired situations. I can’t find the words to thank my guide and my teacher too Usthad
A.P. Musthafa Muhyiddin Hudawi who gave me good guidance for completing my
dissertation, edited it carefully and encouraged me to complete it.
I am gratefully thanking my Usthad U.P. Abdurahiman (Manhar)
Hudawi (Aligarh, New Delhi) who sent me so many books as I needed and motivated
me to research in this subject and Dr. Bahauddin Hudawi (Director, National
Institution for Islamic and Contemporary studies, DHI University) who helped me to
re-read my dissertation and gave me so many supports. I thankfully remember Usthad
N.K Muhammad Hudawi (Qatar) and Usthad E.K. Basheer Hudawi (U.A.E) who
inspired me to research about this subject and helped me in all of my efforts and are
leading me now too in my future planning.
I am admiringly memorizing Usthad T.K.M Rafi Hudawi (S.Arabia),
Usthad Ibrahim Hudawi (Principal, M.I.A College, Ponnani), and Usthad Rafiq
Hudawi (U.A.E) who helped me in my all endeavors and urged me in my learning
journey. I thanks Usthad Ali Moulavi Irigalloor (Head of Department of Da’awa and
Comparative Religions, DHI University), Usthad Anas Hudawi (Assistend head of
Department Of Da’awa and Comparative Religions, DHI University) who gave me
brainwave in my efforts.
9
I am auspiciously remembering Usthad Zainul Ulama Charussery
Zainuddin Musliyar (Pro Chancellor, DHI Universiy, Chammad), Usthad Dr.
Bahauddin Muhammad Nadwi (Vice Chancellor, DHI University), Usthad K.C.
Muhammad Baqawi (PG Students Dean, DHI University) and Usthad Ishaq Baqawi
(Principal, Degree Block, DHI University) who became a turning point in my life. I
gratefully thanks to Dr. Zubair Hudawi Chekannur (Registrar, DHI University), Dr.
Faisal Hudawi Mariyad (Assistant Professor, Aligarh Off campus Malappuram),
K.T.Haris Hudawi Parappuram (Hamdard, New Delhi) and Jabir Hudawi (Malasia)
who gave sufficient guidance for conducting dissertation.
I am kindly thanking to my mother and father who admitted me in
Maunathul Islam Arabic College, an affiliated Under Graduate College of Darul
Huda Isalmic University, so gave me a golden opportunity to be a little star in the
educational field, otherwise I ensure that I will be a local employee in my locality and
gave me all supports and inspirations with their lovely hearts. I thanks to my brothers
and sisters who gave me mental and financial support in my study tour of eleven
years.
Therefore, there are so many hearts that I am greatly indebted to them
because of their supports and inspirations for my educational journey and this
dissertation. I am thanking all of them, praying, “May almighty Allah bless them and
he may include all of us in his great paradise”.
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CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... 12
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 14
CHAPTER 1
SUFI POETRY IN VARIOUS STANCES ....................................................................... 19
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 20
Qur’anic Poetry ............................................................................................................. 22
Sufi poetry: the appearance of intelligence .................................................................. 23
Sufi Poetry and the Game of Words ............................................................................. 26
Sufi Poetry as a Spiritual Way ...................................................................................... 28
Poetry: the Calmness of the Soul ...................................................................................... 32
Poetry and the Illiteracy of the Prophet (S.A.W) ......................................................... 35
Sufi Poetry: the Language of the Love ......................................................................... 38
CHAPTER 2
AUTHORSHIP IN SUFI POETRY .................................................................................. 49
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 50
Problems of Authorship and Sufi Poetry...................................................................... 50
Problems in Sufi Authorship ........................................................................................ 51
Sufi Poetry as Text ........................................................................................................ 54
Assumption of Poetic Production in Sufism ................................................................. 55
A. Methods of Poetic Production: Virtual, Real .................................................... 55
B. Quantity of Creativity........................................................................................ 56
The Practices and Processes of Sufi Poetry Production ............................................... 56
A. Motives for the Production of Poetry ................................................................ 57
B. Poetic Production in the Virtual Mode ............................................................. 57
C. Poetic Production in the Real Mode .................................................................. 59
The Nature of Meaning in Sufi poetry .......................................................................... 62
Some Remarks on Creativity, Originality, Evaluation, and Attribution ..................... 63
Concept of Sufi Poet in the Eyes of Sufis ...................................................................... 65
The Formation of the Inter Author .............................................................................. 66
Inter Author and Inter Text: Emic and Etic ................................................................ 66
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CHAPTER 3
JALALUDDIN RUMI AND HIS CONTRIBUTIONS FOR SUFI POETRY ................. 68
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 69
Condition of the World in Rumi’s Period .................................................................... 69
The Death of Jalaluddin Rumi...................................................................................... 75
The Masnawi: ‘the Qur’an of Persia’ ........................................................................... 76
The contents of Masnawi .............................................................................................. 80
CHAPTER 4
ABDUL WAHAB AL BAYATHI: A REAL SUFI POET ............................................... 83
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 84
The Contents of Al Bayathi’s Poetry ............................................................................ 87
Criticism on al-Bayathi ................................................................................................. 91
Literary Sufism in al-Bayathi’s ‘Adhabul Hallaj’........................................................ 96
CHAPTER 5
INFLUENCE OF SUFI POETRY IN THE FOLK TRADITION OF INDO-PAKISTAN
AND MEDIEVAL PERIOD ........................................................................................... 103
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 104
Shah Abdul Lathif and his Activities .......................................................................... 108
Al Hallaj and Ibnu Arabi ............................................................................................ 114
Allama Iqbal and Amir Khusrau................................................................................ 116
Shushtari and Medieval Sufi Poetry ........................................................................... 117
Contents of Shushtari’s Poem ..................................................................................... 121
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 124
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 125
WEBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................... 127
GLOSSARY .................................................................................................................... 128
APPENDIX ..................................................................................................................... 131
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ABSTRACT
TOPIC: SUFI POETRY: THE REAL METHOD OF PROPAGATION
No discussion of the Islamic propagation will be complete without
mentioning the Sufi poetry and its vital role, which has played in the ground of Islam
and Sufism. There are so many Sufi poets among Sufi scholars even in Sahaba. They
were preaching Islam and Sufism throughout the world attracting the people by their
Sufi poems, which will increase the remembrance of almighty Allah.
When we look at the history of the countries like India, we can see that
the Sufi poets like Sheikh Nizamuddin Auliya, Amir Khusrau, Sheikh Mueenuddin
Chishti and Sheikh Ahmed Raza Khan were guiding the people with a spiritual
leadership in all of their reforms and social activities. We can see famous Sufi poet
Abdul Wahab al Bayathi standing out of other Sufi poets.
The Masnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi, Manthiquthair of Fariduddin Attar,
Rubai’yath of Umar Qayyami, Burda of Imam Buswiri and Manqhid of Imam Gazali
(R) are some famous Sufi poetry, which led the people into the real way of Sufism
and helped them to know the real meaning of Islamic doctrines. Then we can
understand the influence of Sufi poetry in preaching Islam and we can recognize that
only Sufi poetry can realize the real propagation in this modern age.
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الملخّص
الموضوع : الشعر الصوفي :أسلوبٌ حقییقيّ للدّعوة الإسلاميّ
وأن مناقشة الدعوة الإسلامیة لا تكمل من دون الإشارة إلى الشعر الصوفي
ودوره الحیوي الذي اضطلع بھ في أرض الإسلام والصوفیة. وشعراء الصوفیة كثیرة بین
العلماء الصوفیین حتى في الصحابة. فإنھم كانوا یعظون الناس باشعارھم الصوفیة التي تزید من
ذكر الله عز وجل إلى الإسلام والتصوف في جمیع أنحاء العالم.
فإذا نظرنا إلى أمور الدول كالھند نرى الشعراء الصوفیّین كولیّى الله نزام
الدین, أمیر خسرو,الشیخ معین الدین جشتي والشیخ أحمد رزا خان قد قادوا الناس بسیادتھم
الصوفیّة في أعمالھم الإجتماعیّة والثقافیّة بالنشاط و الرغبة. ونرى عبد الوھاب البیاتي یختلف
من سائر الشعراء الصوفیة.
فإنّ مثنوي لجلال الین رومي و رباعیات لعمر قیّام و منطق الطیر لفرید الدین
عطارو بردة للإمام بوصیري و منقد للإمام الغزالي كانت أعظم كتب الأشعار الصوفیة اللتي
أدّت الناس إلى إمتیاز حقیقة التصوّف و أفكار إلإسلام الزكیّة. فنمكن أن نفھم تأثیر الشعر
الصوفیة في الدعوة الإسلامیّة و نقرّ بأنّ الشعر الصوفيّ وحده یمكن بتحقیق الدعوة الإسلامیّة في
العصر الراھن.
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INTRODUCTION
Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) completed the preaching of Islam in
“Hajathul Wad’a” and ordered his followers (R) “presenter must apprise the
absentee”. Then they recognized it and spread the whole world preaching Islam. They
realized the Qur’anic verse “invite all to the way of thy lord by wisdom and beautiful
preaching, quarrel with them in a way that is better”.1
The lamp of Islam shined all over the world. And so many empires and
nations like Kisra and Qaiser became under Islam. As the century changes, Muslims
also began changing. In addition, Islamic doctrines derived as many arts like, Tafseer,
Hadith, Fiqh, Thaswawuf (Sufism), Lughath, Balagha and Nahvu etc. Sufism is the
most important because it is a spiritual art and has connected to the God. In addition,
it was most influenced theme and most attracted in the minds of the people and
caused to convert into Islam.
Sufism was emerged in 3rd century as Islamic calendar and 9th century as
western calendar. There are so many definitions for it. Ali (R) said, “Sufism is
knowing Allah through the light of Allah”. Classical Sufi scholars have defined
Sufism as "a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away
from all else but God." Otherwise, in the words of Ahmad bin Ajiba, Sufism is "a
science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine,
purify one’s inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits.
According to some modern proponents, such as Idries Shah, the Sufi philosophy is
universal in nature, its roots predating the arising of Islam and the other modern
religions, similarly, some Muslims feel that Sufism is outside the sphere of Islam,
even though some scholars of Islam contend that it is simply the name for the inner or
mysterious dimension of Islam.
Scholars and adherents of Sufism sometimes describe Sufism in terms of
a threefold approach to God as explained by a tradition (hadeeth) attributed to the
1 (Sura: Nahl.125)
ادع إلى سبیل ربك بالحكمة والموعظة الحسنة وجادلھم بالتي ھي أحسن 0
15
Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W), “The Shariath is my words, the tariqath is my actions,
and the haqiqath is my interior states". Sufis believe the shariath, tariqath and
haqiqathth are mutually interdependent. The tariqath, the ‘path’ on which the mystics
walk, has been defined as ‘the path which comes out of the Shariath, for the main
road is called shar’a, the path, tariq.’ No mystical experience can be realized if the
binding injunctions of the Shariath are not followed faithfully first. The path,
tariqath, however, is narrower and more difficult to walk. It leads the adept, called
salik (wayfarer), in his sulook (wayfaring), through different stations (maqamath)
until he reaches his goal, the perfect thawheed, and the existential confession that God
is one.1
Almost all extant Sufi orders trace their chains of transmission (silsila)
back to Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) via his cousin and son-in-law Ali. The
Naqshbandi order is a notable exception to this rule, as it traces the origin of its
teachings from the Prophet Muhammad to the first Islamic Calipha Abu Bakr. Among
early Sufi orders were the Muhasibis who were the followers of Abdulla Haris bin
Asad al Muhasibi, the Qassaris of Umar al Qassari, Junaidis of Junaidul Baqhadadi,
Nuris of Abul Hasan Nuri, Sahlis of Shah Abdullah Tastari, Hakimis of Ali al Hakim
al Tirmidhi, Kharazis of Abu Said Kharazi, Sayyaris of Abu Abbas Sayyari of Merv
and Tayfaris of Abu Yazid Tayfar Bistami. The Hulutis got their name from the
doctrine of Hulul, and followers of Hallaj were called Hallajis2
The first major Sufi order was the Qadiri order established by Sheikh
Abdul Qadir Jeelani (470hi-561hi/AD1077-AD1166) of Baghdad and is called Pir
Dastagir and Ghausul A’zam for his ecstatic utterance “my foot is on the neck of
every Sufis”. The Chishti order produced by great Sufi masters including Baba
Farid of Panjab, Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, hazrath Nizamuddin Auliya,
Naseeruddin Chiragh Dilli and Alawuddin Sabir of Kaliya. The Suhrawardi order
revolves around the teachings of Abu Najib Suhrawardi (d.1168 AD) who was a
1 http//:Wikipedia/Islam and Sufism
2 Ali bin Uthman Hujwiri, Kashful Mahjub, translated by R.A. Nicholson, Adam Publishers, Delhi,
2006
16
disciple of Ahmad Gazali, the younger brother of the founder of Sufi Literature and
the great Sufi philosopher Imam Gazali (305hi-450hi).
The Yasawi order was its name was derived from Khaja Ahmad Yasawi
(d.1166AD) who came from Yasi in Khazakistan. The Kubraviya Sufi order was
established by Sheikh Najmuddin Kubra (d.1220 AD) of central Asia. The Rifai
order was founded by Sheikh Ahmad Rifai (d.1122 AD) of Basra in Iraq. As the
maulawi order crystallized in Turkey around the great Sufi poet Maulana Jalaluddin
Rumi (1207AD-1273AD) the Tijani order was established by Sheikh Abbas Ahmad
ibn al Tijani (d.1815AD) in Algeria, has recently spread to South Africa and North
America. And the famous Shadili order was founded by Sheikh Abdul Hasan Ali
Shadili of Morocco (d.1258), a disciple of Abdullah Harazim who was a follower of
famous African Sufi Abu Madyan (d.1198).
It is being said among historians that Sheikh Imam Gazali (Q.S)
collected the Sufi doctrines and made it in a written form, then Sheikh Abdul Qadir
Jeelani (Q.S) preached the people with such doctrines and purified them and after
them, Sheikh Swalahuddin Ayyubi (Q.S)urged people to fight against the foes of
Islam and led them in crusades against Christians.
No discussion of Sufism will be complete without mentioning the Sufi
poetry. Because Sufi poetry is in concert the Sufism and vice-versa. And the Sufi
poets had played a vital role in preaching Islam throughout the world. They used the
psychological logics in their preaching missions. Poems and songs are the siblings of
men and women. The lips of a person will be buzzing a poem or humming a song in
his free time and the time of works like washing and bathing. And he will think its
meanings. Then if it is a Sufi poem or a spiritual song, he will feel its importance and
it will guide him into the commemoration of almighty God. Thus, he will be attracted
by such Sufi poems and it escorts him into the world of Sufism.
There are so many Sufi poets mentioned in the history. Ali (R), Bilal (R),
Salmanul Fraisi (R), Ammar bin Yasir (R) and Ka’ab bin Zuhair (R) were the Sufi
poets from Sahaba. And from early Sufis Uwaisul Qarni (d. 728), Hasanul Basari
17
(d.728), Habib Ajmi (d.738AD), Ibrahim bin Adham (d.790), Rabiathul Adawiya
(d.801AD), Ma’roof Kharki (d.815), Sayyid Nafisa (d.824)Fathima Nishapuri
(d.838AD), Dhunnon Misri (d.859AD), Harisul Muhasibi (d.857AD), Abul Hasan
Sari Saqthi (d.867AD), Abu Yazidul Bisthami (d.874AD), Abdullah Tasturi
(d.896AD), Abul Hasan Nuri (d.907AD), Junaidul Bagdadi (d.910AD), Mansoorul
Hallaj (d.922AD), Abu Bakar Shibili (d.946AD), Abul Hasan Kharqani (d.1033),
Abu Said bin Abi Khair (d.1049AD), Ibnu Arabi (d.1240AD) and Ali bin Uthman
Hujwiri Datt Ganji Baksh (d.1071AD) were famous early Sufis who preached Islam
through the Sufi thoughts including Sufi poems.
There were Sufi poets in Chishti Sufi order like Khaja Mueenuddin
Chishti (d.633Hi/1236AD), Quthubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki (d.635Hi/1237AD), Sufi
Hamiduddin Nagauri (d.673Hi/1274AD), Baba Farid Ganje Shakar
(d.644Hi/1265AD), Sahiba Bibi Zilaikha (d.658Hi/1260AD), Hazrath Nizamuddin
Auliya (d.725Hi/1325AD), Hazrath Naseeruddin Chiragh Dilli (d.757Hi/1375AD),
Hazrath Amir Khusrau (d.725Hi/1375AD), Bibi Fathima Sam (d.644Hi/1246AD),
Makhdoom Alauddin Sabir Kaliyari (d.690Hi/1291AD), Khaja Banda Nawaz
Gesadaraz (d.825Hi/1422AD), Sheikh Burhanuddin Gharib (d.737Hi/1337AD),
Sheikh Salim Chishti (d.979Hi/1572AD), Sheikh Muhammad Farhad
(d.1135Hi/1723AD), Sheikh Kareemullah (d.1142Hi/1729AD) and Waris Shah
(d.1203Hi/1798AD).
And from Suhrawardis, Qazi Hamiduddin Nagauri (d.643Hi/11245AD),
Sheikh Bahauddin Zakariya (d.720Hi/11262AD), Sheikh Makhdoom Samiuddin
(d.901Hi/11496AD), Sheikh Jamali (d.942Hi/1536AD), Shah Alam
(d.880Hi/1475AD) and Shah Abdul Lathhef Bhitai (d.1165Hi/1752AD) were famous
Sufi poets. Thus, Sheikh Shahul Hamid (d.977Hi/1570AD), Mian Mir
(d.1045Hi/1635AD), Mullah Shah Abdul Haq Muhaddith Dehlavi
(d.1052Hi/1642AD), Sulthan Babu (d.1102Hi/1691AD), Jahanara
(d.1092Hi/1681AD) and Balha Shah (d.1181Hi/1768AD) were Sufi poets from
Qadiris.
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There were Sufi poets in Naqshabandis also like Khaja Baqi Billah
(d.1012Hi/1785AD), Sheikh Ahmad Sarhindi (d.1034Hi/1624AD), Shah Waliyullah
(d.1176Hi/1762AD), Mirza Jaane Janan Shaheed (d.1195Hi/1781AD) and Khaja
Mir Dard (d.1199Hi/1785AD). And Sheikh Alam Nund Rishi (d.842Hi/1439AD),
Zainuddin Rishi (d.853Hi/1420AD), Bamuddin Rishi (d.823Hi/1420AD) and Baba
Rishi (d.986Hi/1577AD) were famous Sufi poets from Rishis.
There are so many Sufi poets in various nations who led the people in their
struggles and battles. Sheikh Swalahuddin Ayyubi and Sheikh Umar Mukhtar
were Sufi poets led the Muslims in the battles against the enemies of Islam like
Christians and fascists. When we look at the history of the countries like India, we can
see that the Sufi poets like Sheikh Nizamuddin Auliya, Amir Khusrau, Sheikh
Mueenuddin Chishti, Sayyid Zaidalawi Mampuram, Sayyid Umar Qazi and Sheikh
Ahmed Raza khan were guiding them with a spiritual leadership in all of their reforms
and social activities. Ibrahim Ibnu Adham was a Sufi poet who led a large number of
emperors. We can see famous Sufi poet Abdul Wahab al Bayathistanding out from
other Sufi poets.
Then the Sufi poetry had played a vital role in preaching Islam. Because
when the poem clarifies the love for almighty God, the spectator of that poem will fall
in love with God and he will reach into the world of Sufism. In addition, he knows the
real doctrines of Islam and real meanings of Sufism. Moreover, that will cause the
preaching of Islam easily and in accurate way. Through the coming chapters we can
be aware of such realities and imbibe the honey from the flower of Sufi poetry.
19
CHAPTER 1
SUFI POETRY IN VARIOUS STANCES
20
Introduction
At a first reading, the Qur’an does not seem to favor poets. Surah 26,
entitled “The Poets” (al-Shu’ara’), concludes with four verses that appear to contain
strong words against poetry:
“And the poets (the deviators follow them), Sees thou not that they
wander in every valley, And that they say that which they do not? Except those who
believe and do good and remember Allah much, and defend themselves after they are
oppressed. And they, who do wrong, will know what final place of turning they will
turn back.”1
The real meaning of the poets in this verse is the poets who opposed the
prophet (S.A.W) and tried to blame him through their poems. Patrick Laude says in his
famous book ‘Singing the Way’ that these verses should therefore not be read as a
reflection of poetry as such, as is moreover clearly indicated by the “exception” (illa
lladhina amanoo wa ‘amilu sswalihathi, “except those who believe and perform good
deeds”). Actually, there were among the Prophet’s contemporaries, poets such as
Hassan ibn Thabit who put their talents in the service of Islam.2 Moreover, as
Toshihiko Izutsu has demonstrated in his works on the Qur’an, the Islamic revelation
was, in a certain sense, circumstantially situated within a poetic context that was
conducive to it. Some major Qur’anic themes and expressions can be interpreted as a
spiritual counterpoint and a response to pre-Islamic poetry.3 In addition, the linguistic
usage of Arabic words in pre-Islamic poetry has become in Islam a basic principle of
Qur’anic commentary (thafsir).4
1 The Holy Qur’an, trans. Maulana Muhammad Ali, pp. 224-27. (surah: Shu’ara.224-226)
والشعراء یتبعھم الغاوون 0 ألم تر أنھم في كل واد یھیمون 0 وأنھم یقولون ما لا یفعلون 0
2 See Anne-Marie Schimmel, As Through a Veil, Mystical Poetry in Islam, p. 14.
3 Commenting on the pessimistic conception of earthly life that prevails in pre-Islamic poetry, Izutsu
states as follows: “It is important to remark also that this bitter consciousness of the absolute
impossibility of finding ‘eternity’ in this world was at once the dead end into which heathenism drove
itself and the very starting point from which Islam took its ascending course” (Ethico-Religious
Concepts in the Qur’an, p. 48).
4 “Ibn ‘Abbas … is given the credit for having emphasized one of the basic principles of ‘ilm altafsir
which has remained important to this day, namely, that the meaning of words, especially of unusual
words in the Qur’an ought to be traced back to their usage in the language of pre-Islamic poetry”
(Ahmad Von Denffer, ‘Ulum al-Qur’an, p. 126).
21
In spite of these qualifications, it should be added, on a more profoundly
spiritual plane, that the reproach of “wandering” that is addressed to poets in the
aforementioned verses points to the lack of direction that characterizes poetry in the
absence of faith or contemplative intellection. Moreover, a poetry that is disconnected
from a sense of the Ultimate Reality reveals its futility in that it entails spiritual
“hypocrisy” by positing two separate and irreconcilable realities, that of “saying”
(yaquluna) and that of “doing” (yaf’aluna). Divorced from “doing,” “saying” amounts
to little more than nothing; it is deprived of ontological and spiritual reality and
therefore pertains to the domain of “vain talk” (batil). This “vain talk” is the
fundamental opposite of the Qur’an, since it is basically deprived of any ontological
reality.
As with the Greek poets at the time of Plato, the deluded poets whom the
Qur’an chastises are producers of a phantasm tic reality, which they substitute for
God’s works. Given the tension between the poetic power of the Qur’an as well as the
poetic vigor of the Bedouin culture, that envelops its outer manifestation. As well as the
fundamental “association” (shirk) and cancellation of transcendence that is the deadly
bent of the worldly poetry of the time, there is no category of human activity (painting
excepted) that is considered with more ambivalence than poetry.
Poetry was associated with an excitement of the individual ego and
worldly life (as typified by wealth and wine) that is the very antithesis of contemplative
extinction. Moreover, passions and occult powers seemed to rule poetical practice, and
the latter was therefore professed as a potential (if not actual locus of rebellion against
God’s law).
On the other hand, Islam found consonant elements in the moral
undertones and modes of expression of pre-Islamic Jahiliyah poetry. Accordingly, and
with a keen sense of awareness of the extraordinary creativeness of Muslim civilization
in the domain of poetic expression, a foremost expert on Islam such as Anne-Marie
Schimmel has justifiably asserted that “despite the attempts by later poets to rehabilitate
poetry and despite the fact that ‘no people in the world are so moved by the word as
the Arabs’ (Philip Hitti), it cannot be denied that the words of Surah 26 point to an
22
important truth, namely, the strong tension between the words of revelation and the
words of poetry.”1
Qur’anic Poetry
The level of inspiration of the Qur’an is taken by Muslims to be directly
reflected in the poetic incomparability (i’jaz) of the Qur’anic text. In this connection,
the Qur’an may be considered as the major “miracle” of Islam. On the other hand, the
permeating of poetic inspiration in the pre- Islamic era allows for the possibility of
dismissing the Revelation as one more occurrence of the verbal magic of poetry. Poetry
is therefore both dignified and rejected, and in this respect, the Qur’an is both a
reference and a counter-model for poetry.
The positive and “prophetic” status of poetry is primarily actualized in
Islamic spirituality: the intimate relationship between poetry and the Qur’an is clearly
highlighted although not exclusively so by the fact that poetic texts are often
intertwined with Qur’anic quotations. It would be more accurate to consider these
quotations as being integrated into these contemplative poems in a way that reflects a
profound interiorization of the Qur’anic revelation.2 Qur’anic “poetry” has become the
very substance of the contemplative soul to such an extent that it becomes, so to speak,
the very texture of its utterances.
In Islam, the contemplative poetry of the mystics is both a commentary
upon the Qur’an and a kind of prolongation of the sacred text; the integration of Sufi
poetry along with Qur’anic passages within the mystics’ ceremonial gatherings bears
witness to this fact. The case of Rumi is particularly enlightening in this regard since
much of his poetry is interspersed with Qur’anic passages, such that Anne Marie
Schimmel has argued, “it would be useful to read Rumi’s poetry as a kind of thafsir, a
commentary on the Koran, and to reconstruct his interpretations from the numerous
quotations.”3 In parallel, some experts have been able to show that thousands of verses
1 Anne-Marie Schimmel, As Through a Veil, p. 13.
2 “Being the inner dimension of the Islamic revelation, Sufism is related in both form and content to the
Noble Quran, and the language of the Sacred Text, its rhythms and rhymes, its metaphors and symbols,
has continued to echo in Sufi literature throughout the centuries” (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Sufi
Essays, p. 171).
3 Anne-Marie Schimmel, I am Wind, You are Fire, The Life and Work of Rumi, p. 116.
23
from both the Diwan and the Mathnawi can be considered as translations of Qur’anic
verses into Persian poetry.1
Sufi poetry: the appearance of intelligence
In Islam, and particularly in the world of Sufism or taswawuf, the term
ayath refers both to the cosmic “signs” that are like the “signature” of God upon
Creation, and to the verses of the Qur’an. Intelligence (‘aql) isconceived as a
fundamentally contemplative faculty since it is manifested primarily in the bility to read
these ayath. The unbeliever is repeatedly characterized in the Qur’an as one who is
unable to read the signs of God on the horizon; this incapacity being both the cause and
the consequence of his lack of Islam, or “submission” to God.
The Qur’an and the book of Creation are the two fundamental aspects of
the Word of God. They are as “poetry” in the highest sense. Logic and poetry are
therefore intimately connected as complementary modes of knowing in Islam: they
both manifest the Divine Intelligence in the realms of nature and language. Michel
Foucault’s concept of a “prose of the world” that would have the semantic
“transparence” of a book to be read should actually be prolonged here by that of a
“poetry of the world,” since the latter refers more explicitly to the idea of a qualitative
and orderly correspondence between nature and language. Seyyed Hossein Nasr
expresses the meaning of this correspondence in the following terms:
“According to the traditional doctrine, the inner reality of the cosmos,
which unveils itself to the inner eye or to intellectual vision for which the
inner eye is the instrument of perception, is based upon a harmony,
which imposes itself even upon the corporeal domain. This harmony is
moreover, reflected in the world of language, which is itself a reflection of
both the soul of man and of the cosmos.”2
1 “One of the greatest living authorities on Rumi in Persia today, Hadi Ha’iri, has shown in an
unpublished work that some 6,000 verses of the Diwan and the Mathnawi are practically direct
translations of Qur’anic verses into Persian poetry” (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Art and
Spirituality, p. 145).
2 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, pp. 88-9.
24
On its highest level, poetry therefore reproduces the qualitative order of
the cosmos. God can be contemplated both in the order of nature and in the harmonic
structures of poetic language.
As with the signs of God on the horizon, the phenomena that constitute
poetic language may be considered from two standpoints: they can be envisaged on the
one hand as a set of formal appearances and structures, as they may also be interpreted
in light of their inner significance. Islamic poetics therefore distinguishes between two
components of poetic expression: that of form (Surah) and that of meaning (Ma‘na). As
George Cave puts it:
“Surah means the appearance of the poem, and comprises all that is not
inherent in the meaning of the poem. By this is meant structure, metrical
arrangement, rhyme scheme, rhetorical devices, etc., in other words all
that can be concretely viewed and objectively treated. Ma‘na simply
means “meaning” or that which must be subjectively treated or intuited.”1
Notwithstanding its clarity and relevance, this definition may present the
inconvenience of lending itself to a misinterpretation of the two adverbs “objectively”
and “subjectively.” It would in fact be erroneous to reduce Ma‘na to a kind of
equivalent of “feeling” or “emotion”: if Ma‘na is to be “subjectively treated or intuited”
it is not by reason of its purely emotional character, but simply because the “meaning”
has to be apprehended by the intelligence and the sensibility of the auditor therefore
“subjectively” in order to be actualized.
Ma‘na is an inner reality whereas Surah is like the outer shell through
which the latter may manifest itself. Ma‘na is akin to the intelligible seal (eidos) that
informs the material substratum (hyle). The combinatory fusion of these two principles
is effected in a variety of proportions: the more clearly determinative Ma‘na is, the
more integrally the intelligible radiance of the poem may be unveiled:
As this impression of Ma‘na upon Surah increases, the external form
becomes transparent and reveals more readily its inner meaning.2
1 George Cave, Sufi Poetry, p. 3.
2 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 89.
25
As with the most expressive forms of human and natural beauty, the
poetic ideal is therefore one in which Surah has been completely crystallized by Ma‘na.
Sufi poetry is in no way intent on allowing language freedom from the intellective form
of dhawq, or intuitive taste of reality. A true poem is one in which a profound spiritual
intuition manifests itself in the perfect clothing of a prosodic gem. Mystical poets like
Rumi have utter disdain for poetry conceived as an art for art’s sake, as a formal
perfection in kind: “in face of meaning, what is form? Very contemptible.”1 If it is so, it
is most fundamentally because meaning is akin to God’s informing and intellective
power, or because, as William Chittick quite plainly puts it: “in the last analysis the
meaning of all things is God.”2 Poetry is a “logical” language, but one in which the
symbolic potentialities of the latter are brought to exceptional heights. Symbolic
meaning is a capacity to reveal the formless in and by a form. In this connection,
Seyyed Hossein Nasr quotes Jamias a poet who is most explicit about this union of
form and essence in poetry:
“What is poetry? The song of the bird of the Intellect.
What is poetry?
The similitude of the world of eternity.
The value of the bird becomes evident through it,
And one discovers whether it comes from the oven of a bath house
or a rose garden.
It composes poetry from the Divine rose garden;
It draws its power and sustenance from that sacred precinct.”3
Rumi emphasizes this parallel when longing for an expression that would
match bird songs in their “meaning” and not simply in their “form”:
“Birdsong brings relief
To my longing.
I am just as ecstatic as they are,
But with nothing to say!
Please, universal soul, practice
Some song, or something, through me!”4
1 Rumi, Mathnawi I. 3330, cited in William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, The Spiritual Teachings
of Rumi, p. 19.
2 William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, p. 19.
3 Jami, cited in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 91.
4 Rumi, Birdsong, trans. Coleman Barks, p. 13.
26
The spiritual implications of the contemplative function of poetry that
have just been sketched have been most suggestively encapsulated by Hafiz:
“Good poetry
Makes a beautiful naked woman
Materialize from words
Who then says,
With a sword precariously waving
In her hands,
“If you look at my loins
I will cut off your head,
And reach down and grab your spirit
By its private parts,
And carry you off to heaven,
Squealing in joy.”
Hafiz says,
“That sounds wonderful, just wonderful.”1
Sufi Poetry and the Game of Words
First, the experience of poetry implies the Ability of words to make
spiritual reality “materialize.” In other words, it is through words that contact is
effected with the “imaginable world” (‘alamul-khayal) where spiritual realities take on
form. The imaginable world (the locus of the images that are expressed by poetry) is
the intermediary realm that mediates between the supra-individual kingdom of the
Spirit and the zone of multiplicity and matter. On this imaginable level, the “beautiful
naked woman” is the most direct image of the hidden beauty of God, which intoxicates
those who contemplate it. Her nakedness is all the more significant in that poetry seems
to imply, by definition, a formal “clothing” of truth: good poetry proceeds in such a
way as to reveal naked reality through the “clothing” of words.
Poetry makes words translucent: it unveils the body of the goddess
through a dance of a thousand words. When actualized by words, this most direct image
of ecstasy and union with God is depicted as a terrible reality, through an evocation that
1 Hafiz, “That Sounds Wonderful,” cited in The Subject Tonight is Love, 60 Wild and Sweet Poems
from Hafiz, trans. Daniel Ladinsky, p. 32.
27
almost conjures up visions of the Goddess Kali, the destroyer. Beauty holds a sword as
an attribute of rigor and justice that will not tolerate any complacency or weakness.
Sufism, in its methodical or operative immersion, makes use of artistic
means to awaken and strengthen a psychophysical consciousness of the ovine that may
open body and soul to the irradiation of celestial archetypes. In this respect, the
contemplative role of poetry can be defined as a prolongation of the act of
remembrance through the invocation (dhikr) of the Name of God. Poetry, music, and
dance are particularly apt to foster this type of existential remembrance and they may
even be combined in the sama’, or session of the Maulavi and Arrahiyyah orders, the
former tracing its ceremonial practices to Jalaluddin Rumi.
Mystical verses from Rumi may thus be accompanied by melodies while
dervishes perform their traditional whirling dance. In such a context, poetry may be
deemed a prolongation of the Divine Name itself; the synthetic mode of presence
actualized by a Divine Name, whether it be the Supreme Name Allah or one of the
ninety-nine traditional names that express some of the countless qualities of the Divine,
is so to speak analytically unfolded in the poetical text.
The “centrifugal” creative motion that characterizes Sufi poetry can
therefore be characterized as an overflowing or outpouring of grace through the channel
of words. There is no trace of virtuosity in such a practice of poetry: the poet is to over
whelmed by the flow of images and words to be able to manipulate them in a technical
way. The formal cohesiveness and regularity of the poetry is reflection and
manifestation of qualitative perfection.
As Frithj of Schuon has pointed out, the art of poetry is characterized by
contrast with music as one in which the “essence” moves toward the form in order to
meet with it. The form is therefore like a kind of outer crystallization of the very
unfolding r “exteriorization” of these senses. In music on the other hand, it is rather the
form that moves towards the essence, the former echoing the “vertical music” of the
latter.
The exteriorization of the poem, which is the literary fruit of
contemplation and union with the Divine, is quite evidently not an end in itself. It is, to
28
use Schuon’s phrase, “exteriorization with a view to interiorization.” The
exteriorization that poetry implies must therefore be understood as a sort of
complementary realization that projects” the inward into the outward. It is in the sense
that Seyyed Hossein Nasr has perceived Shamsuddin al-Tabriz as a kind of catalyst who
prompted Rumi to “exteriorize” his purely interstate of being into contemplative
poetry.1
In such connection, mystics lean to highlight the “necessity” of “words,”
even though that necessity might be elsewhere denied by the same mystics in view of
the distance separating union from its utterance. Rumi may thus refer to poetic language
in an almost disparaging way, while writing elsewhere that “faith may be in the heart,
but if you do not express it in words, it has no profit.”2 In this sense poetry becomes an
occurrence of testimony, which is the very principle of belonging to Islam. A faith not
expressed in a testimony is not a fully “profitable” faith in the sense that it backs the
actualizing “magic” of the vow, while being incommunicable to others.
Sufi Poetry as a Spiritual Way
As Dana Wilde has rightly indicated,3 the actual reading aloud of poetry
entails a spiritual assimilation that is much stronger and much more direct than that
which would be offered imply the more discursive and indirect mode of silent reading.
Oral communication entails a more direct spiritual, and also anemic and physical,
imparting of reality than does the written word. In this sense, poetry may be considered
as the “wine” of Islam. There is a profound analogical correspondence between the
wines” of Christ’s blood and the “poetry” of the Qur’anic substance.
1 “It seems that Shamsuddin was a divinely sent spiritual influence which in a sense ‘exteriorized’
Rumi’s inner contemplative states in the form of poetry and set the ocean of his being into a motion
which resulted in vast waves that transformed the history of Persian literature” (Seyyed Hossein
Nasr, Jalaluddin Rumi: Supreme Persian Poet and Sage, p. 23).
2 Rumi, Fihi ma fihi, cited in William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, p. 269.
3 “Poetry can literally be intoxicating. A brief anecdote, one among many that might be told: Years ago
a couple of friends and I were reading poems of Robert Frost aloud in the living room, and although we
were temperately drinking black tea (not beer or wine as we well might have been), I began to feel
quite tipsy, the early sweet fuzzy stages of drunkenness that incite one to intensify the pleasure by
drinking more” (Dana Wilde, “Poetry and Sufism: A Few Generalities,”
www.unc.edu/depts/Sufilit/Wilde.htm).
29
The poet is also an auditor, in the sense that he may listen to the voice of
inspiration as he would listen to the voice of God speaking through him. In the Wasiyah
‘arusiyah, we read that the Sufi sheikh, when God speaks through his mouth, must
listen as if he were himself one of his own auditors. In fact, the all-pervasiveness of
God is the very key to the de-centering of the subject; for, as Rumi expresses it, “when I
write letters to my friends, He (the Beloved) is paper, pen and ink-well.”1
The poetic experience is therefore surprise and marvel: it points to a
transcendent voice that is the real “I” or the supreme Self or Witness (shuhud); or, as
Rumi puts it, “That voice which is the origin of every cry and sound: that indeed is the
only voice, and the rest are only echoes.”2 Sometimes, this metaphysical priority f the
Divine voice is a source of confusion for the Sufi poet who does not seem to retain a
clear perception f the respective identities of the speaker and the hearer. A poem of al-
Hallaj’s Qasideh highlights this kind of indecision and the disorienting inversion it
entails:
“Here I am, I am, my secret, my bliss
Here I am, here I am, my oral, my thought
I call you, no you call me, how can
I call you if you do not whisper to me?
O eye of my being’s eye, and of my wish
O my speech and my terms and my stammering.”3
The Qur’an states: “We are nearer to him (man) than is jugular vein”4,
whence a recognition that speech ultimately stems from that profoundly hidden source
of being which is the core of the self. It is when considered from the standpoint of this
immanent ocean of being that the work of poetry and all its components may be
referred to as being aspects f the Divine itself. Conversely, it could also be said that in
this respect poetry may constitute for the writer n experience of objectification and
extinction. This utterance becomes the center of his consciousness to the point of
making his ordinary self (nafs) peripheral. Rumi has emphasized this pervasive
1 Rumi, Diwan-i Shams-i Tabrizi 2251, cited in William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, p. 234.
2 Rumi, Mathnawi I.2107, cited in Rumi Daylight, trans. Camille and Kabir Helminski, p. 55.
3 Al-Hallaj, Selections from the Poems of Zuhair ibn Abi Sulma and Husain ibn Mansur al Hallaj,
trans. Arthur Wormhoudt, p. 79.
4(Sura: Q’af.16)
ولقد خلقنا الإنسان ونعلم ما توسوس بھ نفسھ ونحن أقرب إلیھ من حبل الورید 0
30
immanence of God n the very act of poetic creation, highlighting both the material
immanence and the productive efficiency of the Divine:
“And when I write a letter
To my beloved friends,
The paper and the inkwell,
The ink, the pen is He.
And when I write a poem
And seek a rhyming word
The one who spreads the rhymes out
Within my thoughts, is He!”1
“He” is the very substance and fundamental reality of all poetic
manifestation, just as He is also the reactive that is impending to all creation. To be a
poet, as to be an artist in general, ultimately consists in “participating” in the Divine
Act on a given level of being. The Divine Word as Act is the essence of poetic creation
in Sufism ; William Chittick has also underlined the importance of this reality for
Islam: “Moslem thinkers have always stressed the importance of God’s creative Word
in the natural order of the universe and man, just as they have emphasized the central
role of His written Word in guiding man to salvation.”2
The poet is not so much a designer as he is a transmitter of that which is
expressed through Him. A contemporary Sufi Master such as Sheikh Ahmad al-‘Alawi,
expresses in his Diwan this de-centering in the following distich:
Allah! Allah! I speak only of Him
My whole and only word is His Splendor.
(Nahnibihi, kulli nutqibisanahu)3
All contemplative utterances may ultimately be reduced to the Divine
Name, which is the essence of all orders; and the Divine Name is nothing other than the
very voice of God, the utterance of Reality.
Poetry may be considered as a means of bridging the gap of absence. The
Sufi way is often described as an alternation of contraction (abd) and expansion (bast),
1 Rumi, cited in Anne-Marie Schimmel, I am Wind You are Fire, p. 45.
2 William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, p. 268.
3 Ahmed Ben Mustapha al-‘Alawi, Extraits du Diwan, pp. 54-5.
31
these two states of the soul corresponding respectively to separation and union, or
absence and presence. As distinct from the Divine Substance, the soul of the
contemplative experiences separation and distance from God, fear and longing are two
most common expressions of this sense of absence. The soul is in a state of contraction
because it is “sent back” o to speak to its limited identity, severed from the Source that
gives being and life to it.
On the other hand, the soul may also experience a profound sense of union
and participation in the Divine life, which is the expansion of love that dispels
limitations and lifts the veil of separation. In such a state, the soul is so entreated by the
Divine presence that it cannot even reflect upon itself as a separate being. However,
given the rhythm of alternation that presides over all manifestation since the latter
cannot have the same degree being and permanence as God himself the soul is
necessarily subjected to variations that alternate between ‘abd’ and ‘bast’. Even in the
case of the highest contemplative mode of being and consciousness, the very
participation of the soul in the sequential nature of time and the fragmented reality of
manifestation entails some measure of anemic “unevenness” due to the unavoidable
consequences of the transcendence of the Divine. As Martin Lings puts it:
“Mystical systems are in agreement that for one who reaches the end of
the path itself in this life, the divine presence, which constitutes that end,
is a framework that admits of temporary “absences” of the Beloved,
although these are relative and illusory.”1
As an expression of separation from the One, poetry is at the same time a
way of experiencing His presence in a so to speak symbolic and indirect manner. A
poignant rye may sometimes fulfill this function, as in the Diwanof al-Hallaj:
“O surfeit of sadness, that I should forever
Be calling upon Thee as if I were far
Or as if Thou wert absent!”2
The visions of love that are immanent in the wording f the poem are not
only a discourse addressed to God, they are also an attempt at making Him present.
1 Martin Lings, “Mystical Poetry,” in The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: ‘Abbasid Belles-
Lettres, Julia Ashtiany et al. (ed.), p. 236.
2 Le Diwan d’al-Hallaj, 44, cited in Martin Lings, “Mystical Poetry,” p. 237.
32
We could also synthesize this function of poetry by relating it to that of the Divine
Name, which is invoked by the Muslim mystic. According to this contemplative
approach, God makes Himself present in His Name, and the contemplative may
participate in this presence through his invocation of the Name.1 God “bridges” the
gap between Himself and His creature by uttering His Name.
This statement is imminent in the sacred scripture of Islam in so far as the
name Allah is part of the Qur’an, and is actually considered by Sufis as constituting its
very essence. The whole tradition can be understood, in a certain sense, as the
outward manifestation of the Divine Name: from Allah to the testimony of faith, the
Shahadah, from the latter to the hole Qur’an, and from the sacred scripture to the
entire traditional world that derives from it, both directly and indirectly, Islam may be
interpreted as an outer and complex manifestation of the Word.
Poetry: the Calmness of the Soul
Poetry may be considered as a way of filling the gap that divides the
human soul from the Divine presence: we could say that this function of poetry is
similar to tashbih or analogy, i.e., to the mode of thinking and speaking based upon an
affirmative and symbolic definition of the One.
However, in keeping with the overall spiritual economy of Islam, Sufism
remains keenly aware of both dimensions of tanzih and tashbih, of “otherness” and
analogy. The latter refers to the continuity between God and the world, referring to its
symbolic and the aphonic dimension and being therefore related to an understanding of
poetry as “making odd present, “whereas tanzih establishes a clear distinction between
the One and His creatures, thus trussing he discontinuity between the Divine Essence
and manifested forms. The second perspective is decidedly emphasized in some of the
most elliptic expressions of Sufi gnosis, particularly in the Book of Spiritual stations
and in the Book of Spiritual Addresses by Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Jabbar al-Niffari (the
1 Louis Massignon, and after him Louis Gardet, have rejected the idea that this concept of the Name is
the result of a Hindu influence. In fact, as Anawati and Gardet point out, this idea refers to a
“specifically Semitic meaning attached to the value of the Name” (Cf. G.C. Anawati and Louis
Gardet, Mystique Musulmane, p. 199).
33
Mawqif Station) of the Ineffable in the Kitabal-Mawaqif is particularly interesting in
this respect:
“Expression is a swerving: when thou witnesses that which never changes,
thou wilt not swerve.
The divine word turns unto ecstasy: and using the divine word to induce
ecstasy turns unto the raptures induced by words.
Raptures induced by words are n infidelity according to definition.
Listen to no letter concerning me, and receive no information of me
from any letter.
Letter cannot inform of itself: how then should it tell of me?”1
Even though this text is not technically poetic, its aphoristic form is
parallel to the symbolic and the modality of contemplative poetry. The concise and
elliptic form of expression that is used by Niffari appears to being full consonance with
the fundamental tenet of his concept of language and expression. Whereas the word
may be conceived a priori s a way in which God reveals Himself to men through the
Scriptures and through His Name, thereby allowing for a sacramental participation of
mankind in His nature, it may also be envisaged, as it is here by Niffari, as a separative
reality that leads one astray from the One, causing the contemplative to “swerve”
instead of realizing the unity of being. As Rumi puts it, “although in one respect speech
removes veils, in en aspects it covers and conceals.”2 Words have more chance of
covering than unveiling precisely because hey most often proceed from a human
subject and not from the Divine Word. When stemming from the individual, words
encounter the ocean of dissimilitude, the gap between the many and the One.
The actual understanding of the linguistic, aesthetic, and poetic forms
presupposes a entering upon that which transcends all forms and all language. To be
“concentrated” upon the effable mounts to being conscious of its essence, i.e., its
formless root. By contrast, a relationship with language and particularly with poetic
language that is not rooted in a clear perception of the one can only be a source of
ignorance and straying.
1 -Niffari, Kitab al-Mawaqif, 4-8, in The Mawaqif and Mukhatabat of Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Jabbar
al-Niffari, ed. and trans. A.J. Arberry, pp. 69-70.
2 Rumi, Mathnawi I. 2973, cited in William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, p. 269.
34
Niffari says that the spiritual centering takes the form of a witnessing”
(Shahadah) in Islam that relates everything to its Source. The supreme Shahadah is a
witnessing of the ineffable (ma la yunqal) that is the precondition for the validity of all
other utterances. However, a true understanding of the limitless and inner meaning of
beings can only be reached through a consciousness of the ineffable:
“The ineffable causes thee to witness in everything my Self-revelation
towards it, and causes thee to fitness of everything the places of its
gnosis.”1
In the contemplative silence of pure consciousness, man witnesses God as
the Only Knower and everything as an ode of knowledge of Reality. Such a
“witnessing” can take place only through and in the ineffable, for any discourse would
necessarily introduce a duality that would sever the human self from the Divine Selfelevation.
In pure contemplation, man knows things as they are known by God and, in a
concomitant way, e then knows God as He is “known” by things in the form of their
archetypical necessity.
Niffari pursues his exposition of contemplative gnosis by referring to the
delicate relationship between writing and contemplation:
“Thou wilt write so long as thou reckons: when thou reckons no more,
then wilt thou write no ore.
When thou no more reckonest nor writest, I shall assign to thee a portion
of illiteracy: for the illiterate Prophet either writes nor reckons.
Neither write nor study nor reckon nor examine.
Study writes true and false Alike, and examination reckons taking and
leaving Alike.
He belongs not to me nor to my lineage who writes truth and falsehood,
and reckons taking and leaving.
Every scribe recites his scripture, and every reciter reckons his
recitation.”2
Writing and reckoning are intellectual activities that presuppose
multiplicity: the former takes place by virtue of the sense of multiplicity that is entailed
1 Al-Niffari, The Mawaqif and Mukhatabat, ed. and trans. A.J. Arberry, p. 69.
2 Al-Niffari, Kitab al-Mawaqif, 12-17, in The Mawaqif and Mukhatabat, ed. and trans. A.J. Arberry,
p. 70.
35
by the latter. The very act of reckoning presupposes a kind f quantitative and analytical
consideration of being that is infinitely transcended by its object. As Rumi also
expresses it:
“Speech is an astrolabe in its reckoning.
How much does it really know of the sky and the sun?
Or of that sky which holds this heaven as a speck;
And the Sun which shows this sun to be a grain of sand?”1
In addition to this “faltering” in the face of the Absolute, reckoning also
implies an individual subject who wants to account for realities for the sake of his own
sense of being and centrality; “every scribe” and “every exciter” limits reality by his
own “reciting” and his own “reckoning.” Writing implies truth and falsehood insofar as
it adulterates reality with representation; it cannot encompass the sphere of reality with
the lanimetric surface of its graphic wording. Similarly, reckoning presupposes more
and less, addition and subtraction, whereas everything is infinitely present in the
actuality of the Divine Ineffability. Such perspectives are therefore incompatible with
the simplicity and totality of the Supreme Subject, the essential.”
Poetry and the Illiteracy of the Prophet (S.A.W)
The mention of illiteracy, as opposed to computation and writing, is most
telling that it points both to the inner “virginity” of the Prophet (S.A.W) and to the
primacy of oral expression over the written word. The “illiteracy” of the Prophet is in
fact the passive or receptive dimension of his spiritual perfection. The “illiteracy” of the
Prophet (annabiyyul ummi) refers to the utter “poverty” of his soul before the divine
inspiration and command. If the Prophet was not illiterate, he would not be the perfect
recipient of the divine Word; human interferences would affect the integrity of the
Message. For that reason, writing may appear as a potential act of spiritual betrayal.
As a guarantee of fidelity and legitimacy that matters most of all, from a
human standpoint, is the integrity of the oral transmission (isnad). Even from a ritual
standpoint, “the whole experience of the Qur’an for Muslims remains to this day first of
all an auditory experience and is only later associated with reading in the ordinary sense
1 Rumi, Mathnawi II. 3013-15, cited in Rumi Daylight, trans. Camille and Kabir Helminski, p. 172.
36
of the word.”1 The superiority of the spoken word over the written word is most
profoundly connected to the intimacy of the divine Word with the heart of man when
the latter is in a state of primordial purity. In Mathnawi, Rumi says:
“The book of the Sufi is not black lines and words;
it is none other than the whitened heart which is like snow.”2
Beyond its aspect of graphic exteriority, writing becomes identified in its
essence with the very heart of the contemplative, but that heart is white as snow: it is
blankness and silence, a silence that is however vibrant with the Divine Word. Arberry
reminds us, in this connection, that at times “Rumi signed his verses with the soubriquet
Khamush, the Silent, a reference to the ineffable nature of the mysteries.”3
Symbolically and operatively speaking, the absence of writing is not so much a lack of
graphic representation as it is a lack of appropriation of the Divine that would result
from a sort affixation of consciousness. As Arberry very profoundly points out when
referring to Niffari’s doctrine of the letter (harf):
Letter does not reach Presence (hadrah), and the people of presence
transcend letter and banish it: those that depart from letter are the people of presence,
and those that have departed from themselves have departed from letter. God is nearer
than the letter, though it should speak, and He is farther than the letter, though it should
be silent: for he is the Lord of harf and ahruf.4
We have to note that the letters play a vital role in Islamic doctrines,
especially in Sufism. We can understand such things from the calligraphies of the
Qur’an and that of Hadith. The science of letters (ilmul huroof) is actually one of the
most central hermeneutic disciplines of Sufism: it is fundamentally based on the
correlation between Divine games and letter sand, operatively, upon the correlation
between letters and numeric values. It is noteworthy that, in the perspective of radical
gnosis which is Niffari’s, the theophanic letter becomes a blanket, as also is the name
1 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “Oral Transmission and the Book in Islamic Education: the Spoken and the
Written Word,” Journal of Islamic Studies 3:1 (1992):1.
2 Rumi, The Mathnawi of Jalalu’ddin Rumi, ed. and trans. R.A. Nicholson, pp. 40, 59.
3 A.J. Arberry, Mystical Poems of Rumi, p. 2.
4 A.J. Arberry (ed.), The Mawaqif and Mukhatabat, p. 22.
37
and even the meaning and the thing named since “when thou departest from meanings,
thou art inform My gnosis.”1
On a meticulous level, it is important to notice that, in the passage of
Niffari, which we have quoted above; the mystic appears to suggest that there exists a
profound solidarity between the letter and the self. The letter is not the “name” that was
taught by God to Adam (Qur’an, 2:31).2 By contrast with the “names” that were taught
to Adam in his state of primordial perfection, “letters” are utterly dependent upon the
individualized self; as a “separated” and rational being, the individualized self is
situated within the realm of limitations, determinations, and articulations that are part of
the world of relativity:
“I have joined every pair of letters with one of my qualities, and the
existences have been brought into existence through the qualities joining
them together.”3
To exceed letters therefore consists in transcending the domain of
exclusivity, a domain of differentiation whose unity is assured only by the “ineffable”
and by divine qualities. It is also in a certain sense to return to a primordial state of
perfection that precedes the descent habitué) into “water and clay” and the expulsion
from the Garden. In this sense, it is the realm of multiplicity as negation of Unity, not
as the phony.
The Qur’an also strongly emphasizes that this “settlement” in the
terrestrial world can only constitute an abode for an ephemeral time (2:36)4, therefore
giving a legitimacy o human terrestrial endeavors while being no less adamant to say
the least of the very constraining limits imposed upon these endeavors in light of the
primacy of transcendence and the hereafter.
Man remains as God’s caliphah or vice-regent of Creation. He is therefore
allowed to “live” and “settle” in the world in as much as he remembers who he is and
also that he must needs return to God. He is “real” because he still participates in the
1 Al-Niffari, The Mawaqif and Mukhatabat, ed. and trans. A.J. Arberry, p. 47.
2 Ibid., p. 269.
3 Al-Niffari, The Mawaqif and Mukhatabat, ed. and trans. A.J. Arberry, p. 105.
4 (Surah: Baqarah. 36)
فَأَزَلَّھُمَا الشَّیْطَانُ عَنْھَا فَأَخْرَجَھُمَا مِمَّا كَانَا فِیھِ وَقُلْنَا اھْبِطُوا بَعْضُكُمْ لِبَعْضٍ عَدُوٌّ وَلَكُمْ فِي الْأَرْضِ مُسْتَقَرٌّ وَمَتَاعٌ إِلَى حِینٍ 0
38
Reality of God, and the reality of what he treats is dependent upon a fuller
consciousness of that participation. On all levels of creation, “reality” is therefore
contingent upon God’s “holding together,” as silent and ineffable Principle, the
multiplicity of Etters, names, and meanings.
The Sufi poetry is more often associated with love as a mystical reality of
a higher order than with intelligence as a mental phenomenon. Rumi founds this
superiority of poetry over other modes of expression by suggesting its affinity with the
essentiAlity of a central desire:
“Love lit a fire in my chest, and anything
That wasn’t love left: intellectual
Subtlety, philosophy
Books, school.
All I want now
To do or hear
Is poetry.”1
Sufi Poetry: the Language of the Love
Poetry appears as an essential language of the love. It is the language of
Love, the “language that cannot be said, or heard.” Poetry is the tentative and minimal
language of the supra-formal dominion where the individual “expires” in Pure Being.
As such poetry is always on the verge of being extinguished or silenced by the
contemplative experience:
“Love has come and covered my mouth: ‘Throw away your poetry and
come to the stars.’”2
Poetic expression may be defined as a kind of intermittent projection of
spiritual presence onto the mirror of mental and imaginable consciousness. Rumi is
once again our guide in approaching this subtle interplay between presence and
consciousness, between existential love and intellectual vision:
In your light, I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
1 Rumi, cited in Birdsong, trans. Coleman Barks, p. 20.
2 Rumi, Diwan-i Shams-i Tabrizi 182, cited in William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, p. 226.
39
You dance inside my chest,
Where no one sees you,
But sometimes I do, and that
Sight becomes this art.1
The “dance” that takes place within the chest of the contemplative is akin
to the penetrating infusion of presence that is like breathing in of the divine ether: this
presence no one can see or define, for grace eludes any attempt at appropriating it. It
can only be glimpsed in the instant of consciousness that is fixed into poetry, when
“sight becomes this art.”
Between deficiency and occurrence, the theme of love and its
spiritualization, occupies a central position in Sufi poetry and literature. The famous
story of Layla and Majnun typifies the complexity and depth of the dialectics of
absence and presence in love, and the subtlety of its relationship with poetic expression.
Majnun represents the figure of a lover who is “possessed” by the jinn of love to the
point of becoming insane. Intoxicated with his inner image of the beloved, Majnun
flees into solitude and wilderness. There, his interiorization of Layla’s image is so
profound that he is led to exclude the physical presence of his beloved. When Layla
comes to visit him in the desert, Majnun refuses to see her under the pretext that she
would distract him from the essential reality, the imaginable form of Layla that he
contemplates.
The Sufi tradition has generally interpreted Majnun’s loving madness as a
metaphor for the individual’s extinction in God’s presence. Then the Sufi becomes as
Qais (Majnun) and he sees Allah as Layla. The “Alienation” of Majnun therefore refers
to the contemplative station of fana’ or disappearance. The figure of the beloved,
whose name refers to the Night of the Divine Essence, embodies or symbolizes the
Divine Presence and Divine Wisdom. The seat of individual consciousness becomes so
powerfully and profoundly “occupied” by the Divine that it amounts to a radical
“Alienation” in which “I” becomes “Thou.”
Considering this spiritual process from the point of view of Majnun and
Layla’s love story, one may say that the reason why Layla appears to be annihilated in
1 Rumi, cited in Birdsong, trans. Coleman Barks, p. 41.
40
Majnun’s experience flows from the fact that the real Layla is actually none other than
the inner essence of Majnun. In this process of spiritual self-realization, poetry
functions as a kind of mediation. Having found a retreat far from the world of men,
Majnun is “severed from his tribe and soon from the commerce of men, and even from
language except for the purpose of evoking and poeticizing his beloved.”1 As Rumi
puts it in one of his poems: woman is not created, she is creative, not so much natural
maturate as maturate naturals. She is also similarly transformative. It is through her
contemplation that poetry is set in motion and that it culminates in the realization of the
inner Self. As Jad Hatem has noted in a most cogent way:
“If the absence of Layla provokes the interiorization of Layla, her name
opens up an avenue without which poetry would have been impossible.”2
In Sufism, this harmony is nothing but exteriorization and a polarization
of the only Reality that is. In Mathnawi, Rumi expresses this mystery by reference to
the symbolism of a lover’s relationship with her beloved’s name:
“Zuleikha applied to Joseph the name of every single thing.
From a grain of celery to a branch of aloe.
She hid his name under all other names, and only let
Her special confidantes into the secret….
This is what the name of the Beloved can do
when you are truly and finally lost in love.
When the soul has truly been united to God
To speak of God is to speak of the soul
And to speak of the soul is to speak of God.”3
The person who invokes (dhakir) becomes so infused with the presence of
the beloved who is invoked (madhkur) that everything becomes an invocation (dhikr)
of the name of the beloved. Perceived in his sense, and as a prolongation of the
“invocation” of the One through the multiple “names” of the many, poetry can be
considered a kind of ruse through which multiplicity, or duality, is give access to unity.
Layla as the theophany, and at the same time the autophany, that reveals the unity,
1 Ibid., p. 7: “Qui deraisonne est retranche de sa tribu et bientot du commerce des homes, et meme du
langage sinon pour evoquer et poetiser sa bien-aimee.”
2 Ibid., p. 8: “Si l’absence de Layla provoque l’intériorisation de Layla, son nom ménage unissued sans
laquelle la poésie eût été impossible.”
3 Rumi, cited in Andrew Harvey, Teachings of Rumi, p. 77.
41
which precedes all dualities, his unity being both objective and subjective, or rather,
situated beyond the level on which this polarity functions.
As Henry Corbin has remarkably commented, in his exegesis of Ruzbehan
al-Baqli’s Jasmine of eyelid’ Amore: the contemplation of human beauty must be
founded upon Iltibas or double meaning. Corbin sees the term “amphiboly” to translate
this difficult concept of Iltibas. As Frithjof Schuon puts it when evoking the mystery
of the contemplation of God in formal and erotic beauty:
“The uncertainty of earthly enjoyment above all sexual pleasure is that on
the one hand it is concupiscence or normality in the sense that it implies
the desire for what we do not have, and on the other hand it is an angelic
and quasi-divine awareness of what we are, of what we are in our
ontological and paradisiacal substance. All moral and mystical oscillations
and tensions are explained by this; and the ambiguity is not in the
experience only, it is in the subject as ell s in the object. Man oscillates
between sacraments and idols, objectively and subjectively.”1
The thoughtful experience of Iltibas corresponds neither to a situation of
exclusivity which would retain a dualistic form nor to one of mere synthesis which
would reduce that duality to unity but points rather to a situation in which both sides of
the same reality are contemplated at the same time, i.e., the physical and aesthetic
phenomenon and the spiritual meaning or presence. This inner situation is one in
which, as Corbin says, the contemplative soul enjoys the “coincidence of reaching and
missing the inaccessible, that of the vision refused through the vision that is granted,
absence tasted in presence, disquietude of a still beyond in the quietude that is
sometimes tasted here below.”2
The “amphibolic” character of poetry and of beauty in general also finds
an expression, quite paradoxically, in the poetic acknowledgment of the necessity of
absence or void as the center of spiritual contemplation. The word is a means of
alluding to the heart of all spiritual life, which is beyond form. In “One-Handed Basket
Weaving,” Rumi suggests that the creative core of all arts is emptiness, and that the
1 Frithjof Schuon, Christianity/Islam: Essays on Esoteric Ecumenicism, p. 113
2 Henry Corbin, En Islam iranien III, p. 28
42
search for this essential emptiness is actually the main aspect of contemplative and
artistic endeavors:
“I’ve said before that every craftsman
Searches for what’s not there
To practice his craft.”1
The central importance of silence in mystical poetry finds an expression in
the fact that early Sufi poets tended to favor a shorter form of expression, that of the
quatrain or rubai, a form that was most appropriate to express flashes of intuition or
emotion independently from a specifically didactic purpose. The harmonic principle of
unity finds a correspondent element in the thematic unity that characterizes the
unfolding verses; for, as Laleh Bakhtiar puts it, “each verse corresponds to the primary
image of the arabesque in its continuous repetition of a single theme.”2 As with the
void in the graphic art of the arabesque, silence functioning as an allusion to the unity
transcending multiplicity is suggested by the harmonic and thematic texture of the
poem.3
Poetry reduplicates the thoughtful process symbolically, but it does so by
abolishing in some ways its own reality. Rumi presents the contemplative inversion at
the core of all mysticism in a most expressive way that implies, in a certain sense, a
self-abolishment of language and poetry. The images are strikingly powerful:
“God has allowed some magical reversal to occur,
So that you see the scorpion pit
As an object of desire,
And all the beautiful expanse around it,
As dangerous and swarming with snakes.”4
The most shimmering light in Sufi poetry is hidden in the very depth of
mystery, and it is there that it has to be found. It is moreover by virtue of this finding
1 Rumi, “One-Handed Basket Weaving,” cited at www.armory.com/thrace/Sufi/poems.html.
2 Laleh Bakhtiar, Sufi: Expressions of the Mystic Quest, p. 112.
3 One could apply, mutatis mutandis, what Seyyed Hossein Nasr says about the arabesque and the void
to the relationship between poetry and silence: “The arabesque enables the void to enter into the very
heart of matter, to remove its opacity and to make it transparent beforethe Divine Light. Through the
use of the arabesque in its many forms, the void enters into the different facets of Islamic art, lifting
from material objects their suffocating heaviness and enabling the spirit to breathe and expand”
(Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 186).
4 Rumi, cited in The Essential Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks, p. 24.
43
that the soul will be able to free itself from the “beautiful expanse around it.” Poetry
becomes an invitation to plunge into that “pit” of contemplation and to find in it the
plenitude of emptiness. The possibility of this paradox that of a form calling to the
overcoming of all forms is actually founded upon the very secret of creation: the
metaphysical enigma of existence as a consequence of the desire for the essential
emptiness: Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence: This place
made from our love for that emptiness!1
The love for emptiness is the essence of a desire that can be satisfied only
by the emptiness of the Supreme, an emptiness that is also fullness, depending upon the
standpoint from which one wishes to consider it: a void with respect to the false
plenitude of indefinite multiplicity; a fullness by contrast with the vain illusion of
reality, which is truly “nothingness.” When trying to account for this supreme paradox,
poetry reaches a summit and a limit in the sense that it “condemns” itself to disappear
in its very utterance; whence the conclusive notes of the poem, which are marked by a
kind of contradictory resolution, a concurrent opposite form in which discourse affirms
its own failure:
“These words I’m saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:
Words and what they try to say swept
Out the window, down the slant of the roof.”2
The image of the window evokes the relationship between an inner and an
outer meaning, or conversely the contrast between a confinement and liberation. In all
respects, poetic language cannot accomplish its mission in complete permanence: it is
marked by tension, discontinuity, and disappearance. It springs forth to bear witness to
the One, but it can never uphold its testimony to the point of securing an unfailing
access to the Source.
In a sense, the instability and insufficiency of words have also something
to do with their Abuse (“these words I’m saying so much”): words, especially poetical
words, tend to lose their freshness and therefore their evocative power. Rumi is
1 Fujiwara Teika, cited in Toshihiko and Toyo Izutsu, The Theory of Beauty in the Classical
Aesthetics of Japan, p. 85.
2 Toshihiko and Toyo Izutsu, The Theory of Beauty in the Classical Aesthetics of Japan, p. 85.
44
particularly keen on stressing this very inability of words, while at the same time
indicating that poetry constitutes the best means of gaining access to Love, understood
here in the sense of an actualization of the Divine Presence.
We can understand the relationship between poetry and contemplation
from two standpoints: one that conveys a sense of continuity between words and
experience and the other, on the contrary, pointing to the apophasis dimension of
contemplation. In the latter perspective, Rumi highlights the limits of language when it
comes to conveying a sense of contemplative fulfillment:
“Whatever I say to explain or describe Love
When I arrive at Love itself, I’m ashamed of my word.
The commentary of words can make things clear
But Love without words has more clarity.
My pen was rushing to write its thoughts down;
When it came to Love, the intellect is impotent,
Like a donkey trapped in a bog.”1
Rumi does not deny poetic discourse in that it is a way of “translating” the
experience of mystical love into the language of human commonality. However, such
an attempt presupposes a tension between two poles: that of the identity of words with
presence or the mysterious Ability of inspired words to be channels of presence and
that of the region of dissimilitude, to make use of a Neo-Platonic concept.
Words and poetry are both divine and human realities. This dual nature of
language, which leads us back to the mystery of Iltibas, is to be understood in terms of
a distinction between informal essence and formal substance, a distinction that is
moreover parallel to that of inward nature and outward manifestation. Rumi explains
this “amphiboly” in the following terms:
“With us, the name of everything
appearance;
With the Creator,
The name of each thing is its inward reality.
In the eye of Moses, the name of his rod was “staff;”
In the eye of the Creator, its name was “dragon.”
1 Ibid., p. 85.
45
In brief, that which we are in the end
Is our real name with God.”1
The ontological and spiritual nature of language is rooted in archetypes,
and they are contained in God’s intelligence and “willed” by Him. We have access only
to the outer shells of things, which are symbolically elected by their outer and
conventional names. The reference to Moses’ staff that becomes “dragon” in God’s eye
suggestively indicates that realities are always much more “real” from the latter
standpoint than they may appear to be from the former. “Real” names correspond to
higher realities and, consequently, “real” poetry, as a “real” language, reaches the field
of archetypes.
However, poetry is not Revelation. It is still “on our side” of things, it
may be defined as the realm of the extreme formal limits of human language, the point
at which human language may so to speak “invert” itself to reveal its hidden “reverse”
side. When al-Hallaj writes, “and my words if I wish are inverted,” he most likely
alludes to these boundaries of expression where opposites meet, when wisdom is folly
and vision blindness.2
When poetry comes close to its ultimate prospect and function, it tends to
challenge the laws of conventional reality and logic because it has to conjugate
extremes in order to capture the formless in a single form. Then it leads to the real
sense of the propagation. Al-Hallaj points in his Qasideh to this mystery when he
juxtaposes in a striking contrast the dualities and distinctions that are entailed by
common human arts and endeavors on the one hand and, on the other hand, the literally
absurd expressions that “make sense” of the categories of mystical experience. The
poet is first intent on emphasizing the dichotomies of terrestrial knowing and being:
“Science is double, rejects, accepts
The oceans are two: navigable, dreadful
Time is two days: blamed and praised
Men are double: endowed and plundered …” 3
1 Ibid., p. 82.
2 Ibid., pp. 80-81.
3 Ibid., p. 81.
46
The symbols of the spiritual experience that are evoked are abruptly
deprived of their formal and human features to suggest the coincidence of tanzih and
tashbih, transcendence and immanence:
“I climbed a peak without any feet
Its scaling was hard for others than I
I dived in a sea without setting foot
My soul waded in it, my heart wanted it,
Its pebbles pearls no hand touched
But the mind’s hand had plundered them.
I drank its water without a mouth
Much water that mouths often drank from,
For my soul of old thirsted for it
And my body felt it before creation.”1
Three basic motions or actions recapitulate a symbolic path in which the
formal analogies of imagery are as if reintegrated into their supreme analog on “before
creation”: ascent of a mountain (transcendence), descent into a sea (immanence as
inclusion), and absorption of its water (immanence as assimilation). The ternary
“without any feet … without setting foot … without a mouth” resounds as a rhythmic
pattern of apophasis abstraction that quite suggestively illustrates the “reversal” of
words and images that characterizes the limits of contemplative poetry.
Let us note that the body is characterized as most directly aware of reality:
the “soul of old” has nostalgia for what it has lost but the body apprehends most
immediately what it experienced “before creation.” The immediate naturalness of the
Self is reflected in that of the body, while the soul that lies in the intermediary zone of
reality appears as if “torn” between the conflicting objects of its desires.
The first mode of expression is primarily similar to tashbih and ultimately
proceeds from the crystallization of spiritual insights in the imaginable world. The
process of crystallization we are alluding to is analogous to that of theophanic realities
1 “Despite the fact that yo-yo though it is essentially trans-linguistic can be induced and actualized only
as a concurrent phenomenon of linguistic expression, in the dimension of linguistic expression by the
linguistic expression itself, the aspect of yo-jō in the poetic field of waka comes to be conceived as
more and more distinctly independent of kotoba, the dimension of linguistic expression” (Toshihiko
and Toyo Izutsu, The Theory of Beauty in the Classical Aesthetics of Japan, p. 16).
47
in general and it therefore conforms, mutatis mutandis, to Henry Corbin’s definition of
the entrance of spiritual realities into forms:
Just as a divine Name can be known only in the concrete form of which it
is theophany, so a divine archetypical Figure can be contemplated only in a concrete
Figure sensible or imagined which renders it outwardly or mentally visible.1
By contrast, with this theophanic modality, the second and third modes of
poetic expression of the ineffable, in conformity with tanzih, are chiefly characterized
by an attempt to suggest the distance that separates their own expressions from reality.
In the first case, this is affected through a sort of immanent subversion of common
language, a disarticulation of the syntax of horizontal coherence that may take on the
mode of a kind of bursting apart of language and reason. This type of poetry is akin to
the social behavior of qalandars and malamat, the type of mystics who display an
often-eccentric disdain for normative conventions of conduct and thrive on systematic
reversal. The idea is to open up cracks in the world of appearances in order to give way
to the perception of Reality.
This is the way proposed by Sa’di when he suggests that, “With a sweet
tongue and kindness and silence, Can you catch an elephant by a hair.”2 Such a
dynamic and negative approach runs parallel with the apophasis language of
“unsaying” that has been analyzed by Michael A. Sells in his study of Ibn ‘Arabi’s
“Garden among the Flames”: in this connection, to cohere with concepts and images
amounts to stopping “at a particular station or experience, however exalted, and bind
the real to it.” Inasmuch as language involves a “reification” of itself it must “correct”
and “negate” itself in order to convey the Real.3
As for the choice of silence, it obviously corresponds to a limit that cannot
be reached without abolishing poetry and language; however, this extreme tendency
can find a suitable outlet through either a semantic or a prosodic strategy of intimation
1 Ibid. p. 19.
2 Ibid. p. 75.
3 “Sado is an island on the Sea of Japan, some fifty miles off the mainland coast. Some eminent people,
including Zeami, led a sorrowful life here after being banished from the Capital” (Makoto Ueda,
“Bashō on the Art of the Haiku: Impersonality in Poetry,” in Japanese Aesthetics and Culture, ed.
Nancy G. Hume, p. 175, note 4).
48
of silence. The poem may say or suggests the primacy of contemplative silence through
its meaning either explicitly or implicitly or it may more obliquely allude to this
primacy through its rhythmical and harmonic patterns and practices.
The regularity of rhythm and harmony introduces a sense of unity that
suggests the experience of single-pointed concentration through a prosodic centering of
the multiplicity of linguistic forms. Whether it be through “musical” techniques or
through the suggestiveness of meaning, words must in any case undergo a kind of
“transfiguration” ( i.e., both a “reduction” and an “elation” of their form and meaning)
in order to serve as pure witnesses of Reality; so it is that they may be both blurred and
fixed (fi’l fana’ wa’l baqa, as it were) in the essential and suggestive meaning that
“silently” radiates through them, in the image of Rumi’s candle that becomes a “sign
without signs”:
“Place before the sun a burning candle,
See how its shining disappears before those lights:
The candle exists no longer, is transfigured into light.
There are no more signs of it; it itself becomes a sign.”1
Jalaluddin Rumi surpassed all other poets in making spectators so interesting
and urging them to embrace Islam and cuddle Sufism in their daily life. His tongue
was singing but his heart was inviting people into the world of Sufism. Thus, he could
make so many people converted into Islam and squeezed Sufism. Then he had
influenced between Sufis and poets especially Sufi poets. I have discussed about
Jalaluddin Rumi and his contributions to Sufi poetry in third chapter.
1 “I have occasion to refer to what is known mostly among the tea-men as wabi or sabi, which really
constitutes the spirit of tea. Now, this wabi, which literally means ‘solitariness,’ ‘aloneness,’ and more
concretely, ‘poverty,’ is, we might say, what characterizes the entirety of Japanese culture reflecting the
spirit of Zen” (D.T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, p. 253).
49
CHAPTER 2
AUTHORSHIP IN SUFI POETRY
50
Introduction
When we discuss about the role of Sufi poetry in propagating Islam, we
have firstly to mention about the authorship in Sufi poetry and its different manners.
There are so many problems and solutions in its authorship. Through this chapter, we
can find the accurate answers for such problems and questions against the authorship
in Sufi poetry.
Problems of Authorship and Sufi Poetry
As Michael Frishkopf states in his article there are so many problems of
Authorship and Sufi poetry. An analysis of Sufi authorship may help in developing a
theory of authorship for sacred literatures, and perhaps even contribute towards theories
of authorship in general and will find accurate answers for the questions against the
challenges.
The authorship in Sufi poetry appears as surprisingly postmodern, despite
its putatively traditional worldview, whereas authorship in contemporary Arabic secular
poetry remains firmly modem.1 This ironic twist thus calls into question the
chronological sequence tradition/modernism/postmodernism so often deployed in
contemporary theory.
Michael Frishkopf says,
“A kind of diglosia of literate poetry2 as social practice prevails in Egypt
today. Though the situation in the recent past was more complex, today it
is not too much of an oversimplification to label two antagonistic
discursive streams "secular" and "sacred." One is rooted in a discourse of
secularist modernism, the other in Islamic traditionalism. These two
streams implicitly incorporate each other through an oppositional dialectic
(insofar as each tacitly seeks discursive domination over the other),
reinforcing their differentiation and mutual segregation”.3
He continues stating its two sides,
1 Barthes, Foucault, and Kristeva are more properly termed "post-structuralist" than "postmoder"
theorists; however, many of their ideas contributed crucially to postmodern theory, and consequently to
the concept of postmodernism.
2 By this term he not mean to exclude orality (nearly always present to some degree), though he
disregard "folk" poetry existing solely in the oral tradition.
3 See Michal Frishkopf, Authorship in Sufi Poetry.p.79
51
“on the one hand, the secular poetic stream, resulting from the collision of
traditional Arab poetics with European literary currents first imbibed in
the nineteenth century, is strongly informed by Western aesthetics and
secularism in its content, having become part of a homogeneous "global
literary system" of production and consumption, in which an
individualized author-function (as Foucault would have it) is central. In
practice, its authors (despite Barthes) remain widely regarded as the
creative geniuses from which literary culture must spring”. 1
He denotes expressing the other side
“on the other hand, there is a deeply rooted sacred stream that continues to
maintain traditional Arab poetics, and generally holds Islamic culture in
high esteem. Over the last fifty years or so, this stream has dwindled,
continuing to flow within the only domain of Arab culture necessarily
resistant to secularization: Islam itself. While Sufism does not provide the
only forum for Islamic poetry, it is in Sufism that religious poetry is most
developed and most utilized in religious practice”.2
Rather this poetry is written, printed, often published; it frequently takes
the form of high Arabic, and adopts classical forms, such as the Qasideh, it receives
authorial attributions of various kinds, and is to a large extent considered part and
parcel of the Arab poetic tradition. On the other hand, such poetry is by no means a
purely "written" tradition either, since its primary role occurs in ritual performance,
sung as inshad dini (religious hymnody), and since it is frequently learned orally.
Problems in Sufi Authorship
A few examples explained by Michal Frishkopf will help us to
problematize the concept of Sufi authorship and to motivate the following discussion.
“1. Sheikh3 The disciple receives no authorial credit, since he is
considered to be merely a passive vehicle for a sacred text.
1 See Michal Frishkopf, Authorship in Sufi Poetry.p.79
2 Ibid.
3 Egyptian Sufis use the honorific titleShykhfor several religious types, pre- eminently the spiritual
guide (murshid), religious scholar or teacher ('alim), preacher (khatib), Qur'an reciter (qari'), and
religious singer (munshid). The titles sidi (sayyidi) or imam, often used for saints, connote an even
higher degree of respect.) Muhammad 'Uthman (mentioned above) mirac- ulously conveyed poetry to
his disciples posthumously, often through dreams; the results were published (al-Burhani)
52
2. Contemporary members of his tariqa attribute a large corpus of poetry
to the thirteenth-century saint Sidi Ahmad al-Rifa'i, although Western scholarly sources
cannot confirm that he wrote anything at all (Margoliouth; Trimingham 37).
3. Egyptian Sufis cite the Syrian Sheikh Abu al-Huda al- Sayyadi (1859-
1909), as having written poetry "ala lisan Sidi Ahmad al-Rifa'i," ["from the mouth of
Sidi Ahmad al-Rifa'i"] implying that al-Sayyadi's spiritual relation to Sidi Ahmad was
close enough to speak on his behalf. Authorial credit is shared.
4. Many Sufi authors borrowed the meter, rhyme, and themes of 13th
century poet-saint Imam al-Busiri's famous mystical poem, al-Burda, in producing their
own poetic works. Such poems are termed nahj al- Burda, "in the manner of the Burda"
(see Schimmel, As Through a Veil 185ff). Similarly, many Sufis appear to have
composed ta'iyyas (odes rhyming in the letter’t’) in imitation of thirteenth century Sidi
'Umar Ibnu Farid's famously difficult ta'iyya, Nazm al-Suluk ["The Poem of the Way"]
( Ibnu Farid); one of the most outstanding examples is attributed to the renowned
Egyptian saint Sidi Ibrahim al- Dasuqi (see al-Najjar 197-98).
5. A Sufi poet frequently intercalates his own lines with those of another,
using a consistent interpolative formula (e.g. tarbi', takhmis, tashtir) to elaborate and
comment upon a more famous poem; the result is a collaborative poem-and authorship
is shared. The Burda was often elaborated in this way (e.g. Abd al-Hamid Quds).
6. The founder of a Sufi order compiles a Diwan, perhaps including some
of his own poetry, but also selecting poems from the tradition without attributions; the
resulting Diwan is associated with the Sheikh and thus generally regarded as his
work (as compiler-author). Such is the case for the Diwan of Sidi Salama al-Radi,
founder of the Hamidiyya Shadhiliyya order (al-Radi; on Sidi Salama see Gilsenan).
7. The Sheikh of a Sufi order compiles a set of poems (supposed- ly
gathered from the work of order members) for use among his disciples; many poems
are unattributed, given an anonymous attribution (li ahadi al muhibbin, "by one of the
mystical lovers"), or even a plural anonymous attribution (ba'd al-muhibbin, "some of
the mystical lovers"). Such poems are associated with the order as a whole, and with
the founder in particular. Several poems in the prayer book (al-Bahi) published by a
53
branch of the Ahmadiyya tariqa of al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi (d. 1278) carry
anonymous attributions, while others are explicitly attributed to the saint, though
scholarship casts doubt on his authorship (Vollers and Littmann). These poems are
considered to be "Ahmadiyya," and contribute to al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi's saintly
status. A similar relation obtains between a Shadhili Diwan of anonymous poems (al-
Shadhili), the Shadhiliyya tariqa, and its founder, Sidi Abuul Hasan al-Shadhili.
8. Sheikh Ahmad al-Tuni, a famous Sufi poet-performer (munshid),
constructs a unique text in performance. Drawing upon his poetic repertoire, and guided
by his aesthetic sense, mystical state, and feedback from the audience, he "collages"
poetic fragments from many sources, occasionally inserting material of his own. The
result is a truly new text; and because no line carries any authorial attribution, the
audience attributes the performed text to the performer.
9. Another Egyptian munshid, Sheikh Yasin al-Tuhami (Frishkopf,
"Shaykh Yasin in Performance"), has become famous as a specialist in Sidi 'Umar Ibnu
Farid's recondite poetry, and even for having a personal mystical connection to the poet
himself. As a consequence, his listeners often attribute any abstruse poem sung by
Sheikh Yasin to Sidi 'Umar Ibnu Farid. In one case, a poem so attributed was shown to
be the work not of Sidi 'Umar, but rather of a contemporary Sufi poet (Sheikh Abdul
Alim al-Nakhayli); this fact induced the perception that the latter must be a close
spiritual disciple of the former.
10. In a state of ecstasy (hal) inspired by contact with Prophet or saint, in
which Divine lights become manifest, a Sheikh spontaneously utters poetry, which is
copied down by anonymous disciples; subsequently Sheikh or disciples may "polish"
such poetry to greater technical perfection. Egyptian Sufis say that Ibnu Farid himself
composed poetry in this way; similar accounts of copying and polishing are given for
the contemporary Sheikh, Sidi Jabir al Jazuli, by members of his order.
11. One of Sheikh Yasin's listeners is well known for his priest like
appearance, appearing at the dhikr (remembrance ritual) in a long black hooded cloak
and beard, and silver chains. Moving wildly in response to Sheikh Yasin's performance,
he translates sung poetry line by line into his own consistent sign language of arm and
54
hand signals, occasionally crying out in suriyaniyya (the language of angels and jinn).
His kinetic-sonic performance draws participants' attention away from Sheikh Yasin,
underscoring his comparable role as a producer of poetic text in performance.”1
Sufi Poetry as Text
Poetry is Sufism 's most important expressive medium that that increase
the possibilities of Islamic propagation. Qur’an and Hadith comprise the textual heart
of the Sufi ’s spiritual life. However, unlike the Divinely fixed Qur’an, and traditionally
fixed Hadith, religious poetry is fluid, freer to express (and arouse) personal mystical
feeling.2 The social role of Sufi poetry is not to communicate, but it is to reawaken
mystical knowledge and feeling, and to cause the reader or listener to remember. Like
other forms of dhikr, Sufi poetry points back to the archetypal moment of Divine
awareness ("alastu") and so this became a suitable method of propagation.
Sufi poetry is in concert with the Islamic poetry and vice-versa as there is
no sharp divide between Sufism and "mainstream" Islam. Most important themes in
Sufi poetry include descriptions of mystical experience, expressions of devotional love
and praise for the Prophet and saints, love, glorification and supplication to God.
Forms are both classical (primarily Qasideh, tashtir, and muwashShah), and colloquial
(mawwal, sharh, and zajal).
In the Sufi orders, poetry is commonly collected into a published Diwan,
from which it is performed or memorized, thus entering oral form. Munshidin may
memorize poetry from books, but also (orally) from each other. Thus Sufi poetry moves
fluidly between the oral and the written as an important method of propagation.
1 See Michal Frishkopf, Authorship in Sufi Poetry.p.80-82
2 Thus Abu Hamid al-Ghazali advised: "Then know that singing is more powerful than Qur'an in
arousing to ecstasy" (al-Ghazali 738-45); his jus- tification for this statement rests in part on the
Qur'an's fixity.
55
Assumption of Poetic Production in Sufism
A. Methods of Poetic Production: Virtual, Real
The social practices of Sufi poetry cannot be sharply dichotomized as
creative (e.g. composing/reading), or dichotomized as performative (e.g.
writing/singing/listening). Rather every participant in these practices shares to some
degree in the process of poetic production, which always takes place within an active
spiritual-social network. If everyone is (to some degree) an author, no one is
autonomous.
Theoretically, a sharper division among poetic practices separates two
socio-temporal modalities of production, differentiated according to the kind of timevirtual
(psychic) time or real (clock) time-and the kind of spiritual-social networkvirtual
(spiritual-psychic) or real (face-to-face interactive)-in which poetic production
takes place.
In the practical mode ("composition"), poetic production is independent of
clock time. The author is enmeshed in a spiritual-social network, which plays an active
role in poetic production, though not necessarily via face-to-face interactions. In the
real mode ("performance") a sub-network of this spiritual-social network is realized in
face-to-face interaction (usually in a ritual context), and coordinated by real clock time;
poetic production is here necessarily improvisatory. While certain salient "performers"
(e.g. Munshidin) may control poetic production in performance, others also provide
significant input, spiritually or via face-to-face feedback (auditory or kinetic) to the
"performers."
The "virtual" mode corresponds to what is most often labeled as the
activity of the "poet", while the "real" mode includes activities of the performers and
listeners, who can also be regarded as authors insofar as their activities produce new
textual permutations, or invest them with new meanings. Personalizing these contexts
only as "virtual" or "real" indicates that both are contexts for the creative social
production of poetry.
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B. Quantity of Creativity
Poetic producers never create previous nihilo (a status which, in the
Islamic sphere, is reserved for God), but rather produce "new" texts by permuting preexisting
recombinant elements. The process of poetic production (in both virtual and
real modes) entails the assembly of a linguistic sequence by recombining a certain
number of prefabricated linguistic elements of variable size (from phones, to
phonemes, morphemes, lexemes, adjectival phrases, sentences, etc.), according to a
certain grammar which (to some degree) restricts their possible permutations (ranging
from an infinitely restrictive linear grammar in which each element determines the
following one, to an infinitely unrestrictive non linear grammar, in which any element
can be succeeded by any other), thus producing a "work" of a particular length.1 It is
only the particular recombination, not the elements, which is ever new.
The “creativity" of that works (not to be confused with its "quality") as a
measure of the number of choices the author made in constructing it, and thus equates
"creativity" with "information" in the theoretical sense.2 Consistently, one may take the
"creativity" of a work as the number of possible textual permutations (of equal length
and average unit size) out of which the work in question was selected.
When the number of possible permutations is relatively small, the degree
of creativity is relatively low, e.g. if a virtual-mode author ("poet") creates a poem by
recombining entire prefabricated lines, conversely when the number of possible works
is relatively large, the number of authorial choices and hence degree of creativity is
relatively high. Then one observes that the difference in creativity between the avantgardism
(who breaks all the conventional "rules" of linguistic combination), the
conventional author (who follows them), and the poetic compiler (who merely selects
poems whole) is one of degree, not of kind.
The Practices and Processes of Sufi Poetry Production
A general understanding of Sufi poetic texts is inadequate for an
appreciation of Sufi poetry's broader social and textual network properties. Michal
1 All this is true for poetry in general, but afortiori for Sufi poetry.
2 A readable summary of information theory can be found in Cherry.
57
Frishkopf says “In order to understand the inter textual and inter authorial properties of
Sufi poetry, it is necessary to understand Sufi poetry as a social practice: its
motivations, uses, and processes.
A. Motives for the Production of Poetry
Essentially the same motives apply to virtual and real modes of poetic
production. Normatively, Sufi poetry is instrumental: Sufis produce Sufi poetry in order
to achieve spiritual goals, not as an aesthetic end in itself. Prime goals are affective
catharsis (for self), and spiritual guidance (for others). As a consequence of mystical
practices, the Sufi may become supersaturated with spiritual feeling: painful longing for
the absent beloved (shawq), or the ecstasy of closeness (wajd). When such feeling
overflows the soul (faya’), it becomes impossible to bear, requiring release through
cathartic expression.
Poetry (written or performed) is but one means of such expression. A
second goal pertains both to tariqa-sheikh and to munshid, each of whom wishes to
trigger mystical feeling in others, in order to promote spiritual development among
present followers and listeners, and attract new ones, while simultaneously validating
the importance of his own network position.1 This second goal is realized primarily in
the real mode.
B. Poetic Production in the Virtual Mode
In the virtual mode, the consistent producer of Sufi poetry is sometimes
called "poet" (sha'ir), although this active participle is not typically adopted as a
primary status, but rather as a description of a persistent condition, in which poetry
appears, uncontrollably, out of hal, not craft. As a response to occasional spiritual
"overflow," some mystics compose only a few lines, but Sufis may avoid using the
word "sha'ir" even for prolific producers of such poetry, since the label implies poetry
as creative vocation, whose artifice and aestheticism Sufism rejects. Further, in Sufism
1 Reputation is especially important for the more expansionist tariqa, as well as for the professional
munshid operating outside the ritual framework of any single tariqa. If the munshid is connected to a
tariqa, then his poetic production directly supports his shaykh's spiri- tual goals.
58
the act of poetic production is not individual, but always takes place in the context of a
strongly connected spiritual-social network.
This "poet" is first a Sufi, someone's disciple; often he is the Sheikh of a
tariqa, a spiritual guide for others. Inspirational poetry is itself a sign of a distinguished
and well-connected position with- in the network. Most Sufi poets (even if unconnected
to any tariqa) are consequently addressed as "sheikh." Great poets (such as 'Umar Ibnu
Farid) are regarded as saints (Homerin) and addressed as "Sidi." Their poetic
productions serve as a miraculous sign of sainthood (karama). Conversely, followers
attribute poetry to nearly all great saints and Sheikh s, especially the "poles" (aqtab)
who anchor the major tariqa lines.
Virtual mode poetic production is collaborative, a product of the network,
not the individual. The author is inspired by his strongest network connections
(especially God, Prophet, saints, Sheikhs). On the other hand, he may be inspired by
his own overflowing feeling for the beloved(s) (also situated within that network),
especially as experienced in hadra (which realizes the network by assembling social
and spiritual beings, and via recited poetry remembering them).
The spiritual influence of a saint irradiates large sections of the spiritualsocial
network, inspiring spiritual descendents (sometimes in dreams) to produce poetry
(some- times in the name of the saint). Within this field, unattributed poetry, floating
free, will tend to be "pulled in," accruing to the saint. Sufi Sheikhs may compose
pedagogical poetry (often in the form of direct exhortation) for the spiritual edification
of their disciples, implying the collaboration of the latter.1 Because it expresses the
conditions of its production, most Sufi poetry represents portions of the spiritual-social
network (e.g. via praise, supplication, or conversations (munajat) with its members).
Conversely, the process of spiritual collaboration itself tends to reinforce the network.
Virtual mode composition is frequently oral and performative,
spontaneous linguistic expressions of non-linear mystical flashes, often captured on
paper by disciples. Subsequently the poet, or some- one else, may polish and organize
1 Among the most prolific sheikhs of this type was Sheikh Salih al-Ja'fari (founder of the Ja'fariyya
tariqa), but many other examples could be cited.
59
these recombinant fragments, to become a linear sized text concealing its non-linear
origins. Most Sufi poetry draws on a common stock of symbols, images, descriptors,
phrases, and themes, constantly recycled: the recombinant unit size is relatively large,
as compared to the modem secular poetic tradition, and hence linguistic creativity is
technically low. Some tariqa-sheikhs may compose a Diwan out of preexisting poems,
and nevertheless be granted a kind of authorship status. This technique of reuse is
formalized in tashtir (and its variants, tarbi', takhmis), and nahj. Such textual linkages
both imply and reinforce corresponding spiritual-social ones. Hence, textual reuse, far
from plagiarism, is actually legitimizing, for asserting key spiritual-social connections.
For the virtual mode poet, metaphors of collage and assembly are as apt as
for the performer; simultaneously diminishing the individualization of the authorfunction,
and undermining the autonomy of the text. Despite repetition, an authorfunction
persists, since for Sufis the assignment of authorship is not determined by
originality, but rather by the perception of sincere expression of true feeling, resulting
from connections to the spiritual-social network. On the other hand, such a notion of
text and authorship is necessarily networked, not individualized. Indeed, an "authorship
paradox" arises, since the stronger the poetic producer's inspiration via the spiritualsocial
network, the greater his Sufi -authorial status, but also the more the authorfunction
is distributed across that network. Consequently, it may happen that the poem
is not attributed to its immediate producer at all.
C. Poetic Production in the Real Mode
The munshid produces poetry in the real mode, performing poet- ry in the
hadra, usually to accompany dhikr, either for the semi private tariqa hadra, or (often
professionally) in the extra-tariqa public hadra (typically with musical
accompaniment). Typically the munshid has taken the Sufi oath in at least one tariqa;
he may occasionally be the Sheikh of the tariqa for which he performs. Like the poet,
the munshid's individual authorial status is overshadowed by his spiritual-social status;
the improvising munshid is therefore considered a Sheikh rather than a sha'ir.1
Likewise, the munshid (and other participants in hadra) are enmeshed in the
1 In the secular context, improvisatory epic singers are called poets; see Reynolds.
60
Sufispiritual-social network, rendered palpable by both textual and social aspects of
hadra performance. The spiritual-social network is strongly realized in hadra, which is
considered a ritual invocation, a call for the presence ("hadra") of metaphysical agents,
explicitly so via frequent speech acts of naming, calling, praise, and supplications
embedded in poetry as well as other portions of the liturgy.1
The performance of a saint's poetry is likewise felt to intensify his
presence in hadra.2 But the munshid is also enmeshed in a more ephemeral face-toface
network constituted by participants in hadra performance (sheikhs, singers,
musicians, performers of dhikr, other listeners). Participants move together in a single
cybernetic system, interacting in real time, each providing feedback to the others. They
express their states through various kinds of verbal or gestural feedback (especially the
dhikr leader, or mustaftih) to the munshid, and to each other. While sometimes
controlled by a Sheikh, frequently the munshid is relative- ly free to determine his own
text. However, he does so in response to feedback signals, selecting poetry to express
not only his own spiritual state, but also the states of hadra participants. In this way,
emotion builds within the cybernetic system, ultimately producing a systemic state
known as nashwa ruhiyya (spiritual rapture) or tarab (a more secular term; see
Frishkopf, "Tarab").
The munshid effectively produces a new text, by applying col- lage
operations to his poetic repertoire, including juxtaposing, editing, and repeating;
embedding a fragment of one poem in another; and occasionally improvising new
phrases. Typically, that text is even more strongly intertextual than in virtual mode,
since the recombinant units are usually larger; linguistic creativity is hence technically
lower.
But, in considering munshid as author, this fact must be balanced against
others. As for the poet, attributions of authorship have more to do with the perception
that true mystical feeling is sincerely expressed, than with the technical creativity of the
1 For a detailed textual analysis of three Sufi liturgies along these lines, see Frishkopf, "Sufism, Ritual
and Modernity in Egypt."
2 Texts performed in hadra not only invoke the spiritual-social network, but also imbue it with affect,
especially as generated by real social interac- tions, and the musical dimensions of inshad. The ways in
which poetic production supports the spiritual-social network by realizing emotional connections are
treated more fully in Frishkopf s "Tarab."
61
text produced. Like the "poet" in hal, the munshid wants to express non-linear feeling.
But whereas the poet's text must be linearized in its final printed product, the munshid,
by continually re-permuting textual material, can demonstrate that non-linearity as
performance. The munshid can also deploy expressive sonic variables (pitch, timbre,
loudness) unavailable to the virtual mode "poet." Thus despite lower linguistic
creativity (in the technical sense), the munshid is nevertheless recognized as a poetic
producer with legitimate claims to authorship.
Yet this author position is far from autonomous, a fact which is obvious
given that the munshid's repertoire admittedly comprises the poetry of others. Hadra
performance activates the spiritual-social net- work, as noted above. Within that
context, the intertextual network is present due to the large recombinant unit size, and
further more for grounded by non-linearity in the performance process itself. This fact
further activates portions of the spiritual-social network (and hence interauthor)
perceived as contributing to the emerging text. Sufis explicitly recognize this situation,
for instance when they state that the munshid's performance is most powerful when he
is spiritually connected to the "poets" whose words he sings. The same "author- ship
paradox" applies here: the munshid's true mystical feeling can only arise via inspiration
by the spiritual-social network of which he is a part. Thus, the more his text is
genuinely inspired, the more the author-function must be distributed over the spiritual
social network.
The operation of a real time cybernetic system including ritual participants
means that the author-function is likewise spread over the face-to-face interacting
social group. While centered on the munshid (as "voice"), in actuality poetic production
is distributed across the entire spiritual-social network (including face-to-face
components) activated during performance, since all agents potentially enter into its
cybernetic system.
In some cases, Sheikh or mustaftih may determine poetic production more
than munshid. While some participants may exert a minimal effect on the text itself, all
participants assume an active author role at least by constructing meaning for that text.
Just as poetry serves as a "cathartic" device for the "poet" and munshid, so does it for
the listener, who attaches his own feeling to heard poetry, conforming one to the other.
62
To listen is necessarily a creative act of authorship, for each listener brings a different
spiritual state and station to the hadra, a source of meanings which must be creatively
assembled in performance.”1
The Nature of Meaning in Sufi poetry
No discussion of the meaning of the Sufi poetry will be complete without
mentioning its eternity. Because it has various meanings, but all of them lead to the
propagation into the path of prophet (S.A.W) and almighty Allah. In Egypt, Sufis say
that Sufi poetry is always bikr (novel), unfathomable, producing new meanings at every
reading. What distinguishes such texts is that they result from hal, a condition of ego
absence (ghayb), during which haqiqath becomes partially visible to the poetic
producer. Since haqiqath is infinitely meaningful, the text (even as a limited encoding)
becomes so as well.
Sufis are affectionate of quoting the expression "the meaning is in the
interior of the poet." The author possesses a meaning which can never be known by
anyone else; therefore he is not the source of anyone else's meaning. All of us know
that the author is dead. Rather it is present upon each person to make meaning for
himself, using God-given faculties of spiritual perception (shafafiyya) to view haqiqath
as reflected in the text.
If the range of the signified of Sufi poetry is endless, the range of the
signifier is relatively limited, as compared to present secular poetry: the recombinant
unit size is relatively large, as textual chunks (words, phrases, lines, poems) are
continually repeated whole (in both the virtual and real modes).
If the function of secular poetry is to communicate by poet's affects,
perceptions and assertions, that of Sufi poetry is only to remind of what is already
known, using a limited symbolic code designed for that purpose. Sufi poetry does not
transmit meaning, but rather activates it. Moreover, the meanings of Sufi poetry are
perceiver-centered, idiosyncratic and diverse, though its textual resources are limited.
1 See Michal Frishkopf, Authorship in Sufi Poetry.p.91-95
63
Some Remarks on Creativity, Originality, Evaluation, and Attribution
Creativity: A few unrepresentative exceptions aside (e.g. those Sufi poets
such as Ibnu Farid recognized as 'great' on aesthetic grounds), Sufi poetry qua
signifier is essentially uncreative; this fact (stemming from its dhikr function) has often
rendered it unpalatable to secular literary critics. The production of Sufi poetry consists
primarily in permuting prefabricated textual blocks (inherited from the Sufi tradition),
while assigning them diverse meanings from haqiqath. Given this fact, differences
between various productive roles diminish in significance. The munshid (who "merely"
creates a collage of existing works) may be as creative as the virtual mode "poet" (who
actually "composes" a text); even the listener may be as creative as the others. All three
embody the literal meaning of sha'ir (poet): one who knows or feels. None is truly a
creator, since all creation is God's.1
Originality: In the secular poetic tradition, the meaning of original as
"innovative" implies an author-origin. In this sense, the Sufi "poet," as much as
munshid or listener, cannot be original. For the Sufi, the only origin is God; his
originality consists of nothing more than a connection to that Origin. This Sufi concept
of originality implies a negation of the individualized autonomous author-self
(culminating in fana'). At the same time, the best Sufi authors draw near to each other,
even merging, textually and authorially, due both to their joint proximity to a common
Origin, and to their influence on each other, via the spiritual-social network linking
them together. Radical innovation implies the individualization and autonomy of the
author, and consequently the disconnection of spiritual-social relations that would bind
that author into a larger whole, to haqiqath. However, in Sufism all true meaning flows
from haqiqath, through the spiritual social network, from which no true Sufi wishes to
be cut off.2
Evaluation: Sufis evaluate Sufi poetry (written or performed) as a means
of dhikr: according to the degree to which it is perceived to sincerely encode a true
mystical experience, and hence according to its power to re-awaken similar feelings in
the listener. Technical perfection and creativity (so important to secular poetry and
1 See Michal Frishkopf, Authorship in Sufi Poetry.p.97
2 Ibid
64
song) are secondary considerations. Western critics often accuse Arabic literature
(including Sufi poetry) of having been uninspired and derivative, hence inferior, during
the period of its supposed "decline" (roughly, fourteenth-nineteenth centuries).1 But (at
least in regards to Sufi poetry) such a judgment errs by imposing upon it a wholly
foreign system of evaluation, without recognizing either the ritual function of Sufi
poetry as dhikr, or the independence of inspiration from novelty.2
Attribution: The foregoing discussion indicates why the criterion for
attribution in Sufi poetry is not "original creation," but rather "the sincere encoding of
true mystical experience" (something which Sufis claim, with shafafiyya, to be able to
judge); such a non-objective criterion inevitably produces ambiguities, paradoxes of
attribution (as mentioned at the outset of this article). But these paradoxes merely
reflect Sufi poetry's essentially interauthorial and intertextual nature. Certain parallels to
a Borges short story, influential in postmodern discussions, emerge. In his "Pierre
Menard, Author of Don Quixote," Borges suggests that a writer copying a text verbatim
might nevertheless receive attributional credit, so long as he enables that text to be
endowed with new meaning. For the Sufi that new meaning consists in the fact that a
particular individual ("author," whether poet, munshid, or listener) has truly
experienced a repeated verbal sequence. True mystical experience, depending on
spiritual-social position, maqam, and hal, is always unique, hence "new." To be able to
"truly experience," such that words correspond to inner state is to receive recognition of
a kind of authorship. At the same time, the complexities of multiple attributions for the
same or similar texts means that the author's position becomes blurred, open to
participation in a broader spiritual-social network.3
1 Thus Schimmel writes that "true inspiration seems to be lacking in most of the post-thirteenth-century
mystical poetry" (Schimmel, As Through a Veil 46); Hodgson notes that the Arabs were culturally
depressed, and that the "Arabic language had languished except for narrow theological purposes"
during the period 1600-1800 (Hodgson 272); Goldziher sweepingly writes off the thirteenth to the
seventeenth centuries as "the period of decadence" in Arabic literature generally (Goldziher 141-42);
likewise, Charles Pellat "confidently" applies the term "decadent" to Arabic literature from 1258 until
the nineteenth-century renaissance (Pellat 150-51). Though these critics might be right to point to the
lack of innovation in this period, it is less correct to claim lack of inspiration or culture, and unfair to
unthinkingly apply pejoratives such as "languish," or, afortiori, "decadent."
2 See Michal Frishkopf, Authorship in Sufi Poetry.p.98
3 Ibid.98-99
65
The Sufi author is at least partially individualized, in the sense that he is
recognizable as such. First, it is clear that "folkloric" anonymity is not the rule. Barthes'
"ethnographic society" model, containing only performers of conventional texts, does
not apply. In Egypt, many Sufi "poets" are well known: Ibnu Farid, Ibn ‘Arabi, al-
Hallaj, al- Shushtari, al-Bur'i. The munshid too is far from anonymous; the public
hadra munshid typically produces commercial cassette tapes, featuring his own name
and photo, and implying (by omitting mention of the "poets" used) an authorial status.1
Concept of Sufi Poet in the Eyes of Sufis
Sufis consider the Sufi "poet" as a Sufi or Sheikh who, inspired by his
spiritual-social network, happened to convert mystical experience into poetry and
propagate the people into Islamic spirituality and Sufism. The power of poet (sha'ir) is
secondary to attributes indicating spiritual status, which always locate the poetic
producer within the Sufi spiritual-social network. Hence, the "poet" is not a wellbounded
autonomous social position. These facts dovetail with Islam's general
suspicion about poets and poetry (as based partly in Qur’an, e.g. 24: 224-26)2, which
likewise discourages the assumption of the "poet" status.
Sufi poetry moves back and forth between oral and written forms,
detaching and acquiring various authorial attributions with ease. Never is it circulated
within the global capitalist system of secular literary production and consumption,
which functions to produce a strongly individualized and autonomous author-function
(the genius "Author-god"). Inshad performance likewise has the effect of erasing the
virtual-mode author's name, and breaking down the integrity of his work through
collaring techniques. Yet the Munshidin, constantly recycling each other's poetry, are
not perceived as autonomous authors either.
All Sufi poetry is a form of memory of the beloved (fellow Sufi, Sheikh,
saint, Prophet, God), as located within a broad spiritual- social network, every beloved
points to that network, and ultimately towards the one reality of haqiqath, source of all
truth and all meaning. The closed position of sovereign author is impossible, because
1 Many munshidin, most notablyShykhYasin andShykhal-Tuni (who have even traveled to perform in
European music festivals), have become very famous (see Waugh; Frishkopf, "Inshad Dini").
2 That verses have mentioned in the first chapter ‘Sufi poetry in various stances. P.20.
66
even though meaning is infinitely variegated, the author cannot create a meaning that
does not connect him to others. The Sufi poet does not speak for himself only, but to
whole people in every religion.
The Formation of the Inter Author
As Michael Frikshkopf denotes “this permeable, weakly bounded author
enables a relatively homogeneous field of poetic producers ("poets," Munshidin,
listeners) operating in the context of a strong spiritual social network (unlimited by
time, space, or death) and a set of regular corporate ritual practices, to interconnect,
thus forming the inter author. The author's weakly bounded self facilitates his
absorption into a wider network of social relations, an inter author over which all
authorship is now distributed.
That inter author is reinforced by flows induced by poetic practice itself.
Authors freely recycle each other's texts, overtly (the poet's tashtir; the munshid's
collage), or more subtly (borrowing, imitating), thereby establishing the intertext, while
reinforcing social connections, especially when those texts are performed in hadra,
where authors participate in a cybernetic system, communicating via face-to-face
interaction. Inspiration (Ilham) flows through the network, particularly from God, to
the Prophet, and the saints. Flows of text, face-to-face communications, and inspiration
all reinforce inter authorial links.
Interconnected by bonds of respect, love, and occasionally annihilation,
authors produce poetry, whose attribution is consequently distributed over the network.
Consequently, everyone is connected, and no author (poet, performer, and listener)
stands alone. The greater the Sufi author, the stronger his connections, and the less
autonomous he becomes”.1
Inter Author and Inter Text: Emic and Etic
As he also explains that “every poetic practice of Sufism is collaborative,
involving some portion of a densely connected inter author, a spiritual-social network
itself reinforced by poetic practices, whose by-product is an inter text. Conversely,
1 See Michal Frishkopf, Authorship in Sufi Poetry.p.102-103
67
every poetic product is embedded in the densely connected inter text, a symbolic
network sustained by the inter author, whose linkages are defined by the perpetual
permutation of repeated textual elements. These two networks (inter author, inter text)
thus appear as dual aspects of one phenomenon. What the Sufi sees from his
perspective as an inter author the literary critic views from his perspective as inter text.
Problems of literary attribution in Sufism are thus revealed as illusory,
artifacts resulting from the attempt to force a modernist concept of individualized
authorship upon the strongly connected Sufi inter author. The reason why Sheikh
Muhammad 'Uthmanul Burhani can continue to speak (through his close disciples)
after his own death is now clear. The Sufi author is not dead, but rather revealed as an
inextricable component within a broader non-linear network of crisscrossing social
relations, the inter author. Likewise, the text is not dead, but rather revealed as an
inextricable component within a broader non linear network of crisscrossing symbolic
relations, the inter text”.1
Then the solutions and accurate answers, for the questions and challenges
against the Sufi poetry, mentioned in this chapter command that the Sufi poetry is an
important part of the Sufism and that Of Islam and it is a real method of propagation.
1 See Michal Frishkopf, Authorship in Sufi Poetry.p.103
68
CHAPTER 3
JALALUDDIN RUMI AND HIS CONTRIBUTIONS
FOR SUFI POETRY
69
Introduction
No discussion of Sufi poetry will be complete without discussing about
Jalaluddin Rumi (1207AD-1273AD) who had known in Iran and Central Asia as
Maulana Jalaluddin Balkhi, was born in 1207 in the province of Balkh, now the
border region between Afghanistan and Tajikistan and his contributions for it and his
propagating style. He has long been recognized within the Sufi tradition as one of the
most important Sufis in history.
Rumi not only produced the finest Sufi poetry in Persian, but also was the
master of disciples who later named their order after him. Rumi has become the
archetypal Sufi disciple. From that perspective, the unprecedented level of interest in
Rumi’s poetry over the last couple of decades in North America and Europe does not
come as a total surprise. The translations of his poetries into many languages helped
people understand it and know the real path of Sufism and Islamic doctrines. His
writings were living years and years.
Although many of the followers of the tradition of his father considered
Shams very unworthy of Rumi’s time and attention, he considered him the most
complete manifestation of God. Rumi expressed his love and utter devotion for his
master Shams, with whom he spent little more than two years in total, through
thousands of ecstatic lyrical poems. Towards the end of his life, he presented the fruit
of his experience of Sufism in the form of the Masnawi, which has been judged by
many commentators, both within the Sufi tradition and outside it, to be the greatest
mystical poem ever written.
Condition of the World in Rumi’s Period
The period, in which Jalaluddin Rumi was living, was filled with the fake
activities of Orientalists and so many misconcepts and misunderstandings about Islam
and Sufism. Then the accurate presence of Jalaluddin Rumi helped people to destruct
such thoughts and understand the real meaning of Sufism and Sufi poetry. As Jawid
Mujaddedi who translated Masnawi into English said that book,
70
“The century in which Rumi lived was one of the most tumultuous in the
history of the Middle East and Central Asia. When he was about ten years
old the region was invaded by the Mongols, who, under the leadership of
Genghis Khan, left death and destruction in their wake. Arriving through
Central Asia and northeastern Persia, the Mongols soon took over almost
the entire region, conquering Baghdad in 1258. The collapse at the hands
of an infidel army of the once glorious Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, the
symbolic capital of the entire Muslim world, was felt throughout the
region as a tremendous shock. Soon afterwards, there was a sign that the
map of the region would continue to change, when the Mongols suffered a
major defeat in Syria, at Ayn Jalut in 1260. Rumi’s life was directly
affected by the military and political developments of the time, beginning
with his family’s emigration from north-eastern Persia just two years
before the Mongols arrived to conquer that region.”1
Although the family eventually relocated to Konya (ancient Iconium) in
central Anatolia, Rumi witnessed the spread of Mongol authority across that region too
when he was still a young man. In spite of the upheaval and destruction across the
region during this century, there were many outstanding Sufi authors among Rumi’s
contemporaries. The most important Sufi theosopher ever, Ibn Arabi (d. 1240),
produced his highly influential works during the first half of the century. His student
and foremost interpreter, Sadroddin Qunyavi (d. 1273), settled in Konya some fifteen
years after his master’s death and became associated with Rumi. This could have been
one channel through which Rumi might have gained familiarity with Ibn Arabi’s
theosophical system, although his poetry does not suggest the direct influence of the
latter’s works.2
The lives of two of the most revered Sufi poets also overlapped with
Rumi’s life: the most celebrated Arab Sufi poet, Ibn al-Farezd. 1235), whose poetry
holds a position of supreme importance comparable with that of Rumi in the Persian
canon;3 and Fariduddin Attar (d. 1220), who was Rumi’s direct predecessor in the
composition of Persian mystical Masnawis, including the highly popular work which
1 Jawid Mojaddedi, introduction of the translation of the Masnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi.p.13-14
2 On the relationship between the theosophy of Ebn _Arabi and the poetry of Rumi, see W. C. Chittick,
‘Rumi and wahdat al-wujud’, in A. Banani, R. Hovannisian, and G. Sabagh, eds., Poetry and mysticism
in Islam: The Heritage of Rumi (Cambridge, 1994), 70–111.
3 See further T. Emil Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint: Ibn al-Farid, his Verse, and his
Shrine (Columbia, SC, 1994).
71
has been translated as The Conference of the Birds (tr. A. Darbandi and D. Davis,
Harmondsworth, 1983). It is perhaps not surprising that the Sufi poet Jami (d. 1492)
should want to link Rumi with Attar directly by claiming that they met when Rumi’s
family migrated from Balkh; Attar is said to have recognized his future successor in the
composition of works in the mystical Masnawigenre although Rumi was then still a
young boy. Soon afterwards, the Mongols killed Attar during their conquest of
Nishapur.1
As the Mongols sophisticated westwards, Anatolia became an
increasingly attractive destination for the population of central parts of the Middle East
who wished to flee. A number of important Sufis and influential scholars chose this
option, including Hajji Bektash (d. c.1272), the eponym of the Bektashi order, which
became one of the most influential Sufi orders in Anatolia in subsequent centuries, and
Najmoddin Razi (d. 1256), whose teacher, Najmoddin Kobra (d. 1221), the eponym of
the Kobravi order, had been killed during the Mongol invasion of Transoxiana.
The recent landmark study by Franklin Lewis, entitled Rumi, Past and
Present, East and West (Oxford, 2000), has considered this problem at length. By
examining the sources critically, Lewis has clarified what precisely can be learned from
them and what still cannot be confirmed beyond any doubt. His study is therefore
obligatory for any serious academic investigation, and is likely to inspire many
revisionist accounts in the future. Nonetheless, the general outline of the life of Rumi
seems to be presented relatively consistently in the sources, and remains helpful for
putting the Masnawi into context.
Rumi was born in September 1207 in the province of Balkh, in what is
now the border region between Afghanistan and Tajikistan2. His father, Baha Valad,
was a preacher and religious scholar who also led a group of Sufi disciples. When Rumi
was about 10 years old, his family immigrated to Anatolia, having already relocated a
few years earlier to Samarkand in Transoxiana. This emigration seems to have been
motivated primarily by the approach of Genghis Khan’s Mongol army, although
1 Jawid Mojaddedi, introduction of the translation of the Masnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi.p. 14
2 Concerning the precise location of Rumi’s birth, see F. D. Lewis, Rumi, Past and Present, East and
West: The Life, Teachings and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi (Oxford, 2000), 47–8.
72
rivalries between Baha Valad and various religious scholars in the region may have
also played a part. Instead of moving westwards directly, Rumi’s family first made the
pilgrimage to Mecca, and it was only a few years after arriving in Anatolia that they
decided to settle permanently in Konya. By this time, Rumi had already married (1224)
and seen the birth of his son and eventual successor in Sufism, Soltan Valad (1226).
In Konya Baha Valad found the opportunity, under the patronage of the
Seljuk ruler Alaoddin Kay Qobad I (r. 1219–36), to continue his work as a preacher and
to teach students in a religious school. He had been grooming Rumi to be his successor,
but died only a couple of years after settling in Konya, in 1231. Although the original
reasons for his arrival remain unclear, it seems that one of Baha Valad’s students,
called Borhanoddin Mohaqqeq, arrived in Konya from Northeastern Persia soon
afterwards to take over the management of his school. He also took responsibility for
overseeing the continuation of Rumi’s education and training. Within a few years,
Borhanoddin sent Rumi to Aleppo and Damascus to continue his education in the
religious sciences. It is possible that during his stay in Damascus he may have heard the
lectures of Ibn Arabi, who was living there at the time. Rumi returned to Konya in
about 1237 as a highly accomplished young scholar, and took over leadership of Baha
Valad’s school from Borhanoddin. After his return to Konya Rumi’s reputation as an
authority on religious matters became firmly established there, and he reached the peak
of his career as a scholar, achieving what his father seems to have hoped for him.
In November 1244, after seven years of excelling as a highly respected
religious teacher, Rumi experienced a challenging encounter that would prove to be the
most significant event of his life. As one would expect, an event as important as this
has generated many competing accounts.1 However, most versions at least share the
same basic element. According to one popular and relatively simple account, Rumi is
asked about his books by an uneducated-looking stranger, and responds by snapping
back dismissively, ‘They are something that you do not understand!’ The books then
suddenly catch fire, so Rumi asks the stranger to explain what has happened. His reply
was:
1 For translations of all the main descriptions of this meeting, see Lewis, Rumi, 154–61.
73
“Something you do not understand.”
Rumi was immediately drawn to this mysterious figure, who turned out to
be a wandering mystic called Shamsuddin from Tabriz (known popularly as Shams, or
Shamse Tabriz) in north-western Persia. The two began to spend endless hours together
in retreat. What was shared by the pair during this time remains a mystery that can only
be guessed from the volumes of poetry that it inspired.
Even in the Masnawi , where Rumi makes painstaking efforts to
communicate his teachings as clearly as possible for the benefit of his students, he none
the less expresses his unwillingness to disclose anything about his experiences with
Shams, despite the persistent requests from his deputy at that time, Hosamuddin
Chalabi; Rumi explains that those experiences were beyond the capacity of others to
understand: ‘Please don’t request what you can’t tolerate. A blade of straw can’t hold a
mountain’s weight’ (v. 140). What is reported consistently about the period of about a
year and a half that Rumi spent with Shams is that it provoked intense jealousy and
resentment among his disciples, who also feared that their highly respected master was
risking his reputation by mixing with someone so unworthy in their eyes. These
disciples eventually drove Shams away, but, on hearing reports of sightings of him in
Syria, Rumi sent his own son, Sultan Valad, to ask him to come back.
Although Shams did return a year later, in 1247, he soon disappeared
forever. According to tradition, Shams was killed by Rumi’s disciples after they had
seen that driving him away had failed to separate him permanently from their master,
but, as Lewis has pointed out, there is little external evidence to substantiate this claim.1
As a result of Rumi’s relationship with Shams his conversion cannot be
emphasized enough. Although he was already a respected religious authority in Konya
and had trained in a tradition of Sufi piety under his father, whom he had even
succeeded as master, Rumi had led by Shams to a far loftier level of Sufi mysticism. His
poetry, for instance, emphasizes the importance of love to transcend attachments to the
world, and dismisses concerns for worldly reputation, literal-mindedness and
intellectuAlism. From dry scholarship and popular piety, Rumi turned his attention to
1 See ibid. 185–93.
74
mystical poetry, and he became known for his propensity to fall into an ecstatic trance
and spin around in public.
It is clear that Rumi recognized Shams as a profound mystic, the like of
whom he had never encountered before, and that for him Shams was the most complete
manifestation of God. Rumi innovatively named his own collection of Ghazals, or
lyrical poems, as ‘The Collection of Shams’ (Diwane Shams) rather than as his own
collection, and also included Shams’s name in place of his own at the end of many of
his individual Ghazals, where by convention the poet would identify himself. This can
be seen as Rumi’s acknowledgement of the all-important inspiration that Shams had
provided for him to write such poetry.1 Rumi chose a plain, descriptive name for his
Masnawi ( Masnawi is the name of the rhyming couplet verse form used; see further
below), which he started composing some fifteen years after Shams had disappeared,
but it does not take long before he digresses in this work to his praise, at the mention of
the word shams, which means ‘sun’ in Arabic (vv.124–42).
After the final disappearance of Shams, Rumi remained in Konya and
continued to direct his father’s school. However, he chose to appoint as deputy, whose
responsibility was to manage many of the affairs of the school in his place, a goldsmith
called Salahuddin. Like Shams, many of Rumi’s disciples, who considered him
uneducated, disliked him. A colourful story about the first encounter between the two
describes Rumi as falling into ecstasy and whirling, on hearing the rhythmic beating of
Salahuddin at work in his market stall.
After Salahuddin’s death in 1258, Rumi appointed Hosamuddin Chalabi
in his place. At the time when Hosamuddin had become a disciple of Rumi he was
already the head of a local order for the training of young men in chivalry. He had
brought with him his own disciples, the wealth of his order, and the expertise he had
acquired in running such an institution. However, the most important contribution of
Hosamuddin was serving as Rumi’s scribe and putting the Masnawi into writing as
Rumi recited it aloud. Rumi praises Hosamuddin profusely in the introduction to the
Masnawi, which on occasion he even calls ‘the Hosam book’, indicating the vital
1 See further ibid. 329–30.
75
importance of his role for this work. In addition to Rumi’s poetry, three prose works
have also survived. They reveal much about aspects of his life that have been neglected
by most biographers.
The collection of Rumi’s letters testifies to his influence among the local
political rulers and his efforts to secure positions of importance for his disciples
through letters of recommendation. This contradicts the popular image of Rumi
withdrawing completely from public life after the disappearance of Shams. His
collection of seven sermons attests to the fact that he was highly esteemed by the local
Muslim population. It reveals that he delivered sermons at the main congregational
mosque on important occasions, and that he used such opportunities to give Sufi
teachings, albeit within the rigid constraints of a formal sermon.1
Rumi’s most important prose work, however, is the written record of his
teaching sessions, which was compiled after his death by his students as seventy- one
discourses. This work, called ‘In it is what is in it’, probably on account of its diverse
and unclassified contents, provides intimate glimpses of Rumi as a Sufi master. The
content of this work is comparable with his didactic poem, the Masnawi, in that it
contains many of the same teachings. A reference to a specific verse in the second book
of the Masnawi confirms that the discourses represent Rumi’s teaching activity towards
the end of his life.2 However, a relatively long time-span seems to be represented in this
work, for another of its component discourses refers to the opposition faced by
Salahuddin when he was serving as Rumi’s deputy.3
The Death of Jalaluddin Rumi
Rumi died on 17 December 1273, probably very soon after the completion
of the Masnawi . Tradition tells us that physicians could not identify the illness from
which he was suffering, and that they suspected he had decided to embrace his physical
death, fulfilling sentiments often expressed in his poetry. His death was mourned not
only by his disciples but also by the large and diverse community in Konya, including
1 One of Rumi’s sermons is provided in translation in Lewis, Rumi, 130–3.
2 Rumi, Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, tr. W. Thackston, Jr. (Boston,
1999), 205.
3 Ibid. 99–101.
76
Christians and Jews, who converged as his body was carried through the city. Many of
the non-Muslims had not only admired him as outsiders, but had also attended his
teaching sessions. The ‘Green Dome’, where his mausoleum is found today, was
constructed soon after Rumi’s death. It has become probably the most popular site of
pilgrimage in the world to be visited regularly by members of every major religion.1
Hosamuddin Chalabi served as the leader of Rumi’s school for the first
twelve years after Rumi’s death, and was succeeded by Soltan Valad. Rumi’s disciples
named their school ‘the Maulawi order’ after him, for they used to refer to him by the
title ‘Maulana’ (in Arabic Maulana means ‘Our Master’). It became widespread and
influential, especially under the Ottoman Empire, and remains an active Sufi order in
Turkey as well as many other countries across the world. The Maulawis are better
known in the West as the Whirling Dervishes because of the distinctive dance that they
perform to music as the central ritual of the order.2
The Masnawi: ‘the Qur’an of Persia’
No discussion of the Sufi poetry will be complete without mentioning the
Masnawi, which was leading people into the real path of the Sufism and presented an
accurate character for whole Sufi authors and literates. The Masnawi was known as ‘the
Qur’an in Persian’ because Persian people were imitating it in all of their matters. The
title “Masnawi which was chosen by Rumi is simply the name of the form of poetry
adopted for it, the Masnawi form. Each half-line, or hemistich, of a Masnawi poem
follows the same meters, in common with other forms of classical Persian poetry. The
metre of Rumi’s is the ramal metre in apocopate form a highly popular metre which
was used also by Attar for his Conference of the Birds. What distinguishes the
Masnawi form from other Persian verse forms is the internal rhyme, which changes in
successive couplets according to the pattern aa bb cc dd etc. Thus, in contrast to the
other verse forms, which require a restrictive monorhyme, the Masnawi form enables
poets to compose long works consisting of thousands of verses.
1 Jawid Mujaddedi, introduction of the translation of the Masnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi.p.19
2 Ibid.19-20
77
Rumi’s Masnawi amounts to about 26,000 verses altogether. The
Masnawi form satisfied the need felt by Persians to compose narrative and didactic
poems, of which there was already before the Islamic period a long and rich tradition.
By Rumi’s time a number of Sufis had already made use of the Masnawi form to
compose mystical poems, the most celebrated among which are Sanai’s (d. 1138)
Hadiqatul haqiqatht, or Garden of Truth, and Faridoddin Attar’s (d. 1220) Manteqo_ttayr,
or Conference of the Birds.1 According to tradition, it was the popularity of these
works amongst Rumi’s disciples that encouraged Hosamuddin who was Rumi’s deputy,
to ask him to compose his own mystical Masnawi for their benefit.
Hosamuddin, who wrote all the words and poems of Rumi with his own
hand, served as Rumi’s scribe in a process of text production that is described as being
similar to the way in which the Koran was produced. As Jawid Mujaddedi says while
the Sufi poet Rumi recited the Masnawi orally when he felt inspired to do so, with
Hosamuddin always ready to record those recitations in writing for him as well as to
assist him in revising and editing the final poem, the illiterate Prophet Mohammad is
said to have recited aloud divine revelation in piecemeal fashion, in exactly the form
that God’s words were revealed to him through the Archangel Gabriel; those
companions of the Prophet who were present at such occasions would write down the
revelations and memorize them, and these written and mental records eventually
formed the basis of the compilation of the Koran many years after his death.2
The process of producing the Masnawi was started probably around 1262,
although tradition relates that Rumi had already composed the first eighteen couplets by
the time Hosamuddin made his request; we are told that he responded by pulling a sheet
of paper out of his turban with the first part of the prologue, often called ‘The Song of
the Reed’, already written on it. References to their system of production can be found
in the text of the Masnawi itself (e.g. v. 2947). They seem to have worked on the
Masnawi during the evenings in particular, and in one instance, Rumi begs forgiveness
for having kept Hosamuddin up for an entire night with it (v. 1817). After Hosamuddin
1 See e.g. F. Attar, The Conference of the Birds, ed. and tr. A. Darbandi and D. Davis
(Harmondsworth, 1983).
2 Jawid Mujaddedi, introduction of the translation of the Masnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi.p.21
78
had written down Rumi’s recitations, they were read back to him to be checked and
corrected.1
The vital role played by Hosamuddin as Rumi’s assistant in this process, is
decorated not only by the fact that Rumi refers to the Masnawi on occasion as ‘the
Hosam book’, but also by the fact that its production was halted completely after Book
One was finished because of the death of Hosamuddin’s wife, as indicated at the
beginning of Book 2. The confounded Hosamuddin spent almost one year between
1263 and 1264. He was mourning his deep loss before they could resume their work.
The hyperbolic praise that Rumi lavishes on Hosamuddin in the prose introduction to
Book One, the very start of the Masnawi (pp. 3–4), should be understood as a symbol
of his kindness in extolling the qualities of his deputy, rather than at face value.
The component narratives, homilies, and commentaries on citations,
which make up the body of the Masnawi are signaled by their own separate headings.
The text of longer narratives tends to be broken up into sections by further headings.
Sometimes the headings are positioned inappropriately, such as in the middle of
continuous speech (e.g. vv. 348–9), revealing that they were inserted only after the text
had been prepared and therefore do not represent some form of organizational
framework. The tendency for the given headings to refer only to the immediate start of
the subsequent passage of text suggests that they were designed to serve primarily as
markers for the benefit of reciters.
The homilies cover, in addition to specifically Sufi issues, general ethical
concerns based on traditional wisdom. Rumi drew on his knowledge of a vast range of
both oral and literary sources in the composition of his work,2 as well as his familiarity
with a wide range of disciplines, including theology, philosophy, the exegesis of the
Qur’an and Hadith, philology, literature, jurisprudence, and medicine. Most of his
stories are very humorous at least in parts, and he does not hesitate to use whatever may
1 Jawid Mujaddedi, introduction of the translation of the Masnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi.p.21
2 Since most of the literary sources drawn upon for Book One are unavailable in English, references
have been provided only to the Koran and to those hadith that have been translated in Nicholson’s
commentary. A useful list of the sources for the main stories of Book One is provided in Lewis, Rumi,
288–91.
79
convey his point in as memorable a way as possible to his contemporaries, including
jokes about sexuality and ethnic and gender stereotypes.
The frequency of breaks in the flow of narratives in the Masnawi reveals
that, although Rumi has earned a reputation as an excellent storyteller, nonetheless his
primary concern was to suggest his teachings as effectively as possible to his Sufi
disciples. The Masnawi leaves the impression that he was overflowing with ideas and
symbolic images, which would overflow when prompted by the subtlest of
associations. In addition, Rumi has been able to produce a work that is far richer in
content than any other example of the mystical Masnawi type. That this has been
achieved often at the expense of preserving continuity in the narratives seems to
corroborate.
Rumi’s opinion on the relative importance of the content of his poetry
over its form, as reported in his discourses.1 If it were not for the fact that his digressive
‘overflowings’ are expressed in simple language and with imagery that was
immediately accessible to his contemporary readers, they would have constituted an
undesirable impediment to understanding the poem. Where this leads Rumi to
interweave narratives and to alternate between different speakers and his own
commentaries, the text can still be difficult to follow, and, for most contemporary
readers, the relevance of citations and allusions to the Qur’an and the traditions of the
Prophet will not be immediately obvious without reference to the explanatory notes that
have been provided in this edition. Nevertheless, it should be evident, not least from the
long sequences of analogies that Rumi often provides to reinforce a single point that he
has striven to commune his message as effectively as possible rather than to write
ambiguously and force the reader to struggle to understand him.
1 In a famous passage among Rumi’s discourses, he is reported to have compared writing poetry with
serving to a guest something which one finds unpleasant like tripe, because that is what the guest wants
(Rumi, Signs of the Unseen, 77–8). The main theme of the sixteenth discourse (pp. 74–80), in which
this passage is found, is the relationship between form and content, and it includes Rumi’s response to
the charge that he is ‘all talk and no action’ (p. 78). The statement should therefore be understood in its
propercontext, rather than as evidence that Rumi disliked the art of writing poetry.
80
The contents of Masnawi
The contents of Masnawi had discussed among the literates and the
Islamic preachers. By far the best-known passage in the entire Masnawi is the prologue
of Book 1, where one finds what is often called ‘The Song of the Reed’. Dick Davis has
pointed out that the form this prologue takes is highly innovative; in preference to
following the established convention of beginning mystical Masnawi poems with an
invocation of the Transcendent and unstoppable Creator and His Prophet, Rumi chooses
to focus on the humble reed-flute, and addresses the reader in the second person, with
‘Listen!’ (v. 1).1 These initial eighteen verses have been thought by many to contain the
essential message of the entire work.2 There is some vAlidity to this point, since the
Masnawi is a poem that repeats in a kaleidoscope of different ways and with everincreasing
nuances the same message about the human condition and the means of
recognizing this reality and achieving fulfillment through Sufi mysticism.
The reed that mourns having been cut from the reed-bed may be
understood as a symbol representing the mystic who feels inwardly a strong sense of
separation from his origin with God, and yearns to return to that state. Love is the force
that intensifies this yearning in the mystic (v. 10), increasing his perception of reality,
from which he has become veiled through his attachment to the world of phenomenal
existence. Rumi further illustrates the power of this divine love as an all-consuming
force, with reference to the crushing of Mount Sinai before Moses’s eyes, making him
fall in a swoon (v. 26).
Through the divine love, the lover is effaced and only God, the beloved,
lives on (v. 30). Rumi often describes Man’s relationship with God by using the
scholastic language of Islamic theology and philosophy. God is described as Absolute
Being, while humans are non-beings who merely imagine that they have their own
1 See D. Davis, ‘Narrative and Doctrine in the First Story of Rumi’s Mathnawi’, in G. R. Hawting, J. A.
Mojaddedi, and A. Samely, Studies in Islamic and Middle Eastern Texts and Traditions in Memory of
Norman Calder (Oxford, 2000), 93–6.
2 See e.g. E. Turkmen, The Essence of the Masnevi (Konya, 1992).
81
independent existence. They are urged to recognize their non existence and to strive to
become effaced in God, in order to truly exist through Him.1
Another well-known story in the Masnawi is the brief and simple tale in
Book One about the lover who knocks on the door of his beloved’s house (vv. 3069–
76). When she asks ‘Who’s there?’ he answers, ‘It is I!’ and is consequently turned
away. Only after being ‘cooked by separation’s flame’ (v. 3071) does he learn from his
mistake and perceive the reality of the situation. He returns to knock on her door, and
this time, on being asked, ‘Who’s there?’ he answers, ‘It is you’, and is admitted to
where two I’s cannot be accommodated.2
This story is found among a cluster of passages which illustrate
effacement in God. In the preceding story, a fox learns not to think about himself but
only for his king, the lion, when dividing up what they had caught while hunting, while
in the subsequent story Joseph’s visitor can think of nothing better to present to him as
a gift than a mirror in which he can admire his own beauty. The mirror is in fact one of
Rumi’s favourite images for the soul; it is tarnished by the rust of attachment to
phenomenal existence, which must be scraped away by the breaking of those
attachments, through discipline under the guidance of a Sufi master. Only once it has
become completely clear can it become receptive to the light of God and contain
nothing but His reflection.
The very first story of the Masnawia appropriately expands on the
message of the prologue that immediately precedes it, by its differentiation of
contrasting kinds of love. In order to cure his sick slave-girl, the prayers of a devout
king are answered with the arrival of a divine healer. On discovering that she is
lovesick, the healer reunites her with her sweetheart, but after they are married he
poisons her husband so that she can slowly observe him rotting away in front of her and
losing his former good looks. In this way, all the love she once had for him leaves her
heart. The powerful force of divine love thus takes effect through the holy healer who
cures the slave-girl by murdering her lover with poison. Rumi makes it clear through
1 Jawid Mujaddedi, introduction of the translation of the Masnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi.p.24-25.
2 Jawid Mujaddedi, introduction of the translation of the Masnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi.p.25
82
this harsh lesson that the love discussed in the prologue as an annihilating force is
divine love, by contrasting it with the fickle love of a pair of superficial lovers.
Just as Rumi recognized that his frequent high praise of love could be
misinterpreted, he saw the same risk in his appearance of the experience of witnessing
God in all of creation. While this is possible for an experienced mystic like himself, the
novice is more in danger of loving creation for its own sake and thereby becoming
increasingly implied from reality through such attachments (see e.g. vv. 2813–16). God
is made manifest most clearly to them through mediating figures such as prophets and
Sufi masters, or saints, who fulfill the same specific role of leading human beings back
to Him.
The overriding importance of the Sufi master for Rumi’s understanding of
Sufism is evident in the fact that a character represents him in at least nine of the dozen
or so major narratives in Book 1, while his role and characteristics are frequently
discussed in homilies and commentaries on citations. This figure is perhaps represented
most clearly by the divine healer in the first story. In other stories, he is represented by
religious and political leaders, such as prophets, saints, and Caliphas, as well as by
animals. Among the many homilies about this figure there is a lengthy one urging the
reader to choose a Sufi master as guide and follow him wholeheartedly and
unconditionally (vv. 2947–93), as well as many further passages explaining specific
characteristics of such a master. The fact that Rumi also includes a section on impostors
who claim to be Sufi masters (vv. 2275–98) only underlines further the importance for
him of the genuine mediator figure, a fact which comes as no surprise in view of his
own transformation to a Sufi mystic through his devotion to Shams-e Tabriz.1
Then the Masnawi led people into the real path of Sufism and clarified
them the real meaning of Islam. Thus, Persians called it ‘the Qur’an of Persia’. Because
the scholars and students were depending it in so many issues. In addition, we can
express by Masnawi that Sufi poetry is a real method of propagation.
1 Jawid Mujaddedi, introduction of the translation of the Masnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi.p.26
83
CHAPTER 4
ABDUL WAHAB AL BAYATHI:
A REAL SUFI POET
84
Introduction
There are so many dissimilarities between the literates and Sufi poets in
the case of Abdul Wahab al Bayathi(1926-1999) and his poetry. But he is a major
Iraqi Poet whose poems led the people to convert into Islam and Sufism.
Paradoxically he is more recognized abroad than in the Arab world and more in the
rest of the Arab world than in Iraq.
After graduating from Teachers' Training College in Baghdad in 1954, al-
Bayathi taught Arabic and pursued his political activities until he was fired and forced
to leave the country. His exile began in late 1955 and continued, except for brief
intervals, until his death in Damascus almost two years ago. Since 1950, al-Bayathi
published more than twenty volumes of poetry and, in addition, several volumes of
prose describing his poetic experience and his life in exile and in Iraq. Critics are
sharply divided about al-Bayathi's role in harakat al-shi'r al-hur (free verse
movement) and about his overall poetic achievements.1
Thus, he is a sort of poetic variance among his contemporary poets and
among the majority of Arab critics and readers. His international recognition, the
many translations of his work into European and Asian languages, and his close
relationship with major world poets, writers, and politicians2 all drew mixed
responses from Arab poets, intellectuals and general readers. Saadi A. Simawe says,
“Though some of the negative responses to al Bayathi can be seen as symptoms of
jealousy or poetic "sibling rivalry," so to speak, other responses may be based on
genuine skepticism. I think there are several reasons for the mixed reaction to al-
Bayathi. One is probably his contentious personality, as is evident from his own
accounts of other poets' jealousy of his poetic achievements.3 Obsessively self-
1 For an example of effusive praise of his poetry see Nihad al-Takarli, ed., 'Abdul Wahab al-Baydti:
Ra'id al-Shi'r al-Hadith (Damascus: Dar al-Yaqazah: 1958) and Nazim Hikmat et al., Ma'sdt al-Insan
al-Mu'asir fi Shi'r 'Abd al-Wahhdb al-Baydti (Cairo: al-Dir al- Misriyyah lil-Tiba'ah wa al-Nashr wa al-
Tawzi' 1966). For negative evaluations, see studies, cited below, by Fadil Thamir, Ghili Shukri, Issa J.
Boullata, Salma Khadra Jayyusi, 'Ali Ja'far al Allaq and M. M. Badawi.
2 More than any other modem Arab poet, al-Bayiti nurtureda huge internationanl etworkof friendships
that includes prominent literary, intellectual, and political figures such as Turkish poet Nazim Hikmat,
Spanish poet Rafael Alberti, Lebanese, poet Khalil Hawi, Egyptian critic Lewis 'Awad, Egyptian
fiction writer Najib Mahfuiz, to mention only a few.
3 Al-Bayati's quarrels with other poets are documented in his Hard'iq al-Shu'ara':Dhikrayat wa Nu.sus
(Beirut: al-Mu'assasah al-'Arabiyyah lil-Dirasat wa al-Nashr, 1994). See especially chapters "Badr
Shikir al-Sayyab: al-Mawt wa al-'Abqariyyah," "Khalil Hawi: al- Khalas bi al-Mawt," and "Salath 'Abd
al-Sabur: fi Asqa' al-Nfir." Almost the same accounts are repeated in his 'Abd al-Wahhdb al-Baydti,
85
promoting all his life, al-Bayathi had a shrewd talent for effective networking to
promote his poetry, as can be seen from the hundreds of studies written on him. Still
another reason is the tendency of the international left and of the socialist realist
school to inflate any exiled mediocre poet from the Third World, evaluating his or her
poetry according to its political commitment. And lastly, some of the problem may be
attributable to the tendency of Western scholars to become fascinated with exotic
foreign writers without adequate understanding of the cultural contexts.”1
Al Bayathi's embroidered international reputation is similar to the still
baffling popularity of Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) in the United States, who is not
read much in his native Lebanon nor in the rest of the Arab world. Readers in the
Arab world still surprise what there is in al-Bayathi that American, European, South
American, and Asian readers find so attractive. Though it may sound skeptical, some
Arab readers have become enchanted with al-Bayathi due to the influence of his
international reputation, a disturbing case of convoluted Orientalism.
Al Bayathi's utilization of the lives of Al Hallaj and Ibn Arabi as literary
masks.2 Many of al-Bayathi's poems employ such traditional Sufi masters as 'Umar al
Khayyam (1038-1123), al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi, al-Suhrawardi, and al-Shiafi as literary
personae or masks. We can understand such matters from two poems "Adhab al-
Hallaj" (The Passion of al- Hallaj) and "'Ayn al-Shams, al-Tahawwulat Miuhyi al-Din
Ibn ‘Arabi in Tarjumdn al-Ashwdq" ('Ayn al-Shams, or the Transformations of Muhyi
al- Din Ibn ‘Arabi in The Interpreter of Desires). Historically, the use of Sufism has
become more noticeable in the 1960s. This became especially visible as the 1960s
was a time when the liberation movement in the Arab world began to decline, and
intellectuals, especially poets and writers, became increasingly disillusioned with the
Sirah Dhdtiyyah: al-Qithdirah wa al-Dhdkirah. (London: Bazzaz Manshurat, 1994); and Yandbi' al-
Shams: al-Sirah al-Shi'riyyah (Damascus: Dar al-Farqad, 1999
1 Saadi A. Simawe, The Lives of the Sufi Masters in Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī's Poetry.p.120-121
2 The mask, or the literary persona, has been defined by several modern Arab critics and poets such as
Ihsan 'Abbas in Ittijdhdt al-Shi'r al-'Arabi al-Mu'asir (Kuwait: Al-Majlis al- Watani lil-Thaqafah wa al-
Funfin wa al-Adab, 1978), Shukri 'Ayyad in "Sifr al-Faqr wa al- Thawrah," in Hikmat, Ma'sat al-lnsdn
al-Mu'asir, 177-83, Jabir 'Usfur in "Aqni'at al-Shi'r al-Mu'asir: Mihyar al-Dimashqi" Fusul no. 4
(1981): 123-48, and 'Ali Ja'far al-'Allaq, "The Artistic Problems in 'Abdul Wahab al-Bayati's Poetry: A
Comparative Critical Study," (Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of Exeter, 1983). As far as I
know, 'Usffir's study of the mask in Adinis's long poem "Aghani Mihyar al-Dimashqi" is the most
comprehensive treatment of the use of the mask in both Arabic and Western literatures. He rigorously
examines the inevitable links of the mask with metaphor, symbol, and myth. Hence, effective use of the
mask, he argues, usually exploits all these artistic possibilities.
86
revolutionary regimes that they had dreamt of and fought for so many decades.1
Clearly, this statement assumes that Sufism habitually emerges as a counterpoint to a
discarded reality.
Several studies had carried out about the Sufism in Al Bayathi’s poetry
such as ‘Aziz al-Sayyid Jasim's 1990 book, titled Al-Iltizam wa al- Tasawwuf fi Sh'ir
'Abd al-Wahab al-Baydthi (Political Commitment and Sufism in 'Abd al-Wahhab al-
Bayathi's Poetry),2 which examines the evolution of the poet from socialist realism to
Sufism . Samih al-Rawashidah's 1996 Sh'ir Abdul Wahab al-Bayathi wa al-Turath
(The Poetry of 'Abdul Wahab al-Bayathi and Arabic Literary Tradition)3 devoted two
sections to the treatment of the Sufi dimension in al-Bayathi's poetry.
Saadi A. Simawe denotes “the most obvious is that most practitioners of
what might be termed literary Sufism, to distinguish it from traditional Sufism, among
modern Arab poets are not religious. Actually, many of them are practitioners of
modern ideologies that have nothing to do with, if not hostile to, traditional Islam.
Among those, in addition to al-Bayathi, who flirt with or claim to express Sufi diction
and vision are the following: Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926-1964), especially in his
later work after his break with the Communists and the onset of his fatal illness,
consciously wrote Sufi poems. Nazik al-Mala'ikah (1923-), Muzaffar al-Nawwab
(1931-), Adunis (1929-), Muhammad 'Afifi Matar (1935-), Mahmud Darwish (1942-),
Salah 'Abd al-Sabair (1931-1981), just to mention the most obvious figures. Despite
their different ideologies and political convictions, these poets are fascinated with
Sufism. In their poetry, they seem to aspire to the condition of Sufi poetry and Sufi
vision.
Some of the attraction of Sufism can be located in its ambiguity and its
esoteric vision, which make it an especially convenient mask for the poet who fears
oppression and therefore loves to whisper in symbols. In addition, there is a satisfying
sense of power for authors in creating difficult texts, thus competing with the most
challenging and coveted Arabic text, that is, the Qur’an. Sufism attracts poets
1 On this point, see M. M. Badawi's A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry (CambridgeC:
ambridgeU niversityP ress, 1975), 212-13.
2 Aziz al-Sayyid Jasim, Al-Iltizdm wa al-Tasawwuf fi Shi'r 'Abdul Wahab al-Baydti (Baghdadi:W
izarata l-Thaqafahw a al-I'lam,D ar al-Shu'una l-Thaqafiyyaha l-'Ammah,1 990
3 Samih al-Rawashidah, Shi'r 'Abd al-Wahhdb al-Baydti wa al-Turdth (Irbid, Jordan: Matba'at Kan'an,
1996) 40-58, 119-29.
87
because it provides them with a divine vision, a symbolic language, and a claim to
prophet hood, or at least clairvoyance.”1
The fundamentals of Sufism that traditionally separated orthodox Islam
are almost the same elements that appeal to modem Arab poets and writers who, for
different reasons, are unhappy with the status quo. Foremost among these elements
was "the negative attitude to this world that seemed to develop among the Sufis with
alarming alacrity."2Fuzlur Rahman believes that this negative attitude, "with its
popular character and mass appeal,"3 was perceived by the 'Ulama' as a major threat
to the spirit of Islam, which is expressed in the famous Hadith "there is no
monasticism in Islam."
The Contents of Al Bayathi’s Poetry
We can understand from Al Byati’s poetry that the three essential elements
of Sufism , that is, unhappiness with the present world, a direct contact with God, and
the belief in Gnostic knowledge, make the Sufi by nature a creative artist. Hence the
natural similarity between Sufism and poetry. As a poet, al-Bayathi slowly but
gradually moved from identifying with Marxist figures to identifying with Sufi
figures. In this regard, a close look at his two-volume Al-A'malul Kamilah (Complete
Works), published in 1995, is revealing.4
In volume one, the contents of which were all originally published before
1965, there is only one title that mentions the Sufi master, Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-
1273). It occurs at the very end of the last collection titled Al-Nar wal-Kalimat (Fire
and Words), published in 1964. The majority of the titles and dedications in this
volume refer to Marxists, Communists, or revolutionary leaders from the international
liberation movements. For example, there are titles such as "Mau Mau," "Jamal
'Abdunnasir" "For Gabriel Bern and the Workers of Marseilles," "Spartacus,"
"Algeria," "Warsaw," "Mau Tse Dung," "For Demetrov," and many poems for the
1 Saadi A. Simawe, The Lives of the Sufi Masters in Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī's Poetry.p.121-122
2 Fuzlur Rahman, Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 134.
3 'Ibid., 134.
4 Abdul Wahab al-Bayiti, Al-A'mdl al-Kdmilah, 2 vols. (Beirut: al-Mu'assasah al-'Arabiyyah lil-Dirasat
wa al-Nashr, 1995
88
Palestinians. As 'Aziz al-Sayyid Jasim has noticed, in this period of socialist realism,
al-Bayathi scarcely wrote about Sufism.1
In a poem dedicated to his close friend and comrade, the Turkish
Communist poet Nazim Hikmat (1901?-1963), al-Bayathi titles Part Four of the poem
"Jalaluddin Rumi," a double gesture indicating both his Maxism and Sufism . After
1964, titles of poems and of entire collections begin to honor major Sufi masters, and
the poetic diction, the dominant themes, and the historical settings contain echoes of
Sufi tradition with, of course, a leftist slant.
The titles of the collections published after 1964 are very suggestive of the
significant spiritual transformation that al-Bayathi had gone through. For example, in
the 1965 Sifr al-Faqr wa al-Thawrah (The Book of Poverty and Revolution), the word
sifi implies, first, that it is a holy book not different from the Bible or the Qur’an and,
second, that the poet is a prophet and a seer and a revolutionary leader of the poor.
Al Bayathi has written a poem in the title "For Albert Camus," published
in 1964 in Al-Nar wal-Kalimat during the last year of his socialist realist period, while
he was still living in Moscow. Thus in addition to Marxism and Sufism,
existentialism, as a component of modernism, is evident in al-Bayathi's poetry after
1965. The three ideologies, Marxism, existentialism, and Sufism, both enriched and
diluted al-Bayathi's poetry. By receiving such method, Bayathi was showing the
lterates and Sufi poets a various style of propagation.
Bayathi’s famous poems with the titles Al-Mawt fi al- Hiyah (Death in
Life), Al-Kitabah 'ala al-Tin (Writing on Clay), Qasa'id Hubb 'aid Bawwabat al-
'Alam al-Sab' (Love Poems on the Seven Gates of the World), Sirah Dhdtiyyah li-
Sdriq al-Nur (Autobiography of the Stealer of Fire), Qamar Shiraz (The Moon of
Shiraz), Mamlakat al-Sunbulah (The Kingdom of the Spike), Bustan 'A'iShah
('A'iShah's Orchard) and the last published collection in Al-A'mal al-Kamilah, Al-
Daynunah (This Puny World) express the Sufi attitude.
Out of the thirteen books of poetry published after Bayathi’s socialist
realist period, ten titles reverberate Sufism directly or indirectly. The Sufi titles of
numerous poems in these thirteen books further reveal his increased appropriation of
1 Aziz al-Sayyid Jasim, Al-iltizdm wa al-Tasawwuf. See especially chapter 10 on al-Bayati's transition
from socialist realism to what Jasim terms "revolutionary" Sufism, pp. 187-222.
89
Sufism and mysticism. In the poetry published after 1964 there are more than thirty
five poems that indicate Sufi tradition in their titles, symbolic settings, use of Sufi
masters as masks, allusions to Sufi poetry, or at least in their Sufi diction.
Some of Bayathi’s poems such as "'Adhab al-Hallaj" (The Passion of al-
Hallaj) and "Mihnat Abi al-Ala"' (The Ordealof Abfi al-'Ala') are supposedly devoted
to the lives of a Sufi master and a great ascetic, respectively. All the poems in the
collection Alladhi Ya'ti wa Ya'ti are concentrated on the internal autobiography of
'Umar al-Khayyam; and all the poems in Al-Mawtu fi al-Hayah depict the other face
of al-Khayyam's meditations on existence and nothingness. Albert Camus's presence
with al-Khayyam is announced from the very beginning by a quotation from Camus:
"In the heart of my writing there is a sun that does not set." Al-Bayathi's poetry after
1964 promises a rereading of Sufism with new portraits of the Sufi masters, such a Ibn
‘Arabi, al-Suhrawardi, Jalaluddin Rumi, al-Hallaj, and Farid al-Din al-'Attar among
many others. However, al-Bayathi's Sufism is unusually blended with Marxism and
existentialism.
M. M. Badawi, who wrote about Writing about the faithful Arab poets and
modernism of the 1970s, remarks that "Bayathi seems to adopt a strangely materialist
philosophical position, fraught with elements of pantheism and mysticism, for which
he finds support in ancient Babylonian literature."1
When we seek the answers for Bayathi’s ways of Sufism and Marxism we
can see in his Yandbi' al-Shams: al-Sirah al- Shi'riyyah (Fountains of the Sun: The
Poetic Autobiography) published in 1999, al-Bayathi speaks at length about his
creation of the elusive, ubiquitous 'A'iShah, who is capable of endless transformations.
"Thus, 'A'iShah has been for me the symbol for femininity, revolution, and myth and
the twin of Sufism." He defines his concept of Sufism:
“The union with the beloved is what made me perceive the things of this
world not out of the window of a seclusion or from the shore. For when I
am in love, I die in that love, and when I believe in an idea, I identify with
it until it becomes part of my spiritual existence. Therefore, everything I
love and feel ready to die for becomes part of my poetic crucible. It burns
only to emerge in a new form. And if there are some poets who approach
Taswawwuf [lit., the practice of Sufism] by way of imitating its
philosophy, I am not one of those. For my Tasawwuf-if I am correct in
1 Badawi, A Critical Introduction, 214
90
saying so-is part of my poetic vision and my being is burnt into it. As I
have said on many occasions, I do not strive for God's Kingdom in the
Afterworld, but I work for the Kingdom of God and Man in this world.
Tasawwuf does not mean for me wearing wool or becoming a dervish or
dwelling at meditation circles. Rather, it means absolving one's self of
selfishness, hatred, harm, and evil and entering the union with the spirit of
this world and with the music of this universe that manifest themselves in
the poem that becomes a being glorifying truth, freedom, justice and the
supreme love.”1
Obviously here, Al-Bayathi is synthesizing Sufism, by modifying its
metaphysical spirit on the union with God in Heaven, with a radical activism that
aims at establishing a better world. In addition, he appeals to a variety of audiences in
the Arab world and abroad, including the nationalists, the Marxists, the Muslims and
all others who are interested in changing the status quo, including existentialists and
iconoclasts. Significantly, al-Bayathi's Sufi poems attempt to capture his vision of a
better world described above.
Fadil Thamir, a well-known Iraqi critic, believe that in his use of the Sufi
master as a mask, al-Bayathi's voice and portrait both occur at the expense of his
characterization of the Sufi master, as, for example, with the case of al-Khayyam in
Alladhi Ya'ti wa la Ya'ti.2 The prominent Egyptian critic Ghali Shukri argues that the
entire poem of Alladhi Ya'ti wa ld Ya'ti is a sharp contrast to al-Khayyam's spiritual
life.3
However, Samih al-Rawashidah defends al-Bayathi's use of historical
figures as masks and argues that al-Bayathi aspires to be original and creative.4
But a
careful reading of such poems as "‘Adhbul-Hallaj,""Ayn al-Shams, aw Tahawwulatu
Muhyuddiini bn 'Arabi,"" Rasa'il ila al-Imam al Shafi'i,("Epistles to the Imam al-
Shafi'i), "Qira'ah fi Diwan al-Tawasin lil-Hallaj" (A Reading in the Diwan al-
Tawasin of al-Hallaj), "Maqati' min 'Adhabat Fariduddin Attar"( Short Poems from
the Passions of Fariduddin Attar)," Suirahlil Suhrawardi fi Shab Abih"( A Portrait of
1 A l-Bayati, Yandbi'a l-Shams, 166-67. Translationsf rom the Arabic in this study are mine except
where otherwise noted.
2 Fadil Thamir, Ma'dlim Jadidah min Adabina al-Mu'asir (Baghdad: Wizarat al-I'lam al-Iraqiyyah,
1975), 267.
3 Ghali Shukri, Shi'rund al-Hadith ila Ayn? (Cairo: Dar al-Ma'arif, 1968), 97-8.
4 Al-Rawashidah, Shi'r 'Abd al-Wahhhab al-Baydti, 30-31.
91
al-Suhrawardai s a Young Man) and "Qira'ahf i Diwan 'Shams Tabriz' li-Jalaluddin
Rumi"(' A Reading in the Diwan "Shams Tabriz" of Jalil al-Din al-Rumi) reveals that
they do not live up to their graceful and attractive titles.
“Adhab al-Hallaj” (The Passion of Al-Hallaj) (1964), for example, is
composed of five sections titled "Al-Murid" (The Sufi Novice), "Rihlah hawla al-
Kalimat" (A Journey around the Words), "Fusayfisa""(Mosaics), "Al-
Muh.kamah,"(The Trial), "Al-Salb"(The Crucifixion), and "RamaduI al-Rih" (Ashes
in the Wind). The sections are set up as dramatic peaks in al-Hallaj's spirituala nd
political transformations leading to the day of his crucifixion by the Baghdad
authorities in 309/922. Yet, what the poem describes in quick staccato images is a
reduced al-Hallaj, or a flat al-Hallaj, who is robbed of the complexity and inner
drama that lead him ultimately to declare a war of liberation theology against Abbasid
corruption.
We can say that al-Bayathi's al-Hallaj is crucified by the three un
reconciled, conflicting passions in al-Bayathi, namely, Marxism, Sufism, and
existentialism. Then we seem that Marxism, Sufism and existentialism overlie in
some of their tenets and can be synthesized, al-Bayathi's synthesis is not effectively
balanced, primarily because he fails to allow the speaker of the poem, al-Hallaj, to
develop as an independent character. In addition, eager to appeal to several audiences
at once, al-Bayathi ultimately loses his al-Hallaj.1
In this poem, Al-Hallaj is a political observer with some revolutionary
sentiments but with al-Bayathi's f ace, voice, and utilitarian concerns. One assumes
that an effective use of a larger than life and legendary figure such as al- Hallaj for a
poetic and theatrical persona should at least add new dimensions to the historical
figure. Otherwise, the mask will become gravely anticlimactic, producing a caricature
instead of a tragic figure as in "Adhabaul Hallaj."
Criticism on al-Bayathi
Critics such as Issa J. Boullata and Salma Khadra Jayyusi have pointed
out aesthetic and structural problems in "Adhabul Hallaj."I n his "The Masks of
1 Salma Khadra Jayyusi observes this tendency in al-Bayati in her Trends and Movements in Modern
Arabic Poetry, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977). She remarks that: "some of the defects of al-Bayati's
poetry probably arise from his wish to convey a universal message of love, faith and courage to the
largest audience, which leaves him sometimes lacking in respect towardsa more rigorousa nd
sophisticatedt echnique"( 2:702)
92
'Abdul Wahab al-Bayathi," which appears in this issue, Boullata fittingly perceives
that "the lack of the narrative sequence and the focusing on situational analysis and on
symbols in this poem necessitate dependence on the section titles and calling on al-
Hallaj's teachings in order to understand it."1
Jayyusi points to two defects in the poem that ultimately render it less
effective. One is that "in a serious poem like "Adhabul Hallaj' the tragedy is
inartistically diluted by the extreme fluidity of words and by the persistent and
elaborate use of rhyme." The other defect, according to both Boullata and Jayyusi, lies
in al-Bayathi's tendency to "inappropriate use of images" in his poetry in general.2
Probably these defects are symptoms of a larger problem: the incongruity of al-
Bayathi's vision of al-Hallaj, and other Sufi masters, and his insufficient artistic
creativity.
Al-Bayathi's ability for characterization, action, and dialogue do not seem
to help him in rendering his vision into a poetic drama. This paucity becomes very
evident when we submit "'Adhab al-Hallaj" to a more stringent textual analysis.
When we read Part 1 of the poem, titled "Al-Murid," we immediately assume, because
of the poem's title, that the speaker in this section is either al-Hallaj in his early stage
of Sufism, or one of his disciples. Whoever the speaker is, he clearly is chastising
someone, but this person's identity is not clear either:
“You have fallen in the darkness and the void
Your soul has been soiled with (dirty) stains
You have drunk from their wells
And you have suffered from vertigo
Your hands have been smeared with ink and with dust
And now I see you bent on the ash of this fire
Your silence is a cobweb and your crown is cactus
You who have slain his she-camel for his neighbor
You knocked at my door after the singer had slept
After the lyre had broken
How can I (begin) while you are being revealed in (divine) Presence
And where can I end while you are already at the beginning of the end
Our rendezvous is Doomsday, so do not break the seal of the wind's words
over water
And do not touch the udder of this scabby goat
1 J. Boullata, "The Masks of 'Abdul Wahab al-Bayati," this issue, p. 111.
2 Jayyusi, Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry, 2:701.
93
For the interior of things
Is their appearance... then think as you wish
How can I (help) and their fire in the eternal desert
Danced and disappeared and now I see you in the supplication of weeping
Immersed and silent in the temple of light, speaking to the evening.”1
In this section, there are four characters: the speaker, the addressee or the
listener, the singer, and those whose fire danced and disappeared in the desert.
Because of the imprecision of characterization, it becomes difficult to understand who
is who in the dramatis personae. Boullata believes that in this section, al-Hallaj is the
speaker and he is disciplining the poet, the novice in Sufism.2 But lines 11-12
complicate Boullatta's reading because the speaker in these two lines seems to look up
to the poet as an advanced master in Sufism who has already reached the beginning
of the end of the path to the union with the divine. Also lines 8-9 the two metaphors
"your silence is a cobweb" and "your crown is cactus" are usually associated with the
prophets Muhammad and Jesus Christ respectively as sacred symbols of their divine
manifestations. It does not seem credible at all to have al-Hallaj, the speaker, endow
the poet, a Sufi novice, with two divine seals immediately after he has rebuked him for
his worldly sins.
Another critic, Madani Salih, believes that the speaker in this section is al-
Hallaj, who is not speaking to the poet but to himself after he has fallen into sin.3 In
this case the entire section is al-Hallaj's internal monologue. This reading makes
sense until we get to line 8, when it breaks down. If this is al-Hallaj, talking to himself
about his sin and penitence, who is then the slayer of the she-camel for his neighbor?
And who is knocking at al-Hallaj's door after the singer had slept and the lyre had
been destroyed? Salih's reading of this section requires al-Hallaj to be so
schizophrenic that in the first seven lines he is the exact opposite of himself in the rest
of the section.
More problematic than these two readings is al-Bayathi's characterization.
"Adhabul-Hallaj" promises to be a narrative poem with intense dramatic scenes that
1 Al-Bayati, Al-A'mal al-Kamilah, vol. 2. Further references to this edition of Al-Bayati's poetry appear
in the text. Roman numerals [I] are keyed to the Appendix of Arabic Texts.
2 Boullata, "The Masks of 'Abdul Wahab al-Bayati," p. 110.
3 Madani Salih, Hada Huwa al-Bdyati (Baghdad: Dar al-Shu'fn al-Thaqafiyyah al- 'Ammah, 1986, 41
42.
94
utilizes lyricism as the appropriate medium for depicting the passions of al-Hallaj in
his internal and external drama. Yet al-Bayathi, perhaps for lack of narrative skills,
uses al-Hallaj as a lyrical mask for his own voice, without allowing the historical al-
Hallaj to emerge as an independent character who speaks for al-Bayathi's
contemporary political and spiritual concerns.
In the treatment of Adunis's mask poem, "Mihyar al-Dimashqi," as one of
the most successful mask poems in modem Arabic poetry, Jabir 'Usffr identifies the
basic elements of the mask: "The mask" is a symbol used by the modem Arab poet in
order for the poet to assume a more objective tone, an almost neutral tone, that helps
him to avoid the effusive flow of his own feelings, without preventing the poet from
expressing his own thought and views of the world.
Habitually the mask is a person who is not the poet, and the poem
represents his voice, in a way that characterizes him as a distinct character, revealing
its world through depiction of its attitudes, thoughts, meditations and its relations with
others. Throughout the mask poem, this character, being the speaker, dominates the
entire poems to the point that we even hear his voice. However, gradually we realize
that the speaker is merely a mask through which the poet is speaking. Yet the
speaker's voice identifies with the poet's voice in an effective way that reveals for us
the meaning of the mask in the poem.1
As a result, the mask poem is by definition a narrative poem that requires
basic elements of narration such as characterization, voice (or point of view), internal
and external conflicts, temporal and physical settings, tone, diction and even
mythmaking.2 However, it seems that al-Bayathi, in employing al-Hallaj as a mask,
thinks that he can create a literary character, and a complex and highly dynamic one
such as al-Hallaj, in a dramatic poem merely by using a historical name, a few
slogans, and some Sufi diction.
Taking Al-Hallaj out of the poem would possibly make it better, but
would not save it because of the endemic rhyme that renders a large section into a
monotonous rhythm that seriously obscures any possible coherence and precludes any
development of imagery, let alone characterization:
1 Usfuir," Aqni'ata l-Shi'r al-Mu'asir,"p . 123.
2 On al-Bayati's art of mythmaking in creating 'A'ishah, see Aida Azouqa's "Al-Bayati and W. B. Yeats
a MythmakersA: ComparativeS tudy,"J ournal of Arabic literature,3 1 no. 3 (1999), pp. 258-89.
95
“Muharriju al-Sultan
Kana wa ya ma kan
Fi sAlifi al-aman
Yudd'ibu al-'awtar, yamshi fawqa huddi al-sayfi wa al-dukhan
Yarqusu fawqa al-habli, ya'kulu al-zujdja, yanthani mughanniyan sakran
Uqallidu al-sa'dan
Yarkubu fawqa dhahrihi al-atfalu fil busthan”
(The sultan's clown
once upon a time
in the old days
he used to fiddle his strings, walk on the sword's edge and on smoke
and dance on the rope, eat glass, and suddenly sway singing, very drunk
imitating the monkey
Children ride on his back in the orchard)1
One might disagree that this silly rhythm is used as a tool for
characterizing the clown, accentuating his foolishness and clumsiness. But when we
come to the next part, "Al-Muhikamah" (The Trial), which is supposed to be a
dramatization of a very tragic moment, we encounter the same meter and the same
prancing rhythm, even the same rhyme:
“Buhtu bi kilmatayni lil-Sultan
Qultu lahu: jaban
Qultu li-kalbi al-saydi kilmatayn
Wa nimtu Laylatayn
HAlimtu fihima bi'anni lam a'ud lafzayn”
(I revealed two words to the Sultan
I told him: you are a coward
And I told the hunting dog two words
Then I slept two nights
During which I dreamt I was no longer just two words)2
1 lines 1-7, Part Three "al-Fusayaisa"
2 lines 1-5
96
It is interesting to examine at this point al-Bayathi's concept of the literary
persona or al-qand'a ('the mask') as he defines it in his 1968 Tajribati al-Shi'riyyah
(My Experience of Poetry) against his execution of the mask as a poetic technique:
“And the mask is the name through which the poet speaks, getting rid of his ego.
Which means that the poet attempts to create a character or a figure that is
independent from himself, thus avoiding the sphere so of lyricism and romanticism
into which most Arabic poetry has deteriorated. Here the initial feelings [of the artistic
process] no longer constitute the poem's form or content; rather they become the
means for an independent artistic creation. The poem in this case is a world
independent of the poet-although he is its author, yet free of the distortions, screams,
and personal psychological problems that characterize egoistic lyrical poetry.”1
This broad definition of the mask is widely accepted by literary critics.2
But it is usually more easily said in prose than achieved in creative writing, as many of
the mask poems by al-Bayathi and other poets demonstrate. The capability to "negate"
or suspend the self or the ego in order to create a consistent, credible persona,
invented or based on a historical figure, requires, as John Keats insightfully observes,
a talent for negative capability.3
Literary Sufism in al-Bayathi’s ‘Adhabul Hallaj’
The literary persona in "'AdhAbul Hallaj" in terms of voice, point of view,
and characterization seems indistinguishable from al-Bayathi's personal voice in his
poems without the mask. In "'Ayn al-Shams, aw Tahawwulat Muhyi al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi
fi Tarjumin al Ashwaq," the speaker, presumably Ibn ‘Arabi, is more consistent and is
more independent of the poet than is al-Hallaj as a speaker. Written about seven years
after the publication of "Adhabul-Hallaj" and published in the 1971 collection Qasa'id
Hubb 'ald Bawwdabt al-'Alam al-Sab' (Love Poems at the Seven Gates of the World),
the poem does not ostensibly promise to employ the historical Ibn ‘Arabi as a mask.
Rather, the title announces a reading of one book by Ibn ‘Arabi (560/1165-638/1240),
1 Abdul Wahab al-Bayati. Tajribati al-Shi'riyyah (Beirut: Munshfrat Nizar Qabbani,1968), 35.
2 Jabir' Usffirw ould think al-Bayati's definitiono f the mask representsj ust one aspect of its functions.
See note 5 above.
3 John Keats's "Letter to Benjamin Bailey," "Letter to George and Thomas Keats," and "Letter to John
Taylor,"in Hazard Adamsed. CriticalT heorys ince Plato (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1971), 472-74.
97
al-sheikh al-akbar (The Great Master) of Islamic mysticism, whose work has had
tremendous influence on generations of Sufis.
In this poem, al-Bayathi chooses one crucial moment from Ibn ‘Arabi's
many transformations, namely, the literary persona Ibn ‘Arabi used in his Tarjuman
al-Ashwaq (Interpreter of Desires),1 a short Diwan of love poetry of mystical lyricism.
The very occasion of the writing of the Diwan is highly symbolic of Ibn ‘Arabi's life
and doctrine of love. According to his biographers, in "597/ 1200, a vision told him to
go to the East. In 599/1202 he performed the pilgrimage at Mecca and became
acquainted with a Sheikh from Isfahan, whose beautiful and spiritually accomplished
daughter ['Ayn al-Shams] became, like Dante's Beatrice, his inspiration in the
composition of Tarjuman al-Ashwaq."2 In this episode Ibn ‘Arabi's dominant passions
are metaphorically captured: Mysticism as reflected in its highest form in his Perfect
Man, Muhammad, the holy site, Mecca, women as manifestations of divine beauty,
and poetry as illumination of human passions.3
As Saadi A. Simawe says Al-Bayathi's poem is composed of eight short
sections, numbered but without titles, and the speaker is Ibn ‘Arabi as understood by
al-Bayathi. The voice in the poem flows in smooth lyricism studded with essential
symbols, such as 'Ayn al-Shams ('the eye of the sun'), which is the name of Ibn
‘Arabi's beloved, Qasyun, the mountain in Damascus, a gazelle, and Sahib al-Jalalah
(His Majesty). Some of these symbols, especially the gazelle, are effectively
developed; others remain static metaphors, not enhancing the dramatic interaction
between major characters such as the speaker/mask and the beloved 'Ayn al-Shams.
Part One introduces the speaker in his highest moment of confidence,
celebrating his centrality in wahdatul-wujud ('the interactive unity of existence'),4 an
essential doctrine in Ibn ‘Arabi's pantheistic philosophy:
“I carry Qasyun
A gazelle running behind the green moon in the dark,
A rose thrown on the steed of the lover,
1 See Muhyi al-Din Ibn 'Arabi, The Tarjumdn Al-Ashwdq: A Collection of Mystical Odes, ed. and
trans. R. A. Nicholson (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1911).
2 William C. Chittick, "Ibn Arabi and His School," in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed., Islamic Spirituality:
Manifestations (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 49-50.
3 See Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1975), 271-73.
4 I am indebtedt o Schimmel in my understandingo f Ibn 'Arabi's concept of wahdata lwujfid. See
especially page 267 in Mystical Dimensions of Islam.
98
A bleating lamb,
An alphabetI transform it into a poem
So Damascus will fall into its arms
A necklace made of light.
I carry Qasyun
An apple I bite
A picture I clutch
Under my wool shirt.
I speak to the birds
And to Barada the enchanted
Whatever name I mention is her name I am calling
Every house I lament in the morning is her house.
The one is unified with the all
The shadow with the shadow
The world was born before me
And will remain after me.”1
No wonder that this animating vision generates lyrical intensity and
rhythm that fit the speaker's emotional embrace of the universe and thus he can reach
the people into the real coast of the Sufism and Islam. However, in the middle of that
rhythmical celebration, the structure of the imagery is twisted to serve the flow of the
poem and that will be a ladder for the peace and the calmness of Sufism. As readers,
we expect to be challenged and we strive to understand and enjoy the fruitful strife.
Within the context of Ibn ‘Arabi's doctrine of eternal transformation of
mawjuiidat (things found by our consciousness), we appreciate the elegant
transformations of Qasyun from a mountain to a gazelle, to a flower for the beloved,
to a bleating lamb, to an alphabet and ultimately to a poem into which Damascus
throws itself like a necklace of light.
In the next part, the gazelle, a conventional Arabic symbol of the female
beloved, gets complicated in lines 4 and 5:
The Lord, the lover, and the slave,
The lightning and the cloud,
The master and the disciple spoke to me.
And the almighty,
1 Bassam K. Frangieh, Abdul Wahhab Al-Bayati, Love, Death, and Exile: Poems Translated from
Arabic (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1991), 53-60.
99
After lifting the clouds
Gave me a gazelle1
According to Bassam Frangieh in his “Abdul Wahab Al Bayathi, Love,
Death and Exile: Poems Translated from Arabic (1991)”, he translated the poems,
including the one under discussion, in discussion with al Bayathi.2 However, his
translation of the Arabic phrase "sahib al-jalalah" (His Majesty) as "the almighty,"
while it salvages the general meaning in Part Two, it costs it in Part Seven and
complicates the entire dramatis personae of the poem. If "almighty" refers to God,
who unveils for the speaker Ibn ‘Arabi and favors him with the gazelle, 'Ayn al-
Shams, how is it possible for the dead, who are the enemies of love and life, to
manipulate God and arouse His anger against the speaker, whom God has already
advantaged with unveiling?
“I returned to Damascus after death
Carrying Qasyun
Returning it to her [Damascus]
Kissing her hands.
For this land, bound by sky and desert,
By sky and sea,
Its dead chased me
And locked the tomb's door on me
Besieging Damascus.
They turned the almighty against me
After he lifted, the clouds and they slaughtered the gazelle.
But I escaped their siege and returned.”3
One example of dysfunctional imagery is that of death in this poem. In a
poem that promises to depict dramatic Sufi transformations towards the ultimate union
with God, even death by disfigurement becomes a beginning of a higher life:
"Strangers hunted her4
in the meadows of the lost nation
and skinned her alive
From her skin they made a rebak and a lute string
1 Ibid.
2 Ibid., See Preface, p. ix.
3 (Ibid., p. 58.)
4 'Ayn al-Shams, the gazelle
100
I pluck
In the night the trees sprout leaves
The nightingale of the wind weeps
With the Lovers of Barada the enchanted
And the Lord crucified upon the wall."1
In a powerful image, after her death 'Ayn al-Shams turns into music that
inspires life. Similarly the speaker challenges the forces of death by saying in eighth
part:
"I returned to Damascus after death
Carrying Qasyun."
Yet in the same part, the speaker wails:
"Who will stop the bleeding?
All that we love departs or dies?
0 ships of silence, books of water, handfuls of winds
We will meet in another birth, in a new era
When from my face and your face
The shadow and the mask will fall
and the walls will collapse."2
The inconsistency that occurs here, disturbing characterization and theme,
is caused by the first line in this part: "I returned to Damascus after death." If the
speaker has experienced death and has learned that death is a passage to a new and
better, probably eternal, life, why does he then wail: "All that we love departs and
dies"? It is human nature, even among those who firmly believe in the Afterlife, to
fear death and separation. Yet, this is not conveyed in the images of death.
Also earlier, in Part five the speaker invites death to take care of
everything he considers injurious to this life:
"O land of putrid flesh of horses and women and
the corpses of ideas
O lean ears of grain
this is the time of death and harvest."3
1 Frangieh, p. 54.
2 Ibid., p. 56
3 Ibid., p. 56
101
Patently, there are several concepts of death operating in the poem and
through such thoughts, people will remember the death every time, they will
memorize almighty Allah and that will be a cause for their participation with Sufism
and Islam. Then Al Bayathi is propagating people into the path of truth and reality. Al
Bayathi says "when I become linked to the music of the universe, or the music of the
cosmic system. When this connection with the music of the universe is over, the poem
ends or it is almost complete."1 Muhsin J. al-Musawi has shown in his recent article
"Dedications as Poetic Intersections," "al- Bayathi's persona negotiates an impossible
settlement at a textual intersection, keenly recovered in his poems of dedications."2
Saadi A. Simawe indicates in her book, “Most of al-Bayathi's poems are
dedicated to prominent figures or titled with reference to great Sufi thinkers. The
intimate connection in his work between dedications and masks reveals that the masks
really function as no more than dedications. This obsession with great names makes
one wonder about the politics behind it.”3 There are so many interesting poems of Al
Bayathi which are leading people into the real path of Sufism and the real meaning of
Islam, such as "Al-Hijrah min al- Dhat" (Migration from the Self) and "Al-Ma'budah"
(Adored Woman).4
Saadi A. Simawe continues, “Free from the imposition of the mask and
the pursuit of rhymes and particular meters, these poems, like many others, flow
naturally in their genuine rhythm and imagery. Al-Bayathi's poetry, it seems to me,
reads at its best when it is lyrical, mystical, and without masks or dedications. The
major problem with his use of the mask is that he cannot hide himself, nor he can
establish the psychic detachment between himself and his dramatic persona.
A related problem is that al-Bayathi's characterization is, in most cases,
flat, without the depth that is necessary to reveal the complexity and the dynamic
reality of his characters. In addition, the brevity of his poems naturally does not allow
adequate narrative space for character development and dramatic interaction.”5
1 Ibid
2 Muhsin J. al-Musawi, "Dedications as Poetic Intersections," Journal of Arabic Literature, 31, no. 1
(2000), 12
3 Saadi A. Simawe, The Lives of the Sufi Masters in Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī's Poetry.p. 137
4 Al-Bayati, Al-A'mal al-Kdmilah, vol. 2, "Al-Hijra min al-Dhat," pp. 555-56; and "Al- Ma'bfidah,"p p.
306-12.
5 Saadi A. Simawe, The Lives of the Sufi Masters in Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī's Poetry.p. 138
102
Another matter, which needs careful examination, is the nature of al-
Bayathi's audience. The overwhelming number of dedications and title references to
great thinkers, poets, philosophers, and mystical figures seems to betray al-Bayathi's
profound anxiety to appeal to as wide and diverse an audience as possible. This desire
to cater to all possible critics and to belong to all literary movements at once
ultimately happens at the expense of integrity of the poem.1 Then Al Bayathi was a
great Sufi poet who informed his presence in the world of Sufism and preached Islam
with various ideas and doctrines.
1 49(On the issue of the audience in al-Bayati's poetry, see Jayyusi's observation in note 17. However,
long before Jayyusi, Iraqi critic Fadil Thamir, whom I met in Hilla prison in 1964 in Iraq, argued, in
one of the prison's evening literary activities, in a lecture on modern Iraqi poetry, that al-Bayati, who
was in Moscow at the time, loses clarity and intensity in his poetry as a result of his attempt to write for
an international audience, making his poetry as translatable as possible.)
103
CHAPTER 5
INFLUENCE OF SUFI POETRY IN THE FOLK TRADITION
OF INDO-PAKISTAN AND MEDIEVAL PERIOD
104
Introduction
“Sometimes He is Rama or Sita;1
Sometimes He appears as Laksmana.2
Sometimes He is Nimrud or Abraham;
Several are the guises He adopts.”3
As Ali S.Asani says “In this daring manner does the mystic poet Sachal
Sarmast (1739-1826) describe in Sindhi, the language of the Sind province in southern
Pakistan, the immanence of God. Sachal Sarmast, whose last name means "the
intoxicated one," represents an aspect of mystical Islam in South Asia which we may,
on the basis of its appeal and popularity among the rural, illiterate masses, characterize
variously as the folk, low or little tradition. Contrasting, or perhaps some would say
complementing, this rustic tradition is the more sophisticated, intellectual facet of
Islamic civilization that developed in urban areas under the cultural influence of the
immigrant Muslim elite of Persian or Central Asian origin.”4
So many studies have done about Islam in India and Indo-Pak Sufism.
Then historians have discovered influence of Sufi poets in propagating the Islam and
Sufism in India and Pakistan. Most studies of Indian Islam, while focusing on the
exclusive surface, have treated the folk tradition marginally a treatment that is rather
surprising considering the tradition's impact on a substantial proportion of the Muslim
population, not to mention, as we shall see presently, its seminal role in propagating
Islamic ideas within this population.5
This condition exists mainly because, as the verse above illustrates, folk
Islam had a tendency to include, sometimes in strange ways, elements drawn from the
local Indian environment. For example, poets in the folk tradition in medieval Bengal
schemed to describe Hindu deities as prophets and represented the Prophet of Islam as a
Hindu avatar (incarnation),6 while some of their Shiite contemporaries in Gujarat and
1 Rama is the incarnation of the Hindu deity Visnu and Sita, the daughter of the Earthgoddess and wife
of Rama.
2 Laksmana is the half-brother of Rama and partial incarnation of Visnu.
3 Bhagavat Githa 62-63
4 Ali S. Asani, Sufi Poetry in the Folk Tradition of Indo-Pakistan.P.81
5 For a discussion on this subject, see Imtiaz Ahmad, "The Islamic Tradition."
6 For this development, see Roy, Mannan, Dobhasi Literature, and Haq.
105
Sind equated the Prophet with the Hindu deity Brahma, the Prophet's daughter Fatimah
with the Hindu goddess Saraswati, and 'Ali (R), the Prophet's son-in-law with the tenth
avatar of the deity Vishnu.1 Since such indigenous elements, in the view of some
scholars, contradicted, "the fundamentalist view of the beliefs and practices which
Muslims must adhere to”, 2they could not be treated as part and parcel of Islam.
We should not, be surprised when a prominent scholar of Indian Islam
dismisses the folk tradition as "a mosaic of demotic superstitions and syncretistic
beliefs"3whose only function is to "add color to the bizarre pageantry of India."4 Even
the British administrators of India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could
not desist from observing, "The Musalman religion5 is an exotic one in India and
consequently does not contain a great number of pure Muslims."6
To preserve and protect Islam from violation by "idolatrous" Indian
customs and beliefs, Sufi poets refined a strong "extraterritorial cultured ethos," an
outlook that Annemarie Schimmel has called "Mecca-oriented" for its appeal to the
Islamic heartlands for determining cultural and religious norms and mores7. We can
separate this "extra territorial cultural ethos" in the works of many of the subcontinent's
influential Muslim saints, scholars and theologians beginning with the early fourteenth
century saint Makhdumi Jahaniyan Jahangasht (d. 1385), who prohibited his followers
from using Indian names to refer to God8 to the twentieth century poet-philosopher
Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) who, in his Urdu work Bange dara, sees himself as a signal
in the convoy of the Prophet calling the Muslim community to return to its true
homeland in Mecca.
Ali S. Asani denotes “However much the Mecca-oriented elite may have
repudiated the Indian cultural milieu, the Islamic tradition did eventually have to
reconcile itself to the local languages, mores and traditions. It was only by expressing
1 See Azim Nanji and Gulshan Khakee
2 Ahmad 45
3 Aziz Ahmad, An Intellectual History, 44.
4 Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture, 163-64.
5 Islam
6 Govt. of India, Census of India, 1901, (Baroda) 18.1: 152
7 "Reflections" 19
8 Schimmel, "Reflections" 18
106
its message in terms and concepts familiar and accessible to the native population that
Islam was able to firmly establishing itself on the Indian soil, acquiring a following that
constitutes the largest concentration of Muslims in the world.”1
The role of the Sufi poets, or Islamic mystics, in this process of
reconciliation and adaptation has been universally acknowledged.2 Although the
popular conception of the Sufis as "missionaries of Islam" who overnight converted
substantial populations has been questioned recently,3 still the devastating evidence
indicates that the Sufis, and not the shari'ah bound theologians and religious lawyers,
were responsible for initially spreading the message of Islam, in particular mystical
Islam.
Indian Sufis were begun composing poetry in thirteenth century, in the
vernaculars which they initially included in the ritual of the sama’ (listening and
dancing to mystical music). Amir Khusrau, the follower of the Sufi Nizamuddin Auliya
(Q.S) was famous in composing such style of poetry. The early Sufis encountered and
had to tolerate the deep-seated prejudice of the Muslim rational leaders to anything
Indian. Consequently, most Sufis, at least until around 1600, began their compositions
with an apology and justification for the use of a "profane" medium for "sublime"
religious matters.
One composer in Bengali, in fact, expressed his trepidation "about
incurring the wrath of the Lord" for having rendered "Islamic matters into Bengali"4.
Most Sufis would have agreed with Piri Roshan, a sixteenth century religious leader,
who declared on this issue:
“God speaks in every language, be it Arabic, Persian, Hindi or Afghani. He
speaks in the language which the human heart can understand.” 5
By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century it had not only
become acceptable to write in the vernacular, but we can witness across the
1 Ali S. Asani, Sufi Poetry in the Folk Tradition of Indo-Pakistan.P.82-83
2 To cite only a few examples: H. K. Sherwani; Yusuf Husain Khan; K. A. Nizami; Schimmel,
Mystical Dimensions 344-402; Eaton, "Sufi Folk Literature" and Sufis; and S.A.A. Rizvi.
3 See, for example, Bruce Lawrence, "Early Indo-Muslim Saints and Conversion," Islam in Asia, 109-
45, and Eaton, "Sufi Folk Literature."
4 Roy 68
5 Basauni 322
107
subcontinent, from Punjab to Bengal, a veritable exuberance of vernacular folk-poetry,
a significant portion of it written by Sufis. Indeed, the pioneering role the Sufis played
in the development of the Indie languages is comparable to that of medieval European
mystics, monks and nuns in the literary history of modern European languages. 1
While the Sufis may have found an suitable medium to converse their
ideas, their mission involved much more than simply translating classical Arabic or
Persian religious texts including Sufi poetries into Indian languages. As Asim Roy
points out in his study of the Islamic tradition in Bengal, "if the medium was to be
intelligible to the people, its idioms and symbols should be no less so". For this
purpose, the Sufis turned to the pre-existing native folk-poetic tradition, a tradition that
was mainly oral, meant to be recited or sung in a musical mode.
Although it was recorded in writing only rarely (and that only at a very
late stage), its simple rhyme forms made it easy to memorize. It was also a tradition that
was oriented to the world of women, who though uneducated, were and still are the
most important keepers of folksongs, proverbs and customs. Consequently, in addition
to using local Indian verse forms such as the doka, caupai, kaui, wai, barahmasa,
chautisa, siharui,2 the poetry drew on forms of folk songs sung by women as they
engaged in their household duties.
In these songs, the poets inserted the essentials of Islam in their simplest
form. To exemplify this process, we quote a very common type of composition
prevalent in the Deccan (Southern India), the chakkinama, sung by women while
grinding grain at the chakki, grindstone. Drawing parallels and metaphors between the
1 Schimmel, As Through a Veil 137.The role of the Sufis in the literary history of Hindustani, the
lingua franca of the subcontinent's northern provinces, and Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, is
described in Maulvi 'Abd ul Haq, Urdu ki ibtidai nashv o numa men Sufiya-i kiram ka kam (Alligarh:
Anjuman-i taraqqi-i urdu, hind, 1968).
2 The doha, a popular verse-form in the subcontinent's Indo-Aryan languages, is a couplet, the two
verses of which rhyme, each verse consisting of 24 matras or syllables distributed according to a
prescribed pattern; the caupai is a kind of verse consisting of four padas or short lines, usually of 16
matras each; the kafi and wai are Sindhi verse forms in which one basic verse announces the rhyme and
tune and is then repeated after each verse; the barahmasa is the "twelve month" poem in which the poet
expresses his feelings toward a beloved in each month; in the chautisa each verse begins with a letter
from the Indian alphabet, while in the siharfi a letter from the Perso- Arabic alphabet is used at the
beginning of each verse.
108
various parts of the grindstone at which the woman was working, the poet explains in a
simple language the precepts of Islam:
“The chakki’s handle resembles [the letter] Alif, which means Allah,
And the axle is Muhammad, and is fixed there.
In this way the truth-seeker see the relationship:
Ya bismi Allah, hu hu Allah.
Grind the flour and make stuffed puri;1
Put in it heavenly fruits and sugar.
The seven qualities of God must be taken in the body,
As the seven ingredients fill the puri, oh sister.
Ya bism Allah, hu hu Allah.” 2
Interwoven in this effort to show the basic link between God, the prophet
Muhammad and the reciter herself, is the use of the dhikr, the highly regulated
meditational exercises involving the rhythmical repetition, "remembrance," of one or
more religious phrases such as the ninety-nine beautiful names of God. Dhikr was
frequently an important theme in Sufi folk songs originating in regions where spinning
was a major activity among women, for the spinning of yarn could easily be compared
to the humming sound which constant dhikr produces:
“As you take the cotton, you should do dhikr-i jail
As you separate the cotton, you should do dhikr-i qalbi
And as you spool the thread, you should do dhikr-i 'aini
The threads of breath should be counted one by one, O sister.”3
In fact, Sufi folk-poetry from the cotton mounting areas along the Indus
valley is so permeated with technical terms from the world of spinning and weaving
that in her original study of Punjabi Sufi poetry, Lajwanti Rama Krishna included short
definitions of these terms to guide the uninitiated (xxvi-xxix).
Shah Abdul Lathif and his Activities
Shah Abdul Lathif (d.1752), the greatest poet of Sind, extends even further
the parallel drawn between the spinning woman and the soul engaged with the
recollection of God. In a chapter he entitles kapa'iti after the old folk tunes used during
1 fried bread
2 Eaton, Sufis 163
3 Ibid. 164
109
the spinning process, he cleverly extends the Qur’anic imagery of God as the customer
of the soul (Surah 9:111)1 just as the thread has to be finely spun to fetch a good price
from the buyer, so the human heart has to be refined and prepared with utmost care
before the merchant-God can purchase it (Schimmel, Pain and Grace 160; Sorley 255):
“Wondrous devotion spinners have,
who tremble, spin and spin;
For earning good, in the spinning- yard
at sun-rise they begin -
Such soul beauty the connoisseurs [God]2
even for themselves would win.
Yarn spun by spinners so genuine,
without weighing they buy.”3
We can see from Indian history that many women, many of them are non
Muslim have influenced in Indian Folk poetry and became the main transmitters of
Islamic doctrines and Sufi ideas in rural households. Through this "rather insidious
medium," Richard Eaton's suggests in his famous book about the role of rural women
in Indian folk Islam, the slow and gradual process of acculturation and identification
with Islam began”4
The role of women is obvious in an even more important manner. In
consonance with the literary conventions of Indian folk literature, the soul was always
represented as a virahini, a loving and longing woman, habitually a young bride or
bride-to-be, who awaits her husband- God or who is involved in a long and arduous
quest for him. In this symbolism, reminiscent of the Radha-Krisna decoration in Hindu
devotional poetry, and quite unusual by the standards of Islamic literature in the Middle
East,5 it is not difficult to discern the influences of songs sung by the peasant woman in
1 (Surah: Thawba.111)
إِنَّ اللَّھَ اشْتَرَى مِنَ الْمُؤْمِنِینَ أَنْفُسَھُمْ وَأَمْوَالَھُمْ بِأَنَّ لَھُمُ الْجَنَّةَ یُقَاتِلُونَ فِي سَبِیلِ اللَّھِ فَیَقْتُلُونَ وَیُقْتَلُونَ وَعْدًا عَلَیْھِ حَقا فِي التَّوْرَاةِ وَالْإِنْجِیلِ
وَالْقُرْآنِ وَمَنْ أَوْفَى بِعَھْدِهِ مِنَ اللَّھِ فَاسْتَبْشِرُوا بِبَیْعِكُمُ الَّذِي بَایَعْتُمْ بِھِ وَذَلِكَ ھُوَ الْفَوْزُ الْعَظِیمُ 0
2 In Sindhi poetry God is often referred to in the third person plural, e.g. "they," "them."
3 Kazi 170
4 Sufi Folk Literature" 125-26
5 In classical Sufi literature outside the sub-continent, the woman was usually a negative symbol
equated either with the world which tries to seduce man or the nafs, lower soul, who by its ruses tries to
ensnare the pure spirit and trap it in worldly life. However, the classical tradition was also aware of the
positive aspects of woman- hood as illustrated by the Quranic accounts of Zulaykha, Potiphar's wife
and Maryam or Mary, the mother of Jesus. Zulaykha became for the Sufis a symbol of the soul
110
periods of separation when she leaves her parental home for her in-laws' home or when
she anxiously awaits at sunset the return of her husband from the field, or his fishing
trip, or from the nearby village where he went to sell his produce.
The use of popular Indian romances by Sufis as vehicles of expressing
the mystical experience can be dated as early as 1379 when the Hindi poet Maulana
Daud wrote his mystical metaphor, Candayan, initiating a tradition of rather cultured
and literary mystic-romantic epics that was to last for several centuries. At the folk
level, Muslim poets in Bengal adopted the Radha-Krisna romance from Vaisnava
poetry and furnished it with "Sufic" meaning.1 Identifying himself with the female
Radha, the poet could express the core of all Sufi thought, the yearning of the human
soul for God:
“Oh Krishna, show compassion to me.
Don't ever withdraw your affection
That black moon has become a stranger,
And I am sinking in the ocean of love.
Saiyid Sultan says,
Save my life by revealing yourself.” 2
It is the mystic poets writing in Punjabi and Sindhi, however, who
sophisticated the method of reading mystical meaning into local romances such as Hir-
Ranjha, Sassui-Punhun, Sohni-Mewar. The heroine in these stories always searches for
her lost beloved until she either finds him or dies of desire and heat in the mountains or
drowns in the Indus. She becomes the parable of the seeking soul on the mystical path
who, separated from the Divine Beloved, has to experience great tribulation and a
painful purification process in her quest:
“My body burns. With roasting fire
I am consumed but make my quest
Parched am I with Beloved's thirst
enraptured in love for the Beloved, while Mary represented the spirit that receives divine inspiration.
See Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, Appendix 2: "The Feminine Element in Sufism."
1 Roy 187-206
2 Abdul Mannan and Seely:Bengali Sufi poets were so skillful in integrating the Radha-Krisna motif
into their work that scholars are undecided whether their poetry should be considered Vaisnava and
therefore Hindu or Sufi and therefore Muslim! For the Hindu interpretation, see E. C. Dimock. The
Muslim case is presented in Haq 48-51.
111
Yet drinking, find in drink no rest
Nay! Did I drain the ocean wide,
I would grant in not one sip a zest.”1
It is wonderful to see how the folk poets, especially the Sindhi Shah Abdul
Lathif, have ingeniously gifted these heroines with interpretations that are so much in
keeping with Qur’anic verses such as "Verily from God we are and to him we return"2
or “He (God) loves them and they love him"3 or Qur’anic concepts such as the
primordial covenant between each soul and God4.
As Ali S. Asani clarifies, “fundamental Sufi ideas concerning the
transformation of the nafs, the lower-self, are most effectively presented: the heroine
Sassui, whose beloved Punhun was kidnapped while she slept peacefully, represents
the soul in the khwabi ghaflat, "the sleep of negligence," ensnared in the material world
and oblivious of the Lord; Marui, the village damsel who, pining for her parental home,
spurns the wealth and status offered her by her suitor Umar, represents the soul ever
yearning for the divine homeland in which it originated; the foolish queen Lila who, for
the sake of a fabulous necklace, "sold" her husband to her maid for a night, represents
the nafse ammara, "the commanding lower self,"5 attracted to the material world and
which needs to be purified and transformed into the nafse mutma'inna, "the soul at
peace"6 before it can be accepted by the Lord (Pain and Grace 155-58). In the skillful
hands of the folk-poets, the heroine becomes so sublime that her physical and external
quest for the Beloved is transformed into a spiritual and internal one.”7
According to the Sufisaying "safar dar watan" the real journey must take
place through the wastes of one's homeland - the soul. It is there where, after following
the Prophet's precept of dying to oneself, one can find the Beloved who, according to
Qur’an Surah 50:16, is closer to man than the jugular vein (Pain and Grace, 241-42).
Thus, Shah Abdul Lathif's Sassui sings:
1 Sorley 255
2 (Surah: Baqara.151)
كَمَا أَرْسَلْنَا فِیكُمْ رَسُولًا مِنْكُمْ یَتْلُو عَلَیْكُمْ آیَاتِنَا وَیُزَكِّیكُمْ وَیُعَلِّمُكُمُ الْكِتَابَ وَالْحِكْمَةَ وَیُعَلِّمُكُمْ مَا لَمْ تَكُونُوا تَعْلَمُونَ 0
3 (Surah: Maidah.59) قُلْ یَا أَھْلَ الْكِتَابِ ھَلْ تَنْقِمُونَ مِنَّا إِلَّا أَنْ آمَنَّا بِاللَّھِ وَمَا أُنْزِلَ إِلَیْنَا وَمَا أُنْزِلَ مِنْ قَبْلُ وَأَنَّ أَكْثَرَكُمْ فَاسِقُونَ 0
4 (Surah: A’raf.171) وَإِذْ نَتَقْنَا الْجَبَلَ فَوْقَھُمْ كَأَنَّھُ ظُلَّةٌ وَظَنُّوا أَنَّھُ وَاقِعٌ بِھِمْ خُذُوا مَا آتَیْنَاكُمْ بِقُوَّةٍ وَاذْكُرُوا مَا فِیھِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَتَّقُونَ 0
5 (Surah: Yusof.53) مَا أُبَرِّئُ نَفْسِي إِنَّ النَّفْسَ لَأَمَّارَةٌ بِالسُّوءِ إِلَّا مَا رَحِمَ رَبِّي إِنَّ رَبِّي غَفُورٌ رَحِیمٌ 0
6 (Surah: Fajre.27) یَا أَیَّتُھَا النَّفْسُ الْمُطْمَئِنَّةُ 0
7 Ali S. Asani, Sufi Poetry in the Folk Tradition of Indo-Pakistan.P.87
112
“As I turned inwards and conversed with my soul,
There was no mountain to surpass and no Punhu [Punhun] to care for;
I myself became Punhu [Punhun]
Only while Sasui [Sassui] did I experience grief.”1
Similarly, his Punjabi contemporary Bullhe Shah (d.1754) has the heroine
Hir exclaim:
“Repeating Ranjha Ranjha I myself have become Ranjha.
Call me (now) Dhidho Ranjha, none should call me Hir.”2
By drawing broadly on metaphors and symbols connected with the
experience of women, especially their experience of love, the Sufis could express their
idea of the soul's relationship to God in a manner which even the most illiterate
segments of society could understand and they were propagating in a new style. In
addition, they also had at their discarding the whole repertoire of inherited forms
derived from the range of activities common in rural life ploughing, sowing, hunting,
milking, planting, and so on. In coastal regions, the worlds of fishing and seafaring
were a predominantly favored source of inspiration. Lalan, the famous Baul poet of
Bengal, explains the role of the Prophet by comparing him to a pilot steering the boat of
the faithful to salvation:
“You are a companion of God's,
Helmsman to the far shore of truth.
Without you, the world on the shore
We shall not see again.
And who but for you could govern
In this way, Oh instrument of faith.
Lalan says, no other such lamp will ever burn so.”3
Many poets also turned to the world of nature and the countryside that
surrounded them for symbols from the swan which has a keen discriminating taste for
only pure pearls 4to the papiha bird which constantly cries out (in Hindi!) piu kahan piu
1 Jotwani, Shah Abdul Lathif 136
2 Rama Krishna 63
3 Mannan and Seely 4
4 Qazi Qadan (d. 1551), the first major poet in Sindhi, composed 5 couplets utilizing this symbol. See
Qazi Qadanjo kalam, verses 12-16. For an English transla- tion (with some printing errors) see Jotwani,
113
kahan, "where is the beloved, where is the beloved,"1 to the bumble bee which in
Indian lore is famed for its attraction to the lotus flower. This flower itself symbolized
the preservation of purity in the midst of an uncongenial, dirty environment:
“The root of Lotus flower fair
in deepest waters grows
High soars the bumble bee, but fate
their innermost wishes knows.
Through love, fulfillment it bestows,
and makes the lovers meet.”2
In fact, this poetry strongly destined serious learning and barren
intellectualism as means of approaching the Divine Beloved. As in Sufi poetry in the
classical languages, the main targets of this attack were the 'Ulama, the learned
theologians and religious jurists who claimed to have the exclusive right to interpret
God's word as embodied in the Qur’an. All the acquaintance and scholarship in the
world was useless in comparison to the experience of he who has "seen" the Beloved.
The rural peasant must surely be reassured his poverty and illiteracy even though could
enjoy the freedom of a loving relationship with God when he heard poets such as Qazi
Qadan recite:
I have not read at all Kanz, Quduri, Kafiya;3
I met the beloved at a place so different! (3)
As many poets put it, one need not learn to read or write more than the
first letter of the Arabic alphabet, the Alif, with which begins the name Allah:
Those who have found the Lord Alif, they
do not read again the Qur’an; O He.
They respire the breath of love and
their veils have been lifted; O He.
"Sindhi Sufi Poet" 51. Shah Abdul Lathif devoted the chapter Kara'il of his work the Risalo to the same
symbol. For selections in translation, see Kazi 175-78
1 18(See Schimmel, As Through A Veil 144-45.)
2 Kazi 175
3 Kanz al- ummal by 'Ali al-Muttaqi al-Hindi (d. 1565) is a widely used collection of Prophetic
traditions; Quduri (d. 1037) is the author of a handbook of Hanafi law, while the Kafiya is Ibn Malik's
(d. 1274) Arabic poem on Arabic grammar.
114
Hell and heaven their slaves become
their faults they have forsaken; O He.1
Sufi had a special relationship to God, that of wait, "friend," and as a
delegate of the Prophet he could help the soul in the process of purification. Various
images, again drawn from aspects of daily life, were used to illustrate this role. He was
compared to a dhobi, a washer man, who, in the subcontinent, beats his laundry with a
stick to thrash out the dirt, or to a dyer who cleans off the spots of impurity from the
soul before dipping it in a vat that contains, to use a Qur’anic expression, the sibghat
Allah, "the coloring of Allah" (Surah 2:132; Pain and Grace 180)2. Although the
methods used by the guide may seem to be cruel, not to have one could be a disaster.
As a Bengali poet puts it:
“When one who did not accept a spiritual teacher dies,
Azrail (the angel of death) will take him
And will force him to drink cups of urine;
A filthy cap will be placed on his head,
And he will wander about in this.
The angels will beat him with iron clubs,
And drive him to hell.”3
Al Hallaj and Ibnu Arabi
The most admired role model was Mansur Al-Hallaj, the Sufi who was
cruelly executed in Baghdad in 922 for proclaiming Ana'l Haqq, "I am the Reality."
The gruesome fate of this saint has won him eternal fame in almost all Islamic folk
literature.4 Al-Hallaj becomes the most significant symbol of the true lover of God who
proved his maturity by giving up his life at the gallows, the bridal bed where he was
finally united with the Beloved with whom he so ardently identified.5
1 Translated from the Punjabi text of Majmu'a Sultan Baku as quoted by Rama Krishna 32.
2 (Surah: Baqara.132) وَوَصَّى بِھَا إِبْرَاھِیمُ بَنِیھِ وَیَعْقُوبُ یَا بَنِيَّ إِنَّ اللَّھَ اصْطَفَى لَكُمُ الدِّینَ فَلَا تَمُوتُنَّ إِلَّا وَأَنْتُمْ مُسْلِمُون 0
3 Mannan, "Heritage" 13
4 Louis Massignon, the French orientalist, has devoted the second part of his four- volume work on al-
Hallaj to a discussion of the flowering of the Hallajian myth in various Islamic lands. See Le Passion
de Husayn Ibn Mansur Hallaj: martyr mystique de V Islam and English translation with biographical
foreword by Herbert Mason, The Passion of al-Hallaj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Other Sufis who
feature prominently in this poetry include: 'Abdu'l-Qadir Gilani (d. 1166), the founder of the Qadiriyya
order and Sarmad (d. 1661), a Persian Jew who converted to Islam, fell in love with a Hindu boy, and
who was finally executed for his "intoxicated" Sufi ideas.
5 For al-Hallaj as symbol, see A. Schimmel, "The Martyr-Mystic Hallaj in Sindhi Folk-Poetry."
115
Obviously, to the 'Ulama, the guardians of Islamic tenet as personified in
the shari'ah (divine law), the overstated importance accorded to the mediator role of
Sufi saints was objectionable on theological grounds. According to them, no human
could be elevated to the lofty ranks often ascribed to the Sufi mystical guide. Yet, from
their point of view, the most objectionable aspect of folk poetry was the strong
presence of the wahdat al-wujud "unity of existence" theory associated with the Arabo-
Hispanic mystic Ibnu Arabi (d. 1240).
This system of mystical assumption, whose fundamentals are summed up
in the formula, "Everything is He," greatly influenced the expression of much delighted
mystical poetry in the Islamic world, especially after 1300. 1Thus, while the
conservatives thought the theory dangerous because it blurred the distinction between
creation and the Creator, mystic poets under its influence wrote pantheistic-sounding
verses claiming the fundamental unity of all outward forms of creation. To quote one
example, the spirit of which is echoed throughout folk-poetry in the subcontinent and
elsewhere:
“From One, many to being came;
"many" but Oneness is;
Don't get confounded, Reality
is "One," this truth don't miss.
A thousand doors and windows too,
the palace has . . . but see,
Wherever I might go or be,
the Master confronts me there.” 2
In the context of the Indian subcontinent, this philosophy, which is
strongly reminiscent of the advaita, (non-dualistic) philosophical system in Hinduism,
has led several scholars to detect the preponderance of "Vedantic Hindu" influences in
the works of the Sufi folk poets.3 While the amount of Hindu influence on Sufi poetry is
arguable, what remains beyond question is the strong regard the composers of this
poetry show toward the Prophet of Islam, an affection that is the hallmark of Islamic
1 Much has been written about Ibn 'Arabi's life and works. Information about his "school" of mysticism
is available in any standard study of Sufism. A good survey of his various interpreters is the two-part
article by Jim Morris in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, 106 (1986).
2 Kazi 32
3 The studies by Rama Krishna and Jotwani represent two examples of this trend of interpretation. S. R.
Sharda, Sufi Thought, is a third.
116
identity. The Punjabi poet Sultan Bahu, who has been considered by some as a prime
example of a Sufi influenced by Hindu vedanta, says in this regard:
“This heart is burning with separation;
it neither dies nor lives.
O He, the true path is the path of Muhammad,
along which God is found, O He.”1
As Constance Padwick has emphasized, love for the Prophet is the
strongest fastening force in the Muslim tradition, for it is an emotion in which all levels
of society, from the peasantry to the intelligentsia, can share. Just as the poets of the
classical languages Arabic and Persian composed grandiose and cultured poems, the
folk poets, too, wrote plain but moving pieces to spark Prophetic love in the hearts of
their audience, whether they spoke Sindhi, Punjabi, Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali,
Malayalam or Tamil.
The Prophet is the loyal friend, the most dependable companion, the
intercessor on the Day of Judgment, the pilot who guides the boat of human existence.
In short, any metaphor that reveals the Prophet's love and protection for his people
could be and was used.2 Perhaps the most beautiful image frequently associated with
the Prophet in the folk tradition is the cloud of mercy which brings the rain of mercy to
a parched and thirsty earth a clever reference to the Qura’nic appellation for the
Prophet, "a mercy for the worlds" (Surah 21:107)3. Then the Sufi folk poets were
preaching Islam in a various style and their poetry helped people
Allama Iqbal and Amir Khusrau
No discussion of the Indian Sufi poetry will be complete without
mentioning about Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877, Nov.9-1938, April.21) and Abdul
Hasan Yaminddin Khusrau (1253-1325), who preached Islam and Sufism with Sufi
poems. They were real followers of prophet (S.A.W) and urged people to enter the
world of Sufism.
“Most of Allama Iqbal's writings were devoted to a revival of Islam. In
1 Rama Krishna 38
2 For a detailed account of the Prophet Muhammad in popular Muslim piety and poetry, see Schimmel,
And Muhammad is His Messenger.
3 (Surah: Anbiya’. 107) وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَاكَ إِلَّا رَحْمَةً لِلْعَالَمِینَ 0
117
his presidential address to the Muslim League in 1930, he first suggested that the
Muslims of northwestern India should demand a separate nation for themselves.
Although many compilations of Iqbal's poetry also deliver his message very
eloquently, his foremost book Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam was
intended to secure a vision of the spirit of Islam as emancipated from its Magian
overlayings.”1
Iqbal’s famous prose was the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in
Islam (1930), Religion vs. Philosophy to Embrace or Exclude? And the Development
of Metaphysics in Persia (1908). And his famous poetries were Baange-Dara (1924)
Baale-Jibraeel (1935) Zarbe-Kaleem (1936) Armaghani Hijaz (1938)“He encouraged
Muslims to embrace ideals of brotherhood, justice, and service. His masterpiece is
'The Song of Eternity' (1932). Similar in theme to Dante's 'Divine Comedy', it relates
the poet's ascent through all realms of thought and experience, guided by the 13thcentury
poet Jalaluddin Rumi. He also wrote poetry in the Persian language. He tried
to free the Muslim mind from the prevailing colonial mentality and from Muslims'
own narrow self-interests, which is reflected in his classical work "Tolooe-Islam"
(Rise of Islam).”2
“A Sufi mystic and a spiritual disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi,
Amir Khusrau was not only a notable poet but also a prolific and seminal musician.
He wrote poetry primarily in Persian, but also in Hindavi. He is regarded as the
“father of qawwali” (the devotional music of the Indian Sufis). He is also credited
with enriching Hindustani classical music by introducing Persian and Arabic elements
in it, and was the originator of the khayal and tarana styles of music. The invention of
the Tabla is also traditionally attributed to Amir Khusrau. He has written Ghazal,
Masnawi, Qata, Rubai, Do-Beti and Tarkibhand.”3
Shushtari and Medieval Sufi Poetry
As Omaima Abou Bakr says “The choice of the Hispano-Arab mystical
poet Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtari (b. 1212) as one example of medieval use of metaphor
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allama Mohammad Iqbal
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allama Mohammad Iqbal
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Khusrow
118
is encouraged by his unique poetic blend of Sufi thought and figurative language.
Metaphorical imagery permeates Shushtari's poetry in such a subtle and subterranean
fashion that it develops a symbolic character. The language of symbols has always been
connected with mystical expression in general, and so naturally medieval Sufi poetry
partakes of this convention, but with an additional perspective derived from the Sufi
tradition.”1
Like all Sufis, Shushtari does not deal with texts superficially either
scripture or otherwise. He constantly asks of his audience or readers to "untie symbols,"
"grasp ultimate meanings," and "perceive allusions," "words," and "terms." Hence, one
needs to analyze how Shushtari's metaphors are formed, how they function, and how
they come to acquire this symbolic feature in his poetry. 2
Sufis differentiate between two kinds of exegetical interpretation: the first
is thafsir, the external interpretation of the Quran that seeks to explicate the outer level
of the exposure, such as the immediate literal meaning and the metaphorical and
grammatical questions. The second kind, initiated and practiced by Sufi exegetes, is the
ta’wil, the internal interpretation that seeks the inner level of meaning. The word ta’wil
itself is derived from 'awwal or "first," hence the attempt to find out the major meaning
of the Quran by returning the outward, literal plane of meaning (ta’wil) to its inner,
hidden spiritual essence (batin).
The Islamic equivalent to the medieval conception of symbol finds its
direct origin and expression in the Quran (as was mentioned), especially in (2, 109)3:
"Wherever you turn, there is the face of God." Here, we begin to discern an important
distinction emerging between the conventional medieval notion of "signs" and the
Islamic understanding and application of "symbol" (ramz). Henri Corbin explains the
difference: The symbol is not an artificially constructed sign; it flowers in the soul
spontaneously to announce something that cannot be expressed otherwise; it is the
1 Omaima Abu Bakr, The Symbolic Function of Metaphor in Medieval Sufi Poetry: The Case of
Shushtari p.40
2 See CAli Sami al-Nashshar's edition of Shushtan's Diwan (The Collected Poems), (Cairo: Dar al-
Ma’arif, 1960).
3 (Surah: Baqarah.109)
وَدَّ كَثِیرٌ مِنْ أَھْلِ الْكِتَابِ لَوْ یَرُدُّونَكُمْ مِنْ بَعْدِ إِیمَانِكُمْ كُفَّارًا حَسَدًا مِنْ عِنْدِ أَنْفُسِھِمْ مِنْ بَعْدِ مَا تَبَیَّنَ لَھُمُ الْحَقُّ فَاعْفُواوَاصْفَحُوا حَتَّى یَأْتِيَ اللَّھُ
بِأَمْرِهِ إِنَّ اللَّھَ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْء قَدِیرٌ 0
119
unique expression of the thing symbolized as of a reality that thus becomes transparent
to the soul, but which in itself transcends all expression.
We can say that Shushtari uses in his poetry the word ramz to mean this
special concept of "symbol." Examination of his poetry demonstrates the following
process: the initial alteration of the sensible and imaginable into symbol, then the
consequent returning of the symbol to the situation that brought it to flower (i.e.
applying the Suf1 ta'wil to the poetic text).
Omaima Abou-Bakr denotes “the Sufi poet utilized the means provided by
this religious/mystical tradition for symbolic expression and could not simply depend
on the general techniques of Arabic traditional rhetoric of the time. In rhetoric, the term
ta'wil simply means "interpretation," that is, the act required to explain the figurative
sense of a statement. Majaz, the general tenn for figurative language, is commonly used
by rhetoricians as an umbrella notion under which are classified the various figures and
tropes. Traditional rhetoric distinguishes between "reality" (haqiqath) and "metaphor"
(majaz).”1
The Muslim rhetorician Abu Bakr Yusuf al-Sakkaki (b.1160), whose
Miftahul Ulum was a standard metaphorical treatise, defines majaz as "opposition to
reality" (al-tacarud lil-haqiqath), a "word used in a context for which it was not
intended.”2 We can noticed that this tradition is silent on the particular subject of
symbolic interpretation and the complexities of ta'wil, although symbolic writing, both
in verse and in prose, was practiced, mostly as a mystical mode of expression.
The Sufis charged such terms as majaz, haqiqath, and ta'wil with new
critical and interpretive implications. For instance, majaz stands to haqiqath in the
relation of symbol to symbolize. 3This is in reference to the classical Arabic saying that
became a favorite of the Sufis: "The metaphorical is the bridge toward reality" (almajaz
al-qantarat al-haqiqa).4 Majaz here not only signifies what is opposite to a
1 Omaima Abou-Bakr, The Symbolic Function of Metaphor in Medieval Sufi Poetry: The Case of
Shushtari p.44
2 Yusuf ibn Abi Bakr al-Sakkaki, Miftah al- ( Ulum (Cairo: 1356/1937), 168, 170.
3 Corbin, 29-30.
4 Quoted in Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1975), 292.
120
literal adherence to meaning, but also symbolic interpretation (ta'wll), which is at the
beginning of the road to reality or truth higher meanings in the world of Sufism. In the
words of Henri Corbin, ta’wil is "the intuition of an essence or person in an Image
which partakes neither of universal logic nor of sense perception, and which is the only
means of signifying what is to be signified.1
When we read Shushtari's poetry, for example, we must realize that the
Universe speaks to him in the language of symbols and that everything, besides its
external value, has a symbolic significance as well. In Arabic, the phenomena of Nature
mentioned in the Quran, the Quranic "verses" themselves, and the inner states of the
soul are all called ayat that is, portents or signs. They may all be diverse realities
externally, but actually, they are only symbols of the same internal spiritual essences.
And such uses of signs and verses increase the reality of Sufi touch in the poems.
The two phrases in Sufism, "the large man" and "the small world"
articulate the interrelationship between God and man. The complicated network of
symbols leading to such relations means that "there is a macrocosmic as well as a
microcosmic aspect to Revelation, as there is a 'revealed aspect' to both the macrocosm
and the microcosm, to both the Universe and man.''2 This "literary" approach to the
Qur’anic text extends to poetry.
Before turning to a Shushtari poem for investigation, it will be interesting
to note the resemblance, yet at the same time difference, between the above mentioned
Islamic mystical model and the Christian exegetical tradition. Common motivating
forces internal within each of the two religious traditions exist: in other words, the same
interpretive approach to both sacred and poetic or literary texts can be discerned in Sufi
writings as well as in the Western Christian correspondent. We may recall the
"fourfold" allegorical method employed by Christian medieval exegetes, and adapted
by Dante as a tool of allegorical composition in the Commedia: the literal level (surface
meaning), the allegorical (general truth), the topological (moral), and the anagogic
1 ''Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn CArabi (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1969), 13.
2 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Three Muslim Sages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 104.
121
(spiritual). 1And for a brilliant analysis of "figural interpretation" of the Bible as applied
by Dante, see Erich Auerbach, "Figura," in Scenes from the Drama of European
Literature 2
Contents of Shushtari’s Poem
Now we may evaluate a poem of Shushtari, namely Zajal 99 of his
Diwan.3 That poem demonstrates an inquisitive structure: it consists of five strophes.
The first part of the poem up until the second strophe presents us with the
"metaphorical" (majazi), unreal world of literary symbols, and afterwards we have an
extended part in which the poet explains more fully the mystical, doctrinal
measurement beneath the initial symbolic texture.
Really, he tells us at the end of that strophe that he is drinking "abstract
wine," as opposed to a material, concrete one. He is acting as the interpreter and is
giving us the referents for the symbols he uses. "Wine" in mystical context has always
stood for divine love and "drunkenness" for spiritual intoxication or divine happiness.
Yet, it is more complex than simply an item standing for another. The line, "And in my
prayer-niche a jug containing abstract wine" forms a defined symbolic image which
itself becomes as important in its own right as what it suggests. That is why; even after
Shushtari reveals to us what the wine symbolizes (the fact that it is spiritual), he still
maintains in the rest of the poem a strong presence of that general symbol. He does not
draw so clear a line of delineation between art and reality, symbol and thing
symbolized.
William Tindall in his discussion of this particular feature in The Literary
Symbol defines the literary symbol based on the idea of analogy to establish the
distinction between symbol and sign:
“The literary symbol, and analogy for something unstated, consists of an
articulation of verbal elements that, going beyond reference and the limits of
discourse, embodies [my emphasis] and offers a complex of feeling and
1 For an extensive study of the historical origins and development of Biblical exegesis, see Beryl
Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame:University of Notre Dame Press,
1964.
2 New York: Meridian Books, 1959), 11-76.
3 The Collected Poems, ed. Cali Sami al-Nashshar, 1960
122
thought. This analogical embodiment may also be a rhythm, a juxtaposition,
an action, a proposition, a structure, or a poem. One half of this peculiar
analogy embodies the other, and the symbol is what it symbolizes.”1
Omaima Abou-Bakr clarifies “the relationship between Sufi and poet
consists of a unity rather than of one standing for the other, or replacing the other. As
for the opening of the poem, it presents the "universe-as-monastery" image, which is
customary in Shushtari, in order to establish the symbolic mode and the "unrealness" of
the zajal's literary world. After inviting his beloved to drink from the cup of passion,
the poet continues:
“Then we tear the turbans and cut the shawls,
And we knock on monasteries' doors
and accompany deacons,
And go to hermitages looking for hoods.”
The Christian aura evoked here can be explained by referring to the essay
by Cabd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, "Radd al-Muftarl Can al-Taon f al-Shushtari," which is a
literary apology for Shushtari's pervasive use of Biblical and Christian terms such as
monk, monastery, priest, church, Jesus, and other references that were considered
unusual and unorthodox even in Sufi poetry.2 The writer maintains that for the auliya
despite their unquestionable belief as Muslims in the Prophet Muhammad as the seal of
the prophets some of them will be inclined to follow the Muhammadan spirit in its
Noah's, Moses', Abraham's, or Jesus' aspect.”3
Now let us recapitulate the development of the poem so far, from the point
of view of the main symbolic metaphors. First, the poem begins with a love-motif, then
the “monastery image,” then the drinking wanton in the “tavern” along with the other
two personae (the ascetic and the lover or poet). This was followed by the wine and
drunkenness in the prayer niche. When we reach the latter part of the poem where
truthful meanings are exposed a reference is made to "the polished mirror" as an image
for the heart polished and illumined by God's light. This latter part epitomizes the
1 William Tindall, The Literary Symbol (Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1967), 13.
2 CAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, "Radd al-MXtaril c an al-TaCnfi al-Shushtari," al-Mashriq, 54 (1960)
629-39.
3 Omaima Abou-Bakr, The Symbolic Function of Metaphor in Medieval Sufi Poetry: The Case of
Shushtari p.48-49
123
ultimate punitive vision, when the human speaker merges with the Divine speaker, and
the ambiguity of the first person usage in the last two strophes achieves its artistic
purpose. The human divine unity also represents a unity of the various levels of
meaning found in the poetry.
The last two lines are a paraphrasing of the well-known Hadith Qudsi
(Divine Saying): "I was a hidden treasure and I wanted to be known, so I created the
world, that I may be discovered." This Saying sums up the fundamental symbolic
character of Sufi conceptions. In his analysis of it, the Sufi writer al-Qashani stresses
this point: “the essential and eternal precedence of occultation, concealment, and
absolutism to manifestation and apparentness.”1
In other words, in pre-Eternity esotericism preceded exotericism. Then,
the desire "to be known" points to a primordial propensity towards disclosure, towards
connecting what is hidden with what is apparent, and the "Inner" world (batin) with the
"Outer" world (ta’wil ). In Sufi context, this connection directly leads to perceiving the
"diffusion of unity in plurality"2and the paradoxical spreading of Divine singularity in
various manifestations. This interpretation underlines the Sufi efforts concerning
intellectual concepts of the Divine, since they emphasize the movement from inner to
outer, from hidden to manifest, and from unknown to known.
In the end of the poem, the dynamics of crossing over from metaphor to
meaning is completed. This process of critical interpretation becomes our means or
"bridge" to Truth that lies in the heart of the poetry and thus it lead us into the real
meaning of Sufism and real doctrines of Islam. As the poem presents us with the
mechanism of poetic “exegesis,” it also embodies a spiritual Sufi journey from ta’wil to
batin, from appearances to Truth and from Satan to God.
1 Kamal al-Din CAbd al-Razzaq al-Qashani, Istilabat al-Sufiyya, ed. M. Kamal Ibrahim Jacfar (Cairo:
al-Hay'a al-Mis riyya al- chnma, 1981).
2 al-Qashani, Istilahat al-Sufiyya, 97.
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CONCLUSION
The Sufi poetry, which is a great part of Sufism, played a vital role in
preaching Islam throughout the world. When the Sufi poetry included the
remembrance of Allah and spiritual thoughts of Islamic doctrines, it was most
attractive to people and the spectators of Islam and Sufism. Through the Sufi poetry,
they could know the real meaning of Sufism and the real love for almighty Allah.
Through the Sufi poems, Sufi poets were showing their spectators the real
love of a slave to his master Allah comparing the love between Qais (Laila Majnoon)
and Laila. Then when the spectator think the meanings of the poems including the
memories of Allah and special themes of Sufism , he will be attracted into the world
of Sufism and he will be thinking always about his master Allah.
There are so many Sufi poets in every Sufi orders like Qadiris, Chishtis,
Naqshabndis, suhrawardis and Yaswis etc. Masnawi, which was known as the
“Qur’an in Persia”, Rubaiyyath, Burdah, Manqid and Al a’amalul Kamilah were
famous Sufi poetries, which led the people into the real world of Sufi m and the real
love of almighty Allah. Then the Sufi poetry is the real method of propagation.
There are so many Sufi poets, who led the people in their struggles and
battles. When we look at the history of the countries like India, we can see that the
Sufi poets like Nizamuddin Auliya, Amir Khusrau, Mueenuddin Chishti and Ahmed
Raza khan were guiding them with a spiritual leadership in all of their reforms and
social activities. Ibrahim Ibnu Adham was a Sufi poet who led a large number of
emperors. We can see famous Sufi poet Abdul Wahab al Bayathistanding out from
other Sufi poets.
Now the modern people are being addicted to various songs and musical
poems. No one can live without the poems and songs. Everyone will be buzzing any
poem or song in his daily activities like walking etc. In addition, modern students are
inserting earphones in their ears every time, hearing any poem or song. Then the Sufi
poetry can influence them quickly and that will be a real method of Islamic
propagation, because it will lead them into Sufi thoughts and thoughts of almighty
Allah.
125
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Lings, Martin. what is Sufism. kualalampur, Malasia: Islamic Book Trust, 2008.
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WEBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.Sufism.org
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http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufipoetry
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/ Iqbal and Sufi poetry
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/AmirKhusrau
http://gigabooks.com
www.googlebooks.com
www.yahoobooks.com
http://www.Sufijournals.com
http://shadilitariqa.com
http://Chishtijazi.com
www.ushbi-jalakam.blogspot.com
http://ushbi-Sufipoetry.blogspot.com
www.guidinglight.com
http://wikipedia.org/abdul wahab al Bayathi.com
http://wikipedia.org/JalaluddinRumi
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/umarqayyam
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GLOSSARY
(S.A.W): (Swallallahu Alaihi Wa sallam), May Allah bless him, Allah’s
blessing and peace be upon him.
(R): (Raliyallahu ‘Anhu), May Allah content with him.
(Q.S): (Qaddasallahu Sirrahu al-Azeez), May Allah sanctify his
secrets.
Ahlussunna: Sunnites.
Al-Taswawuf: Islamic Mysticism.
Ahwal Mystical States.
Amal: Practical Worship.
Aqida: Belief, Faith.
Auliya: Holy men, ‘friends of God’, pl.of Wali.
Baqa: Persistence in the divinely bestowed attributes.
Baraka: the power of blessing.
Batin: Inner meaning.
Giving (Bay’a): Act by which the authority of the Sheikh is recognized.
Dargah: Darvish convert.
Dhikr: Remembering God, reciting the names of God.
Fana: Being lost in God; fana fi Allah (Annihilation in Giod).
Fatwa: Legal Opinion.
Faqr: Poverty.
Fiqh: Islamic jurisprudence.
Ghaibu: Absence.
Githa: A sacred song or poem.
Hadith: Tradition, verses or activities of Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W).
This is called Hadith Nabavi. And that of prophet which
features words attributed to Allah, is known as Hadith Qudsi.
129
Hajj: Pilgrimage.
Halqas: Gatherings (circles).
Haqiqath/Haqq: the truth, wisdom or reality.
Ibadath: Submissive obedience to the master, religious practice.
Ikhlas: Dedication, devoting or consecrating oneself to something;
almost fervor.
Ijazath: Authorization; license.
Karamat: Miracle that will occur from Auliya and good followers of
Allah.
Ma’arifa: Mystical Intuitive knowledge, Gnosis.
Mahboob/Hubb: Mystical love of God and loving relationship between God and
man; Ishq, Shawq.
Maulid: Celebration of prophet’s or a Sufi saint’s birthday.
Maulawi: Religious divine.
Mujaddid: Renewer of the century.
Mullah: Religious scholar/counselor.
Murid: Disciple, novice or follower.
Nafs: Lower’ self, self or in contrast of Ruh.
Nahv: Grammar.
Na’t: Poetry in Praise of Allah or Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W).
Pir: Sufi teacher or spiritual guide.
Ruh: Virtuous spirit, as concert part of nafs.
QawAli: Sufisong.
Sahaba: Followers of prophet Muhammad (S.A.W).
Sam’a: Listening to music, musical concert and dance.
Shari’a: Islamic law.
Waliullah: Friend of Allah.
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Ziyarath: Shrine, visit any tomb.
Zuhd: Asceticism, renunciation.
Silsila: Continuous chain of spiritual descent.
Tariqah: (Mystical) path, Sufi brotherhood. plural:Turuq.
Tawhid: Unity or oneness of Allah.
Tekke: Darvish convert.
‘Ulama: Theologians. Singular: Alim.
‘Urafa: Gnostics. Singular: Arif.
Wahdathu Shuhud: Concept of ‘the unity of experience or witnessing’.
Wahdathul Wujud: concept of the ‘unity of being’.
Qutb: Heart as an Instrument of cognition and arena of the mystic’s
encounter with Allah; it occupies the inter mediate position in
the friend. Nafs-Qutub-Ruh.
Qawm: ( Sufi ) folk, Sufis.
Shawq: Loving passion, longing.
Sheikh: Lit. ‘Elder’, a Sufi master.
Taqwa: Fear of God and pious behavior springing from it; piety;
righteousness.
Wasiyyah: Spiritual advice or the advice in deathbed.
Zahir: Outer meaning.
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APPENDIX
Text/Author Century Place Language Literary Notes
Qur’an 7 Arabia Arabic Rhymed Prose
Hadith 9 Mideast Arabic Pros: Text and
Transmission
Imam Gazali 11-12 Iraq Arabic Treatise
Sheikh Abdul
Qadir Jeelani
12-13 Iraq Arabic Treatise
Madih 20 Iran Persian Lyric, Gazal
Na’th 14 India Urdu Lyric, Gazal
Sayings/Chishthi 12/13 India Persian Varied maxims
NaqshAbi 14 India Persian Literary moral
anecdotes
Suhrawardi 12 Iran Persian Prose allegory
San’ai 11-12 Iran Persian Didactic Mathnawi
Ibnu Faried 13 Eagypt Arabic Literary hagiography
Rumi 13 Turkey Persian Lyric, Gazal
Rubi’a 16-17 Eagypt Arabic Hagiography
Amir Khusrau 13-14 India Persian Lyric, Gazal
Al-Bayathi 20 Iraq Arabic,
persian
Lyric, Gazal
Umar Al
Qayyam
12-13 Iran Arabic,
persian
Lyric, Gazal