Deciphering the Signs of God: A

Phenomenological Approach to Islam

State University of New York Press

1994

ISBN: 978-0791419823

Contents

List of Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction

I | Sacred Aspects of Nature and Culture

II | Sacred Space and Time

III | Sacred Action

IV | The Word and the Script

V | Individual and Society

VI | God and His Creation; Eschatology

VII | How to Approach Islam?

Bibliography
List of Abbreviations
AM Aḥādīth-i Mathnawī Furūzānfar

ARW Archiv für Relligionswissenschaft

BIFAO Bulletin de l'Institut Franüais d'Archéologie Orientale

CIBEDO Christlich-islamische Begegnung Dokumentationsstelle Frankfurt

D Dīvān-i kabīr Rūmī

EI Encyclopedia of Islam 2nd edition Leiden 1954–

ERE Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics ed. Hastings 1908–

IC Islamic Culture Hyderabad/Deccan

IRAN Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies

JA Journal Asiatique

JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society

JPOS Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society

JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

M Mathnawī-yi ma‘nawī Rūmī ed. Nicholson

MW The Moslem (later. Muslim) World

REI Revue des Etudes Islamiques

RGG Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart 3rd edition

RHR Revue de l'Histoire des Religions

SWJA Journal of the Scientific Society of South West Africa

WI Die Welt des Islams

WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes

ZDMG Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft

Preface
To deliver the Gifford Lectures is a great honour and privilege for any scholar working in the
general field of ‘religion’, and I am deeply grateful to the Trustees of the Gifford Lectures for
having invited me to speak in Edinburgh in the spring of 1992—an experience which I
thoroughly enjoyed. Yet at the same time, the lecturer, overwhelmed by the names of his or
her illustrious predecessors, is troubled by the question of whether one can really do full
justice to the chosen topic—in this case, a phenomenological approach to Islam. It probably
seems preposterous to give a sweeping survey of different aspects of Islam, a religion which
has been much studied, much misunderstood, and sometimes accused by historians of
religion as being rather primitive. At the same time, however, scholarly study of Islam has in
recent years attracted more and more people, spurred on by the political developments in
the Muslim world and in other areas increasingly populated by Muslims. Needless to say,
many of these political and sociological studies have little interest in the ‘spiritual’ values of
Islam, instead ranging from questions of religious authority to the position of children in
medieval Muslim society; from Muslim responses to Western education to the changing role
of the Sufis; from the mechanics of conversion to the formation and functioning of the
biosphere in the Koran; and concerning the question of human rights and their
implementation in the modern world. Indeed, it was this ever-growing amount of literature
which made me decide to avoid lengthy and elaborate references and to mention in the
Bibliography only works actually cited in the text or the notes. I beg the reader's indulgence
for this way of handling the material.

The Lectures have grown out of a lifelong occupation with the languages and values of
Islam, and from innumerable discussions with Muslim friends, whether highly learned and
sophisticated scholars in the Muslim lands and in the diaspora, or simple illiterate villagers,
particularly women, in Pakistan, India and Turkey. They owe much to the inspiration of my
academic teachers in Islamic Studies—Richard Hartmann, Hans Heinrich Schaeder and
Ernst Kühnel in Berlin, to mention only the most important ones—but even more to my
collaboration with Friedrich Heiler, who opened the world of the history of religions to me.
These Lectures are dedicated to his memory. Similarly, I would like to thank my students in
Marburg, Ankara, Bonn and Harvard, as well as my friends and all those who have patiently
listened to my lectures in Europe, North America and the Near and Middle East, and who
have alerted me to new aspects of Islamic thought, art and poetry. I am very grateful to Dr
Shams Anwari-Alhoseyni, Cologne ,for adorning the book with his calligraphic renderings of
Koranic verses. I also express my gratitude to my ‘writing angel’ Christa Sadozay MA, in
Cologne, who typed the manuscript, and to Mr Ivor Normand MA, in Edinburgh, for his
careful and meticulous copy-editing of the text.

The Swedish Lutheran bishop and Islamicist, Tor Andrae, to whom we owe some of the
most sensitive works about the Prophet Muhammad as well as about early Sufism, once
remarked:

Like any movement in the realm of ideas, a religious faith has the same right to be judged
according to its real and veritable intentions and not according to the way in which human
weakness and meanness may have falsified and maimed its ideals.
Trying to approach Islam with this in mind, I hope that the Lectures may help to clarify some
of the structures underlying life and thought in Islam. Depending on their field of interest and
specialization, readers will no doubt be able to add numerous parallels and influences, both
from Islamic sources and from other religions. However, when such parallels are drawn
here, it is not with the intention of dwelling on the ‘Reste arabischen Heidentums’ again, as
does Julius Wellhausen's classic of that name (1897); nor do I want to prove, or suggest,
that this or that external influence has determined the development of Islam. Nobody denies
that such influences exist in Islam; for no religion can grow in a vacuum, and the religious
leader, founder or prophet can only ever use the language to which his listeners are—at
least to a certain extent—accustomed, and whose images and symbols they understand.
Without soil, air, rain and fertilization by insects, no tree—and we may well compare religion
to a ‘good tree’ (cf. Sūra 14:24)—could ever grow strong enough to house birds or to provide
shade and luscious fruit to those who come close to it (as Mawlānā Rūmī says in the story of
Daqūqī in his Mathnawī III 2005ff.). But these influences are not absolute values: a religion
takes into itself only those ideas, customs and tendencies which are in one way or another
compatible with its innermost essence. Furthermore, as every religion has an outward and
inward aspect, any sentence, proposition or legal prescription may be understood and
interpreted differently by different people. Age-old similes come to mind: the water takes the
colour of the glass, or else the ‘white radiance of eternity’, the colourless Light, becomes
visible only in its reflections in ever-changing colours.

My aim is to point to the colourful reflections, Goethe's ‘farbiger Abglanz’; or, in Koranic
words to try to decipher some of the signs, or āyāt ,which through their infinite variety point
to the One Truth.
Introduction1

And We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in themselves.

Sūra 41:53

When I was teaching the history of religions at the Islamic Faculty of Divinity in Ankara in the
1950s, I tried to explain to my students Rudolf Otto's distinction between the mysterium
tremendum and the mysterium fascians—the Numen that reveals itself under the aspect of
awe-inspiring majesty and fascinating beauty. Suddenly one of the students stood up and
said proudly: ‘But, Professor, we Muslims have known that for centuries. God has two
aspects: His jalāl—majesty, power and wrath—and His jamāl—beauty, kindness and mercy.’
Ever since then, the idea of approaching Islam from a phenomenological angle has been on
my mind, all the more because I kept finding that Islam was badly (if at all) represented in
the few major books in this field, as though historians of religion still needed the admonition
of the eighteenth-century German thinker Reimarus:

I am convinced that among those who accuse the Turkish religion of this or that fault, only a
very few have read the Alcoran, and that also among those who indeed have read it, only a
precious few have had the intention of giving the words the sound meaning of which they are
capable.

For many historians of religion, Islam, a latecomer in history, is still not much more than ‘a
Christian heresy’, as it was repeatedly called for centuries until the time of Adolf von
Harnack, or else an anti-Christian, inhuman, primitive religion—ideas which one now
encounters rather frequently owing to the political situation in the war-torn Middle East and
the rise of fundamentalist groups. However, the problem is how to give an accurate picture
of a religion that stretches from its cradle, Arabia, to the east through major parts of Asia,
into central China and Indonesia and the Philippines, and to the west over Turkey and part of
the Balkans to North Africa and its Atlantic borders; that appears in various parts of Black
Africa and gains new converts in the traditional Christian areas such as Europe and
America, partly as a result of the increasing number of immigrants from the Muslim world,
partly also by conversion to this or that branch of Islam, Sufism, pseudo-Sufism, or
fundamentalism alike; a religion whose sacred script is revealed in Arabic, but whose
participants have composed and still continue to compose innumerable works—theological
and literary, catechisms and poetry, newspapers and historical studies—in a plethora of
languages among which Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu and Swahili boast an inexhaustible
treasure of high and popular literature, not to mention the other idioms—with Arabic still
ruling supreme in the religious sphere. Nobody can follow up the ever-increasing number of
publications in the various fields of Islamic studies either, and thus the researcher feels
handicapped and somewhat hopeless when trying to write about Islam, to find a structure
that could do justice to this often maligned religion, and to embed it into the general history
of religions.

It is certainly possible to learn about Islam by using the vertical, that is, historical method,
and the study of its history is refined day by day thanks to documents that come to light from
the enormous but barely tapped sources in libraries in East and West; a hitherto overlooked
inscription in a mosque in Zanzibar or a Muslim poem in a south Indian idiom can open
surprising insights into certain historical developments, as can a completely fresh look at the
very beginnings of Islamic civilization.

One can also use cross-sections to attempt to categorize different aspects of Islam by type
of religion. Here, the traditional contrast of ‘prophetic’ and ‘mystical’ religions as elaborated
by Nathan Söderblom and Friedrich Heiler offers itself comfortably, with Islam apparently
constituting a paradigm of a ‘prophetic’ religion which, however, is tempered by a strong
strand of legalism on the one hand, and mysticism in its different forms on the other hand.
One can also study it from a sociological viewpoint and look at the human condition; at sects
and social groups; the relation between master and disciple; at trends to universality and to
expansion by either mission or war. If one approaches it by applying the different concepts of
the Divine, one will find an uncompromising monotheism which, however, sometimes turns
into ‘pantheistic’ or monistic trends by overstressing the oneness of the Divine.

Again, one may ask about its attitude towards the world—whether it is world-negating, like
Buddhism (an attitude that appears among the early Sufis), or world-dominating, like
mainstream normative Islam. What are its psychological peculiarities; and how does the
Muslim react to the encounter with the One God—is one moved predominantly by awe, fear,
hope and love, or does one simply feel unshakable faith and trust?

All these approaches are valid and offer the researcher ways to understand a religion, in this
case Islam, somewhat better. However, more than other branches of scholarship, the study
of religion is beset with difficulties, the most important one being the necessity of formulating
one's stance on the object of one's research while at the same time suspending judgment,
since one is dealing with something which, after all, constitutes the most sacred area in the
lives of millions of people. Can one really deal with religion—in general or in its specific
forms—as if one were dealing with any other object of study, as is nowadays claimed by
many historians of religion? Personally, I wonder if a completely objective study of religion is
possible when one respects the sphere of the Numinous and the feeling of the otherworldly
in one's approach, and realizes that one is dealing with actions, thought systems and human
reactions and responses to something that lies outside purely ‘scientific’ research.
It is therefore difficult to remain distanced when dealing with religion, and the personal bias
of the researcher cannot but be reflected in the study—a bias which, in my case, certainly
leans more towards the mystical and poetical trends inside Islam than towards its legalistic
aspect, which, in any case, is not the topic dealt with here (although it would be most
welcome to interpret the refined Islamic legal system and its applications in a comprehensive
comparative work).

In the rare cases where historians of religion have ventured to include specimens of Islamic
culture into their phenomenology, the lack of linguistic skills is sadly visible, and the
tendency to rely upon largely outdated translations has led to strange shifts in emphasis,
such as the disproportionate use of old translations of Persian poetry in which the imagery of
sacred intoxication and ecstasy abounds. These phenomena certainly have their place in
Sufism, but should be viewed in relation to the ideals of mainstream Islam.

Nevertheless, I believe that the phenomenological approach is well suited to a better

understanding of Islam, especially the model which Friedrich Heiler developed in his
comprehensive study Erscheinungsformen und Wesen der Religion (Stuttgart 1961), on
whose structure I have modelled this book. For he tries to enter into the heart of religion by
studying first the phenomena and then deeper and deeper layers of human responses to the
Divine until he reaches the innermost sacred core of each religion, the centre, the Numinous,
the deus absconditus. Heiler always liked to refer to Friedrich von Hügel's remark that the
spirit awakens when coming into contact with material things. That is, the highest spiritual
experience can be triggered off by a sensual object: a flower, a fragrance, a cloud or a
person. Islamic thinkers have always pondered the relation between the outward
manifestations and the Essence, based on the Koranic words: ‘We put Our signs into the
horizons and into themselves’ (Sūra 41:53). For the Muslim, everything could serve as an
āya, a sign from God, and the Koran repeats this truth over and over again, warning those
who do not believe in God's signs or who belie them. The creatures are signs; the change
between day and night is a sign, as is the loving encounter of husband and wife; and
miracles are signs (cf. Sūra 30:19–25): they all prove that there is a living God who is the
originator of everything. These signs are not only in the ‘horizons’, that is, in the created
universe, but also in the human souls, that is, in the human capacity to understand and
admire; in love and human inquisitiveness; in whatever one may feel, think, and experience.
The world is, as it were, an immense book in which those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear can recognize God's signs and thus be guided by their contemplation to the Creator
Himself Sensual and spiritual levels meet through and in the signs, and by understanding
and interpreting them one may be able to understand the Divine wisdom and power; one will
also understand that, as the Koran proclaims repeatedly, God teaches by means of
comparisons, parables and likenesses to draw the human heart beyond the external,
peripheral faces of creation.

For one has to keep in mind that spiritual aspects of life can be revealed only by means of
sensual ones—the wind becomes visible only though the movement of the grass, as the
nineteenth-century Indo-Muslim poet Ghālib sings; the dust which we may see from far in the
desert hides the rider who stirs it up; and the foam flakes on the surface of the ocean point to
the unfathomable abyss. These signs are necessary, for the human heart longs to catch a
glimpse of the Divine—even though God is beyond all forms and imagination—and yet one
hopes to ‘touch’ the Numinous power in some way or another: does one not respectfully kiss
the copy of the Koran in which God's word is written down?
Everything can become an āya, a sign, not only the verses of the Koran which are called by
this very name. To be sure, it is not the ever-hidden deus absconditus but the deus revelatus
who can be found through them, He, who reveals His will through His word; who has talked
through the prophets; and whose guidance leads humankind on the right path to salvation.
The Muslims understood that everything created praises the Creator with its own lisān al-ḥāl,
the silent eloquence—for this is the purpose for which they were created. Thus, the entire
universe could be seen, as it were, in a religious light: that is why every human act, even a
seemingly profane one, is yet judged from religious viewpoints and regulated according to
the divinely revealed Law.

Cultic and ritual duties too could be interpreted beyond their external importance as signs
towards something higher: prayer is the loss of one's small self in communion with the Holy,
or the sacrifice of one's soul before the overpowering beloved Lord; pilgrimage points to the
never-ending journey of the soul towards God; fasting teaches one to live on light and
praise, as do the angels; and thus each and every outward ritual form could become a sign
of spiritual experience. But even those who see only the ‘husk’ and dutifully fulfil the external
ritual will still feel themselves to have obeyed God and thus prepared themselves for the way
that leads to happiness in the Hereafter, for surrender to God and/or His word is the
meaning of the word islām.

Likewise, symbolic actions could serve to illuminate certain spiritual aspects of Islam: hence
the Prophet's casting some sand and pebbles against the enemies in the battle of Badr
(624), upon which Sūra 8:17 was revealed (‘You did not cast when you cast…’), which
indicates that the one who has been absolutely obedient to God can act, so to speak,
through God's power.

There is no doubt that previous religions have left their traces upon Islam, for every religion
has adapted trends and systems from earlier strata of religious life that seemed to express
its own concerns, and the colourful bushes of folk Islam with their often scurrilous flowers
have grown from the same root as the straight tree of normative Islam. The tension between
the two major aspects of Islam— the normative-legalistic and the popular, mystically tinged
one—forms a constant theme in Islamic cultural history. The way in which Islam has taken
into its embrace variegated forms and strange elements, especially in the Indian and African
contexts, is fascinating—as much as the normative traditionalists dislike these developments
and regard them as contradicting the pure monotheism which is expressed and repeated
thousands of time in the shahāda, the profession of faith, and in Sūra 112, the final word of
the Koran about the God who is One, neither begetting nor begotten.

In both aspects, Islam knows the concepts of the sacred power—baraka, blessing power2—
and this word will occur frequently on the following pages, for not only has the holy person
baraka, but also the black stone of the Kaaba radiates it, and the copy of the Koran is filled
with blessing power, as is the sacred Night of Might (cf. Sūra 97), in which the first revelation
took place.

In order to give a form for a cross-section through different phenomena of Islam, the model
used by Friedrich Heiler appeared to me most convenient and clearer than that of Gerardus
van der Leeuw, admirable as his collection of material is. Heller's book and approach has
been severely criticized by some scholars; it has also been summarized in English with an
undue emphasis on the Christian part of it, which resulted in a lop-sided picture that lacks
the stupendous breadth of Heiler's material. To offer an idea of Heiler's model, I give
overleaf the fine summary by J. J. Waardenburg (1973) in his Classical Approaches to the
Study of Religion, vol. 1.

The model of the concentric rings may seem somewhat artificial; but, strangely enough, it
was prefigured more than a millennium ago in the work of Abū'l-Ḥusayn an-Nūī (d. 907), a
mystic of Baghdad, and apparently also by his contemporary al-Ḥakīm at-Tirmidhī.3 Based
on Koranic verses, Nūrī invented a circular form which leads, as does Heiler's model, from
the external encounter of the sacred to the innermost core of religion, thus showing that
there is no deity but God. His fourfold circles read as follows:

The breast, ṣadr, is connected with islām (Sūra 39:22)—that is, in our model, the
institutional, external element of religions.

The next circle mentions the heart, qalb, as the seat of īmān, ‘faith’ (Sūra 49:7): the heart is
the organ through which true faith, the interiorization of a mere external acceptance of a
religious form, can be achieved; it is thus the organ for the spiritual aspects of religious life.

The fu‘ād, the inner heart, is the seat of ma‘rifa, intuitive, ‘gnostic’ knowledge (Sūra 53:11);
that means that, here, the divine, immediate ‘knowledge from Us’ (Sūra 18:65) can be
realized.

Finally, one reaches the lubb, the innermost kernel of the heart, which is the seat of tawḥīd
(Sūra 3:190), that is, of the experience that there is only the One who was and shall be from
eternity to eternity without a companion, visible and tangible only when He reveals Himself to
humankind.

All the outward manifestations, the different forms of revelations, are signs. The word about
God is, in Rūmī's lovely phrase, like ‘the scent of heavenly apple trees’ (M VI 84). The
externals are as necessary as the breast to enclose the mysteries of the heart, but the
Essence of the Divine remains forever hidden; the human being can only seize the hem of
His favour and try to find the way to Him through His signs.

The similarity between Nūrī's four circles of religious experience and Friedrich Heller's
circular structure seems to indicate to me that there is a way that is at least to a certain
extent legitimate for my undertaking; for, as the early Sufis liked to recite:

wa fi kulli shay’in lahu shāhidun

Yadullu ‘alā annahu wāḥidun

In everything there is a witness to Him;

that points to the fact that He is One.

Everything—from the stone to the dogmatic formula—calls out Quaere super nos, ‘Seek
beyond us!’ The plurality of signs is necessary to veil the eternal One who is transcendent
and yet ‘closer than the neck vein’ (Sūra 50:16); the plurality of signs and the Unicity of the
Divine belong together. The signs show the way into His presence, where the believer may
finally leave the images behind. For ‘everything on earth is perishing but His Face’ (Sūra
28:88).
 NOTES

• 1.

For general surveys, see Charles J. Adams (1967), ‘The history of religions and the study of
Islam’ Willem Bijlefeld (1972), ‘Islamic Studies within the perspective of the history of
religions’ J. Jacques Waardenburg (1980), ‘Islamforschung aus religionswissenschaftlicher
Sicht’ idem (1978), ‘Official and popular religion in Islam’ and James E. W. Royster (1972),
‘The study of Muhammad. A survey of approaches from the perspective of the history and
phenomenology of religion’.

• 2.

Joseph Ghelhod (1955), ‘La baraka chez les arabes ou l'influence bienfaisante du sacré’.

• 3.

Paul Nwyia (1970), Exégèse manque et langage mystique, p. 326ff.; cf. also al-Ḥakīam at-
Tirmidhī (1958), Al-farq bayna'ṣ-ṣadr wa'l-qalb…, ed. N. Heer.
I | Sacred Aspects of Nature and
Culture

Of His signs are the night and the day and the sun and the moon.

Sūra 41:37

INANIMATE NATURE1

From earliest times, human beings have been impressed and often overawed by the
phenomena of nature which they observe from day to day in their environment. They
certainly felt awe when looking at stones, which never seemed to change and which could
easily be taken as signs of power and, at a later time perhaps, as representing eternal
strength. In the ancient Semitic religions, stones, in particular those of unusual shape, were
regarded as filled with power, mana, and the fascination with stones—expressed in the Old
Testament by the story of Jacob and the stone of Bethel—has continued down through the
ages.

Turkic peoples were equally fascinated by stones and their mysterious powers: stories about
taş bebekteri—stones which slowly turned into children—are frequent in Turkey. Stones are
used in rain-producing rituals (especially jade), and small niyyet taşlarĭ serve to indicate
whether one's intention, niyya, will come true, which is the case when the stone sticks on a
flat surface such as a tombstone.2

Syria and Palestine, the home of the ancient Semitic stone cult, still boast strangely-shaped
stones which are sometimes considered to be resting places of saints. In Syria, rollstones
are supposed to give some of their ‘power’ to a person over whose body they are rolled. To
heap stones into a small hill to make a saint's tomb before it is enlarged into a true shrine
seems common practice everywhere, be it in the Near East or in the Indo-Pakistani
regions.3

Mythology speaks of a rock which forms the foundation of the cosmos; of green colour, it lies
deep under the earth and is the basis of the vertical axis that goes through the universe,
whose central point on earth is the Kaaba. The black stone—a meteor—in the south-eastern
corner of the Kaaba in Mecca is the point to which believers turn and which they strive to
kiss during the pilgrimage, for, as a mystical ḥadīth claims: ‘The Black Stone is God's right
hand’.4 This stone, as legend tells, is pre-existent, and, while it was white in the beginning, it
turned black from the hands of sinful people who touched it year after year.
However, this black stone, described in wonderful and fanciful images by pious poets, is by
no means the only important stone or rock in the Muslim world. The Dome of the Rock in
Jerusalem is extremely sacred because, so it is said, all the prophets before Muhammad
rested there, and the Prophet of Islam met with them at the beginning of his heavenly
journey to perform the ritual prayer on this very spot. The stone beneath the actual dome is
blessed by Muhammad's footprint, and some traditions even claim that the rock hangs free
in the air. At the end of time, Isrāfīl, the archangel, will blow the trumpet that announces
resurrection from this very rock. The spiritual—besides the historical—connection between
the two sacred places with stones (Mecca and Jerusalem) is evident from the poetical idea
that the Kaaba comes as a bride to the Dome of the Rock.5

Not only in Jerusalem can one see the imprint of the Prophet's foot, qadam rasūl. One finds
such stones in various countries, often brought home by pious pilgrims especially in India—
even Emperor Akbar, otherwise rather critical of Islamic traditions, welcomed the arrival of
such a stone which his wife Salīma and his aunt Gulbadan had acquired during their
pilgrimage.6 Often, majestic buildings are erected over such stones, which the faithful touch
to participate in their baraka and then pass their hands over their body. As early as c. 1300,
the reformer Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) fought against the custom of touching a stone with the
Prophet's footprint in Damascus, something that appeared to him as pure superstition,
incompatible with the faith in the One God.7

Shia Muslims know of stones with the impression of ‘Alī's foot. A centre of this cult is the
sanctuary of Maulali (Mawlā ‘Alī) on top of a steep rock near Hyderabad/Deccan, where one
can admire an immense ‘footprint’.

The importance of stones is reflected in the symbolic use of the term. Rūmī compares the
lover to a marble rock that reverberates with the Beloved's words and echoes them (D l. 17,
867), but even more important is Ibn ‘Arabī's idea that the Prophet is a ḥajar baht, a ‘pure
stone’ on which the Divine message was imprinted, as it were—an idea that continued down
through the centuries and which is prominent in the theological work of Shāh Walīullāh of
Delhi (d. 1762).8

Stones could serve to express the aspect of Divine Wrath, as in the numerous Koranic
references to the ‘stoning’ of disobedient peoples (Sūra 105:4 et al.). In this connection, the
‘stoning of Satan’ is administered during the pilgrimage by the casting of three times seven
pebbles on a certain spot near Mina, and Satan is always referred to as rajīm, ‘stoned’, i.e.
accursed.

Numerous other customs are connected with stones: thus, among the Persian Khāksār
dervishes, it is customary to bind a rather big stone on one's stomach—the sang-i-qanā at,
‘stone of contentment’, which points to the suppression of hunger—for that is how the
Prophet overcame his hunger.9 A special role is ascribed to gemstones, some of which were
regarded as filled with baraka. Early Muslim scholars had a vast knowledge of mineralogy
and enlarged the inherited Greek mineralogical works by their observations. Hence, precious
and semiprecious stones play a considerable role in folklore and literature.

It is said that the Prophet himself recommended the use of ‘aqīq, agate or carnelian,10 a
stone that was plentiful in Yemen and which therefore became connected with the whole
mystical symbolism of Yemen whence the ‘breath of the Merciful’ reached the Prophet (AM
no. 195). Muslims still like to wear an agate ring or locket, inscribed with prayer formulas or
Divine Names (among the Shias, often with the names of the Panjtan), and later Persian and
Urdu poets have compared themselves to an ‘agīq bezel which contains nothing but the
name of the Divine Beloved. But not only believers in general like to wear such stones; a
twelve-pointed agate (symbolizing the twelve imams of the Shia) used to be worn by the
members of the Bektashi order of dervishes (Hacci Bektash Stone).

From ancient times, it was believed that the ruby could avert illness—and indeed, in medical
tradition, pulverized ruby was an ingredient of mufarriḥ, ‘something that cheers you up’, a
kind of tranquillizer—hence its connection with the beloved's ruby lip, or with ruby-like red
wine. A beautiful myth tells that ordinary pebbles, when touched by the sun, can turn into
rubies after patiently waiting in the depth of the mines—an idea that came to symbolize the
transformation of the human heart which, touched by the sun of grace, can mature during
long periods of patience and, by ‘shedding its blood’ in suffering, may be transformed into a
priceless jewel.

The emerald is thought to avert evil, but also to blind serpents and dragons. Its green
colour—the colour of paradise—gave this stone a special place in Muslim thought. Thus,
according to a saying, the lawḥ mahfūẓ, the Well-preserved Tablet on which everything is
written from pre-eternity, consists of emerald; it is a true tabula smaragdina, as it is also
known from medieval gnostic imagery. Henry Corbin, then, has followed the Sufi path which,
at least according to some authors like Simnānī (d. 1335), ends in the light of the emerald
mountain: the highest station for the wayfarer who has passed through the blackness of
mystical death.11

The sight of mountains has always inspired human hearts, and mountains have often been
regarded as seats of deities all over the world. This was, of course, an idea impossible in
Islam, all the more so because the Koran has stated that the mountains, though put in their
places to keep the earth stable, are yet like clouds (Sūra 27:88) and will be, in the horrors of
the Day of Judgment, ‘like combed wool’ (Sūra 70:9). Furthermore, Mt Sinai was shattered
by the manifestation of the Lord's grandeur (Sūra 7:143), an event that means for Rūmī that
it ‘danced’ in ecstasy (M I 876). Mountains are, thus, nothing but signs of God's
omnipresence; they prostrate themselves before God (Sūra 22:18) along with all the other
creatures, and yet the feeling that one might find more than a purely earthly experience on
certain mountains is attested in the Islamic tradition as well—suffice it to think of Abū
Qubays near Mecca, according to tradition the first mountain on earth, which later served as
a meeting place of the saints, or of Huseyin Ghazi near Ankara, the site of the shrine of a
medieval Muslim warrior saint, and similar places.

One could imagine the high mountains as a liminal area between the created universe and
the spacelessness of the Divine (cf. the initial oath of Sūra 52); thus, Mt Qāf was thought of
as a mountain encircling the whole earth, even though the sight of the Caucasus or, in
Southern Asia, of the Himalayas has certainly contributed to, or sparked off, such ideas. In
antiquity, some people tried to imitate the sacred mountains, as for example in the
Babylonian Ziggurat; the Malwiyya, the spiral minaret of Samarra in Iraq, may be the result
of subconscious memories of this tendency.

The earth was always experienced as a feminine power, and although the concept of
‘Mother Earth’ is not as outspoken in the Islamic tradition as elsewhere, the Koranic words
according to which ‘women are your fields…’ (Sūra 2:223) show that the connection was a
natural one. Was not Adam made of dust, the soft maternal material which was then to be
enlivened by the spirit?12 That is why Iblīs, Satan, claimed superiority over him, as his own
origin was fire. And thus, the dervishes might remind their listeners that all existence is dust
except the Beloved—after all, man is created from dust (Sūra 22:5 et al.) and will return to
dust. Dust has a purifying quality: when water for the ritual ablution is wanting, one can
perform the purification with dust, tayammum.

The ancient myth of the hieros gamos, the marriage between heaven and earth which, as it
were, preforms human marriage—the ‘sowing of the seed’ into the earth and into the
females—surfaces only in some cases, especially in the verse of Rūmī, who takes his
imagery from the oldest strata of myths. Although he remarks that ‘the earth like the wife and
the sky like the man’ are no longer of interest for the true seeker (D l. 15,525), the lover may
yet address the spiritual beloved:

You are my heaven, I am your earth—

You alone know what You've put into me!

(D no. 3,038)

Earth and dust become sanctified by contact with powerful and beloved people, and, humble
in themselves, acquire new wealth. Sa‘dī's story about an amazingly fragrant piece of
purifying clay, which was permeated with the scent of the beloved who had used it while
bathing, points to this feeling. Thus, the dust of sacred places and of mausoleums can bring
blessing: prayer beads and little tablets are formed from the mud of Ḥusayn's mausoleum in
Kerbela for the use of pious Shiites. The Turkish poet Fuzuli (d. 1556) therefore claims with
apparent humility:

My poetry is not rubies or emeralds,

my poetry is dust, but the dust of Kerbela!13

Dust from Kerbela and Najaf, ‘Alī's burial place, was deposited in some mausoleums of
Shiite kings in India (thus in the Gol Gunbad in Golconda), just as some dust from Mawlānā
Rūmī's tomb in Konya was brought to Iqbāl's mausoleum in Lahore because of the Indo-
Muslim philosopher-poet's deep veneration for the medieval Persian mystical poet.

Many visitors to an Indo-Pakistani shrine will have been offered dried-up rose petals and
dust from the sarcophagus—and, trusting in the sacred purity of this dust, they dutifully
swallow it. Indeed, the dust of saints’ and sayyids’ tombs is the true treasure that a province
can boast—when Nādir Shah of Iran came to conquer Sind in 1738, the Hindu minister of
the Kalhora rulers countered his requests for an immense indemnity by offering him a small
bag containing the most precious thing that Sind had to offer, that is, the dust of saints and
sayyids.14

Much more central, however, is the role of water, for ‘We have made alive everything
through water’ (Sūra 21:30), and, ‘He has sent down water from the sky…’ (Sūra 13:17), to
mention only two prominent Koranic statements with regard to water.15 This water not only
has the power of purifying people externally, but also becomes—as in other religious
traditions—a fitting symbol for the purification of hearts. Water is constantly quaking and
moving—that is, as Kisā’ī thinks, its act of exalting the Lord in unison with all other creatures.

There are numerous sacred springs and ponds in the Islamic world—the Zamzam near the
Kaaba gushed forth, as legend has it, when Hagar, left alone with little Isma‘il, was thirsty.
The well is forty-two metres deep, and its water is slightly salty. Most pilgrims carry some
Zamzam water home in special flasks to make the baraka of the spring available to friends
and family; some also dip their future shrouds into the well, hoping that the water's blessing
power may surround them in the grave. According to popular tales, the water of the Zamzam
fills all the springs in the world during the month of Muaḥarram, while in Istanbul legend has
it that some Zamzam water was used to build the dome of the Hagia Sophia; otherwise it
would have crumbled.

In Arabic folklore, especially in Syria and Jordan, fountains are generally thought to be
feminine, although the type of watery fairies (nixies) known in European folklore seems to be
absent from traditional Muslim lore. Salty springs, on the other hand, are regarded as male;
that is why barren women bathe there.

Springs are often found near the shrines of saints, and it is likely that the locality of many
sacred places was chosen just because of the blessing of a nearby water course or fountain.
The tank near Sālār Mas‘ūd's shrine in Bahraich is supposed to cure leprosy. The pond of
Mangho Pir near Karachi seems to be a prime example of aetiological legends transforming
a weird pre-Muslim sacred spot into a Muslim shrine, for not only is this pond close to the
dwelling-place of a thirteenth-century saint, but it also houses a huge number of enormous
crocodiles whose ancestor the saint, angered for some reason, produced out of a flower.
The large pond at Bāyezīd Bisṭāmī's sanctuary in Chittagong (Bangladesh) is inhabited by
utterly repellent white tortoises, and in the same area, in Sylhet, a well filled with fish forms
an important part of the sanctuary.

Even if one concedes the necessity for a source of water for ablutions in the vicinity of a
shrine-cum-mosque, in such cases ancient traditions still seem to have survived. As far as
the water for purification is concerned, its quality and quantity are exactly defined by the
lawyer-divines, for to enter the water means to re-enter the primordial matter, to be purified,
rejuvenated, reborn after dying—hence, the ablution could become a truly spiritual
experience for some Muslims, and the theme of entering the water and being like a corpse
moved only by the water's flow is frequent in mystical literature. The old Indian tale of the
sceptic who, submerged in water, lived through an entire human life in a single moment has
also reached Islam: unbelievers who doubted the reality of Muhammad's nightly journey
were instructed in a similar way. The best-known example is the tale of the Egyptian Sufi
master Dashṭūṭī, who had the Sultan bend his head into a bowl of water so that he
immediately lived through an entire life story.16

One should not shy away from water—it is, after all, its duty, indeed its pleasure, to purify the
dirty, as Rūmī emphasized time and again: the water of Grace waits for the sinner. The life-
bestowing quality of water led almost naturally to the concept of the Water of Life, the goal of
the seekers, far away near the majma‘ al-baḥrayan, the ‘meeting place of the two oceans’,
as is understood from Sūra 18:60, 61. The Water of life is found, like a green fountain, in the
deepest gorges of the dark land, and only Khiḍr, the prophet-saint, can lead the seeker
there, while even great heroes such as Alexander missed the blessed fountain and failed to
achieve immortality.

The earth is supposed to rest on water, the all-surrounding ocean, but the Koran also speaks
several times of the ocean on which boats travel (thus Sūra 14:32) and of its dangers for
travellers (thus Sūra 17:67), who remember the Lord only during the horrors of their journey.
One also finds the comparison of the world with foam-flecks (Sūra 13:17), and in another
Koranic verse it is stated that the world is ‘decked out fair’ (Sūra 3:14). From this point, it was
easy for the Sufis to see the created universe as small, pretty foam-flecks in the immense,
fathomless ocean of God—mystics in all religious traditions know this image, especially
those with ‘pantheistic’ tendencies. Are not waves and foam peripheral, surfacing for a single
moment from the abyss, only to return into it? Rūmī has described this vision:

The ocean billowed, and lo!

Eternal wisdom appeared

And cast a voice and cried out—

That was how it was and became—

The ocean was filled with foam

and every fleck of this foam

Produced a figure like this

and was a body like that,

And every body-shaped flock

that heard a sign from the sea,

It melted and then returned

into the ocean of souls…

(D no. 649)

The journey of the fragile boat, that is ‘man’, which will be shattered by the wave of the pre-
eternal Covenant, appears time and again in mystical imagery. Many Sufis, especially those
writing in later times, were well aware that there is only one real existence which we
experience in different states of aggregate: water, ice, droplet and rain are all the same, for
water, being without a form of its own, can accept and produce every form.

The image of the ocean for God (or, in poetry, for Love, which may even be an ‘ocean of
fire’) is generally valid, but the Prophet too has been called an ocean in which the Koran
constitutes the precious pearl.17 More frequent, however, is the combination of the Prophet
with the rain.

For rain was sent down to quicken the dead earth (Sūra 41:39), and it is still called raḥmat,
‘mercy’, in some areas of the Turkish and Persian world. Thus it was easy to find cross-
relations between the ‘rain of mercy’ and him who is called in the Koran raḥmatan li’ l-
‘ālamīn, ‘Mercy for the Worlds’ (Sūra 21:107). Muhammad himself, as Abū Hạfṣ ‘Omar as-
Suhrawardī tells in his ‘Awārif al-ma‘ārif, was fond of the precious rain, and ‘used to turn to
the rain to accept blessings from it and said, “One that was still recently near his Lord”’.18

Was the Prophet, sent with a life-bestowing message to his compatriots, not comparable to
the blessing, fertilizing rain? This thought inspired some of the finest poems in his honour,
especially in the Eastern Islamic world. The Sindhi mystical poet, Shāh ‘Abdul Laṭīf (d.
1752), devoted his Sur Sārang to him, ingeniously blending the description of the parched
land that longs for rain with the hope for the arrival of the beloved Prophet, who appears as
the rain-cloud that stretches from Istanbul to Delhi and even further. A century later, Mirzā
Ghālib in Delhi (d. 1869) composed a Persian mathnāvī about ‘The Pearl-carrying Cloud’, i.e.
the Prophet, and towards the end of the nineteenth century Muḥsin Kākōrawī (d. 1905) sang
his famous Urdu ode in honour of the Prophet, skilfully blending the theme of the cloud and
the ‘rain of mercy’ with time-honoured indigenous Indian rain poetry.19

But rain has yet another aspect to it. It comes from the ocean, rises, evaporating, to the sky,
condenses again in the clouds and returns finally to the ocean to be united with its original
source or else, as was popularly thought, to become a pearl enshrined by a pure oyster. The
latter is often connected with the April rain, and to this day in parts of Turkey drops of April
rain are carefully collected and preserved for healing purposes. In medieval times, artisans
produced vessels, called in Turkey nisan tasĭ, for this precious rain, which were often
beautifully decorated.

As is natural in areas where droughts are frequent and rain is a real blessing, the custom of
istisqā, the prayer for rain, is found from the earliest days of Islam; in such cases, the
community of believers went out of the town in shabby clothes to implore Divine help. Many
stories of saintly people who, in some way or another (sometimes even by threatening God),
were able to bring down the heavenly water reflect the important role of the istisqā.

One has, however, to distinguish between the blessing, fertilizing rain and the dangerous
sayl, the torrent or flash flood. The Koran says: ‘Evil is the rain of those who have been
warned’ (Sūra 26:173), for the Divine wrath can devastate their hearts as a rainstorm ruins
the fruits in the orchards. It was the Baghdadian Sufi Abū'l-Ḥusayn an-Nūrī (d. 907) who—
probably for the first time in Arabic literature—beautifully described the two kinds of spiritual
rain which can descend upon the human heart's garden either to quicken it or to destroy it in
the form of terrible hail (Sūra 24:43).20

Most obvious is the danger posed by water, of course, in the deluge which, as is said, began
by an overboiling kettle in Kufa and which destroyed all sinful people, while the Ark was
taken to heaven (Sūra 29:14). The term baḥr in the Koranic revelation can be interpreted as
‘ocean’ but also as a ‘large river’ such as the Nile; and the Nile—connected with the story of
Moses—as well as the Tigris (owing to its situation as the river on which the capital Baghdad
was built in the mid-eighth century) are the rivers most frequently mentioned by later
authors. Does the Tigris not consist of the tears which Iraq shed after the death of the last
Abbasid caliph at the hands of the Mongols in 1258? Thus asks a fourteenth-century Persian
poet,21 while Khāqānī, two centuries earlier, had interpreted the mighty river as tears of
mourning for the once glorious Lakhmid kingdom of which only the ruins of Seleukia-
Ktesiphon were left.22
However, besides this half-realistic use of the river-imagery, rivers also acquired a symbolic
meaning. The Shiite theologian Kulaynī in the tenth century seems to have been the first to
use the comparison of the Prophet with a mighty river. It is remarkable that Goethe, eight
centuries later in Germany and, of course, unaware of this early Arabic text, symbolized
Muhammad as a river which, springing from a small, fresh and refreshing fountain, steadily
grows and, by carrying with him whatever comes into his way—small brooks, rivulets and
rivers—brings them home to the father, the all-embracing ocean. Iqbāl (d. 1938), the Indo-
Muslim philosopher-poet, admired Goethe's intuitive understanding of the dynamics of
prophethood. He translated (very freely, to be sure) the German poem into Persian. Later,
he even assumed the pen name Zindarūd, ‘Living Stream’, to point to his close connection
with the spirit of prophetic inspiration.23

Rivers can also become signs of Divine activity. One of the finest expressions of this feeling
is the Sindhi poet Qāḍī Qādan's (d. 1551) verse:

When the Indus is in spate then the canals overflow.

Thus the love of my Beloved is too mighty for my soul.24

For the human heart is too narrow to contain all the blessing water of the Divine grace and
love.

Rivers, so it is understood, are not only this-worldly: Paradise is described in the Koran at
several points (Sūra 48:17 et al.) as ‘gardens under which rivers flow’. The cooling, purifying
quality of limpid water is part and parcel of eternal beatitude, and Yunus Emre (d. 1321)
rightly sings that the rivers in Paradise repeat the name of God in an uninterrupted litany
(see below, p. 238).

Sometimes, four paradisiacal rivers are mentioned, and the structure of many gardens,
especially those surrounding a mausoleum or a kiosk, reflects with its four canals the
arrangement in the hoped—for Paradise, in which rivers or fountains like kauthar and
salsabīl will refresh the blessed.

Water in its different manifestations appears—with only a few exceptions, such as the
deluge—as blessing power; fire, however, is generally charged with negative power. The
word ‘fire’, used so frequently in the Koran, denotes almost without exception the Hellfire. To
be sure, God can transform the burning pyre into a rose-garden, as he did for Abraham, for
whom fire became ‘cool and pleasant’ (Sūra 21:69) when Nimrod had cast him into it; but
burning is utterly painful, be it real burning in Hell or burning in the fire of separation, of
unrequited love, which appears to the longing lover worse than Hellfire. And yet, this burning
is necessary for the heart's purification (see below, p. 95). Perhaps some subconscious
reminiscences of the Zoroastrian fire cult added to the dangerous aspect of fire in Islam—did
not Iblīs boast of his fiery origin as a proof of his superiority over Adam? Later poets would
sometimes claim that their hearts were burning in love more than the great fire temples of
ancient Iran, while folk poets compared their hearts to the potter's kiln which does not reveal
the fire that rages inside.25

However, despite allusions to Hell, fire also has its positive qualities. It gains its specific
place by the Divine manifestation through the burning bush on Mt Sinai. This was a
wholesome fire, and later poets have tended to compare the red tulip that looks indeed like a
flame to the fire on the sacred mountain.

Another expression of the Divine aspect of fire is the frequently-used image of the ‘iron in
fire’, a symbol well known in both the Christian and the Indian traditions. Rūmī explains the
anā'l-ḥaqq, ‘I am the Truth’ (= I am God) of the martyr mystic al-Ḥallāj (d. 922) by comparing
him to a piece of iron in the fire: the red, glowing iron calls out ‘I am fire’, and yet its
substance is still iron, not fire (M II 1,3478ff.). For no absolute union between man and God
is possible as long as the material, bodily aspects of the creature persist.26

A different use of fire occurs in al-Ḥallāj's story of the moth which, slowly approaching the
candle, first sees its light, then feels its heat and finally immolates itself in the flame, to
assume complete identification (see below, p. 23). But is it not so—as a later poet asks—
that the moth knows no difference between the candle of the Kaaba and that of the idol
temple? The end of the road is, in either case, complete annihilation.

Candles are lighted in mausoleums and shrines and used during festive nights in honour of a
saint. In Turkey, Muslims used to celebrate kandĭl, ‘candle’, that is the nights of major feasts
such as the Prophet's birthday or of his heavenly journey, and the mosques are decorated
with artistically illuminated signs and inscriptions. These, formerly of live candles, have now
of course been replaced by electric bulbs, and thus the modem woman who formerly might
have placed a candle near a sacred place to fulfil a vow may now simply bring a bulb to the
saint's shrine or the mosque.

Other fiery manifestations of power and ‘signs of God’ are thunderstorms, lightning (Sūra
30:24) and thunder. The Koran states (Sūra 13:13) that ‘the thunder praises Him’, while for
Ibn ‘Arabī, lightning is a manifestation of the Divine Essence. Hence, Divine ‘Flashes’ are
symbolized from early times as ‘lightnings’ during which the wayfarer may proceed a little bit,
while in the intervals the road is dark and it is not possible to walk—an idea derived from
Sūra 2:20. Dangerous as the lightning is, it nevertheless releases the element of fire inherent
(according to ancient physiology) in the straw as in other things—thus, it is similar to the fire
that immolates the moth which it thereby helps to achieve release from the material world.
These ideas, however, belong on the whole to a later development in Islamic thought.27

Much older is the role of the wind, which comes as a promise of His Mercy (Sūra 7:57)
because it announces the arrival of rain. The gentle wind carried Solomon's throne (cf. Sūra
34:12), but the icy wind, ṣarṣar, destroyed the disobedient cities of ‘Ad and Thamud (Sūra
69:6 et al.). Thus, the term ṣarṣar becomes a cipher for any destructive power. Many later
poets in the Persianate world would boast that the scratching of their pen was like ṣarṣar to
destroy their patron's enemies, while others, less boastful, would see the two aspects of
God's activity, the manifestations of His jamāl, kindness and beauty, and His jalāl, majesty
and wrath, in the two aspects of the wind which destroys the infidels and yet is a humble
servant to the prophet Solomon.

One aspect of the kindly wind is the southern or eastern breeze, called nafas ar-raḥmān, ‘the
breath of the Merciful’, which reached the Prophet from Yemen, carrying the fragrance of
Uways al-Qaranī's piety, as formerly a breeze brought the healing scent of Yūsuf's shirt to
his blind father Jacob (cf. Sūra 12:94).
‘God is the light of the heavens and of the earth’ (Sūra 24:35). Thus states the Koran in the
Light Verse, and the Scripture emphasizes time and again that God leads people from the
darkness to the light, min aẓ-ẓulumāilā’ n-nūr.

Light plays a central role in virtually all religious traditions, and the concept of the light which
in itself is too radiantly evident to be perceived by the weak human eyes has clear Koranic
sanction.28 In the early days of Koranic interpretation, scholars believed that Muhammad
was intended as the ‘niche’ of which the light Verse speaks, as the Divine light radiates
through him, and again, the Koran had called him sirāj munīr, ‘a shining lamp’ (Sūra 33:46).
As such, he is charged with leading people from the darkness of infidelity and error towards
the light. One of the prayers transmitted from him is therefore, not surprisingly, a prayer for
light:

O God, set light in my heart and light in my tomb and light before me, and light behind me;
light on my right hand and light on my left; light above me and light below me; light in my
sight and light in my perception; light in my countenance and light in my flesh; light in my
blood and light in my bones. Increase to me light and give me light, and appoint for me light
and give me more light. Give me more light!

This prayer has been repeated by the pious for many centuries.

At a rather early stage, Muhammad himself was surrounded with light or even transformed
into a luminous being: the light of prophethood was inherited through the previous prophets
and shone on his father's forehead when the Prophet was begotten. In the Shia tradition, this
light is continued through the imams. Small wonder, then, that Muhammad's birth was
marked by luminous appearances, and later stories and poems have never failed to describe
the light that radiated from Mecca to the castles of Bostra in Syria—the luminous birth and/or
epiphany of the founder of a religion is a well-known theme in religious history (cf. the birth of
Zoroaster, the Buddha, or Jesus). For light is the Divine sign that transforms the tenebrae of
worldly life.

But not only the birth of the Prophet happened with manifestations of light; even more
importantly, the night when the Koran was revealed first, the laylat al-qadr (Sūra 97), was
regarded as filled with light. Pious Muslims still hope to be blessed with the vision of this
light, which indicated the appearance of the last, all-encompassing revelation.

As for the Prophet, numerous myths grew around his luminous being: his light was the first
tiling that God created, and mystics have embellished the concept of the pre-eternal
Muhammad as a column of light with ever more fanciful and surprising details which are
reflected in mystical songs even in Bengal.29

The symbolism of light is widely used, yet in one case even a whole philosophy of light was
developed by a Muslim thinker. This is the so-called ḥikmat al-ishrāq, the Philosophy of
Illumination by Shihābuddīn as-Suhrawardī, who had to pay with his life for his daring
theories (he was killed in 1191). According to him, ‘existence is light’, and this light is brought
to human beings through innumerable ranges of angelic beings. Man's duty is to return from
the dark well in the ‘western exile’ where he is imprisoned by matter to the Orient of Lights,
and his future fate will be determined by the degree of illumination that he has acquired
during his life.30
But this search, the quest for more and more light, is central not only in Suhrawardī's
illuminist philosophy; rather, the Koranic statement that man should come from the tenebrae
to light led certain Sufi masters to elaborate a theory of the development of the human soul
so that an individual, during long ascetic preparations, may grow into a true ‘man of light’
whose heart is an unstained mirror to reflect the Divine light and reveal it to others. Henry
Corbin has described this process lucidly in his study on L'homme de lumière dans le
soufisme iranien (1971). The equation God = light, based on Sūra 24:35, was natural for
Muslims, but it was a novel interpretation of this fact when Iqbāl applied it not to God's
ubiquity but to the fact that the velocity of light is the absolute measure in our world.31

The central role of the concept of ‘light’ can also be gauged from the considerable number of
religious works whose tides allude to light and luminosity, beginning from collections of
ḥadīth such as Ṣāghānī's Mashāriq al-anvār, ‘Rising points of the lights’ or Baghawī's
Maṣābīḥ as-sunna, ‘The lamps of the sunna’ to mystical works like Sarrāj's Kītāb al-luma‘,
‘Book of the Brilliant Sparks’, Irāqī's Lama‘āt, ‘Glitterings’ and Jāmī's Lawā'iḥ, ‘Flashes’—
each of them, and many more, intended to offer a small fraction of the Divine or the
Prophetic light to guide their readers in the darkness of this world.

The most evident manifestation of the all-embracing and permeating light is the sun; but the
sun, like the other heavenly bodies, belongs to the āfilīn (Sūra 6:76), ‘those that set’, to
whom Abraham turned first until he understood that one should worship not these transient
powers but rather their Creator, as Sūra 41:37 warns people ‘not to fall down before the sun
and the moon’ but before Him whose signs they are. Islam clearly broke with any previous
solar religion, and the order of the ritual prayer takes great care to have the morning prayer
performed before sunrise and the evening prayer after sunset lest any connection with sun-
worship be imagined (and yet their timing perfectly fits into the cosmic rhythm). The break
with the solar year and its replacement by a lunar year underlines this new orientation.
Nevertheless, the sun's role as a symbol for the radiance of the Divine or of the Prophet is
evident. The ḥadīth has Muhammad say: ‘I am the sun, and my companions are like stars’
(AM no, 44)—guiding stars for those who will live after the sun has set. And in another ḥadīth
he is credited with claiming: ‘The hatred of the bats is the proof that I am the sun’—the
contrast of the nightly bats, enemies of the sun and of the true faith, was often elaborated,
for example in SuhrawardīMaqtūl's delightful Persian fables.32

The Prophet's connection with the sun becomes particularly clear in the later interpretation of
the beginning of Sūra 93, ‘By the morning light!’, which was understood as pointing to the
Prophet. It was perhaps Sanā'ī (d. 1131) who invented or at least popularized this equation
in his long poetical qaṣīda about this Koranic chapter.33 The ‘morning light’ seemed to refer
to the Prophet's radiant cheek, while the Divine Oath ‘By the Night!’ (Sūra 92) was taken to
mean the Prophet's black hair.

As a symbol of God, the sun manifests both majesty and beauty; it illuminates the world and
makes fruits mature, but were it to draw closer it would destroy everything by its fire, as
Rūmī says, warning his disciple to avoid the ‘naked sun’ (M I 141).

More important for Islamic life than the sun, however, is the moon, the luminary that
indicates the time. Did not the Prophet's finger split the moon, as Sūra 54:1 was interpreted?
And it was this miracle that induced the Indian king Shakravarti Farmāḍ to embrace Islam,
as the Indo-Muslim legend proudly tells.34
The moon is the symbol of beauty, and to compare one's beloved to the radiant moon is the
highest praise that one can bestow upon him or her. For whether it is the badr, the full moon,
or the hilāl, the slim crescent—the moon conveys joy. To this day, Muslims say a little prayer
or poem when they see the crescent for the first time; on this occasion, they like to look at a
beautiful person or something made of gold and to utter blessings in the hope that the whole
month may be beautiful. It is told that the great Indian Sufi Niẓāmuddīn Awliyā used to place
his head on his mother's feet when the crescent appeared in the sky, out of reverence for
both the luminary and the pious mother. Poets have composed innumerable verses on the
occasion of the new moon, in particular at the end of the fasting month, and one could easily
fill a lengthy article with the delightful (but sometimes also tasteless) comparisons which they
have invented. Thus, for Iqbāl, the crescent serves as a model of the believer who ‘scratches
his food out of his own side’ to grow slowly into a radiant full moon, that is, the person who
does not humiliate himself by begging or asking others for help.35

It was easy to find connections between the moon and the Arabic alphabet. The twenty-eight
letters of the alphabet seemed to correspond to the twenty-eight days of the lunar month.
And does not the Koran mention twenty-eight prophets before Muhammad by name, so that
he is, as it were, the completion of the lunar cycle? Indeed, one of his names, Ṭāhā (Sūra
20:1), has the numerical value of fourteen, the number of the full moon.

While the moon is a symbol of human beauty, it can also be taken as a symbol of the
unattainable Divine beauty which is reflected everywhere: the traditional East Asian saying
about the moon that is reflected in every kind of water has also found its way into the Islamic
tradition. Thus, in one of Rūmī's finest poems:

You seek Him high in His heaven—

He shines like the moon in a lake,

But if you enter the water,

up to the sky He will flee…

(D no. 900)

Some mystically-inclined Turks even found a connection between the words Allāh, hilāl
‘crescent’ and lāla ‘tulip’, all of which consist of the same letters a-l-l-h and seem therefore
mysteriously interconnected.

The stars, although belonging to the āfilin, ‘those that set’, can serve as signs for mankind
(Sūra 6:97); they too prostrate before the Lord—‘and the star and the tree prostrate both’
(Sūra 55:6). The importance of the ‘star’ as a mystical sign can be understood from the
beginning of Sūra 53, ‘By the Star!’

The stars as guiding signs gained extreme practical importance in navigation, and inspired
mathematical and astronomical works in the early centuries of Islam. The great number of
astronomical terms in Western languages which are derived from the Arabic prove the
leading role of Muslim astronomers. Among the stars that were particularly important were
the polar star and Suhayl, Ganopus, and the Pleiades, as well as Ursa Major, which often
appear in literature. The Koran speaks also of shooting stars, shihāb, which serve to shy
away the devils when they try to enter the heavenly precincts (Sūra 72:8–9).
Astronomy went along with astrology, and the properties of the zodiacal signs (as they were
known from classical antiquity as well as from Oriental lore) were taken over and elaborated
by Muslim scientists. Niẓāmī's (d. 1209) Persian epos Haft Paykar, ‘The Seven Pictures’ or
‘Beauties’, is the best example of the feeling that everything is bound in secret
connections—stars and days, fragrances and colours. Those who had eyes to see could
read the script of the stars in the sky, as Najmuddīn Kubrā (d. 1220/1) informs his readers,
and astrological predictions were an integral part of culture. Thus arose the use of
astrologically suitable names for children, a custom still practised in parts of Muslim India, for
example. Indeed, it is often difficult to understand the different layers of Islamic poetry or
mystical works without a certain knowledge of astrological traditions, and complicated
treatises such as Muhammad Ghawth Gwaliorī's (d. 1562) Jawāhir-i khamsa, ‘The Five
Jewels’, point to astounding cross-relations involving almost every ‘sign’ in the universe. The
ancient tradition of interpreting the planets—Jupiter as the great fortune, Saturn as the
(Hindu) doorkeeper of the sky, Venus as the delightful musician, etc.—was used by artists at
many medieval Muslim courts. There is no dearth of astrological representations on
medieval vessels, especially on metal.

Astrology, as it was practised by the greatest Muslim scientists such as al-Bīrūnī (d. 1048),
offered believers another proof that everything was part of cosmic harmony—provided that
one could read the signs. But when it came to the sky itself, the ancient idea that this was
the dwelling-place of the High God could not be maintained. The sky is clearly a symbol
pointing to Divine transcendence, because God is the creator of the seven heavens and of
the earth; and, as the Throne Verse (Sūra 2:255) attests, ‘His Throne encompasses heavens
and earth’. The heaven is, like everything else, obedient to God's orders, bending down
before His Majesty. And yet, one finds complaints about the turning spheres, and Muslims
seem to join, at times, the remarks of their predecessors in Iran and ancient Arabia for whom
the turning wheel of the sky was connected with cruel Fate (see below, p. 32).

Light and darkness produce colours. Here, again, one enters a vast field of research. The
combination of the different stars with colours, as found in Niẓāmī's poem, is not rare—as
Saturn is the last of the then known planets and its colour is black, ‘there is no colour beyond
black’. The luminous appearances which the Sufi may encounter on his spiritual path are
again different, and so are the seven colours which are observed in mystical visions in
different sequences.36 One thing, however, is clear: green is always connected with
Paradise and positive, spiritual things, and those who are clad in green, the sabzpūsh of
Persian writings, are angels or saints. This is why, in Egypt, Muslims would put green
material around tombstones: it should foreshadow Paradise. Green is also the colour of the
Prophet, and his descendants would wear a green turban. Thus, green may constitute, for
example, in Simnānī's system, the eternal beatitude which, manifested in the emerald
mountain, lies behind the black.

Dark blue is the ascetic colour, the colour of mourning. Red is connected with life, health and
blood; it is the colour of the bridal veil that seems to guarantee fertility, and is used as an
apotropaic colour. Red wine, as well as fire (in its positive aspects) and the red rose, all point
to the Divine Glory, as it is said that the ridā al-kibriyā, ‘the cloak of Divine Glory’, is radiant
red.
Yellow points to weakness, as the weak yellow straw and the pale lover lack fire and life-
giving blood; in its honey-coloured hue, yellow was used for the dresses of the Jews during
the Middle Ages.37

A full study of the colour symbolism of the Sufi garments is still required. Red was preferred
by the Badawiyya in Egypt, green by the Qādiriyya, and the Chishtis in India donned a frock
whose hue varied between cinnamon and rosy-yellowish. Whether some masters wore
cloaks in the colour that corresponded to the colours that they had seen in their visionary
experiences is an open question, but it seems probable.38 But in any case, all the different
colours are only reflections of the invisible Divine light which needs certain means to become
visible—in the ṣibghat Allāh (Sūra 2:138), ‘the colouring of God’, the multicoloured
phenomena return to their original ‘one-colouredness’, a term used by Sufis for the last stage
of unification.

PLANTS AND ANIMALS39

The Tree of Life is a concept known from ancient times, for the tree is rooted in the earth and
reaches the sky, thus belonging to both spheres, as does the human being. The feeling that
life power manifests itself in the growth of a tree, that leaves miraculously sprout out of bare
twigs and fruits mature year after year in cyclical renewal, has impressed and astounded
humanity through the ages. Hence, the tree could become a symbol of everything good and
useful, and the Koran states, for this reason, that ‘a good word is like a good tree’ (Sūra
14:24).

Trees are often found near saints’ tombs: the amazing number of trees connected with the
name of ‘Abdul Qādir Gīlānī in Sind was mentioned by Richard Burton and others.40 Visitors
frequently use such trees to remind the saint of their wishes and vows by hanging rags—
sometimes shaped like minute cradles—on their branches or, as for example in Gazurgah
near Herat, driving a nail into the tree's trunk.

It is natural that Paradise, as an eternal garden, should boast its very special trees, such as
the Tuba, whose name is developed from the greeting ‘Happiness’, ṭūbā, to those pious
people who believe (Sūra 13:29); that is, the Tuba tree is the personified promise of eternal
bliss that one hopes for in Paradise. Likewise, the boundaries of the created universe are
marked by the Sidra tree, mentioned in Sūra 53:14—the ‘Lote tree of the farthest boundary’,
which defines the limit of anything imaginable; and it is at this very Sidra tree where,
according to legend, even the mighty Gabriel had to stay back during the Prophet's heavenly
journey while the Prophet himself was blessed with reaching the immediate Divine Presence
beyond Where and How.

Thinkers and mystics could imagine the whole universe as a tree and spoke, as did Ibn
‘Arabī, of the shajarat al-kawn, the ‘tree of existence’, a tree on which man is the last, most
precious fruit. On the other hand, Bāyezīd Bisṭāmī, in his mystical flight, saw the ‘tree of
Unity’, and Abū'l-Ḥusayn an-Nūrī, at about the same time, envisaged the ‘tree of gnosis’,
ma‘rifa.41

A detailed account of the ‘tree of the futuwwa’, the ‘manly virtue’ as embodied in later
futuwwa sodalities, is given in a fifteenth-century Turkish work:42 the trunk of this tree, under
which the exemplary young hero lives, is ‘doing good’ its branches are honesty; its leaves
proper etiquette and restraint; its roots the words of the profession of faith; its fruits gnosis,
ma‘rifa, and the company of the saints; and it is watered by God's mercy.

This is reminiscent of the Sufi shajara, the ‘family tree’ that shows the disciples their spiritual
ancestry, leading back to the Prophet: drawings—often of enormous size—symbolize the
continuous flow of Divine guidance through the past generations, branching out into various
directions.

Some thinkers embellished the image of the ‘tree of the world’ poetically. Probably nobody
has used the image of the tree for different types of humans more frequently and extensively
than the Ismaili philosopher-poet Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 1072), for whom almost
everything created turned into a ‘tree’:

You may think, clever man, this world's a lovely tree

Whose tasty, fragrant fruits are the intelligent…

or else:

The body is a tree, its fruit is reason; lies and ruse

are straw and thorns…43

The close connection between the tree and life, and especially spiritual life, is beautifully
expressed in the ḥadīth according to which the person who performs the dhikr, the
recollection of God, is like a green tree amid dry trees—a likeness which makes the Muslim
reader think immediately of dry wood as fuel for Hell, as it is alluded to in the Koranic curse
on Abū Lahab's wife, ‘the carrier of fuel wood’ (Sūra 111:5). Thus Rūmī sings in one of his
quatrains:

When the spring breeze of Love begins to blow—

every twig that's not dry begins to move in dance!

For Love can move only the living branches, while the dried-up twigs remain unmoved and
are destined to become kindling for Hellfire.

The Tree of Life, whose branches are the Divine Names,44 is rooted in the Divine Presence;
or else, the profession of faith can be seen as a tree whose outer rind, formed by the
negation lā, is pure negativity, and whose sap flows through the h, the last and essential
letter of Allāh (see Figure, p. 19) (M IV 3,1828ff.).

In addition, not only the created universe but also God Himself can be symbolized through a
tree: poets, especially in the Indo-Pakistani areas, sang of the tree ‘God’. Qāḍī Qādan in
Sind (d. 1551) sees the Divine Beloved as a banyan tree whose innumerable air roots seem
to hide the fact that the tree in reality is only one (as the phenomena hide the Divine Unity),
while Sulṭān Bāhū in the Panjab (d. 1692) sings of God as the jasmine tree that grows in his
heart, watered by the constant repetition of the profession of faith until His fragrance
permeates his entire being.45
The shahāda, centred on the essential letter h, with the lā as the ‘outer rind’.

Hence comes the idea encountered in popular traditions, for example, that to plant a tree on
someone's grave not only has a practical aspect to it but is also thought to lessen the
punishment in the grave and console the dead person. The baraka of a tree can be
transferred by touching it or, in certain places, by creeping under a low-bent tree or its
strangely-shaped branches; a very typical tree of this kind can be seen near a shrine in Ucch
(southern Panjab).

Parts of the tree carry the same baraka as does the whole tree, be it its leaves or its twigs.
The custom of beating people—in jest or earnest—with fresh twigs is basically an old fertility
rite, which conveys some of the tree's life power. It was practised in medieval Egypt when
the jester, ‘ifrīt al-maḥmal, jokingly beat the spectators when the maḥmal on which the cover
of the Kaaba was carried to Mecca was paraded in grand style through the streets of Cairo;
similar customs can be observed during the Muḥarram processions in Hyderabad/Deccan.

The tree's blessing power is also preserved in the wreath. The custom of garlanding pilgrims
returnnig from Mecca or honoured guests is a faint reflection of this feeling of the tree's
baraka, as is the garlanding of saints’ tombs; every visitor to major shrines in the
subcontinent knows of the numerous little shops that sell flowers and wreaths near the
entrance to the sacred places.

Not only does the tree in general bear the flow of vital power, but also specific trees or their
twigs play a role in folklore and literature. Sometimes the baraka of such trees is ascribed to
the fact that they had grown out of the miswāk, the toothpick of a saint which he threw away
and which took root to grow into a powerful tree. A good example is the Junaydi shrine in
Gulbarga/Deccan.

On a Koranic basis, it is the date palm which has a special relation with life: the Koranic
account of Mary's labour (Sūra 19:236ff.) tells that the Virgin, during her birth pangs,
grasped the trunk of a dried-up palm tree, which showered dates upon her as a Divine sign
of the Prophet to be born. (The idea has inspired Paul Valéry's beautiful poem La palme.)
The Arabs love date palms, and dates were and are used in several dishes prepared for
religious purposes, such as the twelve dates in the ḥalwā prepared for feasts in the futuwwa
sodalities.46 Another important tradition in the Tales of the Prophets points to the idea that
fig trees are protected and should not be burnt, as the fig tree offered its leaves to cover
Adam's and Eve's shame after the Fall. And did not God swear in the Koran (Sūra 95:1) ‘By
the the fig and the olive’? The olive is even more prominent in the Koran, not only in the
Divine Oaths but also as the mysterious tree, ‘neither eastern nor western’ (Sūra 24:35),
whose oil shines even without being touched by fire. The cypress is called ‘free’ and reminds
Persian and Turkish poets of their beloved's tall, slender stature, while the plane tree seems
to resemble a human being—do its leaves not look like human hands which it lifts as if it
were in prayer?

Such comparisons lead to the concept of the garden—the garden as a replica of Paradise,
Paradise an eternal garden in which every plant and shrub sings the praise of God. The
Koran had repeatedly emphasized the reality of resurrection by reminding the listeners of the
constant renewal of Nature in spring, when the rains had quickened the seemingly dead
earth. Therefore Persian and Turkish poetry abounds in such poems, for the fresh greenery
of bushes and trees looked as if Paradise had descended on earth.47

Abū'l-Ḥusayn an-Nūrī in ninth-century Baghdad elaborated the comparison of the heart with
a garden filled with fragrant plants, such as ‘recollection of God’ or ‘glorification of the Lord’,
while a somewhat later mystic speaks of the ‘garden of hearing’ in which the leaves are of
God pleasure and the blossoms of praise.48 The garden of the heart, then, is blessed by the
rain of grace, or, in the case of sinners, the rain of wrath destroys its poisonous plants.49
Likewise, one may see human beings similar to plants—some like fragrant flowers, some
like grass.

Certain plants are thought to be endowed with special powers: the wild rue, sipand, is used
against the Evil Eye (usually in fumigation), and the so-called Peyghamber gul in
Afghanistan, a small yellow plant with little dark lines, seems to bear the marks of the
Prophet's fingers. But in the Islamic tradition, as elsewhere, the rose has pride of place. The
Prophet kissed the rose and placed it on his eyes, for ‘the red rose is part of God's glory,
kibriyā’.50 On the other hand, legend claims that the rose grew out of the drops of
perspiration which fell from the Prophet's body during his nightly journey—therefore it carries
his sweet fragrance.

To the poets, the violet could appear as an old ascetic who, sitting in his dark blue cloak on
the green prayer rug, namely the lawn, meditates modestly, his head bent on his knee, while
the lily can be interpreted—owing to the shape of its petals—as Dhū ‘l-fiqār, ‘Alī's miraculous
sword, or else it praises God with ten tongues. The tulip may appear as a coquettish beau
with a black heart, but in the religious tradition it reminds the spectator of bloodstained
shrouds, especially those of the martyrs of Kerbela, with the black spot resembling a heart
burnt by sorrows.51 In Iqbāl's poetry, on the other hand, it symbolizes the flame of Sinai, the
glorious manifestation of God's Majesty, and at the same time it can stand for the true
believer who braves all the obstacles that try to hinder his unfolding into full glory.

All the flowers and leaves, however, are engaged in silent praise of God, for ‘there is nothing
on Earth that does not praise its Creator’ (Sūra 59:24 et al.), and every leaf is a tongue to
laud God, as Sa‘dī (d. 1292) sings in an oft-imitated verse which, if we believe the historian
Dawlatshāh, the angels sang for a whole year in the Divine presence.52

This feeling of the never-ending praise of the creatures is expressed most tenderly in the
story of the Turkish Sufi, Sünbül Efendi (sixteenth century), who sent out his disciples to
bring flowers to the convent. While all of them returned with fine bouquets, one of them,
Merkez Efendi, offered the master only a little withered flower, for, he said, ‘all the others
were engaged in the praise of God and I did not want to disturb them; this one, however, had
just finished its dhikr, and so I brought it’. It was he who was to become the master's
successor.

Not only the plants but the animals too praise God, each in its own way. There are
mythological animals such as the fish in the depth of the fathomless ocean on which is
standing the bull who carries the earth; and the Persian saying az māh ta māhī, ‘From the
moon to the fish’, means ‘all through the universe’. However, it is difficult to explain the use
of fish-shaped amulets against the Evil Eye in Egypt and the frequent occurrence of fish
emblems and escutcheons in the house of the Nawwabs of Oudh. A pre-Islamic heirloom is
likely in these cases. While in the Koran animals are comparatively rarely mentioned, the
Tales of the Prophets tell how animals consoled Adam after the Fall.

There seems to be no trace of ancient totemism among the Arab Muslims, while in the
Turkic tradition names like bughra, bugha ‘steer’ or börü ‘wolf’ could be understood as
pointing to former totem animals of a clan. Yet, in some dervish orders, mainly in the off-
centre regions of the Islamic world, one encounters what appear to be ‘totemistic’ relics: for
example, the ‘Isawiyya in North Africa take a totem animal and behave like it during a certain
festival, when a steer is ritually (but not according to Islamic ritual!) slaughtered.53 The
identification of cats and dervishes among the Heddawa beggar-dervishes seems to go back
to the same roots.54 Although these are exceptional cases, some remnants of the belief in
the sacred power of certain animals still survive in Sufi traditions in general. One of them is
the use of the pūst or pöste, the animal skin which constitutes the spiritual master's seat in a
number of Sufi brotherhoods. When medieval dervishes such as Ḥaydarīs and Jawāliqīs
clad themselves in animal skins, they must have felt a sort of identification with the animal.

One problem when dealing with the role of animals in religion is the transformation of a
previously sacred animal into an unclean one, as happened for example in ancient Israel
with the prohibition of pork, the boar being sacred to the Canaanites. The prohibition of pork
is one of the rare food taboos that lives on in Islam. There, however, the true reason for its
prohibition is unknown, and it is generally (and partly correctly) attributed to hygienic
reasons. Yet, it seems that the ugliness of boars shocks the spectator perhaps even more
than the valid hygienic reasons, and I distinctly remember the old Anatolian villager who, at
Ankara Zoo, exclaimed at the sight of the only animal of this kind (a particularly ugly
specimen, to be sure): ‘Praised be the Lord, who has forbidden us to eat this horrible
creature!’ Besides, pigs are in general thought to be related in some way or another to
Christians: in ‘Aṭṭār's Manṭiq uṭ-ṭayr, the pious Shaykh Ṣan‘ān is so beside himself with love
for a Christian maiden that he even tends her swine, and in Rūmī's poetry the ‘Franks’ who
brought pigs to the sacred city of Jerusalem occur more than once.55 With the deeply-rooted
aversion of Muslims to pork and to pigs, it comes as a true cultural shock for parents when
their children, in British or American schools, have to learn nursery rhymes about ‘three little
piggies’, illustrated by pretty drawings, or are sometimes offered innocent marzipan pigs.

The Muslims have devoted a good number of scholarly and entertaining works to zoology,
for example al-Jāḥiẓ's and Damīrī's works; but on the whole the characteristics of animals
were provided either by the rare allusions in the Koran or, after the eighth century, by
Bidpai's fables known as Kalīla wa Dimna, which became widely read in the Islamic world
after Ibn al-Muqaffa‘(d. 756) had first rendered them into Arabic.

The Koran (Sūra 2:26) mentions the tiny gnat as an example of God's instructing mankind by
means of likenesses. In the Tales of the Prophets, we learn that it was a gnat that entered
Pharaoh's brains, thus causing his slow and painful death—the smallest insect is able to
overcome the mightiest tyrant. The bee (Sūra 16:68) is an ‘inspired’ animal whose skill in
building its house points to God's wisdom. In later legend, ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib appears as the
amīr an-naḥl, ‘the Prince of the bees’ because they helped him in a battle, and popular
tradition in both medieval Turkey and Indo-Pakistan claims that honey becomes sweet only
when the bees constantly hum the ṣalawāt-i sharīfa, the blessings over the Prophet, while
gathering the otherwise tasteless sap.56
The ant appears in Sūra 27:18ff., a weak creature which was nevertheless honoured by
Solomon, and the legend that it brought a locust's leg to the mighty king is often alluded to—
‘a locust's leg’ is an insignificant but well-intended gift from a poor person. The spider, on the
one hand, is a creature that builds ‘the weakest house’ (Sūra 29:41), and yet it was a spider
that helped the Prophet during his hegira: when he spent the night with Abū Bakr in a cave,
the spider wove its web so deftly over the cave's entrance that the Meccans who pursued
the Prophet failed to recognize his hiding-place. So legend tells.

Although not mentioned in the Koran, the moth or butterfly that immolates itself in the
candle's fire was transformed into a widespread symbol of the soul that craves annihilation in
the Divine Fire. It reached Western literature through Goethe's adaptation of the motif in his
poem Selige Sehnsucht.57

As for the quadrupeds, the tide of Sūra 2, Al-Baqara ‘The Cow’, is taken from the sacrifice of
a yellow cow (Sūra 2:67ff.) by Moses; but during a religious discussion at Emperor Akbar's
court in 1578, a pious Hindu happily remarked that God must have really loved cows to call
the largest chapter of the Koran after this animal—an innocent misunderstanding that highly
amused the Muslim courtiers.58

The lion, everywhere the symbol of power and glory, appears in the same role in Muslim
tradition, and ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, whose proper name was first Ḥaydara (or Ḥaydar), ‘Lion’,
was praised from early days as the ‘lion of God’ and therefore surrounded by numerous
names that point to his leonine qualities, such as Ghaḍanfar, ‘lion’, or Asadullāh, ‘God's lion’,
or in Persian areas ‘Alīshīr, and under Turkish influence Aslan ‘Ali and ‘Ali Arslan (both shīr
and arslan mean ‘lion’). The true saint, it is said, is like the golden lion in the dark forest of
this world, and fierce lions bow before him or serve him as obedient mounts. But perhaps the
most moving role of the lion is found in Rūmi's Fīhi mā fīhi. People travelled from near and
far to see a famous strong lion, but nobody dared to come close to him from fear; however, if
anyone had stroked him, he would have been the kindest creature imaginable. What is
required is absolute faith, then there is no danger any more.

In popular belief, the cat is the lion's aunt, or else she is born from his sneezing.59 The
Prophet's fondness for cats is often referred to, and whether or not the ḥadīth that ‘Love of
cats is part of faith’ is genuine, it reflects the general feeling for the little feline. For the cat is
a clean animal; her presence does not annul ritual prayer, and the water from which she has
drunk can still be used for ablution. There are variants of the story of how Abū Hurayra's cat,
which he always carried in his bag, saved the Prophet from an obnoxious snake, whereupon
the Prophet petted her so that the mark of his fingers is still visible in the four dark lines on
most cats’ foreheads, and, because the Prophet's hand had stroked her back, cats never fall
on their backs. Whether the custom that a ‘Mother of cats’ and later the ‘Father of cats’
accompanied the Egyptian maḥmal on the pilgrimage to Mecca is a dim survival of the
ancient Egyptian cat cult is not clear.60 Love of cats is particularly evident in Maghribi
tradition, where, among the Heddawa for example, the novices are called quēṭāṭ, ‘little tom-
cats’. Ibn Mashīsh is credited with love of cats, and there is also an old Sufi shrine in Fez
called Zāwiya Bū Quṭūṭ, ‘that of the father of cats’, just like Pisili Sultan, ‘Lady with kitten’, in
Anatolia. Yet, despite the cat's positive evaluation in early literature, there is no dearth of
stories (especially in Persian) about hypocritical cats which, while peacefully murmuring their
prayers or the dhikr, never forget to kill the mice which they have cheated by their alleged
repentance from bloodshed.
While the cat is a clean animal, the dog is regarded as unclean, and his presence spoils the
ritual prayer. He appears as fierce and greedy (anyone who has encountered the street dogs
in Anatolia will appreciate this remark), and thus the dog could represent the nafs, the lower
soul ‘which incites to evil’ (Sūra 12:53). Sufis were seen with a black dog besides them,
which was explained to the onlooker as the hungry nafs; but, as the dog can be trained and
become a kalb mu‘allam, an ‘instructed dog’, thius the lower faculties too can be turned into
something useful. On the other hand, the Koran mentions the dog that faithfully kept
company with the Seven Sleepers (Sūra 18:18–22), and this legendary creature, called
Qiṭmīr in legends, became a symbol of fidelity and trustworthiness. The poets would love to
be ‘the dog of fidelity’ at their beloved's door or, in Shia Islam, at the shrine of an imam. By
unswervingly watching there, they hoped to be purified as was the dog of the Seven
Sleepers, who was honoured by being mentioned in the sacred Book. The proper name Kalb
‘Alī, ‘‘Alī's dog’, in some Shia families expresses this wish. And when poets tell how the
demented lover Majnūn used to kiss the paws of the cur that had passed through the quarter
of his beloved Laylā, they mean to point out that even the lowliest creature can become a
carrier of blessings by his association with the beloved.61 The remarkable amount of
positive allusions to dogs in Persian poetry (contrary to the rather negative picture of cats in
the same literature) may stem from the Zoroastrian love for dogs which, in the dualistic
Zoroastrian system, belonged to the good side of creation.

The camel, mentioned as sign of God's creative power in Sūra 88:17 (‘Don't they look at the
camel how it was created?’) became in later tradition a fine symbol of the nafs which, restive
and selfish in the beginning, could be educated (similar to the dog) to carry the seeker to his
goal, the Divine Presence, dancing on the thorny roads despite its heavy burden when
listening to the driver's song.

Among the negative animals represented in the Koran is the donkey, whose braying ‘is the
ugliest possible voice’ (Sūra 31:19) and whose stupidity is understood from the remark that
the ignorant who are unable to understand and appreciate the contents of the sacred
scriptures are like ‘the donkey that carries books’ (Sūra 62:5). In legend, the donkey is said
to be accursed because Iblīs managed to enter Noah's Ark by clinging to its tail.
Traditionally, the donkey is connected in Islamic literature (as in classical antiquity) with dirt
and sensuality and became, in mystical parlance, the representative of the material world
which has to be left behind, just as Jesus's donkey remained on earth while he was uplifted
to heaven.62

There is, however, the white mule Duldul (the name means ‘large hedgehog’) which the
Prophet gave to ‘Alī and on which he performed many of his heroic deeds. Nowadays,
Duldul's pictures can be found on the walls of shrines and on cheap prints in India and
Pakistan to bring blessing to the building and to its owner.

The horse is the typical Arabic animal, created, according to a myth, from the swift southern
wind, and Arabic literature abounds with praises of the beautiful creature. The beginning of
Sūra 100 speaks of the ‘running horses’ which appear as galloping through the world
towards the final goal—the Day of Judgment. But it rarely appears in truly religious contexts,
although it may serve in the Sufi tradition again as a nafs-animal, which has to be starved
and broken in order to become useful for its owner; the numerous allusions to the ‘restive
horse’ and the miniature drawings of starved horses seem to be related to this concept.63 In
Shia circles, it is believed that a white horse will carry the Mahdi when he descends to earth
at the end of time; therefore a fine steed with henna-coloured feet is led every year in the
Muḥarram procession (the so-called dhū ’l-janāḥ) to make sure that his horse is saddled in
case he should suddenly appear. It is touched by the pious for the sake of blessing.

A strange mount, smaller than a horse and larger than a mule, was Burāq (connected with
barq, ‘lightning’), that carried the Prophet during his mi‘rāj through the heavens into the
Divine Presence. It is described as having a woman's face and a peacock's tail, and was the
embodiment of swiftness and beauty. Poets and painters have never tired of describing it
with new colourful details. Burāq nowadays appears frequently on pictures; and, in the
eastern lands of the Muslim world, especially in Pakistan, trucks and buses are decorated
with its ‘likeness’, perhaps in the hope that its baraka will bring the vehicle as swiftly to its
goal as the real Burāq carried the Prophet through the universe.64

Serpents, so important in the Christian tradition, do not play a central role in Islam. The
Koran (Sūra 7:117, 20:66ff.) alludes to Moses’ rod that turned into a serpent to devour the
rods of Pharaoh's sorcerers. For they can appear as nafs-animals which are blinded by the
spiritual master, who resembles an emerald.65 Also, it was Iblīs in the shape of a small
snake which, carried into Paradise owing to the peacock's negligence, induced Adam and
Eve to eat from the forbidden fruit. However, the role of the snake and its greater relative,
the dragon, is not as central as one would expect. Yet, both snakes and dragons (the latter
appearing more frequently in the indigenous Persian tradition) are connected in popular
belief with treasures which they guard in ruined places. Perhaps that connects them with the
mighty serpent which, according to the Tales of the Prophets, surrounds the Divine Throne.

Much more important in symbolic language is the world of birds, which, like everything,
adore the Lord and know their laud and worship, as the Koran states (Sūra 24:41). The soul
bird, common in early and ancient societies, was well known in the Islamic world. Pre-Islamic
Arabs imagined soul birds fluttering around a grave. Later, the topic of the soul bird, so fitting
to symbolize the soul's flight beyond the limits of the material world, permeates mystical
literature, and still today one can hear in some Turkish families the expression Can kusu
uçtu, ‘his/her soul bird has flown away’, when speaking of someone's death. The tradition
according to which the souls of martyrs live in the crops of green birds to the day of
Resurrection belongs in this connection.66

Again, just as plants in general play a considerable role in Islamic beliefs and folklore and
yet some special plants are singled out for their religious or magic importance, the same is
the case with birds. If the rose is the supreme manifestation of Divine beauty or the symbol
of the beloved's cheek, then the nightingale is the soul bird par excellence. It is not only the
simple rhyme gul-bulbul, ‘rose-nightingale’, in Persian that made this bird such a favourite of
poets, but the plaintive nightingale which sings most expressively when roses are in bloom
could easily be interpreted as the longing soul. This idea underlies even the most worldly-
looking use of this combination—unbeknown to most authors.

The falcon is a different soul bird. Its symbolic use is natural in a civilization where falconry
was and still is one of the favourite pastimes. Captured by a cunning old crone, Mistress
World, the falcon finally flies home to his owner; or else the hard, seemingly cruel education
of the wild, worthless fledgling into a well-trained hunting bird can serve as a model for the
education which the novice has to undergo. The Sufis therefore liked to combine the return
to his master's fist of the tamed, obedient bird with the Koranic remark (Sūra 89:27–8)
‘Return, oh you soul at peace…’, for the soul bird has undergone the transformation of the
nafs ammāra into the nafs muṭma'inna. On the other hand, however, the falcon as a strong,
predatory bird can also serve to symbolize the irresistible power of love or Divine grace,
which grasps the human heart as a hawk carries away a pigeon.

The pigeon, or dove, is, as in the West, a symbol of loving fidelity, which is manifested by its
wearing a collar of dark feathers around its neck—the ‘dove's necklace’.67 In the Persian
tradition, one hears its constant cooing kū, kū, ‘Where, where [is the beloved]?’ (In India, the
Papiha bird's call is interpreted similarly as Piū kahān, ‘Where is the beloved?’)

The migratory stork is a pious bird who builds his nest preferably on minarets. Is he not
comparable, in his fine white attire, to pilgrims travelling once a year to Mecca? And his
constant laklak is interpreted as the Arabic al-mulk lak, al-‘izz lak, al-ḥamd lak, ‘Thine is the
kingdom, Thine is the glory, Thine is the praise’.

Similarly the rooster, and in particular the white rooster, is regarded as the bird who taught
Adam how and when to perform the ritual prayer; thus he is sometimes seen as the muezzin
to wake up the sleepers, a fact to which a ḥadīth points (AM no. 261); Rūmī even calls him
by the Greek word angelos, ‘an angel’.68

The peacock, due to whose negligence the serpent, i.e. Satan, was carried into Paradise, is
a strange combination of dazzling beauty and ugliness: although his radiant feathers are put
as bookmarks into copies of the Koran, the ugliness of his feet and his shrieking voice have
always served to warn people of selfish pride. While some authors dwell upon his positive
aspects as a manifestation of the beauty of spring or Divine beauty, others claim that the bird
is loved by Satan because of his assistance in bringing him into the primordial Paradise.
Nevertheless, peacocks—sacred to Sarasvati in former times—are kept in many Indo-
Pakistani shrines. Hundreds of them live around a small shrine in Kallakahar in the Salt
Range; and in other places, peacock feathers are often used to bless the visitor.

Like the peacock, the parrot, probably unknown in early Islamic times, belongs to India and
has brought from his Indian background several peculiarities: he is a wise though somewhat
misogynistical teacher69 whose words, however, are sweet like sugar. That is why, in
Gulbarga, deaf or stuttering children are brought to the minute tomb of a pet parrot of the
saint's family; sugar is placed on the tomb, and the child has to lick it. The parrot's green
colour connects him with Paradise, and it is said that he learns to speak by means of a
mirror behind which someone utters words (see below, p. 31).

In the Muslim tradition of India, one sometimes encounters the hāns, the swan or, rather,
large gander who, according to folk tales and poems, is able to live on pearls. Diving deep,
he dislikes the shallow, muddy water—like the perfect saint who avoids the dirty, brackish
water of this world.

Muslim authors’ interest in birds can be easily understood from the remark in Sūra 27:16
according to which Solomon was acquainted with the ‘language of the birds’, Manṭiq uṭ-ṭayr.
This could easily be interpreted as the language of the souls, which only the true master
understands. The topic of the soul birds had already been used in Ibn Sīnā's (d. 1037)
Risālat aṭ-ṭayr and his poem on the soul, and Sanā'ī (d. 1131) has described and interpreted
in his long qaṣīda, Tasbīḥ aṭ-ṭuyūr ‘The birds’ rosary’, the different sounds of the birds. The
most extensive elaboration of the stories of the soul birds is given in ‘Aṭṭār's Manṭiq uṭ-ṭayr:
the hudhud, the hoopoe, once the messenger between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba,
leads them through the seven valleys in their quest for the Sīmurgk.70

However, it becomes clear from ‘Aṭṭār's epic, as from other poems such as some of Nāṣir-i
Khusraw's qaṣīdas, that by no means all birds are examples of the positive aspects of the
human soul.71 Some are connected with the hibernal world of matter, like the crow and the
raven which inhabit ruins and, contrary to other birds, enjoy the winter, the time when the
world seems to be dead and the life-giving water is frozen. Was it not the raven that showed
Cain how to bury his slain brother Abel (Sūra 5:31)?

Mythical birds are not lacking in Muslim lands. There is the Humā, the shade of whose wings
conveys kingdom to the one touched by it, and the ‘Anqā, the ‘long-necked’ female bird
which has become a metaphor for something nonexistent: adĭ var özü yok, ‘He has a name
but no reality’, as the Turkish saying goes. Its Persian counterpart, the Sīmurgh, was a
resourceful bird in early Persian tradition, rescuing, as the Shāhnāma has it, little Zāl and
bringing the outcast child up with her own chicks; the colourful feather which she gave to Zāl
allows its owner to perform licit magic. The Sīmurgh was, however, transformed into a
symbol of the Divine by Suhrawardī the Master of Illumination (d. 1191) and by ‘Aṭṭār, who
invented the most ingenious pun in Persian mystical literature: the thirty birds, sī murgh, who
have completed their pilgrimage through the seven valleys, discover that the goal of their
quest, the divine Sīmurgh, is nothing but themselves, being sī murgh.

The Koran mentions (Sūra 5:60) the transformation of sinners into pigs and monkeys, and
some medieval authors took over these ideas, beginning, it seems, with the Ikhwān aṣ-ṣafā
of Basra. Ghazzālī mentions the ‘animal traits’ (pig = appetite, greed; dog = anger) in his
Ihyā ‘ulūm ad-dīn,72 and the Divine threat that greedy, dirty and sensual people will appear
on Doomsday in the shape of those animals which they resembled in their behaviour is quite
outspoken in the works of Sanā'ī and ‘Aṭṭār, and somewhat softened in some of Rūmī's
verses.

Yet, there is still another side to animals in Islamic tradition. Muslim hagiography is replete
with stories that tell of the love that the ‘friends of God’ showed to animals, and kindness to
animals is recommended through moving stories in the ḥadīth. Early legend tells of Sufis
who were famed for their loving relations with the animals of the desert or the forest, and
later miniature paintings often show the saints with tame lions (or their minor relatives,
namely cats) or surrounded by gazelles which no longer shy away from them. For the one
who has subdued the animal traits in his soul and has become completely obedient to God
will find that everything becomes obedient to him.

Finally, the dream of eschatological peace involves the idea that ‘the lion will lie down with
the lamb’, and Muslim authors too have described the peaceful kingdom which will appear
(or has already appeared) under the rule of this or that just and worthy sovereign, or else
which will be realized in the kingdom of the Beloved.73

MAN-MADE OBJECTS

Man-made things used as objects of worship or regarded as filled with a sacred power are
often called ‘fetish’ (from Portuguese feiti̧ o). The term can be applied to almost everything
made by human hands which then occupied a special place in human life: even a sacred
book which is used more or less as a cult object without remembering its spiritual content
can turn into a fetish. However, to put one's trust in the power of a ‘fetish’ is absolutely
prohibited in Islam, as such an act is incompatible with the faith in the One God who is the
Creator of everything; hence, man-made objects were less important in the Islamic context
than in other religions, even though certain shades of their former role may have survived
and they continued to be used in symbolic language.

Yet a look at some of these objects may be interesting. Among man-made objects, weapons
had a very special value in early societies, and the role of the blacksmith in ancient
civilizations is well known. In the Islamic tradition proper, this ‘cult’ of weapons seems to be
lacking; only in the Iranian epical tradition, in the Shāhnāma, does the blacksmith Kāvah act
as hero and liberator. In the Koranic tradition, David appears as a master in making coats-of-
mail (as every prophet was instructed in a practical profession). But the mystical power of
arms survives in one specific historical example. That is ‘Alī's famous double-edged sword,
Dhū ‘l-fiqār, with the aid of which he performed his greatest heroic feats. Later, the name of
Dhū ‘l-fiqār was often applied to a patron's sword or to any sharp instrument (including the
poet's sharp tongue!) to express the greatest possible achievement in overcoming enemies;
hence, it is also used as a proper name.

Islamic arms and armour are often inscribed with religious formulas to enhance their power.
Besides the Koranic verse of victory (Sūra 48:1), one frequently finds the ḥadīth lā fatā illā
‘Alī, lā sayf illā Dhū ‘l-fiqār, ‘there is no true herioc young man but ‘Alī and no sword but Dhū
‘l-fiqār’. The names of the ‘rightly guided caliphs’ in Sunni circles and those of the Shia
imams in the Shiite world are used; in Shia environments, the invocation Nādi ‘Aliyyan, ‘Call
upon ‘Alī, the manifestor of miracles…’, is quite common on weapons and on other objects.

Similar texts are also inscribed on different parts of the armour, from breastplates to
leggings, from helmets to shields; but in all these cases, it is the words of the Koran or of the
Prophet that endow the object with specific power. An old object of pride was the axe or
double axe, the use of which is connected with certain Sufi orders such as the Hamadsha in
North Africa, and in Iran, where some Sufis in former times also used a mace, a typical sign
of ancient male sodalities.

When trees, and twigs as part of a tree, were widely used for religio-magic purposes, one
may explain the rod or wand as an artificial twig. It enhances man's power, and is a sign of
guidance. The Koranic story of Moses, whose serpent-turned-wand devoured those of
Pharaoh's sorcerers (Sūra 20:66 et al.), is a typical example of the living power of the rod.
Furthermore, Moses split the sea with it and caused water to gush forth from the rock. Żarb-i
Kalīm, ‘The stroke of Moses’, was therefore chosen as a telling title for a collection of Iqbāl's
Urdu poetry in which he harshly criticizes the modern development in the Muslim world—as
though his pen might work the miracles associated with Moses’ rod.

During the Friday services, the preacher in the mosque carries a wand; that points to his
authority.74 Likewise, many Sufi masters own either a long rod (or several of them) or else a
high pole. Often, the upper end of the ceremonial pole is decorated with the ‘hand of Fatima’
to avert the Evil Eye, or else complicated caligrams made of pious invocations (verses from
the Koran, the names of saintly people, etc.) crown the high pole, which is seen as a sign of
leadership although its power is, again, mainly due to the use of sacred texts.
A further development of the rod seems to be the flag or banner. Some Sufi masters are
known as ‘he of the flag’, for example the Pīr Jhāndēwārō in Sind, who wielded an authority
similar to that of his cousin, the Pīr Pāgārō, ‘he with the turban’. In processions, the
members of the different Sufi brotherhoods marched with their colourful flags through the
cities, as lively descriptions of medieval Cairo tell, and when a Mamluk sultan's pious wife
was buried in 1467, her bier was covered with the red flag of the dervishes of Aḥmad al-
Badawī ‘for the sake of blessing’.75

To mark a pious person's tomb in the wilderness, people often put little colourful flags
around or on top of a heap of stones. Similarly, in the majlis meetings of the Shia during the
first ten days of Muḥarram, flags in different colours, often with precious embroidery, are
placed in a corner to remind the participants of the flags which heroes like ‘Abbās, the
standard-bearer of Kerbela, had carried. These flags are touched by the participants for the
sake of the baraka. The use of blessed flags or even ṭūghs, poles with yak tails, was
apparently well known among Sufis and Sufi-related groups such as the futuwwa sodalities.

The intrinsic religio-magic value of the flag appears again in connection with the blacksmith
Kāvah, who unfurled his apron which thus became the famous dirafsh-i kāviyānī, the flag
under which he helped to liberate Iran from tyranny. For this reason, the term dirafsh-i
kāviyānī was used in later times by authors who wanted to show their compatriots the right
way, even if only in the area of Persian grammar.76

Much more important for the general Muslim tradition, however, is the concept of the liwā al-
ḥamd, the ‘banner of praise’ which Muhammad will carry on Doomsday (AM no. 331). The
believers will gather in the field of Resurrection under this green flag to be led, thanks to his
intercession, to eternal bliss. Each Muslim dynasty had its own flags and banners, and the
poets of medieval Arabia liked to compare the flowers of the garden to flags of different
tribes, hence different colours.77 The favourite comparison, which continued for many
centuries in Persian and even Ottoman Turkish literature, was that of violets with the black
banners of the Abbasids. And as flags serve to delineate a ruler's territory, it is not surprising
that one of the Turkish terms for a certain administrative unit is sancak, ‘flag’. Flags were
embroidered with the emblems of strength, or of Islam. In later times, many of them bore the
sign of the crescent or were decorated with the words of the profession of faith (now
generally woven into the material), while it seems that in former times pictures of lions were
quite common (as they continue to be in Iran), for the ‘lion on the flag’ became a standard
metaphor for something lifeless and powerless.

One of the most fascinating objects in religious history is the mirror,78 from ancient times an
object sacred to the Japanese goddess Amaterasu. Mirrors were made of steel and had to
be polished carefully so that they could reflect persons or objects. The Koranic saying (Sūra
83:14) ‘What they were earning was overshadowing their hearts’ could easily be applied to
the mirror of the heart that was covered by the rust of blameworthy actions, and thus no
longer capable of reflecting the Divine light. This theme was to become a favourite with the
Sufis, who tried (and continue to try) to instruct the disciple in how to polish this mirror by
constant recollection of God lest any dust, rust or verdigris of evil actions or thoughts be
collected on it. Even to breathe on it (that is, to speak) would stain its purity: This latter
comparison remains true also at a time when metal mirrors were replaced by glass mirrors.
The mirror plays an important role in traditional sagas and tales. A famous one is
Alexander's mirror, which he placed on high to overcome an obnoxious serpent. As
everyone who saw this monster had to die, it was concluded that if the serpent were to see
its own reflection it was bound to expire as well. By this trick, the country was saved.
Alexander's ‘world-showing mirror’, often set parallel to Jamshīd's world-showing goblet,
appears in Persian literature time and again.

As the pure heart is a mirror of God, those whose hearts are perfectly purified and polished
can serve as mediators for God's beauty. This is the spiritual guide's role. ‘Isā Jund Allāh of
Burhanpur (d. 1621) says, with a somewhat different metaphor:

Even though straw and woodchips can be heated by the rays of the sun, they cannot be
ignited. But if one places a mirror before them and focuses the rays through it upon the
straw, then it can be ignited. The Pīr's essence is like the mirror.79

The mirror symbol also serves to explain how the disciple learns to speak and to act: as a
parrot is placed before a mirror behind which someone is talking whom the bird (thinking his
mirror image to be another parrot) tries to imitate, the disciple is instructed by the words of
the master, who serves as God's mirror.

A person whose heart has become a pure mirror will be able to recognize other people's
wishes and thoughts as though they were his own, and the famous ḥadīth ‘The believer is
the believer's mirror’ (AM no. 104) has served through the ages as a fine educational device:
when one sees some unpleasant traits in one's neighbour, one should recognize them as
one's own faults and try to eliminate them from one's own character.

However, not only the heart is a mirror of things Divine; rather, the whole universe could be
considered to be a mirror of God's beauty and majesty. God, who ‘was a hidden treasure
and wanted to be known’ (AM no. 70), as the Sufis’ favourite extra-Koranic saying stated,
created the world as a mirror to contemplate His own beauty in it. Only the ignorant prefer to
admire this mirror's reverse side instead of looking at God's reflection in the seemingly
‘empty’ face-side (see below, p. 229).

The mirror's secret is perhaps most beautifully alluded to in a story which Mawlānā Rūmī
repeated at least thrice in his work: someone wanted to bring a gift to Yūsuf, the
manifestation of Absolute Beauty, but the only present that he could think of was a mirror so
that the beloved could admire his own beauty in it.80 Likewise, the lover's mirror-like heart is
filled so completely with his beloved's picture that finally mirror and image can no longer be
distinguished and his beloved is, in this mirror, closer to the lover than to himself: the mirror
unites both.81

The mirror, as becomes clear from its ancient connection with Amaterasu, is a feminine
object, the purest vessel of reception: thus, the story of Yāsuf and the mirror is at the same
time the story of his relation with Zulaykhā, who wanted to come as close as possible to the
Eternal Beauty. The loving soul, in its mirror-like quality, assumes the receptive, feminine
role just as the world, created as God's mirror, appears as feminine. It was perhaps the
subconscious understanding of the mystery of the mirror as a feminine receptacle that was
needed to manifest the masculine creative power which made it so important not only in
mystical thought but also in Islamic art, which abounds in mirror structures that reflect the
central motif of an arabesque or the sacred words of a pious invocation in never-ending
repetition.

Most man-made objects which play important roles in different religions appear in the Islamic
tradition only at random or in a negative connotation: the wheel has no significant role unless
one thinks of the poetical concept of the wheel of the sky; and the cross, the central reality
and symbol in Christian theology and meditation, is used only negatively, as Islam denies
the crucifixion of Christ (Sūra 4:157). Does not the cross with its four arms remind the wise
of the four elements from whose bondage one tries to escape to reach essential tawḥīd,
monotheism? And when Persian poets like to speak of the ‘cross-shaped’ hairstyle of the
young Christian cupbearer, it is more or less a pleasant literary game.

Even more repellent to Muslims were the idols fashioned in the ancient world, whether
primitive stone figures or the wonderful creations of classical antiquity. The Koran tells how
Abraham broke the idols of his father Azar (cf. Sūra 6:74) to become the first true
monotheist. ‘To break the idols’ is necessary for anyone who honestly attests that there is
‘no deity save God’, and for this reason Muslim modernist thought tends to call an ‘idol’
anything that diverts human interest from God, be it communism, capitalism or nationalism,
or many man-made inventions which are taken for support instead of the One God.

And yet, the terminology of ‘idols’ (Arabic ṣanam, Persian but) permeates the entire corpus
of Persian, Turkish and Indo-Muslim literatures, for the Beloved is very often addressed as
but, so that a confusing oscillation between strict monotheistic religion and the literary game
with the ‘idols’ can be observed throughout the literary history of the Persianate world. In this
respect, the mystics might argue that, as God created Adam ‘according to His form’, one
could find a way to the absolute object of love by seeing the Divine through human ‘idols’—
after all, ‘the metaphor is the bridge towards reality’. But the constant appearance of ‘idols’
has caused much misunderstanding, not only among externalist theologians but also among
non-Muslim readers of this kind of literature.82

Among the objects that could serve in antiquity as small idols was the coin, which was
usually imprinted with representations of deities. In Islamic times, these were largely
replaced by the words of the shahāda. The feeling that coins could have a ‘religious’ value
continued in at least some areas: in the Deccan, Indian friends may fasten the imām żāmin
kā rūpia, ‘the rupee of the protecting Imam’, around a departing person's arm to protect him
or her during the journey, and formerly a square rupee with the names of the rightly guided
caliphs was dipped in water which was then administered to a woman in labour.83

The aversion of the Sufis to coins (that is, to money in general, as paper money appears
only in post-Mongol times) may or may not have something to do with the feeling that coins
were indeed a kind of idol that could divert the seeker from the trust in the one true God and
provider of nourishment.

Islam is known as an absolutely iconoclastic religion. Although the prohibition of painting, let
alone stone carving, is based not upon a Koranic text but rather upon the Prophet's saying, it
was a safeguard against idol-worship, as the represented object is thought to be really
present in the picture.84 It was said that the painter or sculptor would be asked on
Doomsday to infuse life into his works —a task in which he would of course miserably fail.
Nevertheless, there are the wall paintings in Omayyad desert castles such as Qusayr Amra,
or the pictorial decoration of Seljukid palaces, especially in Anatolia, where even statues
were used; and representations of birds and quadrupeds, as well as of scenes from courtly
life or illustrations of various tales, are found on many metal and ceramic objects. In the
Middle Ages, book illumination was used to illustrate first scientific treatises and also, at a
rather early point, the Maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī, these delightful short stories in brilliant rhyme prose
interspersed with punning verses.

The art of wall-painting was practised mainly in bathrooms and bath-houses. It is said that
angels would not enter a room with pictures in it; and, as they were not thought to enter
bathrooms in any case, pictures could be safely placed there. The historian Bayhaqī tells
about the ‘pleasure house’ of the Ghaznawid king Mas‘ūd I in Herat in the early eleventh
century, and it seems more than a mere accident that four centuries later Jāmī (d. 1492), in
the same city of Herat, gives a detailed poetical account of the sensual paintings with which
the lovesick Zulaykhā decorated her palace in the hope of seducing Yūsuf. But, however
sensual they may have been, one knew that they had no soul, and the frequent idiom of the
‘painted lion’ or the ‘painted hero Rustam’ meant only utter lifelessness.

Nevertheless, the development of miniature painting continued to increase, and in modern

times the problem of whether or not photography is part of the prohibited representation has
resulted in many legal opinions being issued pro and con. The fascination with ‘group
photos’ and videos in the Islamic world seems quite unexpected in the iconoclastic
atmosphere of traditional Islam. Perhaps Jāmī's verse expresses the heart of the matter:

The sharī‘a prohibits painting because

it is impossible to paint your beauty!85

The open question here is, as so often, whether the beautiful beloved is human or Divine.

In contrast to the Muslim's aversion to pictures, especially icons in sacred rooms (an attitude
that influenced the heated Byzantine conflict between iconoclasts and iconodules, which
lasted nearly a century, 716 to 787), Christianity was often seen as a religion of pictures; the
iconostasis in the Eastern Orthodox churches with which the Muslims were most familiar
made them sometimes call the world of forms and colours a dayr, ‘monastery’.

One development in the field of iconoclasm is remarkable: in the Middle Ages, it seemed
perfectly possible to show representations of the Prophet and his companions in historical
works such as Rashīduddīn's World History or Turkish chronicles of early Islamic history. In
our day, this is considered absolute anathema, so much so that in some Muslim countries
even reproductions of such medieval pictures in a scholarly book can cause it to be
banned.86 In the later Middle Ages, the Prophet was shown with his face veiled, but
nowadays even this seems to go too far. Angels, on the other hand, appear frequently in
colourful miniatures or delicate line drawings,87 and one may encounter pictures of a well-
formed Angel Gabriel with the ram that was to be substituted for Ismā‘īl on the walls of
Turkish restaurants.

One witnesses also a proliferation of pictures on paper and woven fabrics of objects filled
with baraka, be it the Kaaba, the Prophet's mausoleum in Medina, his mount Burāq, ‘Alī's
mule Duldul, or an object that was venerated from early days, the Prophet's sandal, to which
a good number of medieval poets and poetesses had devoted Arabic poetry (see below, p.
183). In mosques, one finds calendars with pictures of the Holy Places, and postcards and
postage stamps from Arabia show the Kaaba—but never any human being; while recent
painters in Iran do not shy away from scenes from the lives of the prophets, which are
depicted in an almost pseudo-Nazarean style. A speciality of Afghanistan and Pakistan are
figurative paintings on trucks or on the walls of tea-houses, where large-eyed maidens
alternate with warplanes and representations of Burāq or portraits of a political leader.88

Besides baraka-filled objects of metal, wood or stone, one finds woven objects, whose role
in Islamic tradition is much larger than that of the previously mentioned items. Woven pieces
or rug-like fabrics have served to cover sacred objects. The tradition of veiling the Kaaba
with black velvet with golden embroidery, the kiswa, is probably the best-known example of
this custom. In the Middle Ages, sovereigns might compete to send the kiswa (which was
usually dispatched from Cairo) to Mecca, thus making a claim, as it were, to their rights over
the Holy Places. The kiswa itself, renewed every year, is cut in small pieces which some
fortunate pilgrims take home for the sake of blessing.

A similar custom is observed at saints’ tombs. Visitors, usually as the result of a vow, bring
covers which can also be obtained in the small stalls close to the shrine's entrance. The
cover is placed on the sarcophagus and stays there for a while, and its hem is touched or
kissed; often, the visitor places his or her head for the length of a Fātiḥa under the cover to
obtain blessings. Then the cover is taken off again and either distributed as a whole or cut
into small pieces for deserving visitors, serving sometimes as an additional head-cover or
veil for a woman. Pious mothers will collect fragments of such tomb-covers for their
daughters’ trousseaus to ensure the girl's happiness.

One of the finest modern Sindhi short stories describes dramatically the role that such a
cover plays in popular piety. Jamāl Abrrō's Muñhuñ kārō, ‘With Blackened Face’, tells of a
poor man who stole the sumptuous cover which had been dedicated by a wealthy man in
gratitude for a son's birth; the thief had hoped to procure some money by selling it to obtain
some medicine for his dying child, but was beaten to death by the furious visitors.89 A small
cover is the mindil, often represented in medieval art, and mentioned for example as a sign
of asking for pardon.90

But the most important object among man-made things is the garment, headgear included.
To change one's garment means to change one's personality, as everyone experiences
when putting on an official dress, a uniform or a graduation cap and gown, and the priest
wearing the liturgical garments acts not as a private person but as the official administrator
of the sacred action.

For the garment is the human being's alter ego; thus, to burn a piece of an enemy's clothing
serves as a substitute for killing him—a practice still known in East and West. The fact that
garments and persons are, so to speak, interchangeable lies at the base of the Koranic
saying that ‘women are men's garment’ and vice versa (Sūra 2:187), which indicates a most
honourable position: husband and wife are each other's alter ego. Thus, Ibn Sīrīn explains
that if one dreams of a woman's veil or cover, the meaning is ‘her husband’.91

As the garment carries the owner's baraka, it was used to convey a king's, a prince's or a
saint's power to another person: the English word ‘gala’ is derived from khil‘a, ‘the honorary
robe which the ruler has taken off’, khala‘a, ‘to bestow it on someone worthy’. In early Islam,
the most famous case of such an investiture (in the true sense of the word) is the Prophet's
taking off his striped Yemenite cloak, the burda, to grant it to the poet Kaab Ibn Zuhayr as a
sign of forgiveness.92 The word burda was then metaphorically applied to the great poem in
honour of the Prophet which the Egyptian Sufi al-Būṣīrī (d. 1296) sang after dreaming that
the Prophet had cast his burda over him to heal him—and he was then healed. Just as the
original burda was filled with baraka, thus al-Būṣīrī's ‘secondary burda’ was regarded as
extremely blessed and was copied time and again, written on walls to protect the house,
translated and enlarged not only in his Egyptian homeland but in all parts of Muslim world to
the borders of southern India.93 Ibn Sīrīn's interpretation fits in: to dream that one is given a
garment by the Prophet means great fortune.

The Prophet's actual cloak, so it is said, was later sold to the Omayyad caliph Mu‘āwiya and
then reached the Abbasid caliphs. Several cloaks attributed to him are found in the Islamic
world—one in Istanbul, another in Qandahar (Afghanistan)—and it was this latter khirqa-i
sharīf, ‘the noble cloak’, that inspired Iqbāl to some moving Persian poems.94

As the Prophet's mantle contains special blessing, it used to be said that the Prophet's
mantle was inherited by so-and-so, or fell on his shoulders, to describe a scholar of special
standing. The Sufi custom that the master bestows a patched frock upon his disciples is the
same symbol for the transmission of baraka, and when the disciple swears ‘by the cloak of
my shaykh’ it is as if he were swearing by a person who—after the Prophet—is the most
important in his life.

The protective value of the Prophet's cloak is also reflected in the term ahl al-kisā or ahl al-
‘abā, ‘the people of the cloak’, which means the closest relatives of the Prophet (Fāṭima, ‘Alī,
Ḥasan and Ḥusayn), who are wrapped in his cloak and form so to speak a sacred and
blessed unity.

Garments in general can be used for protective purposes: when one wraps a child in an
aged person's dress, one hopes that it may grow to a ripe old age; or when the anxious
mother dresses up her little boy as a girl, she wants to protect him from the Evil Eye or
malicious djinns who might be more interested in a baby boy than in a girl: the dress helps to
‘change its identity’. The Evil Eye or any other danger can also be averted—so Muslims
hope—by means of a talismanic shirt, which ideally should be of cotton spun and woven by
forty pure virgins and would be covered with Koranic inscriptions and invocations.

Islam developed a strict order of dress. The most important rule was to cover the essentials,
that is, for men the area between navel and knee, and for women the body, although in this
case the degree of covering varies from a normal decent dress to the full ḥijāb or the burqa‘
which covers the entire person. The question of whether a good Muslim is allowed to wear
shorts, for example while rowing, caused intensive discussions among Muslim students at
Harvard in the spring of 1992.

One must not forget that the strict rule for decently covering the body and the necessity of
wearing a fitting garment during prayer caused major changes in border lands in the wake of
Islamization. Muhammad Mujeeb (1972) has highlighted the importance of the Muslims’
introducing stitched garments into India, as the loosely-knotted lungi and the graceful saree
are not practical for performing the prayer rite (and the use of shalwār qamīṣ instead of the
saree was emphasised when Islamic concepts were being increasingly stressed in Pakistan
in the 1980s).95 Much earlier, C. H. Becker spoke of the influence of the Bohora-Ismaili
traders in East and Central Africa who brought with them different types of sewn dresses
and at the same time propagated the religion that ordered the wearing of such clothing.96

The dress prescribed for the pilgrimage, iḥrām, shows by its very name that it is connected
with the sphere of the sacred, ḥaram, that is, an area to which access is prohibited to those
who do not follow the proper rites. The two white unsewn pieces of cloth for men and the
long straight gown for women distinguish the pilgrims from the normal believer and subject
them to a number of taboos.

In classical times, each stratum of society could be easily recognized by the style of dress
worn (as was the case in medieval Europe as well), and it is speculated that one of the
reasons for the order to the Prophet's wives to cover themselves decently (Sūra 24:31) was
to distinguish them from the lower class and from servant-women. In medieval towns, the
scholars’ high hats with veils, ṭaylasān, were well known,97 and one of the reasons that
upset the adversaries of the martyr-mystic al-Ḥallāj was that he changed his attire frequently,
now posing as a soldier, now as a scholar or a Sufi. Arabic, Persian and Turkish sources
give many more or less detailed descriptions of fashions and fabrics, which are supported by
the allusions to different garments in poetry and are illustrated in Oriental miniatures as well
as in the travelogues of European merchants and visitors to the Middle East. It was therefore
an immense shock for Muslims when three political leaders in the 1920s tried to force the
population in their countries to exchange the time-honoured dress of men and the even
more traditional dress of women for European-style clothes: Ataturk was successful in
Turkey, Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran somewhat less, and Amānullāh of Afghanistan failed.

Of special interest are customs in the Sufi orders98 where the investiture with the muraqqa‘,
the patched frock, or the khirqa, the woollen cloak, were central: legend claims that the
dervish frock and the turban were given to the Prophet during his heavenly journey, and he
handed them over to ‘Alī. A patched frock made of rags of Sufi cloaks that were torn during
the whirling dance was regarded as particularly blessed owing to the ‘power’ of the ecstatic
state of its former owner. The Sufis developed a far-reaching symbolism not only of the cloak
but also of its different parts such as the hem, collar and sleeves, as is described extensively
in Hujwiri's Kashf al-Mahjūb. For the Mevlevis, the black coat that is thrown off when the
mystical dance begins and the dervishes emerge in their white garments is seen as the
material part of man, while the white garment points to the spiritual body. The Khāksār
dervishes know a kafanī, which is the ‘shroud’ garment, for the dervish has to die to this
world and what is in it; they also have the lung, a kind of apron worn under the garment and
connected with the mysteries of initiation.99

In futuwwa circles, which are offsprings of the Sufi tradition, the investiture with the futuwwa
trousers was the most important part of the initiation rite, and the term ‘fastening the belt’ (or
the string that keeps the trousers in place) could develop into the expression ‘binding the belt
of servitude’, or, as we would say, ‘girding one's loins’ for work, to perform services for the
master.

The Sufis’ types of headgear have different shapes and colours, as have the coats, and the
headgear plays an important role; it shows the person's standing. The headgear could be
the so-called tāj, ‘crown’, which is sometimes high, broadening towards the top, and
sometimes round and made of a certain number of wedges: thus the twelve wedges in the
Bektashi order remind the dervish of the twelve Shia imams. Another type is the high conical
felt hat, sikke, of the Mevlevi dervishes.

Symbolically, the headgear can even be a favour from God, as Nāṣir-i Khusraw says in his
Sa‘ādatnāma:

When God grants you the cap, kulāh, of loftiness,

Why do you bind your heart to someone else?

For to bless someone by placing headgear on his head means to honour him, and thus
dastārbandī, ‘turban-winding’, is a highly important occasion in the dervish orders; it means
the instalment of a worthy representative of the master. That the Pīr Pāgārō in Sind has
received his surname from the turban, pāgrī, belongs here.

Turbans in different shapes and colours were also worn by non-dervishes, and their use is
most prominent among scholars. To enlarge one's turban often came to mean ‘to show off,
to boast’. Therefore, the Indo-Persian poet Ṭālib-i Amulī (d. 1627) satirized those who
neglect useful work because ‘they are too busy with building up the domes of their turbans’.

One part of the dervish's outfit was the earring, at least in some brotherhoods, and the term
ḥalqa be-gūsh, ‘ring in the ear’, means servitude: one is the servant of the person whose
earring one wears. Such earrings could assume different shapes, and some of the itinerant
dervishes in the Middle Ages as well as certain groups among the Bektashi used to wear
heavy iron earrings in one or both ears.

Given the importance of garments and clothing in tradition and daily life, it would be
surprising if the garment had not become a favourite metaphor. Models are given in the
Koran: a ḥadith speaks of the libās al-birr, ‘the garment of kindness’, and Sūra 7:26 of the
libās at-taqwā, ‘the dress of piety’. It is told in the Tales of the Prophets that, after the Fall,
Adam's and Eve's clothes flew away and God addressed Adam: ‘Let thy battle cry be My
name and thy clothing what thou weavest with thy own hand’ (for Adam's profession was
agriculture as well as spinning and weaving), yet one felt that the garment sent down to
cover their shameful parts should not be interpreted in the literal sense but also as the order
and rules of the Divine Law: ‘This garment’, says Kāshānī, ‘is the sharī‘a which rectifies the
ugly traits in the rational soul’. Ibn ‘Arabī's interpretation of a dream points to the same
meaning: faith is seen as a cloak, and, among the people that appeared in that specific
dream, only ‘Omar, the second caliph, has a sufficiently long cloak, that is, full faith in
God.100 Thus, when Niẓāmuddīn Awliyā of Delhi promises a disciple that he would ‘cast a
cloak over him to veil his sins’, external and internal meaning are well interwoven. But a
‘normal’ dress cannot cover one's shameful acts, as Nāṣir-i Khusraw warns.

Someone who embraces Islam ‘puts on the robe of honour of Islam’, and during his
heavenly journey the Prophet was invested with two cloaks, namely spiritual poverty, faqr,
and trust in God. The ‘robes of poverty and patience’ are also mentioned by Shiblī, the
Baghdadian Sufi (d. 945) who claimed to wear them on the Feast Day instead of the new
garments which people usually don on festive days—in fact, to celebrate ‘īd, the Feast of
Fast-breaking, without wearing new garments is considered a sign of utter destitution.
Given the metaphorical uses of ‘garment’, it is not difficult to speak of the ‘robe of
martyrdom’, and when the Christian, according to St Paul, is ‘clad in Christ’, then the highest
stage that a Muslim mystic may dream of is to be clad in the libās al-ḥaqqāniyya, the robe
connected with the Divine Name al-ḥaqq, the Absolute Truth.

The Koran mentioned ‘garments of fire’ for the inhabitants of Hell (Sūra 22:19), and Satan's
garment, as Kisā'ī claims, is God's wrath. The pious, on the other hand, can hope that the
Lord will clothe them on the day of Resurrection with forgiveness and good actions to
constitute a garment in Paradise, while the sinner is naked, deprived of the ‘robe of piety’.

This image leads to another aspect of the weaving, spinning and clothing area: it was
thought that one spins and weaves one's own eternal garment by one's actions and
thoughts. Rūmī too admonishes his listeners to ‘eat the fruit which one has planted oneself
and dress in the garment which one has oneself spun’ (M V 3,181). These images are
elaborated particularly in the cotton-growing areas of the Deccan and of Pakistan.101 The
traditional folk songs which used to accompany spinning everywhere in the world were
transformed into songs where spinning becomes a symbol for the uninterrupted dhikr, the
recollection of God, and the soul that has performed this religious act dutifully will find a
precious trousseau on her wedding day, that is, on Doomsday, while the lazy girl who has
neglected the ‘spinning’ of the recollection will then be naked and disgraced. This imagery
may also explain the belief of the Kurdish Ahl-i Haqq, who saw metempsychosis as a
wandering from one (bodily) garment to another one, always wearing—so one may think—
what has been woven in the previous life.102

God Himself appears as the master weaver and tailor, as He is the supreme master of
everything. He ‘makes the night to a cloak’, says Sūra 78:10, and it is He who weaves the
whole history of the universe on the loom of days and nights. Furthermore, He can be
approached only through the garments which He has put over his unfathomable Essence—
the 70,000 veils of light and darkness hide Him as the garment hides the body and as the
body hides the soul. ‘Kibriyā, “Glory” is His cloak’, as a ḥādith qudsī says (AM no. 404), and
his shirt—according to the same source—is mercy with which He will clothe those who hope
for it.

Without the ‘garments’, that is, without His manifestations of mercy and majesty, God would
remain forever the deus absaconditus, and when Meister Eckhart in Germany speaks in
recurrent images of ‘God in his kleithûs’, His ‘house of garments, His wardrobe’, by which he
means the tangible and palpable signs of His mercy, his elder contemporary in Anatolia,
Mawlānā Rūmī, sings in one of his most moving poems:

O seize the hem of His favour

because from you He will flee…

(D no. 900)

To seize some powerful person's hem means to partake of his baraka, and the Muslim poet,
a mouthpiece for so many other bards, knows that the mystery of God can be touched only
through the signs, through the twofold woof and warp of the created universe, through
phenomena which both hide and reveal Him like garments.
For the Muslim, the concept of the garment or shirt may carry still another connotation. In
Sūra Yūsuf, the Koran speaks of the scent of Yūsuf's shirt, which healed his blind father
Jacob (Sūra 12:94). The whole range of fragrance in Islamic culture would deserve a special
study, beginning with the Prophet's love of fragrance, which belonged to the few things that
God had endeared to him (AM no. 182), and including the idea of the fragrant breeze that
comes from Yemen, carrying the spiritual message of love and piety. Scent reminds
mankind of something long forgotten, something that cannot be seen, something precious,
intangible—words are the scent of paradisiacal apple trees (M VI 84); the scent of the musk-
deer leads the seeker to the deserts of China, that is, to the deserts of eternity.

NOTES

• 1.

An interesting approach is H. A. R. Gibb (1962), ‘The structure of religious thought in Islam’,

especially Part I, ‘The animistic substrate’. See also William F. Albright (1955), ‘Islam and
the religions of the ancient Orient’ M. Ghallab (1929), Les survivances de l'Egypte antique
dans le folklore égyptien moderne.

• 2.

Hikmet Tanyu (1979), Türklerde taşla ilgili inanülar.

• 3.

There are numerous examples in Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich (1960), Volksglaube im Islam.

• 4.

Yaḥyā Bakharzī (1966), Awrād al-aḥbāb, vol. 2, p. 249 cites this ḥdith. On Bakharzī, see
also F. Meier (1957), ‘Ein Knigge für Sufis’.

• 5.

According to popular belief, the black stone will testify on Doomsday for all those who have
kissed it. See H. Lazarus-Yafeh, ‘The ḥadjdj’, in her (1981) Some Religious Aspects of
Islam.

• 6.

Abdul Qādir Badaoni (1864–9), Muntakhab at-tawārīkh, vol. 2, p. 310; English translation
(1972) vol. 2, p. 32.

• 7.

See Muhammad Umar Memon (1976), Ibn Taimiyya and Popular Religion.

• 8.
H. S. Nyberg (1919), Kleinere Schriften des Ibn al-‘Arabī, p. 216f.; see also J. M. S. Baljon
(1986), Religion and Thought of Shāh Walī Allāh, p. 34 and index under ḥajar baht.

• 9.

R. Gramlich (1981), Die schiitischen Derwischorden Persiens, vol. 3, p. 5.

• 10.

E. Doutté (1908), Magie et religion, p. 84 about the ‘aqīq; Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich (1962),
Volksglaube im Islam, vol. 2, p. 58f.; A. Schimmel (1992b), A Two-colored Brocade, ch. 11.

• 11.

For the topic, see H. Corbin (1971), L'homme de lumière.

• 12.

Suhrawandī (1978), ‘Awārif (trans. R. Gramlich), p. 32, tells how ‘Azrā'il tore out the dust for
Adam's creation.

• 13.

A. Bombaci (1971), ‘The place and date of birth of Fuzuli’, p. 96.

• 14.

J. Parsram (1924), Sind and Us Sufis, p. 65.

• 15.

See Martin Lings (1968), ‘The Qur'anic symbolism of water’.

• 16.

For the origin of this story, see H. Zimmer (1957), Maya, p. 50. It appears in Amīr Khusraw's
Ā'ina-i Iskandarī, quoted in Rückert (1874, ed. Pertsch), Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der
Parser, p. 70; further in Jāmī (1957), Nafaḥāt al-uns, pp. 563–4 about some little-known
saints. According to Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich (1960), Volksglaube in Islam, vol. 1, p. 76f., the
story is told about the fifteenth-century Egyptian Sufi ad-Dashṭūṭī, probably because his
anniversary is celebrated on the eve of the day of the Prophet's heavenly journey, i.e. 26–27
Rajab. It occurs also in a Sindhi folktale, ‘Der Zauberer Aflatun’, in A. Schimmel (1980b),
Märchen aus Pakistan, no. 21.

• 17.

Nāṣir-i Khusraw (1929), Dīvān, translated by A. Schimmel in Nāṣir-i Khusraw (1993), Make a
Shield from Wisdom, p. 59.

• 18.

Suhrawardī (1978), ‘Awārif (transl. R. Gramlich), p. 190.

• 19.
A. Schimmel (1966); ‘Der Regen als Symbol in der Religionsgeschichte’. For specific ‘rain
poems’ in honour of Muhammad (Shāh ‘Abdul Laṭīf, Muḥsin Kākōrawī, et al.), see Schimmel
(1988), And Muhammad is His Messenger, p. 81ff.

• 20.

Paul Nwyia (1970), Exégèse coranique, p. 330.

• 21.

Thus Khājū-i Kirmānī, in Dawlatshāh (no date), Tadhkirat ash-shu‘arā, p. 250.

• 22.

Khāqānī (1959), Dīvān, pp. 358–60 (the Madā'in qaṣīda).

• 23.

Iqbāl (1923), Payām-i mashriq, pp. 151–2; idem (1932), Jāvīdnāma, ‘Sphere of Mercury’, p.
66.

• 24.

Qāḍī Qādan jō kalām (1978), no. 37.

• 25.

Thus Shāh ‘Abdul Laṭīf (1958), Risālō, ‘Sur Ripa II’, verses 13–15; see also A. Schimmel
(1976a), Pain and Grace, p. 171.

• 26.

The topos of the ‘iron in fire’ appears among the Sufis not only in Rūmī's Mathnawī (II
1,347ff.) but also among the Nūrbakhshīs and in Dārā Shikōh's discussions with Bābā Lāl
Dās: see Massignon and Huart (1926), ‘Les entretiens de Lahore’, p. 325. For its use in the
Christian tradition (Origen, Symeon the New Theologian, Richard of St Victor, Jacob
Boehme), see E. Underhill (1911), Mysticism, p. 549ff.; also A. Schimmel (1978c), The
Triumphal Sun, p. 464 note 181.

• 27.

For the theme, see A. Schimmel (1978a), A Dance of Sparks.

• 28.

T. Izutsu (1971b), ‘The paradox of light and darkness in the Garden of Mystery of
Shabastari’ see also M. Mokri (1982), La lumière et le feu dans l'Iran ancien… et lew
démythification en Islam.

• 29.

The mythological elements in the concept of the Light of Muhammad go back, to a large
extent, to Sahl at-Tustarī; see G. Böwering (1979), The Mystical Vision of Existence in
Classical Islam The Qur'anic Hermeneutics of the Sufi Sahl at-Tustarī (d. 283/896). For its
reception in Bengal, for example, see Asim Roy (1983), The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in
Bengal; he, however, ascribes this and other phenomena to Hindu influences. A beautiful
description of the Prophet's light is the proem in ‘Aṭṭār (1962), Manṭiq uṭ-ṭayr.

• 30.

For Suhrawardī shaykh al-ishrāq, see Suhrawardī (1945), Opera metaphysica et mystica,
ed. by H. Corbin; idem (1970), Oeuvres en Person.

• 31.

Iqbāl (1930), The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, p. 64; for a related idea in
the mystical theories of Mīr Dard, see A. Schimmel (1963a), Gabriel's Wing, p. 100.

• 32.

Translated in Wheeler M. Thackston (1982), The Mystical and Visionary Treatises of

Suhrawardī.

• 33.

Sanā'ī (1962), Divān, p. 34ff. For the use of the sun-metaphor in Rūmī's work, see A.
Schimmel (1978c), The Triumphal Sun, ch. II, 1, pp. 61–75.

• 34.

Y. Friedmann (1975), ‘Qiṣṣa Shakarwarti Farmāḍ’.

• 35.

Iqbāl (1915), Asrār-i khudī, line 450.

• 36.

The best survey is Fritz Meier's introduction to his (1956) edition of Najmuddīn Kubrā's
Fawā’iḥ al-jamāl, in which the role of the colours in ecstatic experiences is analyzed in detail.
Based on the statements of Kubrā and his disciples, notably Simnānī, H. Corbin (1971)
discusses the theme in L'homme de lumière. See also Corbin (1972), ‘Réalisme et
symbolisme des couleurs en cosmologie Shiite’, English translation (1986) in Temple and
Contemplation. For philological approaches, see W. Fischer (1965), Farb-and
Formbezeichnungen in da Sprache der arabischen Dichtung, H. Gätje (1967), ‘Zur
Farbenlehre in der muslimischen Philosophic’ Toufic Fahd (1974), ‘Génèse et causes des
couleurs d'après l'Agriculture Nabatéenne’.

• 37.

For the combination of yellow, autumn and Jewish garments, see Mas‘ūd ibn Sa‘d-i Salmān
(1960), Dīvān, p. 471, and Khāqānī (1959), Dīvān, pp. 133, 428.

• 38.
Bakharzī (1966), Awrād al-aḥbāb, vol. 2, discusses this problem, especially on p. 34ff.; he
thinks that the dervish's cloak should reflect the person's state of mind. See also Fazlur
Rahman (1966), Islam, p. 160.

• 39.

For an extensive treatment of vegetable and animal symbols, see A. Schimmel (1992b), A
Two-colored Brocade, chs 11–14, and idem (1978c), The Triumphal Sun, chs II, 3 and 4, pp.
75–123. For practical aspects, see G.-H. Bousquet (1949), ‘Des animaux et de leur
traitement selon le Judaïsme, le Christianisme et l'Islam’.

• 40.

About trees for ‘Abdul Qādir, see R. Burton (1851), Sindh, p. 177; W. Blackman (1925),
‘Sacred trees in modern Egypt’ and numerous references in Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich (1960),
Volksglaube im Islam, vol. 1. For the artistic aspect, see Gönül Öney (1968), ‘Das
Lebensbaum-Motiv in der seldschukischen Kunst in Anatolien’.

• 41.

Al-Ghazzālī (1872), Ihyā’ ‘ulūm ad-dīn, Book IV, p. 282, sees Love as the ‘good tree’
mentioned in Sūra 14:24. For further mystical interpretations, see A. Jeffery (1979), Ibn al-
‘Arabi's shajarat al-kawn. A fine example of the ‘Muhammadan Tree’, whose leaves are
covered with the ninety-nine noble names of the Prophet, is a Turkish miniature in the Berlin
Staatsbibliothek, used as the cover for A. Schimmel (1988), And Muhammad is His
Messenger.

• 42.

F. Taeschner (1979), Zünfte und Bruderschaften in Islam, p. 364.

• 43.

Nāsir-i Khusraw (1929), Dīvān, in idem (1993) tr. A. Schimmel, Make a Shield from Wisdom,
p. 71ff.

• 44.

S. Murata (1992b), The Tao of Islam, p. 103: Ṣadruddin Qūnāvī speaks of the tree rooted in
the Divine Existence, whose branches are the Divine Names.

• 45.

Qāḍī Qādan jō kalām (1978), no. 56; Sultan Bahoo (1967), Abyāt, no. 1; cf. also Mas‘ūd
Bakk's ghazal in Ikrām (1953), Armaghān-i Pāk, p. 150.

• 46.

Taeschner (1979), Zünfte, p. 528.

• 47.

Schimmel (1976c), ‘The Celestial Garden in Islam’.

 • 48.

Sam‘ānī, Rawḥ al-arwāḥ, quoted in Murata (1992b), The Too of Islam, p. 71.

• 49.

Nāṣir-i Khusraw (1929), Divān, pp. 472–3, dramatically describes how the garden of the
world (or of religion) is slowly destroyed by a pig that first posed as a sheep.

• 50.

Rūzbihān Baqlī (1966), Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyā, § 265.

• 51.

Irène Mélikoff (1967), ‘La fleur de la souffrance. Recherches sur le sens symbolique de laâla
dans la poésie mystique turco-iranienne’. Professor Karl Jettmar mentions (Akademie-
Journal 1, 1992, p. 28) that, during the Bronze Age, people in northern Afghanistan used to
celebrate a tulip festival; in the same area, a tulip festival connected with ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib
was celebrated until recently.

• 52.

Dawlatshāh (no date), Tadhkirat ash-shu‘arā, p. 224.

• 53.

U. Topper (1991), Sufis und Heilige im Maghreb, p. 167.

• 54.

R. Brunei (1955), Le monachisme errant dans l'Islam: Sidi Heddi et les Heddawa.

• 55.

Pigs in connection with the Resurrection appear in Rūmī, Mathnawī II, 1,413; in connection
with Jerusalem in Dīvān-i kabīr, lines 3,882, 7,227, 12,883. Khāqānī (1959), Dīvān, qaṣīda
no. 1, also uses this motif, and combines such pigs with the elephants which were used to
besiege Mecca in 570.

• 56.

See Schimmel (1988), And Muhammad is His Messenger, pp. 102–3; the Sindhi ballad in N.
A. Baloch (ed.) (1960), Munāqiba, pp. 196–8; Yuns Emre Divanĭ (1943), p. 542, no. CLXXV.
About ‘Ali's connection with the bees, see R. Paret (1930), Die legendäre Maghazi-Literatur,
p. 196ff.

• 57.

Al-Ḥallāj (1913), Kitāb aṭ-ṭawāsīn, ed. L. Massignon: ‘Ṭāsīn al-fahm’. For the transformation
of Ḥallāj's story into Goethe's poem ‘Selige Sehnsucht’ in the West-Östlicher Divan see H. H.
Schaeder (1942), ‘Die persische Vorlage für Goethes “Selige Sehnsucht”’.

• 58.
Related by Badaoni (1864–9), Muntakhab at-tawārīkh, vol. 2, p. 221 (English translation
(1972), vol. 2, p. 215).

• 59.

A. Schimmel (1985), Die orientalische Katze.

• 60.

E. M. Lane (1836), Manners and Customs, p. 434.

• 61.

J. Nurbakhsh (1989), Dogs. From a Sufi Point of View.

• 62.

Rūmī's language becomes extremely coarse when he juxtaposes Jesus, the spiritual part of
man, and the donkey, the material part. See Schimmel (1978c), The Triumphal Sun, index
s.v. ‘donkey’.

• 63.

Schimmel (1972), ‘Nur ein störrisches Pferd…’. For Khāqānī, ‘religion’ is ‘a steed of Arab
birth’, which should not be disgraced by putting a saddle of Greek philosophy on its back.
Interestingly, Iqbāl used this verse in his last political letter a few weeks before he died
(1948, Speeches and Statements, p. 169).

• 64.

See R. A. Bravmann (1983), African Islam, ch. V on the use of the Burāq motif among
African Muslims.

• 65.

For the serpent as a nafs-symbol, see Schimmel (1975a), Mystical Dimensions of Islam, p.
113.

• 66.

I. Goldziher (1903), ‘Der Seelenvogel im islamischen Volksglauben’.

• 67.

Hence the title of Ibn Ḥazm's famous book on courtly love, Ṭawq at-ḥamāma (1914 etc.),
‘The Dove's Necklace’, which has been translated into numerous Western languages.

• 68.

A ḥadīth says: ‘Don't curse the rooster, for he wakes you up for prayer’ (AM no. 261). See
also F. Meier (1977), ‘Niẓāmī und die Mythologie des Hahnes’.

• 69.
A typical example is Ziā'uddīn Nakhshabī's Ṭuṭīnāma: see Muhammad S. Simsar (1978),
The Cleveland Museum of Art's Ḥūṭīnāme: Tales of a Parrot.

• 70.

‘Aṭṭār's Manṭiq ut-ṭayr (1962) is rightly the best-known example of the ‘soul birds’ see also
Carl W. Ernst (1992b), ‘The symbolism of birds and flight in the writings of Rūzbihān Baqlī’.

• 71.

Nāṣsir-i Khusraw expresses the view that the raven wears black, the colour of the Abbasids,
who treacherously deprived Fāṭima's children of the caliphate; Dīvān in (1993) tr. Schimmel,
Make a Shield from Wisdom, pp. 18, 66, 67.

• 72.

See S. Murata (1992b), The Tao of Islam, p. 258 about Ghazzālī's views, p. 278 in a general
context. The Persian poet Anvarī (d. after 1190) expressed the canine qualities of the lower
soul in a fine ghazal: see A. Schimmel and Stuart Cary Welch (1983), A Pocket Book for
Akbar: Anvarī's Dīvān, p. 61.

• 73.

The most famous representation of the ‘peaceful kingdom’ is the Mughal miniature of
Emperor Jahāngīr and Shah ‘Abbās of Iran standing on a lion and a lamb respectively (a
picture which also points to the fact that Jahāngīr was a descendant of Bābur, ‘Tiger’, while
Shāh ‘Abbās belonged to the Turcomans of the White Sheep, Aqqoyunlu. See, for example,
S. C. Welch (1979a), Imperial Mughal Painting, p. 121. An example of an early poetical
expression of this wonderful time is ‘Abdul Wāsi‘-i Jabalī's poem, in Dawlatshāh (no date),
Tadhkirat ash-shu‘arā, p. 84.

• 74.

For the preacher's rod, see C. H. Becker (1924), Islamstudien, vol. 1, p. 451f.

• 75.

Sultan Khushqadam's wife was buried under the red flag of Badawī dervishes in 1467; see
Ibn Taghrībirdī (1928), An-nujūm az-zāhira fi ta'rīkh Miṣr wa'l-Qāhira, vol. 7, p. 809.

• 76.

Ghālib called the second edition of his book Qāti‘-i Burhān, ‘Dirafsh-i kāviyānī’ (Delhi 1865);
in this work, he harshly criticized the Persian lexicographical work Burhān-i qāṭi‘. S. Ghālib
(1969a), Kulliyāt-fārsī; (17 vols).

• 77.

G. Schoeler (1974), Arabische Naturdichtung… von den Anfängen bis aṣ-Ṣanaubarī, gives a
number of examples of this comparison.

• 78.
For a general overview, see A. E. Crawley (1908), ‘Mirror’, in ERE, vol. 8; T. Burckhardt
(1974), ‘The symbolism of the Mirror’.

• 79.

Rashīd Burhānpūrī (1957), Burhānpūr kē Sindhī Auliyā, transl. in A. Schimmel (1986), Lube
zu dem Einen, pp. 95–6.

• 80.

Thus in Mathnawī I, 3,200ff.; Dīvān, lines 15,880 and 17,950, as well as in Fihi mā fihi, ch.
59.

• 81.

The classic work on mirror symbolism is Aḥmad Ghazzālī (1942), Sawāniḥ, available in
several translations. J. C. Bürgel (1988), The Feather of Simurgh, deals with ‘The Magic
Mirror’ in ch. 6. The idea of the heart as a pure mirror for the Divine Beloved is alluded to in
Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī's remark that he was the blacksmith of himself until he had made his self
into a pure mirror (‘Aṭṭār (1905), Tadhkirat al-awliyā, vol. 1, p. 139). One may also see under
the aspect of the ‘mirror’ the famous story of the contest between the Greek and the Chinese
painters which, via Niẓamī's Iskandarnāma, received its perfect form in Rūmī's Mathnawī, I,
3,467ff.: the Greek artists polished the marble wall so perfectly that it reflected the colourful
paintings produced by the Chinese in ever greater beauty.

• 82.

Bakharzī (1966), Awrād al-aḥbāb, vol. 2, p. 246 explains the use of but as ‘The gnostics call
‘but’ everything your heart wants to see and possess, positive and negative alike’. The whole
question of ‘idols’ and ‘idol worship’ forms an important part of H. Ritter (1955), Das Meet der
Seele.

• 83.

Jafar Sharif (1921), Islam in India, p. 21.

• 84.

For the whole subject, see Sir Thomas Arnold (1928), Painting in Islam; also M. Ipşirogülu
(1971), Das Bild im Islam. Ein Verbot und seine Folgen.

• 85.

Jāmī (1962), Dīvān-i kāmil, p. 265, no. 345.

• 86.

This happened, for example, in Pakistan, to Emel Esin's (1963) work Mecca the Blessed,
Medina the Radiant, an account of the pilgrimage written by a deeply religious Turkish
Muslim lady who, to the dismay of the ‘fundamentalists’, published some fourteenth-and
fifteenth-century Turkish miniatures on which the Prophet is represented with an unveiled
face.
 • 87.

Every work on Islamic manuscripts contains angel pictures, beginning with the pictures of
the archangels in medieval and post-medieval manuscripts of Qazwīnī's ‘Ajā'ib al-makhlūqāt.
For an amazing proliferation of angel representations, see Ebba Koch (1983), ‘Jahangir and
the angels’.

• 88.

Among the Sufis, especially in Turkey, representation, often by means of caligrams, is not
unknown: see M. Aksel (1967), Türkerde Dini Resimler, and Fred de Jong (1989), The
Iconography of Bektashiism. In recent decades, truck-painting has developed into a whole
new branch of art; see Jürgen Grothues (1990), Automobile Kunst in Pakistan.

• 89.

Translated into German by A. Schimmel, ‘Geschwärzten Gesichts’, in Rolf Italiaander (ed.)

(1972), Aus da Palmweimschenke.

• 90.

For the mindīl or mandīl, see F. Rosenthal (1971), Four Essays on Art and Literature in
Islam, ch. IV.

• 91.

H. Klopfer (1989), Das Traumbuch des Ibn Sīrīn, p. 84. Sanā'ī (1950), Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqat,
pp. 122–3, gives different interpretations of garments and colours that one sees in one's
dreams.

• 92.

R. Paret (1928), ‘Die Legende von der Verieihung des Prophetenmantels (burda) an Ka'b ibn
Zuhair’.

• 93.

The classic edition is Būṣīrī (1860), Die Burda, ed. and transl. by C. A. Ralfs. About the
poem and its use, see A. Schimmel (1988), And Muhammad is His Messenger, pp. 180–7.

• 94.

Iqbāl (1933), Mussāfir, p. 29ff.

• 95.

M. Mujeeb (1972), Islamic Influences on Indian Society, p. 11.

• 96.

C. H. Becker (1932), Islamstudien, vol. 1, p. 379.

• 97.
J. van Ess (1979), Der Ṭaylasān des Ibn Ḥarb, deals with poems written about this
headgear.

• 98.

A number of articles try to explain the meaning of the Sufi frock with rather fanciful
interpretations, thus S. Mahdihasan (1960), ‘The garb of the Sufi and its significance’, and
Muhammad Reza Shafii Kadkani (1989), ‘Anmerkungen zum Flickenrock der Sufis’. Every
handbook on Sufism in Arabic and Persian deals wit this topic more or less extensively: see,
for example, the chapter in Hujwīrī (1911) Kashf al-mahjūb, pp. 45–57.

• 99.

R. Gramlich (1981), Die schiittschen Derwischorden, vol. 3, pp. 4, 5, 84, 86.

• 100.

S. Murata (1992), The Tao of Islam, p. 149: ‘religion as a shirt’.

• 101.

For the topic of spinning songs, see R. Eaton (1978), Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700, pp. 155–
64. A fine example of a mystical spinning song in Sindhi is Shāh ‘Abdul Laṭīf (1958), Risālō,
‘Sur Kapā'itī’.

• 102.

R. Gramlich (1976), Die scfiitischen Derwischorden, vol. 2, p. 53, speaks of the libās-i
adamiyat, ‘the garment of humanity’, as one of the stages through which the spirit has to
pass; such ideas may have led the Kurdish Ahl-i Ḥaqq to the belief that the soul dons 1,001
corporeal habits and then no longer appears in human guise. See H. R. Norris (1992), ‘The
Ḥurūfī legacy of Faḍlullah of Astarabad’, p. 94.
II | Sacred Space and Time

See, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of day and night there
are signs for those with insight.

Sūra 3:190

SACRED SPACE

‘The Muslim lives in a space defined by the sound of the Koran.’ Thus writes S. H. Nasr to
point to the situation of the Muslim believer.1 He is certainly right, and yet Islamic tradition
has known and still knows, as do all religions, a good number of places which are or seem to
be endowed with special blessing power and which then serve in literature as symbols of the
human experience of ‘coming home’.

Thinking of places with such sacred power, one can begin with the cave. Humankind has
been fascinated by caves for millennia, as prehistory and history prove, and Islam continued
in this respect, though from a somewhat different vantage point. Is not the cave singled out
by the very name of Sūra 18, al-Kahf, ‘The Cave’, a Sūra in which—along with other
stories—the Seven Sleepers, the aṣḥāb al-kahf, are mentioned at some length? The seven
pious youths ‘and the eighth with them was their dog’ (Sūra 18:22) have turned in popular
Islam into protective spirits whose names, and especially that of their dog Qiṭmīr, written on
amulets, carry baraka with them.2

In the historical context, it is well known that the Prophet Muhammad received his initial
revelation in a cave on Mt Hira where he used to retire for meditation. It was in the solitude
of this place that he was blessed with the first auditions which forced him to go into the world
and preach what he had learned: the constant change between the khalwa, the lonely place
of meditation in the dark cave, undisturbed in his concentration upon God, and the jilwa, the
need and duty to promulgate the Divine word that he had heard, was to remain the model for
the Muslims—a spiritual movement of whose necessity Iqbāl reminds the believers of our
time.

Yet, there is a second cave in the Prophet's biography: the cave where he found shelter
during his hegira from Mecca to Medina. And again, after re-emerging from the mysteriously
protected place where he, as Sufi tradition has it, introduced his friend Abū Bakr into the
mysteries of the silent dhikr, his life as a political leader in Medina began: once more, he
undertook the way out of the khalwa of meditation into the jilwa of preaching and acting.

The Prophet's example of retiring into the cave was imitated by a number of mystics who
lived for long periods in caves. The extremely narrow cave in which Sharafuddīn Manērī of
Bihar (d. 1381) spent several decades of his life is only one of the numerous examples of
this pious custom; Muhammad Ghawth Gwaliorī (d. 1562) also belongs to the Sufis who,
year after year, performed their meditation in a cave, to emerge in the end filled with
overwhelming spiritual energy. The experience of the arba‘īn, chilla, khalwat, forty days’
meditation in a narrow, dark room or a subterranean place, belongs here as well. The
intimacy of the experience of God's proximity in such a khalwa could lead the pious to
address Him in prayer as ‘Oh Cave of them that seek refuge!’3

The cave is difficult to reach for men and animals, and is hence safe. But when one lives on
the plains, the sacred space has to be separated from the profane environment by an
enclosure (one remembers here that the Latin term sanctus is derived from sancīre, ‘to limit,
enclose’, and hence ‘make sacred’), and so the cult takes place in a spot removed from the
ordinary space, which keeps away not only animals but also, as was thought, demons.
Lonely prayer places in Sind and Balochistan are surrounded by simple thorn hedges (as are
some shrines in the desert),4 and it is probably not too far-fetched to think that the border of
the prayer rug also serves as a kind of enclosure which marks the praying person's
inviolable ‘sanctuary’—even though the whole world can serve as a prayer place.

More important is the house, the man-made dwelling-place which serves both for protection
and as a sanctuary: in Sind and Balochistan, the house of the wadērō, the big landlord,
could serve as a shelter for women accused of immorality or other transgressions.5
However, the concept of ‘house’ has a much wider range: the ‘House of Islam’, dār al-islām,
is the area which, as Walter Braune says aptly, is built on five pillars and in which the
believers live in safety, while the dār al-ḥarb, ‘the abode of war’, is the world outside the ideal
home of the believers.6 To enlarge this ‘house’ is incumbent upon the community, so that
finally the whole world may become a ‘House of Islam’.

And not only that. In religious language, the house is one of the most frequently-used
metaphors for the human heart—a house that has to be cleansed by constantly using the
‘broom of lā’, that is, the beginning of the profession of faith, lā ilāha illā Allāh, ‘There is no
deity but God’. Only when the house is clean and no dust of profane thought has remained
can the dulcis hospis animae, the ‘sweet guest of the soul’, enter and dwell in it. The
Baghdadian Sufi an-Nūrī (d. 907) used this metaphor,7 and Mawlānā Rūmī sang in one of
his most famous stories in the Mathnawī (M I 3,056–63):

A man knocked at the door of his beloved.

‘Who are you, trusted one?’ thus asked the friend.

He answered: ‘I!’ The friend said: ‘Go away—

Here is no place for people raw and crude!’

What, then, could cook the raw and rescue him

But separation's fire and exile's flame?

The poor man went to travel a whole year

And burnt in separation from his friend.

And he matured, was cooked and burnt, returned

And carefully approached the friend's abode.

He walked around it now in cautious fear,

Lest from his lips unfitting words appear.

The friend called out: ‘Who is there at my door?’

The answer: ‘You—you dear are at the door!’

He said: ‘Come in, now that you are all I—

There is no room in this house for two ‘I's!’

In order to enter the precincts of the house, one has to cross the threshold, the liminal place
par excellence that cuts off the sacred from the profane. It is therefore a rule that one must
not step on the threshold: as the bride in Muslim India is carried over it into her new home,
the devotee is warned not to step on the threshold of the master's house or the shrine. To
enhance the religio-magic power of the threshold, one may sacrifice a sheep over it or at
least sprinkle some blood on it.8

While Muslims carefully avoid touching the threshold with their feet, which are sullied by the
dust of the profane world, one often sees men and women at shrines devoutly kissing the
step that will lead them into the sacred presence of the saint. ‘One should rub one's face on
the threshold like a broom’, says a Turkish handbook of religious etiquette.9 The threshold's
sanctity is also attested by dream exegesis: threshold and door mean, in the dream, women,
i.e. the sacred, ḥarīm, part of the house.10

Since the door or gate allows the visitor to enter the private, ‘sacred’ sphere, gates of
mosques and shrines are often huge and impressively decorated. Alternatively, shrines may
have an extremely low door which forces the entering person to bow down humbly; again,
there are narrow doors through which the visitor squeezes himself in the hope of obtaining
blessings. A typical example is the bihtshtīdarwāza, the ‘paradisiacal door’ in Farīduddīn
Ganj-i shakar's shrine in Pakpattan, where, during the anniversary of his death, thousands of
pilgrims strive to enter into the saint's presence in order to secure entrance to Paradise.

The door opens into the sacred space, and the Muslim knows that ‘God is the Opener of the
doors’, mufattiḥ al-abwāb, as He is called in a favourite invocation, for it is He who can open
the doors of His mercy or generosity, not forgetting the gates of Paradise.11 In later Sufism,
the seven principal Divine Names are even called hadana, ‘doorkeepers’. Metaphorically, the
concept of the door or gate is important by its use in the well-known ḥadīth deeply loved
especially in Shia tradition, in which the Prophet states: ‘I am the city of wisdom and ‘Alī is its
gate’ (AM no. 90), that is, only through ‘Alī's mediation can one understand the Prophet's
true teaching. As the gate, bāb, can be the person through whom the believer may be led
into the Divine presence, it is logical that the spiritual guide could also be considered, or
consider himself, to be The Gate, the Bāb. This claim was voiced most prominently by Mirzā
Muḥammad ‘Alī of Tabriz, which led to the emergence of a new religious movement,
Babism, in early nineteenth-century Iran.

After entering the house, one finds the high seat, ṣadr, or the throne, sarīr, both of which
possess special baraka; and anyone who has seen an old Pakistani woman throning on her
bed and ruling the large household knows that this is more man simply an elevated place:
the seat carries authority with it. But those lowest in rank, or most modest, will sit in the
‘place of the sandals’, that is, where the shoes are left close to the entrance.
In the Arabic tradition, the hearth plays no major role, while among the Turks the fireplace,
ocak, as is typical of peoples from northern climates, was the veritable centre of the house,
and the term ocak is used in modern Turkey to denote the true centre of the community.

The Muslim house boasts carpets and rugs, pile-woven or flat-woven, and the rug can be as
important as the high seat, the place for the master of the house. The tide sajjāda nishīn or
pōst nishīn for the person who ‘sits on the mat’ of a Sufi master, i.e. his true successor,
conveys an impression of the rug's importance. The numerous flying carpets in Oriental folk
tales seem to translate the subconscious feeling that the carpet is something very special.

There is also a place with negative power in or close to the house: the privy, which is
regarded as a dwelling-place of unclean and dangerous spirits and is therefore avoided by
angels. The bath itself, however, sometimes decorated with paintings plays an important role
in connection with the strict rules of ritual purity.12

Larger and higher than the normal house is the citadel or fortress, ideally built in a circular
shape. If the heart can be imagined as a house for the Divine Beloved, it can also be seen
as a fortress with several ramparts—again one of Nūrī's images, which prefigures St
Teresa's Interior Castle.13 For the Sufis, the shahāda became the stronghold and citadel in
which they felt safe from the temptations of the world, as though the rampart and moats of
sacred words helped them to survive in the inner chamber, which could be compared to the
h, the last letter of the word Allāh.14 Is not God a fortress, ḥiṣn, and a stronghold, ḥirz?15
The word ḥirz is also used as a name of one type of protective prayers and litanies, while the
term taḥṣīn, literally ‘to make into a fortress’, can be used for the religio-magic
circumambulation of villages or groups of people to protect themselves against enemies.

The sacred space par excellence in Islam seems to be the mosque, and many visitors—
Rudolf Otto, S. H. Nasr, Martin Lings, Frithjof Schuon and others—have emphasized the
‘feeling of the Numinous’, the experience of otherworldliness when standing in one of the
great mosques in North Africa or Turkey.16 These buildings were, as they felt, perfect
expressions of the emptiness which is waiting to be filled with Divine blessing, that is the
experience of the human being, poor (faqīr) as he or she is, in the presence of the All-Rich,
al-ghaniy.

However, the mosque was first no more than a house, a building in which instruction and
legal business were conducted as well: it was and is not—unlike the church—a consecrated
building. Its name, masjid, is derived from sajada, ‘to prostrate’, meaning ‘place of
prostration’. A mosque for larger groups, where believers could gather on Friday for the
midday prayer with following sermon, is called jāmi‘, ‘the collecting one’. In the early Middle
Ages, up to around AD 900, only one jami‘ was found in each city; the minbar, the pulpit from
which the preacher gives his short sermon, was the distinctive mark of a city, as was the
minaret. In later times, when mosques proliferated, a certain distance was still kept between
the major mosques, or a new jāmi‘ was built only when the first one, too small for the
growing number of the faithful, could not possibly be enlarged.

To build a mosque is a highly meritorious act, and a tradition which is frequently quoted in
India (especially in Bengal) states: ‘Who builds a mosque for God, be it as small as the nest
of a qaṭā bird, for him God will build a house in Paradise’.17 The paradisiacal recompense
can also be granted to someone else: when the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror
(1449–81) erected a mosque in the recently conquered city of Istanbul in remembrance of
his father, the intention was the same as offering prayers for the well-being of the deceased
monarch's soul.18 Popular piety therefore claims that a mosque is like a boat of salvation or,
even more fancifully, that it will be transformed into a white camel to carry its founder on
Doomsday across the ṣirāṭ-bridge.19

The increasing feeling of the sanctity of the mosque is understood from the custom of using
its precincts for istikhāra, that is, performing two prayer cycles and then sleeping in the
mosque in the hope of being guided by a dream. And Turkish calligraphers would collect the
soot produced by the oil lamps in, for example, the Süleymaniye mosque in Istanbul to use it
as an ingredient of their ink which, they felt, would thus carry some of the mosque's baraka
with it.

The shapes of mosques vary according to the architectural styles of the different countries,
and from simple mud mosques in Africa to pagoda-like structures in China almost every form
is found. Mosques in Gujarat, with their narrow rows of highly decorated pillars, resemble
Hindu temples, and for the Western observer the Turkish mosque with its central dome and
the elegant needle-like minarets seems to be the paragon of the concept of ‘mosque’,
although large mosques with wide prayer halls or endless rows of naves belong to a much
earlier, classical period (Samarra, Cordoba).

But whatever the outward shape, every mosque has a miḥrāb, a niche pointing to the
direction of Mecca, which could be shaped, again, according to the material available and to
the artistic taste of the builder. Often, words from Sūra 3:37 are written around the miḥrāb:
‘Whenever Zakariya entered the miḥrāb…’, for the term is used for the place where the
young Mary dwelt and was mysteriously nourished by the Lord. What appear to be the most
unusual and impressive miḥrābs in the world of Islam are located in the Indian subcontinent:
the miḥrāb of the Great Mosque in Bijapur/Deccan, built in 1635 and measuring six to seven
metres across, is completely decorated in a highly sophisticated style with à-jour inscriptions,
half-relief, and colourful niches in gold and red. The Faisal Mosque in Islamabad, completed
some 350 years later, boasts as its miḥrāb the likeness of an opened copy of the Koran in
white marble, inscribed in ‘medieval’ Kufi calligraphy with verses from Sūra 55, Ar-Raḥmān,
‘The Merciful’.

While the miḥrāb is common to masjid and jāmi‘s, the jāmi‘ alone contains an elevated pulpit
for the Friday sermon, usually three steps high; larger odd numbers of steps can be found in
vast buildings. This minbar, again, can consist of the most diverse materials; the artistically
carved wooden minbars of medieval Egypt and Anatolia are worthy of mention. The
preacher, who stands on the minbar, briefly sits down between the two parts of his address
in memory of the Prophet's sitting on the first minbar, a simple platform.20

One may find a few huge candlestands, and the floor is usually covered with prayer rugs. A
stand for the Koran and sometimes boxes in thirty parts for the thirty juz’ of the Koran belong
to the necessary items in the mosque; a clock that shows the times of prayer is a more
recent addition. The walls are plain, for too much colour or decoration might distract the
praying person's eye and mind. They are covered with tiles (as in Iran and Turkey) or with
white marble; if there is any decoration, then it is only calligraphy, whether Koranic verses or
the name of God in enormous letters, or sometimes also the names of the four rightly guided
caliphs (as in the Aya Sofya in Istanbul).
The minaret, again connected only with the jāmi‘, and built in diverse shapes according to
local traditions, was sometimes conceived of as a tower of victory, the visible sign of Islam's
presence in a newly conquered area: the Qutub Minar in Delhi from the early thirteenth
century is a good example of this type of minaret. For those who loved esoteric meaning, it
was not difficult to connect it, owing to its shape, with the letter alif that is always taken to
symbolize the Aḥad, the One God. And was not the building of a mosque in a newly
acquired territory, as it were, a new ‘brick’ in the extension of the House of Islam?

In some mosques, a special corner is reserved for women; in others (often in Turkey),
women are expected to pray on the balcony-like gallery. In state capitals, one may find a
maqṣūra, a special enclosure for the rulers.

Another sacred place of major importance is the burial place of a saintly person. The
Prophet himself, according to one tradition, prohibited visits to tombs, while according to
another he suggested turning to ‘the people of the graves’ when facing difficulties.21 Visits to
tombs and cemeteries became a common practice and offered rare opportunities for an
outing to many women. The Prophet's warning against frequenting the tombs was reinforced
in the nineteenth century by the Wahhabis in Central Arabia, who did not even honour the
sanctity of the Prophet's own mausoleum.

Among the places with special baraka are, understandably, the tombs of the martyrs of faith
such as Kerbela, Najaf and Mashhad. Kerbela, where the Prophet's grandson Ḥusayn ibn
‘Alī fell in fighting against the Omayyad forces in 680, is in the Shia world coterminous with
‘utter tragedy’, and its name was explained as a combination of karb and barā;, ‘grief and
affliction’. The earth of Kerbela, with its strong baraka, is still ‘exported’ to other countries
(see above, p. 5). When Muḥarram is celebrated in Shia cities, especially in India, a place
called ‘Kerbela’ is chosen close to a tank or a river; there the tābūts, replicas of Ḥusayn's
sarcophagus, are submerged at the end of the ritual. To make people partake in the baraka
of the sacred places, one can even call children after them: Najaf or Nazaf Khan, and
Madīnakhan, appear in the Indian subcontinent,

A mausoleum often develops from a simple heap of stones, and even a great Sufi like
Gēsūdarāz (d. 1422) tells, tongue in cheek, the story of the travellers whose dog died on the
road and was buried. They marked the faithful creature's tomb, and when they returned to
the same place after some years, they found that a flourishing town had developed around
the ‘saint's’ burial place.22 Even more obscene anecdotes about the growth of a pilgrimage
centre are not uncommon in Muslim literature.

The tombs of saints are highly venerated.23 People will throng at the tomb's doors or
windows to make vows; they hang rags on nearby trees or on the window grill, or post
petitions on the wall hoping for the saint's intercession, and as the saint's baraka increases
after he has left this world, people want to be buried near to him: that is how the enormous
cemeteries in the Islamic world came into existence. The cemetery of Makli Hill near Thatta
in Sind is credited with the presence of 125,000 saints; the Qarāfa in Cairo allows a survey
of hundreds of years of Muslim cultural history in Egypt, and, during a walk through the hilly
cemetery of Khuldābād, ‘Abode of Eternity’ near Daulatabad in the northern Deccan, one
gains a comprehensive survey of the entire history of the Deccan from the fourteenth to the
nineteenth centuries, for poets, emperors, scholars and politicians rest peacefully in this
lovely place.24
Rulers erected their mausoleums usually during their lifetime and surrounded their future
burial site with charitable foundations to ensure benefits for their souls. When the last
Mamluk sultan Qanṣauh al-Ghawrī's dead body was never found on the battlefield of Marj
Dabiq in August 1516, the historian Ibn Iyās attributed this strange event to the fact that the
ruler had illegally appropriated the marble of someone else's mausoleum and used it to
embellish his own mausoleum ‘and God did not allow him to be buried in it, and therein is a
sign for those who have eyes to see’.25 Often, the mausoleums of rulers were surrounded
by vast gardens, sometimes divided by canals so as to resemble the gardens of Paradise
‘under which rivers flow’ and to give the deceased, as it were, a foretaste of heavenly bliss.

In cases when a famous person's burial place is unknown, or when Muslims want to gain
some of his baraka in their own village or town, they erect a maqām, a memorial. In the
Fertile Crescent, one finds a number of maqāms in places where ‘Alī's camel allegedly
stopped.26 But more prominent are the maqāms of saints, for example, places devoted to
the memory of Bāyezīd Bisṭāmī, who died in 874 in northern Iran but is venerated in
Zousfana in the High Atlas as well as in Ghittagong in Bangladesh (and probably in other
places as well). The Turkish bard Yunus Emre (d. 1321) has maqāms in at least seven
Anatolian towns, and the city of Mazar-i Sharif in Afghanistan grew around an alleged tomb
of ‘Alī. The most recent example of a ‘maqām’ is that of Muḥammad Iqbāl (buried in Lahore)
in the garden near Mawlānā Rūmī's mausoleum in Konya, erected by the Turks, to underline
the spiritual connection between the two religious poets.

Often, the actual mausoleum of a saintly person is connected with the dargāh, the seat of
the mystical guide who continues the saint's work. To stay for a few days at a dargāh, as a
waiter or servant, can make the visitor a special recipient of Divine grace, and many people
avail themselves as much of the living baraka of the ‘master of the prayer rug’ or his
assistants as of the healing power of a tank or well close to the shrine. The shrine serves as
a sanctuary, and people may swear innocence before it; some regular visitors may even be
able to ‘see’ the saint.27

The master who resides in the dargāh has a spiritual territory, wilāyat, and it was customary
that he would assign to his khalīfa, substitute or vicegerent, a certain area over which his
influence would extent; the borders of the spiritual territories of two khalīfas, or, more
complicated, of khalīfas of two different masters were strictly defined and had by no means
to be transgressed. The protecting power of the saint was thought to work only inside his
territory.28

Shrines and dargāhs were and still are usually open to non-Muslims; in some of them,
women are not admitted inside (similarly, men are excluded from women saints’ shrines). As
humans have apparently always prayed at the same places, there is a certain continuity in
the use of such places, as if a special baraka were inherent in this or that spot. That is well
known in the Jewish-Christian-Muslim sequence in Near Eastern sanctuaries, and holds true
in many cases also for Indian Muslim and formerly Hindu places of worship. Therefore, the
borders between religions often seem blurred in the dargāhs and shrines—certainly one of
the valid reasons for the aversion of traditionalist orthodox Muslims to saint-worship. It has
been rightly stated for India that ‘While the mosque distinguishes and separates Muslims
and Hindu, the dargāh tends to bring them together’.29
Other sacred places in the Islamic world are, for example, the Ismaili Jamaatkhana, to which
the outsider is only rarely given access even at times outside the service; the dā'ira of the
Indian Mahdawis, which is mainly devoted to dhikr rather man to ritual prayer; or the
imāmbārah of the Twelver Shia, where the implements of the Muḥarram processions are
kept and which the Shia rulers, especially in Lucknow, Hyderabad/Deccan and Bengal, built
in the hope of heavenly reward. There are, further, the different types of Sufi convents such
as the ribāṭ, whose name conveys the idea of fortification and fighting at the frontier but
becomes in the Maghrib a true dervish centre founded by a shaykh and frequented by his
followers. The taqiya, in Turkish tekke, contrasts with the large khānqāh (the Khānqāh
Siryāqūs near medieval Cairo is a glorious example of such an institution)30 and the dargāh,
a term mainly used in India, and the solitary master would perhaps dwell in a zāwiya,
‘corner’, a term which, again in the Maghrib, is used to mean rather a hospice for Sufis. The
use of names for these institutions varied in different times and different countries, but one
thing is common to all Sufi institutions: none of them is a ‘consecrated’ building. For the
pious, they assumed a sacred quality owing to the master's and the dervishes’ presence.

When the Muslim speaks of the ‘two sacred places’ (al-ḥaramān; accusative and genitive al-
ḥaramayn), he means Mecca and Medina. The word ḥaram, from the same root as ḥarām,
‘prohibited’, designates the place where anything profane is excluded, as the ḥarīm, the
place reserved for women, is accessible only for the maḥram, a male member of the family
who is related to the inmates. To enter the heart of the sanctuary, in this case the precincts
of the Kaaba in Mecca, one is required to put on the iḥrām, the garment that obliges the
pilgrim to observe a number of taboos such as avoidance of sex, of cutting one's hair or of
paring one's nails. This is valid not only during the season of the ḥajj in the last lunar month
but also during the ‘smaller pilgrimage’, the ‘umra, which can be performed at any time.

In the sacred precincts, no animal may be hunted or killed, and Iqbāl alludes to this
prohibition by admonishing his co-religionists to return spiritually to Mecca and gather in the
protective shade in the Kaaba because ‘no gazelle’, that is, no living being must be hunted
there while they, oblivious to their spiritual centre, have become an easy prey for the non-
Muslim hunters—and non-Muslims are excluded from the sacred place, Mecca.31

The name of Mecca is connected, in general thought, with a great assembly-place, and one
can encounter, in the West, expressions like ‘the Mecca of gamblers’ or ‘of racing cars’. For
this reason, Muslims now prefer to spell the city's name as Makkah to distinguish it from
these strange and appalling definitions.

The city of Mecca, Muhammad's home town, is situated between two ranges of hills and
formerly housed an ancient Arabian sanctuary. The Koran (Sūra 42:7) calls the place umm
al-qurā, ‘the mother of the cities’ (hence the name of its university), and numerous legends
have grown around this place from where, as Muslims believe, the creation of the Earth
began. Thus, as the praying Muslim turns to Mecca whence the Earth was expanded, he
turns spiritually to the centre of truth, the source of all spirituality. Mecca's unique role is
emphasized in a proverb in which its inhabitants proudly claim that a person who sleeps at
Mecca is equal to someone worshipping God in another place.32

The central sanctuary, the Kaaba, blesses the city with its presence: it appears as an
omphalos, the navel of the earth,33 and is, as pious people believe, situated exactly
opposite the heavenly Kaaba in the seventh heaven. During the deluge, the Meccan Kaaba
was taken into heaven, where Noah's Ark surrounded it seven times. As for the heavenly
Kaaba, it is constantly circumambulated by angels whose movements the pilgrim should
remember while performing the ṭawāf, ‘circumambulation’ around the earthly Kaaba. But
sometimes, as legend tells, the Kaaba itself comes to turn around visiting saints such as the
great Sufi woman Rābi'a (d. 801), or wanders to a Sufi in faraway lands.34 The Koran (Sūra
2:125ff.) speaks of Abraham's building or restoring the Kaaba; and, when the Prophet
reconquered Mecca in 630, he cleaned the building of all the idols, whose number is given
as 360, which may point to an old astral cult connected with the sanctuary (the moon god
Hubal is well known from pre-Islamic times).

The Kaaba is an almost cubic stone building measuring 12 m² and 15 m high; it is usually
covered with the black kiswa, and many poets have compared this black veiled structure
with a longed—for bride whom one wants to reach and kiss.35 Thus, comparisons of the
kissing of the black stone in the Kaaba's south-eastern corner with kissing the black beauty
spot or the lips of the beloved are common in Persian poetry.

As Mecca and the Kaaba are, for the pious, certainly the most sacred place on Earth to
which the living and the dead turn, one should not spit or stretch out one's legs in the
direction of the Kaaba, nor perform bodily needs in its direction. After death, the believer
should be buried lying on his right side with his face turned towards the Kaaba.

As every Muslim has to direct his or her position towards the Kaaba during the five daily
prayers (Sūra 2:144), it became important for Muslim mathematicians and astronomers to
enable believers to find the right direction, qibla, when travelling by land or sea; lately, they
have even discussed the problem of how to determine the qibla while travelling in a
spaceship. Mathematical and geographical research developed refined methods of finding
the correct direction; in later times, small compasses facilitated this.36 But it was not always
easy to determine the exact position of the prayer niche, miḥrāb, in a mosque, especially
when the mosque was built in an already crowded quarter and one had to adjust the
structure of the building with one face following the alignment of the street while the other
showed the direction towards Mecca. There were different ways of achieving the correct
result, so that one may even find slightly varying directions in one and the same city.37
Legends, mainly from India, tell how a saint's prayer could correct the position of the miḥrāb
when an architect had miscalculated it. That was a useful miracle, for the Muslims are
indeed called the ahl al-qibla, ‘those that turn towards the qibla’, and warnings are issued
about talking against the ahl al-qibla, for they are all united by turning to the same centre of
prayer-life. Poets loved to compare the beautifully arched eyebrows of their beloved to a
miḥrāb—was not Adam, the first human being, a qibla before whom the angels prostrated
and through whom one could find the way to the Divine beauty?38 It is therefore not
surprising that the Persian line

Mā qibla rāst kardīm bi-simṭ-i kajkulāhī

We have directed our prayer direction towards the one sporting his cap awry

became commonplace in later Persian and Persianate poetry.39

For the mystically minded poets knew that the Kaaba in Mecca, central as it is, is still a mere
sign—the ka‘ba-i gil, ‘Kaaba of clay’, is often juxtaposed with the ka‘ba-i dil, ‘the Kaaba of the
heart’—and everyone has his or her own qibla, the place of worship to which one turns
intentionally or unintentionally. For qibla became a general term for the place on which one
concentrated one's attention: when a calligrapher is called with the honorific tide qiblat al-
kuttāb, it means that he is the person to whom everyone in the writing profession turns in
admiration. Rūmī describes, towards the end of his life, the different qiblas to whom humans
turn instead of looking towards Mecca, the central direction of worship:

The Kaaba for the spirits

and Gabriel: the Sidra-tree,

The qibla of the glutton,

that is the table-cloth.

The qibla for the gnostic:

the light of union with God,

The qibla of the reason,

philosophizing: vain thought!

The qibla of the ascetic:

the beneficent God,

The qibla of the greedy:

a purse that's filled with gold.

The qibla of those who look at

true meaning, is patience fine,

The qibla of those who worship

the form: an image of stone.

The qibla of those esoterics

is He, the Lord of Grace,

The qibla of these exoterists

is but a woman's face…

(M VI 1,896f.)

Despite such psychologically insightful verses, Mecca was and remained the veritable centre
of Islamic piety. Moreover, it is not only the place to which to turn in prayer and which to visit
during the pilgrimage; it has also inspired innumerable people in their religious achievement.
The great medieval theologian, al-Juwaynī (d. 1085), was honoured by the title imām al-
ḥaramayn because of his prolonged exile in the sacred places. Pilgrims, particularly scholars
who stayed for months, even for years in Mecca, were inspired to compose their most
important works there. Zamakhsharī (d. 1144), with the honorific title Jār Allāh, ‘God's
neighbour’, as result of his prolonged sojourn in Mecca, wrote his comprehensive
commentary on the Koran in this place, and at the beginning of the following century Ibn
‘Arabīi received the initial but comprehensive inspiration for his voluminous Futūḥāt al-
makkiyya, ‘The Meccan Openings’, while circumambulating the Kaaba.40 Again, centuries
later, the Indian reformer Shāh Walīullāh (d. 1762) wrote his Fuyūz al-ḥaramayn, ‘The
Effusions of Grace from the Two Sacred Places’ under the impression of his sojourn in the
sacred cities.

The stay in Mecca had certainly an ‘Arabicizing’ influence on pilgrims from foreign countries,
and numerous reform movements in North and West Africa, Bengal and Central Asia were
sparked off when Muslim leaders came to Mecca, where they found what seemed to them
true Islam but which often contrasted with the ‘Islam’ in their homeland, which now appeared
to them utterly polluted by the pernicious influences of popular customs and pre-Islamic
practices. They then felt compelled to reform Islam at home as a result of their stay in
Mecca.

Another noteworthy aspect of Mecca's central position was the understanding that he who
rules over Mecca and Medina is the rightful caliph—hence the claim of the Ottomans who
conquered Mamluk Egypt and the areas under its dominion, including the Hijaz, in 1516–17
and thus became the overlords of the ḥaramayn. But the mystics often voiced the opinion
that ‘Mecca is of this world, faith is not of this world’, and that God can be found everywhere
and that His presence is not restricted to the Kaaba.

The role of the second sacred place, Medina, was increasingly emphasized in the later
Middle Ages. After all, it was the city where the Prophet was buried, and with the growing
glorification of the Prophet and the deepening of mystical love for him and trust in him,
Medina gained in status.

The role of Medina in the history of Islam cannot be overstated. The Prophet's hegira in 622
to this town, that only after some time was to become a Muslim, ‘home’, forms the beginning
of the Muslim calendar, for now the Prophet's revelations had to be put into practice and
create political and juridical foundations for the fast-growing community of believers. Besides
this practical side of the hegira, medieval mystics have seen it as a subtle hint to the fact that
one has to leave one's home to find superior glory; and for a modernist like Iqbāl, the hegira
shows that one should not cling to narrow, earthbound, nationalist concepts.41 The Muslims
who migrated from India to the newly-created Pakistan in the wake of the partition in 1947
called themselves muhājir, ‘one who has participated in the hegira’ from ‘infidel Hindustan’ to
the new home where they hoped to practise their faith without difficulties, and modern North
American Muslims may find consolation in the thought that they, like the companions of the
Prophet, have left their former home and found a new place in not-yet-Muslim America.

For most pilgrims, it is their dream to visit the Prophet's tomb, the rawḍa, in Medina in
connection with the pilgrimage, and the Saudi authorities, despite their aversion to ‘tomb-
worship’, allow these visits.42 Pictures of the Rawḍa, as of the Kaaba, decorate many
houses; printed on calendars, woven into rugs, painted on walls, they convey the blessing of
the Prophet's spiritual presence. The sanctity of Medina is understood from the medieval
belief that the plague never touches this city.
Poetry in honour of Medina seems to develop from the late thirteenth century, the first major
representative of this genre being Ibn Daqīq al-‘Id (d. 1302).43 The greater the distance
between the poet's country and Medina, the more emotional he waxes:

More beautiful than all the flowers are the flowers of Medina…

and, as Jāmī thinks, the angels make their rosaries from the kernels of Medina's dates.44 It
makes hardly any difference whether the poet in Anatolia around 1300 sings:

If my Lord would kindly grant it,

I would go there, weeping, weeping,

and Muhammad in Medina

I would see there, weeping, weeping,

or whether he lives in eighteenth-century Sind, like ‘Abdur Ra'ūf Bhattī, whose unassuming
poem has the refrain:

In the luminous Medina, could I be there, always there…45

For Medina is al-madīna al-mumawwara, the luminous city, and the pious imagine that there
is a column of light over the Rawḍa, as the modern Sudanese writer, al-Fayṭūrī, states:

Over the Prophet's bones, every speck of dust is a pillar of light.46

In Indo-Pakistan, poetical anthologies with the title Madīna kā ṣadaqa, ‘Pious alms for
Medina’, are available in cheap prints, and Iqbāl wrote, close to the end of his life:

Old as I am, I'm going to Medina

to sing my song there, full of love and joy,

just like a bird who in the desert night

spreads out his wings when dunking of his nest.47

Besides the ḥaramayn, the city of Jerusalem is surrounded with special sanctity, for it was
not only the place on whose rock, as mentioned earlier (p. 2), all the previous prophets had
rested, but also, more importantly, the first qibla of the Muslims.48 Only after the hegira was
the prayer direction changed to Mecca (Sūra 2:144). Connected also with the Prophet's
heavenly journey and with mythological tales about the events on Doomsday, when Isrāfīl
will blow the trumpet from there, Jerusalem holds pride of place in the hearts of the Muslims,
and many early ascetics spent some time there.49

The orientation to the Kaaba is certainly central for the Muslim, but it is not only the direction
in prayer that plays a great role in his life and thought. One has to remember the importance
given to the right side as well. The term ‘right’, yamīn, belongs to a root with connotations of
felicity and happiness; the right side is the ‘right’, prosperous side. One eats with the right
hand (or rather with its first three fingers), while the left hand is unclean, being used for
purification after defilement. One should enter a room with the right foot first, and sleep if
possible on the right side to ensure happy and good dreams. On the Day of Judgment, the
Book of Actions will be given in the sinners’ left hands, and they are the ‘people of the left’
(Sūra 56:41). When Ibn ‘Abbās states that Paradise is to the right side of the Throne and
Hell to its left, then popular belief has it that during ritual prayer the Prophet and Gabriel are
standing at the praying person's right side while Hell is waiting at his/her left.50 The
importance of the right side is attested not only in surnames like Dhū ‘l-yamīnayn, ‘someone
with two right hands’ for an ambidextrous and successful individual, but also in the idea that
‘God has two right hands’.51 Thus, the orientation towards the right is a time-honoured and
generally accepted fact. Yet there are other spatial peculiarities as well.

The Koran emphasizes that East and West belong to God (Sūra 2:115) and that true piety
does not consist of turning to the East or West (Sūra 2:177); it mentions also the wondrous
olive tree that is ‘neither from the East nor from the West’ (Sūra 24:35). Yet, as the right side
was thought to be connected with positive values, it seems that an ‘orientation’ in the true
sense of the word, that is ‘turning to the East’, was well known to Muslim thinkers from early
days despite the different directions in which the qibla had to be faced in the expanding
empire. The worn-out juxtaposition of the material West and the spiritual East is not a
modern invention: Suhrawardī the Master of Illumination spoke of the ghurbat al-gharbiyya,
the ‘western exile’ where the soul is pining and whence she should return to the luminous
East. Persian poets sometimes confront Qandahar in the East and Qairouwan in the West,
combing the latter name with qīr, ‘tar’, because the dark West makes them think of pitch-
black misery. Similarly, the Dakhni Urdu poet Wajhī (d. after 1610) located, in his story Sab
ras, King Intellect in the West and King Love in the East, while Sindhi folk poets like to speak
of the ‘journey eastwards’ of the spiritual seeker although both their traditional goals of
pilgrimage, Mecca and the ancient Hindu cave of Hinglaj, are situated west of Sind. One
wonders whether the language called Pūrabī, ‘eastern’, in which God addressed the Delhi
mystic Niẓāmuddīn Awliyā, was indeed the Purabi dialect of Hindwi or whether it points to a
‘spiritual language’ in which he heard the Divine Beloved speak.

The ‘Orient of lights’, the place where the light rises, appears sometimes also as Yemen,
which in Suhrawardī's work represents the true home of spirituality because the ‘country on
the right hand’ was the home of Uways al-Qaranī, who embraced Islam without ever meeting
the Prophet and concerning whose spirituality the Prophet said, as legend tells: ‘I feel the
breath of the Merciful coming from Yemen’. Ḥikma yamaniyya, ‘Yemenite wisdom’, and
ḥikma yūnāniyya, ‘Greek philosophy’, contrast, as do intuitive gnosis and intellectual
approach, as do East and West.52

Not only this ‘Morgenlandfahrt’ of the medieval Muslim thinkers is fascinating, but also the
way in which some of them transformed a geographical concept into its opposite. India,
which in most cases is the land of ‘black infidelity’, became in a certain current of Persian
poetry the home of the soul. ‘The elephant saw India in his dream’ that means that the soul
was reminded of its primordial home whence it had been carried away to live—again—in
Western exile. And the steppes of Asia, where the musk-deer lives and moonlike beauties
dwell, could become at times a landscape of the soul—where the soul, guided by the scent
of the musk-deer, finds its eternal home.53

Again, the concept of the quṭb, the Pole or Axis, the central figure in the hierarchy of the
saints, points to the importance of the upward orientation, as Henry Corbin has lucidly
shown: the polar star, thought to be located opposite the Kaaba, is the guiding light for the
traveller.54
On a different level, one meets the concept of sacred space in attempts of medieval Sufis—
especially in the tradition of Ibn ‘Arabī—to map the spiritual world and describe the strata of
Divine manifestations through which the inaccessible Divine Essence reveals Itself. One
usually speaks in descending sequence of ‘ālam al-lāhūt, ‘the world of divinity’, ‘ālam al-
jabarūt, ‘the world of power’, ‘ālam al-malakūt, ‘the realm of the Kingdom’, and ‘ālam an-
nāsūt, ‘the realm of human beings’. In certain cases, the highest level beyond the ‘ālam al-
lāhūt is thought to be the ‘ālam al-hāhūt, the ‘Divine Ipseity’ as symbolized in the final h of
the word Allāh. Very frequently, the ‘ālam al-mithāl, ‘the realm of imagination’, mundus
imaginalis, is placed between the world of the heavenly Kingdom and that of humanity,
where it constitutes so to speak a reservoir of possibilities which await realization and can be
called down by the spiritual ambition of the saint.

One also sees attempts to chart the Otherworld, for the Koranic mention of various stages in
Paradise, such as ‘illiyūn (Sūra 83:18, 19), jannat ‘adan (Sūra 15:45 et al.) and the like,
invited searching souls to develop an increasingly complicated celestial geography. Again,
the main contribution in this field is owed to Ibn ‘Arabī and his followers. And as late as 1960,
a Turkish thinker produced a lengthy study about the geography of Hell.

The importance of sacred space and place is reflected in the emphasis which Islam plays on
the concept of the road, a theme that can be called central in Islamic thought.55 Does not
the Muslim pray with the words of the Koran: ihdinā ‘ṣ-ṣirāṭa ‘l-mustaqīm, ‘Guide us on the
straight path!’ (Sūra 1:6)? This petition from the Fātiḥa, repeated millions of times every day
around the world, has lent the title ‘Islam, the straight Path’ to more than one study on
Islamic piety (and one may add that titles of books that contain Arabic terms like nahj or
minhāj, both meaning ‘path, right way’, are often used for religious works).

God guides, and He can let people go astray in the desert (aḍalla), but the straight path is
manifested—so one can say—in the sharī‘a, a term usually (and rightly) translated as
‘religious law’. Its basic meaning is, however, ‘the road that leads to a water course or
fountain’, that is, the only road on which the traveller can reach the water that is needed to
survive; for in the desert, it is incumbent on everyone to follow the well-established path lest
one perish in the wilderness—and the sharī‘a offers this guidance.

The concept of ṭarīqa, ‘path’, which expresses the mystical path in general and has become
the normal term for Sufi fraternities, belongs to the same cluster of images, with the
understanding that the narrow path, ṭarīqa, branches out from the highway. There can be no
ṭarīqa without the sharī‘a.56

In this connection, one may also think of the frequent use of the word sabīl, ‘way’, in
expressions like ‘to do something’, ‘to fight’, or ‘to give alms’ fi sabīl Allāh, ‘in the way of
God’, that is, in the right direction, guided by the knowledge that one's action is God-pleasing
and will result in positive values. The feeling that the establishment of fountains and the like
is particularly useful fi sabīl Allāh is the reason why fountains near mosques and in the
streets are often simply called sabīl, literally ‘way’. Finally, the term for the legal school which
Muslims adhere to, and according to whose rules Muslims judge and are judged, is
madhhab, ‘way on which one walks’, a term often used in modern parlance for ‘religious
persuasion’.
But the ‘way’ is also very real: the pilgrimage to Mecca, ḥajj, is one of the five pillars of Islam.
Legend tells that Gabriel taught the rites of the ḥajj to Adam and Eve,57 and the decisive
ritual was set by the Prophet's last pilgrimage shortly before he passed away. The
pilgrimage has served numerous writers as a symbol of the soul's journey towards the
longed-for goal, ‘the city of God at the other end of the road’ (John Masefield).58 One's
entire life could be seen as a movement through the maqāmāt, the stations on the journey,
or the stations of the heart, in the hope of reaching the faraway Beloved. The pilgrims’
progress is regulated on the normal level by the sharī‘a and, for the Sufis, by the ṭarīqa; it is
a dangerous undertaking whose external and internal difficulties and hardships are often
described. The long journeys through deserts or beyond the sea made the ḥajj in former
times a very heavy duty; many pilgrims died from fatigue, illness, Bedouin attacks and
shipwreck; and yet, as Indonesian pilgrims state, these long, strenuous journeys served
much better as a preparation for the final experience of ‘reaching the goal’ than the modern
brief, rather comfortable air travels.59 And as the pilgrimage to Mecca is fraught with
dangers and hardships, thus the inner pilgrimage requires uninterrupted wakefulness. It is a
journey through the spaces of the soul which the sālik, the wayfarer, traverses, day after
day, year after year, for, as Ibn ‘Aṭā Allāh says:

Were there not the spaces of the soul, there would be no journey from man to God.

The mystics have always asked, as did Mawlānā Rūmī:

Oh, you who've gone on pilgrimage—where are you? Where, o where?

Here, here is the Beloved—O come now, come, o come!

Your friend, he is your neighbour; he is next to your wall—

You, erring in the desert—what air of love is this?

(D no. 648)

In this process, the actual landscapes are transformed into landscapes of the soul: when in
the old Sindhi story of Sassui Punhun the lovesick young woman runs through the deserts
and steep rocks, braving all kinds of dangers, the poet makes us understand that this is a
perfect symbol of the difficulties that the soul has to overcome on her path to God.60

The topos of the journey and the path predate Islamic times: the central part of the ancient
Arabic qaṣīda describes most eloquently the poet-hero's journey on his strong camel or his
swift horse through the desert, and the theme of such a journey was taken over by later
poets. Thus Ibn al-Fāriḍ's (d. 1235) major poem, the Tā#39;iyya, is officially called Naẓm as-
sulūk, ‘The Order of the Progressing Journey’. Slightly later, Rūmī sang of the necessity of
travelling in a poem whose first line he took over from Anvarī (d. around 1190):

Oh, if a tree could wander and move with foot and wings!

It would not suffer the axe-blows and not the pain of saws!

(D no. 1,142)
Painful though the separation from home may be, it is necessary for one's development: the
raindrop leaves the ocean to return as a pearl; the Prophet left Mecca to become a ruler in
Medina and return victoriously.

It is the Prophet's experience not only in the hegira but even more in his nightly journey, isrā
mi‘raj, that offered the Muslims a superb model for the spiritual journey. The brief allusion in
Sūra 17:1 was elaborated and enlarged in; the course of the centuries and lovingly
embellished; the Persian painters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries represented the
wondrous event in glorious pictures, often with moving details, and almost every later
Persian or Turkish epic contains a poetical description of the Prophet's mi‘rāj. The last epic
in the long list of works inspired by the account of the mi‘rāj is Iqbāl's Jāvīdnāma (1932),
which combines the different traditional strands of the motif and weaves them into a colourful
fabric of modern Islamic thought. The assumption that the kitāb al-mi‘rāj, Arabic tales about
the Prophet's nightly journey through Heaven and Hell, has influenced Dante's Divine
Comedy to a certain extent seems to be well established thanks to Enrico Cerulli's
research.61

The soul's journey usually traverses seven stations; the eighth may be the ‘heavenly earth of
Hurqalyā’. Henry Corbin has pointed out how the concept of the quṭb, the mystical ‘axis’ or
‘pole’, is closely connected with the theme of the upward journey, for it is the point of
orientation for the soul on its ascent from the Western exile.

The ascent through the seven valleys, well known in Christianity, is most beautifully
symbolized in ‘Aṭṭār's Persian epic Manṭiq uṭ-ṭayr, which sings of the journey of the thirty soul
birds towards the Sīmurgh at the end of the world. Like many other thinkers, ‘Aṭṭār too found
that the arrival at what looked like the end of the road is only a mere beginning, for ‘when the
journey to God ends, the journey in God begins’.

There are two journeys, one to God and one in God, for God is infinite and eternal. And how
could there be an end for the journey of the soul that has reached His presence?62

But we are faced with a dilemma. God is always described as lā-makān, ‘there where no
place is’, or as being in nā-kujā-abād, ‘Where there is no Where’ and yet the Koran
describes Him as the One who ‘is upright on the Throne’ (Sūra 7:54, 13:2 et al.) and states
that His Throne ‘embraces the whole universe’ (Sūra 2:255). His Throne is beyond Heaven
and Earth and what is in them, and yet He, who is closer to mankind than the jugular vein
(Sūra 50:16), dwells in the innermost sanctuary of the human heart.

The experience of the journey to God and into His depths is expressed in a ḥadīth: the
Prophet, speaking of his own mi‘rāj, admonished his companions: ‘Do not prefer me to
Yūnus ibn Mattā because my journey is into the height and his journey is into the depths’.
For there are two ways to reach the Divine: the journey upwards to Mt Qāf and beyond, and
the journey into the ocean of one's soul. The same ‘Aṭṭār who so eloquently describes the
birds’ journey to Mt Qāf in his Manṭiq uṭ-ṭayr has devoted another work, the Muṣībatnāma, to
the journey that leads the seeker through the forty stations of seclusion into the ocean of his
soul.63

Both ways are legitimate—the one into the heights of Divine glory where the Divine light
permeates everything and becomes invisible owing to its radiance, and the way into the dark
abyss where all words fail and the soul loses itself in sheer ecstasy, drowned in the
fathomless ocean of God.

Both ways also seem correct when one thinks of the concept of orientation in Islam: the
correct direction to the qibla, indicated by the Kaaba in Mecca, is binding for everyone, and
yet the Muslim also knows that ‘Whithersoever ye turn, there is the Face of God’ (Sūra
2:115).

SACRED TIME64

At the end of the road, the carpet of time and space is rolled up. But before this point and
this moment is reached, we observe the same apparent paradox that we encountered
concerning God's ‘place’ and ‘placelessness’ when dealing with time and timelessness in
Islamic thought.

Time measures our lives, and each religion has its own sacred times: times in which the
mystery that was there at the beginning is re-enacted; festivities which are taken out of the
normal flow of daily life and thus carry humans into a different dimension; sacred seasons;
and sacred days and hours.

For the Muslim, the history of salvation (Heilsgeschichte) begins with Muhammad, as his
essence is the first thing created by God and, as mystics would claim, thus precedes the
‘first man’ Adam. His appearance in time after the long ages in which earlier prophets taught
God's commands constitutes the climax of human history; in him, the fullness of time is
reached. This conviction helps to explain the Muslim's constant longing for the Prophet's
time, for no other time could have been or could ever become so blessed as the years that
he, bearer of the Divine Word, was acting on Earth. For this reason, all ‘reform movements’
are bound to reorient themselves back to the Prophet's time.

People have looked for an explanation why Muhammad appeared just around the turn of the
sixth to the seventh century AD, and Ibn ‘Arabī found out that the Prophet entered history in
the sign of Libra, which means that he inaugurated a new age in the sign of justice, that is,
he struck the balance between the legalism of Moses and the mildness of Jesus.65

Historically speaking, Muslim time-consciousness begins with the hegira which, as already
mentioned, means the practical realization of the contents of the revelation. Furthermore, an
important new beginning was made as a purely lunar year was introduced, which entailed a
complete break with old Semitic fertility cults connected with the solar year and its seasons.
To be sure, the solar year continued to be used for financial purposes such as taxation, as
the yield of the crops was dependent upon the seasons and could not be harmonized with
the lunar calendar, in which, contrary to earlier systems, no intercalation was permitted.

The month begins when the crescent moon is sighted by two reliable, honest witnesses.
Although the appearance of the first slim crescent can be mathematically determined in
advance, the prescription of actually observing the moon still remains valid. The crescent
was thus able to become the favourite symbol of Islamic culture.66

Nevertheless, some rites are still celebrated according to the solar calendar. The best-known
one is Nawrūz, the Persian New Year at the vernal equinox, which was and still is central in
the Persianate world but which was accepted, to a certain degree, also by the Arabs. Some
feasts of local saints again follow the solar calendar, for example that of Aḥmad al-Badawī in
Tanta, Egypt, whose dates are connected with fertility, which means, in Egypt, with the rising
of the Nile.

Other popular measures of time may have been in use in various parts of the Islamic world;
thus, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje mentions for the late nineteenth century a Hadramauti
solar year which consisted of twenty-eight parts with thirteen days each; the twenty-eight
parts corresponded one by one to the station in which the moon rises.67 These lunar
mansions were, as he states, well known among the people. Indeed, the importance given to
the lunar mansions is a fascinating aspect of Muslim culture, and numerous popular sayings
and superstitions express the widespread acquaintance with these concepts, which are
echoed in high literature. Thus, one should avoid bloodletting when the moon is in Libra, and
‘moon in Scorpio’ is the worst possible, most disastrous combination, as both Muslim writers
and European observers tell.68 The poetical genre of bārahmāsa, ‘Twelve Months’ poems’,
in the Indo-Pakistani vernaculars shows a curious shifting from Indian to Muslim and recently
even to Western months.69

Feasts carry a special power with them, and therefore humans behave differently on festive
days, beginning with the custom of sporting new garments. One may perform supererogative
acts of piety, distribute alms, or share food and sweets. That is particularly true for the two
great feasts in the Muslim world which are based on Koranic sanction: one is the ‘īd ul-fiṭr at
the end of Ramadan (Turkish şeker bayramĭ, ‘sugar feast’), the other one the ‘īd an-nahr or
‘id al-aḍḥā (Turkish qurban bayramĭ), when the sacrificial animal is slaughtered during the
ḥajj on the tenth day of the last lunar month.70

Ramadan is the most sacred time of the year, for during this month the first revelation of the
Koran took place. The gates of Hell are closed, the gates of Paradise open. The laylat al-
qadr, the Night of Might (Sūra 97), is ‘better than a thousand months’ it is thought to be one
of the last odd nights of the month, probably the twenty-seventh. Many pious people
therefore spend the last ten or so days of the month in seclusion or in the mosque, and even
those who do not fast generally may try to fast at least on the first and during the last ten
days for the sake of blessing. The laylat al-qadr is thought to be filled with light, a light that
appears to a few blessed people who excel by their devotion.71

Although a fasting day, ‘āshūrā, was institutionalized at an early stage in Mecca,72 now a
whole month is devoted to fasting (Sūra 2:185), a hard discipline which requires strong
intention and is particularly difficult when it happens to fall in the hot season, for the fasting
Muslim is not allowed a single sip of water (if possible, one even avoids swallowing one's
saliva) between dawn, when one can discern between a black and a white thread, and the
completion of sunset. Nor are food, smoking, sex, perfume or injections permitted during
daytime; exemptions are possible for weak, travelling or fighting people and menstruating
and pregnant women; but either the lost days have to be made up for, or other penitences
such as feeding a certain number of poor are required, following exact regulations. It seems
that the fasting along with the community, and the festive fast-breaking, ifṭār, along with
others, make the discipline for all its difficulties more joyful than an outsider can judge.
Ramadan is a problem for northern countries, when summer days stretch for more than
twenty hours and where many believers miss the wider communal support that they would
enjoy in a Muslim country. According to some fatwās, the Muslim in such faraway northern
areas (and that would be valid for southern areas as well, e.g. Muslims in southern Chile)
could break the fast at the time when it is broken in the next Muslim country; that would be
Turkey or North Africa for Europeans. It was also claimed that because fasting is not
required during war, and hard labour in factories or agriculture is a ‘war against poverty’,
these workers should be exempt from this religious duty; but this suggestion by President
Bourguiba of Tunisia was not favourably met with.

After breaking the fast with an odd number of dates and some water, the pious Muslim will
perform the evening prayer, then eat, then perform another set of prayers, the so-called
tarāwīḥ, which comprise usually twenty, sometimes twenty-three rak‘ah (cycles). The nights
used to be formerly devoted to amusements and joyful entertainment; before the night is
over, one may eat a light meal (saḥūr or saḥriÒ), and then formulate the intention for another
day of fasting. The ‘īd ul-fiṭr is celebrated with great joy, but differences in sighting the moon
may cause the feast to be celebrated with a day's difference in the same country or in
faraway areas, although the sighting of the moon in Mecca is now broadcast all over the
Muslim world.

The laylat al-qadr is filled with light because the world was illuminated by the revelation of
God's Word, but the laylat al-mīlād, the birth of the Prophet, is equally luminous, as popular
and mystical piety have it, quite in harmony with the general phenomenon that the ‘birth of
the saviour’ in the history of religions is surrounded by light.73 The exact date of the
Prophet's birth is unknown; the twelfth day of Rabi‘al-awwal, the third lunar month, is actually
the date of his death, and in some areas, such as in Pakistan's North-West Frontier, it is still
remembered as such (bārah wafāt) without displaying the joyful aspects of the birthday.
Celebrations of the birthday are known first from Fatimid times, for the Fatimids (969–1171),
claiming descent from the Prophet's daughter Fāṭima, had a dynastic interest in celebrating
at least in courtly circles their ancestor's birthday. Around 1200, the celebrations were
already widespread and elaborate, as can be understood from Ibn Khallikān's account of the
mawlid, ‘birthday’ in Arbela (Irbil) in 1207. Praise-songs were composed on this occasion,
and the use of candles and illuminations became popular—a custom to which the
traditionalists objected because of its similarity to Christian festivities. Lately, however, the
imaginative poems in honour of the Prophet's birth, as they are known from Turkey to East
Africa and India from the fourteenth century onwards, were discarded in many countries
because their romanticism seemed incompatible with a modern sober mind, and instead of
the great ‘Welcome’ which all of Nature sings to the new-born Prophet (as expressed in
Süleyman Çelebi's Turkish mevlûd), the Prophet's ethical and political achievements are
emphasized. But in Cairo, Muslims continue to celebrate the day with great joy, and the
sugar-dolls, called ‘bride of the mawlid’, are still sold and enchant children.

The two ‘īd are firmly rooted in Koranic tradition, and the celebration of the Prophet's
birthday was a corollary of the increasing veneration which was felt for the ‘best of mankind’,
who brought the final revelation. Another feast has no Koranic roots and yet is connected
with the Prophet who, according to some ḥadīth, emphasized its importance. It was
apparently celebrated in the early Middle Ages, for it is mentioned in Sanā'i's (d. 1131)
Persian poetry. This is the laylat al-barā'a (shab-i barat in Persian), the night of the full moon
of the eighth lunar month, Sha‘bān. Special sweets are made and, as usual for such nights,
firecrackers and fireworks are used. Additional prayers are recommended, for example 100
rak‘a with ten recitations of Sūra 112 in each rak‘a; for this night is something like a New
Year's Eve: God destines—so many people believe—mankind's fate for the next twelve
months, and, according to a delightful belief, the angels put on file the notes which they have
written about each human's action during the last twelve months. In Lebanon, the middle of
Sha‘bān was celebrated as the mawlūd, the birthday, of all those saints whose actual
memorial days were unknown, while among the Shia it is regarded as Imam al-Mahdī's
birthday.74 Sanā'ī not only mentions the shab-i barāt as a special sign of grace for the
Prophet but also singles out the ‘white nights’, that is, the nights of the full moon in general;
the first three days of the four sacred months—Muḥarram, Rajab, Ramaḍān and Dhu ‘l-
ḥijja—were also surrounded by a special sanctity; fasting was recommended at these
times.75

In the Shia community, more sacred days are known, such as ‘Alī's birthday (13 Rajab) and
the Day of Ghadīr Khum (18 Dhu ‘l-ḥijja), when the Prophet invested ‘Alī as his successor.
Most important, however, is the month of Muḥarram, especially its first ten days.
Processions begin, people go to the majlis, which are meetings (separated for men and
women, of course) with standards, flags and votive offerings placed in a corner, and the
story of Ḥusayn's suffering in Kerbela is recited in poetry and prose with increasing intensity
day by day. Pious Shiites follow the sufferings of the imam, the death of the small children,
the wailing of the women and the final martyrdom of Ḥusayn and his family and friends with
ever-heightened empathy, almost like the Christians who live through the mysteries of the
Holy Week.76

In the processions on 10 Muḥarram, tābūts are carried, replicas of the sarcophagus of

Ḥusayn. These are very high structures (5–6 m) made of wood or paper, veritable works of
art in whose preparation the pious compete from the beginning of Muḥarram. A white horse
is also led in the procession in case the Mahdi should suddenly appear (see above, p. 25).
Everyone wants to participate in these processions and the general atmosphere of
mourning. S. H. Manto's Urdu short story Kālī Shalwār, ‘The black shalwar’, tells of a
prostitute's desire for the black trousers worn during Muḥarram (for Muslims avoid wearing
colourful garments, jewellery and make-up); in Ahmadabad in Gujarat, the prostitutes have a
special day for taking part in the celebration, during which they abstain completely from their
usual activities. For Muslims know that weeping for Ḥusayn is necessary for one's
salvation—even though the idea is not theologically founded.

The Muḥarram processions with flagellation and even fire-walking have turned in some
areas into something akin to a carnival: in Hyderabad/Deccan, one finds buffoons dancing
with the procession, and little boys may serve— usually owing to their parent's vow—as
Ḥusayn kā majnūn, ‘Ḥusayn's madman’ fumigation with fragrant woods is also practised.77
As in other popular festivities, such as anniversaries of a saint's death, ‘urs, the limits of
normal behaviour can disappear, the borders between different classes and groups of
people can be lifted, and everyone is carried away in the waves of enthusiasm, if not frenzy,
that tear apart the sober rhythm of normal life.

Special food is connected with Muḥarram: on ‘Ashūrā Day, the actual death of Ḥusayn,
Muslims prepare a dish called ‘āshūrā, which consists of grains, raisins and numerous other
ingredients to remind the pious of the last meal which the poor members of the Prophet's
family prepared from the few edibles that they could scratch together. To send a bowl of
‘āshūrā to one's neighbours was customary in Turkey and the countries east of it; now,
‘āshūrā appears as a delicious everyday dessert on the menu of many Turkish restaurants.
Poets loved to sing of the tragedy of Kerbela, and the genre of marthiya, threnody, had its
highest development at the Shia courts of India, especially Lucknow; it ranges from simple
lullabies for the dying six-month-old baby ‘Alī Aṣghar (thus in Golconda in the seventeenth
century) to the famous marthiyas of Anīs (d. 1874) and Dabīr (d. 1875). The latter two
excelled in long poems of the type musaddas, six-lined stanzas, which enabled them to
describe the gruesome details most accurately at epical length. To this day, a good recitation
of an Urdu marthiya moves the participants in a majlis to tears, and such recitations attract
thousands of Indo-Pakistanis, for example in London.

In Iran, poets have also devoted poetry to the event of Kerbela. Most impressive among their
ballads is Qā'ānī's elegy in the rhetorical form of ‘question and answer’, which begins with
the lines;

What's raining?—Blood!—Who?—The eye.—How?—Day and night!

—Why?—From grief!—What grief?—The grief of the monarch of

Kerbela…78

This form points to the tendency in Iran to dramatize the event of Kerbela. There, the art of
ta‘ziya, a kind of passion play, occupies a prominent place.79 In these plays, the sufferings
of Imam Ḥusayn and his family are placed at the centre of the entire universal history, to
become an integral part of salvation history. Not historical truth but the metahistorical
importance of Ḥusayn's suffering is at the base of this ta‘ziya, in which the most incongruous
protagonists are brought together to become aware of Ḥusayn's sacrifice; Adam, Mawlānā
Rūmī, the martyr-mystic al-Ḥallāj and many others are woven into the fascinating fabric of
these plays which centre around an event that took place at a well-defined moment in history
yet seems to belong to a different dimension of time.80 The poets, especially the folk poets,
have therefore been accused of mentioning how Ḥasan, ‘Alī's elder son, entered the
battlefield along with his brother Ḥusayn, although in reality he had died (probably poisoned)
some eleven years earlier; but, for the poets, both appear as ‘princes’ or ‘bridegrooms’ of
Kerbela.

While Muḥarram is generally observed in the Shia community, another tendency among
some Indian Shiites was not only to commemorate Kerbela but also to celebrate all the
death anniversaries as well as birthdays of the twelve imams with dramatic performances:
eye-witnesses at the court of Lucknow in the 1830s describe such uninterrupted festivities
and tell with amazement that the king's favourite elephant was trained to mourn Imam
Ḥusayn during Muḥarram with long-drawn-out trumpetings; Wāh Ḥusaynaa, wāāh
Ḥusaynaa, Wāh Ḥusaayyin…81

Much more in the general line of festive days are the celebrations of saints’ anniversaries,
called ‘urs, ‘wedding’, because the saint's soul has reached the Divine Beloved's presence.
Tens and even hundreds of thousands of pilgrims arrive from various parts of the country or,
as in the case of Mu‘īnuddīn Chishtī (d. 1236) in Ajmer, even in special trains from Pakistan
which, for the occasion, are allowed to cross the otherwise closed border. Common prayer,
the singing of hymns and, last but not least, the participation in the common meals which are
distributed weld them into one great family (the ‘urs at Ajmer has lately been described in
detail).82 The religious events can go together with less religious aspects; the shrine of Lāl
Shahbāz Qalandar in Sehwan, Sind, still bears traces in the cult of its long-forgotten past as
a Shiva sanctuary, and the ‘urs of Sālār Mas‘ūd in Bahraich reminds the visitor not only of
the spiritual marriage of the young hero's soul with God but also of his nuptials with his bride,
Zahra Bībī.83 Many people regard a visit on the anniversary of ‘their’ special saint as almost
equal to a pilgrimage to Mecca.84 (To visit Mawlānā Rūmī's mausoleum in Konya seven
times equals one ḥajj—so they claim in Konya.) Muslims like to visit mausoleums and
cemeteries on Fridays before the noon prayer, and in general the gates are always open to
welcome visitors. The days of the ‘urs of each saint are carefully printed in small calendars in
India and Pakistan, although for the traditionalist the celebration of saints’ anniversaries is
nothing short of paganism, and the legalistically-minded ‘ulamā tried time and again to curtail
these customs.

For the pious Muslim, almost every month has special characteristics. While in Muḥarram
Muslims think of the martyrdom of Ḥusayn and avoid wedding feasts (even among Sunnis),
the second month, Ṣafar, is considered unlucky because the Prophet's terminal illness
began on its last Wednesday, and he supposedly said that he would bless the one who gave
him news that Ṣafar was over.

In Rabī ‘al-awwal, the Prophet's anniversary is celebrated, while the next month, Rabī’ ath-
thānī, is devoted—at least for Sufi-minded Muslims—to the memory of ‘Abdul Qādir Gīlānī
(d. 1166), the founder of the Qadiriyya ṭariqa; hence in Indo-Pakistan it is simply called
gyārhrinñ or yārhinñ, ‘the eleventh’, because ‘Abdul Qādir's anniversary falls on the eleventh
of the month.

Rajab, the seventh lunar month, is connected with the Prophet's heavenly journey, mi‘rāj,
which took place, according to tradition, on the twenty-seventh. The so-called raghā'ib nights
at its beginning are especially blessed. This month is preferable for the smaller pilgrimage,
the ‘umra, which, however, is permitted at any time except during the days of the ḥajj.

Sha‘bān is the month of the laylat al-barā'a: and some pious people have claimed that the
letters of its very name point to five noble qualities of the Prophet: sh: sharaf, dignity, honour;
‘ayn: ‘uluw, eminence; b: birr, goodness; atif: ulfat, friendship, affection; n: nūr, light. It is also
related that he used to fast in Sha‘bān as a preparation for Ramaḍān. The following
Ramaḍān, as the fasting moon, and finally the last month, Dhū ‘l-ḥijja, as the time of
pilgrimage, are considered blessed everywhere.

In this connection, it is revealing to have a look at a list of days during which the Muslim
sipahis in India (especially in the Deccan) were given home leave by the British in the
nineteenth century: during the Muḥarram festivities, on the last Wednesday of Ṣafar, on the
Prophet's death anniversary (i.e. 12 Rabī‘al-awwal), on ‘Abdul Qādir's ‘urs, and on the ‘urs of
Zinda Shāh Madār, as well as on the memorial day of Mawlā ‘Alī and of Gēsūdarāz, the
great Chishti saint of Gulbarga (d. 1422). Lists from other parts of British India may have
included other saints’ days.

But not only ‘sacred’ days which are taken out of the normal flow of time by dint of their
blessing power are observed; rather, each day has its peculiarities because it is connected
with planetary influences, angels, colours and scents, as one can understand from Niẓāmī's
Persian epic Haft Paykar. If any sober critic feels compelled to accuse Niẓāmī of poetical
exaggeration, he should turn to the works of famous Muslim scholars such as the traditionist
and theologian Jalāluddīn as-Suyūṭī (d. 1505) in Cairo and the leading ḥadīth scholar in
seventeenth-century India, ‘Abdul Ḥaqq Muḥaddith Dihlawī (d. 1645), for both of them—like
many others before and after them—have composed books about the properties of the days
of the week. As God created Adam on Friday from the clay that the angel ‘Azra'il collected
by force from the earth, Friday is the best day of the week. Hud and Abraham, so it is said,
were born on a Friday (the latter incidentally on 10 Muḥarram!), and Gabriel gave Solomon
his miraculous ring on Friday, as Kisā'ī tells. Thus, the central position of the day on which
the congregation is supposed to gather at noon in the mosque is duly singled out, although
in classical times Friday, in contrast to the Sabbath and Sunday, was not considered a full
holiday. Only comparatively recently have some Muslim states declared it the weekly
holiday, while Sunday is a working day in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for example. On
Friday, so Muslims believe, there is an hour during which God answers all prayers—but the
exact moment is unknown to mortals.85

Monday is the day of the Prophet's birth as well as of his triumphal entrance into Mecca in
630—hence it is a most auspicious day, while Tuesday is considered unlucky, for God
created all unpleasant things on Tuesday. Thursday is a good day for travelling, for military
undertakings and also for fasting86 (as a preparation for Friday, for the day begins at its eve:
jum‘a rāt, ‘Friday night’, corresponds to the night between Thursday and Friday).

The scholars detected auspicious days for shaving, for measuring and for putting on new
clothes; in short, one might organize one's whole life in accordance with the aspects of
certain days. It is well known that the Mughal emperor Humāyūn (1530–56) fastidiously
clung to the rules of the auspicious and inauspicious days and hours and would allow people
to visit him in this or that capacity or for specific kinds of work only according to the right hour
of the right day.87

Most blessed are, in any case, the early morning hours (the Koran urges Muslims in Sūra
11:114 to pray at the ends of the day and at night). Therefore the merchant will sell the first
item at a special price to partake in this blessing; the first customer's arrival will positively
determine the whole day.

The hours themselves were fixed in accordance with the prayer times, whose greatest
possible extension was exactly to be measured by the length of the shadow cast by the
praying person. Now, modern clocks facilitate the exact determination of the time, which, in
any case, is marked by the mu'adhdhin's call from the minaret. The Westerner who may be
used to calling the time between approximately 3 and 6 p.m. ‘afternoon’ will have to learn
that, for the Turks, ‘afternoon’, marks rather the hours between noon prayer and mid-
afternoon prayer, ‘aṣr.

When speaking about time-consciousness in Islam, one tends to regard time as linear, which
is typical of ‘prophetic religions’: time begins with creation, the Yesterday, dūsh, of Persian
poets, and leads to the Day of Judgment, the Tomorrow of the Koran (cf. Sūra 54:26). But
this linear time changes in a certain way into a cyclical movement, that is, ‘the journey of
God's servants from the place of beginning to the place of return’, as Sanā'ī and Najmuddīn
Dāyā Rāzī called their books concerning human beings’ progress.88 Mystics would see it as
a journey from ’ adam, ‘not-being’, into the second ’ adam, the unfathomable Divine
Essence. Later Sufis have spoken of the arc of descent from the Divine origin to the
manifestation of humanity and back in the arc of ascent into the Divine homeland, under
whatever image (rose-garden, ocean, reed-bed) it may have been symbolized.
A complete development of cyclical time, however, has been offered by the Ismailis, to
whose system Henry Corbin has devoted a number of studies—the seven cycles of prophets
and their nāṭiqs, ‘speakers’, represent the cyclical movement in universal history.89

Yet, in our lives, we experience linear time. However, the believers were well aware that just
as the road towards God ends in lā-makān, ‘there where no place is’, thus there is a deep
difference between the time we usually know and live in and the Divine time. This is
expressed in the Prophet's word: ‘I have a time with God, li ma‘a Allāh waqt (AM no. 100)—a
time to which not even Gabriel, who is pure spirit, has access. The waqt, the ‘cutting sword’,
as it was defined by the Sufis, is the nunc aetenum, the time beyond time in which there is
neither before nor hereafter. The experience of the waqt (which roughly corresponds to the
medieval German mystical term ‘das Nu’) is central in Sufi writing because it changes the
seeker's consciousness radically. Persian drinkers have spoken, in a fine interpretation of
Sūra 41:53, of the zamān āfāqī and zamān anfusī, based on the signs in the horizons, āfāq,
and in the souls, anfus, which serve to point to God's activities. The āfāqī time, connected
with the ‘horizons’, our created world, is the level which we experience in daily life and in
which we act; but once the waqt takes the seeker out of himself, he experiences the anfusī
time, the spiritual time, the moment when normal discernment has no meaning any more. It
is this timelessness out of which the mystics spoke their paradoxes, for the distinction
between generations and ages exists no longer—thus al-Ḥallāj can sing, as did many others:

My mother has borne her father,

and my daughters are my sisters,90

and Fāṭima is called umm abīhā, ‘her father's mother’. This Divine Now is the still point that
contains in itself all movement.

Perhaps the most ingenious attempt to symbolize the two levels of time was made by Iqbāl
who saw linear, created time as it comes into existence with the very moment of creation as
a zunnār, an infidel's girdle which has to be torn so that one may reach the eternal Now in
God in a rare moment of ecstasy. He quotes Goethe's lines:

Wenn im Unendlichen dasselbe

sich ewig wiederholend fließt,

Das tausendfältige Gewölbe

sich kräftig ineinanderschlieöt,

stromt Lebenslust aus alien Dingen,

dem größten wie dem kleinsten Stern,

und alles Drängen, alles Ringen

ist ew'ge Ruh in Gott dem Herrn.91

One may find in literature allusions to dahr, the time, which had been regarded by both pre-
Islamic Arabs and Iranians as the power ruling the universe. It is a power through which
everything is determined, a blind fate. Yet, a ḥadīth qudsī makes God say: ‘Don't curse dahr,
for I am the dahr’ that is, if one understands it correctly, then even the seemingly cruel time
is still subjugated to God. In later time, dahr was taken as coterminous not only with
impersonal fate but even more with the material world—the Dahriyya become, in Islamic
polemics, the materialists, godless and hence sinful.

Yet, Time as a power that ‘weaves a garment for the invisible divinity from the two-coloured
thread on the loom of days and nights’ can be encountered among the poets and thinkers,
and Iqbāl, who so ingeniously called people to tear the girdle of created linear time, yet sings
of Time's activities in more than one poem. But Nāṣir-i Khusraw remarks, in a verse that
sounds astounding in the general Islamic context:

The Canvas of His Art is Time and Place—

Hence Time is infinite, and boundless Space,92

while one generally accepts the movement from eternity without beginning, azal, to eternity
without end, abad, as finite; for even time will end, as everything is perishable, and only the
Divine Now will remain.

SACRED NUMBERS93

Space and time are measured in numbers, and Islam, like all religions, emphasizes the
importance of certain numbers, in many cases following Pythagorean ideas, thus in the
emphasis laid on odd numbers. The Pythagorean preference for odd numbers (which are
regarded as masculine while even numbers are feminine and fraught with negative
connotations) is reflected in the saying Inna Allāha ‘witr yuḥibbu ‘l-witr, ‘Verily God is an odd
number [i.e. One] and loves odd numbers’. For this reason, many acts are performed in odd
numbers such as three or seven times: the Prophet, so it is said, broke his fast with an odd
number of dates; and Snouck Hurgronje tells that in his time in Arabia the visitor was offered
one cup of tea after the other, but if he should drink four cups he must have a fifth one lest
the number be even.94

It was easy, as can be clearly seen from the above-mentioned saying, to connect the odd
number with the central dogma of Islam, namely that God is One (although, properly
speaking, One is not a real number). The problem of honestly attesting God's absolute unity
and Oneness, however, posed grave problems to mystical thinkers, for the very act of
pronouncing the profession of God's Unity presupposes the existence of a speaking subject.
Hence, according to mystical thought, only God can attest His Unity; only He, as Kharrāz (d.
around 896) stated, ‘has the right to say “I”’.

But creation requires the existence of duality, of the Creator and the creation; and, as space
and serial time come into existence only with the act of creation, God reveals Himself in the
contrasting pair of jalāl and jamāl, majesty and beauty, in the change of day and night, in
breathing in and breathing out, in the heartbeat and in the positive and negative poles that
make the electric current flow. Is not the Divine creative word kun (written in Arabic kn) like a
two-coloured rope that hides the Divine Unity, as Rūmī asks (see below, p. 226)?

For those who understood the signs, it seemed revealing that the Koran (as does the Torah)
begins with the letter b, that is, with the formula bismi'llahi…, and the numerical value of b as
2 points to the duality inherent in everything created, while the first letter of the alphabet, alif
with its numerical value 1, is the cipher for the One and Unique God.

Islam has fought fiercely against the Trinitarian concept of the deity, the apparent ‘tri-deism’
in Christianity. However, Trinitarian dunking is deeply rooted in human beings, as we live in
a three-dimensional world. It is therefore not surprising that one encounters a considerable
number of concepts which are grouped in three, let alone the many customs and rites which
have to be performed thrice, such as knocking at the door, or repeating certain questions or
polite formulas; for the Prophet used to repeat his words thrice (AM no. 192).

The life of piety itself is divided, according to the ḥadīth, into three phases: islām, the
external, legal, practical aspect; īmān, the interiorized faith; and iḥsān, ‘doing good’, that is,
acting in the knowledge that God is always watching, so that every act has to be performed
as beautifully, ḥasan, as possible. The Koran offered the Muslim the three stages of the
nafs, the self, beginning with the nafs ammāra bi ‘s-sū, the ‘soul inciting to evil’ (Sūra 12:53),
then the higher stage, nafs hawwāma, ‘the blaming soul’, which can be taken as
corresponding to our conscience, but sometimes even to consciousness (Sūra 75:2), and
finally the nafs muṭma ‘inna, the ‘soul at peace’, the stage from which it will be called back,
satisfied and satisfying, to its Lord (Sūra 89:27, 28).

The way to God was seen as sharī‘a, the Highway of the Law, ṭarīqa, the narrow path of the
mystic, which leads in its end to ḥaqīqa, ‘Divine Truth’, or to ma‘rifa, ‘intuitive gnosis’. Each
step on the path could be divided, again, into three degrees: the rules for the normal
believer, the elite, and the elite of the elite. And as Three is the overarching principle, the first
number by which a geometric figure, the triangle, can be constructed, contrasts and tensions
are solved through the introduction of a third element: lover and beloved are united in Love,
and in the last stage of recollection, dhikr, the one who recollects is united with the
recollected object in the very act of dhikr.

One finds—outside Sunni orthodoxy—theological trinities. In Shia Islam, God, Muhammad

and ‘Alī are named together; in the tripartite Shia call to prayer, though not based on official
texts, one adds to the general formula of the shahāda the words ‘Alī walī Allāh, ‘‘Alī is the
friend of God’. The Ismailis know the groups of Muhammad, ‘Alī and the Imam. In other
sectarian groups, similar formations of three (sometimes amazing ones!) are found, for
example when the name of Salmān al-Fārisī is added to that of Muhammad and ‘Alī.

From ancient times, Four was the number of the orderly universe, of the square, a number
by which chaos is formed into something tangible: the four directions and the four elements
are the best-known examples of this ordering power of Four.95 In the spiritual sphere, there
are four awtād, ‘pillars’, of the hierarchy of saints, as there are also four archangels. Kisā'ī
even speaks of four castes of learned djinns.96 The ‘four books’, Torah, Psalms, Gospel and
Koran, are as well known as the ‘four takbīr’, that is, the fourfold Allāhu akbar pronounced in
the funeral rite. That there are ‘four rightly guided caliphs’ as the first successors of the
Prophet may be an accident, but one wonders whether it was just by chance that only four
legal schools, madhhab, crystallized out of a large number of schools that existed in earlier
times. Up to four legitimate wives are permitted, and four witnesses are required to testify in
a case of adultery.
The structuring of cities or buildings according to the cosmological model of the square or
the cross exists in Islam as well: the city of Hyderabad/Deccan, with its centre, the Chār
Minār, the fourfold minaret, is one of the finest examples of this ordering principle. The
ordering power of four is clear from a number of sayings in the Nahj al-balāgha, a work
attributed to ‘Alī, such as:

Faith rests upon four pillars: patience, certitude, justice and striving; and patience rests upon
four pillars: longing, kindness, asceticism and watchfulness… [and so on].

The same structure is repeated in the description of infidelity, or in sayings like:

There is no wealth but intellect; no poverty but ignorance; no heritage but good behaviour;
no helper but good counsel.97

A particularly interesting number in Islam is Five, connected from time immemorial with the
goddess Ishtar or her later counterpart Venus, and central in Manichean cosmology. Fivefold
structures do not occur in crystalline forms, but occur in many vegetable forms, and thus
Five is connected with the five senses.

In Islam, five is the numerical value of the letter h, the last and essential letter of the word
Allāh, but it occurs on a more practical level in faith and ritual: there are five so-called pillars
of Islam (profession of faith, ritual prayer, alms tax, fasting in Ramaḍān, and pilgrimage to
Mecca), as well as five daily ritual prayers. In the initiation rites of the futuwwa sodalities, the
apron is folded five times to remind the neophyte of five basics: the ritual prayer; the ahl al-
‘abā (i.e. the five members of Muhammad's household which are under his cloak and who
are often called Panjtan, ‘five people’, namely Muḥammad, Fāṭima, ‘Alī, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn);
the five ūlū ‘l-‘azm, the lawgiving prophets Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muḥammad;
the five pillars of faith; and the five parts of the creed: ‘I believe in God, His angels, His
books, His messengers, in resurrection and in God's decree’ not forgetting the five
‘presences’, ḥaḍrāt, of the Divine in Ibn ‘Arabī's theosophy. At the initiation of a Khāksār
dervish, five ghusl (complete baths) of the candidate are required, and the newcomer has to
bring five gifts and is reminded of his fivefold duties.98

Pentads reign supreme in practical life and belief, but can also be encountered in several
philosophical systems developed by early Muslim philosophers, as well as by the Ismailis.

God created the world in six days (Sūra 25:60 et al.), and in metaphorical language this
world is often described as a cube in the midst of whose six sides the poor human being is
fettered by the four elements and the five senses. The Koranic remark that God ‘revealed to
the bee’ (Sūra 16:68) can perhaps be taken as pointing to the hexagonal shape of the
beehive, which is a fitting symbol for the created world. The hexagram, an old magic sign,
also plays a role in Islamic magic literature, as does the six-pointed star, which combines the
macrocosmic and microcosmic triangle.

In most religious traditions, Seven is particularly important. The sevenfold circumambulations

of the Kaaba and the seven stonings of Satan near Mina (repeated thrice) are central rites in
Islam. Seven was sacred both to Semites (from the days of Babylonian astronomical
reckoning, to which we owe the concept of the seven spheres) and to Iranians, and Islamic
lore and psychology have taken over many ideas from both sources and added to them.99
The seven steps, or seven valleys, on the mystical path are common to mystical traditions in
most parts of the world, but it is a typical Persian custom to have haft sīn on the Nawruz
table; these are seven objects (food, flowers or the like) whose names begin with an s.

But while this is restricted to Iranian areas, many aspects of the sacred seven are commonly
observed; the Koran has a sevenfold meaning, and there are seven canonical ways to recite
it, not forgetting that a rak‘a, a cycle in prayer, consists of seven parts. There are in esoteric
Islam seven ‘angels ecstatic with love’, which are explained as the theophanic forms of the
Divine Names, and there are seven major prophets. The highly complicated speculations
about the heptadic cycles of prophets and ‘speakers’, nāṭiq, the role of the seventh imam
and its philosophical implications in Ismaili Shia Islam, have been discussed several times
by Henry Corbin.100 The Ismaili emphasis on Seven is beautifully symbolized in the
heptagonal fountain in the Ismaili Centre in London. For Seven is in numerological
interpretation an ideal combination of the spiritual Three and the material Four and thus
points to the perfect way through life.

But while there are seven steps required to lead the wayfarer to his goal, and there are
seven gates of Hell (Sūra 15:44), Eight has been, in the history of religions, the number of
completion and eternity, of eternal bliss. Is not the Divine Throne carried by eight angels
(Sūra 69:17)? There have been attempts to explain the octagonal fountains in the centre of a
mosque's courtyard as recalling the heavenly Throne. Paradise has eight gates, one more
than Hell, for God's mercy is greater than His wrath (cf. AM no. 64). The eightfold path
(comparable to the eight blessings in the Sermon on the Mount or the eight teachings of the
Buddha) has a counterpart in the eight advices in the ‘Path of Junayd’, the eight rules of the
Naqshbandi Sufis, and the eight words of wisdom which the Khāksār novice receives at his
initiation.

Hasht bihisht, ‘Eight Paradises’, is a Persian epic by Amīr Khusraw which tries to emulate
Niẓāmī's Haft Paykar, ‘Seven Beauties’, and gardens, especially those surrounding a
mausoleum, are often laid out in an eightfold shape reminiscent of Paradise, while books
with titles like Gulistān, ‘Rose Garden’, or Bahāristān, ‘Spring Garden’, consist of eight
chapters each, recalling the ideal garden's shape.

Nine, the glorified sacred Three, is prominent among Turks and peoples under their
influence; the concept of nine spheres appears in Muslim astronomy, hence Persian literary
works with the title Nuh Sipihr, ‘Nine Spheres’. Among Turkish dynasties, nine remained
important in etiquette and official life, so much so that in Mughal India the custom of bringing
ninefold gifts to a high-ranking person transformed the word toquz, ‘nine’, into a term for
‘present, gift’.

Ten has been, from the days of the Pythagoreans, the number of perfection and
completeness, and the Arabs and Muslims used the decimal system. Perfection was
reached by the ‘ashara al-mubashshara, the ten companions of the Prophet who were
promised Paradise, and famous Sufi masters surrounded themselves, as legend has it, with
ten favourite disciples. That Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, the tenth Ottoman ruler, was
born at the beginning of the tenth century of the hegira and had ten sons, induced Turkish
historians to attribute all kinds of decades to him: for example, he conquered ten countries.
Military units, incidentally, were also arranged in tens and multiples of ten (as in ancient
Rome). For the Shia, on the other hand, ten is usually reminiscent of 10 Muḥarram, the day
of Ḥusayn's martyrdom, and Dehnāmas, ‘books of Ten’, were composed to be read during
the first ten days of Muḥarram.

Twelve, the number of the zodiacal signs, appears most prominently in the twelve imams of
the Shia, between whom and the signs of the zodiac mysterious relations were established.
Ibn ‘Arabī also speaks of twelve categories of angels mentioned in the Koran.

The importance of Fourteen is understood from its being a lunar number, and a beautiful boy
of fourteen was often compared to the full moon in radiant beauty, while the Fourteen
Innocents in Shia Islam are perhaps connected with ancient groups of fourteen protecting
spirits, angels or saints. Fourteen, as the number of the full moon, has more peculiarities:
there are twenty-eight lunar mansions as well as letters of the Arabic alphabet; fourteen of
these have diacritical marks and are, in esoterism, connected with mulk, the created worlds,
while the other fourteen are plain and are related to the malakūt, the realm of angels and
powers; again, fourteen of them are called ḥurūf shamsiyya (they assimilate with the l of the
Arabic article al-) and fourteen are qamariyya, ‘moon letters’. The correspondence between
the twenty-eight lunar mansions and the twenty-eight letters induced the great medieval
historian and astronomer al-Bīrūnī to claim that the ‘word of God’ (as revealed in the letters)
and ‘work of God’ as shown in the lunar mansions are intrinsically intertwined.

Seventeen, rather unimportant elsewhere, plays a significant role in Islam: the number of all
the rak‘as to be prayed during one day is seventeen, and, in the ninth century, Jābir ibn
Ḥayyān developed a highly interesting system built on the Seventeen.101 In Turkish Muslim
tradition, it is connected with the number of heroes and battles but also the number of the
patrons of artisans’ guilds, while Eighteen is loved by the Mevlevis on account of the
eighteen introductory verses of Rūmī's Mathnawi. The concept of the 18,000 worlds was
known from a rather early time.

Nineteen is the numerical value of the word wāḥid, ‘One’, and therefore highly appreciated; it
is the sacred number of the Bahais. But also it plays a role in general Islam, not only
because of the nineteen henchmen of Hell (Sūra 74:30), but also because many interpreters
connected it with the number of letters in the basmalah (others, however, counted only
eighteen letters in this formula). And in Shia speculation it occupied a prominent place as it
is the sum of the twelve zodiacal signs and the seven planets, which correspond to the
seven prophets and twelve imams.102 But when a Muslim, a few years ago, tried to prove
with the help of a computer that the entire structure of the Koran relied upon Nineteen his
work was met with great mistrust, even hatred.

Among the larger numbers, Forty is exceptionally important. Not only is it the numerical
value of the letter m, a letter specifically connected with the prophet Muhammad and in
particular with his ‘heavenly name’ Ahmad: as Aḥmad is distinguished from Aḥad, ‘One’, only
by the m, human beings have to reach God by means of forty steps.

The general meaning of Forty in Middle Eastern traditions is preparation and purification, an
often painful preparation for a rite of passage: the forty years during which the Children of
Israel erred through the desert symbolize, as it were, the numerous other ascetic feats that
humankind has to undertake, and Moses’ forty-day fast (Sūra 7:142) prefigures the forty
days of seclusion (arba‘īn, chilla) that the Sufi has to practise to achieve mature spirituality.
In everyday life, forty days are required for purification after childbirth or a case of death to
get rid of the taboo connected with these states. Many major events are measured in forties:
the deluge lasted forty days; Idrīs, Hūd and Ṣāliḥ were called to act as prophets at the age of
forty, and so was the Prophet Muhammad; for forty is the age of full maturity, as is borne out
not only by legends and proverbs but by historical fact as well. At the end of time, so
Muslims believe, the Mahdi will appear after forty caliphs have ruled, and will reign for forty
years.

Forty saints—the Ki-̆rklar of Turkish piety—are an important group in the mystical hierarchy,
and it is claimed that the ahl aṣ-ṣuffa, the pious poor ‘of the veranda’ in Muhammad's house
in Medina and prototypes of later Sufis, consisted of forty people; to commemorate them, the
rope around the Khāksār dervishes’ headgear consists of forty threads twisted together.103

Forty could also be used as a general round number; that is why ‘Ali Baba had to deal with
forty thieves, and the gnat that entered Nimrod's brains brought about his death after forty
days. Fairytales abound in forties: someone gives birth to forty daughters at once; feasts
always last forty days and forty nights; the hero is victorious in forty battles; and the student
may vow to recite forty times Sūra Yāsīn provided he passes his examinations. There is no
end to partly beautiful, partly amusing uses of Forty in Arabic, Persian and especially Turkish
folklore and literature. After all, to drink a cup of coffee with someone creates, according to
Turkish belief, a relationship that will last for forty years!

Among the higher numbers, seventy-two and seventy-three are worthy of mention; seventy-
two is the number of diversified plurality (like the seventy-two disciples of Jesus, or of
Kungfutse). In Islam it appears as the number of Muslim sects, one of which will be saved.

There are ninety-nine Divine Names. Parallel to them, there were also established the
ninety-nine ‘noble names’ of the Prophet, and the prayer beads point by their division into
thirty-three or ninety-nine to these Divine Names or remind the pious of the necessity of
repeating formulas of praise and petitions ninety-nine times or a multiple of that number. And
everyone is aware of the role of 1,001, the ‘infinite’ number of the tales of ‘1,001 Nights’.

As was the case in other cultures, Muslim writers liked to arrange their works in meaningful
numbers of chapters or verses: as books dealing with Paradise or its earthly replica, the
garden, were preferably arranged in eight chapters, Ghazzālī's Ihyā’ ‘ulūm ad-dīn, ‘The
Revivification of the Sciences of Religion’, that is, of Theology proper, is divided into forty
chapters in four parts to lead the reader slowly from the basic teachings necessary for a truly
God-pleasing life to mystically deepened aspects of life such as love, longing, trust in God,
etc. While the central chapter is devoted to the Prophet Muhammad, the last one deals with
death, when the soul meets its Lord. That is the end of the fortyfold path through human life.
‘Aṭṭār's Muṣībatnāma, again, describes poetically the forty days of the chilla with the soul's
final submersion in the ocean of the soul. And when the Indo-Muslim poet Ghālib (d. 1869)
composed a na‘t, a eulogy for the Prophet, in 101 verses, he sings that his real intention was
to write 100,000 verses; 101 is, then, at least a step toward this goal; for each rhyme shall
resound a thousand times…104

NOTES
 • 1.

S. H. Nasr (ed.) (1987), Islamic Spirituality, vol. 1, p. 4. A general survey is Jamie Scott and
Paul Simpson-Housley (eds) (1991), Sacred Places and Profane Spaces. Essays in the
Geographies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. A fine introduction is Attilio Petruccioli
(1985), Dār al-Islam, Architetture del territoria nei paesi islamici.

• 2.

H. Basset (1920), Le culte des grottes au Maroc. For the aṣḥāb al-kahf, see S. Seligmann
(1914), ‘Das Siebenschläfer-Amulett’.

• 3.

C. E. Padwick (1960), Muslim Devotions, p. 22.

• 4.

M. G. Konieczny (1976), ‘Unbeachtete muslimische Kultstätten in Pakistan’.

• 5.

For a different approach, see Juan E. Campo (1991), The Other Side of Paradise.
Explorations into the Religious Meanings of Domestic Space in Islam.

• 6.

W. Braune (1960), Der islamische Orient zwischen Vergangenheit and Zukunft, p. 81. See
also J. C. Bürgel (1991), Allmacht und Mächtigkeit, p. 23.

• 7.

P. Nwyia (1970), Exégèse coranique, p. 320ff.

• 8.

F. Taeschner (1979), Zünfte, p. 532.

• 9.

Ibid., p. 574.

• 10.

H. Klopfer (1989), Das Traumbuch des Ibn Sīrīn, p. 71.

• 11.

C. E. Padwick (1960), Muslim Devotions, p. 215ff., ch. 13b.

• 12.

See H. Grotzfeld (1970), Das Bad im arabisch-islamischen Mittelalter.

 • 13.

P. Nwyia (1970), Exégèse coranique, p. 332ff.

• 14.

A. Schimmel (1983), ‘The Sufis and the shahāda’, p. 107.

• 15.

C. E. Padwick (1960), Muslim Devotions, p. 22.

• 16.

Rudolf Otto (1932), Das Gefühl des Überweltlichen, p. 258f.

• 17.

J. Horovitz (1905–10), ‘A list of published Mohammedan inscriptions of India’, p. 15.

• 18.

Christel Kessler (1984), ‘Mecca-oriented urban architecture in Mamluk Cairo; The Madrasa
Mausoleum of Sultan Sha‘bān II’.

• 19.

M. Horten (1917b) Die religiöse Gedankenwelt des Volkes im heutigen Islam, p. 332f.

• 20.

C. H. Becker (1924), ‘Die Kanzel im Kultus des alten Islam’. The Sufis loved the legend of
the ḥannāna, the palm trunk on which the Prophet used to lean while preaching; when the
first minbar was erected, the deserted piece of wood cried and sighed because it missed the
Prophet's touch.

• 21.

F. Taeschner (1979), Zünfte, p. 533.

• 22.

Gēsūdarāz (1937), Fawāmi‘ al-kilam, note of 16 Dhū'l-qa‘da 802 / 21 July 1400; transl. in
Schimmel (1986), Liebe zu dem Einen, p. 87.

• 23.

For the development of saint-worship and its paraphernalia, I. Goldziher (1890),

Muhammedanische Studien, vol. 2, pp. 275–378 is still the classical source. The literature
about saints and sacred places in Islam has increased immensely in recent years, with
studies ranging from psychological approaches to exact lists of income and expenses in a
Sufi convent. E. Dermenghem (1924), Le culte des saints dans l'Islam maghrébin, is still
valuable; a very fine collection of articles is Christian W. Troll (ed.) (1989), Muslim Shrines in
India.
 • 24.

L. Massignon (1958), ‘La Cité des Morts au Caire: Qarāfa. Darb al-aḥmar’ A. Schimmel
(1982c) Makli Hill, Cari W. Ernst (1992a), Eternal Garden. Mysticism, History, and Politics at
a South Asian Sufi Center.

• 25.

Ibn Iyās (1935), Badā'i‘ az-zuhūr fi waqā'i‘ ad-duhūr, vol, 5, p. 82.

• 26.

Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich (1962), Volksglaube im Islam, vol. 2, p. 33.

• 27.

Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui (1989a), ‘The early Chishti dargāhs’, especially p. 13.

• 28.

Simon Digby (1990) writes; ‘The territorial wilāyat of the Sufi shaykh was considered as
having a direct influence on the political and material destiny of the realm over which it was
exercised’. In ‘The Sufi Shaykh and the Sultan: a conflict of claims to authority in medieval
India’.

• 29.

P. Jackson (1989), ‘Perceptions of the dargāhs of Patna’, p. 11.

• 30.

J. A. Williams (1984), ‘The Khānqāh of Siryāqūs: A Mamluk royal religious Foundation’.

• 31.

Iqbāl (1915), Asrār-i khudī, line 502.

• 32.

C. Snouck Hurgronje (1925), Verspreide Geschrifien, vol. 5, p. 44,

• 33.

For the theme of omphalos, see W. H. Roscher (1913), ‘Omphalos’ idem (1915), ‘Neue
Omphalos-Studien’.

• 34.

For the mystical interpretation of the Kaaba, see F. Meier (1944), ‘Das Mysterium der Kaaba:
Symbol und Wirklichkeit in der islamischen Mystik’ H. Corbin (1965), ‘La configuration du
Temple de la Ka‘ba comme secret de la vie spirituelle’ (English translation in Corbin (1986),
Temple and Contemplation).

• 35.
A. L. F. A. Beelaert (1988–9), ‘The Ka‘ba as a woman—a topos in classical Persian
literature’. For a study of present-day imagery and actions among the pilgrims to Mecca, see
William C. Young (1993), ‘The Ka‘ba, gender, and the rites of pilgrimage’, in which the
imagery of the Ka‘ba as woman or bride is described by a social anthropologist.

• 36.

David A. King (1986), ‘The sacred direction in Islam. A study of the interaction of religion and
science in the Middle Ages’.

• 37.

Christel Kessler (1984), ‘Mecca-oriented urban architecture’, deals with this theme.

• 38.

C. E. Padwick (1960), Muslim Devotions, p. 59.

• 39.

Ḥasan Dihlawī, in Ikrām (1953), Armaghān-i Pāk, p. 135. But the term occurs some 200
years earlier in ‘Aṭṭār (1960 ed.), Divān-i qaṣā'id wa ghazaliyāt’, p. 26.

• 40.

Compare the description in Claude Addas (1988), Ibn ‘Arabī: La quête du Soufre Rouge.

• 41.

Iqbāl (1961), Stray Reflections, no. 19, takes ‘the fact that the Prophet prospered and died in
a place not his birthplace’ as an indication of the unnecessary clinging to one's native soil.

• 42.

A particularly fine account is Emel Esin (1963), Mecca the Blessed, Medina the Radiant.
Descriptions of Europeans who secretly participated in the pilgrimage (such as Richard
Burton) or stayed in Mecca for a long time (such as Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje) are now
increasingly complemented by travelogues and autobiographies of European and American
converts to Islam.

• 43.

For poetry in honour of Medina, see A. Schimmel (1988), And Muhammad is His
Messenger, pp. 189–94.

• 44.

Jāmī (1962), Dīvān-i kāmil, pp. 88–9, no. 61.

• 45.

Yunus Emre Divanĭ, p. 567, no. CXXXIX; for Bhatti, see N. A. Baloch (ed.) (1961), Maulūda,
p. 23, no. 54.
 • 46.

Published in ‘Āshiq min Ifrīqiyya; German translation in A Schimmel (1975b),

Zeitgenössische arabische Lyrik, p. 95. For the idea that the Prophet's tomb radiates light,
see also E. W. Lane (1978 ed.), Manners and Customs, p. 236.

• 47.

Iqbāl (1938), Armaghān-i Ḥijāz, p. 29.

• 48.

According to popular sayings, one prayer in Jerusalem is better than 25,000 prayers
elsewhere, one in Medina is 50,000 times better, and one in Mecca is 100,000 times better.

• 49.

H. Lazarus-Yafeh (1981), ‘The sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam’ L. Massignon (1964),

‘L'oratoire de Marie à l'Aqüa, vu sous le voile de deuil de Fāṭima’ speaks of the importance
of Jerusalem as ‘the gibla of Muhammad's heart’ and refers too to the belief that the Kaaba
will be transported to Jerusalem at the end of time.

• 50.

Kisā'ī (1977), The Tales of the Prophets (translated by Wheeler M. Thackston), p. 18.

• 51.

S. Murata (1992b), The Tao of Islam, ch. 3.

• 52.

H. Corbin (1971), L'homme de lumière, deals with this problem.

• 53.

For a theme from Siraiki literature, see C. Shackle (1978), ‘The pilgrimage and the extension
of sacred geography in the poetry of Khwāja Ghulām Farīd’.

• 54.

This theme is elaborated in H. Corbin (1971), L'homme de lumière.

• 55.

G. Fohrer (1939), Der Heilige Weg, K. Goldammer (1940), ‘Wege aufwärts und Wege
abwärts’ Hady Roger Idris (1974), ‘De la notion arabo-musulmane de voie salvatrice’
Frederick M. Denny (1984), ‘The problem of salvation in the Quran: key terms and concepts’.

• 56.

A good example is E. Kohlberg (1979), ‘Manāhij al-‘ārifin. A treatise on Sufism by Abū ‘Abd
al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī’, where it is stated. ‘Sufism has a starting point, an end, and stages in
between’.
 • 57.

Kisā'ī (1977), The Tales of the Prophets, p. 66. He derives the name of the hill of Marwa
from mar'a, ‘woman’, as it was Eve's place, and that of ‘Arafat from ta‘ārafā, ‘the two [Adam
and Eve] recognized each other’ when they met on this spot after the Fall and their
repentance. The name of the hillock Ṣafā is sometimes derived from Adam's nickname, Ṣafī
Allāh.

• 58.

E. Underhill (1961), Mysticism p. 132, beautifully sums up the predilection for the idea of
pilgrimage: ‘Through all these metaphors of pilgrimage to a goal runs the definite idea that
the travelling self in undertaking the journey is fulfilling a destiny, a law of transcendental
life’.

• 59.

For the actual ḥajj, see C. Snouck Hurgronje (1888), Het Mekkaansche Feest, M.
Gaudefroy-Demombynes (1923), Le pélerinage à la Mecque; J. Jomier (1953), Le maḥmal
et la caravane égyptienne des pélerins de la Mecque en XIV-XX siècles; D. E. Long (1979).
The Hajj today: A Survey of the Contemporary Mecca Pilgrimage; H. Lazarus-Yafeh (1981),
‘Modern attitudes to the Hadjdj’ in Some Religious Aspects of Islam, See also Juan E.
Campo (1987), ‘Shrines and talismans—domestic Islam in the pilgrimage paintings of Egypt’.

• 60.

Shāh ‘Abdul Laṭīf (1958), Risālō, especially in the cycle about Sassui Punhun; cf. A.
Schimmel (1976a), Pain and Grace, part 2.

• 61.

For the ascension, see Schimmel (1988), And Muhammad is His Messenger, ch. 9, and
bibliography there; some of the most important studies are W. Bousset (1901), ‘Die
Himmelsreise der Seele’ G. Widengren (1950), The Ascension to Heaven and the Heavenly
Book, Marie-Rose Séguy (1972), The Miraculous Journey of Mahomet (based on a fifteenth-
century Chagatay miniature manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale); R. Ettinghausen
(1957), ‘Persian ascension miniatures of the fourteenth century’. The most famous
ascension miniature—a genre that proliferated in the fifteenth and even more so in the
sixteenth century—is that by Sulṭān Muhammad in the British Museum Niẓāmī, which is
available on postcards from the British Museum. See also S. C. Welch (1979b), Wonders of
the Age, no. 63.

• 62.

Sulṭān Walad (1936), Valadnāma, pp. 238, 356.

• 63.

‘Aṭṭār (1959), Muṣībatnāma, French translation by Isabelle de Gastines (1981), Le livre de

l'épreuve.

• 64.
For some interpretations of time in Islam, see L. Massignon (1952), ‘Le temps dans la
pensée islamique’ Lennart E. Goodman (1992), ‘Time in Islam’ H. Corbin (1983), Cyclical
Time and Ismaili Gnosis.

• 65.

H. S. Nyberg (1919), Kleinere Schriften des Ibn al-‘Arabī, p. 113.

• 66.

See EI S. V. hilāl. To point with the finger at the new moon was common, hence the
expression ‘I became so famous that people pointed at me as though I were the new moon’.

• 67.

C. Snouck Hurgronje (1925), Verspreide Geschriften, vol. 5, p. 70. These lunar mansions
are often explained with popular interpretations; thus sunbula, ‘Virgo’ is thought to mean
samm u balā, ‘poison and affliction’, because it falls in the hottest time of the year.

• 68.

Thus Mrs Meer Hassan Ali (1984), Observations on the Mussulmauns of India, vol. 1, p. 294;
at about the same time, the poet Ghālib in Delhi used the expression ‘moon in Scorpio’ to
explain his misfortune (1969a, Kulltyāt-i fārsī, vol. 4, p. 213).

• 69.

C. Vaudeville (1965), Barahmasa, Les chansons des doux mois dans Us litératures indo-
aryennes. This genre is very popular in the regional languages of Pakistan such as Sindhi
and Panjabi, where it is sometimes used to point to the course of the Islamic year in
romantic images, beginning with mourning in Muḥarram, until the longing ‘bridal soul’ finds
her goal either at the Kaaba or at the Prophet's rawḍa in Medina in the last month of the
Muslim year.

• 70.

G. E. von Grunebaum (1958), Muhammedan Festivals.

• 71.

S. D. Goitein (1966), ‘Ramaḍān, the Muslim month of fasting’, in Studies, pp. 90–110. Klaus
Lech (1979) devoted an extensive study to the institution of fasting: Geschichte des
islamischen Kultus 1, 1: Das Ramaḍān-Fasten.

• 72.

For ‘āshūrā as a fasting day, see S. Basheer (1991), ‘‘Ashūrā. An early Muslim fast’.
According to Bukhārī (ṣawm 69), ‘āshūrā was celebrated because on this day Moses and his
folk were released from Pharaoh's servitude.

• 73.
E. Mittwoch (1926), ‘Muhammads Geburts-und Todestag’. Süleyman Çelebi's mevlûd was
often printed in Turkey in Arabic and, after 1928, in Roman letters; a good English translation
is that by Lyman McCallum (1943), The Mevlidi Sherif. For modern mawlid, see P. Shinar
(1977), ‘Traditional and Reformist maulid celebrations in the Maghrib’. For the whole topic,
see A. Schimmel (1988), And Muhammad is His Messenger, ch. 8.

• 74.

According to tradition, mid-Sha‘bān also marks Muhammad's victorious return from Medina
to Mecca in 630. In Indonesia, Sha‘bān is used to commemorate the saints and to look after
the graves.

• 75.

Sanā'ī (1950), Hadīqal al-ḥaqīqa, ch. 3, p. 209. See also Suhrawardī (1978), ‘Awārif (transl.
Gramlich), p. 292.

• 76.

A fine study is M. Ayoub (1978), Redemptive Suffering in Islam. See also Irène Mélikoff
(1966), ‘Le drame de Kerbela dans la littérature epique turque’.

• 77.

Jafar Sharif (1921), Islam in India, pp. 160ff. A picture of an eighteenth-century

representation of this ‘carnival’ is in A. Schimmel (1982b), Islam in India and Pakistan
(Iconography of Religion), plate XXXVIIa.

• 78.

E. G. Browne (1924), A Literary History of Persia, vol. 4, pp. 177–8.

• 79.

Peter J. Chelkowski (ed.), (1979) Ta‘ziye (Ritual and Drama in Iran). A considerable number
of ta‘ẓiye-texts have recently been published in both the West and Iran.

• 80.

A typical example is the ta‘ziya play edited by A. G. Rawan Farhadi (1954), ‘Le majlis de al-
Ḥallāj, de Shams-i Tabrezi, et du Molla de Roum’.

• 81.

Described by Mrs Meer Hassan Ali (1973 ed.), Observations, p. 88, as well as in Aḥmad ibn
Muḥammad ash-Shīrwānī (1821), Al-manāqib al-ḥaydarīyya.

• 82.

P. M. Currie (1989), The Shrine and Cult of Muin al-Din Chishti of Ajmer.

• 83.
See Tahir Mahmood (1989), ‘The dargāhs of Sayyid Sālār Mas‘ūd Ghāzī in Bahraich;
legend, tradition, and reality’ Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui (1989b), ‘A note on the dargāhs of Sālār
Mas‘ūd in Bahraich in the light of standard historical sources’ Kerrin Gräfin Schwerin (1976),
‘Heiligenverehrung im indischen Islam’.

• 84.

Nowadays, one can advertise invitations to an ‘urs in the hope of accumulating some
baraka. An example from Morning News, Karachi, 20 November 1978: ‘Urs mubarak of
Hazrat Abdulah Shah Ghazi (Rehmatullah elaih) will be celebrated at Clifton Karachi (Hawa
Bundar) from November 22 to 24th 1978. Reputed qawwal Ghulam Farid Sabri and other
leading qawwals will participate. All are cordially invited to attend in large numbers and be
blessed. Space donated by Rusi S. Patel [author's italics]

• 85.

S. D. Goitein (1960), ‘Beholding God on Friday’, deals with the possibility that the blessed in
Paradise may see God on Fridays; some other peculiarities of Friday are also mentioned.

• 86.

According to Tirmidhī (ṣawm 44), human actions are presented to God on Mondays and
Thursdays.

• 87.

Jafar Sharif (1921), Islam in India, p. 280.

• 88.

Najmuddin Dāyā Rāzī (1893), Mirṣād al-‘ibād min al-mabda’ ilā'l-ma‘ād, transl. by Hamid
Algar (1982), The Path of God's Bondsmen from the Beginning to the Return; Sanā'i (1969),
‘Sayr al-‘ibād’, in Mathnavīhā; cf. J. C. Bürgel (1983), ‘Sanā'ī's Jenseitsreise der
Gottesknechte als poesia docta‘.

• 89.

H. Corbin (1983), Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis.

• 90.

al-Ḥallāj (1931), ‘Dīvān’, qaṣida no. X.

• 91.

For Iqbāl's concept of time and his use of the zunnār motif (especially in the Jāvīdnāma,
1932), see A. Schimmel (1963a), Gabriel's Wing, p. 295ff.

• 92.

Nāṣir-i Khusraw, translated by E. G. Browne (1921), in A Literary History of Persia, vol. 2, p.

234.

• 93.
For a general introduction, see A. Schimmel (1993), The Mystery of Numbers.

• 94.

C. Snouck Hurgronje (1925), Verspreide Geschriften, vol. 5, p. 33.

• 95.

Henry Corbin (1986), ‘The science of the balance’, in Temple and Contemplation, ch. 2,
deals with the ‘conjugal imagery’ of Sūra 4:35 by juxtaposing the four elements.

• 96.

Kisā'ī (1977), The Tales of the Prophets, p. 307.

• 97.

Nahj al-balāgha (1963) nos 30, 31, 38, 47, 54. One may also think of the four levels of Divine
manifestations, i.e. lāhūt, malakūt, jabarūt and nāsūt; cf. the paper by Jamal Elias, ‘The four
faces of God…’, read at the American Oriental Society meeting in Cambridge, MA, in March
1992.

• 98.

F. Taeschner (1979), Zünfte, p. 474; R. Gramlich (1981), Die schiitischen Derwischorden,

vol. 3, p. 77.

• 99.

U. Hartmann-Schmitz (1989), Die Zahl Sieben im sunnitischen Islam.

• 100.

H. Corbin (1983), Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis, p. 75.

• 101.

Irène Mélikoff (1962), ‘Nombres symboliques dans la littérature epico-religieuse des Turcs
d'Anatolie’ Taeschner (1979), Zünfle, p. 44.

• 102.

F. Rosenthal (1959), ‘Nineteen’.

• 103.

Gramlich (1981), Die schiitischen Derwischorden, vol. 3, p. 6.

• 104.

A. Schimmel (1979b), ‘Ghālib's qaṣīda in honour of the Prophet’.

III | Sacred Action

And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the difference of your
tongues and your colours.

Sūra 30:22

Life consists of numerous actions, many of which are deeply rooted in religious feeling or
experience, or are explained by aetiology, as repetition of once sacred events. For actions
are thought to gain weight by repetition.1

The custom, sunna, of the ancestors was one of the yardsticks of social life in pre-Islamic
Arabic society. After the advent of Islam, the sunna of the founding fathers of the religion
regimented all aspects of life. Whatever contradicts or does not conform with the sunna as
set as a model by the Prophet is abhorred because it is probably misleading, hence
dangerous; thus bid‘a, ‘innovation’, could often be simply classified as mere heresy. The
imitatio Muhammadi, as Armand Abel said correctly, consists of the imitation of the Prophet's
actions, not, as in the imitatio Christi, of participating in the role model's suffering.

The Koranic revelation itself had emphasized right conduct and salutary action, and to cling
to the sunna of the Prophet and the ancient leaders of the community, the salaf, became
increasingly important the further in time one was from the first generations who still had a
living experience before their eyes. However, the understandable tendency to sanctify the
Prophet's example could lead to a fossilization by strictly adhering to given models without
realizing the spirit expressed through these models. But while the imitation of the Prophet is
termed ittibā‘, or iqtidā, both of which mean ‘to act in conformity with…’ rather than blindly
‘imitating’ and therefore possess a salutary quality, the simple taqlīd, imitation of legal
decisions made centuries ago under different social and cultural circumstances, could be
dangerous for the growth of a healthy community. Iqbāl blames those who blindly follow the
once-and-forever determined decisions:

If there were anything good in imitation,

the Prophet would have taken the ancestors’ path.2

In the framework of inherited values and traditions, classified by theologians and (in part
even more strictly) by Sufi leaders, one can discover a tripartition, similar to that in other
religions though not as clearly and outspokenly delineated as, for example, in Christianity or
Buddhism. It is the organization of material and spiritual life into the via purgativa, via
illuminativa and via unitiva, each of which is again divided into steps and various aspects.
VIA PURGATIVA

The via purgativa comprises the different ways of purifying oneself in one's attempt to get in
touch with the sacred, the Divine, the Numinous. These include apotropaic rites, such as
noise to shy away dangerous powers. That involves, for instance, the use of drums during
eclipses to frighten the demons, or, as in parts of Muslim India, gunshots when a son is born
in order to distract possible envious djinns from hurting the baby.3 Muslims also use
firecrackers (as in the Western tradition) during important and especially liminal times, such
as the night of mid-Sha‘bān when the fates are thought to be fixed for the coming year, or in
royal weddings, as can be seen in miniatures from Mughal India.

Fumigation is particularly popular: wild rue, sipand, is burnt against the Evil Eye,4 as is
storax, tütsü. In former times, Muslims fumigated with the precious ‘ūd, aloes-wood, still
used today on rare occasions (thus in Hyderabad/Deccan during the celebrations of the
Prophet's birthday or in Muḥarram majilises). Certain kinds of scent were also considered to
be repellent to evil spirits and evil influences. The custom of pouring a fragrant lotion over
the guest's hands after a meal might originally have had such a protective value.

The idea that scent is an expression of the bearer's character is common in various parts of
the world, and the ‘odour of sanctity’ is also known in the Islamic tradition. A story told by
both ‘Aṭṭār and Rūmī (M IV 257–305) points to the role of scent as revealing a person's
predilection: a tanner came to the perfumers’ bazaar and, shocked by the wonderful
fragrance, fainted; he revived only after his brother rubbed some dog excrement under his
nose—for the sweet fragrance did not agree with him; he was used only to the stench of the
tannery. Thus, evil spirits whose being is permeated with ‘stinking’ characteristics shun the
fragrance of incense or fragrant lotions.5

The belief in the Evil Eye,6 which probably belongs among the most ancient concepts in
human history, is based, among the Muslims, on Sūra 68:51ff., wa in yakādu, ‘and they
nearly had made You glide by means of their eyes’ that is, ill-intentioned enemies directed
their eyes upon the Prophet whom God saved from their meanness. And Bukhārī (aṭ-ṭibb 66)
states: ‘The Evil Eye is a reality, ḥaqq’. Based on Koranic statements, the words wa in
yakādu are often written on amulets against the Evil Eye. Generally, blue beads, frequently
in the shape of eyes, are thought to protect people and objects, and the recitation of the last
two Sūra, al-mu‘awwidhatān, has a strong protective value. The words a‘ūdhu bi-‘llāh, ‘I seek
refuge with God’, act, as it were, as a general protection against evil.

A simple form of averting evil or sending off unpleasant visitors (humans or djinns) is to
sprinkle some salt on the floor7 or, as in Turkey, secretly to put some salt in the shoes of a
visitor whom one does not want to come again. Salt, however, has a twofold aspect: it
preserves food and is highly appreciated as a sign of loyalty, similar to the Western ‘eating
bread and salt together’.

One can ward off evil by drawing a circle around the object which one wants to protect;
walking around a sick person (usually three or seven times) with the intention of taking his or
her illness upon oneself is a well-known custom, which was performed, for example, by the
first Mughal emperor, Bābur, who thus took over his son Humāyūn's illness; the heir
apparent was indeed healed, while the emperor died shortly afterwards.
Tying knots and loosening them again was a way of binding powers. Therefore, Sūra 113
teaches the believer to seek refuge with God ‘from the women who blow into magic knots’. In
some societies, such as Morocco, tattooing is also used to ward off evil.

There are also power-loaded gestures to shy away evil. To this day, a Muslim can be deeply
shocked when shown the palm of the right hand with the fingers slightly apart, for this is
connected with the Arabic curse khams fi ‘aynak, ‘five [i.e. the five fingers] into your eye’ that
is, it means to blind the aggressor. The belief in the efficacy of the open hand is expressed in
one of the best-loved amulets in the Islamic world, the so-called ‘Hand of Fāṭima’, a little
hand worn as an elegant silver or golden piece of jewellery or else represented in red paint,
even drawn with blood on a wall to protect a house. Often, it forms the upper part of Sufi
poles or staffs.8 This hand is also connected, especially among Shiites, with the Panjtan, the
‘five holy persons’ (see above, p. 79) from the Prophet's family, and their names. Also, the
name of ‘Ali or those of all the twelve imams are sometimes engraved in a metal ‘Hand of
Fāṭima’.

If the gesture of showing the open hand to someone is more than just shying away a
prospective adversary but involves a strong curse, another way of cursing is connected with
the prayer rite: while one opens the hands heavenwards in petitional prayer to receive as it
were the Divine Grace, one can turn them downwards to express a curse. An extensive
study of gestures in the Islamic world is still required.

A widely-used apotropaic matter is henna, which serves on the one hand to dye white hair
and beards, giving the red colour of youthful energy. At weddings, especially in Indo-
Pakistan, the bride's hands and feet are painted with artistic designs in the henna (mēhndi)
ceremony, and the young women and girls attending the festive night happily throw henna at
each other to avert evil influences. For the same apotropaic reasons, henna is also used in
the Zar ceremonies in Egypt to keep away the evil spirits and djinns.9 Among Indian
Muslims, yellow turmeric can have the same function of protection of the bride, and betel,
chewed by so many Indians and Pakistanis, is supposed to contain some baraka (one can
even swear on betel).10

But one has not only to use protective means to keep away evil influences; rather, one has
also to eliminate negative aspects and taboo matter before approaching the sacred
precincts. Here, again, various rites are used to get rid of the evil, the sin, the taboo—
whatever may cling to one's body or soul. There is nothing comparable to the scapegoat in
Islamic lore, but the custom, known both in the Indian subcontinent and in Egypt, of sending
off little rafts or boats of straw into a river is thought to carry off evil. Often, this is done in the
name of Khiḍr, and the tiny vehicle is loaded with some lights or blessed foodstuffs over
which the Fātiḥa has been recited. This sending-off of evil is usually done at weddings and
on festive days. One may even look from the viewpoint of elimination at a well-known
historical event: when the ashes of the martyr-mystic al-Ḥallāj were cast into the Tigris after
his execution, it was probably not only the external act of getting rid of him, but
subconsciously it may also have been hoped that the ‘evil’ influences of the man which might
continue to disturb the community should be carried off by the water.

A widely-known rite for eliminating evil is the confession of sins. This custom is unknown in
normative Islam, for there is no mediator between God and man to whom one could confess
one's sins and be absolved. However, in Sufi and futuwwa circles, a brother who had
committed a sin had to confess it either to his master or in front of the brethren, assuming a
special ‘penitent's position’ (i.e. keeping his left ear in his right hand and vice versa, with the
first toes of each foot touching each other, the left one on the right one).11

One could also try to get rid of any evil that might cling to one's body or soul by taking off
one's clothing, especially the belt or the shoes. Moses was ordered ‘to take off his sandals’
(Sūra 20:12) because, in the sacred area which he was called to enter, nothing defiled by
ordinary daily life is admitted. The expression khal‘ an-na‘layn, ‘the casting-off of the two
sandals’, became a favourite term among the Sufis. One thinks immediately of Ibn Qaṣy's (d.
1151) book by this very tide, but the use is much wider: the seeker would like to cast off not
only the material shoes but everything worldly, even the two worlds, in order to enter the
Most Sacred Presence of the Lord.

The Turkish expression duada baş açmak, ‘to bare one's head in petition’, is reminiscent of
the custom that formerly a sinner wore a shroud and approached the one whose forgiveness
he implored barefooted and bareheaded.12 Thus, to take off one's shoes when entering a
house and, even more, a mosque is not so much a question of external purity lest the
street's dust sully the floor and the rugs but basically a religious act, as the house is in its
own way, a sacred place whose special character one has to respect and to honour (see
above, p. 49). The finest Islamic example of casting off one's everyday clothes when
entering a place filled with special baraka is the donning of the iḥrām, the pilgrims’ dress
which enables a person to enter the sacred room around the Kaaba. In pre-Islamic times,
the circumambulation of the Kaaba was probably performed naked, as sacred nudity is well
known in ancient religious traditions. Islam, however, strictly prohibits nudity, and only a few
more or less demented dervishes have gone around stark naked, such as Sarmad, the
ecstatic poet of Judaeo-Persian background, who befriended the Mughal heir apparent Dārā
Shikōh (d. 1659) and was executed two years after his master in Delhi. As contrary as nudity
is to strict Islamic prescriptions, it is nevertheless used as a metaphor in mystical language,
and authors like Bahā-i Walad (d. 1231) and his son, Jalāluddīn Rūmī, as well as Nāṣir
Muḥammad ‘Andalīb and Sirāj Awrangābādī in eighteenth-century India (to mention only a
few), used this term to point to the moment when the everyday world and its objects have, as
it were, been discarded and only God and the soul are left in a union attained by the
absolute ‘denudation’ of the soul.

A different way of eliminating evil powers is exactly the contrary of taking off one's clothing;
namely, covering. As human hair is regarded in most traditions as filled with power (cf. the
story of Samson in the Old Testament), women are urged to cover their hair. But this rule is
also valid for men, for one must not enter a sacred place with the head uncovered. A pious
Muslim should essentially always have his head covered by whatever it be—cap, fez,
turban—with a small, light prayer cap underneath. When a prayer cap is wanting and one
has to greet a religious leader or any worthy man, or enter his house, one may simply use a
handkerchief to avoid offending him.

The problem of what to cover and how to interpret the Koranic statement about the attractive
parts which women should veil (Sūra 24:31) has never been solved completely. But even the
modem Muslim woman, dressed in Western style, will cover her head when listening to the
Koran, even if only with a hastily-grabbed newspaper when she suddenly hears a recitation
of the Koran on the radio.
Purification

After the evil influences have been averted and previous sins or taboo matter cast out,
purification proper can begin before one draws near the Numinous power, the sacred space.

One way of purification is to sweep a place, especially a shrine; and while pilgrims from India
and Pakistan could (and perhaps still can) be observed sweeping quietly and gently ‘Abdul
Qādir Gīlānī's shrine in Baghdad, modern Turks have found an easier way to purify the
shrine of Ankara's protective saint, Hacci Bayram: one simply vows a broom, which is
offered to the keeper of the mausoleum when one's wish has been fulfilled.

The Chagatay minister at the court of Herat, Mīr ‘Alī Shīr Navā'ī (d. 1501), called himself the
‘sweeper of ‘Anṣarī's shrine’ to express his veneration for the Sufi master ‘Abdullāh-i Anṣārī
(d. 1089),13 a remark which should not be taken at face value, as little as the hyperbolic
expression found in literature that one ‘sweeps this or that threshold with one's eyelashes’
(and washes it perhaps with one's tears). But some credulous authors seem to believe that
this was actually done.

Sacred buildings were and still are washed at special times: to wash the Kaaba's interior is
the Saudi kings’ prerogative, and many shrines are washed at the annual celebration of the
‘urs. Often, the water is scented with sandalwood or other substances to enhance its
purifying power. In Gulbarga, the sandalwood used for such a purification is carried around
the city in a festive procession led by the sajjādanishīn of the shrine.

But much more important than these customs is the constant admonition that one has to be
ritually clean to touch or recite the Koran, for ‘only the purified touch it’, as Sūra 56:79
states.14 This is taken very seriously: no-one in a state of impurity (thus, for example,
menstruating women) may perform the ritual prayer in which Koranic verses are recited.
Particularly meticulous believers would not even mention the name of God unless they were
in a ritually pure state. Among them was the Mughal emperor Humāyūn, who would avoid
calling people by their names such as ‘Abdullāh or ‘Abdur Raḥmān lest the sacred name that
forms the second part of the name be desecrated. Similar expressions of veneration are also
known when it comes to the Prophet's name: ‘Urfī (d. 1591) claims in his grand Persian
poem in honour of the Prophet:

If I should wash my mouth a hundred times with rosewater and musk,

it would still not be clean enough to mention your noble name.15

Purification means, in a certain way, a new beginning on a loftier spiritual level.

The Prophet's biography (based on Sūra 94:1) tells how the angels opened young
Muhammad's breast to take out a small black spot from his heart and wash it with
odoriferous fluids: this is a very convenient way of pointing to his spiritual purification before
he was called to act as God's messenger.16
Purification can be achieved by different means. One, not very frequent in the Islamic world,
is by fire. It survives in some areas where, as for example in Balochistan, a true ordeal is
enacted in the case of a woman accused of adultery, who has to walk barefoot over burning
charcoals. Fire-walking is also practised among some Indian Shiites during the Muḥarram
procession: a young Muslim friend from Hyderabad/Deccan joyfully described to me this
experience, by which he felt purified and elated. Purification through fire is spiritualized in the
image of the crucible in which the base matter of the soul suffers to turn finally into gold—
one would have to refer here to the entire, and very wide, alchemical vocabulary of medieval
Islam whose centre is, indeed, purification by fire. A branch of this purification—comparable
to European midsummer night customs—is jumping through fire at Nawruz, the celebration
of the vernal equinox, as is sometimes done in Iran; but there is no obvious ‘Islamic’ aspect
to this tradition.

Purification, however, is a central Islamic tradition, based essentially on the Divine order to
the Prophet: ‘And your garments, purify them.’ (Sūra 74:4). To be in the water is, as was
seen above (pp. 7–8), to be quickened after death, and the use of water before prayer or the
recitation of the Koran (and in fact before any important action) is not only a bodily but also a
spiritual regeneration.

Modernists claim that the emphasis on proper ablution proves that Islam is the religion of
hygiene, but the true meaning is much deeper. To get rid of external dirt is one thing, to
purify oneself before religious acts is another; as Niẓāmuddīn Awliyā of Delhi remarked: ‘The
believer may be dirty, but never ritually unclean’.17 For this reason, ablution is still to be
performed after a ‘normal’ bath or shower. It is recommended, according to a ḥadīth, also in
times of anger and wrath, because wrath comes from the fire-born devil, and fire can be
extinguished by water (AM no. 243).

Ablution is a sacred action, and for each of its parts—taking the water in one's hand,
washing one's face, one's arms, one's feet etc—special prayers are prescribed which point
to the role of this or that limb in the religious sphere. A look at the examples in widely-used
religious manuals such as Abū Ḥafṣ ‘Omar as-Suhrawardī's (d. 1234) ‘Awārif al-ma‘ārif helps
one to understand the deeper meaning of purification.18 Ablution after minor defilements,
wuḍū’, is required after sleep and after anything solid, liquid or gaseous has left the lower
part of the body. Some legal schools require it after two people of opposite sex, who are not
related, shake hands or touch each other's skin. After major pollutions such as sex, emission
of semen, menstruation or parturition, a full bath, ghusl, is required during which no part of
the body, including the hair, may remain dry. The ablution has to be performed in running
water (or by pouring water over one's body), and the volume of the water places, ponds or
tanks, as found near mosques, is exactly defined.

Mystics could be induced into ecstasy during the first moment that water was poured over
their hands, and one reads of saintly people who would perform ghusl—even without
previous major pollution—in the icy waters of Central Asian rivers. Often, such acts were
done not only for the sake of ritual purification but also with the intention of educating one's
obstinate nafs, the lower sensual faculties, the ‘flesh’. Ghusl should be performed before
putting on the iḥrām, and a good number of people like to perform it before the Friday noon
prayer. For ritual purity is recommended for every important act; thus one should not sleep
with one's spouse in a state of impurity, nor should the mother suckle her baby without
previous ablution.
Ablution has been taken as a metaphor into literary language, and poets and mystics alike
have called on their readers to wash not merely their bodies, their shirts and their turbans
but rather their souls. Nāṣir-i Khusraw says:

One has to wash off rebellion from the soul with (the water of) knowledge and obedience.

He even speaks of the ‘soap of religion’ or ‘soap of intellect’ which is needed to purify the
human mind.19

But like all rituals, purification too could be overstressed, and it seems that particularly law-
abiding people were obsessed with what can almost be called ‘idolatry of water’. Shabistarī
thus writes:

Although the mullah takes sixty kilogrammes of water to make his ablution for prayer,

his head seems hollower than a calabash in Koranic meditation.20

Similarly, the Buddha had made some deprecative remarks about those who concentrate
almost exclusively upon ritual cleanliness, for, if water enhanced one's piety, then fishes and
frogs would be the most religious creatures on Earth. In ‘Aṭṭār's Manṭiq uṭ-ṭayr, then, the
duck refuses to partake in the quest for the Sīmurgh because she is constantly in the state of
ritual purity (sitting on the ‘prayer rug of water’) and does not want to spoil this state.

The scarcity of water in Arabia led to the possibility of replacing water by sand in cases of
dire need (layammwn).

One of the prerequisites of ritual purity in Islam is the absence of blood: not even the
smallest bloodstain must be found on one's clothing during prayer. The Christian concept of
‘being washed in the blood of the lamb’ would be utterly repellent to Muslims. And yet, in the
history of Sufism one finds that the martyr-mystic al-Ḥallaj claimed that he had performed his
ablution with his own blood; that is, after his hands and feet had been amputated, he wiped
the bleeding hand-stumps over his face. This expression was taken over by later poets for
whom this meant the lover's absolute purification through martyrdom. For the body of the
martyr, who is killed ‘in the way of God’, that is, in religious war (and on a number of other
occasions), is not washed before burial; the blood of the martyr is sacred.

Metaphorically speaking, one can ‘perform the ablution with one's tears’, which flow so
profusely that they can serve, as it were, as purifying water streams. Some Sufis even
thought that their remorseful weeping served ‘to wash the faces of the paradisiacal
houris’.21

Not only during one's lifetime is ablution required before important actions, but also when the
Muslim is laid to his or her last rest, the dead body is washed, preferably with warm water
(except for martyrs). It is repeatedly related that pious calligraphers who had spent most of
their lives in copying the words of the Koran or ḥadīth would carefully collect the pieces of
wood that fell down when they sharpened their reed pens, and these innumerable minute
scraps would be used to heat the water of their last ghusl because the baraka of the pens
with which they had written the sacred words might facilitate their way into the next world
and inspire them to answer correctly the questions of the interrogating angels in the grave.22
As ablution can be spoiled by any bodily impurity, so Muslims feel that one's ritual purity
(which is more than the bodily) can also be spoiled by looking at or listening to things
prohibited; when a Turkish woman friend of mine saw a couple kissing each other intensely
in a crowded street in Ankara, she cried out: ‘abdestim bozulacak’—‘my ritual purity is going
to be spoiled!’23

Not only by water or, rarely, fire can one become purified, but also by abstinence, whether
from sleep, from food or from sex.

Giving up sleep to perform the nightly supererogative prayers, tahājjud, which are
recommended in the Koran (Sūra 17:79), is a custom practised by pious Muslims who enjoy
the deep spiritual peace of the nightly conversation with their Lord. Mystically-minded people
will use the time between 2 and 4 a.m. to meditate and perform their dhikir. In the Ismaili
community, the very early morning hours serve for the daily gathering of the believers in
quiet meditation.

Asceticism as such, however, is basically un-Islamic. The aversion of many traditionalist

Muslims to exaggerated forms of asceticism is one of the reasons for the tensions between
the normative orthodox circles and Sufis. Iqbāl had once stated that asceticism is
incompatible with Islam, for ‘the Koran is brimful with life’.24 There is no diabolization of the
‘flesh’ and, as there exists no priestly caste whose members have to administer the
sacrament and therefore have to abstain from sex, celibacy has never been accepted as the
norm. Rather, the fulfilment of religious obligations requires that one must not mortify the
body because it enables the human being to perform the ritual duties. Thus the Muslim can
pray before eating: ‘My intention is to eat this food to strengthen my body so that I can fulfil
God's commands’.25

Yet, both in mainstream Islam and in Sufism, various kinds of abstinence were and are
practised. The intentional avoidance of food is, basically, a means to gather greater ‘power’
or baraka by giving up a less important source of power, but the fasting month is not
observed for reasons of penitence, nor for atonement, nor for ‘gaining power’, but simply
because it is God's decree, hence a duty26—a duty, to be sure, that involved other, spiritual
benefits.27 The Sufis, considering fasting to be ‘the food of angels’, often overstressed it
both in the form described for Ramadān and additional fast days and in the intake of minimal
quantities of food, for ‘hunger is God's food by which he feeds only the elite’ (AM no. 460).
Hagiographical literature contains examples of the reduction of food-consumption that sound
almost frightening, and yet it is quite possible that the remarkable longevity of a considerable
number of medieval Sufis is a result of their utterly abstinent life, which led to an increasing
spiritualization. To make fasting more difficult, some Sufis practised ṣawm dā'ūdī, that is,
eating for one day normally and fasting on the next day lest the body get used to one of the
two forms. In the medieval Maghrib (and perhaps elsewhere too), Sufis knew the ṣawm al-
wiṣāl, a forty-day fast which was supposed to lead to the unitive experience.28

During Ramaḍān, the Muslim should not only abstain from food during daytime but also
avoid evil thoughts and actions, wrath and anger, trying to follow the old adage takhallaqū bi-
akhlāq Allāh, ‘qualify yourselves with the qualities of God’, that is, exchange one's lowly
characteristics for better ones until one attains complete equanimity.
Modern interpretations of the fasting in Ramaḍān state that it is a good training in self-control
but also a practical way to prove one's solidarity with the hungry in the world. But there has
been and still is criticism of the institution of a fasting month, which seems not suited to a
modern industrialized society as it makes people unable to work enough during daytime. A
typical case is President Bourguiba of Tunisia's attempt to declare work as jihād, a ‘holy war’
against hunger and poverty, claiming that as the rules of fasting are lifted in war times the
same should be done for modern hard-working people (see above, p. 68).

Abstinence from sex has never been required in Islam. Although the virginity of the
unmarried girl is strictly protected, nevertheless celibacy was never encouraged. On the
contrary, marriage is the sunna, the sacred custom of the Prophet's community, and
numerous stories tell how the Prophet appeared to a celibate ascetic in a dream, urging him
to get married in order to become a real follower of his sunna. Most Sufis blessed by such a
dream accepted his order, even though they might consider married life a foretaste of Hell.
There were some Sufis who had no interest in marriage; but the majority were certainly not
ascetics—‘Abdul Qādir Gīlānī, the epitome of the Qadiriyya ṭarīqa, had forty-nine children.

The positive attitude toward marriage as recommended by the Prophet was probably
facilitated by the fact that Islam does not know the concept of an original sin that is inherited
from generation to generation through the very act of procreation.

Abstinence is a kind of sacrifice: one abstains from a pleasure and gives up a custom in the
hope of obtaining in exchange something more valuable. Characteristic of sacrifice is giving
up something particularly dear to please or appease the Divine powers (an idea underlying
the ancient sacrifice of the firstborn son).

The replacement of human sacrifice by animal sacrifice is at the centre of the story of
Abraham's willingness to offer his son (Isaac, according to the Old Testament; Ismā‘il,
according to the Muslims). The Muslim remembers this beginning of a new era without
human sacrifice every year at the ‘id ul-adḥā on 10 Dhu ‘l-hijja during the pilgrimage to
Mecca when a lamb, a ram or the like is slaughtered. Modern critics as well as ordinary
Muslims have often asked why the enormous waste of animals at the pilgrimage site in
Mecca was necessary and why every Muslim family at home should slaughter an animal.
Would it not be more logical, in our time, to give the price for the animal to the poor instead
of distributing the meat and the hides? But the lawyer-divines insist on the slaughtering
which is not in the Koran but is sunna because only thus the real intention, the remembrance
of the substitution of an animal for a human sacrifice, is re-enacted by the believers.29 The
sacrificed lamb or ram—so some people believe—will reappear on Doomsday to carry its
owner across the ṣirāt-bridge into Paradise.

The sacrifice of blameless young animals (two for a boy, one for a girl) during the ‘aqīqa, the
first haircut of a seven-day-old baby, is part and parcel of domestic rituals, and the sacrifice
of a sheep is also customary before a Muslim builds a house or constructs any major
building, as one may sacrifice animals at saints’ shrines; the blood is sometimes smeared on
the threshold to increase its baraka. Among some Sufi orders, the novice is likened to the
sacrificial ram of Abraham: he offers himself completely to the master.

The highest form of sacrifice is that of one's own life, as practised for example by the martyrs
of faith. One thinks also of the fidā'is in medieval Islamic history whose appearance is initially
connected with the Ismaili groups centred in Alamut (Iran) and northern Syria (the so-called
Assassins). However, the disciples of a Sufi shaykh could also willingly perform self-sacrifice
at the master's order: a modern example is the Ḥurr, the hard core of dervishes around the
Pīr Pāgārō in Sind, who were particularly active from the mid-nineteenth century to the
Second World War.30

Self-sacrifice lives on in spiritualized form in mystical tradition: the story of the lover whose
beloved tells him that his very existence is the greatest sin, whereupon he immediately dies
‘with a smile like a rose’ (D no. 2,943), is found in different variants in classical Sufi literature.
Furthermore, al-Ḥallāj's song ‘Kill me, O my trustworthy friends’ served poets such as Rūmī
for pointing to the constant growth and upward movement of the creature, which, by ‘dying
before dying’ in a series of self-sacrifices, slowly ‘dies from mineral to become a plant’ (M III
3,901) until it returns to the Divine Essence.

Instead of substituting an animal for human sacrifice, one can also perform a pars pro toto
sacrifice; that is, one offers a small part of one's body. The typical form, as it survives in
Islam, is the sacrifice of hair,31 beginning with the first haircut of the newborn baby. Both
sexes have to shave their pubic hair. The hair is cut before the pilgrimage to Mecca (but is
not touched during the ḥajj rites). In former times, a disciple who wanted to enter a certain
Sufi order such as the Chishtiyya had all his hair shaved, and to this day dervishes devoted
to the tradition of the Turkestani saint Aḥmad Yesewi (d. 1166) shave their heads, while the
medieval qalandars and a number of bē-shar‘ dervishes (that is, those who consider
themselves as standing outside the religious prescriptions) used to shave not only the head
but every trace of hair, including the eyebrows.

An even more important pars pro toto sacrifice is circumcision, something which originally
was probably done to increase the boy's sexual power. The Koran does not mention
circumcision, but it was apparently taken for granted, as legend tells that the Prophet was
born circumcised. The Turkish name of circumcision, sünnet, shows that it is done according
to the Prophet's sunna, while the Arabic term ṭahāra points to the ‘purification’ aspect; the
Urdu expression musulmānī shows that it is by circumcision that the boy becomes a full
member of the Muslim community. The act is usually performed when the boy is seven or
eight years old, so that he is fully aware of its importance, and the pride of now being a true
Muslim—as Turkish boys told us with beaming faces—outweighs the moments of pain
during the operation. Otherwise, to distract the boys, the adults often organized music,
shadow plays and the like, and had a number of boys circumcised together to divert them.
The circumcision of the sons of a ruler or grandee were usually celebrated with parades and
entertainment.

The question of whether or not the prayer of an uncircumcised man is valid was answered
differently. A number of theologians consider it permitted, which is important especially when
it comes to adult converts to Islam.

Female circumcision is practised based on a ḥadīth which speaks of the ‘touching of the two
circumcised parts’, which requires ghusl. It is probably more widespread than is thought, but
is never done as a ‘public feast’.32

The complete sacrifice of one's sexual power by castration was never an issue in Islam.
Eunuchs, usually imported from Africa and Europe, were kept for practical reasons, such as
guarding the women's quarters. They could also serve in the army and reach high ranks in
the military hierarchy; but no religious aim was connected with castration.33 Nor did Islam
know the custom of sacred prostitution, which played a considerable role in some other,
earlier religious traditions.34

Simpler types of substitute offerings are common: among them are the flowers and sweets
which are often brought to a saint's tomb and then distributed to the poor as well as to the
visitors; and before setting out for a journey, Indian Muslims might offer to their neighbours
and friends special sweets over which the Fātiḥa was recited in the name of a particular
saint in the hope of securing a speedy journey.

Such distribution of foodstuffs leads to another kind of ‘sacrifice’ which is central in Islam,
namely alms-giving. The prescribed alms tax, which constitutes one of the five pillars of
Islam, is called zakāt, a term which is, typically, derived from the root z-k-y, ‘to purify’ and to
give it is a true act of purification. However, not only the prescribed alms tax but also alms in
general, ṣadaqāt, is important in Islamic piety. Not only material gifts in cash and kind can be
‘sacrificed’, but also ethical behaviour and prayer: one offers oneself completely to God in
the hope of receiving His mercy. The finest expression of the sacrificial character of ritual
prayer, in which the lower self is slaughtered like a lamb, is found in the story of the Sufi
leader Daqūqī in Rūmī's Mathnawī (M III 2,140ff.).

While alms are an exactly organized, legally prescribed action, the gift is a free act of the
individual, and yet it can also be seen as a kind of sacrifice. For to give means to part with
something that is dear to oneself, to distribute as it were a small part of one's being. Gifts
bind people together and thus help in shaping and institutionalizing a community. A person
with whom one has shared ‘bread and salt’, as Westerners would say, is supposed to remain
loyal, hence the Persian term namak ḥarām, ‘whose salt is prohibited’, for a disloyal person.

One must not forget, however, that the recipient of the gift is under a certain obligation
towards the giver. Just as by offering a lamb one hopes to attract Divine grace, the giver—
even if secretly or unwittingly—hopes for a reciprocation. The Persian expression bār-i
minnat, ‘the burden of owed gratitude’, expressed this feeling on the part of the recipient
very well. By giving generously, one's power is strengthened, and therefore one loves to give
lavishly; anyone who is blessed with Muslim friends knows the largesse of their generosity
and often near-despairs under the burden of gratitude. To give in order to receive underlies
(for example) the Panjabi custom of vartan banji, the exchange of gifts in ever-increasing,
exactly measured quantities, especially at weddings.35

VIA ILLUMINATIVA

A certain borderline between the profane, which is excluded by the act of purification, and
the ritual state, is the niyya, ‘intention’. Every religious act must begin with the formulation of
the niyya, and the famous saying ‘Al-a‘māl bi'n-niyyāt’, ‘Works are judged according to the
intentions’, does not mean, in the first place, that it is the spiritual intention, as most readers
would interpret it, but rather that it is the formulated intent to ‘perform a prayer with three
cycles’ or to ‘perform the fasting for the day’. Thus, when I asked a Turkish friend during
Ramaḍān whether she was fasting, she simply answered ‘niyyetliyim’, ‘I have formulated the
niyya’, that is, ‘I certainly am fasting’.
The customs mentioned hitherto belong to the preliminary rites which prepare men and
women for the approach to the Numinous. For even in a religion in which Divine
transcendence is as central as in Islam, human beings still crave an approximation to the
object of their veneration or love (hence the development of saint-worship), and for this
reason some Sufis sought the theophany, tajallī, of the Lord whom ‘the looks can never
reach’ (Sūra 6:103) by gazing at a beautiful youth, shāhid, a witness to this invisible Divine
beauty.

In certain religions, plays were invented to make a sacred event visible in the here and now.
In Islam, this happened only in the ta‘ziya plays among the Shiites, in which the drama of
Kerbela is re-enacted and the spectators are as it were participating in this event as though
they were really present. This however is, again, a custom incompatible with normative
Sunni Islam.

Yet, there are always new attempts to become unified, or at least to come close to the object
of devotion or the power that is hidden in it. The simplest way is to touch the sacred object or
the saintly person, tabarrukan, for blessing's sake. The believer clings to the helper's skirt,
and when Mawlānā Rūmī sings:

O seize the hem of His kindness,

he expresses this feeling in an old symbol. The believer touches sacred objects such as
stones, tombs or the threshold and, most importantly, the copy of the Koran in which God's
word is contained, or else is softly touched by the saint's or the venerable elder's hand which
he may put on the believer's head, or perhaps by some peacock feathers that carry his
baraka. The ritualized clasping of hands at the beginning of the Mevlevi samā‘ belongs here.

A typical case of transferring the baraka is the bay‘a, the oath of allegiance given to a Sufi
master. The novice takes the master's hand (often in a specially prescribed form of
movement), and this act guarantees that the current of blessing that goes back to the
Prophet reaches him through the proper channel. If a woman takes the bay‘a, the shaykh
may touch her hand or find some other way to transfer the baraka; he may stretch out a rod
which she grasps, or make her touch his sleeve, or perhaps place his hand in a bowl with
water, lest a direct contact, prohibited by the shari‘a, should happen.

A special kind of transfer of power is the custom called in Urdu balā'ēn lēnā, ‘to take away
afflictions’: one passes one's hands over an ailing or suffering person, circles them over the
head and then takes them onto one's own body; thus the evil is taken away and blessing
power substituted.

An even stronger way to avail oneself of blessing power is kissing. Touching or kissing the
feet or knees of elders, of important people or of the mystical leader is common practice, as
is the kissing of the threshold at a saint's shrine. The best-known ritual of this kind is the
pilgrims’ attempt to kiss the black stone of the Kaaba to partake in its blessing power. The
same is true for the practice of kissing the copy of the Koran, filled with the baraka of God's
word—and when poets compare their beloved's beautiful face to a pure, flawless Koran
copy, the idea that the Koran should be kissed may have played a role in this imagery.36

The kiss between two people is, as was known in classical antiquity, an exchange of souls;
the soul, which is often thought to be contained in the breath, comes to one's lips when one
expires, and can be restored by the life-giving breath of the beloved. That is why Jesus,
whose breath could quicken the dead (Sūra 3:44ff., 5:110ff.), became in poetical language
the prototype of the beloved who quickens the near-dead lover with his or her kiss. Mystics
like Bahā-i Walad extended the topic of the spiritual kiss to contact with God: ‘Go into God's
bosom, and God takes you to His breast and kisses you and displays Himself so that you
may not run away from Him but put your whole heart upon Him day and night’.37

As both breath and saliva are fraught with blessing power, the custom of breathing upon
someone after reciting a prayer (damīdan, üflemek) is common in the Muslim world. One can
also breathe certain religious formulas or invocations over water in a bowl, which thus
becomes endowed with healing power. In Shia circles, the invocation Nādi ‘Aliyyan… is
frequently used for this purpose, and among the Ismailis the āb-i shifā is ‘healing water’ over
which the Imam has breathed to fill it with baraka to bless the believers.

Such attempts at establishing a closer connection with the sacred power and its
representative were and still are practised among Muslims; but certain practices are
restricted to only a segment of the believers, and are disliked by others. One of these is the
sacred dance, which belongs originally to the rites of circumambulation by which one either
‘sains’ an object or tries to participate in its power. Orthodox Muslims are still as averse to
dance as a religious experience as were the early Christians—so much so that Origen (d.
254) would claim: ‘Where there is dance there is the devil’.38

Dance, especially the whirling dance, goes together with ecstasy, that state in which the
seeker seems to be leaving the earthly centre of gravity to enter into another spiritual
centre's attracting power, as though he were joining the angelic hosts or the blessed souls.

Ecstasy could thus be induced by whirling dance, which was practised as early as the ninth
century among the Sufis in Baghdad, some of whom would abandon themselves to the
rapture caused by music, their ‘hearing’, samā‘.39 Such spontaneous dance is known
among a number of mystical fraternities (and has almost become a hallmark of Sufi
movements in the West—as much as critical early Sufis disliked it). Samā‘ was
institutionalized only in the Mevleviyya, the order that goes back to Mawlānā Rūmī and
which was organized in its actual form by his son and second successor, Sulṭān Walad (d.
1312). Rūmī had sung most of his poetry while listening to music and whirling around his
axis, and to him the whole universe appeared as caught in a dance around the central sun,
under whose influence the disparate atoms are mysteriously bound into a harmonious
whole. Thus, to enter the whirling means to come into contact with the eternal source of all
movement—so much so, that Rūmī saw even the very act of creation as a dance in which
Not-Being leapt forward into Existence (D no. 1,832) when it heard the sweet melody of the
Divine question Alastu bi-robbikum?, ‘Am I not your Lord?’ (Sūra 7:172); and this dance
which permeates all of nature revives even the dead in their graves, for:

Those who know the secret power

of the whirling, live in God—

Love is slaying and reviving

them—they know it. Allāh Hu!

The mystic might feel the bliss of unification when he had lost himself completely in the
circling movement, and thus dance can be seen as ‘a ladder to heaven’ that leads to the true
goal, to unification. But, as this goal contradicts the sober approach of normative
theologians, who never ceased to emphasize God's Total Otherness and who saw the only
way to draw closer to Him in obedience to His commands and revealed law, their aversion to
music and dance is understandable.40

VIA UNITIVA

In ancient strata of religion, sexual union was conceived as a symbol for spiritual union, and
even the Upanishads, abstract as their teaching may sound in many places, describe the
highest bliss as comparable to being embraced by a beloved wife. But as the normative
theologians disliked the ecstatic dance as a means to ‘union’, they also objected to a
terminology in which ‘love’ was the central concept.41 Nomos-oriented as they were, they
sensed the danger of eros-oriented forms of religion which might weaken the structure of the
House of Islam. They could interpret ‘love’ merely as ‘love of obedience’ but not as an
independent way and goal for Muslims, and expressions like ‘union’ with the One who is far
beyond description and whom neither eyes could reach nor hands touch seemed an
absurdity, indeed impiety, to them. The theological discussions about the terminology of
‘Love’ continued for a long time in the ninth and tenth centuries, long before the thought of a
human being as target of one's love appeared in Sufism—a love which, to be sure, was
never to be fulfilled but remained (or at least was supposed to remain) chaste and spiritual.
The mystics then became aware that ‘the metaphor is the bridge to Reality’ and that love of
a beautiful human being was, as they say, ‘ishq majāzī, ‘metaphorical love’, which would
lead to ‘ishiq ḥaqīqī, ‘the true love’ of the only One who was worthy of love.

From this viewpoint, the frank use of expressions like ‘naked union’ in Rūmī's poetry can be
understood, and his father Bahā-i Walad, who encourages the soul to cast itself into God's
bosom without reluctance, compares the intimacy between God and the soul with an explicit
reference to the play between husband and wife in which even the most private parts do not
remain hidden.42 Six centuries later, the Sufi master Nāṣir Muḥammad ‘Andalīb in Delhi
uses similar words, comparing the soul's union with the Divine Beloved to the experience of
the virgin whose hymen is pierced by her husband so that she, accustomed to his
gentleness, becomes aware of his power and strength.43 The overwhelming shock of the
last ecstatic experience is thus symbolized. It seems also (according to an authentic report
by someone who underwent the forty days’ seclusion and spent most of the time in dhikr)
that this results in a strong ‘sensual’ and even sexual feeling—a fact which perhaps also
accounts for the tendency to describe the final union in sexual imagery.

Although the seekers tried to reach the state of blessed union in this life, the true ‘urs, the
‘wedding’ of the soul, is reached in death when the soul is finally reunited with God.

The Koranic descriptions of Paradise, with the large-eyed heavenly virgins, the houris, can
be interpreted as a hint of the highest bliss of spiritual union which cannot be expressed in
other terms, just as one explains the joy of sexual union to a child by comparing it with sugar
(M III 1,406).
An interesting aspect of this imagery is the concept of the woman soul, which is encountered
most outspokenly in the Indian subcontinent.44 The Indian type of virāhini, the longing bride
or young wife, was taken over into popular and at times also high literatures of the Muslims
in Sindhi, Panjabi and other indigenous languages. Such a choice of images would have
been difficult, had not a predisposition existed to compare the soul with a woman. After all,
the Arabic word for ‘soul’, nafs, is feminine, and the romantic stories of young women,
braving all difficulties on the path that leads them through deserts and mountains or into the
depth of the Indus, form excellent symbols of the soul's wandering in the mystical path
where she has to overcome the most terrible obstacles to be united, through death, with her
pre-etemal bridegroom. The predilection of Sufi writers for the topic of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā
(Sūra 12:23ff.) seems to point to the same experience; the love-intoxicated woman who tries
to reach Absolute Beauty, and is chastised and—as later legend has it—repents and is
finally united with her erstwhile beloved, may have served the mystics as a prefiguration of
their own longing. This becomes particularly clear in Rūmī's use of the Zulaykhā theme,
through which he seems to express his deepest feelings.45 Many utterances of mystical love
become indeed much more meaningful if one recognizes the seeker as the female part who
craves for union and longs to be filled with Divine grace. The Beloved, the Lord and eternal
King, is the truly acting power, while the mystic is the recipient of His grace: God is, as
mystical folk poetry often says, as-Sattār, the ‘One Who Covers’ the lonely woman. That in
popular Indo-Pakistani poetry the Prophet appears sometimes as the soul's bridegroom, just
as the Imam is the longed-for beloved in Ismaili gināns, is part of this imagery.

These ideas were symbolized by dervishes who donned women's garments to show that
they were the Lord's modest handmaidens, and it also underlies, to a certain extent, Rūmī's
parable, in Fīhi mā fīhi, of the birth of Jesus in the human being when the soul, like Mary, is
pregnant with the Holy Spirit.46 Interestingly, the bond between master and disciple is called
among Khāksār dervishes izdiwāj-i rūḥānī, ‘spiritual marriage’, a marriage that shall lead to
the ‘engendering of love’.47

The Sufis’ love of and admiration for a beautiful young boy, ideally of fourteen years of age,
has been expressed in thousands of lines of poetry and is thus an integral part of the
tradition. They love to quote the apocryphal ḥadīth: ‘I saw my Lord in the most beautiful form’
(and, as is often added, ‘with his cap awry’). This admiration of a young, ‘moonlike’ beloved,
a shāhid, ‘witness’ to Divine beauty, arose in part from the strict seclusion of women in
Muslim society, but could lead also to pederasty, as even early sources state with anger and
chagrin. As pederasty was condemned in the Koran (cf. Sūra 27:55f.), the very imagery was
disliked by many of the pious, who tried to interpret such allusions as pertaining to women
(neither Persian nor Turkish has a grammatical gender). The problem of how then to
translate correctly the young beloved with ‘a sprouting green facial down and moustache’ is
discussed time and again.48

Sexual union is not the only way to allude to one's union with the Numinous power. One can
eat or drink the matter that carries blessing and sanctity; one can ‘eat power’. When the
Muslim boy in southern India at the Bismiliāh ceremony (which takes place when he has
reached the age of four years, four months and four days) has to lick the words ‘In the name
of God…’ from the slate on which they are written with some blessed stuff such as
sandalwood paste, he takes in their power, as does the ailing person who drinks water from
a bowl that is inscribed with Koranic verses and formulas of blessing.
The pilgrim who visits saints’ shrines and participates in eating the food that carries, as it
were, the saint's baraka is another example of ‘eating the sacred’,49 and the huge cauldron
from which everyone, caste or rank notwithstanding, receives some blessed food has
certainly played a role in expanding the realm of Islam in areas where food taboos were
strict (as is the case in Hindu India). Scraping out the enormous cauldron in Mu‘muddīn
Chishtī's shrine in Ajmer is one of the most important rituals during the ‘urs, and people try to
scrape some morsels from it without caring whether they burn their fingers.50

Communal meals were and are customary at the initiation ceremonies in Sufi brotherhoods
and in the futuwwa, and in certain orders very elaborate communal meals are held once in a
while; then one usually takes home some of the food for one's family to give them their share
of the blessings. The power that can be ascribed to such food, and here in particular to
sweets, is understood from Ibn Battūta's travelogue, when he tells that Rūmī's whole
inspiration was caused by a piece of blessed ḥalwa.51 The astounding number of allusions
to food in Rūmī's poetry makes this amusing story sound almost correct—and Konya is still
famed for its ḥalwa!

Even though the ‘sacramental’ idea of partaking of sacred food may be largely forgotten, the
language has still, as so often, preserved the underlying feeling: the Sufi ‘tastes’ or
experiences the ‘taste’ of spiritual bliss (dhauq). And may one not be allowed to see in the
wondrous fruits which the blessed will eat in Paradise a hint of the Numinous character of
‘spiritual’ blessed food? To reach a higher stage by ‘being eaten’ underlies Rūmī's story of
the chickpeas (M III 4,1588ff.).

Although the practices and the symbolism just mentioned are certainly important, much more
widespread even than food imagery is the symbolism of drinking. It is indeed a strange
paradox that, in a religion that prohibits intoxicants, this particular image became the
favourite of pious writers. The Koran first ordered: ‘Don't approach prayer when you are
drunk!’ (Sūra 4:43), because intoxication hinders the person from performing the rites
correctly; in a later stage of the revelation, wine was completely prohibited (Sūra 5:90); only
in Paradise will the believers enjoy sharāban ṭāhūran, ‘a pure wine’ or ‘drink’ (Sūra 76:21).

However, the theme of sacred intoxication (Den helige rusen, as Nathan Söderblom's well-
known study is called)52 was an excellent symbol for the spiritual state which German
mystics would call Gotessfülle, ‘being filled with God’. Intoxication involves a loss of personal
identity; the soul is completely filled with spiritual power, and the boundaries of legal
prescriptions are no longer observed.

Ibn al-Fāriḍ's (d, 1235) great Khamriyya, the Wine-Ode, describes the wine of Love which
the souls drank before the grapes were created and by which they are guided and refreshed;
it makes the deaf hear and the ailing healed.53 It is this wine that is mentioned even in a
ḥadīth, according to which God gives to His friends a wine by which they become intoxicated
and finally reach union (AM no. 571). It also fills Sufi poetry in manifold variants: ‘the Manṣūrī
wine, not the angūrī wine’, as Rūmī says, is the wine by which the martyr-mystic ‘Manṣūrī’ al-
Ḥallāj was so intoxicated that he joyfully sacrificed his life in the hope of reaching union with
his Beloved, while the grape wine, angūrī, is connected with the Christians (D no. 81) and, to
a certain extent, the Zoroastrians. Rūmī also called his friends not to come to his grave
without being intoxicated, for the wheat that will grow out of his grave's dust will be drunk;
the dough made of it will be equally intoxicated; and the baker who works on it will sing
ecstatic hymns—so much is he permeated by the wine of Divine Love. This imagery,
praising wine and intoxication, continued through the centuries, and even Ayatollah
Khomeini's small collection of Persian verse bears the surprising title Sabū-yi ‘ishq, ‘The
Pitcher of Love’.54

Two types of Sufis are often juxtaposed: the sober and the intoxicated. The former are those
who fulfil all obligations of the law and the path and are in complete self-control, while the
intoxicated prefer the state of ecstasy and often utter words that would be dangerous in a
state of sobriety. The borders, however, are not always clearly delineated. Sobriety, again, is
of two kinds: the first sobriety is the human being's normal state and can lead, for a moment
to an intoxication, a rapture in which the mystic seems to experience the absolute Unity; but
when he returns from there, restored to his senses, in his ‘second sobriety’ he sees the
whole universe differently—not as one with God but entirely permeated by Divine light.

The symbol of intoxication seems most fitting for the ecstatic state when the wine of Love
fills one's whole being and causes infinite happiness—which may, however, be followed by
long periods of spiritual dryness.

It is interesting that the imagery of wine and drunkenness is also used to symbolize the
Primordial Covenant, mīthāq, in which God asked His creatures: ‘Am I not your Lord?’ (Sūra
7:172), Everyone from the future generations whom God drew from the loins of the children
of Adam in pre-eternity had to testify that God is the Lord, lest they deny this when asked on
Doomsday. The Sufis saw this moment in poetical imagery as a spiritual banquet in which
the wine of Love was distributed to humanity so that everyone received the share which he
or she will have in this fife. Here, the imagery of wine is used not for the final goal of the
mystic's unification with God and his being filled with Him, but rather as the starting point of
the flow of Divine grace at the beginning of time. And thus it is written around the dome of
Ge—sūdarāz's mausoleum in Gulbarga:

They, intoxicated from Love's goblet,

Senseless from the wine of ‘Am I not?’

Strive at times for piety and prayer,

Worship idols now, and now drink wine…55

The lovers of God are beyond beginningless eternity and endless eternity, there where no
place is, all submerged in the Divine Beloved.

NOTES

• 1.

A recent attempt to interpret various aspects of Islam is M. E. Combs-Schilling (1989),

Sacred Performances. Islam, Sexuality, and Sacrifice.

• 2.
Iqbāl (1923), Pqyām-i mashriq, p. 264 (last poem).

• 3.

Jafar Sharif (1921), Islam in India, p. 23.

• 4.

The Wild Rue has lent its name to Bess A Donaldson's very useful (1938) study of Persian
customs and superstitions. One may also remember that several mystical works have titles
alluding to fragrance, such as Najmuddin Kubrā's Fawā'iḥ al-jamāl, the ‘fragrant breeze of
beauty’, or Khwāja Khurd's notes called simply Fawā'iḥ. A translation of Rūmī's Mathnawi is
called Pirahan-i Yūsufi, ‘Yusuf's shirt’, to convey the idea that it brings the healing fragrance
of the original to the reader whose spiritually blind eyes will be opened just as the fragrance
of Yusuf's shirt healed his blind father.

• 5.

For the theme, see E. Lohmeyer (1919), ‘Vom göttlichen Wohlgeruch’. The odour of sanctity
is well known in Christianity, and the Muslim should pray, following the ḥadith (AM no. 383):
‘Oh my God, quicken me with the fragrance of Paradise’. In Rūmī's poetry, following the
example of Shams-i Tabrīzī, concepts like scent, fragrance and odour play an extremely
important role. Rūmī's story of the tanner is inspired by ‘Aṭṭar's Asrānāma (see H. Ritter
(1955), Das Meer der Seele, p. 92), where the hero is a sweeper, cleaning the latrines. The
connection of fragrance and the ‘scent of acquaintance’ with the Prophet's love of perfume is
important, and one even finds that the mawlid: singers in Egypt sometimes sing a
‘perfumed’, ta‘fīr, mawlid: ‘Send down, O Lord, perfumed blessings and peace on his tomb!’
(information from Dr Kamal Abdul Malik, Toronto). I hope to deal with the whole complex of
‘scent’ in my forthcoming book Yusuf's Fragrant Shirt (New York, Columba University Press).

• 6.

S. Seligmann (1910), Der böse Blick, R. Köbert (1948), ‘Zur Lehre des tafsīr über den bösen
Blick’ Hiltrud Sheikh-Dilthey (1990), ‘Der böse Blick’ Jan Rypka (1964), ‘Der böse Blick bei
Niẓāmī’.

• 7.

E. W. Lane (1978 ed.), Manners and Customs, p. 227.

• 8.

An excellent example of this movement is the title page of Roland and Sabrina Michaud
(1991), Dervishes du Hind et du Sind.

• 9.

For the Zār, see Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich (1962), Volksglaube im Islam, vol. 2, ch. 3.

• 10.

Jafar Sharif (1921), Islam in India, p. 62.

 • 11.

R. Gramlich (1981), Die schiitischen Derwischorden, vol. 3, p. 26ff.

• 12.

I. Goldziher (1915b), ‘Die Entblössung des Hauptes’. See also A. Gölpĭnarlĭ (1977),
Tasauuftan dilimize geüen terimler, pp. 46–7.

• 13.

M. Subtelny (forthcoming), ‘The cult of ‘Abdullāh Anṣārī under the Timurids’.

• 14.

G. H. Bousquet (1950), ‘La pureté rituelle en Islam’. See also the unattributed article ‘What
the Shiahs teach their children’ in general: I. Goldziher (1910), ‘Wasser als
dämonenabwehrendes Mittel’.

• 15.

‘Urfi (d. 1591), quoted in Sājid Siddīqui and Walī ‘Aṣī (1962), Armaghān-i na‘t, p. 49.

• 16.

H. Birkeland (1955), The Legend of the Opening of Muhammad's Breast.

• 17.

The difference between ‘worldly’ dirt and ritual uncleanliness underlies the story that a Sufi's
maidservant in ninth-century Baghdad exclaimed: ‘O Lord—how dirty are Your friends!’
(Jāmī (1957), Nafaḥāt al-uns, p. 621)—and yet a Sufi would never neglect his ritual purity.

• 18.

Suhrawardī (1978), ‘Awārif (transl. R. Gramlich), p. 243f.

• 19.

Nāṣir-i Khusraw (1929), Dīvān, pp. 38, 421, 507, 588, and in (1993) tr. Schimmel, Make a
Shield from Wisdom, p. 36. Bakharzī (1966), too, speaks in the Awrād al-aḥbāb, vol, 2, p.
311, of ‘the soap of repentance’.

• 20.

Quoted in L. Lewisohn (ed.) (1992), The Legacy of Mediaeval Persian Sufism, p. 23.

• 21.

Richard Gramlich (1992), ‘Abū Sulaymān ad-Dārānī’, p. 42.

• 22.

See A. Schimmel (1984), Calligraphy and Islamic Culture, p. 180 note 167.
 • 23.

According to Kharijite opinion, evil talk and slander require an ablution.

• 24.

Muhammad Iqbāl (1917), ‘Islam and Mysticism’, The New Era, 28 July 1917.

• 25.

F. Taeschner (1979), Zünfte, p. 516.

• 26.

H. Wagtendonk (1968), Fasting in the Koran.

• 27.

A ḥadīth mentioned by Bukhārī (ṣawm 2, 9) claims that ‘the bad breath of one who fasts is
sweeter to God than the fragrance of musk’.

• 28.

Oral communication from Professor Vincent Cornell, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.

• 29.

See H. Lazarus-Yafeh (1981), Some Religious Aspects of Islam, p. 20: according to the well-
known theologian M. Shalṭūt, money cannot be substituted for a sacrifice because the
slaughtering of the animal ‘is a statute given by God’.

• 30.

H. T. Lambrick (1972), The Terrorist, gives an excellent introduction into the life and thought
of the Ḥurr, based on personal papers and records of the trials which he, as a British official,
conducted.

• 31.

I. Goldziher (1886), ‘Le sacrifice de la chevelure des Arabes’.

• 32.

Female circumcision is rather common in Egypt, but is also practised in some Panjabi tribes
(see Jafar Sharif (1921), Islam in India, p. 50) and among the Daudi Bohoras.

• 33.

D. Ayalon (1979), ‘On the Eunuchs in Islam’.

• 34.

A reflection of Hindu practices is probably the former custom of ‘marrying’ a girl to the shrine
of Lāl Shahbāz Qalandar in Sehwan (Sind), an old Shiva sanctuary. In Sind, girls from noble
families are sometimes ‘married’ to the Koran and remain virgins, respected by their families
and friends. See R. Burton (1851), Sindh, p. 211.

• 35.

For vartan banjī and many more customs in rural Indo-Pacistan, see the useful book by
Zekiye Eglar (1960), A Punjabi Village in Pakistan. The still-prevailing custom of celebrating
a wedding as grandly as possible, even if that means incurring heavy debts, reflects the—
perhaps subconscious—hope of acquiring more power by spending whatever one can afford
(and often cannot afford…).

• 36.

See ERE S.V. Kiss; RGG (3rd ed.) S.V. Kuss.

• 37.

Bahā-i Walad (1957), Ma‘ārif, vol. 4, p, 28.

• 38.

For a general introduction, see W. O. G. Oesterley (1923), The Sacred Dance, G. van der
Leeuw (1930), In den Himel ist eenen dans; F. Meier (1954), ‘Der Derwischtanz’ M. Molé
(1963) ‘La Danse extatique en Islam’.

• 39.

For the use of dance and music in Rūmī's work, see A. Schimmel (1978c), The Triumphal
Sun, and idem (1982a), I am Wind, You are Fire, in general: J. During (1989), Musique et
mystique dans les traditions d'Iran.

• 40.

Ibn Ḥanbal mentions even a ḥadīth: ‘I was sent to eradicate musical instruments’.

• 41.

W. Schubart (1941), Religion and Eros; A. Schimmel (1979a), ‘Eros—heavenly and not-so-
heavenly—in Sufism’.

• 42.

Compare the chapter ‘Hieroi gamoi’ in F. Meier (1990a), Bahā-i Walad (ch. 23).

• 43.

‘Andalīb (1891), Nāla-i ‘Andalīb, vol. 1, p. 832. The motif of wounding the female by means
of an arrow permeates literature and art from classical antiquity. A fine way of pointing to the
purely symbolic aspects of ‘bridal mysticism’ is Rūmī's verse that ‘No ablution is required
after the union of spirits’ (D no. 2207).

• 44.
The theme of the woman soul as it occurs in the regional languages of Indo-Pakistani Islam
has been taken up several times by Ali S. Asani (1991, et al.).

• 45.

See A. Schimmel (1992c), ‘Yusof in Mawlānā Rūmī's poetry’.

• 46.

Fīhi mā fīhi, end of ch. 5.

• 47.

R. Gramlich (1981), Die schiitischen Derwischorden, vol. 3, p. tot.

• 48.

See the remark of Joseph von Hammer (1812–13) in his German translation of Der Diwan
des… Hafis, Introduction, p. vii.

• 49.

For the role of dīg and langar, cauldron and open kitchen, among the dervishes, see R.
Gramlich (1981), Die schiitischen Derwischorden, vol. 3, p. 49f.

• 50.

See the description in P. M. Currie (1989), The Shrine and Cult of Muin al-Din Chishti of
Ajmer, and the article by Syed Liaqat Hussain Moini (1989), ‘Rituals and customary practices
at the Dargāh of Ajmer’.

• 51.

Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Riḥla, translated by H. A. R. Gibb, The Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, vol. 2, 1962. For
Rūmī's use of ‘kitchen imagery’, see A. Schimmel (1978c), The Triumphal Sun, ch. II.

• 52.

N. Söderblom (1915), Ur religionens historia.

• 53.

A translation of the Khamrrjyya is E. Dermenghem (1931), L'écloge dun vin-poème mystique

d'Omar ibn al-Faridh.

• 54.

Published in Teheran (200,000 copies) on the occasion of the fortieth day after Ayatollah
Khomeini's death in 1989. Bakharzī (1966, Awrād al-ahbāb, vol. 3, p. 240ff.), as well as
virtually all Sufi theoreticians—up to Dr J. Nurbakhsh (1988) in his Sufi Symbolism—explain
the frequent use of terms like ‘wine’ (sharāb, mudām) as ‘wine of Love’, and ‘that is the “pure
wine”, ash-sharāb aṭ-ṭāhūr’.

• 55.
Gēsūdarāz, in Ikrām (ed.) (1953), Armaghān-i Pāk, p. 151.
IV | The Word and the Script

And of His signs: He shows you the lightning, for fear and hope, and that He sends down
from the sky water and revives by it the earth after it was dead.

Sūra 30:24

THE WORD—ABOUT GOD, AND FROM GOD

The Primordial Covenant shows very clearly that the Divine word precedes the human word:
after hearing the Divine address ‘Am I not your Lord?’, the future human beings answered
with ‘Yes, we give witness to it’ (Sūra 7:172).1

The word, as it comes from God and reveals Him and His will, is central in Islam. But
generally speaking, the sacred word is taken out of ordinary daily life and its confused noise
by means of a special kind of recitation which underlines its sacred character.

There are primordial sounds, Numinous ‘Urlaute’ like the Indian om, and nobody who has
heard the long-drawn-out call Huuu (literally ‘He’) at the end of a dervish ceremony such as
the Mevlevi samā‘ can forget this sound, whose vibrations move body and mind equally.
Listening to such sounds, one understands why ‘sound’ could be regarded as Creative
Power, and it becomes perfectly clear why musical therapy with sacred, baraka-loaded
sounds was well known in Islamic culture and is still practised among certain Sufi groups.

Given this importance of the proper sound patterns, and as their corollary, proper recitation,
it would be astonishing if special reciting styles were not applied to the Koran, which should
be ‘embellished’ by human voices.2 For sound patterns and meaning in the Koran are
closely intertwined, one of the reasons that account for the prohibition of a ‘translation’ of the
Koran into other languages, as then the inimitable sounds and the true spirit would be lost.
The arts of Koranic recitation, tilāwat, tajwīd or tarāl, that is, deliberate cadences, and tardīd,
rhythmical repetitions, are highly developed, and nowadays competitions of Koran reciters
from all over the world are convened every year. But even in the normal recitation without
the psalmodizing technique, a number of rules have to be observed in order to display the
Divine word's full beauty.

By applying certain musical and rhetorical rules to religious texts, a very special atmosphere
is created. This can be observed in popular religious songs all over the Islamic world: the
Turkish ilaâhi or nefes are characterized by repetitive formulas such as the form of four-lined
stanzas, the fourth line of which is repeated either in full or at least in its rhyme-scheme. In
Indo-Pakistani qawwali sessions, the alternating voices of the leader and the small choir
slowly submerge the listener in an undulating sea of sound until he or she is transported to
another sphere far away from daily life. As repetition serves to give form to the intangible, in
languages such as Sindhi and Panjabi the theme is given by an initial line which is then
repeated after every one or two lines by the chorus. This includes the repetition of the
congregation's Amīn after the master, or leader, has uttered a lengthy chain of small prayers.
Parallelisms membrorum is a literary form well known in the ancient Oriental and then
Christian tradition, and is found in a style reminiscent of that of the Psalms in the great
prayers transmitted from religious leaders of early and medieval Islam. In Jazūlī's (d. 1495)
Dalā'il al-khayrāt, a very widely-used religious text in which blessings are called down upon
the Prophet, who is described in ever-changing and yet similar, often rhyming, invocations,
the blessing ṣallā 'llāh ‘alāyhi wa sallam, ‘God bless him and give him peace’, is repeated
hundreds of times, very much like the hundredfold ‘Be greeted’ in Christian litanies.
Furthermore, the constant repetition of this sacred formula is thought to bring the Prophet
close to the reciting believers: ‘the Prophet is with his community when they recite the
blessings over him many times’, says a prominent mystical leader of the early nineteenth
century. Thus, such a session in which the ṣalāwāt sharīfa are recited hundreds of times can
lead to what can be called a ‘sacramental’ experience.

Melodious songs in honour of saints follow a similar pattern, thus the invocation of the
Chishti saint Gēsūdarāz with its constantly repeated salām:

As-salāmu ‘alayka yā Gēsūdarāz,

as-salāmu ‘alayka mērē Bandanawāz…

Whole litanies exist in which the names of mystics are enumerated, as the powerful
invocations in Rūzbihān Baqlī's Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiāt show;3 the same is true for the invocations
of Shia imams.

The tendency to highlight the core idea by repetition can be observed in high poetry as well.
There, the radīf, the repeated rhyme word or phrase, seems as it were to circumambulate
the Lord, whom the author uses all rhetorical devices to praise, in particular the juxtaposition
of two contrasting aspects of God, such as His mercy and His wrath, His guidance and His
‘ruse’, or His capacity to grant life and to take life. Eulogies of the Prophet, or, in Shia poetry,
of ‘Alī, are structured according to the same principle. A fine example is the great hymn in
honour of the Prophet by Nāṣir-i Khusraw, in which the name Muḥammad forms the
recurrent rhyme no less than forty-three times. Constant repetitions of exclamations like ‘My
soul!’ or of questions like kū kū?, ‘Where, O where?’, of invocations that are almost an
epiclesis—‘Come, Come!’ or ‘Hither, Hither!’—especially in the emotionally highly-charged
verse of Rūmī, are excellent examples of repetitive structures in the rhyme.4 Long chains of
anaphors can serve the same purpose; suffice it to read the chain of exclamations Zahī zahī
‘How beautiful! How beautiful!’ in the introductory praise of God in ‘Aṭṭaür's Ilāhīnāma. By the
use of both anaphors and repeated rhymes, the poet tries to approach the Divine from all
possible new angles to give at least a faint idea of His greatness.

Such poems should be recited with high voice to enjoy them fully; but besides the loud
recitation and even shouting aloud, one may also find a recitation of sacred words with low
voice, or in silence. That can be done lest the outsider understand the secrets expressed by
the reciter, or to give the listener an opportunity to pray in the spirit, as in the silent recitation
of the Fātiḥa at the end of prayers, or in meetings. The murmuring of the Zoroastrian priests,
zamzama, was well known among the Persians, and sometimes poets compare the
twittering and chirping of the birds to this practice (for they praise the Lord in their secret
language, which only Solomon could properly understand). The question of whether the
dhikr, the recollection of God, should be performed with loud voice (and even in a kind of
screaming, as in the so-called dhikr-i arra, ‘sawing dhikr’, of some Central Asian Sufis) or
should rather be done quietly caused major discussions and tensions in medieval Sufi
circles.

The word—the language in itself, as Muslims felt—was something special: the word is a
messenger from God, as Nāṣir-i Khusraw stated.5 From early times, people have known
sacred and secret languages. Hunters and fishermen had their own idioms, as have some
merchants, or thieves still today, and each group jealously concealed its intentions under the
cover of metaphors lest the power of the ‘real’ word be broken.6 The same is true in higher
religions whose scriptures are revealed in a specific language which then tended to become
sacralized. Prime examples of sacred languages are Sanskrit and Arabic, as much as Arabic
was the common language at the time the Koran was revealed and is still one of the most
widespread languages in the world. Yet, the language of the Koran is something different; its
proper and religiously valid recitation is possible only in Arabic because that is how God
revealed His will; therefore ritual prayer must be performed only in the language of the
Koran. The attempts of Ataturk in Turkey to have the call to prayer recited in Turkish caused
much grievance in the Muslim community, and most traditionally-minded Turks rejoiced
when the Arabic call to prayer was reintroduced after the elections of 1950. Arabic is filled
with baraka, and there is even a ḥadīth that ‘Knowledge of Arabic is part of one's religion’.7
The i‘jāz al-qur'ān, the inimitability of the sacred Book, was the incontrovertible proof of its
Divine character as well as the proof of Muhammad's prophethood. For as the Arabs were
so fond of their powerful language, Muhammad's miracle had to be connected with
language, as Jāḥiẓ argued, while Moses performed ‘magic’ miracles in consonance with the
Egyptians’ trust in magic, and Jesus was the healer in a culture where healing was highly
appreciated.8

The feeling of Arabic being ‘the language’ par excellence could lead to certain problems, for
the question arose as to whether or not a non-Muslim Arab should be permitted to teach
Arabic, or whether a non-Muslim should learn and teach it at all. A shade of this feeling that
the non-Muslim cannot teach Arabic properly as he or she is excluded, as it were, from fully
appreciating its sacred mysteries can be observed even today despite the great number of
Arabic-speaking Copts and Syrian and Lebanese Christians, many of whom are first-class
scholars of Arabic.

But when the language of the Koran could and should not be translated owing to its sanctity,
how was one to inform people about its contents as Islam continued to spread into areas
outside Arabia? Commentaries and interlinear translations, however insufficient, were one
means, and the role of Muslims of non-Arab background in the development of Koranic
sciences, not to mention philology, history and natural sciences, is immense.

Another way, which is important when one has to deal not with the elite but with the masses,
was to develop the different languages which the Muslims encountered during the expansion
of their rule. As in Europe St Francis and Jacopone da Todi stand at the beginning of Italian,
and German nuns and mystics, in particular Meister Eckhart (d. 1328) and Mechthild of
Magdeburg (d. 1283), used their mother tongue to speak of religious subjects to the general
public instead of using the church's Latin, so mystical preachers in the medieval and post-
medieval Islamic world contributed largely to the development of various tongues.9 When
early Sufis in Baghdad and Egypt filled Arabic with emotion and transformed it into a
language of loving experience, the same happened later on a much larger scale in the areas
beyond the Arab world. Aḥmad Yesewī in Turkestan (d. 1166) composed sayings about
religious wisdom in his Turkish mother tongue, while 150 years later the Anatolian bard
Yunus Emre was—as far as can be ascertained—one of the first poets (and certainly the
most successful) to sing moving religious songs in Anatolian Turkish, thus opening a whole
literary tradition which has remained alive to this day. From this vantage point, Bosnian and
Albanian versions of religious Muslim literature also developed.

Even stronger is the Sufi influence on languages in the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent, where
mystical leaders like Mollā Da'ūd, the writer of Lōr Chanda in Awadh (d. 1370), and
Muḥammad Ṣaghīr (author of an early version of Yūsuf Jalīkhā) in Bengal, utilized their
humble mother tongues to sing of Divine Love in images which even the simplest villager or
the housewife could understand, while others at least praised the sweetness of the
indigenous idiom without using it for their own poetry. The short verses which often induced
mystics into ecstasy were uttered neither in the Persian of the intellectuals nor in the Arabic
of theologians and jurists but mainly in the regional languages such as Hindwi or Sindhi. In
Pashto, Pīr-i Rawshan (d. 1575) expressed the conviction that God understands every
language, provided it is the language of the heart; and his own work is the first classic in his
mother tongue. For, as Rūmī had told much earlier, God prefers the seemingly stupid
babbling of the loving shepherd to theological high-falutin… (M II 1, 720ff.).

The activities of wandering preachers and Sufis probably also account for the spread of
Islamic themes not only into Muslim majority areas such as Kashmir and Gujarat and their
respective languages but also into Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, not forgetting (somewhat
later) Malay and Indonesian. C. H. Becker once stated that the use of Swahili and Hausa as
lingua francas for large parts of Africa amounted to an Islamization owing to the great
amount of Arabic phrases contained in these languages, through which, then, the knowledge
of Islamic culture reached African peoples.10 One may assume that a similar development
took place in India and in Central Asia.

The goal of the Muslim preachers, Sufis and religious bards was to familiarize people with
the central concepts of Islam by translating them into the different languages—except, of
course, for the basic formulas of the creed and the Sūras required for the correct
performance of prayer, which had to be in Arabic.

If it is the ‘language of the heart’ that matters, then another way of transmitting the content of
the revelation, though much rarer, is glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. For when the heart
truly speaks, the words that gush forth can often be understood even by those who are not
acquainted with the actual language of the speaker. Thus, Mawlānā Rūmī relates that he
talked to a group of Greeks who, without understanding his Persian sermon, were
nevertheless deeply moved by it. More cases of such heart-to-heart speaking can probably
be found in Islamic hagiography.

The mystics were often blessed with what one might call automatic speaking or singing: an
inspiration, derived from ‘ibm ladunī (Sūra 18:65), the wisdom that is ‘with God’, overcame
them and made them speak or sing, often without their being aware of the content. Ibn al-
Fāriḍ's Arabic poems are a case of such an inspiration, although they look like the result of
extremely sophisticated rhetorical polishing. Rūmī's lyrical and didactic work is the best
example of such an experience: when he frequently compares himself to a reed flute which
sings only when the lips of his beloved touch it, he has expressed well the secret of
inspiration.

The genre of wāridāt, ‘arriving things’, appears still in literature, and some of the wāridāt that
have come to Turkish mystics in our time are good examples of what must have happened
during the Middle Ages. Ismail Emre, called Yeni Yunus Emre because he wrote in a style
similar to that of the historical Yunus Emre, was an illiterate blacksmith from Adana, and I
myself observed several times the ‘birth’, doğuş, of some of his simple mystical poems which
one of his companions noted down while he was singing.11

But how can humans understand the Divine words at all? How does one draw nearer to the
meaning of revelation? The Prophet, as Muslims felt, is a word from God, who had placed
His word into the souls of all prophets, incarnated it in Jesus12 and finally inlibrated it in the
Koran, whose promulgation he entrusted to Muhammad.

The Divine revelation, which radiates through the prophets, is called wahy, while the
inspiration which poets, thinkers and human beings in general experience is ilhām—a
distinction that must always be kept in mind.

Muslims knew that true revelation is always fraught with mystery: one can never fully
understand and comprehend it; and, clear as its wording and sense may appear, they
always need new interpretations, for when the Word is indeed of Divine origin, humankind
can never completely discover all the possible meanings which it contains. A revelation that
is fully understood would not be a true revelation of the unfathomable Divine being.13 That is
another reason why a ‘translation’ of the Koran is regarded as impossible: neither its
miraculous linguistic beauty nor all the shades of its meaning can be reproduced in a version
in another language.

One approach to drawing closer to the mystery of revelation is the attempt to give God, who
is its originator, a name. As God calls Himself Allāh in the Koran, His ‘personal’ name is
known; and, in precious copies of the Koran, one may find this name written in gold, or
heightened by some other calligraphic means.

It is the so-called ‘prophetic’ religion that tends to address God with a name, for He has to be
‘nameable’ (as Kenneth Cragg puts it) so that He can be known and obeyed.14 This name
can be a sacred cipher, like the Hebrew YHVH, but even then it helps to constitute an I-Thou
relation, enabling the creature to call upon the Creator. Mystical religion, on the other hand,
tends to hide the Divine name, as Prince Dārā Shikōh (probably based on, or at least
inspired by, an identical saying in the Upanishads) sings at the beginning of his poetry:

Be-nām-i ānki ū nāmi nadārad…

In the name of Him who has no name,

Who lifts His head at whichever name you call…

Besides, mystics, like all lovers, were very well aware that one condition of love is not to
reveal the beloved's name:15

Sometimes I call you ‘Cypress’, sometimes ‘Moon’

And sometimes ‘Musk-deer fallen in the snare’…

Now, tell me, friend, which one do you prefer?

For out of jealousy, I'll hide your name!

(‘Aynul Quḍāt Hamadhānī)

Even though the Muslims knew the Ninety-nine most beautiful Names of God, the asmā'al-
ḥusnā (Sūra 7:180), they also knew that the greatest Name of God must never be revealed
to the uninitiated, as someone who knows it would be able to perform heavy incantations
and magic, for the name has a strong power:

Someone who pronounces His name,

his bones don't decay in the grave,

as Mawlānā Rūmī sings (D no. 3,107).

While the demented person in ‘Aṭṭār's Muṣībatnāma claims that His Greatest Name must be
‘bread’, since everyone cries out this word during a famine, for some people the Greatest
Name consists of ‘the perfection of humanity’, kamāl-i insāniyya.16

In many respects, the name resembles the garment: it is identical with the named one and
yet distinct from him. That is why God revealed the names of all things to Adam so that he
might have power over them (Sūra 2:31), just as someone who owns a piece of someone's
garment can perform magic with it.

But according to another interpretation of the Koranic verse about ‘teaching the names’, God
revealed to Adam His own names; for, as Rūmī explains:

He taught Adam the names out of jealousy;

He wove the veils of the particulars around the all-embracing entity.

(D l. 2,423)

That is, the beautiful Names of God faintly point to Him and His ninety-nine (i.e.
innumerable) qualities, while they do not reveal His Essence.

The role of the asmā’ al-ḥusnā in Muslim piety was and still is very important. The
thousandfold repetition of one or several names in the dhikr is one of the central duties of the
Sufi, for whom—as for the loving Zulaykhā in Rūmī's Mathnawī—the Beloved's name
becomes food and clothing. It shows the master's wisdom in choosing for his disciple the
right name to repeat (similar to the Hazir Imam, i.e. the Aga Khan, who gives the Ismaili a
secret ‘word’, shabad). For the selection of the Name depends upon the station in which the
wayfarer finds himself; names which may be wholesome and strengthening for one person
may be dangerous for another. The properties of the Divine Names as they are used in
many-thousandfold repetition have been pointed to in important works from the later Middle
Ages onwards, one of the finest being Ibn ‘Aṭā Allāh's Miftāḥ al-falāḥ, ‘The Key to Well-
being’. There is no lack of poetical versions of the Names and their special powers, and
recently Sufi masters have published several collections with explanations as well as fine
calligraphies of the Names.

The Divine Names were also important because they contained and pointed to ethical
qualities. Ghazzālī urged his readers to dwell upon the ethical aspects of the Names: when
reciting al-Baṣīr, ‘The Seeing’, one should become aware that God sees everything that one
does; the name al-Ḥakīm speaks of His all-embracing wisdom, and so on. Mawlānā Rūmī
follows his argumentation in this respect, and (contrary to many of his contemporaries) does
not dwell upon the dhikr of the Names as, for himself, the constant repetition of the name of
his mystical friend Shamsuddīn was enough to induce ecstasy.17

In the theosophy of Ibn ‘Arabī and his followers, creation is seen as a result of the ‘primordial
sadness of the Names’ which wanted to be manifested; and everything and everybody is
ruled, marbūb, by a certain Divine Name, acts according to it and reaches his goal by means
of it, for Divine activity is, as it were, channelled through the Names to the things named.18

The active role of the Divine Names can be discovered in another, less mystical aspect of
life; that is, calling children ‘abd, ‘slave of’, followed by any of the ninety-nine Names.19 The
name ‘Abdur Raḥmān, so Muslims feel, connects the boy with the quality of ar-raḥmān, the
‘All-Merciful’, and believers hope that an amat al-karīm, ‘handmaiden of the Generous’, might
display the characteristics of generosity in her life. Many proper names have therefore as
their second part one of the ‘Names of Kindness’ and when an American baseball player, at
his conversion to Islam, took the name ‘Abdul Jabbār, ‘Slave of the Overpowering’, the
intention was clear: he hoped to overcome his opponents. Similarly, when a family whose
children have died in infancy names the new-born boy ‘Abdul Bāqī or ‘Abdud Dā'im, ‘Slave
of the Everlasting’ or ‘Slave of the Ever-Remaining’, they certainly hope that the Divine
Name may keep the child alive, for a strong bond exists between the Name and the named
one.

That is also true when it comes to the Prophet's name.

Adĭn güzel güzel Muhammad

Your name is beautiful, you are beautiful, Muhammad,20

sings the medieval Turkish bard; and, six centuries later, Iqbāl in Lahore calls out:

Light the world, so long in darkness,

with Muhammad's radiant name!21

The Prophet's name has been used for boys from the earliest times of Islamic history, for the
ḥadīth promises that everyone who bears this blessed name would enter Paradise. Yet,
Muslims were also afraid lest this name be polluted by frequent use or in inappropriate
connections; hence, they tended to pronounce it with different vocalization. Best-known is
Mehmet in Turkish, but one also finds Muh, Mihammad, Mahmadou etc. in the western
Islamic lands. Often, Muhammad's other names such as Muṣṭafā, ‘The Chosen’, Aḥmad,
‘Most Praised’ (which is his heavenly name), or his Koranic names Ṭāhā (Sūra 20), Yāsīn
(Sūra 36), Muzzammil (Sūra 73) etc. are used for the sake of blessing.22
The names of the prophets mentioned in the Koran, and of the Prophet's companions,
especially the ten ‘who were promised Paradise’ and the fighters in the battle of Badr (624),
are frequently used; especially in amulets, the names of his cousin and son-in-law ‘Alī and
his two grandsons Ḥasan and Ḥusayn occur innumerable times in both Sunni and Shia
families. The same is true for the Prophet's first wife, Khadīja, his daughter Fāṭima and, less
prominently, his daughters Umm Kulthūm, Ruqaiya and Zaynab. Shiites will never use the
names of the first three caliphs, considered usurpers, nor that of Muhammad's youngest
wife, ‘A'isha.

Names that show a relation with the Prophet or a saint—perhaps the one thanks to whose
prayer the child is born—are frequent, especially in the eastern part of the Muslim world,
such as Nabī bakhsh, ‘Gift of the Prophet’, or Ghauth bakhsh, ‘Gift of the Help’ (i.e. ‘Abdul
Qādir Gīlānī), while opprobrious names are used—mostly in the lower classes—to avert the
Evil Eye or djinns whom the parents hope might not care to hurt an Egyptian boy called
Zibālah ‘garbage’ or else would take a Panjabi boy by the name of Bulākī as a girl, for bulākī
is a woman's nose-ring.

The convert is given a new name, often corresponding to his or her previous name. When a
Wilfred embraces Islam, the syllable will can be connected with Murād, ‘will, wish’, and many
a Frieda or Friedrich is now called Farīda or Farīduddīn. When someone embarks on the
Sufi path, the master may select a fitting name.

The custom of assuming religious throne-names as a sign of a politico-religious programme

begins with the Abbasids, who chose names like ar-Rashīd, ‘The rightly-guided one’, or al-
Mutawakkil, ‘the one who trusts in God’. The Fatimids boasted names like al-Mustanṣir, ‘the
one supported with victory by God’, etc.

Names combined with ad-dīn, ‘religion’, appear first in official surnames in the tenth century
in the central and eastern Islamic areas; from the eleventh century onwards, they percolated
down into general nomenclature, and the numerous Shamsuddīn, ‘Sun of religion’ (as well
as other luminaries such as qamar, ‘moon’, badr, ‘full moon’, najm ‘star’ and so on), and
‘aḍud, ‘support’, continued down through the centuries. The further a country is from the
Arab heartlands, the more fanciful religious names appear, and thus one finds Mehraj (=
mi‘rāj) addīn, ‘Ascension of Religion’, or Mustafīz urraḥmān, ‘favoured by God's effusion’, in
the Indian subcontinent.

There are also astrological names which depend upon the zodiacal sign, the day and the
hour of the child's birth, and a given name can later be changed into an astrological one if
the first one is thought unfitting, even ‘too heavy’, and dangerous for the person.

Often, names were selected by opening the Koran at random and taking the first word on
which one's eye fell, even though it might not make any sense. The figure of Mirza A-lam
nashiaḥ, ‘Did We not open…?’ (beginning of Sūra 94) is a famous example from India, and
Uzlifat, ‘[when Paradise] is brought near’ (Sūra 81:13), is found in Turkey. One could also
extend the first letter of the Koranic page into a new name, or combine the first word with ad-
dīn.

This custom of opening the sacred Book leads to the central problem faced by a pious
person: how to find God's will and understand His working? How to learn something about
one's own future in the vast plan of God's order?
To resort to oracles, usually with arrows, was common practice in ancient Arabia and
therefore ruled out by Islam. But the wise word attributed to ‘Alī, tafa’ ‘al bi ‘l-khayr tanalhu,
‘find something good in the oracle and you will get it’—that is, one should interpret oracles
and signs in a positive sense—shows an important attitude to life.

The Koran offered itself as the infallible source for divination. Just as one could find proper
names by merely opening the Book, thus religious and political events could be discovered
in its words, and the cabalistic arts of jafr and wifq, counting and changing letters, was a
widely-used means of finding out the future. The numerical value of the letters and the
possibility of changing the sequence of the letters in a three-radical root offered specialists
infinite ways of finding what they were looking for.

Secondary sources for prognostication in the Persianate world included Rūmī's Mathnawī
and the Dīvān of Ḥāfiẓ. This latter oracle is still widely used among Persians. Muslims also
tried to discover remarks about the future in the mysterious words of earlier sages such as
the seven martyrs of Sind who, while dying in the fourteenth century, allegedly uttered some
verses which were interpreted for centuries afterwards in the hope of understanding or
foretelling events in the country.

A special way of learning about the future, and in particular of finding a Divinely-inspired
answer to a question that bothers one, is istikhāra, that is, performing two units of prayer and
then going to sleep, if possible in a mosque; the dreams of that night should be interpreted
as pointing to the solution of one's problems.

For dreams are an important part of Muslim life.23 A dream, it is said, consists of one forty-
sixth of prophethood; a woman's dream, however, is supposedly only half as true as a
man's. The idea underlying this important role of dreams relies upon the Koran (Sūra 39:42
and 6:60), where it is said that the spirits in their sleep are taken back by God into His
presence. Thus they have been in immediate contact with the source of all wisdom. The fact
that Yūsuf appears as the interpreter of dreams in Sūra 12 has certainly enhanced the high
regard for dreams.

What one sees in one's dream—so Muslims believe—is real; it has only to be interpreted
properly. The dream-book of Ibn Sīrīn (d. 728) has formed a guideline for interpretations for
many centuries. Mystical leaders, then, would interpret their disciples’ dreams according to
their deep psychological insight.

It is often told how friends appear in dreams after their death to inform the sleeper about
their post-mortem state and to give the reasons why God has forgiven them. A dead
calligrapher may verify the saying that ‘he who writes the basmala beautifully will enter
Paradise’, and the eccentric Sufi Shiblī (d. 945) told his friend that it was not all his
meritorious acts, his fasting and prayer that saved him but the fact that he cared for a kitten
that was shivering on an icy winter day. The same Shibli is credited with a vision of God in
his dream: he asked Him why He had allowed His devotee, al-Ḥallāj, to be executed so
cruelly, and God's answer was: ‘Whom My love kills, I'll be his blood money’ (AM no. 407).

Of greatest importance is the Prophet's appearance in dreams.24 Such a dream is always

true, as Satan cannot assume the Prophet's form. The Prophet may appear to remind a
celibate Sufi that marriage is his sunna; or he approves of mystical works written by the
dreamer; he may show the dreamer his future grave or boast of the presence of a certain
scholar, for example Ghazzālī, among his community.25

Political ideas could also be promulgated where a reformer (or a rebel) claimed to have
received dream instructions from the Prophet.26

I have seen many examples of the great role which dreams play in Muslim life: what appears
in a dream must come true in one way or another, and when my faithful help Fāṭima in
Ankara told me that she had seen me in her dream, presenting her with a dress, there was
no way out; I had to give it to her.

A ḥadīth states that ‘people are asleep and when they die they awake’ (AM no. 22a). This
saying, along with its parallel that ‘the world is like the dream of a sleeper’, was loved by the
Sufis, who eagerly awaited the true interpretation of their dreams, that is, of their life in the
world, in the morning light of eternity where the truth will become manifested.

In the hope of reading the future as it is foreseen in God's universal plan, some Muslims
turned to astrology because the script of the stars might tell of positive and negative currents
in personal and communal life. In some areas, an astrological reckoning of names and
elements was therefore performed before arranging a marriage. But, all the different human
attempts to predict the future notwithstanding, the central source of knowledge is the word
through which God reveals His holy will in the Koran.

The prophet is forced to speak; he cannot resist the Divine power that makes him feel like an
instrument without a will of his own. The first revelation that came over Muhammad is typical
of the prophet's initial experience: he was ordered: iqra’, ‘Read!’ or ‘Recite!’ (Sūra 96:1), to
which he answered: ‘I cannot read’ or ‘I do not know how to recite’. The deep shock after this
experience, which his faithful wife Khadīja understood well enough to console him, as well
as several other instances, prove that his case fits exactly in the general pattern of a
prophet's initiation.

This is also true for the contents of his preaching: the revelations spoke of God's
absoluteness—there is no deity save Him—and ordered repentance and pure worship, and
gave ethical maxims about the treatment of the poor, the widows and orphans—again typical
of the ‘prophetic’ pattern of experience. The prophet always comes as a warner (nadhīr,
Sūra 33:45 et al.) to his people; he is at the same time the one who announces glad tidings
(bashīr, Sūra 2:119), that is, the promise of salvation for those who accept the Divine word
and follow the now revealed order of life; finally, the prophet brings with him a message
about the future (often a terrible future if people do not repent), which culminates in the
description of retribution for human actions in either Paradise or Hell. All these themes are
fully developed in Muhammad's preaching (see also below, p. 237). Yet, some of these
points needed a wider elaboration.

Human beings have always tried to understand the world, its creation and its why and how,
and an expression of this search for more than sheer historical knowledge is the myth, which
contains—or rather is thought to contain—answers to such questions. Myth speaks of typical
events, something that happened at a certain time; of an event that can be recalled to
memory, often by ritual acts; vice versa, ritual acts are explained by aetiological myths.
Islam is in its essence a religion with but little mythological material; but the interpreters of
the Koran and the tradition could not help enlarging the mythological germs found in the
revelation, while mystical thinkers and poets often delved deep into the ocean of ancient
mythological traditions to reinterpret them for themselves.

There are, of course, no theogonic myths in Islam, for there was no need to explain how a
deity, or deities, came into existence: ‘God was, and He still is as He was’, as the famous
tradition says.

Much more common are cosmogonic myths that tell how and why creation came into
existence. The clear and simple statement that God needs only say kun, ‘Be!’ to something,
and it becomes (Sūra 2:117 et al.), as well as the remarks that He created the world in six
days (Sūra 25:60), were elaborated in various and often fanciful ways. Perhaps the most
fascinating one is Ibn ‘Arabī's grand vision of creation by means of the Divine Names that
longed for manifestation. Widespread stories such as the creation of the Muhammadan
Light, the primordial luminous substance of the Prophet out of which everything appeared,
belong here. And did not God address him: lawlāka ma khalaqtu ‘l-aflāka, ‘But for your sake I
would not have created the spheres!’ (AM no. 546)? Orthodox Islam would barely agree with
such mythological embellishments of the Prophet's creation, yet they occupy an important
place in literature and Sufi poetry.

Anthropological myths are not lacking either: the creation of Adam and Eve, the details of
Adam's first transgression and his Fall were repeated with various details in the Qiṣaṣ al-
anbiyā and alluded to in literature up to Iqbāl's daring interpretation of the ‘Fall’ as a
necessary precondition for man's development into a true human being.

Cultic myths are frequent: for example, how the Kaaba was built and what place it occupied
in the oldest history of mankind. Shiite tradition imagined that the site of Ḥusayn's
martyrdom, Kerbela, was predestined for this event millennia before the actual tragedy, so
that prophets and sages of yore were already aware of its central role in the sacred history of
mankind.

Islam knows no saviour figures, yet the ideas that grew around Muhammad as the
intercessor on Doomsday and around ‘Alī and Ḥusayn in Shia piety, furthermore the role of
Fāṭima as a kind of mater dolorosa whose intercession will save those who weep for
Ḥusayn—all these are formally quite close to soteriological myths.

Aetiological myths have been created to explain the origins of the prescribed rites, and as
the pilgrimage to Mecca is projected back to the time when Adam and Eve, after being
expelled from Paradise, found each other again on Arafat near Mecca, thus forms of prayer
and fasting are likewise traced back to earlier strata of human history; for as all the prophets
before Muhammad brought essentially the same message, it was natural that they too had
performed similar rites.

Particularly rich is the genre of eschatological myths, for the Koran dwells intensely and
extensively upon the Last Judgment and the fate in the Hereafter. Thus, commentators and
fanciful poets alike found a fertile ground from which they could elaborate the details of the
eschatological instrumentarium (the Books, the Scales, the Bridge) and spin out delightful
stories of paradisiacal bliss or horrifying descriptions of the tortures of the damned. A special
addition was the introduction of the Mahdi, the rightly-guided leader from the Prophet's
family, who will arrive before the end of the world; he, or Jesus, whose second coming is
also connected with the last decades of the world, will finally overcome the dajjāl to reign for
a short while to bring peace before Resurrection is announced. As long as such myths were
not supported by exact data in the Koranic revelation, they were usually spiritualized by the
philosophers and the mystics.

Mythological motifs connected with the Prophet, such as his heavenly journey (āā‘, mi‘rāj),
which was developed out of Sūra 17:1, were understood by mystics as prefiguring the soul's
flight into the Divine Presence. Did not the Prophet himself compare his feeling during ritual
prayer to his experience during the mi‘rāj, when he was standing in God's immediate
presence? The colourful descriptions of the mi‘rāj have inspired poets to see their own way
as a kind of replica of his lofty experience with the difference, however, that the Prophet's
mi‘rāj took place in the body while the mystic's or poet's heavenly journey can be only made
in the spirit. Artists never tired of creating pictures of the mi‘rāj some of which are of truly
dazzling beauty (see above, p. 85 note 62).

While many pious souls and imaginative people extended and expanded the realms of
mythological tales over the centuries, there is also a tendency to demythologize the Koranic
data and even more the popular stories connected with the Prophet. This tendency is not
new, but has increased lately. Modernists would criticise the mawlūd poetry which told how
all of Nature welcomed the new-born prophet who had been sent ‘as a mercy for the worlds’
(Sūra 21:107), with birds and beasts participating in the praise. Was it not nonsensical, even
dangerous, to teach children such stories instead of emphasizing the rational character of
the Prophet's message, and his ethical qualities as he, a veritable human being, came to
lead the community to better social and cultural standards? During the relevant discussions
in Egypt in the early 1930s, it was, typically, the well-known author Ṭāhā Ḥusayn who
defended the ‘mythological’ elements in these songs, for as an artist he was able to grasp
their deeper meaning. For rationalists do not understand the symbolic character of myth and
strive to explain away whatever seems to be contrary to ‘normal’ common sense, trying, at
best, to purify the kerygma from the mythological accretions, while dogmatists, on the other
hand, require absolute faith in the external words or statements by which layers of deeper
meaning are covered.

While myths dwell upon an event in a certain time, in illud tempore, saga, legend and
fairytales handle temporal relationships very freely and, to produce the hoped-for effect,
often connect historical persons who have no relations with each other but are woven
ingeniously, or carelessly, together.

The saga is part of Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Indo-Muslim literature, but rarely has a truly
religious content. Beginning with the ayyām al-‘arab, the Arabs liked to tell of the heroic feats
of people, and the names of ‘Antara, Shanfara and Ta'abbaṭa Sharran, the pre-Islamic
warrior poets (and often outcast-heroes), are known to this day. The saga assumes a more
Islamic character in the tales concerning Ḥamza, the Prophet's uncle, whose adventures
were told and retold especially in Persian, and were illustrated in grand style under the
Mughal emperor Akbar. The adventures of Tamīm ad-Dārī, another historical figure from the
Prophet's environment in Medina, were likewise spun out with highly picturesque details, and
this traveller's return forms a dramatic story of a type well known in folklore. Such stories
were apparently quite attractive for new converts to Islam, for the Ḥamza-nāma and even
more the story of Tamīm ad-Dārī became integrated in Southern Indian literature and were
retold even in Tamil. A comparable saga deals with Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya (d. 700), a
son of ‘Alī from a wife other than Fāṭima, which has long been famous even in the Malayan
archipelago.27

The comparatively scant saga material from Arabia was supplemented by sagas from Iran,
and Firdawsi's (d. 1020) Shāhnāma, the ‘Book of the Kings’ in which the ancient history of
Persian kings and heroes is told, offered Muslim authors of the Persianate world much
narrative material and remained an inexhaustible source for new elaborations of certain
themes. The Iskandarnāma, based on the Pseudo-Kallisthenes, was successfully integrated
into the narrative tradition of the Muslim peoples, while sagas alive among the Turks, as well
as Indian themes, influenced the general Muslim literature only to a small degree.

The word ‘Orient’ will make most people think of the Arabian Nights, the ‘Tales of the 1,001
Nights’, which appeared to the Europeans as the most typical expression of the Oriental
world and have inspired, since their first translation into French by A. Galland (d. 1715),
numerous poets, musicians and painters, while in the Islamic world these popular fairytales
were never considered to be real ‘literature’ their glittering charm was not attractive to
educated Muslims (in part owing to their non-classical language).

On the other hand, animal fables of Indian origin, from the Pançatantra and Hitopadeşa,
were regarded as useful models of human behaviour. After these stories had been
translated under the title Kalīla wa Dimna into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa’ (d. 756), they were
illustrated; several Persian translations were made later. They became known in Europe at a
rather early point in history, and form a source for many later fables up to Lafontaine.
Similarly, the Indian Ṭuṭināma, ‘The Book of the Parrot’, was widely read in the Indian,
Persian and Turkish areas after its first Persian version by Nakhshabī (d. 1350), and it
reached Europe by different routes. The growth of tales among people who can skilfully
weave religious and political criticism into their narratives can still be observed in some
areas and sheds light on classical narrative techniques.28

However, one would hesitate to call most of the works just enumerated ‘Islamic’ in the strictly
religious sense of the word. The situation is quite different when one comes to another
widespread literary genre, that is, legends.29

Legends were told about the early wars and fights of the Prophet and his companions, but
even more about the pious, saintly people in the Muslim world. Richard Gramlich's
comprehensive work about Die Wunder der Freunde Gottes (‘The Miracles of God's
Friends’) is the best study of the phenomenon. Legends tell of the karāmāt, the charismata,
of saints, from food miracles (important in a culture where hospitality is so highly valued) to
thought-reading, from helping an aged couple to get a child to healing all kinds of ailments.
They make the listener or reader aware that the entire cosmos participates in the saints’
lives because they, being absolutely obedient to God, are obeyed, in turn, by everything.

Legends of Muslim saints generally resemble legends in other religious traditions, but it is
important to remember that many of them deal with dogmatic miracles by which infidels or
hypocrites are drawn into the true faith: when ‘Abdul Qādir Gīlānī as a baby refused to drink
his mother's milk during daytime in Ramaḍān, or when a saintly person could walk unhurt
through a pyre to prove to his Zoroastrian counterpart that fire can burn only with God's
permission; or when a Sufi's cat discovers a ‘materialist’ posing as a pious Muslim, the
success of such miracles is clear. And those who do not fulfil their vows, desecrate sacred
places or incur the saint's wrath by some flippant remark will certainly be exposed to terrible
punishments.

The same legend is often told about different people, whether in Morocco, Turkey or Sind. A
good example is the story of the saint who wanted to settle in a certain place but was
refused by the scholars. When they showed him a bowl brim-full with milk to point out that
there was no room, he silently replied by placing a rose petal on top of the milk—and was, of
course, gladly admitted. Another common theme is the saint's illiteracy: many of those who
are known as prolific writers appear in legends as illiterate (following the example of the
ummī, ‘unlettered’ Prophet) and acquainted only with the letter alif, the first letter of the
Arabic alphabet and cipher for the One God.

The Shia developed a specific religious literature such as the Maqātil Ḥusayn, stories about
the martyrdom of Ḥusayn and his family; the Dehnāma, or Deh Majlis, ‘Books of Ten’, are
recited during the first ten days of Muḥarram. Rawẓakhwānī, the recitation of the
martyrologia in highly-charged style, is likewise part of the Muḥarram celebrations. Works
like Rawz at ash-shuhadā, ‘The Garden of the Martyrs’, enjoyed great popularity, and in later
times the literary genre of the marthiya, lengthy Urdu poems about the tragedy of Kerbela,
became increasingly important and described the martyrs’ suffering with ever more heart-
rending details. In Bengal, this kind of literature, which may be called a subspecies of
legend, is called jārīnāme, from zār, ‘lament’.

Ages-old wisdom is condensed in proverbs, which play (or rather played) an important role;
in former times, with a greater number of illiterate people (especially women) around, one
could listen to an amazing variety of words of wisdom or inherited proverbs from simple
villagers in Turkey, Sind and other areas.30

The same can be said for the treasure of poetical quotations with which even the least
‘educated’ people were acquainted. Anyone who has heard how Persian villagers quote
verses of Ḥāfiẓ, or how Turkish or Pakistani officials have hundreds of fitting poetical
quotations ready, will agree that love of poetry is (and now one probably has to say was) a
hallmark of traditional Muslim culture, as much as the Prophet warned of poetry which was
often understood as dealing primarily with the frivolous aspects of life such as free love and
drinking (cf. Sūra 26:226ff.).

Sagas, fairytales, legends and poetry are part of the tradition in which educated and less
educated people participate; but veritable religious instruction is of a different kind. Ad-dīn
naṣīḥa (AM no. 282), ‘religion consists of good advice’. The noblest science after the study
of the Koran, namely the study of ḥadīth, offers a good example of the technique of teaching;
for, in all branches of science, art and religion, the maintenance of the isnād is central. That
is the spiritual chain from the present teacher or student back to the founder of the specific
science or art (who is, ideally, the Prophet himself, or ‘Alī); and, just as scholars of ḥadīth
had to know the isnād of a, tradition to lead it step-by-step back to its origin, thus musicians,
calligraphers and in particular Sufis would always place themselves in the chain of
transmission that guarantees the correctness of their own performance, as it is blessed by
the spiritual current that flows from generation to generation. The reliability, ‘soundness’ as
the technical term is, of a ḥadīth is warranted by the uninterrupted chain of transmitters (men
and women) whose biographies and personal circumstances have been rigorously examined
so that the chain is unbroken and flawless. The oral transmission of ḥadīth, and other
sciences, is important even though notes may have been used and even though the ‘sound’,
ṣaḥīḥ (that is, doubtlessly authentic) ḥadīth were later collected in books. The most famous
among these are the Ṣaḥīḥayn, the ‘two sound ones’, by Bukhārī (d. 870) and Muslim (d.
875). Yet, the ‘hearing’ of ḥadīth was considered essential, and scholars would wander
through the world of Islam in quest off ḥadīth not only to find, perhaps, new material or an
isnād unknown to them, but also to meet a famous scholar whose presence was a blessing
in itself. Many manuscripts of Islamic sciences bear notes in the margin or at the end which
show which scholar ‘heard’, samā‘, this text from the author and the author's disciples and
successors.

Oral instruction was the rule not only in the teaching of ḥadīth but also in other sciences and
arts, and this applies even more to the esoteric teaching in mystical circles or the
interpretation of philosophy. This could take the form of person-to-person teaching, and not
in vain is ṣuḥbat, the ‘being together’ between master and disciple, required; for only by
proximity to the guiding master could one hope to understand the true secret, and only
through intense concentration upon the master, tawajjuh, could one expect to receive a
share of his spiritual power and knowledge. For this reason, the Sufis and the sages in
general insisted upon oral transmission of classical texts, for ‘reading the white between the
lines of the written text’31 was as important as reading the actual letters; a true introduction
into deeper and deeper levels of a seemingly simple text could only be achieved by listening
to the master's words, by observing his speech and his silent actions.

When one keeps in mind this viewpoint, one understands why Shāh Walīullāh of Delhi
remarked that ‘the books of Sufism are elixir for the elite but poison for the normal believer’.
That is, the uninitiated reader will most probably be caught in the external sense of the
words and the symbols (such as wine, love, union), which he will take at face value and then
go astray, while the initiated understand at least some of the meaning hidden beneath the
letters. Iqbāl's aversion to Sufi poetry stems from the same experience, and when one looks
at the history of translations of sacred texts in the West, from the Koran to mystical Persian
verse, one understands easily that a good knowledge of the ‘white between the lines’ is
necessary lest one distort the meaning. Therefore it is not easy for a late-born reader to
relish the collections of malfūẓāt, ‘sayings’, of medieval masters,32 or to understand the full
meaning of their letters to their disciples.33

The teacher taught not only the seeking individual but also whole groups of students in the
general tradition. This happened in the madrasa, the theological college where sciences
such as ḥadīth, exegesis and law, as well as the auxiliary fields like Arabic grammar and
literature, were taught. The madrasas served in the Middle Ages to counteract Shiite
influences and were often supported by the government as institutions to maintain
mainstream Sunni orthodoxy. The fact that the students very often used classical works on
the central subjects in abbreviated form, mukhtaṣar, and depended on scholia more than on
original texts, led to a deterioration of scholarship in the course of time.

The mystical master generally gathered his disciples at certain hours of the day to teach
them. A widespread legendary aspect of the instruction of a group of disciples is that, in the
end, each of those present claims that the master talked exclusively to him and solved
exactly his problems.
The mystical teacher's method consists, among other ways, of the use of paradoxes—he
tries ‘to catch an elephant by a hair’, for the mystical experience, being beyond time and
space, can be expressed only in words that defy the limits of timebound logic. That is true for
a good number of apophthegmata of early Sufis, as they are handed down in the classical
handbooks of Sufism such as Sarrāj's Kitāb al-luma‘, Kalābādhī's Kitāb at-ta‘arruf and
numerous others.

Many of these sayings may yield more meaning when they are taken as expressions of a
supra-intellectual experience and not analyzed according to our normal grammatical and
logical understanding. The whole problem of the shaṭḥtyāt, the theophatic locutions or, as
Henry Corbin calls them in the sense in which the Protestant spirituals had used the term,
‘paradoxa’, belongs here.34 The mystic, whose mind resembles a canal into which suddenly
an overwhelming amount of water is poured, says things that are not licit in a normal state of
mind. Yet, similar to the Zen ko'an, some such wilful paradoxes can also lead the disciple to
a loftier level of understanding.

The famous tekerleme of the Turkish medieval poet Yunus Emre is a good example of
mystical instruction by means of paradoxes:

Çĭktim erik dalĭna…

I climbed upon the plum tree

to pluck grapes there—

The master of the garden screamed:

‘Why do you take my walnut?’

This is interpreted by a later Turkish master, Niyazi Misri, as pertaining to the sharī‘a (plum),
ṭarīqa (grape) and ḥaqīqa (nut): the attempt to attain reality or truth is often likened to the
hard work that is needed to break a nut before one can enjoy the sweet, wholesome kernel.
The poet himself closes his poem with the lines:

Yunus said a word which does

not resemble other words:

For he hides the face of Truth

from the eyes of hypocrites.

One sometimes wonders whether the oxymorons and paradoxical images used by the Sufis
derive from a common root that lies beneath all mystical experience. The line in Yunus's
tekerleme:

The fish climbed on the poplar tree

has its exact parallel in Indo-Muslim poetry; and as the Moroccan story tells that a cow had
eaten a presumptuous Sufi's lion, an Egyptian poet of the nineteenth century claims, inter
alia, that ‘the lion is devoured by a jenny ass’.35
The world of timelessness, where all contrasts are obliterated and the weakest creature
equals the strongest one, inspires many a mystical teacher. For this reason, riddles and
conundrums were also part of teaching. It seems not unlikely that the Hindi riddles,
pahēliyāñ, ascribed to Amīr Khusraw (d. 1325) may have been a genuine contribution of his
to mystical teaching, as he was a disciple of the Chishti master Niẓāmuddīn Awliyā.

While the mystical teacher tried to introduce his disciples to ever-deeper new layers of reality
by means of unusual literary forms, the ta‘līm, the theoretical dictation of religious texts by
the Shia imam, is of a different character; it is a highly sophisticated introduction into the
mysteries of the faith, and has an absolute validity for those who are exposed to it.

Besides the various types of teaching, scholarly or mystical, the sermon occupies an
important place in Muslim religious life.36 The sermon, khuṭba, during the noon prayer on
Friday in the great mosque was established in early times, and so were the khuṭbas at the
two feasts. The Prophet himself used to preach; rulers or governors followed his example
and the khuṭba became a literary genre in itself, sometimes of extreme brevity, sometimes
delivered in a brilliant style in which the strength and density of the Arabic phrases is
admirable; sometimes it became highly elaborate. The Abbasid caliphs did not preach
themselves, while the Fatimids did at times. The khuṭba was never a lengthy homily but was
to concentrate on eschatological themes; but in more recent times it can go on for a long
time, depending on the talents of the preacher (khatịb), who might comment intelligently
upon current issues. In its second half, the prayer for the ruler was said so that it was also a
highly political affair: to be mentioned in the Friday sermon meant being acknowledged as
the true ruler of the country.

The official khuṭba is interrupted by a very brief pause between its first and second part
during which the preacher sits down (so that ‘shorter than the preacher's sitting’ came to
mean ‘just a moment’). To attend the Friday prayers (which consist of only two rak‘a instead
of the normal four at noon) and the khuṭba is a duty for the community.

There were also other preachers, the quṣṣāṣ, popular speakers who attracted the masses
by their fanciful interpretations of Koranic data and surpassed all limits in their detailed
descriptions of future life. Although—or perhaps because—their fantastic stories coloured
popular piety to a considerable extent, they were sharply criticized and rejected by sober
theologians. Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 1200), certainly a spokesman of many other serious believers,
does not hesitate to call them liars; he even goes so far as to call a well-known mystical
preacher ‘one of God's marvels in lying…’.37

In times of crisis, speakers delivered sermons that reminded Muslims of their duty to repent;
these are called maw‘iẓa, a term often used for the Koran itself, which warns and educates
people (cf. Sūra 2:66 et al.). One of the early Sufis, Yaḥya ibn Mu‘ādh (d. 871), is known by
the nickname al-wā‘iẓ, the ‘preacher calling to repentance’. As all his biographers emphasize
that he mainly preached about hope, one can suppose that on the whole the theme of fear
was prevalent in such sermons. Even women could act as preachers, for example one
Maymūna al-wā‘iẓa (d. 1002) in Baghdad.38

Teachers as well as preachers availed themselves of all kinds of literary forms, in particular
of parables to make their speeches more impressive; suffice it to mention Rūmī's use of the
parable of the moon that is reflected in every kind of water, be it the ocean or a small pond.
Allegorical stories offered vast possibilities for preachers and teachers to bring the central
truth closer to their listeners under the guise of memorable tales: one glance at the poetical
works of Sanā'ī ‘Aṭṭār and Rūmī shows their talent of catching the attention of their
audiences by a seemingly inexhaustible treasure of allegories. ‘Aṭṭār is certainly the greatest
master of this art, while Rūmī is often carried away by the flow of inspiration and returns to
the original story only after long digressions.39 The delightful allegories of Suhrawardī the
Master of Illumination are jewels of medieval Persian prose.

Beside, and correctly speaking above, all these literary forms through which the Muslims
tried to approach the Divine mystery and the world in one way or another stands the clear-
cut dogma, first of all the profession of faith, the shahāda, lā ilāha illā ‘Llāh Muḥammad rasūl
Allah. To pronounce it means to make a decision, and that is shown by lifting the right index
finger. The shahāda is the verbal heart of Islam. The graphic form of its first part with its ten
vertical strokes offers infinite possibilities for the calligrapher; the twenty-four letters of the
full profession of faith—‘There is no deity save God, Muhammad is God's messenger’—
seem to point, for the believers, to the twenty-four hours of the day, while the fact that none
of the letters bears any diacritical marks proves its luminous character, and its seven words
atone for the transgressions of the seven limbs and close the seven gates of Hell. The
shahāda, the fortress into which the believer enters to be protected from every evil, formed a
convenient topic for never-ending meditations.40

A longer form of the profession, a true creed, was developed out of Koranic statements,
especially Sūra 4:136. Thus the believer says: amantu bi ‘llāhi…, ‘I believe in God and His
books and His angels and His messengers and the last Day, and that what happened to you
could never have failed you’. There is a typical placement of the books, as the true words of
God, before the prophets, who are only the instruments through whom the revelation is
brought to the world.41

This creed, which was formulated in the eighth century, aptly sums up the basic facts in
which it is the Muslim's duty to believe. Calligraphers, especially in Turkey, liked to write
these words in the form of a boat, the connecting particles wa, ‘and’, forming the rows. This
is called amantu getnisi, ‘the boat of amantu, “I believe’”, and is supposed to be filled with
baraka, carrying as it were the believer and the artist to the shores of Paradise,

In order to instruct the community in the contents of the revelation, one needed ‘ilm,
‘knowledge’, which was administered by the ‘ulamā, the caretakers of religious instruction
and learning. The Prophetic saying, that ‘seeking ‘ilm is a religious duty’ (AM no. 676), and
its more famous form, ‘Seek knowledge even in China’, triggered off much investigation into
various aspects of knowledge, but one should not forget that the real meaning of ‘ilm was
religious knowledge, a knowledge meant not for ‘practical life’ but for the world to come. A
ḥadīth has the Prophet say: ‘I ask refuge by God from an ‘ilm that has no use’, that is, a
knowledge which may enable its owner to find a good job in modern society but does not
help him to fulfil his religious duties which, as the believer hopes, will lead him to a peaceful
and happy death and a blessed life in Paradise, The content of ‘ilm is to know how to utilize
each moment of life in the service of God, and how to do everything, even though it may
look a profane action, in conformance with the Divine law. This interpretation of ‘ilm has cut
off some of the most pious segments of the Muslim community from contact with the
developing world, and one reads with sadness that in the 1850s a southern Indian Muslim
benefactor of his co-religionists, who had founded a college in Madras in which not only
traditional sciences were taught but also English and other ‘modern sciences’, was forced by
the ‘ulamā to close down this ‘worldly’ institution.42 This may be an exceptional case, but it
shows the difficulties which many Muslims from traditional families have to overcome when
trying to live in modern Western societies.

Besides ‘ilm, the great power that serves to prepare the believer for a happy life in the
Hereafter, Muslims also know ‘irfān, a term often translated as ‘gnosis’. But one has to
beware not to understand ‘gnosis’ in the sense of the historical gnostic trends in the
Hellenistic-Christian tradition. Rather, ‘irfān is the inspired, mystico-philosophical wisdom
which permeates later Sufi and ‘theosophical’ writing, especially in Iran.

But everything is dominated by the moral law which is expressed, for the Muslim, in the
sharī‘a. To obey the law means to obey God, who, as some scholars say, has revealed not
Himself but rather His law, which is then interpreted by the ‘ulamā or, in the Shia tradition, by
the imams and their representatives, the mujtahids. That is why the ‘ulamā, who are able to
interpret God's will, are so important for the maintenance of the House of Islam: they stand
for the right approach to everything in life, even though progressive Muslims attribute the
decline of Islam to ‘self-styled ulamā’, as for example the Malaysian Prime Minister said at
the inauguration of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization in Kuala
Lumpur on 4 October 1991.

THE WORD TO GOD43

I have prayed so much that I myself turned into prayer—

everyone who sees me requests a prayer from me.

(D no. 903)

Thus says Mawlāna Rūmī in a verse which is perhaps his most beautiful self-portrait and, at
the same time, the ideal portrait of a God-loving human soul.

The word has the power of realization: coming from God in its beginning (as does
everything), it is the source of all activity, but the human answer to it has strong power as
well. Ancient peoples (and to a certain extent modern man as well) knew the magic power of
the word, which can be realized in the effects of blessing and curse, of greeting and
command: to speak the word can heal or hurt.

That is why the formula of greeting is so important. The Koran orders the believers to greet
each other with the formula of peace, and the Prophet urged them to answer with an even
more beautiful formula. Therefore the Muslim greets you with as-salāmu ‘alaykum, ‘peace be
upon you’, to which you should answer: as-salāmu ‘alaykum wa raḥmatu ‘Llāhi wa
barakātuhu, ‘And upon you be peace and God's blessings and mercy’.

The Arabic language uses the same word for blessing and cursing: da‘ā, ‘to call’, is done li
‘for’ someone, that is, to bless the other person, or ‘alaà ‘against’, which means to call down
a curse. Blessing means to turn over good fortune by means of the word, and the blessings
upon the Prophet, the taṣliya or ṣatawāi sharifa (or in the Persian-Indian areas durūd sharīf),
‘sets in motion heavenly forces’, as Constance Padwick writes. The religious singer in Egypt
even knows a ta‘ṭīra, ‘perfumed’ blessing for the Prophet: he asks the Lord to send down
‘perfumed blessings and peace’ on his tomb. The taṣliya was thought to strengthen a
petition's value or to lead to forgiveness of sins; it could be used in oaths, and also to silence
people: in every case, its power becomes evident.44

To appreciate the efficacy of formulas like raḥimahu Attāh, ‘may God have mercy upon him’,
or ghafara ‘Llāh ‘alayhā, ‘May God forgive her’, one has to keep in mind that in Arabic the
past tense does not only express a completed action but can also be used as an optative.
That is, when one pronounces the words of blessing or curse, the intention is, as it were,
already fulfilled. The same holds true for the participial form: al-marḥūm is the ‘one upon
mercy is shown’ but at the same time, and perhaps in a more realistic sense, the one for
whom one hopes and prays that God will show him mercy.

Islamic languages are replete with formulas for wishing well or averting evil: bāraka Allāhu
fik, ‘may God bless you’, is as general a wish as Allah razī olsun, ‘may God be satisfied with
you’, as the pious Turk says to thank someone, upon which one is supposed to say
hepimizden, ‘with all of us’. The Muslim blesses the hands that have prepared a delicious
meal or produced a fine piece of embroidery: elinize sağlik, ‘health to your hands’ in Turkish,
dast-i shumā dard nakunad in Persian, ‘May your hands not see pain…’. Among traditional
Turks, one could conduct an entire conversation with these blessing formulas until the
honoured visitor leaves and one thanks him for his coming by saying Ayağĭnĭza sağlĭk, ‘May
your feet (which have brought you to us) be healthy!’

Important as these beautiful wishes are, the curse, on the other hand, can be as efficacious
as (and perhaps even more so than) the blessing, especially when uttered by a powerful
person.45 It is contagious, and Muslims avoid contact with an accursed or afflicted person.
To avoid its evil influences, Muslims again use numerous formulas such as, in Turkish, Allah
göstermesin, ‘May God not show it’ (i.e. the illness or disaster with which someone else has
been smitten), or, in Persian, khudā na-khwāsta, ‘God not willing’. When mentioning some
mishap or disaster, Persians used to say haft kūh or haft qur'ān dar miyān—‘may seven
mountains’ or ‘seven Korans be between it (and us)’.

As Muslims are careful not to mention evil or opprobrious tilings, they also try to circumvent
the taboo connected with death. Where the Arab says or writes, for example, tuwuffiya, ‘he
was consumed’ (in the mercy of God), the Persian writer may say intiqāl kard, ‘He was
moved’ (to another place). It would be a fascinating study to collect the different expressions
in Islamic languages that are used to speak of a person's death. In classical literatures, such
expressions are often worded according to the deceased person's rank, character and
interests. One of the most interesting and moving forms, which I encountered in Turkey, was
sizlere ömür, ‘may you live!’ instead of saying ‘he passed away’ (which of course is also an
ellipsis). Thus one says: ‘Osman Bey sizlere ömür oldu, has become—may you live on’, that
is ‘he died’.

Blessings and curses work on others, while the oath is a kind of curse that has
repercussions on the speaker: when one breaks the oath or solemn promise, one will be
punished.46 Therefore, one takes an oath by the object or person dearest to one's heart: ‘By
the head of my father!’ ‘By the Prophet!’ ‘By the beard of the Prophet!’ ‘By the Koran!’ In Sufi
circles, one may find formulas like ‘By the cloak of my shaykh’, and a member of the former
futuwwa sodalities might swear ‘By the futuwwa trousers!’47 The most frequently-used—and
therefore somewhat worn-out—formula is Wallāhi, ‘By God’, which is often strengthened in
threefold repetition: Wallāhi, ballāhi, tallāhi. Superficial and irresponsible swearing was, it
seems, common among the Arabs, for one finds a ḥadīth which looks at first sight somewhat
mysterious: ittaqū ‘l-wāwāt, ‘beware of the W's’, that is, the swearing particle wa used in
such formulas. It would then mean: ‘Do not take an oath easily’. Another ḥadīth states: ‘He
who swears a lot goes to Hell’ (AM no. 669).

Part of the oath is the vow.48 One can vow anything—‘a candle my body's length’ or the
recitation of forty times Sūra Yāsin—for the vow is a kind of contract with the one in whose
power one trusts. It is therefore often done in the presence of an important person endowed
with baraka, or preferably before a saint's shrine, or else at a sacred time, for instance in
Muḥarram. One can vow, for example, that a child born by the blessings of the saint will be
called after him—hence the numerous names like Ghauth bakhsh, ‘Gift of the Help’, namely
‘Abdul Qādir Gīlānī. The most prominent example is Akbar's son, later the emperor
Jahāngīr, whose proper name was Salīm after the pious Salīm of Sikri, whose prayer had
worked to give the emperor an heir. One can also vow to ‘sell’ the child to the saint's shrine:
in Turkey, such children bear the name Satĭmĭş, ‘sold’. It is possible to vow the celebration of
a mawlid or to feed so-and-so many people, or to prepare a special meal, as in the Turkish
Zakarya sofrasĭ to which forty people are invited and where forty kinds of food are prepared.
From the vow to sweep the saint's shrine (or at least to bring a new broom) to the offering of
a new cover for the sarcophagus, everything can be turned into a votive gift (although I have
never seen counterparts of the silver hands and feet which one may find in Catholic
churches). The numerous places such as trees or window grills, on which little rags are
hanging to remind the saint of the ‘contract’ established by the vow, prove how common
these customs are, as much as orthodox circles may object to such superstitions which
betray people's craving for some power mediating between man and God, and thus, as it
were, contradict Islam's pure monotheism.

The belief in demonic powers led to conjurations and exorcism, which are particularly
elaborate in the Zār ritual practised mainly among Egyptian women.49 Similar practices are
also found in parts of Muslim India, and probably elsewhere. It is the magic word that serves
along with complicated actions to drive out the spirit that has taken possession of the
woman.

Before beginning the ‘verbal sacrifice’, i.e. the prayer, it is necessary to invite God by means
of an epiclesis. Islamic prayer has no actual epiclesis unless one were to call the beginning
of the prayer rite, the attestation Allāhu akbar, ‘God is greater (than everything)’ such, for it
brings once more to mind the overarching power of God in whose presence the praying
person now stands.

It is a somewhat different case in mystical writing. Rūmī's verses, with their repeated
invocations such as:

biyā biyā dildār-i man dildār-i man

Come, oh come, my Beloved, my Beloved!

serve as an invocation and invitation to the mystical Beloved. In connection with Rūmī, in
whose poetry and the later Mevlevi ritual the reed flute plays a central role, one may
remember that in ancient Anatolia the flute-player had a sacred function: his tunes
accompanied the spoken epiclesis, and thus the person who plays the flute is indeed the
one ‘who calls the deity’.50 Rūmī use of the symbol of the reed flute at the very beginning of
the Mathnawī may have been born from a subconscious memory of these traditions, for he,
too, wanted to call—call back, that is—the mystical Beloved.

Prayer is the heart of religion: lex orandi lex credendi, as the saying goes. Prayer is, as
mentioned, a sacrifice, the sacrifice of the word, as Rūmī says:

When they pronounced takbīr, they went away

from our world, just like a sacrifice:

the meaning of takbīr, my friend, is this:

‘O God, we have become Thy sacrifice!’

(M III 2,140ff.)

As a sacrifice, a sacred action, it has to begin with purification, whether with water, as in the
ritual ablution, or purification by repentance. The human being who calls to the Powerful,
Rich Lord sees himself or herself in the invocations as a poor, lowly sinner, and such
epithets—al-faqīr al-ḥaqīr al-mudhnib—are frequent in religious poetry; the Sindhi bard
‘Abdur Ra'ūf Bhattī in the eighteenth century assumed the pen name al-‘āṣī, ‘the rebel’, for
his prayer poems.

The official confession of sins, central in Christianity, has no room in Islam as a preparation
for prayer. It is practised, however, in some Sufi orders among the brethren and in the
presence of the master, who gives the penitent a special formula and may or may not
impose a punishment upon the sinner. But the contritional outcry of the penitent, mentioned
in the Koran (e.g. Sūra 27:44; 28:16) is repeated time and again: Yā rabbī ẓalamtu nafsī, ‘O
Lord, I have wronged myself!’ Even more important, if one may say so, is the formula of
istighfār, ‘I ask God for forgiveness’, which can be given to a person as a dhikr at the first
stages of the mystical path. One of my Pakistani friends, a major in the army, constantly
murmured the istighfār while walking, driving or riding in order to clean his soul, for if
repeated 3,000 or 5,000 rimes a day, it is supposed to purify the heart.

Some of the most moving Islamic prayers are inspired by the hope of forgiveness. The
seeker's heart is hovering between fear and hope—fear of God's justice but hope for His
mercy, fear of the One who is not hurt by human sins and hope for Him who can easily
forgive the miserable creature's mistake. The short dialectic prayers of Yaḥyā ibn Mu‘ādh (d.
871) are the most beautiful and tender examples of this feeling, which finds its perfect
expression in his prayer; ‘Forgive me, for I belong to Thee’.

Ritual prayer is announced by the call to prayer, adhān, which serves to remind the Muslim
that he or she is now entering the realm of sacred time; it leads him or her into a sacred
presence, similar to the enclosure that protects the spatial sanctuary from defilement. Proper
attire is required: for men, the area between navel and knee, for women the whole body
except face and feet has to be covered, as has the head; the dress should be beautiful (Sūra
7:31).
After the purification with water, the actual prayer rite begins with the words Allāhu akbar, the
so-called takbīrat al-iḥrām which seals off the sacred time (just as the donning of the iḥrām
seals up the sacred space). For now one finds oneself in the presence of the All-Holy King
and is even more overawed than one would be in the presence of a worldly ruler. There are
very many descriptions of what a Muslim experiences when entering the prayer rite: it could
be seen as sacrificing one's whole being to the Lord, or it could inspire the feeling of already
participating in the Resurrection, standing between Paradise and Hell; and those whose
thoughts perhaps wander to worldly tilings instead of completely concentrating upon the
prayer are severely admonished, for ‘there is no ritual prayer without the presence of the
heart’ (AM no. 109).

One can perform the ritual prayer (ṣalāt, Persian/Turkish namāz) on any clean spot, but it is
preferable to use the prayer rug (and pious travellers would have a small rug with them;
even wooden slates of the size of 60 to 120 cm are used in some places).

The five daily prayers are not mentioned in the Koran, but must have been practised in the
Prophet's day. Their number is connected in legend with Muhammad's heavenly journey:
God imposed a heavy duty of prayers upon the Muslims, which was reduced after much
pleading to five. The Koran speaks of the prayers at the ends of the day and in the
afternoons (Sūra 11:114) and recommends nightly prayer, tahajjud, which is still performed
by pious people but which never became a duty.

When someone's ṣalāt is finished, one wishes him or her taqabbala Allāh, ‘may God accept
it’, because it does not consist of a petition which should be answered but is rather a
sacrifice which has to be accepted. Each ṣalāt consists of two, three or four unities or cycles,
rak‘a, which comprise bodily movements such as standing, genuflexion and prostration, as
well as the recitations of several Sūras of the Koran. The five daily prayers together
comprise seventeen rak‘a. The recitations of the Sūras and formula—always in Arabic—
have to be absolutely correct, yet Muslim hagiography knows of saints who, being foreign or
illiterate, could not articulate the Arabic prayers correctly and were therefore despised by
people, although their proximity to God was greater than anyone could perceive.51

It is left to the individual to recite longer or shorter pieces from the Koran during the ṣalāt,
and most people will prefer the short Sūras which are the first that one learns by heart, but
once in a while one hears of people, especially among the Sufis, who recite the whole Koran
in one or two rak‘a. This, of course, requires an extension of the prayer which is not
recommended for the rank and file, for ‘The best prayer is the briefest one’, as the Prophet
said.

One can perform one's prayer in the quiet atmosphere of one's home, in the middle of
maddening traffic noise or in the loneliness of the desert or the forest; yet the community
prayer is even more esteemed, because Islam is a religion in which the individual is
generally conceived of as an integral part of the community, the umma.52 The equality of
the believers in the mosque, where there is no ranking of rich and poor (some pious people
would even avoid praying in the first rows in order not to look ostentatious), induced Iqbāl to
make an important remark about the social function of the congregational prayer:

The spirit of all true prayer is social. Even the hermit abandons the society of men in the
hope of finding, in a solitary abode, the fellowship of God… It is a psychological truth that
association multiplies the normal man's power of perception, deepens his emotion, and
dynamizes his will to a degree unknown to him in the privacy of his individuality…

… Yet we cannot ignore the important consideration that the posture of the body is a real
factor in determining the attitude of the mind. The choice of one particular direction in Islamic
worship is meant to secure the unity of feeling in the congregation, and its form in general
creates and fosters the sense of social equality, as it tends to destroy the feeling of rank or
race superiority in the worshippers. What a tremendous spiritual revolution will take place,
practically in no time, if the proud aristocratic Brahmin of South India is daily made to stand
shoulder to shoulder with the untouchable!…53

Ritual prayer is an important pillar of the House of Islam, and tradition says: ‘Between faith
and unbelief lies the giving up of the ritual prayer’. A person about whom one says lā ṣalāt
lah, ‘He has no ritual prayer’, or in Persian and Turkish, he is bē namāz, ‘prayerless’, is
someone who does not really belong to the community.

The ṣalāt has been compared to a stream of water that purifies the believer five times a day,
but even without this poetical interpretation one can see that it (ideally) educates people to
cleanliness and punctuality.

As Iqbāl briefly mentioned, the body's position in prayer is important, for, as Abū Ḥafṣ ‘Omar
as-Suhrawardī says, ‘One has to pray with all limbs’.54 The prostration means to give away
everything, to empty oneself completely from worldly concerns; genuflexion means to turn
away from oneself, and standing is the honoured position of the human being. That is, one
expresses one's humility and one's feeling of being one of the people who are ‘honoured by
God’ (Sūra 17:70) by being human. One can interpret the upright position as expression of
the spiritual aspects of the human being and the prostration as expression of the earthly part
in us, while genuflexion is a bridge between the two. Others have seen in the movements of
ritual prayer the human being's participation in the vegetal, the animal and the human
spheres. One can also understand prostration as the attitude of the person who, wonder-
struck, bends his or her back before God—just as the sky is bent in worship. It is the attitude
of closest proximity, as the Koran ordered the Prophet: usjud wa ‘qtarab, ‘Fall down and
draw near!’ (Sūra 96:19). Therefore, the dark mark on one's forehead, caused by regular
prayer, came to be regarded as the sign of the true believer.

The variety of positions is important, as it means that humans can participate in the different
levels of creation while the angels, it is said, occupy only one position of the prayer rite
throughout eternity. And when the praying person lifts his or her hands, the spiritual current
flows into them to fill body and soul.

Some pious souls found that the movement of the ṣalāt are performed in the names of Adam

or Muhammad when written in Arabic characters—an interpretation that shows

that prayer is the central function of humans. Muslims have also explained its three
movements as pertaining to youth, maturity and old age.

The word ṣalāt was connected, though grammatically incorrectly, with waṣala, ‘to reach, to
attain’, as the praying person hopes to reach God's presence or, in the case of ecstatic
Sufis, to be united with Him. Abū Ḥafṣ ‘Omar as-Suhrawardī, on the other hand, combines
the word with ṣalā, to be burnt: he who prays is corrected and purified by the fire of
contemplation, so that Hellfire cannot touch him.

The number of rak‘a for each prayer is prescribed, but one can add certain extra rak‘as or
extend one's prayer by additional recitation: the farā'iḍ, the absolutely binding duties, can be
followed by the nawāfil, supererogatory prayers. An effective prayer must have at least two
rak‘a. That is the kind of prayer which should be offered, ideally, on every occasion: before
leaving the house; when entering the mosque; when going to bed; during an eclipse; or
when putting on a new dress. On such an occasion, one may pray:

Oh God, to Thee be praise who hast clothed me with this. I ask Thee for the good of it and
for the good for which it was created, and I take refuge with Thee from the evil of it and the
evil for which it was created.55

The wording of this prayer is typical of many others: one always asks for God's protection
from any evil that may be connected with that object which one deals with. Special rites are
practised in the communal prayer for rain.

For the Prophet, ritual prayer was a repetition of his experience during the mi‘rāj which
brought him into God's immediate presence. And when he craved this experience, he would
call Bilāl, his Ethiopian muezzin: ‘Oh Bilāl, quicken us with the call to prayer!’ (AM no. 48).
The time of timelessness in prayer made him say tī ma‘a Allāh waqt, ‘I have a time with God
in which neither a God-sent prophet nor an angel brought near has room…’ (AM no. 100). It
is this ecstatic experience which some souls were granted while bowing down in their ritual
prayer.

Once more, the most eloquent spokesman of this experience is Rūmī, who sings in a poem
with breathless rhythms, quick as a heartbeat:

At the time of evening prayer

ev'ryone spreads cloth and candles

But I dream of my beloved,

see, lamenting, grieved, his phantom.

My ablution is with tears, see,

Thus my prayer will be fiery,

And I burn the mosque's doorway

when my call to prayer hits it…

Is the prayer of the drunken,

tell me! is this prayer valid?

For he does not know the timing

and is not aware of places.

Did I pray perhaps two cycles?

Or is this perhaps the eighth one?

And which Sūra did I utter?

For I have no tongue to speak it.

At God's door—how could I knock now

For I have no hand nor heart now?

You have carried heart and hand, God!

Grant me safety, God, forgive me…

(D no. 2,831)

Prayer, properly speaking, begins with praise. For in praise one turns away from oneself and
directs one's heart towards Him to whom all praise belongs. Will not the Muslim exclaim,
even when admiring a man-made object, Subḥān Allāh, ‘Praise be God’, instead of admiring
the artist first? For he knows that God is the real source of human art, and that one has to
praise Him first and only in the second place the instrument through which He works. Out of
praise of God, then, grows ethical behaviour because one attempts to reach a place among
those who approach Him as it behoves.

The Fātiḥa is used among Muslims as much as, if not more than, the Lord's Prayer in
Christianity, and for this reason ‘Fātiḥa often becomes a general term for a religious rite, a
celebration and a meeting in which numerous prayers can be recited; but the Fātiḥa, often
repeated silently by those present, is the true centre.56

It is for this reason that the Fātiḥa, the first Sūra of the Koran, begins with the words, al-
ḥamdu lillāh, ‘Praise be to God’, and by praying so, humankind joins the ranks of those
whose proper destination is praise of God. Minerals, plants and animals praise Him with the
lisān ul-ḥāl, ‘the tongue of their state’, that is, by their very existence. To be sure, not many
have described this praise in such amazing detail as did Bahā-i Walad, who tells how he
heard all the food in his stomach praise the Creator:

I had eaten much. I saw in my stomach all water and bread. God inspired me: ‘All this water
and bread and fruits have tongues and praise Me with voices and supplications. That means
human beings and animals and fairies are all nourishments which have turned into voices of
supplication and praise for Me…’.57

His son, Jalāluddīn Rūmī, then translated into human language the prayer of the fruit trees in
the orchard which utter, as it were, by means of their naked branches and later by dint of the
plentiful fruits the same petition as do humans when they speak the words of the Fātiḥa:

‘We worship Thee!’—that is the garden's prayer

in winter time.

‘We ask for help!’—that's what it utters

in time of spring.

‘We worship Thee’, that means: I come imploring,

imploring Thee:

Don't leave me in this sadness, Lord, and open

the door of joy!

‘We ask Thee, Lord, for help’—that is, the fullness

of ripe, sweet fruits

Breaks now my branches and my twigs—protect me!

My Lord, My God!

(D no. 2,046)

The hymnic prayers of the Egyptian Sufi Dhū'n-Nūn in the ninth century are among the first
attempts of Muslim thinkers to make the material reality transparent for the laud that is on
everything's tongue, even in ‘tonguelessness’.

The laud expressed at the very beginning of the Fātiḥa was translated into poetry by the
great masters of Islamic literature mainly in the genre of poems usually called tawḥīd,
‘acknowledgement of God's Unity’. This laud was expressed in the choicest words that they
could think of: they praise God's unfathomable wisdom and tell of the wonders which He
created in the universe; they also ponder the reasons why God has created things so
differently: why is the Negro black and the Turk white? Why are humans to bear heavy
burdens of obedience while the ferocious wolf is not asked to account for his bloodshed?
Why is there suffering, and why does the Earth now appear in lovely green and now in wintry
white? But the poets always end with the praise as they began with it—the wisdom of the
Creator is too great to be doubted. In everything, there is a ḥikma, a wisdom; and therefore
when the Muslim is afflicted with a disaster or faces some sad events, loss of friends or
illness, and is asked how he fares, he or she will most probably answer, al-ḥamdu li ‘llāhi
‘ala kulli ḥāl, ‘Praised be God in every state [or: for everything]’.

The great hymnic poems, be they qaṣīdas with monorhyme or double-rhymed poems at the
beginning of major Persian, Turkish or Urdu epics, have a psalmlike quality in their majestic
sounds: suffice it to think of the poems of the Pathan poet Rahman Baba (d. after 1707), of
the loving songs of Indian qawwāls, or of Turkish ilāhis with their repeated lines al-ḥamdu
llilāh or the like.

Such poems often begin with the description of God's greatness in the third person and then
turn to the personal address ‘Thou’, again in consonance with the pattern of the Fātiḥa,
which starts with praise and then turns to the personal God: ‘Thee we worship, and Thee we
ask for help’, as though one were drawing closer and closer to the goal of worship. The poet
will be careful to address God with appropriate Divine names: when he writes the
introduction to a love epic, he will choose names that reveal His attributes of beauty, while in
a heroic story the attributes of majesty are to be used. Large sections of religious poetry can
indeed be seen, so to speak, as elaborations of the Prophet's saying lā uḥṣī ‘alayka
thanā'an, ‘I cannot count the praise due to Thee!’

Ritual prayer has a preferred place in Muslim piety not only because it is one of the five
pillars of religion but also because the praying person uses the verses of the Koran, which
means that he or she addresses God with His own words: this close relationship between
the reciting person and the Divine recipient of the prayer creates a very special bond.

At the end of the ritual prayer, after pronouncing the greetings to angels and humans, one
can utter personal prayers, petitionary prayers, du‘ā or munājāt, intimate conversations.
Such prayers can be spoken, of course, at any time, but they are considered more effective
after the ritual prayer when one is still in the state of bodily and spiritual purity.

The content of these petitionary prayers is as variegated as are the needs of human beings.
One can pray for any worldly good, for health, for relief from worries, for success, for
children, or when seeing the new moon, and so on and so forth. But besides these practical
human wishes, there are prayers for ethical values, like the prayer ‘Dress me in the garment
of piety!’ The Prophet's prayer ya rabbī zidnī ‘ilman, ‘O Lord, increase me in knowledge’,
inspired people as well, and the sinner's hope for forgiveness, the longing for Paradise, is
expressed as much as the fear of Hell, although ideally both should be transcended by the
loving trust in God's eternal will and wisdom.

And yet, one finds rebellious outcries against God: Hellmut Ritter gives excellent examples
from ‘Aṭṭār's epics, outcries which the poet puts often in the mouth of mentally deranged
people, but which one can also observe, at times, when listening to a ‘village saint’ in
Anatolia.58 In addition, some of Iqbāl's poetical prayers express a strong resentment to
God's actions and underline man's will to organize life on Earth according to his own will.

One prayer that is always answered is that for others, and not only the family and the friends
are included but also all those whom God has created, even one's enemies, for they may
have served to divert the praying person from his or her previous evil ways, thus leading him
or her back to God and helping to acquire a happier and more blessed state, as Rūmī tells in
one of the stories in the Mathnawī (M IV 56f.). Many manuscripts from Islamic lands have a
short prayer formula at the end or ask the reader to include the author and/or the copyist in
his prayers. Likewise, tombstones often bear the words al-fātiḥa, or, in Turkey, ruhuna fatiha,
that is, one should recite a Fātiḥa for the deceased person's spiritual welfare because
prayers as well as the recitation of the Koran can help to improve dead people's state in their
lonely grave.

According to tradition, free prayer should be spoken in plain words and without rhetorical
embellishment; but in later times, the Arabs’ love of high-flowing, rhyming sentences is
evident. Thus, many such prayers are masterpieces of Arabic and—at a later stage—
Persian or Turkish high-soaring prose.59 Suffice it to mention the prayers ascribed to Imam
Zayn al-‘Ābidīn in as-Ṣaḥīfa as-Sajjādiyya, which is available now in an excellent English
version. Ghazzālī's Ihyā ‘ulūm ad-dīn contains a vast treasure of prayers which are inherited
from the Prophet, his companions and his family, and from certain pious and saintly
members of the community in the early centuries of Islam; such a prayer, du‘ā ma'thūr, is
thought to be particularly effective (similar to classical prayer formulas in Christian prayer
books). In the Persianate world, ‘Abdullāh-i Ansārī's (d. 1089) Munājāt are the first example
of short, rhyming Persian prayers, interspersed by prayer poems, and in the course of the
centuries the mystical prayers of Sufi masters like Mīr Dard of Delhi (d. 1785), or the long
chains of invocations used in the tradition of some Sufi orders, are beautiful examples of the
never-resting longing of the human heart.60

One of the forms found in such traditions is the prayer with the letters of the alphabet which,
being a vessel into which the revelation was poured, have a sanctity of their own (see below,
p. 152). Thus, one finds chains of ‘alphabetical’ prayers which implore God, for example bi-
dhāl dhātika ‘by the letter dh of Thy essence, dhāt’, or ‘By the letter ṣād of Thy reliability,
ṣidq’, and so on.61

Again, in somewhat later times, one finds the closing formula bi-ḥaqq Muḥammadin or bi-
sharaf Muḥammadin, ‘For Muhammad's sake’ or ‘For the sake of Muhammad's honour…’.
The name of the Prophet becomes, as it were, a warrant for the acceptance of prayer. Ibn
Taymiyya objected to this formula; one should rather begin and close the du‘ā with the
formula of blessings for the Prophet. One can also find prayers in connection with the Koran:
‘For the sake of the Koran… I beg Thee that…’.

During the petitionary prayer, one opens the hands, with the palms showing heavenward as
though to attract the effusion of grace (or, in a more primitive interpretation, one thinks that
God would be ashamed not to put something into the open hands of a begging creature).
Therefore the poets see the plane tree's leaves lifted like hands to ask for God's grace.

But, like all people in the world, the Muslims too were plagued by the problem: can prayer
really be heard and answered, and why does God not answer all our petitions? Some radical
mystics, overstressing the concept of surrender and absolute trust in God, voiced the opinion
that prayer is of no use as everything has been pre-ordained since pre-eternity. Only ritual
prayer as an act of obedience is permissible.62 However, most Muslims reminded such
sceptics of the Koranic promise: ‘Call upon Me, and I will answer!’ (Sūra 40:62), or God's
statement: ‘Verily I am near, I answer the prayer of the worshipper when he prays’ (Sūra
2:186).

The concept of God as a personal God, a caring and wise Lord, necessitated the dialogue
between Him and His creatures—a dialogue which, naturally, was initiated by Him. When a
ḥadīth claims that ‘God does not open anyone's mouth to ask for forgiveness unless He has
decreed to forgive him’, then prayer is not only permitted but also required. Prayer and
affliction work against each other like shield and arrow, and it is not a condition in war that
one should not carry a shield, says the traditional adage.

Yet, there remains the problem that many a prayer is not answered. In this respect, Qushayri
and others quote a ḥadīth that states that God likes to listen to the voices of those who
implore Him, just as we enjoy listening to the voices of caged birds; that is why he does not
fulfil their wishes immediately but keeps them at bay to enjoy their sweet voices somewhat
longer… (AM no. 730). This is certainly a very anthropomorphic explanation, not compatible
with high theological reasoning. But since prayer often evades theological definitions and
has apparently its own law of gravity, one need not be surprised that despite many rules and
regulations developed even for the so-called ‘free’ prayer, believers concede that God
accepts every sincere call—even, as Rūmī says, the prayer of the menstruating woman
(who, due to her impurity, must not touch or recite the Koran). He makes this remark in the
context of the story of Moses and the shepherd, when the stern, proud prophet chastised the
simple lover of God who, as becomes clear, was about to reach a much higher spiritual rank
than Moses himself. The true aim of prayer is, as Iqbāl says in a fine Urdu poem, not that
one's wish be granted but rather that the human will be changed to become unified with the
Divine will; the Divine will can then flow through the human soul, filling and transforming it,
until one reaches conformity with one's destined fate.63

Just as free prayer can be uttered at the end of the ritual prayer, one can also often see
pious people sitting after finishing the ṣalāt, counting their prayer beads while they repeat
either a Divine name or a formula given to them by their spiritual guide. The so-called tasbīḥ
(literally, the pronouncing of praise formulas such as subḥān Allāh) or subḥa, a thread with
thirty-three or ninety-nine beads made of ritually clean material, was probably introduced
from India into the central Islamic lands in the ninth century,64 but the custom of dhikr,
‘mentioning’ or ‘recollecting’, goes back to the time of the Prophet. Does not the Koran—
where the root dhakara, ‘remember’, occurs dozens of time—speak of ‘remembering God
after finishing the ritual prayer…’ (Sūra 4:103) and promise: ‘Verily by remembering the Lord,
hearts become quiet’ (Sūra 13:28)?

This ‘remembering’ meant in the beginning simply thinking of God (dhikr) and His grace and
blessings, (something a believer should constantly do), but it developed rather early into a
whole system of meditation in which certain formulas were repeated thousands of times.65
The very name of Allāh was probably the first formula to be used for such purposes, for after
all, the Koran reminded the believers ‘to remember Allah’. Furthermore, the formulas of
asking forgiveness, istighfār, or subḥān Allah, or al-ḥamdu lillāh, were repeated many times,
and the profession of faith, or at least its first part with its swinging from the negation lā to the
affirmation illā, was an ideal vehicle for long meditations, all the more as it can be easily
combined with breathing: lā ilāha, ‘there is no deity’, is said while exhaling, to point to ‘what
is not God’, while the illā Allāh during the inhaling shows that everything returns into the all-
embracing Divine Being.

The Sufis developed psychological systems to understand the working of each of the ninety-
nine Divine Names lest the meditating person be afflicted by the use of a wrong name. The
dhikr could be loud or silent; the loud one is generally used in the meetings of Sufi
brotherhoods and ends in the repetition of the last h of Allāh after every other sound has
slowly disappeared; this last stage resembles a deep sigh. The silent dhikr too has been
described as a journey through the letters of the word Allāh until the meditating person is, so
to speak, surrounded by the luminous circle of this final h, the greatest proximity that one
could hope to reach.66

The dhikr should permeate the entire body and soul,67 and the mystics knew of refined
methods of slowly opening the centres of spiritual power in the body—the five or seven
luminous points, laṭā'if. These techniques, along with the proper movements or attitude in
sitting and the correct breathing, have to be learned from a master who knows best how the
hearts of the disciples can be polished. For the dhikr has always been regarded as a means
of polishing the mirror of the heart—this heart which can so easily be covered with the rust of
worldly occupations and thoughts; constant dhikr, however, can remove the rust and make
the heart clear so that it can receive the radiant Divine light and reflect the Divine beauty.
How much even a simple dhikr permeates the whole being became clear to me in a
Pakistani home: after a stroke, the old mother was unable to speak but repeated—one may
say breathed—the word Allāh hour after hour.

During the dhikr, special positions of the body are required. One often places one's head
upon one's knees—the knees are, as Abū Ḥalṣ ‘Omar as-Suhrawardī writes, ‘the meditating
person's Mt Sinai’ where one receives the manifestation of Divine light as did Moses.68 How
widespread this thought was is understood from Shāh ‘Abdul Laṭīf s great Sindhi Risālō, in
which this eighteenth-century Sufi poet in the lower Indus Valley compares the knees of the
true Yogis, and that means, for him, the true lovers of God, to Mt Sinai where the epiphany
takes place.

Prayer, as the Muslims knew, is an answer to God's call. Western readers are best
acquainted with Rūmī's story of the man who gave up prayer because he never received an
answer but then was taught by God that in every ‘O Lord!’ of his, there are 100 ‘Here I am at
your service!’ from God's side (M III 189ff.). This story, translated for the first time in 1821
into Latin by the German theologian F. D. A. Tholuck,69 helped Nathan Söderblom and
those who studied his works to understand that Islam too knows the concept of the oratio
infusa, the prayer of grace; but few if any authors were aware that this idea had occurred in
Muslim literature long before Rūmī. There are a number of ḥadīth dealing with prayer as
initiated by God, and mystics such as al-Ḥallāj (who sang: ‘I call Thee, nay, Thou callest me’)
and shortly after him Niffarī (d. 965) used this concept frequently. In Rūmī's Mathnawī, not
only does this famous story point to the secret of prayer as a Divine gift, but also the poet
repeats time and again:

Thou madest prayer grow from me, for otherwise,

how could a rose grow out of an ash pit?

(M II 2,443)

Rūmī, like other mystics within and outside Islam, knew that prayer is not fettered in words.
In his elaboration of the above-mentioned ḥadīth, ‘I have a time with God’, he points to the
fact that ritual prayer (and, one may add, free prayer and dhikr as well) is an outward form,
but the soul of ritual prayer ‘is rather absorption and loss of consciousness, in which all these
outward forms remain outside and have no room any more. Even Gabriel, who is pure spirit,
does not fit into it.’

There is only silence—sacred silence is the veritable end of prayer, as Rūmī says:

Become silent and go by way of silence toward non-existence,

and when you become non-existent you'll be all praise and laud.

For silence is very much part of the religious experience,70 and, like the word, has different
shades and forms. There is the ‘sacred silence’, which means that names and formulas must
not be mentioned: neither will the person involved in true dhikr reveal the name which he or
she invokes, nor will the non-initiated be admitted into the Ismaili Jamaatkhana where silent
meditation takes place. Even the use of a sacred or foreign language in the cult is, in a
certain way, silence: one feels that something else, the Numinous, speaks in words and
sounds which the normal observer does not understand.
Often, silence grows out of awe: in the presence of the mighty king, the humble servant
would not dare to speak. In the silent dhikr, the repetition of the names or formulas is
completely interiorized and has no signs or words; in fact, as especially the Naqshbandis
have emphasized, true worship is khalwat dar anjuman, ‘solitude in the crowd’ that is, the
continued recollection of God in one's heart while doing one's duty in the world—dast bi-kār
dil bi-yār, ‘The hand at work, the heart near the friend’, as the Persian saying goes. The
Koran had praised those whom neither business nor work keeps away from remembering
their Lord (Sūra 24:37), who are fi ṣalātin dā'imūn, ‘persevering in prayer’ (Sūra 70:22–3).

One may think in this connection also of ascetic silence, alluded to in the last phrase of the
old tripartite rule of ‘little eating, little sleep, little talking’ (qillat al-ta‘ām, qillat al-manām, qillat
al-kalām)—a rule that could lead to near-complete silence in the case of some Sufis. In
Turkey, silence is part of the fulfilment of certain vows, such as in the Zakarya sofrasĭ.

But when one speaks of silent prayer, as Rūmī does in the verse quoted earlier, his remark
emerges from the feeling that the ineffable cannot be fettered in words. Many of his poems
therefore end in the call khāmūsh, ‘Quiet! Silent!’ because he could not express the secret of
the loving interior dialogue with the Divine Beloved. To do that, one has to learn the ‘tongue
of tonguelessness’.

However, it is a paradox found in many religious traditions, and certainly in Islam, that the
mystics, who were so well aware of the necessity and central role of silence, wrote the most
verbose books and prayers to explain that they could not possibly express their thoughts.
They knew that to speak of one's experience is basically a treason to the experience; for, as
Dhū'n-Nūn said, the hearts of the free (that is, the real men of God) are the tombs of the
secrets, qulūb al-aḥrār qubūr al-aṣrār. Those who have reached the highest ranges of
intimacy with the Lord keep closed the doors of expression. Was not al-Ḥallaj executed
because he committed the major sin of ifshā as-sirr, ‘divulging the secret’ of loving union?
That is at least how later generations interpreted his death on the gallows, pointing by this
interpretation to the importance of silence.

They are here in unison with the representatives of theological silence, of the apophatic
theology whose roots go back, in the Western tradition, to Dionysius Pseudo-Areopagita,
whose theology has influenced Christian and Islamic mysticism over the centuries.

The mystic—verbose as he may be, with however many paradoxes he may try to pour out
his experience—has yet to be silent, for he is trying to fathom the unfathomable depth of the
Divine Ocean, the deus abscoditus, and cannot speak, resembling a dumb person who is
unable to tell of his dreams. The prophet, however, has to speak, must speak, must preach
the deus revelatus. And the revelation happens in Islam through the sacred book, the Divine
Word inlibrated.71

SACRED SCRIPTURE72

The centre of Islam is the Koran. Its sound, as has been said, defines the space in which the
Muslim lives, and its written copies are highly venerated. In no other religion has the
book/Book acquired a greater importance than in Islam, which is, most importantly, the first
religion to distinguish between the ahl al-kitāb, those who possess a revealed scripture, and
the people without such a Book. The Koran is, for the Muslim, the verbum visibile, the Word
Inlibrate, to use Harry Wolfson's apt expression, which corresponds to the Word Incarnate of
the Christian faith.

However, it is not only the Koran, written down and recited innumerable times over the
centuries; since time immemorial, the very act of writing has been considered sacred. The
letters, so it was felt, had a special power, and in ancient civilizations the scribes, those who
could and were allowed to handle the art of writing, formed a class in themselves: they were
the guardians of sacred and secret wisdom.

The mystery of letters has inspired many Muslim thinkers, and most of them would agree
with Ja‘far aṣ-Ṣādiq (d. 765), the sixth Shia imam, who said:

In the first place a thought surged in God, an intention, a will. The object of this thought, this
intention, and this will were the letters from which God made the principal of all things, the
indices of everything perceptible, the criteria of everything difficult. It is from these letters that
everything is known.73

Even Avicenna is credited with a risāla nayrūzijya that deals with the letters, and mystical
philosophers and poets never ceased using allusions to the letters or invented fascinating
relations between letters and events, between the shape of the letters and the shape of
humans, and might even see human beings as ‘lofty letters’ which were waiting to appear,
as Ibn ‘Arabī says in a well-known verse.

A ḥadīth according to which man's heart is between two of God's fingers was poetically
interpreted as meaning that the human heart resembles a pen in God's hand with which the
Creator writes whatever is necessary on the vast tablet of creation. This imagery of the
human being as a pen, or else as letters, written by the master calligrapher, is commonplace
in Islamic poetry, as Rūmī sings:

My heart became like a pen

that's in the Beloved's fingers:

Tonight he may write a Z,

perhaps, tomorrow, a B.

He cuts and prepares his pen well

to write in riqa‘ and naskh;

The pen says: ‘Yes, I'll obey,

for you know best what to do’.

Sometimes he blackens its face,

he wipes it then in his hair.

He keeps it now upside down,

sometimes he works with it too…

(D no. 2,530)

Seven centuries later, Ghālib in Delhi (d. 1869) translated into Urdu poetry the outcry of the
letters which rebel against God who wrote them in such strange forms: the paper shirt they
are wearing (i.e. the fact that they are penned on paper) shows that they are plaintiffs,
unhappy with the Divine Pen's activities. But the same poet also sighed at the thought of
death—after all, he is not a letter that can be easily repeated on the tablet of time.74

The Arabic alphabet, in which the Koran is written, followed first the ancient Semitic
sequence, that is, a, b, j, d, h, w, z etc., and is still used in this so-called abjad sequence
when dealing with the numerical value of a letter. Beginning with alif = 1, it counts the single
digits up to y = 10, the tens up to q = 100 and the hundreds up to gh = 1000, so that the
complete decimal system is contained in the twenty-eight letters of the alphabet and can
then be used for prognostication or for chronograms to give the dates of important events,
from the birth of a prince to the deaths of pious scholars (for which Koranic quotations often
offered fitting dates by their numerical value) or of politicians, chronograms for whose death
were often made up from less flattering sentences.

The Tales of the Prophets gives various stories about the inner meaning of the abjad letters,
which are traced back to previous prophets; the most spiritual explanation is ascribed to
Jesus, according to whom each letter points to one of God's qualities: a = Allāh; b = bahā
Allāh, ‘God's glory’; j = jalāl Allāh, ‘God's majesty and strength’; d = dīn Allāh, ‘God's
religion’; h = huwa Allāh, ‘He is God’; and so on,75 while in Ismaili cosmology alif stands for
the nātiq, b for the wāṣī, and t for the Imām.

A very special role was attributed to the groups of unconnected letters which precede a
considerable number of Koranic Sūras and whose meaning is not completely clear. Thus,
many mysterious qualities were ascribed to them; they could also be seen as pointing to the
special names of the Prophet such as ṬH, Ṭāhā (Sūra 20:1), or YS, Yāsīn (Sūra 36:1), or
other secret abbreviations; thus the sevenfold ḤM, ḥā-mīm, was sometimes read as ḥabībī
Muḥammad, ‘My beloved Muhammad’.

These isolated letters were often used in religio-magical contexts, and along with the sawāqiṭ
al-fātiḥa, the seven letters which do not occur in the first Sūra of the Koran, they can be
found in talismans engraved in agate or carnelian.76 Inscribed in metal bowls for healing
water, they are mixed with a number of Koranic verses and/or numbers. The ailing person
could thus ‘drink the power’ of the letters, just as in the Deccan the basmala kā dulhāñ, ‘the
bridegroom of the basmala’, was supposed to lick off the letters of the formula bismillāh (see
above, p. 107). Frequently used in amulets and talismans are the last two Sūras of the
Koran, the mu‘awwidhatān, ‘by which one seeks refuge’ (with God) from assorted evils.
Another protecting word is the seemingly meaningless budūḥ which one sees on walls, at
entrance gates and in many talismanic objects; even Ghazzālī emphasized the importance
of budūḥ in certain cases such as childbirth.77 Budūḥ corresponds to the four numbers (b =
2, d = 4, ū = 6, ḥ = 8) which form the corners of the most frequently-used magic square (the
one built upon the central five and resulting in every direction in the number fifteen).

The shahāda, the profession of faith, likewise contains sacred power. For this reason, its
words are often woven or embroidered into covers for sarcophagi or tombs, for then, it is
hoped, the deceased will have no difficulties in answering the questions of the interrogating
angels Munkar and Nakīr in the grave. When Koranic verses and sacred letters are used to
decorate a entire shirt, it is hoped that the hero who wears it will return safely and victorious
from the battlefield. In our time, one finds stickers for cars and windows with the most
efficacious blessing formulas such as the basmala, the Throne Verse (Sūra 2:255), or the
mā shā' Allāh, ‘What God willeth’, which is recited against the Evil Eye. They are also used
in pendants, preferably of carnelian, embroidered on various material, repeated on tiles and
printed on thousands of postcards in ever-changing calligraphic designs. This can result in
strange surprises, as when an American firm offers T-shirts with a decorative design which
the Muslim immediately understands as the word Allāh or part of the shahāda. (One is
reminded of the medieval use in Europe of Arabic religious formulas in Kufic lettering to
decorate woven fabrics or even the halo of the Virgin Mary.)78

In houses and sometimes in mosques, one can find the ḥilya sharīfa, that is, the description
of the Prophet's noble bodily and spiritual qualities as recorded in the oldest sources; this
Arabic text is written in fine calligraphy, usually after a famous Turkish model from the
seventeenth century, and serves the Muslim as a true picture of the Prophet, whose pictorial
representation is prohibited.

To Muslims who use a script different from the Arabic alphabet, such as Bengali, the very
sight of Arabic letters seemed to convey the feeling of sanctity, and when Josef Horovitz
observed, at the beginning of the twentieth century, how Bengali villagers would piously
anoint stones with Arabic inscriptions, one could see later that people carefully picked up
matchboxes with Arabic words on them lest perchance a sacred name or word be
desecrated.79 During the time that Bengal was still part of Pakistan, a movement called
ḥurūf al-qur'ān, ‘the letters of the Koran’, gained momentum: Muslims wanted to write
Bengali in Arabic letters to show their loyalty to the Islamic heritage, and the difference of
script doubtless contributed to the break-up of Pakistan in 1971.

For wherever Islam spread to become the ruling religion, the Arabic letters formed a strong
bond. To reject the Arabic alphabet means a complete break with one's religious and cultural
past; Ataturk's Turkey is a telling example. Even though Arabic writing is not ideally suited to
the Turkish grammar and sound systems, the large number of Arabic and Persian words and
grammatical elements in the classical Ottoman Turkish language made it a natural choice to
use this script from the time of the Turks’ conversion to Islam. A return to Arabic letters can
be observed in modern times in the former Central Asian Soviet republics, where Muslims
are trying to shake off the disliked Cyrillic alphabet and reintegrate their culture into the
glorious Islamic past. Tajikistan is a typical case. Attempts by individuals to write Arabic itself
in Roman letters caused a wild outcry among Arabs, and a timid attempt to do the same for
Urdu in Pakistan was likewise doomed to failure.

The Arabic letters in which the first copies of the Koran were noted down were rather
ungainly, but in a short time the script was arranged in fine, well-measured forms, and
various styles emerged in centres of Muslim government both for preserving the Koranic
revelation and for practical purposes such as chancellery use, copying of books, etc.80

We are used to calling the majority of the heavy, angular styles of early Arabic as they were
used for copies of the Koran and for epigraphical purposes ‘Kufic’ after the city of Kufa in
Iraq, a stronghold of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib and his partisans—and ‘Alī is usually regarded as a
kind of patron saint of calligraphy, so that the silsilas, the chains of initiation, generally go
back to him. The early Korans, written on vellum, have, as Martin Lings states correctly, an
‘iconic quality’ to them.81 One looks at them and seems to discover through them the living
element of revelation, awe-inspiring and close to one's heart. The veneration shown to the
copies which, as Muslims believe, are the originals collected and edited by the third caliph,
‘Othmān, is remarkable.

The art of calligraphy developed largely owing to the wish to write the Divine word as
beautifully as possible, and the majestic large Korans in cursive writing (which was shaped
artistically in the tenth century) from Mamluk and Timurid times are as impressive as the
small, elegant copies of the Book made in Turkey or Iran. In Turkey, the Koran copies written
by Hafiz Osman (d. 1689), the leading master in the tradition of Shaykh Hamdullah (d.
1519), were taken by pious people as equal to the original and were therefore used for
prognostication. Most printed editions of the Koran in Turkey are based on Hafiz Osman's
work.

The belief in the baraka of the Koranic letters is attested first during the battle of Siffin (657),
when Mu‘āwiya, fighting ‘Alī, feared defeat and asked his soldiers to place pages of the
Koran on their lances—the Divine word should decide between the two Muslim leaders. One
may see here an attempt to utilize the baraka of the Koranic letters, if not to guarantee
victory then at least to avert defeat. A century later, a Sufi history about Ibrāhīm ibn Adham
(d. around 777) tells that a boat was saved during a storm thanks to the pages of the Koran
that were on it,82 and stories of this kind are frequent in Muslim legend, as are similar
legends about an icon or a crucifix in the Christian tradition.

In thinking of the Koranic letters and words’ baraka, one should be careful not to spoil any
page of the Koran or folios on which a part of it is written; the Journal of the Pakistan
Historical Society 39, 1 (1991) contains, after the Table of Contents, the warning:

The sacred aayat from the Holy Qur'an and ahadith have been printed for Tabligh and for
increase of your religious knowledge. It is your duty to ensure their sanctity. Therefore, the
pages on which these are printed should be disposed of in proper Islamic manner.83

The careful preservation of pages and fragments of old Korans has led to the discovery, in
1971, of a considerable number of bags in the Great Mosque of Sanaa, Yemen, which
contained thousands of fragments of early Koran copies mainly on vellum.

People have pondered the origin of scriptures that contain such power, and while in India the
Vedas are regarded as having emanated, and, in other traditions, the authors are, according
to legend, supernaturally begotten, a widespread belief is that of the pre-existence of the
Scripture.

The Koran is pre-existent; the umm al-kitāb (Sūra 43:4) is preserved in the heavenly original
on the lawḥ mahfūz, the Well-preserved Tablet, and thus the Koran, once it appeared in this
world, makes the Divine power present among humans. It is, as G. E. von Grunebaum says
with a fine comparison, ‘an anchor of timelessness in a changing world’.84 Its message has
no end, for, as Sūra 18:109 says: ‘If the sea were ink for my Lord's words, verily the sea
would be exhausted before the words of my Lord even though we would bring the like of it’.
And again, each word of the Koran has an endless meaning, and the world will forever
understand it anew.
For decades in the early ninth century, the struggle between the Mu‘tazila and the
traditionalists raged, for the Mu‘tazilites, jealously insisting upon God's absolute Unity, would
not allow anything to be pre-eternally coexistent with Him. The Koran, they held, was the
primordial Divine message, but it was created and not, as Ibn Ḥanbal (d. 855) and the
majority of the believers claimed, uncreated. The dogma of the Koran's being uncreated is
maintained to this day; thus, one can correctly say that every Muslim is a fundamentalist, as
this term was first used to designate those American evangelical groups who firmly believed
in the divine origin of the Bible,

Whether one took the side of the Mu‘tazilites or the orthodox, it was accepted that the Koran
is the Divine word which was ‘inlibrated’ through the medium of Muhammad; and, just as
Mary had to be a virgin to give birth to the Word Incarnate, thus Muhammad, it was felt, had
to be ummī, ‘illiterate’, to be the pure vessel for the ‘inlibration’ of the Word. That was why
Muslims interpreted the term ummī as illiterate while its original meaning was probably ‘the
Prophet sent to the umma, i.e. the gentiles’.85 And, as he was a vessel for the revelation,
‘his character, khuluq, was the Koran’, as his wife ‘A'isha said.

The Koran is certainly not the first book ever given by God to humankind. The Torah, Psalms
and Gospel are believed to have been divinely sent, and the ‘four books’ are the proud
property of the ahl al-kitāb although, as the Koran holds, previous peoples have altered their
revelations (Sūra 2:75 et al.). Some even know of other books, and when the Koran
mentioned ‘the book’ which was given to Moses, i.e. the Torah (Sūra 11:110, 41:45), the so-
called ṣuḥuf, ‘pages’, are also given to Abraham (Sūra 87:19). To this day, some Sufi
leaders claim to have seen these pages and to be aware of their contents.

In traditional religions, the believers knew that seers and prophets either see or hear the
Word. In Muhammad's case, both experiences interpenetrate: he saw Gabriel and he heard
the word iqra’, ‘Read! Recite!’, although later, auditions were more frequent and also
stronger than his comparatively rare visionary experiences.86 Abū Ḥafs ‘Omar as-
Suhrawardī has beautifully described the experience of those who hear the Koran as the
Divine word as it behoves:

To listen to the Koran means to listen to God; hearing becomes seeing, seeing becomes
hearing, knowing turns into action, action turns into knowing—that is the ‘fine hearing’.87

The fact that the Koran is, for the Muslim, God's word resulted in a major controversy when
the phonograph was first introduced: can one recite the Koran by means of the phonograph
or not? How should one in such a case perform the prescribed prostrations at the required
places?88 This controversy, which happened around the turn of the twentieth century, is
today absolutely obsolete, and the adversaries of mechanical recitation would be horrified to
learn that the Koran is available through radio, over loudspeaker and on tapes which can be
played everywhere and at any time—which entails also that non-Muslims will listen to it.
Tapes and records made at the annual competitions in Koran recitation, in which men and
women participate, are now coveted items.

The Koran was revealed in clear Arabic language (Sūra 16:103, 41:44, 26:192ff.), and it is its
literary superiority which is several times emphasized. The i‘jāz, its unsurpassable style, is
its true miracle (cf. Sūra 17:88). Each of its so-called ‘verses’, the smaller units of which a
Sūra, or chapter, consists, is an āya, a ‘sign’, a Divine miracle to prove the Prophet's
veracity; the ‘signs’ of the Koran are his Beglaubigungsiwunder. The i‘jāz ‘which
incapacitates men and djinn’ to create anything comparable to it (Sūra 17:88) also makes a
translation impossible: nobody could bring into another idiom its linguistic beauty, the
numerous cross-relations and the layers of meaning. The text ‘was verbally revealed and not
merely in its meanings and ideas’. Thus states one of the leading Muslim modernists, the
late Fazlur Rahman, whose words emphasize the mysterious relations between words,
sound and contents of the Book.89

The text, so Muslims believe, contains the solution of all problems which have arisen and still
will arise. Sanā'ī, taking the first and the last letter of the Koran, namely b and s, understood
from them that the Koran is bas, ‘enough’ (in Persian).90 Unknown mysteries are hidden in
the sequence of its letters. To come close to it, whether to touch it and read from it or to
recite it by heart, means to enter the Divine presence, as the ḥadīth qudsī says: ‘Someone
who reads the Koran is as if he were talking to Me and I were talking with him’ (AM no. 39).

When quoting from the Koran, one begins with the phrase qāla ta‘ālā or qāla ‘azza wa jalla,
‘He, Most High’, or ‘He, Mighty and Majestic, said…’. When reciting the Koran or referring to
it by quoting a Sūra or an āya, one should begin with the basmala after pronouncing the
formula of refuge, a‘ūdhu bi ‘Llāh min ash-shayṭān as-rajīm, ‘I seek refuge with God from the
accursed Satan’. Each Sūra, except for Sūra 9, begins with the basmala, a formula which
should also be uttered at the beginning of each and every work. Thus bismillāh karnā simply
means, in Urdu, ‘to begin’, and when the Turk says Hadi bismallah he means: ‘Let's start!’

The single letters or clusters of letters in the Koran have a sanctity of their own; but, even
more, certain Sūras or verses carry special baraka with them, primarily the Fātiḥa, whose
use in all kinds of rites was mentioned above (p. 143). Sūra 36, Yāsīn, is recited for the
deceased or the dying and their benefit in the world to come; it is called the ‘heart of the
Koran’. And the Throne Verse (Sūra 2:255) is frequently used for protective purposes. The
thousandfold repetition of Sūra 112, the attestation that ‘God is One, neither begotten nor
begetting’, is another way of protecting oneself from all kinds of evil.91

The pious may begin the day with briefly listening to the Koran before or after the morning
prayer, for the Koran was, as it were, ‘personified’, and appeared in some prayers as the
true intercessor for the believer:

O Lord, adorn us with the ornament of the Koran,

and favour us through the grace of the Koran,

and honour us through the honour of the Koran,

and invest us with the robe of honour of the Koran

and make us enter Paradise through the intercession

of the Koran

and rescue us from all evil in the world

and the pain of the Otherworld for the sake of the

honour of the Koran…

O Lord, make the Koran for us a companion in this world

and an intimate friend in the tomb,

and a friend at the Day of Resurrection,

and a light on the Bridge,

and a companion in Paradise,

and a veil and protection from the fire,

and a guide to all good deeds

by Thy grace and kindness and favour!

This prayer was especially recited when one had performed a khatma, a complete recitation
of the Koran, which is considered to carry with it many blessings. One can do that in one
sitting or by reciting each day of the month a juz’, that is, one thirtieth of the whole book.
Often, the reward of such khatma is offered to a deceased person. Thus, one may also hire
professional ḥuffaẓ (plural of ḥāfiẓ) to repeat so-and-so many khatmas for someone's soul,
or one can vow to recite or have recited a khatma. When a child has gone through the whole
Koran, or even more when he or she (usually at a tender age) has committed the Holy Book
to memory and become a ḥāfiẓ, a feast is given.

One has always to keep in mind that the Muslim not only sees the Divine Presence when
contemplating the Koran but also feels honoured to be able to talk to God with the Lord's
own words when reciting the Koran: it is the closest approximation that a pious person can
hope for, indeed a ‘sacramental’ act.92

As God has revealed His will in the Koran, it is also the source of law. The problems of the
abrogating and abrogated verses (nāsikh, mansūkh) have occupied theologians and jurists
down through the centuries, but there is no doubt that, as Bernhard Weiß writes correctly:
‘Islamic law is based on texts which are considered to be sacred and therefore as absolutely
final and not subject to change’.93 The language in which the verbum Dei is expressed is
‘determined for all times’, and it is the duty of the jurists to find out the exact meaning of the
grammatical forms: when the Koran uses an imperative, does that mean that the act referred
to is an obligation or is only recommended, or is the form meant merely for guidance? These
are problems which have been discussed down through the centuries because their
understanding is central for legal praxis.

But abrogated and abrogating sentences aside, the Koran wields absolute authority, for the
heavenly Book, al-kitāb, is faithfully reproduced in the muṣḥaf, the copy, which human hands
can touch and which yet contains the uncreated word. Should a scribe make a mistake in
copying the Koran, the page has to be taken out and replaced. (Such so-called muhrac
pages by major calligraphers could become collector's items in Turkey.) And just as the
scholars were of divided opinion about the mechanical reproduction of the Koran's sound,
the question was raised much earlier as to whether or not printing or (nowadays)
photocopying was permissible. This is particularly important when it comes to muṣḥafs
printed in non-Muslim countries, where the printing facilities and techniques were, in most
cases, superior—but who would know what might happen to the text in the hand of the
infidels? An article issued in South Africa last year states very clearly:

Those responsible for sending the Arabic text of the Qur'aan to impure kuffaar are guilty of a
major sin. They are guilty of sacrilege of the Qur'aan. They are guilty of defiling and
dishonouring the Qur'aan and Islam by their dastardly act of handing copies of the Qur'aan
to kuffaar who are perpetually in the state of hadth and janaabat [minor and major
impurity].94

The conviction that whatever is between the two covers is God's word led, understandably,
to a strong bibliolatry. It is said that the vizier Ibn al-Furāt (d. 924) did not sleep in a house
where a Koran was kept, out of respect for the sacred word95, and even though not too
many people would go so far, the muṣḥar should still be nicely wrapped and kept in a high
place, higher than any other book. Sometimes it is hung from the ceiling or from the door
frame (which secures its blessing for anyone who enters), and it can also be kept above the
marital bed. The muṣḥaf is kissed (that accounts for the comparison of the beloved's
flawless face with a beautiful muṣḥaf), and in Persian poetry the black tress that hangs over
the radiant cheek of the beloved could be compared to an impudent Hindu who stretches his
foot over the muṣḥaf—a double sacrilege, as the Hindu has no right to touch the Book, and
as the muṣḥaf must never be touched with the foot.96

The reverence for the muṣḥaf led to the high rank of the calligrapher who specialized in
writing the Koran: he is the quintessential Muslim artist, for everything else, including
architecture, could be done by a non-Muslim, while God's word had to be written by a pious
believer who was constantly in the state of ritual purity.

The high veneration of the Koran could lead to exaggerations, and as early as the tenth
century, Niffarī, the Iraqi mystic, heard in his auditions that God is far beyond the fetters of
words and letters, and that the Muslims of his time were caught in, as Père Nwyia puts it,
‘the idolatry of letters’, that is, they seemed to worship the letters of the Book while missing
its spirit.97 Did not the Koran become, as Clifford Geertz says with a daring formulation, ‘a
fetish radiating baraka’ instead of being a living power, rather the heartbeat in the
community's life?98 But in all scriptures, the reification began as soon as the revelation was
written down; as Schleiermacher says in the second of his Reden über die Religion,
‘scripture is a mausoleum’. The free-floating revelation was cut off with the Prophet's death,
and what he had brought was encased in the words on vellum or later on paper—and yet, to
recur to these written and recited words was the only way to understand God's eternal will,
and therefore scripturalism was deemed necessary for the preservation of Muslim identity.

When the scattered pieces of the revelation which had been noted down on every kind of
material available to the believers were collected and organized by the caliph ‘Othmān
(reigned 644–56), the exegesis began, for the very compilation of the text and its
arrangement can be seen as a kind of first exegesis. The arrangement of the Sūras was
done according to the length; they were preceded by the short Fātiḥa and closed, after Sūra
112 which contains the quintessential statement about God's Unity, with the two prayers for
Divine succour against evil powers. This arrangement makes it difficult for non-Muslims to
find their way through the Scripture, because it is not arranged according to the historical
sequence in which the revelations appeared; to begin from the last, short Sūras which
contain some of the earliest revelations is easier for the untutored reader than to start with
the very long Sūra 2 with its numerous legal instructions. ‘Othmān's text is as close to the
original wording as can be, even though seven minor reading variants are canonically
accepted. But despite the great care that ‘Othmān took in arranging the sacred words, the
Shia later accused him of having excluded numerous revelations in which ‘Alī's and his
family's role was positively mentioned; and the Shia theologian Kulaynī in the tenth century
even claimed that the muṣḥaf Fāṭima, the copy in the hands of the Prophet's daughter, was
three times larger than the ‘Othmanic recension. On the other hand, the Kharijites, ethical
maximalists that they were, found ‘the most beautiful story’ that is Sūra 12, which deals with
Yūsuf's life, too worldly for a sacred book.

The history of Muslim exegesis has been studied by a number of important European
scholars,99 beginning with Theodor Nöldeke (d. 1930), who for the first time in the West
attempted to write a history of the Koran, which was enlarged many times afterwards. Ignaz
Goldziher's (d. 1921) Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung is still a classic when it
comes to the different strands of exegesis as they developed down through the centuries
among traditionalists, mystics, rationalists, Shia commentators and modernists. Helmut
Gätje composed a useful reading book in which the different exegetical methods are offered
to Western readers, and J. M. S. Baljon has devoted studies to modern exegesis, in
particular in the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent, not to mention the great number of scholars
who approached the Book from different vantage points, whether by trying to retrieve the
Christian and Jewish influences or by mercilessly doubting the inherited traditions
concerning the revelation; valuable studies about the formal aspects of the Koran stand
beside statistics of certain terms as a basis for reaching a better understanding of the key
concepts of Islam.

But, as Nāṣir-i Khusraw writes:

A difficult task is to seek the ta‘wīl [esoteric interpretation] of the Book—

It is a very easy thing to read down this Book!100

That is in particular true for the ‘unclear’, mutashābihāt verses which are open to different
interpretations, contrary to those with clear and fixed meaning (Sūra 3:7).

There were several ways to overcome dogmatic or other difficulties when interpreting the
Koran, for the Arabic script in its earliest forms did not distinguish between a number of
consonants by using diacritical marks, nor were signs for vocalization used. One has, in this
respect, to remember that the early Kufic Korans probably mainly served as visual help for
the many who knew the sacred text by heart and perhaps only every now and then needed a
look at the consonantal skeleton; they would easily know whether a sequence of consonants
that looked like ynzl had to be read as yanzilu, ‘he comes down’, or yanazzilu or yunzilu, ‘he
sends down’, or yunzalu (passive).

Scholars distinguish, in the field of dogmatic exegesis, the tafsīr, explanation, and the
esoteric ta‘wīl, literally ‘bringing back to the root’, which was predominantly practised in Shia
and Sufi circles. The first comprehensive tafsīr was compiled by the great historian Ṭabarī (d.
923), and among leading exegetes of the Middle Ages one has to mention az-Zamakhsharī
(d. 1144), who, though an excellent philologist, was sometimes criticized for his tendency to
use Mu‘tazili argumentations.
Without going into details, one can say that Koranic exegesis provided the basis for almost
all scholarly undertaking in the medieval world. The philologists had to explain the words and
grammatical structures, all the more as the number of Neo-Muslims whose mother tongue
was not Arabic increased constantly to surpass the number of Arabic speakers by far.
Historians studied the historical setting of the Koranic stories and the history of the prophets.
Allusions to natural sciences entailed the necessity of discovering their exact meaning
(recently, a book about the plants of the Koran was published in Delhi). To find the direction
of the correct qibla, to ponder the way of the stars which are placed for guidance into the
firmament (Sūra 6:97) or the animals whose characteristics have to be understood, and,
much more than all the sciences connected with ‘the world’, the eternal questions of free will
and predestination, of the rights and duties of human beings, of the relationship between
God and His creation could and should all be derived from the Koran. Thus, we would agree
with Louis Massignon's statement that the Koran is indeed the key to the Muslims’
Weltanschauung.

While the theologians, the mutakallimūn, tried to use rational discourse, through which they
attempted to solve the major problems of the Koran's interpretation, the esoteric scholars,
though not denying the importance of reason, found infinite possibilities for interpreting the
Divine word by turning, so to speak, into another channel of revelation. It is probably an
exaggerated statement that one of the early Sufis could find 7,000 meanings in a single
verse of the Koran (for, as God is infinite, His words must also have infinite meanings), but
the deep love of the Sufis for the revelation is an attested fact. The long-expected edition of
Sulamī's Tafsīr will shed light on much of early Sufi exegesis. They knew that it needed
patience to understand the true meaning, for the Koran is, as Rūmī once said, like a bride
who hides herself when one wants to unveil her in a hurry.101 Rūmī has also pointed out
how the exoteric and esoteric meaning of the Koran go together:

The Koran is a double-sided brocade. Some enjoy the one side, some the other one. Both
are true and correct, as God Most High wishes that both groups might have use from it. In
the same way, a woman has a husband and a baby; each of them enjoys her in a different
way. The child's pleasure comes from her bosom and her milk, that of the husband from
kisses and sleeping and embrace. Some people are children on the path and drink milk—
these enjoy the external meaning of the Koran. But those who are true men know of another
enjoyment and have a different understanding of the inner meanings of the Koran…102

In Shia circles, a tendency to interpret certain verses as pointing to the Prophet's family is
natural, and verses like Sūra 48:10, which deals with the treaty of Hudaybiya (629), were
given special weight, as one can see from Nāṣir-i Khusraw's autobiographical poem, in
which he describes his true conversion when he understood the meaning of the contract
‘when God's hand was above their hands’.103

Mystics often explained specific verses or shorter Sūra as pertaining to the Prophet, whether
by understanding the unconnected letters at the beginning as sacred names of his (see
above, p. 157) or in the interpretation of the oath formulas of Sūra 92 and 93, which were
seen as references to his black hair (‘By the night!) and his radiant face (‘By the morning
light!’). As early as in the days of the commentator Muqātil (d. 765), the ‘lamp’ mentioned in
the Light Verse (Sūra 24:35) was seen as a symbol for the Prophet through whom the Divine
Light radiates into the world.
A good example of the different explanations of a single Sūra is Sūra 91: ‘By the sun when it
shines, and the moon that follows, and the day when it opens, and the night when it
darkens…!’ A Shia tafsīr sees in the sun and its radiance the symbol of Muhammad, the
moon that follows is ‘Alī, the day when it opens is ‘Alī's sons Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, and the
darkening night is the Omayyads who deprived ‘Alī and his family of the caliphate. The Sufi
‘Aynul Quḍāt (d. 1131), however, saw in the sun the Muhammadan light that comes out of
the beginningless East while the moon is the ‘black light’ of Satan that comes out of the
endless West.104

True ta‘wīl, the esoteric interpretation, was and is, by necessity, connected with the spiritual
master who alone has full insight into the mysteries of faith.105 For the Shia, it is the imams
and their representatives on earth; in Ismaili Shia, it is the infallible Hazir Imam. But the
entire Koran was in fact only seldom subjected to ta‘wīl; one rather selected verses in which
one tried to follow the meaning of the revelation into its ultimate depths and to take care of
the different aspects, wujūh, of the words. In most cases—and certainly in that of the Sufis—
one tried to strike a balance between exoteric and esoteric sense, while in certain Shiite
groups the exoteric sense was barely considered important, and layer after layer of ‘inner
sense’ was discovered.

The early Muslims, and among them in particular the ascetics out of whom the Sufi
movement grew, lived constantly in the Koranic text, which led to what Père Nwyia has
called ‘the Koranization of the memory’,106 that is, they saw everything in the light of the
Koran. This permanent awareness of the Koranic revelation was a reason for the fact that, to
this day, even everyday language not only in Arabic but also in the other Islamic idioms is
permeated by allusions to or short quotations from the Koran. It is next to impossible to
grasp fully the whole range of allusions and meanings in a classical poem or piece of high
prose without understanding the numerous allusions to Koranic figures, sentences or
prescriptions. This is true even for fully secular themes or pieces: a single word can, as it
were, conjure up a whole plethora of related terms and create a very special atmosphere,
which the uninitiated reader, whether Western or secularized Muslim, often misses.

But while pious souls and mystically-minded scholars tried to delve into the depth of the
revelation, attempts at a ‘rational’ interpretation were always being made. The Mu‘tazilite al-
Jubbā‘ī is mentioned as one of the first to try a kind of demythologization.107 However,
rationalizing attempts at explaining the Koran became more important towards the end of the
nineteenth century, doubtless under the increasing influence of modern Western
scholarship. That is in particular true for Muslim India. Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khan, the reformer
of Indian Islam (d. 1898), was sure that ‘the work of God cannot contradict the Word of God’
(he wrote ‘work of God’ and ‘Word of God’ in English in the Urdu text of his treatise), and
although this was a statement voiced as early as the eleventh century by al-Bīrūnī (see
above, p. 16), Sir Sayyid went far beyond the limits of what had hitherto been done in
‘interpreting’ the Koran.108 He tried to do away with all non-scientific concepts in the Book,
such as djinns (which were turned into microbes) or angels, which are spiritual powers in
man and not external winged beings. His traditional colleagues branded him therefore a
nēcharī, ‘naturalist’.

Some decades later, the former rector of the al-Azhar University in Cairo, Muṣṭafā al-
Marāghī, wrote:
True religion cannot conflict with truth, and when we are positively convinced of the truth of
any scientific remark which seems to be incompatible with Islam, this is only because we do
not understand correctly the Koran and the traditions. In our religion, we possess a universal
teaching which declares that, when an apodictic truth contradicts a revealed text, we have to
interpret the text allegorically.

The problem for modern Muslim exegetes is the constant change in the development of
natural sciences, and while exegetes at the turn of the twentieth century and later tried hard
to accommodate Darwinism to Koranic revelation, now some people try to find the H-bomb
or the most recent discoveries of chemistry or biology in the Koran.109 This process of
‘demythologization’ is very visible, for example in a translation-cum-commentary of the
Koran issued by the Aḥmadiyya (at a time when this movement was still considered to be
part of the Islamic community). In the exegesis of the powerful eschatological description in
Sūra 81, ‘And when the wild animals are gathered’, the commentator saw a mention of the
zoos in which animals would live peacefully together in later ages.

But one should be aware that the Koran is not a textbook of physics or biology but that its
basic élan is moral, as Fazlur Rahman rightly states,110 and it is the moral law that is
immutable while the discoveries of science change at an ever-increasing speed.

Besides the dogmatic exegesis which by necessity follows the changes of times, one finds
the historical-critical exegesis. That means, for the Muslim, studying the asbāb an-nuzūl, the
reasons why and when a certain revelation was given. Thus, a remark at the beginning of
the Sūra (makkī or madanī) indicates the place where the piece was revealed. The sequence
of the revelations was thereby established to a large degree of correctness, and Western
scholars have sometimes even arranged their translations of the Koran in this sequence
(thus Bell's translation). A historical-critical exegesis of the type to which the Old and New
Testaments have been subjected during the last 150 years means, for the Muslim, that the
Koranic words concerning the falsification by Jews and Christians of their respective
Scriptures (Sūra 2:75 et al.) is now proven by scientific method; however, in the case of the
Koran, such criticism is considered impossible because the Koran is preserved as it was
when its text was sent down upon the Prophet: the Divine word cannot be subjected to
critical approach as it has never changed.

The discussions turn around the problem of whether the Koran rules the times as ‘an anchor
of timelessness’, to take up G. E. von Grunebaum's formulation once more, or whether it
should rather be interpreted according to the exigencies of time. Iqbāl speaks in his
Jāvīdnāma of the ‘ālam al-qur‘ān, the ‘world of the Koran’ which reveals more and more
possibilities every time one opens the Book; and, as reading and reciting the Koran is a
dialogue with God, the true speaker of the Word, the possibilities of understanding are as
infinite as is God Himself, and He and His word may appear to the reader in a new way, as
though the meditating person's eyes and ears were opened for a new understanding every
time. The Moroccan scholar ‘Aziz Lahbabi has expressed it thus: ‘Not the text in itself is the
revelation but that which the believer discovers every time afresh while reading it’.

It is possible to change the exegetical methods or to change the emphasis in order to convey
the message of the Koran to modern people, but a change of the God-given text is
impossible. To recite the Koran, the Word Inlibrate, is, so to speak, a sacramental act
because it is in the Word that God reveals Himself—or His will—to humanity.
This ‘sacramental’ quality of the Koran also accounts for the rule that basically no translation
of the Koran is permissible or possible, not only because of the linguistic superiority, i‘jāz,
(see above, p. 156) of the Koran, but also because the meaning may be coloured by the
personal approach or predilection of the translator even if he gives only, as Muslims say
carefully, ‘the meaning of the glorious Koran’. Not only does a comparison of English, French
and German translations leave the Western reader confused and bewildered, but even when
reading translations into Islamic languages such as Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Sindhi or Pashto,
one becomes aware of these problems.111 It is the inadequacy of translations which has
caused and still causes so many misunderstandings about the Koran and its message,
especially when sentences are taken out of context and set absolute; for, according to the
Muslims’ understanding, not only the words and āyāt but also the entire fabric of the Koran,
the interweaving of words, sound and meaning, are part and parcel of the Koran.
Furthermore, for the great esoteric interpreters of the Koran such as Ibn ‘Arabī, the apparent
‘unconnectedness’ of words and āyāt reveals in reality a higher order which only those
understand who have eyes to see—that is, who read the Koran through taḥqīq, direct
experience, not through taqlīd, dogmatic imitation.112

One ‘external’ remark remains: as a sacred text must never be sold (as little as the teacher
who instructs children in the Koran should be ‘officially’ paid), one calls the price of a Koran
in Turkey hediye, ‘gift’, and thus one finds the beautifully printed copies with the remark: ‘Its
gift is [so-and-so many] lira’.

The Koran's role as the centre of Muslim life is uncontested, important as the veneration of
the Prophet may have become in Muslim piety. Nevertheless, besides the canonical,
unerring Scripture, one also finds a considerable number of secondary literary works in the
Islamic world. A special group is the so-called ḥadīth qudsī, Divine words revealed outside
the Koran.113 This genre became rather widespread among the Sufis, although the earliest
sources are not specifically related to mystical circles. Yet, some of the most important
sentences of mystical Islam appear first as ḥadīth qudsī, such as the famous Divine saying:
kuntu kanzan makhfiyyan, ‘I was hidden treasure and wanted to be known, therefore I
created the world’ (AM no. 70). The growth of such ‘private revelations’, as one may call
them, seems to continue up to the twelfth century, for there were many mystics who
experienced what they understood as direct Divine revelation. The works of Niffarī, with their
long chains of Divine addresses, are a case in point, but the inspirational process is
repeated time and again in Sufi poetry and prose. Nevertheless, after 1200, one looks in
vain—as it seems to me—for new examples of ḥadīth qudsī.

More important for the general history of Islam, however, is the ḥadīth in itself. In order to
explain the Koran and elaborate the statements given in its text, one needed a solid set of
interpretations, of examples from the Prophet, the unerring leader of his community. How did
he understand this or that āya of the Koran? How did he act in a certain case? His sayings
and those of his companions about his actions and his behaviour were collected and retold
from early days onwards so as to help the community to learn how he had acted under this
or that circumstance.

What did he like to eat? How did he clean himself? What did he do if a servant was
disobedient? These and thousands of other problems arose before the believers because,
as the Prophet was the uswa ḥasana, the ‘beautiful model’ (Sūra 33:21), Muslims wanted to
emulate his example and to follow him in every respect. The further the community was in
space and time from the Prophet's time, the more weight was given to the ḥadīth, and it is
small wonder that the number of ḥadīth grew steadily. The proper chain of isnād is central for
the verification of a ḥadīth, as the isnād is important in all Islamic sciences. The isnād in
ḥadīth had to look like this: ‘I heard A say: I heard B say: I heard from my father that C said: I
heard from ‘A'isha that the Prophet used to recite this or that prayer before going to bed’.
The veracity of the transmitters had to be investigated: could B indeed have met C, or was
he too young to have been in contact with him, or did he perhaps never visit C's dwelling-
place? The ‘ilm ar-rijāl, the ‘Science of the Men’ (although there are quite a few women
among the transmitters), developed into an important branch of scholarship; but in the mid-
ninth century the most trustworthy, often-sifted ḥadīth were collected, and among the six
canonical collections that of Bukhārī and, following him, Muslim occupy the place of
honour.114 To complete the recitation of the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (khatm al-Bukhārī) was
considered nearly as important as the completion of the recitation of the Koran although, of
course, not as blessed as the khatm al-qur'ān. In Mamluk Egypt, to give only one example,
the khatm al-Bukhārī during the month of Ramaḍān was celebrated sumptuously in the
citadel of Cairo.115

In the later Middle Ages, numerous selections from the classical collections of ḥadīth were
prepared. To make them less cumbersome, the isnād were generally left out. Collections like
Ṣaghānī's (d. 1252) Mashāriq al-anwār and Baghawī's (d. around 1222) Maṣābīḥ as-sunna
were copied all over the Muslim world and were taught not only in theological colleges but
also in the homes of the pious.116

Yet, the collections of ḥadīth were sometimes met with criticism: was it necessary to waste
so much ink on writing down traditions instead of establishing a living connection with the
Prophet? Thus asked some medieval Sufis, and while certain currents among the Sufis—
especially the Suhrawardiyya—gave ḥadīth studies a very eminent place in their teaching,
others, like the Chishtiyya in India, were less interested in this field. At the beginning of
modern Islamology in Europe, the works by Ignaz Goldziher created an awareness of the
development of ḥadīth: what he highlighted was that the collections, instead of reflecting
Muhammad's own sayings, rather reflected the different trends in the expanding Muslim
world, and this fact accounts for the difference among the traditions, some of which
advocated, for example, predestination while others dwelt upon free will. Political
movements—which always means ‘politico-religious’ in early Islam—used ḥadīth to defend
or underline their own position. Thus, harmonization of conflicting ḥadīth was an important
duty of the scholars.117

Many Muslims objected sharply to this dismantling of the sacred Prophetic traditions, and
yet, before Goldziher and probably unknown to him, the Indian Muslim Chirāgh ‘Alī of
Hyderabad had refused ḥadīth almost wholesale and criticized it even more acerbically than
did Goldziher. Only some ḥadīth connected with strictly religious topics were binding for the
community, but there was no need to follow all the external rules that had become hallowed
in the course of thirteen centuries. Chirāgh ‘Alī was one of the followers of Sir Sayyid, the
‘nēcharī’ reformer, and this may be one of the reasons why the traditionalist ahl al-ḥadīth
reacted so sharply against Sir Sayyid's reformist attempts. The maintenance of ḥadīth in toto
seemed to guarantee, for the ahl al-ḥadīth, the integrity and validity of the Islamic tradition.
Later, it was Ghulām Parwēz in Pakistan who, with an almost Barthian formulation, declared
that ‘the Koran is the end of religion’ and rejected all of ḥadīth, an act that led him, to be
sure, to a very idiosyncratic interpretation of the Scripture. Parwēz's compatriot Fazlur
Rahman tried another way: his concept of the living sunna taught the Muslim not to imitate
mechanically the words of the tradition but rather to keep to the spirit of the sunna; the
knowledge of how the first generations of Muslims understood and interpreted the way in
which the Prophet acted should enable modern Muslims to interpret the sunna according to
the exigencies of their own time.

Thus the problem of the validity of ḥadīth continues to be one of the central problems that
beset modern Muslims, and it seems that especially in minority areas ḥadīth is still one of the
strongholds of Muslim identity. Collections of Forty Ḥadīth—sometimes with poetical
translation—were often arranged and frequently calligraphed ‘for the sake of blessing’,
tabarrukan.118

The first generations of Muslims were afraid of writing down sayings of the Prophet lest their
text be confused with that of the Koran. In later times, a ḥadīth—which is called, like
everything connected with the Prophet, sharīf, ‘noble’—was introduced with the formula qāla
ṣallā Allāh ‘alayhi wa sallama, ‘He—may God bless him and give him peace—said’. This
eulogy for the Prophet, which should actually be uttered after each mentioning of his name
and is often printed either in full or in abbreviation over his name, distinguishes the ḥadīth
also visibly from the words of the Koran.

Less ‘orthodox’ and generally accepted than these collections in Arabic is another group of
secondary scriptures, which belongs to the mystical tradition. Jāmī (d. 1492) called Mawlānā
Rūmī's Mathnawī ‘the Koran in the Persian tongue’, a remark perhaps inspired by the remark
of Rūmī's son, Sultān Walad, that ‘the poetry of God's friends is all explanation of the
mysteries of the Koran’.119 Much of Rūmī's lyrical and didactic poetry indeed betrays its
inspirational character. In a much more outspoken way, Ibn ‘Arabī saw his own Futūḥāt al-
Makkiyya as an inspired book: ‘I have not written one single letter of this book other than
under the effect of Divine dictation… It was not from my personal choice that I retained that
order…’, In fact, Ibn ‘Arabī felt a genuine relationship between his Futūḥāt and the Koran,
and the amazing cross-relations between the chapters of the Futūḥāt and Koranic Sūras
have been lucidly explained by M. Chodkiewicz (1992).120 More than five centuries after Ibn
‘Arabī, the mystical poet of Delhi, Mīr Dard, made similar claims concerning his Persian
prose works and his poetry, and stated repeatedly that he had nothing to do with the
arrangement of the verses nor with the exact number of paragraphs in his risālas.121

In the Arab world, Būṣīrī's Burda in honour of the Prophet and the healing properties of his
cloak was surrounded by a special sanctity and was repeated, written and enlarged
innumerable times everywhere between North Africa and southern India (see above, p. 36).
Perhaps even greater is the veneration of Jazūlī's Dalā'il al-Khayrāt, the collection of
blessings over the Prophet, to which miraculous powers were ascribed.

In Sindhi, the Risālō of Shah ‘Abdul Laṭīf (d. 1752) is probably the most sacred book in the
entire literary tradition, and its stories and verses have influenced Sindhi literature both in its
Muslim and its Hindu branches for more than two centuries.

Among the ‘secondary sacred books’, one should not forget that in the Ismaili tradition the
ginān, poems in different idioms of the western subcontinent (Sindhi, Gujarati, Kuchhi,
Panjabi) and written in a special secret alphabet, Khojki, are regarded as the inspired work
of the Ismaili pirs of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and have been recited for
centuries in the Ismaili community of the subcontinent. A historical analysis of these poems,
which reflect the deep mystical tradition of Indian Sufism, is still viewed with mistrust by the
traditionalist Ismailis even in Canada and the USA.122

Texts of mawlids, poems recited during the Prophet's birthday and interspersed with Koranic
quotations, have assumed a sacred quality in many countries, and whether a Turk listens to
the recitation of Süleyman Çelebi's mevluÖd-i sharif or a singer in Kenya recites a mawlūd in
Swahili, the feeling of being close to the heavenly abodes prevails everywhere.

Books that deal with the Prophet's qualities, such as Qāḍī ‘Iyāḍ's (d. 1149) Kitāb ash-shifā,
were regarded as a talisman to protect a house from evil, and even texts of the catechisms
could inspire such feeling. A certain person, so it is told, was seen being punished in his
grave by Munkar and Nakīr because he had not read the ‘aqīda sanūsiyya,123 the central
dogmatic formulary of the later Middle Ages. Even shajaras, spiritual lineages of Sufis, could
serve as amulets owing to their inherent power.

Finally, one can also mention the rare phenomenon of ‘heavenly letters’ which, as their
recipients claimed, had been sent from the Unseen to admonish the Muslim community to
persevere and fight in the way of God, as happened during the Mahdist movement in East
Africa and the Sudan.

The importance of the written word was, however, often de-emphasized—what is the use of
studying Kanz Qudūrī Kāfiya, the traditional works on ḥadīth, religious law and Arabic
grammar as taught in the madrasas? Should one not rather wash off all books or cast them
in a river, as some Sufis indeed did? What matters is the vision of the Divine Beloved, and
not only the Indo-Pakistani critics of these scholarly works but also the Turkish minstrel
Yunus Emre knew that dört kilabin manasĭ bir aliftedir, ‘The meaning of the four sacred
books lies in one alif’, that is, the first letter of the alphabet, which points with its numerical
value of 1 to the One and Unique God. And the legends telling that many of the great Sufi
poets were illiterate, as was the Prophet, are taken as a proof that they derived their
knowledge not from books but from the fountainhead of all knowledge, from God. Thus, Qāḍī
Qādan could sing:

Lōkānñ ṣarf u naḥw, munñ muṭāli‘a suprinñ

Leave grammar and syntax to the people—

I contemplate the Beloved!124

NOTES

• 1.

For the different interpretations of the Day of the Covenant, see R. Gramlich (1983a), ‘Der
Urvertrag in der Koranauslegung’; he shows that the formulation to which most Muslims (and
certainly the poets and mystics) are used occurs in its classical form first in Junayd's Kitāb
al-mīthāq.

• 2.
Lamia al-Faruqi (1979), ‘Tartīl’.

• 3.

Baqlī (1966), Sharḥ-i shatḥiyāt, pp. 377–8.

• 4.

J. C. Bürgel (1992), ‘Ecstasy and order: two structural principles in the ghazal-poetry of Jalāl
al-Dīn Rūmī.

• 5.

Nāṣir-i Khusraw (1929), Dīvān, p. 672.

• 6.

G. van der Leeuw (1956), Phänomemlogie der Religion, § 58, deals with secret languages;
one could add that in some communities women have developed a special language. That is
particularly important for women living in seclusion; a typical example is rēkhtī, the women's
dialect of Urdu.

• 7.

S. D. Goitein (1966), Studies, p. 7.

• 8.

The same argumentation is still used by Shāh Walīullāh; see J. M. S. Baljon (1986), Religion
and Thought of Shāh Walī Allāh, p. 109.

• 9.

See A. Schimmel (1982a), As through a Veil, ch. 4. The classic study for Urdu is Maulvi
‘Abdul Ḥaqq (1953), Urdu kī nashw u namā meñ ṣūfiyā-i kirām kā kām; see also the
examples in R. Eaton (1978), Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700.

• 10.

C. H. Becker (1932), Islamstuadien, vol. 2, p. 199.

• 11.

Yeni Yunus Emre ve dogüuşlariü (1951), and Dogüuşlar 2 (1965). Turgut Akkaş's Özkaynak
was a short-lived journal in the 1950s in which the author—incidentally a banker—published
his inspired mystical verses. Slightly earlier, a high-ranking Turkish official had published his
inspirational poems, which were commented upon by Ömer Fevzi Mardin (1951), Varidat-i
Süleyman şerhi. The genre of varidāt was common in Indo-Muslim literature, thus in Mīr
Dard's poetry; see A. Schimmel (1976a), Pain and Grace, part 1.

• 12.

Nāṣir-i Khusraw (1929), Dīvān, p. 245.

 • 13.

G. van der Leeuw (1956), Phänomenologie der Religion, § 85, referring in this context to
Paul Tillich's remark that ‘Only what essentially is concealed, and accessible by no mode of
knowledge whatsoever, is imparted by revelation’.

• 14.

K. Cragg (1984), ‘Tadabbur al-Qur‘an: reading and meaning’, p. 189f.

• 15.

I. Goldziher (1928), ‘Verheimlichung des Namens’.

• 16.

R. Gramlich (1976), Die schiitischen Derwischorden, vol. 2, p. 30f.

• 17.

The literature about the Divine Names is very large: see Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī (1971), Al-
maqṣad al-asmā fi sharḥ ma‘ānī asmā Allāh al-ḥusnā (transl. in R. McCarthy (1980),
Freedom and Fulfillment, appendix III); Ibn ‘Aṭā' Allāh (1961), Miftāh al-falāḥ wa miṣbāḥ al-
arwāḥ; idem (1981), Traité sur le nom ‘Allāh' (Introduction… par M. Gloton); al-Qushayrī
(1969), Sharḥ asmā' Allāh al-ḥusnā; G. C. Anawati (1965), ‘Un traité des Noms divins: Fakhr
al-Dīn al-Rāzī's Lawāmi‘ al-batyināt fi'l asmā' wa'l-sifāt. See also Daniel Gimaret (1988), Les
Noms Divins en Islam, Exégèse lexicographique et théologique. The Most Beautiful Names
could be elaborated in poetry, as C. H. Becker (1932) has shown for the Arab world
(Islamstudien, vol. 2, p. 106f.). A superbly and beautifully produced book, The Attributes of
Divine Perfection, by the Egyptian calligrapher Ahmad Moustafa (1989), is in particular
worthy of mention. Many of the modern leaders of Sufi fraternities have published their own
books or booklets on the Divine Names and their use and power.

• 18.

For the role of the Divine Names in creation, see H. S. Nyberg (1919), Kleinere Schriften des
Ibn al-‘Arabī, p. 92ff; W. C. Chittick (1989), The Sufi Path of Knowledge, H. Corbin (1958),
L'imagination créatrice dans le Soufisme d'Ibn Arabi. See also the important ch. 22 in F. Meier
(1990a), Bahā-i Walad.

• 19.

A. Schimmel (1989), Islamic Names. Jafar Sharif (1921), Islam in India, p. 255, deals with
the numerical values and the astrological connections of proper names.

• 20.

Yunus Emre Divanĭ (1943), p. 562, no. CCXXXIII.

• 21.

Iqbal (1924), ‘Jawāb-i shikavah’, in Bāng-i Dorā, p. 231.

 • 22.

A. Fischer (1944), ‘Vergöttlichung und Tabuisierung der Namen Muhammads’. See also R.
Y. Edier and M. J. L. Young (1976), ‘A list of appellations of the Prophet Muhammad’.

• 23.

G. E. von Grunebaum and Roger Caillois (eds) (1966), The Dream and Human Society,
contains a number of highly interesting contributions by Islamicists such as F. Meier, H.
Corbin and Fazlur Rahman. See also H. Gätje (1959), ‘Philosophische Traumlehren im
Islam’. Devin DeWeese (1992), ‘Sayyid ‘Alī Hamadhānī and Kubrawī hagiographical
tradition’, gives a number of accounts about the dreams of the Sufi master Hamadhānī (d.
1385), especially on pp. 143—7. Ibn Sīrīn's book on the interpretation of dreams was
translated into German by Helmut Klopfer (1989), Das arabische Traumbuch des Ibn Sirīn.

• 24.

I. Goldziher (1921), “The appearance of the Prophet in dreams’. Aṣ-Ṣafadī (1979), Al-Wāft
bi‘l-wafayāt, part 12, mentions under no. 47 that a Christian saw the Prophet in his dream,
‘and he became a Muslim and learned the Koran by heart’ to become a leading Islamic
scholar.

• 25.

Thus Shādhili's dream as told by Jāmī (1957), Nafaḥāt al-uns, p. 373.

• 26.

C. Snouck Hurgronje (1923), ‘De laatste vermaning van Mohammad aan zijne gemeende’,
about an appearance in Rabī; al-awwal 1297/1880.

• 27.

A few examples from different geographical areas are: John Renard (1993), Islam and the
Heroic Image. Themes in literature and the Visual Arts, L. Brakel (1977), The story of
Muhammad Hanafiyya. A medieval Muslim Romance, transl. from the Malay; D. Shulman
(1982), ‘Muslim popular literature in Tamil: The tamimcari malai’ and E. S. Krauss (1913),
‘Vom Derwisch-Recken Gazi-Seidi. Ein Guslarenlied bosnischer Muslime aufgezeichnet,
verdeutscht und erläutert’.

• 28.

Margaret A. Mills (1991), Rhetoric and Politics in Afghan Traditional Story-telling.

• 29.

The oldest legends are connected with the Prophet and his companions; see R. Paret
(1930), Die legendäre Maghazi-Literatur, Jan Knappert (1985), Islamic legends. Histories of
the heroes, saints, and prophets of Islam. The genre of Heiligenlieder, songs in honour of
Muslim saints, is widespread. For some Arabic examples, see Enno Littmann (1951),
Islamisch-arabische Heiligenlieder, and idem (1950), Ahmed il-Badawi: Ein Lied auf den
ägyptischen Nationalheiligen.
 • 30.

Words of wisdom are often attributed to Luqmān (based on Sūra 31); in the Persianate
tradition, the wise vizier Buzurjmihr appears as a model of wisdom in many stories and
poems.

• 31.

S. H. Nasr (1992), ‘Oral transmission and the Book in Islamic education: the spoken and the
written word’.

• 32.

For the importance of the malfūẓāt, ‘utterances’ of Indian Sufi masters for the knowledge of
medieval Muslim life, see K. A. Niẓāmī (1961), ‘Malfūẓāt kā tārīkhī ahammtyat’.

• 33.

Typical examples are the cryptic letters by the Sufi master Junayd, as well as the few
fragments preserved from al-Ḥallāj's letters. Aḥmad Sirhindi (d. 1624) tried to revive
normative Islam in India through hundreds of letters which he sent to the grandees of the
Mughal empire as well as to members of his own family. See Ahmad Sirhindi (1968),
Selected letters, ed.… by Dr Fazlur Rahman. Several collections of letters have been made
available in translation, such as Sharafuddin Maneri (1980), The Hundred Letters, transl.
Paul Jackson SJ; Ibn ‘Abbād ar-Rondī (1986), Letters on the Sufi Path, transl. by J. Renard;
and ad-Darqāwī (1961), Letters of a Sufi Master, transl. by Titus Burckhardt. An interesting
collection of modern letters is Mohammad Fadhel Jamali (1965), Letters on Islam, written by
a father in prison to his son.

• 34.

Rūzbihān Baqlī (1966), Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyāt, is the classic work in this field. See also Carl W.
Ernst (1985), Words of Ecstasy in Sufism.

• 35.

A. Schimmel (1982a), As through a Veil, ch. 4. See also idem (1971), ‘Mir Dard's Gedanken
über das Verhältnis von Mystik und Wort’.

• 36.

J. Pedersen (1947), ‘The Islamic preacher: wā‘iẓ, mudhakkir, qāṣṣ’; Angelika Hartmann (1987),
‘Islamisches Predigtwesen im Mittelalter Ibn al-Gèauzī und sein “Buch der Schlußreden” 1186
AD’; Patrick D. Gaffney (1988), ‘Magic, miracle and the politics of narration in the contemporary
Islamic sermon’.

• 37.

Ibn al-Jawzī (1971), Kitāb al-quṣṣāṣ wa‘l-mudhakkirīn, ed. and transl. by Merlin L. Swartz;
the preacher about whom he remarks is the famous mystic Aḥmad Ghazzālī (d. 1126).

• 38.
A. Mez (1922), Die Renaissance des Islam, p. 319.

• 39.

Iqbāl makes an interesting remark (1961) in the Stray Reflections, no. 37: ‘To explain the
deepest truths of life in the form of homely parables requires extraordinary genius.
Shakespeare, Maulana Rum (Jalaluddin) and Jesus are probably the only illustrations of this
rare type of genius.’

• 40.

C. E. Padwick (1960), Muslim Devotions, p. 131; A. Schimmel (1983), ‘The Sufis and the
shahāda’.

• 41.

A. J. Wensinck (1932), The Muslim Creed, deals with the development of the credal
formulas.

• 42.

Muhammad Yusuf Kokan (1974), Arabic and Persian in Camatic (1700–1950), pp. 25, 360ff.
The founder of the madrasa was the Nawwab of Arcot, Ghulam Ghaus Khan Bahadur. The
Muslim theologians, however, claimed that one ‘could not support a cause advocating
earning a livelihood rather than supporting religion’.

• 43.

The basic work on prayer is still Friedrich Heiler (1923), Das Gebet. For the spiritual aspects
of Muslim prayer, see Constance E. Padwick (1960), Muslim Devotions. See also E. E.
Calverley (1925), Worship in Islam. The short (unattributed) article ‘The significance of
Moslem prayer’ in MW 14 gives a good insight into the feelings of Muslims. See also S. D.
Goitein, ‘Prayer in Islam’, in Studies, pp. 79_89; A. Schimmel (1958), ‘The idea of prayer in
the thought of Iqbāl’ and idem (1967), ‘Maulānā Rūmī's story on prayer’.

• 44.

F. Meier (1986), ‘Die Segenssprechung über Mohammed im Bittgebet und in der Bitte’; J,
Robson (1936), ‘Blessings on the Prophet’; Mohammed Ilyas Burney (1983), Mishkaal us-
salawaal: A Bouquet of Blessings on Muhammad the Prophet.

• 45.

T. Canaan (1935), ‘The curse in Palestinian folklore’.

• 46.

J. Pedersen (1914), Der Eid bei den Semiten in seinem Verhältnis zu verwandten
Erscheinungen, sowie die Stellung des Eides im Islam. One of the most famous oath
formulas of the Prophet was: ‘By Him in Whose hand Muhammad's soul is!’

• 47.
A Sufi might even tell his disciples: ‘Swear an oath by me’, as did Sayyid ‘Ali Hamadhānī.
See Devin DeWeese (1992), p. 248.

• 48.

A. Schimmel (1959), ‘Das Gelübde im türkischen Volksglauben’ (based on Hikmet Tanyu's

dissertation, Ankara ve üevresindeki adak yerleri).

• 49.

Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich (1962), Volksglaube in Islam, vol. 2, ch. 3.

• 50.

G. van der Leeuw (1957), Vom Heiligen in der Kunst, p. 23.

• 51.

Compare the story told in Hujwīrī (1911), Kashf al-mahjūb, pp. 233–4.

• 52.

‘The prayer in the community is twenty-seven degrees more valuable than the prayer of a
solitary person’, says a ḥadīth. Twenty-seven, the third power of the sacred Three, has a
special importance.

• 53.

Iqbāl (1930), The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, ch. 5, especially p. 93.

• 54.

Suhrawardī (1978), ‘Awārif (transl. R. Gramlich), p. 266.

• 55.

C. E. Padwick (1960), Muslim Devotions, p. 89.

• 56.

For special uses of the Fātiḥa, see W. A. Cuperus (1973), Al-Fātiḥa dans la pratique
rehgieuse du Maroc.

• 57.

F. Meier (1990a), Bahā-i Walad, p. 250.

• 58.

H. Ritter (1952), ‘Muslim mystics’ strife with God’.

• 59.

Some collections of Muslim prayers are available in translation, among them Abdul Hamid
Farid (1959), Prayers of Muhammad; Zayn al-‘Abidin ‘Ali ibn al-Ḥusayn (1988), Al-ṣaḥīfat al-
kāmilat as-sağğādiyya. The Psalms of Islam, transl.… by William C. Chittick; Kenneth Cragg
(1972), Alive to God, idem (1955), ‘Pilgrimage prayers’ idem (1957), ‘Ramadan prayers’; A.
Schimmel (1978b), Denn Dein ist das Reich, enlarged edition as Dein Wille geschehe
(1992); Al-Ghazali (1992), Invocations and Supplications: Kitāb al-adhkār wa'l-da‘wāt…,
transl.… by Kojiro Nakamura; Al-Gazzali (1990), Temps et prières. Priètes et invocations.
Extraits de l'Ihyā' ‘ulūm al-Din, trad.… par P. Cuperly; ‘Abdullāh Anṣārī (1978), Munājāt:
Intimate Conversations, transl. by Wheeler M. Thackston Jr.

• 60.

A, Schimmel (1976b), ‘Dard and the problem of prayer’.

• 61.

Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich (1962), Volksglaube im Islam, vol. 2, p. 92.

• 62.

Christian W. Troll (1978), Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, a re-interpretation of Islamic theology.
According to Sir Sayyid, God is pleased with personal prayer as with other forms of service,
but He does not necessarily grant the servant's petition. Sir Sayyid is here close to the
Mu‘tazilite viewpoint that God tells His servants to invoke Him because He demands the
attitude of adoration from them.

• 63.

Iqbāl (1937), ̇arb-i Kalīm, p. 267.

• 64.

For the history of prayer beads, see W. Kirfel (1949), Der Rosenkranz, Helga Venzlaff
(1975), Der islamische Rosenkranz. M. S. Belguedj (1969), ‘Le chapelet Islamique et ses
aspects nord-africains’, mentions, as do Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich (1960, 1962), that the
tasbīḥ is, in a certain way, sanctified by the constant recitation of Divine Names or religious
formulas and is thus considered to possess healing power and special baraka.

• 65.

For the dhikr, see L. Gardet (1972–3), ‘La mention du Nom divin, dhikr, dans la mystique
musulmane’. Most works on Sufism contain descriptions of various kinds of dhikr, see A,
Schimmel (1975a), Mystical Dimensions of Islam, pp. 167–78 for references.

• 66.

The description of the heart's journey through the letters of Allāh is given in ‘Andalīb (1891),
Nāla-i ‘Andalīb, vol. 1, p. 270.

• 67.

F. Meier (1963), ‘Qus̆ airīs Tarāb as-sulūk’, is an impressive description of how the dhikr
permeates the whole being. A contemporary description of the experience of dhikr in the
forty days’ seclusion is by Michaela Özelsel (1993), Vterzig Tage. Erfahrungen aus einer
Sufi-Klausur.
 • 68.

Suhrawardī (1978), ‘Awānif (transl. R. Gramlich), p. 125; Shah ‘Abdul Laṭīf (1958), Risālō,
‘Sur Ramakali’ V, verse 1, 2.

• 69.

F. D. A. Tholuck (1821), Ssufismus sive theosophia persarum pantheistica, p. 12.

• 70.

For the problem, see G. Mensching (1926), Das heilige Schweigen.

• 71.

An excellent definition of the difference between the ‘prophetic’ and the ‘mystic’ approaches
to God is in Iqbāl (1930), The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, beginning of ch.
5. In the Payām-i mashriq (1923), p. 186, Iqbāl sings in a ghazal written in imitation of
Rūmī's poem D no. 441:

They said: ‘Close your lips and do not tell our mysteries!’

I said: ‘No! To shout Allāhu Akbar—that is my wish!’

• 72.

For the importance of script and writing, see A. Bertholet (1949), Die Macht der Schrift in
Glauben and Aberglauben; F. Dornseiff (1922), Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magic, Jean
Canteins (1981), La vote des Lettres. For the Koran, see Thomas O'Shaughnessy (1948),
‘The Koranic concept of the Word of God’; Ary A. Roest Crollius (1974), The Word in the
Experience of Revelation in the Qur'an and Hindu Scriptures.

• 73.

G. Vajda (1961), ‘Les lettres et les sons de la langue arabe d'après Abū Ḥātim Rāzī’.

• 74.

Ghālib (1969b), Urdu Dīvān, no. 1, See also A. Schimmel (1978a), A Dance of Sparks, ch. 4,
and, in general, Schimmel (1984a), Calligraphy and Islamic Culture.

• 75.

Kisā'ī (1977), The Tales of the Prophets, p. 60ff.

• 76.

A. Jeffery (1924), ‘The mystic letters of the Koran’. According to E. W. Lane (1978 ed.),
Manners and Customs, p. 256f., the Koranic verses most frequently used for healing and
helping purposes are Sūra 8:14; 10:80; 16:70; 17:82; 26:79–81; and 41:45. For Shia uses of
the Koran (many of which are the same as among Sunnites), see B. A. Donaldson (1937),
‘The Koran as magic’.

• 77.
R. McCarthy (1980), Freedom and Fulfillment, p. no.

• 78.

R. Sellheim (1968), ‘Die Madonna mit der s̆ ahāda’.

• 79.

J. Horovitz (1907), ‘A list of published Mohammedan inscriptions of India’, vol. 2, p. 35.

• 80.

For a discussion, see G. Schoeler (1992), ‘Schreiben und Veröffentlichen. Zur Verwendung
und Funktion der Schrift in den ersten islamischen Jahrhunderten’.

• 81.

M. Lings (1976), Quranic Calligraphy and Illumination. See also A. Schimmel (1984a),
Calligraphy and Islamic Culture, passim.

• 82.

‘Aṭṭār (1905), Tadhkirat al-awliyā, vol. 1, p. 105.

• 83.

This notice is apparently based on the recent Shariat Act in Pakistan, where § 295B reads:

Whoever wilfully defiles, damages or desecrates a copy of the Holy Qur'an or of an extract
therefrom or uses it in any derogatory manner or for any unlawful purpose shall be
punishable with imprisonment for life.

• 84.

G. E. von Grunebaum (1969), Studien, p. 32, For the ‘world of the Koran’, see Iqbāl (1932),
Jāvīdnāma, line 570ff.

• 85.

Samuel M. Zwemer (1921), ‘The illiterate Prophet’; I. Goldfeld (1980), ‘The illiterate Prophet
(nabī ummī). An inquiry into the development of a dogma in Islamic tradition’, emphasizes
the rather slow development of the interpretation of ummī in the ‘mystical’ sense. As in the
case of the ‘mystical’ interpretation of Sūra 7:172 concerning the ‘Primordial Covenant’, the
crystallization of such deeper ‘mystical’ interpretations seems to be achieved around the
beginning of the tenth century AD/fourth century AH—similar to the dogmatization of
Christological formulas at the start of the fourth century AD in Christianity.

• 86.

William A. Graham (1987), Beyond the Written Word. Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History
of Religion, shows very clearly the twofold character of revelation and the important role of
oral transmission in the case of the Koran.

• 87.
Suhrawardī (1978), ‘Awārif (transl. R. Gramlich), p. 41.

• 88.

C. Snouck Hurgronje (1923), Verspreide Geschrifien, vol. 2, p. 438 (year of reference:1899);

‘A fatwa on broadcasting the Koran:5.10.1933’, in MW 24 (1934), p. 180. For the role of
proper recitation, see Lamia al-Faruqi (1979), ‘Tartīl’ also Labib as-Said (1975), The Recited
Koran. Transl. and adapted by Bernhard Weiss, M. A. Rauf, and Morroe Berger.

• 89.

Fazlur Rahman (1966), ch. 2.

• 90.

Sanā'ī (1962), Dīvān, p. 309.

• 91.

Sūra Luqmān is good for pregnant women; Sūrat al-Fatḥ (48) and Sūra Muzzammil (73)
avert illness and calamities.

• 92.

W. C. Smith (1960), ‘Some similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam’, p.
57.

• 93.

Bernhard Weiss (1984), ‘Language and law. The linguistic premises of Islamic legal thought’.

• 94.

The Muslim Digest, Durban, South Africa, May-June 1991, p, 29, repr. from The Majlis, Port
Elizabeth, South Africa, no. 8.

• 95.

A. Mez (1922), Die Renaissance des Islam, p. 328.

• 96.

For this imagery, see A. Schimmel (1992b), A Two-colored Brocade, pp. 309, 373–4, note
11.

• 97.

For the problem, see Schimmel (1975a), Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Appendix 1. The
term is taken from P. Nwyia's penetrating analysis (1970) of Niffarī's experiences which he
wrote down in his Mawāqif wa Mukhāṭabāt (1935), in Exégèse coranique, ‘Des images aux
symboles d'expérience’, part II, ‘Niffarī’, especially p. 370. Nwyia shows the repercussions of
the problem of the doctrine that the Koran is God's uncreated word in the debate between
the Mu‘tazila and the traditionalists.
 • 98.

C. Geertz (1971), Islam Observed, p. 73.

• 99.

For the history of the Koran and Koranic exegesis, see the Bibliography under Ayoub,
Baljon, Gütje, Goldziher, Nagel, Nöldeke, Rippin and Watt. The best survey is Angelika
Neuwirth (1987), ‘Koran’, in Gätje (ed.), Grundriss der arabischen Philologie. See also T.
Nagel (1983), ‘Vom Qur'an zur Schrift. Bells Hypothese aus religionsgeschichtlicher Sicht’.
For an approach from the vantage point of literary criticism, see A. Neuwirth (1981), Studien
zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren; and idem (1991), ‘Der Horizont der Offenbarung.
Zur Relevanz der einleitenden Schwurserien für die Suren der frühmekkanischen Zeit’.

• 100.

Nāṣir-i Khusraw (1929), Dīvān, p. 446.

• 101.

Fihi mā fihi, ch. 35.

• 102.

Ibid., ch. 43.

• 103.

Nāṣir-i Khusraw (1929), Dīvān, in (1993) tr. A. Schimmel, Make a Shield from Wisdom, pp.
44, 46.

• 104.

Sachiko Murata (1992b), The Too of Islam, p. 262.

• 105.

For the problem of mystical interpretation, see P. Nwyia (1970), Exégèse coranique, G.
Böwering (1979), The Mystical Vision of Existence in Classical Islam; A. Habil (1987),
‘Traditional esoteric commentaries’. For a special topic, see P. Bachmann (1988), ‘Ein tafsīr
in Versen. Zu einer Gruppe von Gedichten im Dīwān Ibn al-‘Arabīs’.

• 106.

P. Nwyia (1972), Ibn ‘Aṭa' Allāh et la naissance de la confrérie süādilite, p. 46,

• 107.

C. Huart (1904), ‘Le rationalisme musulman au IVe siècle’. A. Mez (1922), Die Renaissance
des Islam, p. 188ff. gives a survey of the different currents among the interpreters of the
Koran and the scholars during the ninth and tenth centuries, mainly in Baghdad.

• 108.
Aziz Ahmad and G. E. von Grunebaum (eds) (1970), Muslim Self-Statement, p. 34;

• 109.

Ibid., p. 171, where the position of Ghulām Aḥmad Parvēz and his Koranic Lexique
Technique are discussed.

• 110.

Fazlur Rahman (1966), Islam, p. 32.

• 111.

For some examples of interpretation in a rather little-known language, see A. Schimmel

(1963b), ‘Translations and commentaries of the Qur'ān in the Sindhi language’.

• 112.

M. Chodkiewicz (1992), ‘The Futūḥāt Makkiyya and its commentators: some unresolved
enigmas’, p. 225.

• 113.

William A. Graham (1977), Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam.

• 114.

Abū ‘Abdullāh Muḥammad al-Bukhārī (1863–1902), Kitāb jāmi‘aṣ-ṣaḥīḥ, 4 vols, ed L. Krehl

and W. Juynboll, transl. M. M. Khan (1978–80), Sahih al-Bukhari, 6 vols. Another useful
work is Tabrīzī (1964–6), Mishkāt al-maṣābīḥ, 4 vols, transl. James Robson.

• 115.

I. Goldziher (1915a), ‘Chatm al-Buchārī’. Ibn Iyās (1933), Badā'i‘az-zuhūr, mentions this
custom in vol. 4 at almost every Ramaḍān; robes of honour were distributed to the readers
who had completed this task.

• 116.

A. J. Wensinck (1936–71), Concordances et indices de la tradition musulmane, enables the

scholar to orient himself in the vast ‘ocean’ of ḥadīth.

• 117.

I. Goldziher (1888–90), Muhammedanische Studien, was the ground-breaking Western

study in ḥadīth criticism. For Chirāgh Ali, see Aziz Ahmad and G. E. von Grunebaum (1970),
Muslim Self-Statement, pp. 49–59. A survey of modern approaches can be found in G. A. H.
Juynboll (1969), The Authenticity of Tradition Literature. Discussions in Modern Egypt.

• 118.

Such collections can consist of forty ḥadīth about the usefulness of writing, about piety or
about the pilgrimage, or forty ḥadīth transmitted by forty men by the name of Muḥammad, or
by forty people from the same town, etc. Learning such a collection by heart was considered
to entail many blessings. See A. Karahan (1954), Türk Islam edebiyatiünda Kiürk Hadis.

• 119.

Sultān Walad (1936), Valadnāma, p. 53ff. Rūmī's biographer, Sipahsālār, also quotes this
statement.

• 120.

M. Chodkiewicz (1992), ‘The Futūḥāt Makkiyya and its commentators: some unresolved
enigmas’.

• 121.

For Mīr Dard's claims in this field, see A. Schimmel (1976a), Pain and Grace, p. 117ff.

• 122.

Ali S. Asani (1991), The Bhuj Niranjan. An Ismaili Mystical Poem; idem (1992), Ismaili
Manuscripts in the Collection of Harvard College Library.

• 123.

M. Horten (1917a), Die religiöse Gedankenwelt der gebildeten Muslime im heutigen Islam, p.
xxiii.

• 124.

Qādī Qādan jō kalām (1978), no. 1.

V | Individual and Society

(My mercy embraces all things, and I will show it) to those who are Godfearing and pay the
alms-tax and those who believe in Our signs.

Sūra 7:156

THE HUMAN BEING

‘Man's situation is like this: an angel's wing was brought and tied to a donkey's tail so that
the donkey perchance might also become an angel thanks to the radiance of the angel's
company.’

Thus writes Mawlānā Rūmī in Fīhi mā fīhi to describe the twofold nature of the human being,
a duality not of body and soul but of possibilities, a situation meditated upon down through
the centuries whenever Muslims discuss the human condition. On the one hand, the Koran
speaks in various places of the high and noble rank of man: did not God breathe into Adam
from His own breath to make him alive (Sūra 15:29)? Did He not teach him the names, thus
enabling him to rule over the creatures and—as the mystics would continue—to understand
the working of the Divine Names as well (Sūra 2:31)? Man was appointed khalīfa,
‘representative’ either of the angels or, according to another interpretation, of God (Sūra
2:30), despite the critical remarks of the angels who foresaw his disobedience. But God
spoke: karramnā, ‘We have honoured the children of Adam’ (Sūra 17:70). And humans are
the only creatures who accepted the amāna, the good which God wanted to entrust to the
world but which mountains and heavens refused to carry (Sūra 33:72); man, however,
accepted it despite his weaknesses. Is it not astounding, asks Nāṣir-i Khusraw, that the
weak human being was chosen over the animals? Only to him were warners and prophets
sent, while camels and lions, so much stronger than he, were not blessed with such
revelations but are also not held responsible for their actions.1

The frequent use in the Koran of the term sakhkhara, ‘to submit, place under someone's
order’, reminds the reader of man's position as the God investeu ruler over the created
beings. Man's high position was then emphasized by the ḥadīth according to which God
created Adam ‘alā ṣūratihi (AM no. 346), ‘according to His form’ (although the ‘His’ has also
been read as ‘his’, i.e. Adam's intended form). The Sufis became increasingly fond of the
ḥadīth man ‘arafa nafsahu faqad ‘arafa rabbahu (AM no. 529), a saying that could be and
frequently was interpreted as the possibility of finding the deepest mystery of God in oneself.
It could also be understood in a more general sense: the North African Sufi al-Murṣī (d.
1287) says ‘he who knows his own lowliness and inability recognizes God's omnipotence
and kindness’, and Rūmī elaborates the same idea in the moving story of Ayāz: the Turkish
officer Ayāz, beloved of the mighty sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna (d. 1030), entered every
morning a secret closet where he kept his worn-out frock and torn shoes. That was all he
owned before Mạhmūd showered his favours upon him, and by recognizing his own
unworthiness and poverty he gratefully understood the master's bounty (M V 2, 13ff.).

The human being could, however, also become the asfal as-sāfilīn, ‘the lowest of the low’
(Sūra 95:5), and while one is constantly reminded of one's duty to strive for the education of
one's soul, the danger is always present that the animal traits may become overwhelming in
one's lower self: greed, ire, envy, voracity, tendency to bloodshed and many more negative
trends make the human being forget his heavenly origin, his connection with the world of
spirit. For this reason, the Ikhwān aṣ-ṣafā as well as some Sufi writers have thought that
these animal qualities will become manifest on Doomsday in the shapes of dogs, donkeys
and the like, for the ḥadīth says that everyone will be resurrected according to the state in
which he or she dies (AM no. 40; see above, p. 28).

To explain the mystery of man is impossible: man is, as Rūmī says with a comparison that
prefigures John Donne's expression, ‘a mighty volume’: the external ‘words’ fit with this
world, the inner meaning with the spiritual world. For man, created from dust and returning to
dust (Sūra 30:20, 37:53), gains his true value only through the Divine light that shines
through the dust, the Divine breath that moves him.

As Ayāz was a slave of Maḥmūd, the human being is first and foremost a slave of God, and
the feeling that one is nothing but a slave, ‘abd, makes the poet or the artist, the petitioner as
well as the prince, sign his or her letters and works with terms like al-faqīr, ‘the poor’, al-
ḥaqīr, ‘the lowly’ and similar terms, while in high speech one used to refer to oneself, in
Persian or Ottoman Turkish, as banda, ‘the servant’.

The use of ‘abd for the human being goes back to numerous verses of the Koran, in which
human beings and in particular prophets are called ‘abd, as well as to the repeated
statements that everything was created to serve God. Furthermore, the Primordial Covenant
(Sūra 7:172), when God addressed future humanity with the words: alastu bi-rabbikum, ‘Am I
not your Lord?’, to which they answered: ‘Yes, we testify to that’, implies that they,
acknowledging God as the eternal Lord, accepted, logically, their role as God's servants until
they are asked on the Day of Judgment whether they had remained aware of God's being
the one and only Lord whom they had to obey.

But the Koran also offers the basis for interpreting the word ‘abduhu, ‘His [i.e. God's] slave’,
as the highest possible rank that man can reach: was not the Prophet called ‘abduhu, ‘His
slave’, in the two Koranic sentences that speak of his highest experiences, namely in Sūra
17:1, which alludes to his nightly journey (‘praised be God who travelled at night with His
slave…’), and in Sūra 53:10, which contains the vision in which God ‘revealed to His slave
what He revealed’? That means for the Muslim that ‘God's servant’ is the highest rank to
which one can aspire; and, based on centuries of praise bestowed on Muhammad as
‘abduhu, Iqbāl has summed up these feelings once more in his great hymn in honour of the
Prophet in his Jāvīdnāma.

There is only one situation when the human being is freed from bondage: that is in the case
of the mentally deranged, who are not ‘burdened’ by the obligations of law; they are, as the
poets liked to say, ‘God's freed people’. Therefore, one finds that ‘Aṭṭār, in his Persian epics,
puts all rebellious words against the Creator, the outcry of the debased and the unhappy,
into the mouths of madmen: they will not be punished for their unbridled behaviour.2

But while the believer always feels himself or herself to be God's servant, mystical Islam,
especially in later centuries, has developed the idea of al-insán al-kāmil, the Perfect Man,
who is manifested in the Prophet but whose rank is the goal of the true mystical seeker.
Great is the number of Sufi leaders who claimed to be, or whose disciples saw them as, the
Perfect Man, and the contrast between the feeling of humility as ‘abd and the claim to have
reached the stage of the Perfect Man amazes the reader of later mystical texts time and
again. The extreme contrast between these two possible interpretations of humanity has led
a number of scholars to claim that Islam has no ‘humanism’ in the European sense of the
word: man is not the normative being, the one whose rights are central in interhuman
relations and who works freely in the spirit of realization of the ‘human values’, but appears
either as the lowly slave or as the ‘inflated’ Perfect Man.3

The Koran has spoken of man's creation in several instances, most importantly in the first
revelation Sūra 96. Man was created from dust and then an ‘alaq, a blood clot, and the
miracle of the begetting and growth of a child is mentioned several times. The first human,
Adam, was created from clay, and later mythological stories have elaborated this creation in
poetical images. It is said, for example, that Adam was kneaded for forty days by God's two
hands before the Creator breathed His breath into the clay vessel (AM no. 632). Iblīs refused
to fall down before him because he did not perceive the Divine breath in Adam but looked
only to the dust-form and, being created from fire, felt superior to him.

The human being is made up, as can be understood from the story of creation, of body and
soul, and the different parts of the spiritual side of humans are mentioned in varying forms
(see below, p. 183). The rūḥ, ‘spirit’, and nafs, ‘soul’, are central as the truly spiritual aspects
that keep humans in touch with the higher realities, but the body is indispensable for this life.
It is made up of four elements and is perishable as everything composite; it returns to dust,
but will be reassembled on Doomsday. And although many pious people have expressed
their aversion to the body, this old donkey or camel, to neglect the body or kill it by
exaggerated mortification is nevertheless not acceptable, for the body is needed for the
performance of ritual duties and should be kept intact to serve for positive purposes, even
though the mystics would rather call it a town in which the soul feels like a stranger. The
human body in its totality also carries power, baraka.

One of the most important centres of power is the hair. It has therefore to be covered. Not
only women should veil their hair, but also men should not enter the Divine presence with
bare head (cf. above, p. 94). To tear one's hair is a sign of utter despair, as women do in
mourning rites: the marthiyas which sing of the tragedy of Kerbela often describe the despair
of the women in Ḥusayn's camp who came to the fore, their hair dishevelled.
The nāsiya, the ‘forelock’, which is mentioned twice in the Koran (Sūra 96:15, cf. Sūra
11:56), belongs to the same cluster of objects: to grasp someone (or an animal) by the
forelock means to grasp his (or its) most power-laden part, that is, to overcome him
completely.

The offering of the new-born child's first hair during the ‘aqīqa should be remembered in this
context as well as the hair-offering of certain dervishes and the taboos connected with hair
during the pilgrimage.

Sanctity is also contained in the beard: ‘The beard is God's light’, as a saying goes. Thus
Indian Muslims would sometimes dip the beard of an old, venerable man in water, which was
then given to ailing people to drink and was especially administered to women in labour.4

When the hair as such is considered to be so filled with baraka, how much more the
Prophet's hair and beard!5 Muslim children in Sind had formerly to learn the exact number of
the Prophet's hairs, while in the Middle East some authors ‘knew’ that 33,333 hairs of the
Prophet were brought to the Divine Throne.6 Taking into consideration the importance of
hair and beard, one can also understand, at least to a certain extent, the role of Salmān al-
Fārisī in Muslim piety: he, the barber, was the one who could touch the Prophet's hair and
beard, and from earliest times one reads that a few hairs of the Prophet, sewn into a turban,
served as a protecting amulet. Hairs of the Prophet are preserved in various mosques: the
Mamluk sultan Baybars (reigned 1266–77) gave a hair of the Prophet for the miḥrāb of the
Khānqāh Siryāqūṣ, the Sufi hospice near Cairo,7 and riots broke out in Srinagar, Kashmir,
some years ago when Ḥaz ratbāl, ‘Its Excellency the Hair’, was stolen; this hair was
honoured by building a fine mosque in the city around it. Usually, such a hair is preserved in
a fine glass vessel which is wrapped in dozens of fragrant silk covers, as in the Alaettin
Mosque in Konya, where it was hidden in a wall. But generally, non-Muslims (and in
Bijapur's Athar Mahal also women) are not allowed into a room that contains such a
treasure. Some Muslims believe that these hairs can grow and multiply: as the Prophet, they
contend, is alive, so also is his hair. And as the romantic lover in the West carried his
beloved's curl as a kind of amulet, hairs from the beard of a venerated Muslim saint can
serve the same purpose.

Like the hair, the nails have special properties, which is evident from the prohibition of paring
the nails during the ḥajj. There are special days recommended for paring one's nails, and the
comparison used by Persian and Urdu poets who likened the crescent moon to a fingernail
(which does not sound very poetical to Westerners) might have a deeper reason than simply
the external shape.

As the soul is often thought to be connected with the breath (one need only think of God's
‘breathing’ into Adam), the nose and the nostrils play a considerable role in popular belief; to
sneeze means, as ancient Arabic sources as well as Turkish folk tales mention, to be
quickened from death (the morning, too, ‘sneezes’ when it dawns). Alternatively, by sneezing
one gets rid of the devil, who was hiding in the nostrils: hence the custom of uttering a
congratulatory blessing to a sneezing person. The role of the nose as a sign of honour and
rank, as understood from many Arabic and Turkish expressions, also explains why one of
the ways to deprive a culprit of his or her honour is to cut off his or her nose, a common
punishment until recently.8
Breathing is connected with the soul. It is therefore life-giving and healing (as was, for
example, Jesus’ breath: Sūra 3:49). In an ingenious ta'wīl, the Suhrawardī saint Makhdūm
Nūḥ of Hala (Sind) (d. 1591) interpreted the ‘girl buried alive’ of Sūra 81:8 as the breath that
goes out without being filled with the dhikr, the recollection of God.

The importance of saliva is well known in religious traditions. When a saint spits into the
food, it brings blessings, and when the Prophet or a saint (whether in reality or in a dream)
puts some of his saliva into somebody's mouth, the person will become a great poet or
orator.9 The saliva of the beloved is compared to the Water of Life owing to its baraka, and
mawlid singers in Egypt—to quote an example from modem times—sing of the ‘licit wine of
the Prophet's saliva’.10

It is a similar case with perspiration. Women in the environment of the Prophet—so it is

told—would collect his perspiration to use it as a perfume, and the legend that the rose grew
from drops of the Prophet's perspiration which fell to Earth during his nightly journey shows
the baraka of this fragrant substance.

Blood too can be a carrier of soul substance, and the avoidance of blood in ritual and food is
likely to go back originally to the fear of the soul power contained in the blood.

Head and feet are respected, and it is especially the cult of the feet or the footprint which is
remarkably developed in Islamic folklore: touching the feet of a venerable person is an old
custom to show one's devotion and humility (to ‘become the dust for the beloved's feet’ is a
widespread wish in Oriental poetry). The veneration of the Prophet's footprint has been
attributed to influences from India, where Vishnu's or the Buddha's feet are highly honoured;
but the most enthusiastic poems about the Prophet's sandals, as well as the earliest mention
of the cult of his footprint, came from the Arab world. The cult of the Prophet's sandal was
substituted for the cult of his foot some time after his death. Maqqarī's (d. 1624) voluminous
Arabic work is a treasure trove of poems and pictures of this cult.11

The feet of normal believers are also filled with power, and whether the Sufi kisses his
master's foot or the son that of his mother, the wish to humiliate oneself before the power
inherent even in the lowest part of the person's body can be sensed. That becomes very
clear from the custom of dōsa: the shaykh of the Sa‘diyya ṭarīqa (and in Istanbul formerly
also of the Rifā‘iyya) would walk or even ride over the bodies of his followers who were lying
flat on the ground; thus they were blessed by his feet's power.12

I mentioned, at the beginning, the belief in the Evil Eye (see above, p. 91), and the negative
power of the ‘look’ mentioned in the Koran (Sūra 68:51f.) is something to be reckoned with.
However, the eye has not only dangerous properties; rather, the look of the saintly person
may bless the visitor, and there are numerous miracles ascribed to the blessings of
someone's ‘look’. Sudden conversions are ascribed to the single glance of the spiritual
master, and so are healing miracles.13 The rule that women should strictly avoid eye contact
with strangers reminds us of the danger of the glance; women therefore often wear dark
glasses to cover their eyes.

As the body is filled with power, certain bodily states in which one loses, as it were, some
‘power’ have to be rectified by a major purification. Such states include the sexual act or any
loss of semen, as well as death. No food should be cooked for three days after a death; the
neighbours will bring everything required to the home. Pregnant women should not be
present during the memorial rites for a family member (women in general never participate in
a funeral).14 They are also not allowed, during pregnancy, into a saint's shrine. The time for
purification after parturition or death is forty days, the traditional period of waiting and
changing for the better.

The spiritual elements of the human being are classified in various ways, but Muslims
always know that there is the spirit, rūḥ and the soul, nqfs. The spirit generally appears as
the paternal, that is, begetting and impressing power, while the soul is usually taken as the
female, receptive part. The spirit, as part of the all-pervading Spirit, is one, but the ‘mothers’
are different for every being.15 The problem of whether or not bodies and spirits were
created at the same time is answered differently; philosophers and mystics usually agree
that the spirits were created before the bodies.16 The tensions between soul and body, or
spirit and body, are alluded to in numerous stories, especially by Rūmī, whose psychology
is, however, not very consistent. For him, as for many mystics, the most important part of
one's spiritual aspects is the heart, the organ through which one may reach immediate
understanding of the Divine presence: a veritable heart, as many mystics hold, has to be
born, or else it has to be cleaned of the rust of worldliness to become a pure vessel, a clean
house, a radiant mirror for the Divine Beloved. Rūmī even compares the birth of the truly
spiritual parts of the human being to the birth of Jesus from the Virgin Mary: only when the
birth pangs—sufferings and afflictions—come and are overcome in loving faith can this
‘Jesus’ be born to the human soul.17

Both terms, ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’, have airy connotations: rūḥ and rīḥ, ‘wind’, nafs and nafas,
‘breath’: thus the importance of the breath as a vehicle of the soul can be understood, as can
the frequent symbol of the ‘soul bird’, the airy, flighty part of human beings.

The classification of the soul is based upon the Koran, and the three definitions of the nafs,
found in three different places, served the Muslims to form a general theory of the
development of the soul. The nafs ammāra (Sūra 12:53), the ‘soul that incites to evil’, is ‘the
worst of all enemies’ (AM no. 17), but it can be educated by constant fight—the veritable
‘Greater jihād’—against its base qualities to become the nafs lawwāma (Sūra 75:2), a
concept not far from Western ‘conscience’, and finally it is called back to its Lord after
reaching the state of nafs muṭma'inna, ‘the soul at peace’ (Sūra 89:27). When the word nafs
is used without qualification, it denotes the ‘self’ or the reflexive pronoun, but in literary texts,
especially in Persian and Turkish, it is usually the nafs ammāra, the negative qualities of the
lower self, which is then symbolized in various shapes, from a black or yellow dog to a
disobedient woman or a restive horse.

Everyone is made of body and soul-spirit; everyone also participates more or less in the
above-mentioned ‘powers’, and yet, despite the emphasis in Islam upon the equality of all
believers, who are distinguished only by the degree of their God-fearingness and piety,
some people are filled with more baraka than others.18 Myths are woven around ancient
prophets and saints who are thought to be blessed with longevity: Noah lived for 900 years,
and there is the strange figure of Ratan, a Muslim saint who was discovered in the twelfth
century in India and claimed to tell authentic ḥadīth as he had lived in the company of the
Prophet; the ḥadīth collected from him are the ratamiyyat.19 In futuwwa circles, Salmān al-
Fārisī is credited with a lifespan of 330 years.20 Legendary saints of times long past were
sometimes imagined to be gigantic; the phenomenon of the tombs of the naugaza, people
‘nine cubits long’, is well known in Muslim India.
But to come to actual human beings as one encounters them day by day, one has to single
out as prime carriers of baraka the parents about whom the Koran (Sūra 17:23) orders: ‘You
shall not worship any but Him, and be good to the parents whether one or both attain old
age with you’.

Every elderly man can represent the father figure and often functions as the role model for
the son. The families are extremely close-knit, as everyone knows who has lived with Muslim
families. Yet, in the Koran, Abraham is the model of those who sever the family bonds by
turning from idol-worship to the adoration of the One God (Sūra 6:74): true religion
supersedes ancestral loyalties (and one can be shocked when hearing how recent converts
to Islam sometimes mercilessly consign their non-Muslim parents to Hell).

The child grows under the mother's protection and remains in her house, with the women,
until he is seven years old. A beautiful tradition inculcates love of and respect for the mother
in the believer's heart: ‘Paradise lies under the feet of the mothers’ (AM no. 488) is a famous
ḥadīth, and when the Prophet was asked: ‘Who is the most deserving of loving kindness,
birr?’, he answered: ‘Your mother!’ and repeated this thrice, only then mentioning the father.
The role of pious mothers in the formation of Sufis and other pious people is a well-known
fact and proves that they were given not only a religious education but, more than that, an
example by their mothers, and remained beholden to them all their lives (see also below, p.
198).

In many early civilizations, the leader or king is blessed by a special power which is called in
the Iranian tradition the khwarena. The farr, ‘radiance’, with which Emperor Akbar was
surrounded according to his court historiographer Abū ‘l-Faz l, is—philologically and in its
meaning—this very royal charisma. Normative Islam does not know the concept of Divine or
sacred kingship; the leader in traditional Sunni life is the caliph, the successor of the Prophet
as leader of the community in prayer and war, who has no religious authority and is bound,
like every other Muslim, to the commands of the sharī‘a and their interpretation by the
‘ulamā. The goal of the caliphate was not, as can sometimes be read, to establish ‘the
kingdom of God’ on Earth but rather to look after the affairs of the community and defend the
borders against intruders or, if possible, extend them to enlarge the ‘House of Islam’. The
caliph was regarded as a ‘religious’ leader only at a later stage in history, namely when the
Ottoman caliph (whose office was in itself, seen historically, a construction without real
historical justification) was described as the ‘caliph of the Muslims’ at the time when the
Crimea, with its Muslim Tatar inhabitants, was ceded to Russia in 1774; at this point, the
Ottoman sultan-caliph was called to act as the ‘religious’ head of the Muslim community.
This concept induced the Indian Muslims after the First World War to rally to the khilāfat
movement, in an attempt to declare the Ottoman caliph their spiritual head while they were
still smarting under British colonial rule. But the khilāfat movement, in which many Muslims
emigrated—or tried to emigrate—to Afghanistan and Turkestan, finally broke down when
Ataturk abolished the caliphate in 1924.

While the Sunnite caliph is at best a symbol of the unity of Muslims (as was the case during
the later centuries of the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad, which was terminated by the
Mongols in 1258), the concept of divine rulership can be found to a certain extent in Shia
Islam. The return of the leader of a community after a long time in hiding is an old theme in
human history, and this motif was first applied to ‘Alī's son from a wife other than Fāṭima,
Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya (d. 700). The widespread belief in the return of the hero, who is
usually thought to live in a cave, grew among the Shiites to culminate, in the Twelver Shia, in
the concept of the hidden Imam who will return at the end of time ‘to fill the world with justice
as it filled with injustice’. The Divine light which the imams carry in them gives them a
position similar to that of a ‘sacred king’, but the theme is even more pronounced in the
Ismaili tradition, where not the hidden but the living Imam is the centre of the community: the
ḥāzir imām is not only the worldly but also the spiritual leader through whom the light shines
forth and whose darshan, the ‘looking at him’, is believed to convey spiritual blessings to
those present. Hence, the term ‘sacred kingdom’ has been used for Ismaili Islam, while this
concept is totally alien to the Sunnite tradition.21

A similar aversion to a Divinely inspired or religiously exceptional clergy is typical of Sunnite

Islam. There is no priest in Islam in the traditional sense of someone to administer the
sacrament, for the only sacrament, sit venia verbo, is the recitation of the Koran in which the
individual listens and responds to the words of the Lord.

The central role in the community at large belongs to the ‘ulamā, the lawyer-divines and
interpreters of the sharī‘a; for, as the ḥadīth says, ‘the ‘ulamā are the heirs of the prophets’
they are responsible for the maintenance of the Divine Law and the tradition. Thus they have
contributed to the stability of the umma, the Muslim community,22 even though they are also
blamed, especially in modern times, as those who resist modernization and adaptation to the
changing values and customs of the time because they see the dangers inherent in breaking
away from the sacred tradition while they themselves are, probably, not acquainted with the
opportunities that a fresh look into tradition may offer the Muslims who have to find a feasible
approach to the modern world.

One could speak of a kind of clergy, for example under the Fatimids; and Ismaili Islam,
especially among the Aga Khanis or Khojas, has a considerable number of ranks in the
religious hierarchy, from the dā‘i, the missionary, and the ḥujjat, the ‘proof’, down to the
mukhi, who is responsible for the organization of the local communities. (Interestingly,
women can also be appointed to any echelon of these offices.) Yet, it sounds strange to a
traditionist ear when a leading religious functionary of the Ismaili Bohora community (who
has a ‘worldly’ profession as well) says: ‘I was trained to become a minister’.

The mujtahid in the Twelver Shia can perhaps be called a cleric, as he helps to spread the
wisdom of the hidden imam, guiding the community in legal decisions based on a deeper
religious insight.

The most important figure with religious charisma, the model and the beloved whose
presence and the thought of whom spreads blessing, is, without doubt, the prophet. To be
sure, more than a century ago, Aloys Sprenger remarked sarcastically: ‘In Germany, one
has deprived the word “prophet” of all its meaning and then claimed that he, Muhammad, is
a prophet’,23 Sprenger is certainly wrong from the phenomenological viewpoint; for, as
much as Muhammad's contemporaries were prone to compare him to the kāhin, the Arabic
soothsayer, or to the shā‘ir, the poet, who by means of his magic knowledge was able to
utter satires against the enemies and thus wound them, as it were, with the arrows of his
powerful words; and as much as Western critics have been concerned not only with the
Prophet's numerous marriages late in his life but also with his political role in Medina, which
seemed to overshadow his religious vocation—yet his way is exactly that of a prophet
according to the definition in the history of religions. For the prophet is called and has no
choice; he has to speak whether he wants to or not (cf. Sūra 96, the Divine order: ‘Read!’ or
‘Recite!’).

Islam differentiates between two kinds of prophets: the nabī, who receives a revelation, and
the rasūl, who must preach the message; he is the lawgiver who speaks according to the
Divine order.24 The miracles which the prophet shows are called mu‘jiza, ‘something that
incapacitates others to repeat or imitate them’; they prove not so much his power but rather
the power of the Lord whose messenger he is, and while mu‘jizāt have to be openly shown,
the miracles of the saints, karāmāt, should be kept secret. The prophet is also a political
personality, for he is concerned with and responsible for his people's fate in this world and
the world to come: the archetypal ruler among the prophets is Sulaymān (Solomon), the
‘prophet-king’.

The contents of the prophet's message are basically ethical and culminate in absolute
obedience to God, who reveals His will through him. Often, the prophet is an Unheilsprophet:
he has to warn people of the impending disaster if they do not listen, for only the rest will be
saved. The tales of the earlier prophets which appear in the Koran time and again bear
witness to this aspect of prophethood.

The prophet has to be a vessel for the Divine word, hence the importance of the
interpretation of the word ummī as ‘illiterate’ even though its primary meaning is different. But
he must be illiterate lest his knowledge be stained by intellectual activity such as collecting
and adapting previous texts and stories. One could also see him as a mirror that takes in
itself the immediate celestial communication; the concept of the ḥajar baht, the absolutely
pure polished stone, belongs to this set of images.

The prophet—so the theologians emphasize—has to possess ‘iṣma, that is, he has to be
without sin and faults; for, had he sinned, sin would be a duty for his community. As the
Sanūsīya,25 the widespread dogmatic catechism stresses further, the prophet must bring
the message and cannot hide it. Furthermore, ṣadāqa, ‘veracity’, is a necessary quality of a
prophet: he cannot tell lies. Without these essential qualities, one cannot be called a true
prophet; but it is possible that a prophet may be subject to human accidents such as illness.

The Koran mentions twenty-eight prophets by name; parallels to the twenty-eight lunar
stations and the letters of the Arabic alphabet could easily be discovered. Other traditions
speak of 313 prophets, and the plethora of 124,000 prophets also occurs. However, there
can be only one God-sent messenger at a time. Each of the previous messengers prefigures
in a certain way the final prophet, Muhammad; their actions are basically identical with his,
for all of them are entrusted with the same Divine message. There is no problem for the
Muslim in recognizing prophets not mentioned in the Koran, provided that they have lived
before Muhammad (e.g. the Buddha, or Kungfutse), because Muhammad is called in Sūra
33:40 the khātam an-nabiyyīn, the ‘Seal of the prophets’. He was also understood as the
paraclete promised to the Christians, because the word aḥmad, ‘most praiseworthy’, in Sūra
61:5 was interpreted as a translation of perikletos, which was thought to be the word
intended by parakletos.26

Although Muhammad himself is called in the Koran a human being who, however, had to be
obeyed (Sūra 3:32 et al.), and always emphasized that he was nothing but a messenger, the
baraka inherent in him was nevertheless so immense that his descendants through his
daughter Fāṭima were likewise endowed with a special sanctity, whether one thinks of the
politicco-religious leaders of Sharifian descent in Morocco or of the sayyids, whose
veneration is particularly strong in Indo-Pakistan; they have to observe special taboos, and
their daughters are not allowed to marry a non-sayyid.

While the respect for sayyids and sharīfs is common to Sunni and Shia Muslims (though
much more pronounced among the Shiites), emphasis on the companions of the Prophet is
natural in Sunni circles. The Shia custom of tabarra’, that is, distancing oneself from the first
three caliphs and even cursing them, is considered a grave offence by Sunnis, for after all,
even though the Shia claimed that they had usurped the caliphate from ‘Alī, the only
legitimate heir to the Prophet, one has still to remember that Abū Bakr was the father of
Muhammad's youngest wife ‘A'isha, and ‘Omar was the father of his wife Ḥafṣa, while
‘Othmān was married to two of the Prophet's daughters and is therefore called dhu'n-nūrayn,
‘the one with the two lights’. Especially in India, Sunni theologians wrote treatises in favour of
the first three caliphs and even of Mu‘āwiya, the founder of the Omayyad caliphate, in order
to counteract the Shia propaganda.

The designation of Muhammad as the ‘Seal of the prophets’ included for Muslim theologians
the impossibility of the appearance any other religion and a Divinely-inspired sharī‘a after
Muhammad's death. Movements that claimed a continuing revelation, such as the Bābī-
Bahai movement in Iran at the beginning of the nineteenth century, or the Ahmadiyya in the
Panjab at the turn of the twentieth century, were declared as heresies and, in the case of the
Aḥmadiyya, as non-Islamic as late as 1974.27 Hence the merciless persecution in Iran of the
Bahais, whose claim to possess a new revelation violated the dogma of Muhammad as the
final bearer of Divine revelation.

Iqbāl phrased the concept of the finality of Muhammad's prophetic office in an interesting
way which, interpreted wrongly, could lead to heated arguments.

The birth of Islam… is the birth of inductive intellect. In Islam, prophecy reaches its
perfection in discovering the need of its own abolition.28

According to popular belief, the Prophet was sent not only to humankind but also to the
angels to honour them. But connected with the theme of the ‘Seal’ was the question: what
would happen if there were human beings on other stars, in other hitherto unknown worlds?
This question, which disquieted some Muslims at the time when they became aware of new
discoveries in astronomy in the early nineteenth century, resulted, in India, in a fierce
theological debate between Faz l-i Ḥaqq Khayrābādī and Ismā‘īl Shahīd (d. 1831). Could
God create another Muhammad in such a case? Ghālib, the poet of Delhi, wrote a line which
was quoted with approval by Iqbāl in his Jāvīdnāma:

Wherever the tumult of a world arises,

there is also a raḥmatan li ‘l-‘ālamīn, ‘Mercy for the worlds’.29

For God will not leave any community without prophetic guidance, and humanity was never
without prophets until the time of Muhammad.

Prophetology took a different turn among the Shia and in particular in the Ismaili community.
The six days of creation (Sūra 25:60 et al.) were connected with six cycles of prophets;
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad; the seventh one will bring
resurrection. Each of the seven prophets brings the sharī‘a, the Divine Law, which is then
preserved by the wāṣī, the ‘heir’; that was in Moses’ case Hārūn, in Muhammad's case ‘Alī.

The human Prophet, the uswa ḥasana, ‘beautiful model’ (Sūra 33:21) of his followers, was
soon surrounded by innumerable miracles, and when attributes like karwānsālār, ‘the
caravan leader’, or in Bengal ‘helmsman to the far shore of Truth’ point to this quality as the
guide of the community and are therefore generally acceptable, the development of his role
as the first thing ever created, as the pre-eternal light that was between the Divine Throne
and the Divine Footstool, leads into gnostic speculations disliked by more sober Sunni
theologians. When the Koran calls Muhammad raḥmatan li ‘l-‘ālamīn, poets symbolized him
as the great cloud that brings raḥma (rain, mercy) to the dried-up hearts; the short allusion to
his nightly journey (Sūra 17:1) was elaborated in most colourful verbal and painterly images,
and although the Koran and Islam in general strictly reject a soteriology of a Christian
type,30 Muhammad appears more and more as the intercessor who will intercede for the
grave sinners of his community (cf. AM no. 225), and millions of believers have trusted and
still trust in his shafā‘a, his intercession.

He appears as the longed-for bridegroom of the soul, and just as theology sees the virtues of
all previous prophets embodied in him, mystically-inclined poets knew also that the beauty of
all of them appears in his beauty. At an early point in history, the ḥadīth qudsī claimed
‘Laulāka…’ (AM no. 546), ‘but for your sake I would not have created the horizons’ (i.e. the
world). Surrounded by numerous names—similar to the Divine asmā' al-ḥusnā—he is
separated from God only by one letter, as his heavenly name Aḥmad shows: when the m of
Aḥmad disappears, there remains only Aḥad, The One, as a ḥadīth qudsī states.31 Later
Sufis composed complicated treatises about the ḥaqīqa muḥammadiyya, the ‘Muhammadan
archetype’, the suture between God and Creation; and although in early Sufism the goal was
fanā fi Allāh, annihilation in God, it is in later times the fanā fi ‘r-rasūl, the annihilation in the
Prophet which constitutes the highest goal, for one can reach the ḥaqīqa muḥammadijya
while the deus absconditus in Its essence remains forever beyond human striving. The
Prophet, as many people believe, is alive and guides his community through dreams; he can
vindicate people who visit his tomb in Medina.

Several Sufi brotherhoods which called themselves ṭarīqa muḥammadiyya emerged in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, although the term goes back to the Middle Ages;
they taught the imiiatto muḥammadi, not only in the external practices that were reported
about him but also in the deeper layers of faith. At a time when Western influences were
increasingly endangering the traditional Muslim world, the example of the Prophet who, as
Muslims believed, would appear in dhikr sessions devoted to the recitation of blessings upon
him, seemed to be an important stronghold against the threat of Westernization, for he is—
as Kenneth Cragg says—‘the definitive Muslim’.

Even though the traditionalists never liked the exaggeration of his veneration, which so
permeated popular and high Islam, everyone agrees that it is Muhammad who defines the
borders of Islam as a separate religion. It is the second half of the profession of faith,
‘Muhammad is His messenger’, which distinguishes Islam from other religions; when Iqbāl
says in his Jāvīdnāma:

You can deny God but you cannot deny the Prophet,
he has expressed the feeling of the Muslims for the man who brought the final and decisive
Divine message. Therefore sabb ar-rasūl, ‘slandering of the Prophet’, is one of the worst
crimes, liable, according to some authorities, to capital punishment—one has to keep this in
mind to understand the Muslims’ reaction to Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.

There is no end to Muhammad's external and spiritual greatness. Frithjof Schuon32 has
represented him in an interesting model, using his earthly and his heavenly names, Aḥmad
and Muḥammad, to show the two sides in him:

Muḥammad Aḥmad

connected with the laylat al-qadr, the night

connected with the night of the heavenly journey;
of the first revelation of the Koran;

representing the Prophet's role as ‘abd is given the description of ḥabīb, ‘friend, beloved;
‘slave’, which manifests His jalāl side; and thus represents the jamāl side of God;

he is the ‘unlettered’ ummī, the passive recipient

he is the active messenger, rasūl.
of the message.

Positive activity and receptivity, mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans, descent of
the Divine word and ascent into the Divine presence, are thus understood from the Prophet's
two major names. One can expand the scheme and say, with the traditional scholars and
Sufis, that every prophet also carries in himself the quality of the saint, and that the prophet
is connected with ‘sobriety’ and qurb al-farā'iḍ, ‘the proximity to God reached through faithful
adherence to the religious duties’, while the saint, walī, is characterized by ‘intoxication’ and
fanā, annihilation as a result of the qurb an-nawāfil, ‘proximity reached by supererogative
works’, a state based upon a ḥadīth qudsī: ‘My servant does not cease drawing closer to Me
by means of supererogative works… until I become his hand with which he grasps, his eye
by which he sees, his ear by which he hears…’ (AM no. 42).

The question of the superiority of the Prophet or the saint was discussed several times in
medieval Islam, but it was generally agreed that the Prophet, thanks to his twofold quality,
was superior.

The walī, the friend or ‘protégé’ of God, is, in the beginning, in some respect comparable to
the monk in other religious traditions, but ‘there is no monkery, rahbāniyya, in Islam’, as a
famous ḥadīth states (AM no. 598), for ‘the jihād [war for religious causes] is the monkery of
my community’ (AM no. 599). Monkery was something specifically Christian, and Jesus often
appears as the loving ascetic who has no place to put his head and finds no rest even when
seeking refuge in a jackal's den: God throws him out from every place of repose to draw him
to Himself.

The early ascetics knew their Christian neighbours, hermits in the mountains of Lebanon or
Syria, or in the deserts of Egypt, and among these ascetics as well as in later,
institutionalized Sufism, practices similar to those in other monastic communities occurred,
the most important one being poverty and total obedience to the spiritual leader.33 The
Prophet's word faqrī fakhrī, ‘My poverty is my pride’ (AM no. 54), was their guiding principle.
But the third vow besides poverty and obedience which the Christian monk would make,
namely celibacy, could never become part of Sufi life. Chastity in a wider sense can be seen
in the strict following of the rules of behaviour, in the meticulous accepting of even the
strictest orders of the sharī‘a. Celibacy, however, was ruled out by the very example of the
Prophet.

Part of Sufi life was, again similar to monastic groups in other traditions, meditation and
constant recollection of God, dhikr, as was the rābiṭa, the spiritual relation between master
and disciples. Unconditioned love of and obedience to the spiritual guide was a conditio sine
qua non, ending with the complete merging into the shaykh's identity.34 The tawajjuh, the
strict concentration upon the master, is compared by a modern Sufi to the tuning of a
television set: one has to be on the same wavelength to enjoy a fruitful relation with the
master, who then can spread his himma, his spiritual power, over the disciple and not only
guide but also protect or heal him (hence the numerous stories of the master appearing in a
faraway place when the disciple needs his help). The shaykh or pīr could be compared in his
soul-nourishing activity not only to a father but also to a loving mother who, as it were,
breast-feeds her spiritual child.35

While the prophet is called by an irresistible Divine order and forced to speak, the saint is
slowly transformed by Grace. The term for ‘saint’ is walī Allāh, ‘God's friend’; it is ‘the friends
of God who neither have fear nor are sad’, as the Koran (Sūra 10:62) describes them. The
term does not refer, in Islam, to a person canonized by a special religious rite; the Sufi saint
develops, one could say, after being initiated into the spiritual chain. The simple concept of
the ‘friends of God’ was elaborated into a complicated hierarchy of saints as early as around
900. In this hierarchy, the quṭb, ‘pole, axis’, stands in the centre; around him the world
seems to revolve as the spheres revolve around the Pole Star. At least, around him revolve
the groups of four nuqabā, seven abrār, forty abdāl, 300 akhyār, etc., among whom the
seven abrār or forty abdāl play a special role: in North Africa, some Muslims sing hymns to
the ‘seven men of Marrakesh’, that is, the seven protecting saints of the city whose tombs
are visited to this day, so that a ‘seven-man-pilgrimage’ is also well known in that area, while
the Turkish Kiürklareliü is ‘the area of the Forty’.

The saints are hidden from the world; they are, as the ḥadīth qudsī states, ‘under My domes’
(AM no. 131), and therefore even the most unlikely person may be a saint. The virtue of
hospitality, so central in Oriental culture, comprises also the poorest and most disgusting
visitor, for—who knows—perhaps he is one of God's hidden friends, for wilāya can even
exist independent of the moral qualities of the recipient.

Those Sufis who have traversed the path as sālik ‘wayfarer’, can become masters of others;
those who have been ‘dragged away’ (majdhūb) in a sudden rapture, jadhba, are not
suitable as teachers, as they lack practical experience of the stations on the path and its
pitfalls; an ‘enraptured’ Sufi, majdhūb, is often someone who is demented under the shock of
too strong a spiritual ‘unveiling’.

One of the pitfalls on the path is pride in one's supernatural gifts. The Sufis are credited with
innumerable miracles of the most diverse kinds, but to rely upon these miracles, which are
called karāmāt, ‘charismata’, can induce them to ostentation and thus provoke a serious
setback. Therefore, a crude saying was coined to warn them against ‘miracle-mongering’ (as
later writers would say): ‘Miracles are the menstruation of men’, that is, they hinder true
union with the Divine Beloved due to the individual's impurity.
Among the ‘saints’, one finds the most diverse characters: wild and irascible like the ‘ajamī
saints of whom the Egyptians are afraid; saints whose word makes trees dry up and people
die; and others who radiate kindness and beauty, harmony and sweetness, and can take
upon them the burden—illness or grief—of others. They often claim to be beyond good and
evil, as they have reached the fountainhead of everything and are united with Divine will in
such a way that they can do things that look inexplicable from a theological viewpoint,
comparable to Khiḍr when he shocked Moses by his three seemingly criminal acts (Sūra
18:66ff.).

They are the true ‘men of God’ ‘who take the arrow back into the bow’, as Rūmī says with an
allusion to the Koranic address to the Prophet: ‘You did not cast when you cast…’ (Sūra
8:17). To Rūmī we owe the finest poetical description of the ‘man of God’:

The man of God is drunken without wine,

The man of God is full without roast meat.

The man of God is all confused, distraught,

The man of God needs neither food nor sleep.

The man of God, he is a boundless sea,

The man of God rains pearls without a cloud.

The man of God: nor heresy, nor faith,

The man of God knows not of wrong or right

But those who still cling to hope and fear are comparable to the mukhannath, ‘catamite’,
while the lowest class of worldlings are just ‘women’. This does not however, exclude, the
possibility that women can be counted among the ‘true men of God’, as the hagiographers
state.

The Sufi leaders are usually given honorific titles, such as Pir-i dastgīr, ‘the Pir who takes
you by the hand’, or Bandanawāz, ‘he who cherishes the slaves’ (i.e. humans); and as a
general term for high-ranking religious leaders is makhdūm, ‘the one who is served’, a
special saint can be called makhdūm-i jahāniyān, ‘he who is served by all inhabitants of the
world’. Often, they are spoken of in the plural: a Sufi in Central Asia is usually referred to as
īshān, ‘they’, while Ḥasan Abdāl and Niẓāmuddīn Awliyā bear nicknames that mean
‘substitutes’ (the groups of the seven or forty) or ‘saints’.

But it is natural that the lofty ideals of earlier times were often watered down, and the
complaints of true spiritual leaders about the numerous impostors who made their living by
telling stories to credulous people and who paraded in Sufi dress, purporting to demonstrate
miracles, began as early as the eleventh century. Rūmī satirizes these self-styled Sufis with
shaved heads and half-naked bodies who pose as ‘men of God’:

If every naked person were a ‘man’,

garlic too would be a man…

(D no. 1,069)

An ancient belief claims that the human being—provided that one possessed baraka during
one's life—becomes an even stronger source of baraka after death. Despite the general
warning against tomb-worship, the saying; ‘Seek help from the people of the tombs’ is also
attributed to the Prophet, and it was customary among the Sufis and members of the
futuwwa sodalities to visit the cemetery first when entering a town in order to pray for the
deceased.

Such a power is, naturally, greatest in the case of the saintly people, and therefore it is small
wonder that almost every place in the Muslim world contains a tomb or a mausoleum. Sir
Thomas Arnold has told the famous story about the poor Pathans who smarted under the
sad fact that they had no tomb in their village; thus they invited a passing sayyid to stay with
them, regaled him and ‘made sure of his staying in the village by cutting his throat’, so that
they could erect a beautiful mausoleum for him in order to enjoy the blessings that radiated
from his last resting place,36 The statement of an Indian Muslim historian can probably be
generalized for the subcontinent:

Many important infidels of the region entered the fold of Islam because of the blessing of the
tomb of that embodiment of piety.37

Thus it is not surprising that many saints have several tombs or memorial sites (see above,
p. 55).

The role of the ‘mighty dead’ in Islamic history is great, despite the Sunni aversion to it, and
when G. van der Leeuw describes burial as a sort of seed-sowing, he seems to translate
Rūmī, who asks, in his great poem on travelling:

Did ever a grain fall into the earth that did not bring rich fruit?

Do you believe that the grain ‘man’ will be different?

(D no. 911)

Not only simple people who hoped for the fulfilment of their wishes visited and still visit
saints’ tombs; Muslim rulers, too, often came for political reasons to enhance their power
thanks to the saint's baraka. The mausoleum of Mu‘īnuddīn Chishtī in Ajmer is a famous
case in point.38

Mausoleums may preserve, in a special room, some relics of the saint—his turban, his
prayer beads and the like—and in modern shrines one can also find his spectacles or his
dentures, all filled with baraka. The baraka can also be inherited: the marabouts in North
Africa, as studied in particular by Clifford Geertz and Ernest Gellner, are the most prominent
example of this phenomenon; and for the average Moroccan it holds true that ‘Islam is what
the saints do’.39 The role of the inherited baraka of Indo-Pakistani Pīr families belongs here
too.

If the term walī Allāh, ‘God's friend’, is generally applied to what we translate as ‘saints’, it is
used in a more specific way and in an absolute sense for ‘Alī. The formula ‘‘Alī is the friend
of God’, ‘Alī walī Allāh, was added to the bipartite profession of faith when Shah Isma‘il had
introduced the Twelver Shia as the state religion in Iran in 1501. There are great structural
similarities between the quṭb, the Pole or Axis, of Sufism and the Imam as understood by the
Shia. For the Shiite, the presence of the imam—whether in the flesh or (since the
disappearance of the twelfth imam in 874) in the unseen, ghayba—is deemed necessary, for
it is the imam from ‘Alī's and Fāṭima's offspring who is blessed with divinely-inspired religious
knowledge and has absolute teaching authority: like the Prophet, he enjoys ‘iṣmat, immunity
from error.

‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib was surrounded with the highest honours, which led to his near-deification
among the sect of the ‘Alī-Ilāhī, and strange legends are woven around him. In popular piety,
he is sometimes called ‘lord of the bees’ because bees helped him in battle; and his
proficiency in war, which is connected with the wondrous sword Dhū ‘l-fiqār, is as much
praised as his wisdom. The Prophet not only called him ‘the gate to the city of wisdom’ but
also said: ‘Whose master, mawlā, I am, ‘Alī is also his master, mawlā’; and religious songs
praising Mawlā ‘Alī abound at least in the Indian subcontinent. In him, the ideal of the
glorious young hero, fatā, was embodied. Members of his family were surrounded by myths:
not only was the ancient belief in the rqj‘a, the return of the hidden leader of the community,
applied to them, but also dusk was interpreted by some pious Shiites as the blood of
Ḥusayn. The martyrdom of Ḥusayn offered them the passion motif, which added a special
hue to Shia piety.

To be sure, the motif of martyrdom also exists in Sunni Islam, for the Koran speaks
extensively of the sufferings of the prophets preceding Muhammad, as does the oft-quoted
saying ‘ashaddu balā'an al-anbiyā' (AM no. 320), ‘Those who are afflicted most are the
prophets, then the saints, and then the others rank by rank’. The Koran stated that ‘those
slain in the way of God are not dead but alive’ (Sūra 3:169), and that applies mainly to those
slain in jihād.

Those whom the Sufis, and following them many orientalists, regard as the famous martyrs
are usually considered heretics by the orthodox: these are Sufis such as al-Ḥallāj (d. 922),
the young Persian mystic ‘Aynul Quḍāt (d. 1131) and the philosopher-mystic Suhrawardī (d.
1191) (who is not called shahīd, ‘martyr’, but maqtūl, ‘killed’); the Ḥurūfī poet Nesimi (d.
1405) in the Turkish environment, the Mughal prince Dārā Shikōh and his friend the poet
Sarmad (d. 1659 and 1661 respectively). Owing to their unusual, non-conformist attitude, all
of them have attracted, as Hamid Algar states with some dismay, the interest of scholars
much more than has the normative Sunni believer.

One of these ‘normative’ believers has to be mentioned: it is the so-called mujaddid, the
‘renovator’ who is supposed to appear at the turn of every century of the hegira to interpret
afresh the Sunni tradition.40 The concept becomes more central—understandably—in the
course of time, the further the days of the Prophet and the companions were away, and
although there is a considerable number of people who are considered, by this or that trend
in Sunni Islam, to be a mujaddid, one name immediately comes to mind: that is the
‘renovator of the second millennium’, mujaddid-i alf-i thānī, Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1624).
Coming from the sharī‘a-minded Naqshbandi Sufi tradition, he tried, at the beginning of the
second millennium of the hegira, the turn of the sixteenth to the seventeenth century AD, to
reform Indian Islam, which he felt had been polluted by adapting to many Indian, pagan
customs. Emperor Akbar's attempt to create a dīn-i ilāhī, an eclectic religion that comprised
all the ‘positive’ elements of the religions in his vast empire, aroused the wrath of orthodox
Muslims (as reflected in Bada'onī's historical work Muntakhab at-tawārīkh). By means of
letters, Aḥmad Sirhindī tried to call back the Mughal nobility to the true highway that leads to
salvation. His followers were probably not aware of Sirhindī's extremely high claims for
himself and his three successors, for he felt himself to be the qayyūm, the one through
whom the motion of the world continues—a rank higher even than that of the qiṭb in mystical
Islam. Sirhindī's posthumous influence extended over large parts of the central and eastern
Muslim world, and the letters of the imām rabbānī, the ‘Imam inspired by the Lord’, have
been translated into several Islamic languages.

Later lists of mujaddids continued the sequence with a number of famous religious scholars,
such as al-Kūrānī, who propagated Sirhindī's teachings in the later seventeenth century; and
even Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khan (d. 1885), the prince-consort of Bhopal and active member of the
orthodox ahl-i ḥadīth movement in India, was seen by some as a mujaddid.

The ‘man of God’ was always mentioned as the ideal of the true believers, but one should
beware of taking ‘man’ here as gender-related. As Rūmī says:

If one could become a ‘man’ by virtue of beard and testicles, every buck has enough hair
and beard!

(M V 3, 345)

A woman can equally be a ‘man of God’, for ‘when a woman walks on the path of God she
cannot be called woman’, as ‘Aṭṭār says about the great woman saint Rābi‘a of Basra (d.
801). Yet, the prejudice that women are second-rate creatures and that they have no soul is
still very much alive, and especially the mass media in the West like to dwell upon these
topics.41

The Koran certainly ameliorated the woman's position compared to previous times. She
receives a share of any inheritance, though less than a man, for she is supposed to be
maintained by her husband, who had to pay the dower. More than that, she had the right to
administer her own wealth and whatever she might earn or inherit during her lifetime; there is
no Gütergemeinschaft (joint ownership of property) in marriage. Against these positive
developments (of which many uneducated women barely know, for their rights were curtailed
in many cases by the ‘ulamā), women are not fully emancipated politically and legally, and
are considered half of the man: one needs two male but four female witnesses at court, and
the blood money for a woman is half of that for a free man. Marriage is arranged, and, as
marriage of cousins is frequent (and easy to practise in large family units), the first wife is
usually referred to, in Arabic, as bint ‘ammī, ‘my cousin’.

Polygamy is permitted (Sūra 4:3f.), so that the man can marry up to four legitimate wives;
but from the condition that these wives have to be treated absolutely equally, modernists
have deducted that this is a hidden suggestion to adhere to monogamy—for who could be
absolutely just not only in material sustenance but also in affection? Slave-girls can serve as
concubines, and if they bear a child to their master they become free. Numerous caliphs in
the Muslim world were sons of slave-girls, who thus wielded a considerable influence upon
politics. Divorce is easy and can be pronounced by the husband (Sūra 2:229); after the third
ṭalāq, the expression of the divorce formula, the divorce is final, and the man can remarry
the same wife only after she has been married to and divorced from another man. Women
can include a paragraph into the marriage contract that under certain circumstances (mental
illness; impotence of the husband) they have the right to ask for divorce. Temporary
marriage is permitted in Shia law; it can last from a few hours to months and years; children
from such marriages are legitimate.42

The strange idea that women have no soul according to Islam can immediately be discarded
when one reads the numerous Koranic sentences in which the term ‘those who do right, men
or women’ (Sūra 16:97) occurs, or where muslimūn wa muslimāt, mu'minūn wa mu'mināt,
‘Muslim men and women, believing men and women’ are mentioned together. Women have
to fulfil all religious duties like men: they must perform the ritual prayer, although they are not
encouraged to pray in the congregation on Fridays; they fast and go on pilgrimage (in
company of a relative, not alone); and it is only during the days of their impurity that they
cannot participate in cultic acts—but they have to make up the loss at a later point or, in the
case of fasting, by substitute acts.

It would indeed be amazing if Islam were a religion that is against women. As much as later
developments may give this impression, the Prophet himself said in a famous ḥadīth, which
was taken by Ibn ‘Arabī as the centre of meditation for his chapter on Muhammad in the
Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam: ‘God made dear to me from your world women and perfume, and my
consolation is in prayer’ (AM no. 182). Muhammad's first wife, the mother of his children,
was Khadīja, ‘the mother of the faithful’, whom he loved dearly and who was his greatest
supporter during the crises triggered by the shock of the first revelations. Before the
Wahhabi rule in Saudi Arabia with its strict prohibition of ‘tomb-worship’, the Meccans used
to go to Khadīja's mausoleum and ask for help bi-barakat sittinā, ‘by the blessing of our
lady!’43

The position of the Prophet's youngest daughter, Fāṭima, was raised in Shia piety: the
mother of the martyred imams became a kind of mater dolorosa, interceding for those who
weep for Ḥusayn.44 While her importance in Shia life cannot be overstated, the Shia
thoroughly dislike the Prophet's youngest wife, ‘A'isha, the daughter of Abū Bakr, who was to
become the first caliph (thus usurping ‘Alī's rightful position, as the Shia held). Young ‘A'isha,
a mere child when she was married, was certainly a strange element among the other
women—divorced and widowed—whom the Prophet had married after Khadīja's death in
619. A considerable number of ḥadīth about the Prophet's personal habits are related on
‘A'isha's authority, and often the Prophet's address to her—‘Kallimīnī ya Ḥumayrā, Talk to
me, oh little reddish one!’—is quoted to show his fondness of her (AM no. 47), Later (656),
she played an important political role, riding out on her camel to lead her companions—
against ‘Alī.

Women from the following generations appear in legend and piety, such as Sakīna, Imam
Ḥusayn's daughter, or Sitt Nafīsa (d. 824), whose mausoleum in Cairo is much visited and
whose birthday was celebrated in Mamluk times by the sultan. The mausoleum of Zaynab
Umm Hāshim is likewise a centre of popular piety for the Egyptians: this lady is regarded as
a kind of director of the day-to-day affairs in the heavenly government (now called, with a
‘democratic’ term, dīvān ask-shūrā), and thus proves resourceful when called for one's daily
needs.

The Koran mentions or alludes to only a few women in sacred history: Eve's part in the Fall
is not mentioned in the Scripture but was elaborated in the Tales of the Prophets to show her
negative role in man's seduction;45 Asiya is the believing wife of Pharaoh who saved the
infant Moses; Hajar, the mother of Isma‘il, is closely connected with the Kaaba; but pride of
place belongs to Maryam, the only one mentioned by name and extolled as the virgin mother
of Jesus.

I mentioned the importance of the mothers in the biographies of great Sufis and pious
scholars, and could add the pious wives or daughters of Sufi masters, such as Qushayrī's
wife, the daughter of Abū ‘Alī ad-Daqqāq (d. 1015). It is not surprising to find a good number
of women who were saints in their own right, all over the Islamic world, not only the noble
ladies from the Prophet's family but also princesses or poor, unlettered women—from
Princess Jahānārā, the daughter of the Mughal emperor Shāh Jahān (d. 1681) to the poor,
love-intoxicated Lallā Mīmūna in Morocco; from Pisili Sultan, ‘she with the kitten’, and
Karyağdi Sultan, ‘Miss It Has Snowed’ in Anatolia, to Būbū Rāstī in Burhanpur (d. after
1620), who was a sought-after commentator of classical Persian mystical poetry; from Rābi‘a
of Basra (d. 801)46 to Fāṭima of Cordoba (d. after 1200) who, despite her great age, deeply
influenced young Ibn ‘Arabī, not forgetting the great number of more or less unknown
women saints in Palestine—there is no lack of saintly women. Sometimes they are simply
grouped together, like the Haft ‘afīfa, ‘the seven pure ones’ in Sind; and, just as a female
visitor is not admitted inside certain shrines, male visitors are kept outside the shrines or
enclosures where saintly women rest.

In the Middle Ages, convents for women existed in Cairo and elsewhere; there, women could
spend a span of time, for example after a divorce when they had to wait three months and
ten days until they could remarry, or after the death of their husband. Such convents were
led by a skaykha who also preached to the inmates and led them in prayer. Women appear
now and then as preachers, or reciters of religious poetry, and some even taught ḥadīth
publicly (such as Karima of Marw in Mecca).

Benazir Bhutto's appointment as prime minister of Pakistan amazed many in both Muslim
and Western countries, yet there were quite a few precedents of a woman ruling a country
(provided that she does not claim to be imam in the political sense, or caliph!) such as Raz ia
Sultana in Delhi (1236–40) and a few years later Shajarat ad-Durr (1246–50) in Egypt, and,
last but not least, the famous Begums of Bhopal, who ruled over the central Indian province
in female succession for nearly a century from the 1830s onwards.

The Koran (Sūra 24:31) states that the Prophet's wives should ‘cover their ornaments’, a
sentence that has been interpreted in different ways—it resulted in the complete veiling of
hair, face, body and hands (a notable Pakistani woman professor even used to wear gloves
lest an inch of her skin be visible). Originally, the order to cover oneself decently was meant
to make a distinction between noble women and the servants and lower-class women who
went out with little more but the necessary clothing; it was a distinction, not an onerous duty.
In rural areas, veiling was barely possible, as the women had to work in the fields or woods.
The strictest taboos were imposed on sayyid women, because it was held that the rules
given to the Prophet's wives should be applied to them—and, as always in such cases, they
were exaggerated and hardened over the course of the centuries: a pious woman would
leave her husband's house only on the bier (and she has to be buried somewhat deeper
than a man).

The insistence upon woman's deficiencies (a term very much used also in the Christian
Middle Ages) reveals the ascetic fear of women's power, and the ascetics in early Islam saw
in women something horrible but—alas!—necessary. The sunna's insistence on married life
left them between their wish to sever completely the bonds with this world (a world that
appeared to them, as it did to their Christian contemporaries, as a ghastly old hag, always
ready to seduce and then to devour her unfortunate lovers) and a normal and normative
family life. Marriage, to be sure, is no sacrament but a simple contract in which the bride is
represented by her wālī, ‘representative’.

The institution of marriage is beautifully called one of God's wonderful signs, ayāt, in the
Koran (Sūra 30:21) and is explained, in the Tales of the Prophets, by God's creation of Eve,
where God is said to address Adam: ‘I gathered My grace in My handmaiden Eve for you,
and there is no favour, O Adam, better than a pious wife’. And when they were married, the
angels showered coins from Paradise over them,47 as is done in traditional wedding
processions (and to this day weddings have remained an occasion to show off, connected
with incredible expenses which often impoverish a family).

Man's right (Sūra 4:34) to beat his wife for any misconduct by her has coloured the general
image of suffering wives, and the ḥadīth quoted by Ghazzālī, and well known also in India,
that ‘If it were permitted to fall down before anyone but God, women should prostrate before
their husbands’ certainly does not convey the idea of equality between the partners. Nor
does Rūmī's comparison of married life to an educational process in which the man wipes off
his impurities onto the woman speak of a very lofty state—and yet marriage could also
become a symbol for creation in general and for worship. For Ibn ‘Arabī, everything that
transforms, muḥīl, is a father, and that which is transformed, mustaḥīl, a mother, while the
act of transformation is a marriage, nikāḥ. The Prophet is credited with the sayings: ‘The
best of you is the one who is best to his wife…’ (AM no. 57) and ‘When he kisses her it is as
if he has kissed the pillar of the Kaaba…’. These and similar praises of married life are found
in a Persian treatise on the ‘Mysteries of Marriage’, to which Sachiko Murata has recently
drawn attention.48 And the very frank descriptions of the happiness of sexual union in Bahā-
i Walad's life form, as it were, a bridge between actual marriage and the experience of
mystical union. Mawlānā Rūmī, although turning at times to the ascetic aversion to women
(despite his own happy marriage to a remarkable woman, Kīrā Khātūn, whom he married
after his first wife's death), has found the most beautiful description of women's secret: when
commenting (M I 2, 413f.) upon the Prophet's word that ‘many a woman prevails over the
intelligent’ (cf. AM no. 57), he suddenly turns from criticism to praise of women:

She is a ray of God, she is not that ‘sweetheart’—

She is a creator—one would almost say: she is not created!

One reason for the deteriorating image (and, as a corollary, position) of women was the old
ascetic equation between women and the nafs, the lower soul, nqfs being a feminine term.
As the nafs incites one to evil (Sūra 12:53), woman, too, tries to divert man from his lofty
goals—or so it was thought. However, as the Koran points to the different stages of the nafs,
one could also apply this image to women, and the mystical interpretations of the legends,
for example of the Indus Valley, by poets of the western subcontinent are fine examples of
the purification of the women who walk on the hard path to the Divine as a true ‘man of God’.
Thus the parallel with the feminine, receptive quality of the true seeker's soul becomes
evident once more.

Furthermore, not only is the nafs feminine, but Ibn ‘Arabī—who admitted of the possibility of
women entering the higher echelons of the mystical hierarchy—found that the word dhāt,
‘essence’, is also feminine. Thus, the feminine aspect of the innermost essence of God was
revealed in women. As the discoverer of the ‘Eternal Feminine’, the great Andalusian
mystical thinker, in whose life not only his female teachers but also the beautiful Persian lady
who inspired his Arabic verse are worthy of mention, could become the ideal interpreter of
the Prophet's positive statement about ‘women and scent’. That he was accused of a
predilection for ‘parasexual symbolism’ is an understandable reaction from traditionalist
circles.49

SOCIETY

The ideal Islamic society is, according to Louis Massignon and, following him Louis Gardet,
‘an egalitarian theocracy of lay members’, whatever that means. The community of the
believers is central in normative Muslim thought, hence the aversion of some Muslims to the
Western interest in exotic figures such as Sufis and the like, as they do not represent the
norms and ideals of the umma because the umma is built according to the Prophet's
divinely-inspired vision of the perfect society.50 The ‘good life’, the life of a Muslim that
should bring him or her happiness here and in the Hereafter, should be organized to its least
relevant detail in accordance with the rulings of revelation as interpreted by competent
authorities.51

The Koran describes the Muslim community as ummatan wusṭā (Sūra 2:143), a ‘middle’
community, that is, a group of people who wander the middle path between extremes, just
as the Prophet often appears as the one who avoided both Moses’ stern, unbending
legalism and Jesus’ overflowing mildness; for, as the oft-quoted ḥadīth says, ‘The best thing
is the middle one’ (AM no. 187). The members of this group are the ahl as-sunna wa ‘l-
jamā‘a, those who follow the sunna established by the Prophet and subscribe to the rules
and regulations that determine the believer's life. They are brothers (and sisters) in and
thanks to their faith (Sūra 9:11, 33:5, 49:10); rather, they are ‘like a single soul’ (AM no. 109),
therefore they are obliged to support each other on the path of salvation by ordering the
good and prohibiting the evil, amr bi ‘l-ma‘rūf wa nahy ‘an al-munkar. That means that, by
being a member of this umma, one will find the way to heaven and be—it is hoped—
protected from Hell. The beautiful legend of the Prophet's pledge to intercede for his
community belongs here; when on Doomsday everyone is overwhelmed by horror and calls
out nafsī, nafsī, ‘I myself, I myself [want to be saved]’, Muhammad will call out ummalī,
ummalī, ‘My community, my community [shall be saved]’. Therefore, the members of his
umma feel part of the umma marḥūma (AM no. 79), the community upon which forgiveness
is and will be showered, inshā Allāh.
For modern thinkers such as Iqbāl, the umma becomes the true witness to tauḥīd: One God,
one Prophet, one Koran, one direction of prayer.52 The umma is, as the same poet-
philosopher sings in his Asrār-i khudī (‘Secrets of the Self’), like a rose with many petals but
one fragrance, and this fragrance is the Prophet's guiding presence and the umma's love for
him.

The importance of the umma is clear from the fact that the principle of ijmā‘, ‘consensus’—
which was originally the consensus of the religious scholars of a certain time—was
expanded to comprehend the whole community. As Georg Santillana writes:

When the Muslim community agrees to a religious practice or rule of faith it is, in a certain
manner, directed and inspired by God, preserved from error, and infallibly led towards the
truth… by virtue of a special grace bestowed by God upon the community of believers.

We may call this the baraka of the umma.

The Muslim knows that beatitude and hope of eternal bliss lies in worshipping and serving
God, as the Koran repeatedly states; but true ‘ibāda, ‘worship’, can be realized in full only in
the umma, by participating in the five daily prayers, the Friday service, the two feasts and the
pilgrimage, as well as by paying the zakāt. These duties constitute the fabric of the ideal
Muslim life. For the Muslim is not only part of the ahl as-sunna wa ‘l-jamā‘a but also of the
ahl al-qibla, those who turn in prayer towards the Kaaba.

The role of the ‘middle community’ has been emphasized in a work by the Egyptian author
Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm, who speaks of the ta‘āduliyya,53 the attempt to strike the right middle path
between extremes, and this quality of ta‘āduliyya—so it is thought—has inspired the general
tolerance of the umma in religious concepts: as long as one accepts the binding truth of the
Koranic commands and prohibitions, one remains part of the umma even though one breaks
the commandments; it is the denial of the absolute validity of the Koranic revelation that
would make a person an infidel. One should also be very careful to practise takfir, declaring
someone as a kāfir, ‘infidel, unbeliever’, for the ḥadīth says: ‘He who declares a Muslim to be
an unbeliever is himself an unbeliever’, an adage unfortunately lost on some modern,
aggressive groups among Muslims. H. A. R. Gibb could state, in this respect:

No great religious community has ever possessed more fully the catholic spirit or been more
ready to allow the widest freedom to its members provided only that they accepted, at least
outwardly, the minimum obligations of the faith.54

The schisms that have occurred time and again in history were concerned mainly with
practical and political issues, not so much with doctrinal problems.

The feeling of belonging to the umma marḥūma makes, it was claimed, every Muslim a
missionary who wants his friends to walk on the same highway towards eternal happiness
on which oneself is walking. One can even explain the concept of jihād in this way: the aim
of jihād, the ‘striving in the way of God’, i.e. war against infidels (the concept of ‘holy war’, as
jihād is nowadays usually translated, is un-Islamic!), is the expansion of the dār al-Islām and
is thus, as G. E. von Grunebaum formulates it, an instrument to unite the world in the pax
islamica.55 This may sound Utopian and incompatible with the harsh political realities; but
we are dealing here with ideals and thought patterns.
The concept of the umma has sometimes erroneously been identified with ‘nation’. This,
however, is a grave misunderstanding. It is telling that before the partition of the Indian
subcontinent in 1947, most tradition-bound ‘ulamā, such as those of Deoband and related
schools of thought, refused the idea of Pakistan as a Muslim state, as this seemed to
contradict the true concept of the umma. In a similar line of thought, one can argue that in
classical times the caliph was never a ‘head of state’ in the modern sense but the head of
the umma at large wherever the Muslims lived;56 for the medieval ‘states’ were generally
governed by princes or sultans, who would call themselves by titles like nāṣir ‘amīr al-
mu'minīn, ‘helper of the Prince of the Believers’, or the like. The later interpretation of the
caliphate as something ‘spiritual’ is probably derived from this overarching concept.

The problem of the right government has been discussed by theologians and philosophers
down through the centuries without reaching a conclusive form. The parts of the sharī‘a
dealing with the ideals of statecraft remained generally theoretical, and the practice looked
quite different. The decades-long struggle for a constitution in Pakistan which should be
Islamic and modern is a reflection of these difficulties. One thing, however, is clear from
history: it is better—according to general opinion as well as theological reasoning—to accept
the rule of the dhū shawka, a ruler who has grasped power (even despotically), than to let
the country disintegrate into anarchy.

The ideal of the all-embracing umma in which differences of race and colour were unknown,
as the Koran defined the community of the believers, had to be realized in a constantly
expanding ‘state’ in which an increasing number of new, non-Arab converts who had
accepted Islam had to ally themselves with one of the Arab tribes as a mawlā, ‘client’; and
only as ‘adopted’ members of the Arab community could they gain full ‘citizen status’, not so
much by embracing Islam and believing in the One God and His Prophet. It is
understandable that the mawāli soon realized the paradox of this situation and rebelled; the
system broke down with the growing numbers, especially of Persians, who often became the
true guiding lights of intellectual progress in medieval Islam.

Another problem with which the umma had to deal was that of the dhimmī, the ahl al-kitāb,
‘People of the Book’, that is, the Jews, Christians, Sabians and later also Zoroastrians who
were placed under the protection, dhimma, of the Muslim government and had to pay a
special tax (cf. Sūra 9:29) but who had the right of self-government under their respective
religious leaders (rabbi, bishop and the like), although they were not admitted as witnesses
in Muslim courts. They were also exempt from military service. The government rarely
interfered with their affairs, and they could occupy almost any profession: the large number
of Christian and Jewish physicians, translators and secretaries in the administration (where,
for example, the Copts boasted centuries of experience to put at the Muslim rulers’ disposal)
is a well-known feature of medieval and post-medieval life. The fact that many of the Jews
who had been expelled from Spain in 1492 chose to settle in the Ottoman Empire, where
they enjoyed freedom to live and to practise their skills, shows the tolerance of the Muslim
government as compared to that of Christian Spain.57 To this day, Muslim countries have
high-ranking officials from the Christian or, in Pakistan, the Parsee community who are fully
integrated as High Court judges or ambassadors (to mention only some examples from
Pakistan; Egypt's Boutros-Ghali is another example of a non-Muslim serving in a most
responsible position).
To be sure, Muslims reverted time and again to the Koranic warning: ‘Don't take Jews and
Christians as friends!’ (Sūra 5:51), and edicts were issued that the dhimmīs should
distinguish themselves from the Muslims by dress and demeanour. The first known edict that
ordered the Jews to wear honey-coloured veils and belts was issued in 849, and the yellow
colour remained associated with them down through the centuries (as it was the case in
Europe). When early Persian poets described an autumnal landscape, they thought that the
trees ‘put on a Jewish garment…’58

Conversions of the dhimmīs were not encouraged in early times for financial reasons: a
special tax, as well as the land tax which they had to pay, was a welcome addition to the
treasury. Yet, conversions were rather frequent. The concept of dhimmī was extended to
Buddhists and Hindus when Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim conquered Sind in 711–12, a
measure which meant that Muslims did not need to lead jihād against the native inhabitants
of the country, which would have been next to impossible for the tiny group of Muslims
settling in the western subcontinent.59 Conversions in the fringe areas of Islam especially in
India but also in Central Asia and, somewhat later, in Africa, were largely due to the activities
of the Sufi orders, not—as usually claimed—by ‘fire and sword’ or by ‘forced circumcision’.
The exact mechanics of conversion, however, are not yet fully understood and explained.60

Similar to the attitude of the earliest Arab conquerors towards the mawālī, the new Muslims
of Hindu background in India were regarded by some traditionists as second-class citizens:
the historian Baranī (d. after 1350) harshly ruled out the possibility of a naw musulmān's
occupying a responsible position in the state. The true Muslim was (now no longer the Arab
but) the Turk, for the successful Muslim conquerors of the north-western subcontinent from
the days of Maḥmūd of Ghazna (reigned 999–1030) had been predominantly Turks.61 In
general, too, many Muslims tended to regard the convert with a certain distrust because they
suspected that his conversion was mainly due to practical—financial or political—reasons,
not for the love of Islam. (Conversions for the love of a human being occurred too; as a
Muslim girl is not allowed to marry a non-Muslim, such conversions play a role perhaps even
more in our time than earlier as result of the mobility of social groups, educational facilities,
and the like.)

The community, embracing Muslims of different political and dogmatic approaches to the
central truth as well as the ahl al-kitāb and other small groups, was thus far from uniform. In
the long run, even something like Muslim ‘castes’ developed, especially in India.62
Occupational stratification was common, and the relations among members of certain
classes or groups continue to this day. ‘Horrible—my aunt was buried close to a mirzā
[member of the Turco-Persian nobility in Indo-Pakistan!]—what a disgrace for a sayyid lady!’
I heard this remark in Lahore in 1983.

But how to deal with those non-Muslims who were also not ahl al-kitāb? The problem of
jihād, the ‘striving on the way of God’, was and still is one of the greatest obstacles for non-
Muslims to understanding Islam. Some of the Sūras revealed in Medina deal with the
problem of warring for the sake of the true faith, but this is to be understood primarily as the
fight against aggressors and apostates. Yet, the fact that Muhammad, in the course of his
prophetship, became increasingly sure that he was sent not only to the Arabs but to the
‘ālamīn, all the inhabitants of the world, involved a missionary claim; and thus, in the end, it
was revealed to him: ‘Fight against those who do not believe in God nor in the Last Day, who
prohibit not what God and His messenger have prohibited, and who refuse allegiance to the
true faith from among those who have received the Book, until they humbly pay tribute out of
hand’ (Sūra 9:29). The translation of jihād as ‘holy war’, as is now current even among
Muslims, cannot be justified on philological grounds; the term ‘Holy War’ was first coined in
medieval Europe for the undertakings of the Crusaders. Rules for the treatment of prisoners,
women and children are given, but one should always keep in mind that jihād is not a ‘Pillar
of Islam’; rather, it is a farḍ al-kifāya, a duty to which the community in general is called. As
Sūra 2:256 states: ‘There is no compulsion in religion’, it was impossible to declare jihād as
one of the absolutely binding pillars of Islam.

A ḥadīth makes the Prophet say: ‘The difference of opinion in my community is a sign of
Divine mercy’. This ḥadīth, however, does not intend the different opinions and strata inside
the variegated umma but rather the differences between the legal schools which came into
existence in the first two centuries of Islam. Their leaders developed legal systems based on
the Koran and sunna, and added—as was necessary in a time of fast expansion of Islam
into areas with completely different values and traditions—the principle of analogy, qiyās,
which enabled the jurists to decide cases according to precedents. One may also add ra'y,
speculation and use of independent judgment. The systematization of the given data and
their elaboration constituted the field of fiqh, ‘understanding and pondering’, that is, the
human interpretation of the Divinely-given shari‘a.

The legal schools (sometimes wrongly described as ‘sects’) are called madhhab, ‘the way on
which one goes’, a word which is nowadays sometimes used for ‘religion’ in its historical
aspects (ta'rīkh al-madhāhib means at times simply ‘History of religions’, for din, ‘religion par
excellence’, is only one). The madhāhib differ generally only in minor points, such as the
position of the hands in prayer, the necessity of ablution after touching a non-related
woman's skin, and questions in personal status law. Out of a larger number of legal currents,
such as the school of al-Awzā‘ī (d. 774) and the Żāhirites, four have remained active to this
day. The Hanafites are followers of Abū Ḥanīfa an-Nu‘mān, whose madhhab is generally
accepted in Turkish areas, including northern India, and is regarded as being most prone to
a rather ‘free’ interpretation of the law. Mālik ibn Anās (d. 795) is regarded as the
representative of the traditionalist school of Medina; the Malikites are mainly found in the
western part of the Muslim world. Ash-Shāfi‘ī (d. 820) takes a stance between the two earlier
masters; his school is probably the most widespread one, while the fourth school is
connected with the stern traditionist Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 855). The Hanbalites are
characterized by adhering unswervingly to the words of Koran and sunna, disallowing
human reason to solve problems. Out of this group grew, later, the Wahhabis, who rule
today in Saudi Arabia and deny all bid‘a, innovations, in the legal sphere.

The madhāhib are not hermetically closed. One can refer to a lawyer from a madhhab
different from one's own if one sees this as useful, and members of the same family can
belong to different legal schools. But once one has chosen a madhhab, one has to follow the
rulings found by the previous generations. This taqlīd, ‘imitation’, was meant to ensure that
the spirit in which earlier lawyers had solved a problem was kept intact, but it soon
deteriorated into a narrowing traditionalism: the ‘ulamā and fuqahā (those who deal with the
fiqh) were no longer permitted to use their own intelligence to investigate the Koran and
sunna but were bound, instead, to accept the results originally arrived at and hallowed by
general acceptance, ijmā‘. As Islamic fiqh comprises not only legal but also religious and
what we would call ‘profane’ acts and duties of the believer, ijmā‘ carried over many
medieval customs and ideas which, in themselves, were only derivations and not actually
based on the veritable roots of fiqh, i.e. Koran and sunna. Fiqh also established, on a
Koranic and sunna basis, the personal status law and the duties of the human being towards
God as well as towards fellow humans, and defined transgressions and the different kinds of
punishment according to strict rules. One should keep in mind that it is in law that the
position of the human being is defined and interpreted, not in theology (as largely in
Christianity); the law establishes exactly who is mukallaf, ‘burdened’, with performing which
duty.

Thus, the institution of ijmā‘, once thought to open the way for a development of the Muslim
patterns of life, slowly became an impediment to new developments because, from around
AD 1000 onwards, it was held that the gate of ijtihād, ‘free investigation into the sources’,
was closed. Yet, time and again, individuals opened this gate for themselves, and the
aversion to taqlīd became more and more outspoken among modernists, who perceive the
dangers of fossilization of the community and its way of life and rightly believe that a fresh
investigation into the uṣūl al-fiqh would serve Muslims to find a way to prosper in modern
times as they once prospered. One has also to keep in mind that the gap between the
sharī‘a and the sharī‘a-basted legal systems on the one hand and that of customary and
‘secular’ law had been steadily widening—the caliphs had not only the qāḍīs, who
administered and judged according to the sharī‘a, but also lawyers concerned with non-
religious law, by which many of the punishments were handled and state taxes imposed.

One speaks of seventy-two or seventy-three ‘sects’ inside Islam, one of which is the firqa
nājiya, the ‘group that will be saved’. Yet, one cannot call ‘sects’ in the classical sense of the
word the numerous religious and theological groups which lived side by side down through
the centuries. Again, Gibb's remark comes to mind:

It would not be to go too far beyond the bounds of strict truth to say… that no body of
religious sectarians has ever been excluded from the orthodox community but those who
desired such an exclusion and as it were excluded themselves.63

True ‘sects’ appear, however, at a very early point in Muslim history, beginning with the
battle of Siffin in 657, when one group of ‘Alī's partisans retreated from the battlefield
because their leader accepted his adversary Mu‘āwiya's suggestion to leave the decision to
a divinely-ordained arbitrium. The Kharijites (from kharaja, ‘to walk out, secede’) were the
first group to shape themselves into what they felt to be the ideal Muslim community. They
were ethical maximalists, overstressing the ‘arm bi ‘l-ma‘rūf, and have rightly been called the
Puritans of Islam. By declaring an infidel anyone who commits a major sin, they limited the
community and cruelly fought against those who did not accept their rigid ethical standards.
This attitude led Muslims to ponder the problem of the relation between faith and works—to
what extent do works influence faith? Can faith increase or decrease by works? This, again,
was connected with the question of the right leader of the community—should Muhammad's
successor be from his family, his clan, or was it solely piety that determined the choice? The
Kharijites advocated the opinion that, according to the Koranic words ‘The one most
honoured by God among you is the most pious’ (Sūra 49:13), only piety counted, and coined
the famous sentence that the most pious could be the true caliph even though he be an
Abyssinian slave—because he has the necessary moral qualities.

Such extremist views could not possibly be accepted by the umma wustā, and after several
battles the Kharijites slowly receded into fringe areas such as North Africa and Oman. Under
the name Ibadis, they continued to live in North Africa, and their teaching offered a practical
framework for dynastic, especially Berber, rebellions which flared up from time to time in the
Maghrib.

The problem of faith and works as well as that of predestination versus free will occupied the
minds of several theological groups, who answered the question of whether a person
committing a grave sin was still a Muslim in different ways, or decided to leave the judgment
to God, who alone knows what is in human hearts. Out of these discussions grew the
Mu‘tazila, who was to cause major theological discussions in the late eighth and ninth
centuries, centring upon God's unity and his justice (see below, p. 222). Yet, even these
theological movements cannot be termed ‘sects’.

One can say, with undue simplification, that the battle of Siffin was indeed the event that
gave birth to the two major sects of Islam, the Kharijite on the one hand and the Shia on the
other.64 While the Kharijites stressed the ethical qualities of the leader of the community, the
shi‘at ‘Alī, ‘‘Alī's party’, insisted upon the inherited sacred quality of the leader. One can
juxtapose the positions concerning authority in Shia and Sunni Islam, which softened the
Kharijite approach to achieve once more the golden mean, as follows:

Sunnite Shia

Authority is inherent in the leader

Adhering to the Prophet's words and example. Authority is
by virtue of an inherited sacred
contractual.
knowledge.

The leader of the community is, at least in theory, elected

The imam's rule is God-given
from Muhammad's clan Quraysh. The caliph has no
and necessary.
teaching and interpreting authority.

The caliph is the leader of the community in prayer and The imam possesses a luminous
war. substance.

That means that, according to Sunni opinion the caliph is the first of the believers, while the
imam in the Shia tradition is distinguished by the inherited sanctity of Prophetic descent.

The Shia split into numerous groups. Zayd, son of the only surviving son of Ḥusayn, Zayn al-
‘Abidīn, is the imam after whom the Zaydiyya or Fiver Shia is called, who ruled in the Middle
Ages in Tabaristan and until the 1960s in Yemen. They profess an active imamate and
expect the leader to fight and defend his community. Every Alid, whether from Ḥasan's or
Ḥusayn's progeny, can become the imam; no secret inherited knowledge is involved.

While the Zaydites teach active participation in the fight against injustice, many Shiites
consider the miḥan, the ‘tribulations’, part and parcel of Shia life. As many members of the
Alid family were persecuted (under the Abbasids the persecution was sometimes stronger
than under the Omayyads, because the Abbasids had to fear the dynastic claims of their Alid
relatives), suffering plays an important role in the Shia mentality, and many believe that
mourning for those that have suffered or were martyred has a redemptive quality. This
attitude has been contrasted—though not completely correctly—with the ‘success-oriented’
Sunnites.
Shia leaders practised the da‘wā, the rebellious call to revolution to avenge the injustice
done to their imams, but in order to survive they were allowed to use taqiya, ‘dissimulation’
of their true faith (based on Sūra 3:29). Later Shia authors tended to include in their historical
surveys many people who are known as Sunnis; but, according to the Shia view, these
poets, literati or whatever, must have been Shiites who practised taqiya to survive in the
inimical Sunni environment. This tendency becomes stronger after the Twelver Shia was
introduced as the state religion in Iran in 1501 by the young Ismā‘īl the Safavid, scion of a
Shia Sufi family in Ardabil. If leading mystical poets like ‘Aṭṭār and Rūmī had not been Shia,
how could one accept and love them?65 And, as there is among many Sunnites a certain
tashauyu‘ ḥasan, a tendency to express one's love for the Prophet's family and descendants,
such an interpretation was not difficult.

Two aspects of Shia life are connected with the very beginning of the sectarian development
in Islam, that is, with the question of the caliphate. These are tabarra’ and walāyat—to refuse
the first three caliphs (who were often cursed from the pulpits) and to cling faithfully to the
true walī Allāh, ‘Ali and his descendants, the imams who alone can guide the community
thanks to their inspired wisdom.

The idea that the Mahdi from the Prophet's family will appear at the end of time ‘to fill the
world with justice as it is filled with injustice’ is a dogma in Shia Islam, while Sunnites accept
this idea only sporadically—yet the numerous Mahdi figures who emerged in the Muslim
lands every now and again to fight against injustice show that the concept was widespread.
Suffice it to mention the Mahdi of Jaunpur (d. 1505), who preached a mystically-tinged Islam
with strong reliance upon dhikr instead of prayer, or the belligerent Mahdi of the Sudan (d.
1885), who caused so much horror among Europeans and who became a symbol of the
Muslim fight against the colonial powers (thus in a moving chapter in Iqbāl's Jāvīdnāma).

While the so-called Twelver Shia, whose twelfth and last imam disappeared as a child in
874, constitutes the mainstream of Shia Islam and largely shaped intellectual and spiritual
life in Iran and parts of India, not to mention smaller pockets in Syria and other countries, the
Ismaili currents split off with a dispute over the seventh Imam, the son of Ja‘far aṣ-ṣādiq (d.
765), one of the most influential scholars and sages, whose important role in mystical
tradition as well as law is also accepted in Sunni Islam. Instead of his son Mūsā al-Kāẓim
(through whom the chain of the Twelver continues), the line was continued to Ismā‘īl ibn
Muḥammad. The different branches of the so-called Ismaili movement have incorporated
much of gnostic thought, with ‘Alī's role becoming more and more important until even a kind
of deification was reached (thus among the Nuṣayris and ‘Alī Ilāhīs, called ghulāt,
‘exaggerators’, even in Shia sources).

The Ismaili movement, to which medieval Islam owes highly important philosophical
speculations, assumed its visible shape in the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt (969–1171). The
glory of eleventh-century Cairo was described by the great Ismaili philosopher-poet Nāṣir-i
Khusraw in his Safarnāma, the ‘Travelogue’, and in some of his autobiographical poems.
The movement split with the death of the caliph al-Mustanṣir (reigned 1036–94), once more
over the question of succession. One group accepted the birth rights of Mustanṣir's elder
son Nizār, while others were in favour of the younger son Musta‘lī, who succeeded his father
in Egypt. His dā‘īs went to Yemen, where one still finds Ismaili villages and which was
regarded as the basis of the true da‘wā. Yemenite scholars were brought to India to teach in
the families whose ancestors were converted to Ismaili Islam from the late twelfth century
onwards. This group, centred mainly in Bombay and Gujarat, is called Bohoras (‘traders’)
and constitutes to this day a wealthy trading community. They still follow the legal code
established by the Fatimid jurist Qādī Nu‘mān.66 The highest authority among the Daudi
Bohoras is His Holiness Sayyidna, whose ancestor came to India in the mid-sixteenth
century; his rule can be compared almost to that of a pope (without celibacy, of course). His
commands are to be obeyed exactly, otherwise excommunication is practised. Lately,
Sayyidna has promulgated an even harder line in accordance with the increasing
fundamentalist tendencies in mainstream Islam. A smaller group, the Sulaymanis, who
remained faithful to the Yemeni connection, were and still are a remarkably progressive
community. They played a role in politics: Badruddin Tayyabjee, first Muslim president of the
Indian National Congress; A. A. A. Fyzee with his interesting modern interpretation of Islam;
and Atiya Begum, the fighter for women's education in the first decades of the twentieth
century, were part of the Sulaymani Bohora community.

Followers of Nizār, who was brought to the Persian fortress of Alamut, where his line
continued, acted also as dā‘īs in the Indian subcontinent and converted a considerable
number of Hindus in Sind and Gujarat. Smaller pockets of this faction are found in Syria
(once the seat of the mysterious shaykh al-jabal, the Old Man of the Mountain, of Crusader
fame); eastern Iran, northern Afghanistan and Central Asia have small Ismaili groups, and
an important area where the Ismailis are the true political leaders is Hunza in the Karakoram
region of Pakistan, close to the area of Badakhshan where Nāṣir-i Khusraw spent the last
fifteen or twenty years of his life. The leader of the Ismailis, who had received the tithe from
his followers everywhere, left Iran for India in 1839 to join his community in Bombay and
adjacent areas; he was given the tide Aga Khan. His grandson, the famous Sultan
Muhammad Aga Khan III, was able, during his long reign, to transform the so-called Khoja
groups into a modern community in which, for example, education of women is given a very
special place; he also encouraged the migration to East Africa of numerous families from
Sind, Gujarat and the Panjab. Most of them, however, have recently left Africa in the wake of
racial unrest and persecution of minorities to settle in the west, mainly in Canada.

Contrary to the Twelver Shia, the Khojas do not emphasize the suffering of the imams or
indulge in commemorating the event of Kerbela; rather, they feel blessed by the presence of
the Aga Khan, the ḥāz ir imām through whose firmans they receive Divine guidance. Like the
Bohoras, the Khojas have a highly structured organization, a true hierarchy with defined
duties for everyone. The literature of both groups comes to light only slowly due to the
secrecy with which the beliefs are surrounded; the gināns of the Khojas (see above, p. 168)
reflect a deep mystical piety in which all the longing of the soul is directed towards the Imam
through whom the Divine light radiates.67

Another group inside Islam, which is not ‘sectarian’ in the strict sense of the word but whose
ideals have influenced the Muslim community deeply, is the Sufi ṭarīqa, a term translated as
‘order, brotherhood, fraternity’.68 Ernest Gellner has called the establishment of Sufi ṭarīqas,
which began in the mid-twelfth century, ‘a reformation in reverse’, because the Sufi orders
created a quasi-church with the shaykh or pīr forming the centre around whom the different
strata of members were—more or less—organized.69 Early Sufism was ascetic and
certainly very averse to the world and what is in it; government was generally equated to evil
and corruption. Later, the Sufis assumed, wittingly and unwittingly, an immense political
power. The Sufi shaykh was thought to have a direct influence on political events and
material destiny of the realms where his spiritual authority was exercised. That is true not
only in India but also for Sufi ṭarīqas in many other parts of the Muslim world. Offence
against a shaykh could be regarded as a reason for a ruler's downfall or a mighty person's
sudden misfortune: thus some Sufis explained the Mongol invasion of Iran and the adjacent
countries in 1220 and the following decades in part due to the misbehaviour of some Muslim
rulers towards the ‘friends of God’.70

The faces of the Sufi orders differ widely; one finds rural and urban orders, and the
teachings of the different ṭarīqas appeal to every stratum of society. Some ṭarīqas are
connected, at least loosely, with certain professions: the Mevleviyya (which never crossed
the borders of Ottoman Turkey) attracted artists, poets and calligraphers, and represented
the sophisticated educational level; the Turkish Bektashis, strongly inclined towards the Shia
and notorious for admitting women to all their meetings, were the order that worked with the
Ottoman elite troops, the Janissaries, and thus lost some influence after the Janissaries’ fall
in 1829; and adherence to the Shādhiliya with its sober, refined literature was often preferred
by members of the upper middle class, who felt attracted by the emphasis on quietude,
purity and meditation without begging and ecstatic rites, as these are so often part of dervish
orders. It is typical that one of the Shādhiliyya's offspring, the Darqāwiyya, has attracted
several important Western converts to Islam. On the other hand, the musical sessions of the
Indian Chishtis are the joy of those who try to find God through the mediation of sacred
music. Ecstatic groups with wild dhikr meetings and a tendency to perform dangerous-
looking miracles, like eating glass or taking out their eyes, live beside others who practise
silent dhikr and retire in nightly vigils from the outside world to find strength for their daily
occupation, in which they may be highly successful (the Naqshbandis and their subgroups
are among these). Others work for the benefit of the community as do the Muridin of
Ahmadu Bambu in Senegal;71 and while medieval history knows of a number of Sufi rebels
against the government (Qāḍī Badruddīn of Simavna (d. 1414) in Ottoman Turkey, Shāh
‘Ināyat of Jhōk in Sind in the early eighteenth century)72 or, like Sharīatullāh, against the
rich landlords in Bengal, other Sufi families are very involved in politics.73

In short, the influence of Sufism is visible in almost every walk of life, for—as Marshall
Hodgson writes—‘they developed a picture of the world which united the whole dār al-Islām
under a comprehensive spiritual hierarchy of pīrs’.74

However, the Sufis have been and still are harshly criticized for introducing foreign, ‘pagan’
customs into Islam and polluting the pure, simple teachings of the Koran and the Prophet by
adopting gnostic, ‘thoroughly un-Islamic’ ideas. Strange dervishes, wandering mendicants in
exotic attire, or half-naked faqirs were the first representatives of ‘Sufism’ which Western
travellers encountered and from whom they gained the impression that Sufism was
something alien to Islam, a weird movement of drug-addicts who did not know anything of
the legal and theological foundations of Islam. The inner values of Sufism were discovered
only slowly. But the degeneration of Sufism in general and the quest for more political man
spiritual power was undeniable, so much so that many Western observers considered
Sufism the greatest barrier to a modern development in Islam. Muslim thinkers like Iqbāl
joined them, claiming that molla-ism and pīr-ism were the greatest obstacles to truly Islamic
modem life, and that the influence of ‘pantheistic’ ideas in the wake of Ibn ‘Arabī's teachings
and the ambiguous symbolism of—mainly Persian—poetry and the decadence that was its
result (or so he thought) were ‘more dangerous for Islam than the hordes of Attila and
Genghis Khan’.75 And yet, Iqbāl's own interpretation of Islam owes much to the intense love
of God and the Prophet that are typical of classical Sufism.
Out of Sufism, and often parallel with it, grew another movement, called futuwwa. Futuwwa,
the quality of the fatā, the virtuous young hero, is based, as its adherents say, on the
example of ‘Alī, the true fatā. The leaders of the futuwwa groups also reminded their
followers of the appearance of the term in the Koran, where Abraham (Sūra 21:60) as well
as the Seven Sleepers (Sūra 18:10) are called fatā or (plural) futyān. The futuwwa groups
apparently developed in the late tenth century and were a kind of sodality permeated by Sufi
ideas. Some members of the movement sometimes turned against the establishment, and
its offshoot, the ‘ayyārūm, can be compared to the classical mafia. The Abbasid caliph an-
Nāṣir (1182–1220) gave the movement a proper organization and sent out the Sufi leader
Abū Ḥafṣ ‘Omar as-Suhrawardī to invite the princes of adjacent areas to join the futuwwa,
thus creating, as it were, a political network of allegiances. Its initiation ritual was apparently
more formal than that in many Sufi orders; the novice was girded and invested with special
trousers, sarāwīl al-futuwwa, and had to drink salty water, a sign of loyalty, perhaps
endowed with a certain apotropaic power. Franz Taeschner has described the details of this
initiation and translated handbooks from medieval Arabic and Turkish so that one can form
an almost complete insight into this hierarchically-organized Männerbund whose members
were subject to stern ethical roles—only men from respectable families and professions
were accepted.76

The futuwwa sodalities were connected with the artisans’ guilds, although the problem of
whether and how guilds are at all related to Sufism and futuwwa has been debated intensely
among scholars. The guilds—if we can use this term—had a patron saint, and as late as in
1953 the cotton-carder, ḥallāj, in Istanbul who cleaned my mattress told me proudly the story
of his patron saint, the martyr-mystic al-Ḥallāj. The guilds and sodalities such as the Akhi,
who represented the Turkish offshoot of the futuwwa, impressed visitors from other
countries, as can be understood from Ibn Baṭṭūṭa's travelogue: he was highly grateful to the
Akhis in Anatolia, whose honesty and hospitality he praises.

All the groups were involved, in one way or another, in defending the dār al-islām, and the
political changes brought about by colonial powers had to be met by new interpretations. For
instance, was an Indian province now under British rule considered to be dār ul-ḥarb, which
could entail that no Friday prayer could be performed?77 The problem of Muslim minorities
in a non-Muslim majority area is to this day difficult to solve, especially in the West. Can
they, as minorities, play an important role in society? How are they to prove that they are
real Muslims?78 Can their approach to education help to ward off the dangers of
backwardness of which the Muslims are often accused? Innumerable questions have arisen
which were never discussed in previous centuries but which may lead to a fresh self-
understanding for Muslims.79 For most reformers have reminded their co-religionists of Sūra
13:12: ‘Verily God does not change the fate of a people until they change what is in
themselves’.

The new Muslim presence in the West also requires an increased dialogue, but it is
unfortunate that, often, abstract theological and philosophical issues are raised instead of
seeking the vital meeting point, namely the concept of God and the human soul's relation to
Him. Wilfred Cantwell Smith was right when he remarked that, in such meetings and in
conferences about Islam and Christianity, ‘much talk about Islam can be heard but very little
about God…’.80
 NOTES

• 1.

Nāṣir-i Khusraw (1929), Dīvān, p. 214.

• 2.

See the numerous examples in H. Ritter (1955), Das Meer der Sale.

• 3.

H. H. Schaeder (1925), ‘Die islamische Lehre vom Vollkommenen Menschen’; L. Massignon

(1947), ‘L'Homme Parfait en Islam et son originalité eschatologique’. See also H. S. Nyberg
(1919), Kleinere Schriften des Ibn al-‘Arabi, p. 99ff., and Tor Andrae (1918), Die person
Muhammads in glauben und lehre seiner gemeinde for the development of Muhammad as
the Perfect Man.

• 4.

Jafar Sharif (1921), Islam in India, p. 22.

• 5.

S. M. Zwemer (1947), ‘Hairs of the Prophet’. The cult of the Prophet's hair was apparently
more prominent among Turks and Indian Muslims than among the Arabs.

• 6.

R. Burton (1851), Sindh, p. 135. G. Schoeler (1990), Arabische Handschriften, Teil II, no. 94
(Ms. or. oc. 2319), futuwwetnama with an explanation of the ceremony of shaving off one's
hair.

• 7.

J. A. Williams (1984), ‘The Khānqāh of Siryāqūṣ’, p. 118.

• 8.

T. Kowalski (1924), ‘Nase und Niesen im arabischen Volksglauben und Sprachgebrauch’.

• 9.

About spitting, see also E. Doutté (1908), Magie et religion, p. 440.

• 10.

Information from Dr Kamal Abdul Malik, Toronto, from his PhD thesis about songs in honour
of the Prophet.

• 11.
Maqqarī (1916), Fatḥ al-mula ‘āl fi madḥ an-ni‘āl; Anastase Marie de St Elie (1910), ‘Le culte
rendu par les musulmans aux sandales de Mahomet’.

• 12.

See EI, s.v. dawsa, and, for Istanbul, MW 13 (1923), p. 185.

• 13.

About the glance, see R. Gramlich (1976), Die schiitischen Derwischorden, vol. 2, p. 209; for
more examples, idem (1987), Die Wunder der Freunde Gottes.

• 14.

Jafar Sharif (1921), Islam in India, p. 19.

• 15.

S. Murata (1992b), The Too of Islam, p. 144.

• 16.

H. S. Nyberg (1919), Kleinere Schriften des Ibn al-‘Arabi, p. 125. The idea was common
among the mystics; see A. Schimmel (1975a), Mystical Dimensions of Islam, p. 192, and the
numerous references in, for example, Rūmī's work.

• 17.

Fīhi mā fīhi (1952), end of ch. 5.

• 18.

The classification of ‘people with baraka’ used here follows F. Heiler's (1961) model
(Erscheimmgsformen und Wesen der Religion, p. 365ff.). Quite different is the number of
‘people of Eminence’ as described by Shāh Walīullāh, where one find the ḥakīm, ‘wise man,
philosopher’, the walī, ‘friend of God’, the caliph, the muḥaddath, ‘one to whom God has
spoken’, the ford, ‘singular man’, the mujaddid, ‘renewer’, the ‘ulamā, the philosophers, and
the mutakallimūn, ‘scholastic theologians’, that is, people distinguished more by knowledge
than by baraka. See J. M. S. Baljon (1986), Religion and Thought of Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī
(1703–1763), ch. 9, p. 116ff.

• 19.

J. Horovitz (1910), ‘Baba Ratan, the Saint of Bhatinda’.

• 20.

F. Taeschner (1979), Zünfle, p. 439.

• 21.

H. S. Morris (1958), ‘The Divine Kingship of the Aga Khan: a study in theocracy in East
Africa’; P.—J. Vatikiotis (1966), ‘Al-Ḥākim bi-Amrillah, the God-king idea realized’.
 • 22.

Fazlur Rahman (1966), Islam, p. 169.

• 23.

A. Sprenger (1869), Das Leben und die Lehre des Muhammad, 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. ix.

• 24.

Fazlur Rahman (1958), Prophecy in Islam.

• 25.

For the ‘aqīda sanūsiyya, see Frederick J. Barney (1933), ‘The creed of al-Sanūsī’, German
translation and commentary of the ‘aqida in R. Hartmann (1944), Die Religion des Islam, pp.
43–50.

• 26.

The number of books about the Prophet published by Muslims and non-Muslims is much too
great to be mentioned. For a brief survey, see A. Schimmel (1988), And Muhammad is His
Messenger, bibliography. For a moderate Western view, see W. M. Watt (1961),
Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman, as well as his numerous other works. Also of
particular interest are M. Hamidullah (1959), Le Prophète de l'Islam, and Martin Lings
(1983), Muhammad.

• 27.

Y. Friedmann (1989), Prophecy Continuous. Aspects of Ahmadi Religious Thought and its
Medieval Background.

• 28.

Iqbāl (1930), The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, p. 126; cf. A. Schimmel
(1963a), Gabriel's Wing, p. 168f. See also Fazlur Rahman (1966), Islam, p. 220.

• 29.

Daud Rahbar (1966), ‘Ghālib and a debatable point of theology’.

• 30.

Fazlur Rahman (1966), Islam, p. 247. Nevertheless, although the Koran is the veritable
centre of Islamic faith and the dharma the central concept in Buddhism, both the Prophet
and the Buddha each gained a position much higher than that of a simple carrier of
revelation or preacher of the right path, and both of them were endowed with a soteriological
and a cosmic aspect.

• 31.

For this development, see Tor Andrae (1918) Die person Muhammads, and A. Schimmel
(1988), And Muhammad is His Messenger.
 • 32.

Frithjof Schuon (1989), In the Face of the Absolute, p. 230; and idem (1987), ‘The spiritual
significance of the substance of the Prophet’.

• 33.

Tor Andrae (1948), I Myrtenträdgarden (English translation by Birgitta Sharpe (1987), In the
Garden of Myrtles), deals with the earliest phase of Sufism.

• 34.

Bikram Nanda and Mohammad Talib (1989), ‘Soul of the soulless: an analysis of Pīr-Mūrid
relationships in Sufi discourse’, p. 129.

• 35.

J. ter Haar (1992), ‘The spiritual guide in the Naqshbandi order’, p. 319.

• 36.

Sir Thomas Arnold (1909), ‘Saints, Muhammadan, India’, ERE, vol. 11, the story of the
Pathan, p. 72.

• 37.

C. Troll (ed.) (1989), Muslim Shrines in India, p. 7.

• 38.

Carl W. Ernst (1992a), Eternal Garden, is a good survey of the relations between the shrines
in Khuldabad/Deccan and the rulers.

• 39.

C. Geertz (1971), Islam Observed, p. 51.

• 40.

Y. Friedmann (1971), Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi. An Outline of His Thought and a Study of His
Image in the Eyes of Posterity. For later definitions of the mujaddid, see J. O. Hunswick
(1984), ‘Ṣāliḥ al-Fullānī (1752/3–1803). The career and teachings of a West African ‘ālim in
Medina’.

• 41.

The number of books and articles about Muslim women increases day by day. A solid
introduction is Wiebke Walther (1980), Die Frau im Islam.

• 42.

S. Murata (1987), Temporary Marriage in Islamic Lands.

• 43.
C. Snouck Hurgronje (1925), Verspreide Geschriften, vol. 5, p. 60.

• 44.

Ali Shariati (1981), Fatima ist Fatima. Fāṭima was also Iqbāl's ideal, as becomes clear from
his Rumūz-i bēkhudī (1917).

• 45.

Kisā'ī (1977), Tales of the Prophets, p. 44f.

• 46.

Margaret Smith (1928), Rābi‘a the Mystic and her Fellow Saints in Islam.

• 47.

Kisā'ī (1977), Tales of the Prophets, p. 33.

• 48.

S. Murata (1992a), ‘Mysteries of marriage—notes on a Sufi text’.

• 49.

Fazlur Rahman (1966), Islam, p. 146.

• 50.

T. Naff (1984), ‘The linkage of history and reform in Islam’.

• 51.

G. E. von Grunebaum (1958), Muhammedan Festivals, p. 5.

• 52.

About Iqbāl's view of the umma, see A. Schimmel (1963a), Gabriel's Wing, pp. 64–5.

• 53.

The concept of wasaṭ, ‘middle’, was praised in both normative (Ibn Taymiyya) and mystical
literature in Islam. See Merlin L. Swartz (1973), ‘A seventh-century AH Sunni creed: the
‘Aqiqa Wāsiṭiyya’: ‘Doctrinal error or heresy results when one element of the truth is elevated
to the whole, so that the integrity and dialectical tension that ought to exist between the parts
of the whole are destroyed’ (p. 96). That means that the healthy equilibrium in the umma is
the most important thing.

• 54.

H. A. R. Gibb (1949), Mohammedanism, p. 119. The Santillana quote is also from this book
(pp. 96–7).

• 55.
G. E. von Grunebaum (1969), Studien, p. 26, note 5, referring to a Turkish statement of
1959.

• 56.

‘Alī ‘Abdur Rāziq, quoted in K. Cragg (1965), Counsels in Contemporary Islam, p. 70.

• 57.

For a special case, see B. Braude and B. Lewis (eds) (1982), The Christians and Jews in the
Ottoman Empire. The Functioning of a Plural Society.

• 58.

Khāqāni (1959), Dīvān, pp. 133, 428; Mas‘ūd ibn Sa‘d-i Salmān of Lahore (1960), Dīvān, p.
471.

• 59.

Derrick N. Maclean (1989), Religion and Society in Arab Sind, especially p. 41f.

• 60.

Sir Thomas Arnold (1896), The Preaching of Islam, is still the basic introduction to this topic,
although the question of conversion has been discussed frequently during the last decades.

• 61.

Żiyāuddīn Baranī (1860–2; 1957), Tārīkh-i Ferōzshāhī, deals with this problem. See also A.
Schimmel (1974), ‘Turk and Hindu, a poetical image and its application to historical fact’.

• 62.

Satish G. Misra (1963), Muslim Communities in Gujarat, Imtiaz Ahmad (1978), Caste and
Social Stratification among Muslims in India; idem (ed.) (1976), Family, Kinship and
Marriage among Indian Muslims.

• 63.

H. A. R. Gibb (1949), Mohammedanism, p. 119.

• 64.

H. Halm (1988) Die Schia, English translation (1992), The Shia; Allamah Sayyid Muḥammad
Ḥusayn Ṭabātabā'ī (1975), Shiite Islam; S. A. A. Rizvi (1985), A Socio-intellectual History of
the Isna Ashari Shiis in India; A. Falaturi (1968), ‘Die Zwölfer-Schia aus der Sicht eines
Schiiten’.

• 65.

Shushtari (1975), Majālis al-mu'minīn, is a good example of this tendency. For the problem,
see Habibeh Rahim (1988), Perfection Embodied. The Image of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib in Non-
Shia Persian Poetry.
 • 66.

For a very critical statement about this sect, see Asghar Ali Engineer (1980), The Bohras.

• 67.

Farhad Daftary (1992), The Ismailis, Azim Nanji (1978), The Nizari Ismaili Tradition in the
Indo-Pakistani Subcontinent; S. H. Nasr (ed.), (1977) Ismaili contributions to Islamic Culture;
Ismail K. Poonawala (1977), Bibliography of Ismaili Literature.

• 68.

For a general survey, see A. Schimmel (1975a), Mystical Dimensions of Islam. J. Spencer
Trimingham (1971), The Sufi Orders in Islam, is a wide-ranging survey. For Iran, see R.
Gramlich (1965–81), Die schiitischen Derwischorden Persiens, a work that by far surpasses
its rather limited tide and gives an introduction into beliefs and customs of some orders. See
further O. Depont and X. Coppolani (1897–8), Les confiéries religieuses musulmans, A,
Popovic and G. Veinstein (eds) (1986), Les ordres mystiques dans l'Islam; R. Lifchetz (ed.)
(1992), The Dervish Lodge: Architecture, Art, and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey; R. Eaton
(1978), Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700; J. Paul (1991), Die politische und soziale Bedeutung
der Naqs̆ bandiyya in Mittelasien im 15. Jahrhundert; John K. Birge (1937), The Bektashi
Order of Dervishes; Sorayya Faroqhi (1981), Der Bektaschi-Orden in Anatolien; A.
Gölpiünarfiü (1953), Mevlâna’ dan sonra Mevlevilik.

• 69.

E. Gellner (1972), ‘Doctor and Saint’, p. 255.

• 70.

L. Lewisohn (ed.) (1992), The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism, p. 30. Christiaan Snouck
Hurgronje (1923), Verspreide Geschriften, vol. 3, p. 190ff., speaks of the influence of
different Sufi ṭarīqas on the Ottoman Sultan ‘Abdul Hamīd.

• 71.

D. B. Cruise O'Brien (1971), The Mourides of Senegal.

• 72.

F. Babinger (1943), Die Vila des Schejch Bedr ed-Dīn Maḥmūd. The Turkish leftist poet
Nazĭm Hikmet devoted a group of powerful poems to Bedreddin. For the less well-known
Sindhi rebel, see A. Schimmel (1969), ‘Shāh ‘Ināyat of Jhōk’.

• 73.

Sarah F. D. Ansari (1992), Sufi Saints and State power. The Pirs of Sind, 1843–1947. See
also H. T. Lambrick (1972), The Terrorist.

• 74.

Marshall G. S. Hodgson (1974), The Venture of Islam, vol. 3, pp. 211–2.

 • 75.

Iqbāl, Foreword to Muraqqa‘-i Chughtay, a collection of paintings by Abdur Rahman

Chughtay; his aversion to ‘Sufism’ is evident from his verdict against Ḥāfiẓ in the first edition
of the Asrār-i khudī (1915) and his numerous poems against the ‘Sufi’.

• 76.

H. Thorning (1913), Beiträge zur Kenntnis des islamischen Vereinswesens auf Grund von
Basṭ madad at-taufīq, was the first study of the futuwwa phenomenon. See also A.
Gölpiünarliü (1962), Islam ve Türk illerinde fütüvvet tes kilaliü ve kaynaklariü. The most
comprehensive collection of studies is F. Taeschner (1979), Zünfte und Bruderschaften im
Islam.

• 77.

Not all Indian Muslims were critical of British sovereignty; rather, Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khan
and his friend Ḥālī were grateful for the blessings of the Raj, which protected them against
the growing political aspirations of the Hindus. See also Maulana Muhamed Ali's speech for
the khilāfat Movement 1920, in Aziz Ahmad and G. E. von Grunebaum (eds) (1970), Muslim
Self-Statement, p. 112.

• 78.

F. Meier (1991), ‘Über die umstrittene Pflicht des Muslims, bei nichtmuslimischer Besetzung
seines Landes auszuwandem’. American Muslims have sometimes compared their situation
to that of the Prophet's companions who emigrated to the Christian country of Abyssinia.

• 79.

The Journal of Muslim Minorities Affairs, issued in Jeddah, is an important publication in this
field.

• 80.

Quoted in S. D. Goitein (1966), Studies, p. 30.

VI | God and His Creation; Eschatology
VI | God and His Creation; Eschatology1

And of His signs is that He created you from dust, and you became humans, all spread
around.

Sūra 30:20

‘To reflect on the essence of the Creator… is forbidden to the human intellect because of the
severance of all relations between the two existences.’ Thus wrote Muhammad ‘Abduh, the
Egyptian modernist theologian.2 Islam has generally held the opinion that it is sinful to apply
human reason to God. The ḥadīth states: ‘Think about the creation, but do not think about
the Creator’ (AM no. 439). One has to accept the way in which He describes Himself in the
Koran, for according to Ismā‘īl Rājī al-Fārūqī, ‘The Qur'an expresses God's
inconceptualizability in the most emphatic manner’.3

Ancient religions had tried to circumscribe the Numinous power in various ways. The High
God was recognized as causing and maintaining creation, and could be symbolized as
father or, less frequently in historic times, as mother. Functional deities were in many
religions responsible for the different events in Nature and in life: in the high religions many
of them were ‘sublimated’, as it were, into saints who are thought to perform similar
functions—hence the aversion of traditional Muslims to saint-worship, which, as they feel,
imperils the pure, true monotheism whose confession is the duty of the believers.

Religions of antiquity also saw Fate as an impersonal power behind the events, and ancient
Arabic as well a good part of Persian poetry reflects that fear of the revolving sky which, like
a millstone, crushes everything. Who can escape the movement of the haft āsiyā, the ‘seven
mills’, as the spheres are sometimes called in Persian? Who is not trampled down by the
black and white horses which draw the chariot of the sky? Who knows what cruel Time has
in its store, on its loom? The feeling that a merciless Fate reigns over the world surfaces
time and again in literature,4 and yet there is a deep difference between this fatalism, which
the Oriental world inherited from earlier systems of thought, and the belief in the active God
who cares for His creatures and who knows best what is good in any moment of life even
though His wisdom is often incomprehensible to human minds and one wonders what He
intends. To be sure, there are enough statements, especially in the ḥadīth, in which God's
omnipotence seems to be expressed through a seemingly feelingless fate, such as the
famous ḥadīth qudsī;: ‘Those to Paradise and I do not care, and those to Hell and I do not
care’ (AM no. 519). Predestination of this kind seems illogical, even downright cruel, to a
modern mind, but it expresses a strange, irrational relation between the human ‘slave’ and
the Lord; a relation which Tor Andrae, the Swedish Islamicist and Lutheran bishop has
described thus: ‘Belief in predestination is the deepest and most logical expression of
interpreting the world and human life in a purely religious way’.5 This statement translates
well the Muslim's understanding of God's omnipotence and absolute Lordly power.

History of religions knows of different ways to describe God or, at least, to try to understand
Him. There are the via causaliatis, the via eminentiae and the via negationis. All three can be
comfortably applied to Islam, although the first one seems to be predominant in the Koranic
message. Among His names, al-khāliq, al-bārī, al-muṣawwir, ‘the Creator, the Shaper, the
Form-giver’ stand besides others that point to His care for His creatures, such as ar-rāziq,
‘the Nourisher’. He is al-muhuī al-mumīt, the One ‘who gives life and who gives death’.
‘Every day He is in some work’ (Sūra 55:29), that is, He never rests, and ‘slumber or sleep
do not touch Him’ (Sūra 2:255). Just as He has placed His signs ‘in the horizons and in
themselves’ (Sūra 41:53), He also ‘taught Adam the names’ (Sūra 2:31), and furthermore
‘He taught the Koran’ (Sūra 55:2). That means that He taught everything, for the Koran
contains the expression of His will, while the names endow humankind with the power over
everything created as well as with an understanding of the Divine Names through which His
creative power manifests itself.

One could transform the words of the shahāda that ‘there is no deity save Him’ into the
statement that there is no acting Power but Him, for all activities begin from Him: He began
the dialogue with humanity in pre-eternity by asking in the Primordial Covenant alastu bi-
rabbikum, ‘Am I not your Lord?’ (Sūra 7:172), and He inspires prayer and leads people on
the right path if He so wishes. Yet the supreme cause of everything perceptible is not
perceptible Itself.

As much as tradition and the Koran use the via causalitatis to point to God's power, they
also use the via eminentiae, that is, they show that He is greater than everything
conceivable. This is summed up in the formula Allāhu akbar, ‘He is greater (than anything
else)’; and He is ‘above what they associate with Him’ (Sūra 59:23).

But His is also the absolute Beauty, even though this is not stated explicitly in the Koran.
Yet, the ḥadīth ‘Verily God is beautiful and loves beauty’ (AM no. 106) was widely accepted,
especially by the mystically-minded, and when daring Sufis claimed that the Prophet had
said: ‘I saw my Lord in the most beautiful form’, they express the feeling that longing for this
Absolute Beauty is part of human life.

God is absolute Wisdom, and the Muslim knows that there is a wisdom in everything. For
‘God knows better (than anyone)’, Allāhu a‘lam, as is repeated in every doubtful case.
Therefore, God should not be asked why this or that happened, and ‘Alī's word: ‘I recognized
my Lord through the annulment of my intentions’ (AM no. 133) reflects this mentality: the
Lord's strong hand should be seen even in moments of disappointment and despair, for, as
the Koran states (Sūra 21:23), ‘He is not asked about what He does’. This feeling has
inspired Rūmī's poetical version of Adam's prayer in the Mathnawī (M I 3, 899ff.):

If You treat ill Your slaves,

if You reproach them, Lord—

You are the King—it does

not matter what You do.

And if You call the sun,

the lovely moon but ‘scum’,

And if You say that ‘crooked’

is yonder cypress slim,

And if You call the Throne

and all the spheres but ‘low’

And if You call the sea

and gold mines ‘needy, poor’—

That is permissible,

for You're the Perfect One:

You are the One who can

perfect the transient!

God's will is higher than any human will, but this description does not mean, as Fazlur
Rahman says, that we have to do with a ‘watching, frowning and punishing God nor a chief
Judge, but a unitary and purposive will creative of order in the universe’.6 Thus, the constant
use of mā shā' Allāh, ‘what God wills’ or, even more, inshā Allāh, ‘if God wills’, does not refer
to any whim of the Lord but rather to His limitless power.

God is the One who dispenses absolute Justice, so much so that one of the most
penetrating books on Islamic theology is called ‘God of Justice’.7 However, overemphasis on
His justice, ‘adl, as was practised by the Mu‘tazilites, could conflict with His omnipotence,
because His justice was judged according to human understanding of ‘justice’, which is not
applicable to God. The description of God as the khayr al-mākirīn, ‘the best of those who use
ruses’ (Sūra 3:54, 8:30), and the entire problem of His makr, ‘ruse’, belongs to the realm of
His omnipotence; it cannot be solved by human reasoning.8

God is the absolute Truth, al-ḥaqq. It is therefore not surprising that the term ḥaqq was later
used by the Sufis to point to the innermost essence of God, who was experienced as the
sole Reality, something beyond all definitions—and before the ḥaqq, all that is bāṭil, ‘vain’,
disappears (Sūra 17:81).
God is higher than everything—not only in His will, justice or knowledge, but He is also
supreme mercy and love, even though the quality of love is rarely if ever mentioned in the
Koran (cf. Sūra 5:59, end) but is reflected in His name, al-wadūd (Sūra 11:90). Yet, mercy
and compassion are expressed in His two names which precede every Sūra of the Koran,
namely ar-raḥmān ar-raḥīm, ‘the All-Merciful the All-Compassionate’. They come from the
root r-ḥ-m, which also designates the mother's womb, and thus convey the warm, loving
care of the Creator for His creatures. These words, repeated whenever the Muslim begins
something with the basmala, ‘inspired to the Muslim a moderate optimism’,9 and Islamic
scholars have spoken, in the same context, of God's ‘providential mercy balanced by
justice’. Later traditions emphasize that God acts in the way that human beings think He
would—‘I am with My servant's thought’, says the ḥadīth qudsī, to point out that the one who
trusts in God's forgiveness will not be disappointed.10 Rūmī tells the story of Jesus and
John the Baptist; while the latter was constantly brooding in fear and awe, Jesus used to
smile because he never forgot God's loving care and kindness, and therefore he was dearer
to God.11

The via eminentiae can be summed up in the statement that, as God's perfections are
infinite, ‘there is no perfection compared to which there is not a still greater perfection in God
and with God’, and rightly did an oft-quoted Arabic verse say:

Praised be He by whose work the intellects become confused;

praised be He by whose power the heroes are incapacitated!

This exclamation of utter confusion leads to the third way of describing God, the via
negationis:

Whatever you can think is perishable—

that which enters not into any thought, that is God,

says Rūmī, in a verse (M II 3, 107) that sums up the feeling about God. Human thought is a
limitation, and when the theosophical mystics of the school of Ibn ‘Arabī tried to describe
Him in terms that point simultaneously to His transcendence and His immanence, this is
nothing but a faint attempt to describe Him, the deus absconditus, whom one can approach
at best by ‘seizing the hem of His Grace’, that is, to describe one of His manifestations which
cover His Essence like garments, like veils. How is one to speak about the One who is
absolutely transcendent and yet is closer to mankind than their jugular vein (Sūra 50:16), so
that the mystics found Him at the end of the road, in the ‘ocean of the soul’ and not in the
mosque, not in Mecca or in Jerusalem? Poems have sung of Him in colourful images, in
paradoxes, negations and affirmations which, however, do nothing but hide the transcendent
Essence, for He is, so to speak, the ‘Super-Unknowable’.

On the philosophical side, the Ismailis have tried to maintain His transcendence by using a
double negation freeing the idea of God from all association with the material and removing
Him also from the association with the non-material. God is thus neither within the sensible
world nor within the extrasensible.12

He is, in the Koranic expression, ‘the First and the Last, the Inward and the Outward’ (Sūra
57:3), and the mystery of His being is summed up in Sūra 59:23–4:
He is God besides whom there is no deity, the One who knows the visible and the invisible.
He is the Merciful, the Compassionate. He is God, besides whom there is no deity, the King,
the Holy, the Giver of Peace, the Faithful, the Protector, the Mighty, the Overpowering, the
Very High. Praised be God who is above what they associate with Him. He is God, the
Creator, the Form-giver; His are the Most Beautiful Names. He is praised by what is in the
heavens and on Earth and He is the Mighty, the Wise.

Similarly, the Throne Verse (Sūra 2:255) has served to describe Him to a certain degree,
and the concept of His Throne on which He dwells (Sūra 7:54; 10:3 et al.) and which
comprises Heaven and Earth has evoked many commentaries, from realistic descriptions to
visions of a seat of chrysolite or ruby13 to the mystical interpretation that the true Divine
Throne is the human heart, for the ḥadīth qudsī promises: ‘My heaven and My Earth do not
comprise Me, but the heart of My faithful servant comprises Me’ (AM no. 63).

The God as revealed in the Koran is a living God, who has invited mankind to call Him and
He will answer (Sūra 40:62, cf. 2:186), an active, creating and destroying, maintaining and
guiding God who is yet beyond any human understanding. He is, in a certain way, a
‘personal’ God, for He has addressed humankind and revealed Himself to them, but the term
shakhṣ, ‘person’, cannot be applied to Him.

When looking at the active, powerful Lord of the Koran, one wonders how scholastic
theologians could define Him in rational terms: the ‘aqīda sanūsiyya, a dogmatic creed from
the fifteenth century which was largely used among Muslims, describes God with forty-one
qualities, ṣifāt. Six are basic qualities of which the first and essential one is existence, then
further pre-eternity (azaliyya), eternity (abadiyya), His being different from what has become
in time, His self-subsistence and the fact that He needs neither place nor originator.

He has a further seven necessary qualities which are: Power, Will, Knowledge, Life, Hearing,
Seeing and Speech, and seven accidental qualities, that is: His being powerful, being willing,
being knowing, being living, being hearing, being seeing and being speaking (this
differentiation emerged from early theological discussions between the Mu‘tazilites and
traditionists about His attributes).14

Against these twenty qualities are posited twenty others that are impossible, that is, the
contrary of the previous ones: He cannot be not-hearing or not-eternal. His forty-first quality
is that it is possible for Him to do or not to do everything possible. Thus the living God as
described in the Koran was transformed into a set of definitions with which the normal
believer could not establish a true relationship. But definitions of this kind became a central
part of normative thinking.

On the other hand, the ḥadīth qudsī in which God appears as a ‘hidden treasure who wanted
to be known’ became the focal point among mystically-minded Muslims. But while God is
usually seen and experienced as the One who does not need anything, al-ghanī, ‘the Self-
sufficient, Rich’, the moving myth of the Divine Names who longed to manifest themselves
and to be reflected in the world leads to the feeling that God (at least on the level of the deus
revelatus) needs the creatures and mat, in the last instance, God and man are as it were
interdependent—an idea often found in mystical speculations everywhere in the world but,
understandably, contrary to the convictions of traditionist Muslims who maintained God's
supreme rulership and self-sufficiency.
God has been described as the wājib al-wujūd, ‘He whose existence is absolutely necessary’
and upon whom everything relies. One could also transform the simple statement of the
shahāda into the phrase la mawjūda illā Allāh, ‘There is nothing existent save God’, for He is
the only One upon whom existence can be predicated, and He is the only One who has the
right to say ‘I’.15

The concept of waḥdat al-wujūd, ‘Unity of Existence’ as formulated by the commentators of

Ibn ‘Arabī, would be expanded (by losing its necessary sophisticated connotations!) into the
simple statement hama ūst, ‘everything is He’, which was used in Persian mystical poetry,
for example in ‘Aṭṭār's verse, before Ibn ‘Arabī's time and which permeates later Sufi thought
in the entire Persianate world. But those who used it usually forgot that the opposite of unity
of Existence is kathrat al-‘ilm, ‘the multiplicity of knowledge’, that is, the infinite number of
created things which are reflections of God's knowledge and hence different from His
Essence.16

God is the prima causa, and there are no secondary causes: He works through what looks
like secondary causes just as a tailor works with a needle or a calligrapher works with a pen,
and thus it is He who is the real Creator of the design. Again, as He has a name by which He
called Himself in the Koran, that is, Allah, He is, as Iqbāl states, an Ego, the highest all-
embracing Ego in which the smaller egos of the created universe live like pearls in the
ocean, and who contains infinite possibilities in a Presence that transcends created time.

The tension between Divine transcendence and immanence, between theologically defined
impersonality and experienced personality, is reflected in a variety of sayings, verses and
extra-Koranic Divine words. The ḥadīth qudsī ‘My Heaven and My Earth do not comprise Me
but the heart of My faithful servant comprises Me’ (AM no. 63) points to this problem. He is
incomparable, beyond every possibility of being grasped by human thought, and the human
being, His slave, cannot talk about Him but by ta‘ṭīl, keeping Him free from all human
comparisons and not admitting the slightest possibility of an analogia entis; but when one
thinks that He made Adam His khalifa, His vicegerent on Earth, and made him alive with His
breath, one uses tashbīh, comparison with human concepts. Both aspects reflect the Divine,
for man is both slave and representative, and God's attributes of majesty, jalāl, and beauty,
jamāl, which are related to each other like man and woman, as it were, form the fabric of the
created universe. The tendency of pairing concepts, of speaking in polarities, seems typical
of Islamic thought. The Creator is one, but He reveals Himself both in ethical concepts (as
orthodoxy sees Him) and in aesthetic concepts (according to the Sufis’ experiences).
Infidelity and faith, kufr and īmān are, as Sanā'ī sings, ‘only doorkeepers at the sanctuary of
His Unity and Oneness’.17

Although the ‘looks do not reach Him’ (Sūra 6:103), we know of Ibn ‘Arabī's vision of the
letter H, the last and essential letter of Allāh, which points to His huwiyya, ‘He-ness’—He,
who had revealed His words in the letters of the Koran, could be ‘seen’ only in a symbol
taken from the letters, from the Book.18

Perhaps, one may say with the poets, He can be seen with the heart's eye:

I saw my Lord with my heart's eye and asked:

‘Who are You?’ He answered: ‘You’.19

God's Absolute Oneness seems to make it impossible for a human being to profess that
there is ‘no deity but God’, for the very act of pronouncing this formula already means
establishing duality—as Anṣārī says:

No-one confesses the One as the One,

for everyone who confesses Him as the One denies Him.

The mystics knew that (as Dārā Shikōh phrases it):

From saying ‘One’ one does not become a monotheist—

The mouth does not become sweet from saying ‘sugar’.20

Human existence was seen by these radical monotheists as ‘a sin to which nothing is
comparable’—only the One exists. Yet, one should distinguish here between the
overwhelming spiritual vision of the lover who sees nothing but the beloved and hides his
names in all names that he or she mentions—as did Zulaykhā, according to Rūmī's
wonderful description at the end of the Mathnawi (M VI 4,023ff.)—and between the attempt
to ‘explain’ this experience, to fetter it in philosophical terms and conceptualize it in high-
soaring systems which confuse the reader (and here I intend the traditionist as well as the
intoxicated lover) more than they enlighten him.

From whichever angle one tries to understand the All-powerful, the All-majestic and All-
merciful One God, one should certainly listen carefully to the verse in which Sanā'ī has God
speak:

Whatever comes to your mind that I am that—I am not that!

Whatever has room in your understanding that I would be like this—

I am not like this!

Whatever has room in your understanding is all something created—

In reality know, O servant, that I am the Creator?21

The Koran speaks of God as Creator, Sustainer and Judge; but how can one imagine His
creative activity?22

Ancient religions sometimes speak of created beings as ‘begotten’ by the deity, a concept
which, on the level of mystical and philosophical speculation, might be described as
‘emanation’—an idea not unknown among Muslim philosophers and mystical thinkers.
Creation could also be seen as the deity's victory over the chaos: God is the One who
shapes and forms a previously existent matter to fit it into His wise plan. Finally, there is the
creatio ex nihilo, a creation owed to the free will of God and hence emphasized by the
prophetic religions.

The Koran states that God created the world in six days (Sūra 57:4 et al.) without getting
tired, but there is also the idea of a constant creation out of nothing: the long deliberations in
Rūmī's work about ‘adam,23 a concept perhaps to be translated best as ‘positive Not-Being’
capable of accepting form, show how much he, like other mystical thinkers, pondered the
mystery of Creation, which might be taken as an actualization of contingent ‘things’. Such
ideas led Ibn ‘Arabī and his followers to the mythical definition that God and the non-existent
things are as it were male and female, and the existent thing that results can be regarded as
a ‘child’.24 Rūmī speaks in similar connections of the ‘mothers’, for everything touched by a
creative force engenders something that is higher than both.

But in whatever way one wants to explain creation, one knows from the Koran that He needs
only say Kun, ‘Be! and it is’ (Sūra 2:117 et al.). For He creates by His Power, as normative
theology states.

More than that: the Koran insists that the world has a deep meaning, for ‘He has not created
it in jest’ (Sūra 21:16). That is why it obeys Him and worships Him with everything that is in it
(Sūra 51:56). And yet, it was also felt—in the succession of Ibn ‘Arabī—that God takes the
created universe back into Himself to ‘exhale’ it again; in infinitesimally short moments, the
world is as it were created anew, and nothing exists that is not subject to constant though
invisible change. Poets and thinkers sing endless hymns of praise to the Creator whose
work amazes everyone who has eyes to see, and they ask in grand poems:

Who made this turquoise-coloured turning dome

without a window or a roof, a door?

Who granted stripes to onyx from the Yemen?

From where comes fragrance of the ambergris?25

All the miracles that the seeing eye perceives in the created universe point to the necessity
of God's existence; they are His signs, āyāt, which he placed into the world (cf. Sūra
41:53).26

The events in the created world are effects of the Creator's direct involvement: whatever
happens is not the result of causality but rather the sunnat Allāh, the Divine custom which
can be interrupted at any moment if He decrees so. That is why one has to say in shā Allāh,
because one is aware that God can change things and states in the wink of an eye. One
also does not praise the artist when admiring a work of art or some special performance but
exclaims mā shā Allāh (Sūra 18:39) or subḥān Allāh to praise the One whose wondrous
activity shows itself through His creatures; and the pious author will describe his successful
actions as minan, ‘Divine gifts’ for which he owes gratitude.

God is One, but with creation, duality comes into existence, and from duality, multiplicity
grows. The mystics found an allusion to this truth by discovering that the Divine address kun,
written in Arabic kn, consists of two letters and is comparable to a two-coloured rope, a twist,
which hides the essential unity from those who are duped by the manifold manifestations.
Polarity is necessary for the existence of the universe, which, like a woven fabric, is capable
of existence only thanks to the interplay of God's jalāl and jamāl, the myslerium tremendum
and the mysterium fascinans, by inhaling and exhaling, systole and diastole. Azal, eternity
without beginning, and abad, eternity without end, are the poles between which the world
pulsates; Heaven and Earth, ghayb, ‘unseen’, and shahāda, ‘the visible things’ (cf. Sūra
9:94), point to this dual aspect of the created universe as do the concepts of lawḥ, the Well-
preserved Tablet (Sūra 85:22), and qalam, the primordial Pen (Sūra 68:1), which work
together to write the creatures’ destiny.

The idea that God created the world by His word in one moment or, according to another
counting, in six days, was paralleled by the mystical concept of the ‘hidden treasure’. Ibn
‘Arabī developed the myth of the longing Divine Names which, utterly lonely and so to speak
‘non-existent’, that is, not yet actualized in the depths of the Divine, longed for existence and
burst out in an act comparable to Divine exhalation. The Names manifested themselves in
the universe, which thus became their mirror; contingent being received existence as soon
as it was hit by the Name which was to be its rabb, ‘Lord’. Creation is thus a work of Divine
love, but also of Divine self-love—God longed to see His beauty in the mirror of the created
things.27

The breath by which this manifestation took place is the nafas ar-raḥmān, the ‘breath of the
Merciful’, which is, so to speak, the substance of Creation: pure Mercy and pure Existence
are, as it were, the same in the visions of the Ibn ‘Arabī school.

The sudden outbreak of the Divine breath may be called a mystical parallel to the modern
Big Bang theory; in either case, one cannot go behind that moment, and the Divine that
caused it remains absolutely transcendent while we see ‘as through a looking-glass’. Non-
discerning people admire only the highly decorated reverse side of the mirror (medieval steel
mirrors were often artistically decorated); they enjoy ‘the world’ without recognizing the face
of the mirror which can reflect the eternal beauty. By doing so, they are clearly branded as
infidels because, according to the Koran, the world, dunyā, is embellished for the infidels
(Sūra 2:212). While the Muslims are called to see God's marvels in creation as pointing to
Him, and to listen to the adoration of everything created, they are also warned, in the Koran,
not to rely upon the dunyā, ‘this world’, which is usually contrasted with al-ākhira, the
Otherworld, the Hereafter. This world, so the Koran states, was created for play and jest
(Sūra 57:20). The pleasure derived from the world and its use is but small (Sūra 4:77 el al.),
for the world cheats humankind (Sūra 3:185 et al.)—that is why it appears in traditional
images often as a cunning, lecherous old hag who attracts lovers to kill them afterwards. For
the dunyā is the power which can divert humans from the Hereafter (Sūra 87:16), and those
who prefer it to the future life (Sūra 2:86, 4:74) or love it more (Sūra 14:3, 16:107) are
warned and called upon to repent.28

Therefore, this world was often blamed by the sage; Ibn Abī Dunyā's book Dhamm ad-dunyā
is a good example of this genre. Sufi handbooks abound in such blame, and the aversion to
the ‘world’ permeates much of Sufi-minded literature.

On the other hand, one should keep in mind that the world—even if it be worth only a gnat's
wing (AM no. 645)—is God's creation, and gives human beings an environment where they
can perform worship and improve its conditions: ‘do not ruin the world after it has been set
straight’ (Sūra 7:56), warns the Koran, and modern Muslims have taken this āya as a
command to work for the improvement of the environment, for one will be asked how one
has practised one's responsibility in the world. For this reason, the normative believer
disliked overstressed mortification and that kind of tawakkul, ‘trust in God’, which left no
room for activity:29 Rūmī, practically-minded as he was, states that ‘negligence’ is also
necessary, for if everyone were busy only with ascetic pursuits and works that lead to the
Hereafter, how would the world continue and thrive as God had ordered it?
And more than that: the world—again according to Rūmī—is like a tent for the king, and
everyone performs his or her work in embellishing this tent: tentmaker and weaver,
ropemaker and those who drive in the pegs or the nails are engaged in some work, and their
work is their praise for God whose glorification they intend by performing their various
occupations. And those who love his world because it proves God's creative power and
contains the signs that point to Him are, as Ghazzālī holds, the true monotheists.30

The myth of the ‘hidden treasure’ was widely circulated among the Sufis. But there is still
another creation myth which was not as generally accepted. It is the vision of Suhrawardī the
Master of Illumination, according to whom Creation came into existence by means of the
sound of Gabriel's wings: the archangel's right wing is sheer light, oneness, mercy and
beauty, while his left wing has some darkness in it and points to multiplicity, Divine wrath and
majesty; it is directed towards the created universe which, in turn, is maintained through
innumerable ranges of angels through whom the primordial light, the Divine Essence kat’
exochén, is filtered down into the universe and finally reaches humankind.31

Suhrawardī's angelology is a central piece of his philosophy, but angels are an important
part of creation in general and thus play a great role in the religious cosmos of the
Muslims.32 Sūra 35 is called ‘The Angels’, and, in Sūra 2:98, people are mentioned who ‘are
enemies of God and the angels, the messengers and of Gabriel and Michael’. Thus, belief in
the angels is part of the Muslim creed.

Angels are treasurers of God's mercy; they are imagined to be luminous beings but will die
at the end of time, to be resurrected immediately and transferred to Paradise. Angels, so
Muslims believe, accompany the mortals at every step (Sūra 13:11), but they do not enter
places where a picture or a dog is found. They spread the shade of their wings over saints
and martyrs or, in Shia tradition, the imams. They have different occupations: thus four, or
eight of them carry the Divine Throne (Sūra 69:17), but their main duty is constant worship;
adoration is their food and drink, silence is their speech; yet each group of angels which is
engaged in ritual prayer performs only one of the prayer positions. They have no free will,
and are obedient: only once, so the Koran tells, did they question God's wisdom, that is,
when He announced His intention to create Adam and appoint him as khalifa, ‘vicegerent’
(Sūra 2:30). But after acquiescing to God's will and command, they prostrated themselves
before the newly-created Adam. The brief remark (Sūra 2:102) about the disobedient and
rather frivolous angels Hārūt and Mārūt offered imaginative exegetes good story material.

Two angels, the kirām kātibīn (Sūra 82:11), sit on the human being's shoulders to note down
his actions and thoughts. But there are also nineteen angels under the leadership of one
Malik who are in charge of Hell (Sūra 74:30).

Tradition and the Koran know of four archangels. The first is Michael (whose wings, as
Muslims believe, are all covered with emeralds); he is in charge of the distribution of
nourishment to all creatures, and it was he who taught Adam to answer the greeting of
peace with the words wa raḥmatu Allāhi wa barakātuhu, ‘And God's mercy and blessings be
upon you’. Michael, so it is told, never laughed after Hell was created.

Most prominent in the Koran is Gabriel who is also called ar-rūḥ al-amīn, ‘the faithful spirit’
(Sūra 26:193), and even rūḥ al-quds, ‘the holy spirit’ (Sūra 2:87, 5:110, 16:102). He lives by
looking at God, and he is the messenger in charge of the prophets: as he taught Adam the
alphabet and agriculture, he instructed Noah in how to build the ark, offered assistance to
Abraham when he was flung into the blazing pyre, and taught David to weave coats-of-mail.
But more importantly, he was the one who placed God's word into the Virgin Mary so that
she could give birth to Jesus, the Word Incarnate, and likewise brought the revelation to
Muhammad, the unstained vessel for the Word Inlibrate. Gabriel accompanied the Prophet
on his heavenly journey, but had to stay back at the sidrat al-muntahā (AM no. 444) ‘like a
nightingale that is separated from his rose’, as the Turkish poet Ghanizade sang in the
seventeenth century.33 The idea that only the Prophet could transgress the limits of the
created universe and enter the immediate Divine Presence induced thinkers and especially
mystics to equate Gabriel with intellect (or Intellect)—for intellect can lead the seeker in the
way towards God, unfailingly and dutifully, but is not allowed into the bridal chamber of Love.

The third archangel, not mentioned by name in the Koran but very popular in Muslim
tradition, is Isrāfīl, who will blow the trumpet that starts the Resurrection. For this reason,
poets liked to compare the thunder's sound in spring to Isrāfīl's trumpet, which inaugurates
the resurrection of flowers and plants from the seemingly dead dust. Others, not exactly
modest, have likened their pen's scratching to Isrāfīl's trumpet because they hoped, or
assumed, that their words might awaken their slumbering compatriots and cause a ‘spiritual
resurrection’. Even the word of a saint or the beloved could be compared to Isrāfīl's trumpet
because of its reviving qualities.

The most dreaded archangel is ‘Azrā'īl, the angel of death, who, as Muslims tell, was the
only angel who dared to grasp clay for Adam's creation from four parts of the earth, and who
will tear out the human soul at the appointed hour and place, gently in the case of a believer,
painfully in the case of a sinner. However, as mystics claimed, he has no power over those
who have already ‘died before dying’ by annihilating themselves in God.

There is a host of angels with strange-sounding names which are used in incantations and
magic prayers, and in Suhrawardī's philosophy, angels are seen as the celestial selves of
humans. In the later mystical tradition, an angel Nūn appears, connected with the Pen (cf.
Sūra 68:1).

An initial encounter with the angel at the beginning of the spiritual path is common to all
visionary recitals, especially in the Persianate world, and Iran has contributed the angelic
being Sarōsh to medieval Muslim angelology (at least in the eastern lands of Islam). Sarōsh,
an old Zoroastrian angelic being, appears as parallel to Gabriel; but while the archangel
brings the Divine word, the religious revelation to prophets, Sarōsh appears usually as
inspiring poets.

As important as the angels may be, man is still higher than they because he can choose
between good and evil and is capable of development, while the angels are perfect but
static, bound to be good. The daring expression that the true lover of God can ‘hunt angels’
occurs in Rūmī's and sometimes in other mystics’ Persian verse. It was taken up, in the
twentieth century, by Iqbāl, for whom angels are but a lowly prey for the true believer who is
‘the falcon of the lord of lawlāk’, that is, of the Prophet. Iqbāl has often poetically described
how the angels gaze at the Perfect Man and praise him and his position in the universe.34

Angels are created from light; other spiritual beings, however, are created from fire (Sūra
15:27, 55:15). These are the djinns and devils. Sūra 72 deals with the djinns. They can
embrace Islam, and Muslims believe that marriages between djinns and humans are
possible and legally permitted—perhaps the name of the grammarian Ibn Djinnī (d. 1002)
points to this belief. Sulaymān, king and mighty prophet, ruled over the djinn as he ruled over
all kinds of creatures, and numerous incantarions and talismans against spirits of sorts are
prepared in his name, for he was able to imprison some particularly nasty specimens of that
race in bottles which he then sealed and cast into the ocean. The ‘fairy in the bottle’ has
lived on to this day in fairytales, romances and television films.

Among the spirits, Iblīs, diabolus, Satan, occupies a special place. He too is God's creature,
and never appears as God's enemy or an anti-divine power. He was the teacher of the
angels, credited with thousands of years of perfect obedience, but his pride made him claim
to be superior to Adam (Sūra 38:76) as fire is superior to clay. His refusal to fall down before
Adam, a logical outcome of his pride, was nevertheless interpreted differently: according to
al-Ḥallāj and his followers, Iblīs preferred to obey God‘s eternal will that nobody should
prostrate himself before anything but Him, and not His outspoken command to fall down
before Adam. Caught between Divine will and command, he emerges as a tragic figure and
became the model of the true lover who would rather accept his beloved‘s curse man
disobey his will35—an idea that even reached the remote Indus Valley, where Shāh ‘Abdul
Laṭīf sang: ‘āshiq ‘azāzīl—‘‘Azāzīl [i.e. Satan] is the true lover’.36

This interpretation was, however, restricted to a very small group of Sufis, for usually Iblīs
represents the one-eyed intellect who did not see the Divine spark in Adam but only the form
of clay.

Nāṣir-i Khusraw, speaking of the ‘devils of [his] time’, that is, the people who seem to corrupt
the true faith, thinks that nowadays devils are of clay rather than of fire—an idea that is also
found in Iqbāl's highly interesting satanology. Iqbāl considers Iblīs as a necessary force in
life, because only by fighting him in the ‘greater Holy War’ can one grow into a perfect
human being. In a remarkable poetical scene in the Jāvīdnāma, Iqbāl translated Iblīs's
complaint that man is too obedient to him and thus constantly blackens his, Satan's, books
while he longs to be vanquished by the true Man of God to find rescue from the Divine curse.
Iblīs makes life colourful as the jihād against him gives human life a meaning; and, as Iqbāl
says in a very daring Urdu verse, Iblīs ‘pricks God's side like a thorn’, while his ‘old comrade’
Gabriel and the angels are complacent and obedient and thus do not contribute much to
make life interesting or worth living.37

Iqbāl's approach to Iblīs is probably inspired by a famous ḥadīth in which the Prophet, asked
how his shayṭān, his ‘lower soul’ fared, answered: aslama shayṭānī, ‘My shayṭān has
surrendered himself [or: has become a Muslim] and does only what I order him’. That means
that, by educating one's lower faculties by sublimating the nafs, one can achieve positive
results just as a converted thief will make the best policeman because he knows the tricks of
the trade and how to deal with insubordinate people. That is why Iqbāl's Iblīs longs to be
trained and educated by a true believer.

Iblīs, similar to Goethe's Mephistopheles, remains under God's command and can be
overcome by human striving. This idea, as well as the fact that Islam does not accept the
concept of original sin, led a number of critics to the conclusion that Islam does not take
seriously the problem of evil. This seems to be a somewhat questionable viewpoint. Even
without the concept of original sin and all the problems that result from it, culminating in the
necessity of redemption, the thought of man's weakness, sinfulness and his tendency to
prefer the ephemeral pleasures of this world to the good ordained by God permeates the
Koran, and evil is certainly a problem which is discussed, even if only in the emphasis on
istighfār, ‘asking for forgiveness’, and the numerous prayers in which generations of Muslims
have confessed their sins, shivering in fear of God's punishment and yet hoping for His
grace because the gate of repentance remains open until the sun rises from the West (AM
no. 390). This attitude becomes clear when one thinks of the eschatological part of the
revelation. It is absolutely clear from the Koran that the world is transient—everything that is
in it will perish save God's countenance (Sūra 28:88; cf. 55:26f.).

Is death not sufficient as a warner? The Muslims asked this repeatedly; every day, one sees
how humans, animals, plants and even the firm-looking mountains die and decay. Hence the
only thing that really matters is to prepare oneself for the day when one will meet one's Lord.
For: ‘Everyone will taste death’ (Sūra 29:57 et al.). Ghazzālī's Ilyā' ‘ulūm ad-dīn is nothing
but a slow preparation for the moment when one has to face God. The way to that dreaded
moment is facilitated—so Ghazzālī may have pondered—by guiding the Muslim through the
traditional forty steps (in the forty chapters of his book) and teaching the requirements for a
life that, as one may hope, will lead to heavenly bliss. All knowledge, as Muslims know, is
only accumulated to prepare the human being for the Hereafter. Only those who have
longed all their life to meet with their spiritual Beloved may look forward to death, for ‘death
is the bridge that leads the lover to the Beloved’38 and ‘Death is the fragrant herb for the
believer’ (AM no. 364).

When the Muslim passes through the last agony, the profession of faith is recited into his or
her ears so that he or she can answer the questions which Munkar and Nakīr, the angels in
the grave, will ask; for those who answer correctly, the grave will be wide and lofty, while
sinners and infidels will suffer in the narrow, dark hole and be tormented by snakes and
scorpions. Praying a Fātiḥa for their soul or planting a tree on the site of the grave may
alleviate their pain.39 The status of the dead between death and resurrection has been
variously described: one encounters the idea of the soul's sleep until resurrection, as also
the idea of a foretaste of the future life. ‘The tomb is one of the gardens of Paradise or one of
the holes of Hell’ (AM no. 433). Dream appearances in which the deceased tells what
happened to him or her sound as if one already had a full knowledge of one's future fate
without the general Judgment.

But what is this death? Muslims know that ‘everything hastens towards a fixed term’ (Sūra
13:2). Are people not asleep and do they not awake when they die (AM no. 222), as the
Prophet said? The feeling that this life is nothing but a dreamlike preparation for the true life
in the world to come permeates much of pious thought. However, one should not think that
this dream has no consequences—the ḥadīth states clearly that ‘this world is the seedbed
for the next world’ (AM no. 338), and one will see the interpretation of one's so-called
‘dream’ in the morning light of eternity. Death could thus be seen as a mirror of one's
actions: at this moment, one will see whether one's face is ugly or beautiful, black or white; it
is, to use Swedenborg's expression, ‘the unveiling of the true Self’. Death is the fruit of life; it
is, as one says in Persian, baghalparwarde, ‘brought up in one's armpit’ so that one will
experience the death which one has prepared, unwittingly, during one's lifetime. Rūmī has
often dwelt upon these ideas in his verse, and the poems in popular literature that sing of the
spinning or weaving of one's gown for the wedding day, that is for the death or resurrection,
symbolize the same idea. Those who love God would sing again with Rūmī:
If death's a man, let him come close to me

that I can take him tightly to my breast.

I'll take from him a soul, pure, colourless:

He'll take from me a coloured frock, that's all.

Death could also be seen as a homecoming—be it the nightingale's return to the rose-
garden, or the drop's merging into the ocean, its true home.

Death can be seen as spiritual nuptials, and the term ‘urs for the memorial days of a saint's
death expresses this feeling. At such an ‘urs, people would come to the site of a saintly
person's mausoleum to participate in the dead person's increased spiritual power, although
the Prophet warned of the danger of ‘turning a grave into a festive site’. The correct way of
visiting tombs, says Shāh Walīullāh, who quotes this ḥadīth, is to read the Koran, pray for
the deceased, give alms or manumit a slave in the name of the deceased—that will be
credited to his or her soul.40

If individual death suffices as a warning, then the Koranic revelations about the Day of
Judgment are meant to strengthen this warning. There is an astounding number of
descriptions of the Day, the Hour and the Knocking One in the earliest revelations, which
continually point to this horrible event in new, ever more powerful words, sentences and
whole Sūras.41 Perhaps the hour is closer than the distance between two fingers (AM no.
350)? Perhaps it will even happen tomorrow…

Sūra 81 is one of the strongest descriptions:

When the sun shall be darkened,

when the stars shall be thrown down,

when the mountains shall be set moving,

when the pregnant camels shall be neglected,

when the savage beasts shall be mustered,

when the seas shall be set boiling,

when the souls shall be coupled,

when the buried infant shall be asked for what sin she was slain,

when the scrolls shall be unrolled,

when Heaven shall be stripped off,

when Hell shall be set blazing,

when Paradise shall be brought nigh,

then shall a soul know what it had produced.

(transl. A. J. Arberry).

The Meccans, practically-minded as they were, did not take seriously the threats of the
impending Judgment, let alone the idea of a resurrection; but not only the growth of the
human foetus in the womb but also the ‘resurrection’ of plants from the dead earth should be
proof enough. That accounts for the abundance of spring poems in which the imagery of
resurrection is used, for in spring the trees will be covered with the green silken robes of
Paradise.

Many mythological tales and many allegorical stories were woven around the events before
and during Resurrection, such as the return of Jesus and the arrival of the Mahdi. But the
central image is that of a terrible confusion on a day that is hundreds of years long. In
Islamic languages, the term qiyāmat, ‘resurrection’, often means something incredibly
confused—kĭyamet koptu in Turkish is ‘everything was upside down, was in a terrible state’.
The poets, on the other hand, often complain that a day without the beloved is ‘longer than
the day of Resurrection’.

Popular tradition claims that death will be slaughtered in the shape of a ram. This is one of
the numerous fanciful tales, but there is much Koranic foundation for other details of the Day
of Judgment: first of all, no soul can carry the burden of another soul (Sūra 2:48), for
everyone is responsible for his or her actions and, as tradition has it, every limb will testify for
or against its owner. The actions which the angel-scribes have noted down in the books will
be given in everyone's left or right hand—left for the sinners, right for the pious. These books
can be blackened from sins, but are white and radiant thanks to pious and lawful action;
likewise, the sinners have black faces and the blessed have white ones (Sūra 3:106 et al.).
Poets have sometimes expressed their hope for forgiveness in an image taken from the art
of calligraphy; as Oriental ink is soluble in water, they hoped, metaphorically, to wash off the
black letters in their book of actions with tears of repentance.

Scales will be put up (Sūra 21:47 et al.), and, as Sūra 99 states even more emphatically,
when the earth opens, everyone will see what he or she has done, even if it is as small as a
mustard seed. The Balance is, so to speak, an eschatological symbol of justice and
equilibrium. It is, however, not completely clear what is actually being weighed on the
scales—is it the actions themselves, the book or the person? One has also to face the
Bridge, which is thinner than a hair and sharper than a sword's edge. Rūmī has taken up the
ancient Iranian concept of the daēna who will meet the soul at the Bridge to guide it—in the
shape of a beautiful young girl in case of a pious person, but as an old ugly hag when a
sinner arrives. He ingeniously combines this idea with the Koranic descriptions of death and
Judgment.

Your good ethical qualities will run before you after your death—

Like ladies, moon-faced, do these qualities proudly walk…

When you have divorced the body, you will see houris in rows,

‘Muslim ladies, faithful women, devout and repenting ladies’.

(Sūra 66:5)

Without number will your characteristics run before your bier…

In the coffin these pure qualities will become your companions,

They will cling to you like sons and daughters,

And you will put on garments from the warp and woof of your works of obedience…

(D no. 385)

In popular traditions, it was assumed that good acts turn into light and that everything
assumes a tangible form: sinners may appear as dogs or pigs according to their dirty habits,
while the believers’ virtues will come to intercede for them; mosques appear as ‘boats of
salvation’ or as white camels to those who have regularly prayed with the community; the
rams sacrificed at the ‘id al-aḍḥā will carry the person who offered them across the bridge;
the Koran and Islam come as persons, Friday as a young bridegroom, and prayer, fasting or
patience will all be there to intercede for those who have cared for them and performed
works of obedience.42 Children who died in infancy will bring their parents to the
paradisiacal meadows lest they feel lonely; and, most importantly, the Prophet will come with
the green ‘banner of praise’, liwā al-ḥamd, to intercede for the sinners in his community (AM
no. 225).

While normal believers will be interrogated in the grave, the martyrs will enter Paradise
directly and await resurrection in special places, for they ‘are alive with their Lord’ (Sūra
3:169).

The compensation of good and evil posed a problem at some point, because the Mu‘tazilites
claimed that God must punish the sinner and reward the pious, which is a position
incompatible with the faith in the omnipotent Lord, who must not be asked what He does
(Sūra 21:23)—and who could know whether he or she will be among those who are saved?

The world to come is, no doubt, an intensification of this world. Therefore both mistakes and
virtuous deeds appear incredibly enlarged in the form of punishments or compensations.
Time and again, the Koran points to terrible details of the punishments in Hell, and it was
easy for the commentators and even more for the popular preachers to embellish the
Koranic data. When in the Koran Hell is mentioned, for example as calling out Hal min
mazīd, ‘Is there no more?’ (Sūra 50:30), then it is described in popular tradition as a dragon
with 30,000 heads, each of which has 30,000 mouths, and in each mouth are 30,000 teeth,
etc. The central characteristic of Hell is the fire, a fire that rages and burns people, whose
skin is renewed again and again to make them suffer infinitely (Sūra 4:56). The food of the
inhabitants of Hell is the fruits of poisonous trees, zaqqūm (Sūra 44:43), and their drink is all
kinds of dirty stuff, such as dhū ghuslayn (as Naṣir-i Khusraw repeatedly states), that is,
water in which ablution has been performed twice, therefore very dirty water,43

The descriptions of Hell led the believers to speculate on whether or not these torments
would be eternal, for Sūra 11:108–9 says: ‘The damned enter the Fire… to remain therein as
long as Heaven and Earth exist, except if God should decree otherwise’, a word that opens
doors to different interpretations.

While the Mu‘tazilites regarded eternal punishment in Hell as a logical corollary of God's
justice, and Abū Ḥanīfa had claimed that ‘Heaven and Hell are realities never to disappear’,
later scholars drew the reader's attention to Sūra 28:88, which states that ‘everything is
perishing save the countenance of God’, and to its parallel in Sūra 55:26. That implies, one
would think, that even Heaven and Hell, being created, will perish and cease to exist—and
might not God ‘decree otherwise’ (Sūra 11:108)? According to a later ḥadīth, one could find
consolation in the thought that ‘there will be a day when the floor of Hell is humid and cress
will grow out of it’—for there cannot be a limit to God's power and mercy. Did He not make
seven gates for Hell but eight doors for paradise to show that His mercy is greater than His
wrath (cf. AM no. 64)?

Some thinkers seem to transform Hell into a kind of purgatory. Rūmī's statement in Fīhi mā
fīhi points to a wholesome aspect of Hell, strange as it may sound to us:

The inhabitants of Hell will be happier in Hell than they were on Earth because there they
remember their Lord.

While all religions seem to compete in describing the horrifying and gruesome aspects of
Hell, it seems much harder to describe the joys of Paradise. The ‘sensual’ images of
Paradise in the Koran have angered Christian theologians for centuries: the ideal of ‘gardens
under which river flow’ (Sūra 2:25 et al.) might be acceptable (and has influenced the
architecture of mausoleums surrounded by watercourses), but the large-eyed virgins, the
luscious fruits and drinks, the green couches and the like seemed too worldly to most non-
Muslim critics.44 Such symbols, of course, are prone to invite crude elaborations, and some
descriptions in theological works, let alone popular visions of Paradise, take the brief Koranic
words too much at face value and indulge in images of 70,000 rooms with 70,000 beds in
each of them, each with 70,000 pillows on each of which 70,000 virgins are waiting, whose
beauty and tenderness is then further depicted. One could, however, interpret the houris and
the fruits as symbolizing the greatest happiness, that of perfect union with the Beloved, and
of the ancient belief that one can attain union with the Holy by eating it (see above, p. 107).

While the descriptions of Paradise were materialized and clumsified by imaginative people,
one of the true concerns of the pious was the question of whether or not one could see God
in paradise. While the Mu‘tazilites categorically denied such a possibility, the traditional
Muslim view was that it is possible, at least at intervals, and the ḥadīth ‘and your Lord is
smiling’ was applied to the inexhaustible happiness caused by the inexplicable experience
called the ‘smile’ of Divine Beloved.

But the Koran also offers another picture of Paradise, namely that it is filled with laud and
praise of God while the blessed exchange the greetings of peace (Sūra 10:10–11; cf. also
36:58). Based on this Koranic Sūra, Abū Ḥafs ‘Omar as-Suhrawardī spoke of the country of
Paradise which consists of fields whose plants are praise and laud of God;45 and a century
after him, the Turkish bard Yunus Emre sang in the same style:

S ol cernnetin ĭrmaklarĭ

akar Allah deyu deyu…

The rivers all in Paradise

they flow and say Allah Allah…46

The all-too-human descriptions of Paradise and their endless variations in the works of
fanciful preachers and poets were criticized by both philosophers and mystics. The
philosophers partly denied bodily resurrection (Avicenna) or taught that a simulacrum would
be supplied (Averroes),47 or stated that only the soul survives; rather, only the souls of
highly-developed thinkers and knowledgeable people will live on, while the simple souls, like
grass, are destroyed at death. These ideas, in a different key, resurface in Iqbāl's
philosophy.

The Sufis criticized people who rely on the hope of Paradise or fear of Hell and need these
feelings, as it were, to stimulate them to worship. Rābi‘a (d. 801) was probably the first to
voice her criticism, and wanted ‘to put fire to Paradise and pour water into Hell’ so that these
two veils might disappear. Why turn to such veils? After all, human beings are created for
God. Alluding to the story that Adam left Paradise because he ate the forbidden fruit or, in
Islamic tradition, the grain, one writer asks:

Why would you want to settle in a place which your father Adam sold for a grain?48

Paradise, says Yunus Emre, is a snare to catch human hearts, while five centuries later in
Muslim India, Ghālib called the traditional ‘Paradise which the mullah covets: a withered
nosegay in the niche of forgetfulness of us who have lost ourselves…’.49

In certain trends, the degrees, darajāt, to which the Koran allusively speaks (Sūra 17:21; cf.
also AM no. 306), are understood not as different gardens in Paradise but as alluding to the
transmigration of the soul. This interpretation occurs among the early Shia and the Ismailis.

But how to define these degrees? They seem to point to the fact that what the Muslim awaits
in the Hereafter is not a static, unchanging immortality:

If our salvation means to be free from quest,

the tomb would be better than such an afterlife—

says Iqbāl.50 As God's perfections are infinite, the climax is also infinite. Tor Andrae in
Sweden wrote: ‘To live means to grow—if future life is a real life, then it is impossible that it
could be eternally unchangeable, happy bliss’.51 At the same time, Iqbāl, who was not
aware of Andrae's work, interpreted old images of Paradise and Hell in modern terms:
according to him, man is only a candidate for personal immortality (an idea which was
sharply attacked by several Muslim theologians).

For Iqbāl, Hell is the realization of one's failure in one's achievements, while Heaven is a
‘growing without diminishing’ after the individual, who has strengthened himself sufficiently,
has overcome the shock of corporeal death.52 Then a new phase begins, entering into ever-
deeper layers of the Infinite, for ‘Heaven is no holiday’.53 Once the journey to God is
finished, the infinite journey in God begins.

NOTES

• 1.
A general work is A. Schimmel and A. Falaturi (eds) (1980), We Believe in One God. The
Experience of God in Christianity and Islam.

• 2.

Quoted in K. Cragg (1965), Counsels in Contemporary Islam, p. 38.

• 3.

Quoted in K. Cragg (1984), ‘Tadabbur al-Qur'ān’, p. 187.

• 4.

H. Ringgren (1953), Fatalism in Persian Epics, idem (1955), Studies in Arabic Fatalism; W.
M. Watt (1948), Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam.

• 5.

Quoted in F. Heiler, Erscheintmgsformen (1961), p. 514.

• 6.

Fazlur Rahman (1966), Islam, p. 45.

• 7.

Daud Rahbar (1960), God of Justice, is the classic.

• 8.

Eric L. Ormsby (1984) Theodicy in Islamic Thought, H. Zirker (1991), ‘Er wird nicht befragt…
(Sūra 21:24). Theodizee und Theodizeeabwehr in Koran und Umgebung’.

• 9.

Frederick M. Denny (1984), ‘The problem of salvation’.

• 10.

F. Meier (1990b), ‘Zum Vorrang des Glaubens und des “guten Denkens” vor dem
Wahrheitseifer bei den Muslimen’, deals with ‘thinking good of God’.

• 11.

Fīhi mā fīhi, ch. 12.

• 12.

Azim Nanji (1987), ‘Isma‘ilism’, p. 187.

• 13.

M. Horten (1917b), Die religiöse Gedankenwelt des Volkes, p. 70.

• 14.
Frederick J. Barney (1933), ‘The creed of al-Sanūsī’; R. Hartmann (1992), Die Religion des
Islams (new ed.), pp. 55–8.

• 15.

P. Nwyia (1970), Exégèse coranique, p. 249.

• 16.

William Chitrick (1992), ‘Spectrums of Islamic thought: Sa‘id al-Din Farghānī on the
implications of Oneness and Manyness’. The contrast between waḥdat al-wujūd and kathrat
al-‘ilm also occurs in earlier rimes; see R. Gramlich (1983b), At-tajrīd fī kalimat at-tanḥīd. Der
reine Gottesglaube, p. 12.

• 17.

Sanā'ī (1950), Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqa, p. 60.

• 18.

There may have been other visions as well, such as that of Bahā-i Walad, who ‘saw His
forgiveness like a whiteness composed of pearls’: Bahā-i Walad (1957), Ma‘ārif, vol. IV, p.
33.

• 19.

al-Ḥallāj (1931), Dīvān, muqaṭṭa‘ no. 10.

• 20.

Quoted in Bikrama Jit Hasrat (1953), Dara Shikuh: Life and Works, p. 151, quatrain no. xix.
The Anṣārī quote is from S. Langier de Beaurecueil, Khwādja ‘Abdullāh Anṣārī (396–481
h/1006–1089) Mystique Hanbalite, 1965.

• 21.

Sanā'ī (1962), Dīvān, p. 385.

• 22.

S. H. Nasr (1964), An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines; H. Halm (1978),

Kosmologie und Heilslehre der frühen Isma‘iliyya.

• 23.

See A. Schimmel (1978c), The Triumphal Sun, s.v. ‘adam.

• 24.

S. Murata (1992b), The Tao of Islam, p. 148.

• 25.

Nāṣir-i Khusraw (1924), Dīvān, p. 254; p. 48.

 • 26.

Fazlur Rahman (1966), Islam, p. 121.

• 27.

H. Gorbin (1958), L'imagination créatrice, deals with this ‘longing of the Names’ and related
problems. See also H. S. Nyberg (1919), Kleinere Schriften des Ibn al-‘Arabi, p. 85.

• 28.

A fine survey of the use of dunyā is in R. Gramlich (1976), Die schiitischen Derwischorden,
vol. 2, p. 91ff.

• 29.

B. Reinert (1968), Die Lehre vom tawakkul in der klassischen Sufik, shows the different
aspects of ‘trust in God’ and its exaggerations.

• 30.

Ghazzālī (1872), Ihyā' ‘ulūm ad-dīn, part IV, p. 276.

• 31.

Suhrawardī; (1935), Awāz-i parr-i Jibrīl: ‘Le bruissement de l'aile de Gabriel’, ed and transl.
by H. Corbin and P. Kraus. For Suhrawardī's angelology in general, see H. Corbin (1989),
L'homme et son ange.

• 32.

W. Eickmann (1908), Die Angelologie und Dämonologie des Korans im Vergleich zu der
Engel—und Geisterlechre der Heiligen Schrift. Toufic Fahd (1971), ‘Anges, démons et djinns
en Islam’.

• 33.

This story is based on a ḥadīth (AM no. 444); an English translation appears in A. Schimmel
(1988), And Muhammad is His Messenger, p. 116.

• 34.

Iqbāl (1937), Zarb-i Kalim, p. 133; idem (1936), Bāl-i Jibrīl, pp. 92, 119; idem (1927), Zabūr-i
‘ajam, part 2, p. 16. For the topic, see Schimmel (1963a), Gabriel's Wing, pp. 208–19.

• 35.

Peter J. Awn (1983), Satan's Tragedy and Redemption: Iblis in Sufi Psychology, see also
Schimmel (1963a), Gabriel's Wing, pp. 208–19. For a traditional approach, see P. Eichler
(1929?), Die Dschinn, Teufel und Engel im Koran.

• 36.

Shāh ‘Abdul Laṭīf (1958), Risālō, ‘Sur Yaman Kalyān’, ch. V, line 24.
 • 37.

Iqbāl (1936), Bāl-i Jibrīl, p. 192f. See Schimmel (1963a), Gabriel's Wing, pp. 208–19.

• 38.

Quoted in Abū Nu‘aym al-Iṣfahānī (1967), Ḥilyat al-awliyā, vol. 10, p. 9.

• 39.

Irene Grütter (1956), ‘Arabische Bestattungsbräuche in frühislamischer Zeit’; Cesar W.

Dubler (1950), ‘Über islamischen Grab—und Heiligenkult’. F. Meier (1973), ‘Ein profetenwort
gegen die totenbeweinung’, deals with the problem of whether or not the dead are suffering
when their relatives and friends cry after their death.

• 40.

A useful survey of all the names by which Resurrection and Judgment are known is
‘Resurrection and Judgement in the Kor'an’.

• 41.

The literature about Muslim eschatology is quite large: see D, S. Attema (1942), De
mohammedaansche opvattingen omtrent het tijdstip van den Jongsten Dag en zijn
voortekenen; Al-Ghazālī (1989), ‘The remembrance of death and the Afterlife…’, transl. by J.
T. Winter; R. Leszyinski (1909), Muhammadanische Traditionen über das Jüngste Gericht; L
Massignon (1939), ‘Die Auferstehung in der mohammedanischen Welt’; ‘Abd ar-Rahīm ibn
Aḥmad al-Qādī (1977), Islamic Book of the Dead, al-Ḥārit ibn Asad al-Muḥāsibī (1978), Kitāb
at-tawahhum: Une vision humaine des fins dernières, Taede Huitema (1936), De
Voorspraak (shafā‘a) in den Islam; Thomas O'Shaughnessy (1969), Muhammad's Thoughts
on Death; idem (1986), Eschatological Themes in the Qur'an; Jane Smith and Yvonne
Haddad (1981), The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection. For a far-reaching
problem, see M. Asin Palacios (1919), La escatologia musulmana en la Divina Comedia.

• 42.

M. Horten, Die rehgiöse Gedankenwelt des Volkes, p. 253, also p. 74.

• 43.

M Wolff (1872), Mohammedanische Eschatologie, nach den aḥwālu'l-qiyāma, arabisch und

deutsch; J. Meyer (1901–2), Die Hölle im Islam.

• 44.

C. LeGai Eaton (1982), Islam and the Destiny of Man, last chapter, contains a remarkably
‘sensual’ description of Paradise, which seems amazing in a book written recently by a
British Muslim, which is otherwise highly recommendable for modern readers.

• 45.

Suhrawardī (1978), ‘Awārif (transl. R. Gramlich), p. 297.

 • 46.

Yunus Emre Divanĭ (1943), p. 477.

• 47.

Fazlur Rahman (1966), Islam, p. 119.

• 48.

Sam‘ānī, quoted in S. Murata (1992b), The Too of Islam, p. 65.

• 49.

Ghālib (1969b), Urdu Dīvān, p. 9.

• 50.

A. Schimmel (1963a), Gabriel's Wing, pp. 273–306.

• 51.

Tor Andrae (1940), Die letzten Dinge, p. 93ff., especially p. 99.

• 52.

In his notebook of 1910, Stray Reflections (1961), Iqbāl noted (no. 15); ‘Personal immortality
is not a state, it is a process… it lies in our own hands’.

• 53.

Iqbāl (1930), The Reconstruction of Religious Thought, p. 123. See also Schimmel (1963a),
Gabriel's Wing, pp. 119–23.
VII | How to Approach Islam?

And We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in themselves.

Sūra 41:53

In which language does the modern Muslim express himself, his faith and his ideals? That is
a question not only of philology but also of a general attitude, visible in modern art, audible in
modern music, reflected in modern literature and thus a question that concerns every aspect
of life.1

The use of broadcasting not only for the recitation of the Koran but also for giving legal
decisions, fatwā (as is the case for example in Yemen); the fact that in Cairo a walī heals by
telephone every Friday between 9 and 11 a.m.; and the reactions to spaceships and
computer technology make us ask: how can the modern Muslim, faced with the
overwhelming success of Western technology, find a way to accept and cope with the time-
honoured teachings of traditional tafsīr and ḥadīth in modern times? Is not a science, ‘ilm,
which is basically geared toward a preparation of human beings for the Hereafter, obsolete
and to be discarded?

To silence opponents, sceptics and worried souls, it is often proclaimed that Islam is self-
sufficient, that it owes nothing to other religions and philosophical systems but rather that it
endowed the West with scholarly discoveries during the dark ‘Middle Ages’; and that Islam
alone contains the final truth, as Muhammad was the Seal of Prophets. This answer, usually
given by so-called fundamentalists, leaves most Western seekers and quite a number of
Western-educated Muslims unsatisfied, simple and convincing as it is.

To be sure, nobody nowadays would agree with the poisonous remark written by an
unsuccessful missionary to the Muslims and published in The Moslem World (12, 1922, p.
25):

Even if a savage found a full satisfaction in animism, or a semi-civilized man in Islam, that
does not prove that either animism or Islam could meet the need of civilized man.
The extreme wealth of Islamic literatures, of works of art, of psychological insight as
developed over the centuries in Sufism; the refined though (for an outsider's understanding)
complicated network of legal and ritual prescriptions: all this is being discovered slowly in the
West, and attempts to understand and interpret Islam, especially in its mystical dimensions,
for modern Westerners are increasing, as is the number of converts in Europe and America.

Scholars and politicians used to ask whether Islam can be ‘reformed’, and whether it has to
be reformed. During my years at the Ilâhiyat Fakültesi in Ankara, where we worked to
introduce young Muslim theologians to the techniques of modern critical scholarship and
European thought-systems to enlarge their horizons, one question surfaced time and again:
is there no Luther available for Islam? Turkish students as well as modernist thinkers have
often mentioned the example of Luther as a possible ‘saviour’ for present-day Muslims (while
Iqbāl, well read in European history, saw him as a negative force responsible for the break-
up of Christian Europe!). However, as Islam has no structure comparable to that of the
Roman Catholic Church, and no centralized source of authority such as the Pope, it is next
to impossible to imagine a single person emerging and ‘freeing’ Islam from what Fazlur
Rahman has called ‘the dead weight of time’. Islam was at its beginning a reform movement
which brought a fresh approach to life into the medieval world but became increasingly
surrounded over the centuries by an ever-hardening crust of legalistic details, of traditions,
scholia, commentaries and supercommentaries under which the original dynamic character
of the revelation, the innovative impetus of the Prophet, seemed to disappear, so much so
that Lord Cromer, more than a century ago, made the famous remark that ‘reformed Islam is
no longer Islam’.2

But, like any other religion, Islam has been growing in a constant dialectic movement which,
in contemporary parlance, would be called the interplay of Chaos and Order—the sunna was
always ‘disquieted’ by the introduction of bid‘as, innovations. That was particularly true when
Islam expanded to the furthest corners of Asia and Africa and, naturally enough, took over a
more or less significant part of indigenous traditions. The ‘urf, custom, or ‘ādat law,
according to the different countries gained its place besides the sharī‘a law. Normative Islam
as laid down in the books of classical theologians and jurists and taught in the madrasas, the
use of the ‘letters of the Koran’ and the sacred Arabic language, and the conscious following
of the Prophet's example as expressed in the ḥadīth characterized the umma wherever
Islam reached. All these factors helped to create a picture of a uniform, even ‘monolithic’
Islam; and yet a large variety of popular forms grew, especially due to Sufism with its
emphasis, mainly on the folk level, on the veneration of saints. This trend often appeared to
the normative believers as mere idol-worship, as a deviation from the clear order to strict
monotheism which had to be defended against such encroachments of foreign elements,
which, however, seemed to satisfy the spiritual needs of millions of people better than legal
prescriptions and abstract scholastic formulas. But tawḥīd, strictest monotheism, is the
quintessence of Islam along with the acknowledgment that this religion was established in its
temporal manifestation by Muhammad—hence the tendency to go back, in cases of doubt,
to the days of the Prophet, the ideal time, indeed the fullness of time, which was and should
remain the model for the generations to come.3 Muhammad is the centre of history; his is
the middle way between stern legalism as manifested through Moses and world-renouncing
asceticism and loving mildness embodied in Jesus; he constitutes, as mystics would say, the
means in which ghayb, the Invisible, and shahāda, the visible and tangible, meet, and is thus
the Perfect Man kat’ exochén.
The shahāda in its two parts is the foundation of Islam, and a Muslim is a person who
pronounces it and accepts the validity of the sharī‘a as the God-given path to walk on.

But there is the need for a deeper ethical dimension, īmān, ‘faith’, which has been expressed
in very many writings, most notably (and the best-known of which are) those by al-Ghazzālī.
The very definition of muslim and mu'min, or islām and īmān (cf. Sūra 49:14), shows that
besides the formal acceptance of the religion of ‘surrender’ there has to be inner faith, and
the introduction of the third term, iḥsān, ‘to do good’, or, as a Sufi master in
Hyderabad/Deccan explained to us, ‘to do everything as beautifully as possible’ because
God watches over each and every human act, brings a deep personal piety to the fore.
Everything should be done in absolute sincerity, ikhlāṣ, without any admixture of selfishness
or ‘showing off’. Then, even the simplest action will bear good fruits. This attitude seems to
be expressed in the Prophet's answer to the question: ‘What is virtue?’, to which he replied:
‘Virtue is that in which the heart becomes peaceful’. Not so much an external legal decision,
fatwā, is the thing that matters, but: ‘Ask your heart for fatwā’ (AM no. 597).

The fact that Muslim thinkers always want to go back to the Prophet's time has led many
observers to believe that Islam became fossilized as a result of the strict clinging to
externals. Yet, modernists have constantly drawn their coreligionists’ attention to the Koranic
statement: ‘Verily, God does not change a people's condition unless they change what is in
them’ (Sūra 13:12), for, as has been seen (above, p. 220), predestination, which looms large
in the Koran and even more in ḥadīth, is only one of the two ways of giving a meaning to
one's life. The belief in a predestined order in the universe is, in its deepest meaning, the
human attempt to take God seriously as the only acting power and to surrender completely
to Him and His wisdom. However, the Muslims were also very much aware that the
acceptance of a kind of mechanical working of Fate can lead to laziness and is often used as
an excuse for one's own faults instead of ascribing one's good actions to God and blaming
oneself for one's faults and sins. After all, the Koran (Sūra 479) states clearly: ‘Whatever of
good befalls you is from God, and whatever of evil befalls you, it is from yourself’. The
ḥadīth: qad jaffa ‘l-qalam, ‘The Pen has dried up’ (AM no. 92), should therefore not be
interpreted as meaning that everything and every human act was written once for all time but
rather, as Rūmī insists, that there is one absolutely unchanging law, that is, good actions will
be rewarded while evil will be punished.

To be sure, there was always an unsolved aporia between the belief in predestination and
that in free will, but the ḥadīth according to which ‘this world is the seedbed of the Hereafter’
(AM no. 338) was meant to spur the believers to good actions as did the Koranic emphasis
on doing good, for Divine Justice will place even the smallest act on the balance (cf. Sūra
99).

For some thinkers, the problem of free will and predestination meant that the human being
will be judged according to his or her capacity:

One does not beat an ox because he does not sprout wings,

but beats him because he refuses to carry the yoke…

(M V 3, 102)
Predestination could thus be explained as the development of one's innate talents: one
cannot change them but can work to develop them as beautifully as possible until the nafs,
which once was ‘inciting to evil’ (Sūra 12:53), is finally tamed and, strengthened by its steady
struggle against adversities and temptations, reaches inner peace so that it can return to its
Lord (Sūra 89:27–8).

Nevertheless, there has always been a certain emphasis on those ḥadīth that defend
absolute predestination, culminating in the oft-repeated ḥadīth qudsī: ‘Those to Paradise,
and I do not care, and those to Hell, and I do not care’ (AM no. 519).

God appears in poetical parlance as the Master Calligrapher who writes man's fate ‘on his
forehead’ (sarnivisht in Persian, alĭn yazĭsĭ in Turkish), or else He appears as the great
Weaver or the Playmaster whose hands hold the strings of the puppets in the great theatre
of the world and move them according to His design to cast them, in the end, again into the
‘dark box of unity’. And there were and still are outcries against the seemingly ‘unjust’ acts of
God, whether in ‘Aṭṭār's dramatic prayers or in more flippant style in ‘Omar Khayyām's
rubā‘īyāt and, half-jokingly, in Turkish Bektashi poetry. Perhaps the finest definition of free
will is that by Rūmī:

Free will is the endeavour to thank God for His beneficence (M I 929).

For gratitude—often contrasted with kufr, ‘ingratitude, infidelity’—is a quality highlighted in

the Koran (cf. Sūra 42:43). True gratitude, which draws more and more graces upon the
believer, is manifested in the loving acceptance of whatever God sends. By gratefully
accepting one's ‘fate’, the human may reach, ideally, uniformity with God's will and thus
realize what modernists have called jabr maḥmūd, a ‘higher predestinarianism’ in loving
surrender to whatever God has decreed.

This kind of lofty thought is, understandably, not as common as it ideally should be. Modern
times have brought such a shift in the religious consciousness not only of Muslims but also
everywhere else that it is small wonder when in much of modem literature in the different
languages of the Muslim world Islam, either in its official or in its popular form, appears as
the attitude of old-fashioned, middle-class or simple people (a kind of attitude formerly
called, often condescendingly, ‘the faith of the old women of the community’).4 The
excesses of ‘saint-worship’ are banded just as much as ‘molla-ism’, the attitude of the
hardline religious orthodoxy, of lawyer-divines or religious teachers, whose behaviour is
often incompatible with the ideals that they preach. In poetry, one may find, at least for a
moment, a return to figures of the mystical tradition such as al-Ḥallāj who, however, are
interpreted as representatives of a free, loving religiosity and are posited against narrow
orthodoxy or, even more, depicted as rebels against the ‘establishment’ or a government
considered to be a traitor to the ideals of true Islam.5 An additional problem is that the
majority of modern, educated Muslims are used to thinking in either English or French and
have to find a new language to express their ideas which, again, are largely coloured by their
acquaintance with Western literary models rather than with classical Islamic ones. For many
Muslims are now born in a completely un-Islamic environment, and often come from a
background that has nothing in common with the traditional Islamic settings. The various
strands of Muslims—either born Muslims or converts—in the USA, the Indians and
Pakistanis in the UK, the Turks in Germany and the Algerians in France offer the most
divergent approaches to what seems to them ‘true Islam’ as well as to the problem of the
umma; and recent Western converts again add new shades of understanding to the picture,
shades that alternate between theosophical mysticism and strictest observant, normative
Islam.6 They no longer read and write in the classical languages of the Islamic world, and
when their brethren and sisters in the Middle East do, they perhaps try to couch their
message in an antiquated Arabic style, or else shape their native tongues (Persian, Urdu,
even more Turkish) to cope with the exigencies of our time.

For the influence of European languages in both vocabulary and syntax, let alone thought
patterns, on the ‘Islamic’ languages creates a literary idiom quite different from the classical
one, so that many of the precious and meaningful images or expressions of previous times
are irretrievably lost. Alternatively, allusions to and terms from the religious traditions are
used in such a skilful way that the non-Muslim reader barely recognizes the ‘blasphemous’
meaning that a seemingly harmless sentence or image may contain.

But usually, the younger generation both of Western-educated Muslims in the East and
those who have grown up in the West know precious little of their own tradition; everyone
who has taught classical literature in Arabic, Turkish, Persian or Urdu to native speakers of
these languages experiences this break with the tradition. And it is understandable that
‘fundamentalism’, with its return to and stern observance of time-honoured models, emerges
as a reaction to such overly Westernizing trends.

Westernization goes together with a diminishing knowledge of the sacred language, Arabic,
but also with attempts to de-Arabicize the Islamic world. A tendency expressed decades ago
by Turkish reformers such as Zia Gökalp is typical of such movements, whose fruits are
seen, for example, in the secularization of Turkey (where, however, a strong feeling for
Islamic values continues beneath the Westernized surface). Similar approaches can also be
found in India in the work of scholars like A. A. A. Fyzee, while Iqbāl advocated a return to
the central sanctuary, to Mecca, which should go together with a revival of the original,
dynamic and progressive Islam. And what will be the post-modernist perceptions of Islam of
which the brilliant Pakistani anthropologist Akbar S. Ahmad speaks?7

Nathan Söderblom once defined the use of the negation in the ‘prophetic’ and the ‘mystical’
type of religion: the ‘prophetic No’ is exclusive, as is the lā ilāha illā ‘Llāh in the shahāda: ‘No
deity save God’; and whatever is against this absolute truth is dangerous, prohibited, sinful
and, as the Muslim would say, has to be cut off ‘with the sword of lā’ (which in its graphic
form somewhat resembles a two-edged sword). The ‘mystical No’, on the other hand, is
inclusive, and that is expressed in the transformation of the shahāda into the words, lā
maujūda illā Allāh, ‘there is nothing existent but God’, who includes everything.

This twofold orientation of Islam towards the ẓāhir and the bāṭin the exoteric ‘prophetic’ and
the esoteric ‘mystical’ stance, has continued down through the centuries. It is clearly visible
in Indian Islam, for example where one finds the ‘Mecca-oriented’ normative piety of the
theologians who still felt ‘in exile’ in the subcontinent although their families had lived in India
for hundreds of years, while the ‘India-oriented’ current emphasized the compatibility of
Islam with the indigenous traditions and achieved amazing synthetic results, for example in
mystical folk poetry.

It is also possible to see the inner-Islamic tensions expressed in terms of ‘nomos-oriented’

and ‘eros-oriented’ religion: normative Islam is, no doubt, nomos-oriented, built upon the Law
in which God's will is revealed, and therefore averse to movements and people that seem to
break out of the sacred limits of the Law to indulge in practices not exactly compatible with
the norms. That is especially the case in a large part of Sufism, which expressed itself in
poetry, music and even dance with an emphasis on feeling and ‘tasting’—in short, in ecstatic
movements which are typical of the eros-oriented (in the widest sense of the term) attitude.
‘Sober’ Sufis often tried to strike a balance between both aspects and to show that they were
inseparably intertwined and that every unusual spiritual progress or event had to be weighed
against the balance of the Law. For sharī ‘a, ‘Law’, and ḥaqīqa, ‘Divine Truth’, belong
together just as the shahāda in its first part points to the Divine Reality and in its second part
to the Law. Similarly, according to Qushayrī's remark, the sentence in the Fātiḥa, iyyāka
na‘budu, ‘Thee we worship’, points to the Law, while its continuation, iyyāka nasta‘īn, ‘To
Thee we turn for help’, refers to the Divine Reality.8

The Law promises, perhaps even guarantees, the human being's posthumous salvation,
while in the mystical trends the tendency is to ‘touch’ the Divine here and now, to reach not
so much a blessed life in the Hereafter (which is only a kind of continuation of the present
state) but rather the immediate experience of Love. The Sufis’ ecstatic experiences and at
times unbridled utterances could lead to death (both mystical death and execution by the
government), while normative theology shows the way to perfect happiness during one's life
by dutifully following the right path and obeying God's laws. The poets expressed this
contrast by speaking of ‘gallows and minbar’: the mystical lover will die for his love; the sober
preacher will call people to obedience from the minbar, the pulpit; and yet gallows and pulpit
are made from the same wood.9

When William James claims that ‘sobriety says No while drunkenness says Yes’, this
statement is very applicable to the ‘prophetic’ and the ‘mystical’, the exclusive and the
inclusive No in Islam or, as we saw earlier (see above, p. 191), to the juxtaposition of qurb
al-farā'iḍ, the proximity reached by the punctual fulfilment of ritual duties, which is the
prophets’ way, and qurb an-nawāfil, the proximity reached by supererogative works, which is
the way of God's friends, the awliyā.

Again, while the Prophet said: ‘We do not know Thee as it behoves!’, the Sufi Bāyezīd
Bisṭāmī called out: ‘Subḥanī’, ‘Praise to me!’ If we are to believe legend, it was the contrast
between these two utterances that awakened Mawlānā Rūmī to the spiritual life. Rūmī, so it
is told, fainted when listening to Shams's shocking question about whether Bāyezīd or the
Prophet was greater, a question based on the two men's respective sayings that express the
human reactions to the meeting with the Divine. The tensions between the two poles of
religious experience, that of the prophet, who knows his role as humble ‘servant’, and that of
the mystic, who loses himself in loving union, became clear to him.

There are, however, many different reactions of Muslims to the experience of the Numinous
besides these two basic forms. There is unending awe, an awe like the one felt when one
approaches the mighty Lord, the King of all kings—such an awe is an attitude expressed
best in prayer and reflected in prayer poems.

Awe before the mysterium tremendum is natural, but one has also to reckon with fear—fear
of the terrible Day of Judgment; fear when thinking of God's Justice with which one will be
confronted on that day; fear of His ‘ruses’, the sudden changes by which He confuses those
who are all-too-secure on the way and then meet with unexpected hardships; and if a
wanderer may be too advanced to fear God's ruses, one may still fear being deprived of
God's presence, of the consoling feeling that He is watching here and now and that He is
eternal when everything else will perish; and the mystic who has ‘found’ the Divine beloved
may fear being separated from Him, a thought more terrible than Hellfire.

But there is also hope, the hope of the merciful God's endless capacity for forgiving one's
sins and mistakes. Fear and hope, as the traditional saying claims, are ‘the two wings by
which the soul flies towards God’, for too much fear stifles and paralyzes the soul, and too
much hope can make humans frivolous and oblivious to their duties. Yet, hope always has
the upper hand, as is understood from the ḥadith qudsī that one should ‘think well of God’
(see above, p. 223).

On a different level, fear and hope are expressed in the stages of qabḍ and basṭ, depression
and elation; that is, the anguish of the soul, which feels like ‘living in a needle's eye’, when
nothing is left but hope against all hope, and the elation during which the jubilant soul seems
to encompass the entire universe, sees the world in radiant colours and sings of divine joy.
These stages alternate in the course of one's life. The impression which the reader obtains
is that the state of basṭ seems to dominate in mystical circles—how else is one to explain the
thousands of ecstatic verses that translate the happiness of the lover who feels united with
all and everything? Yet, the state of qabḍ, depression, is considered more valuable in the
‘sober’ traditions, for, while living through the dark night of the soul, one has to realize that
there is only God to whom one can turn, and thus the ideal of pure worship of the One can
be achieved better.

As important as awe, fear and hope are, in Islam the encounter with God will nevertheless
be most frequently called ‘faith’. Unquestioning faith in His power and wisdom requires the
belief in the positive meaning of everything He decrees in His eternal wisdom, negative as it
may seem. For people sometimes hate something, and yet they will discover its positive
aspects later on (cf. Sūra 2:216). Such faith can be considered the most characteristic
quality of the true believer. So also is tawakkul, absolute ‘trust in God’. Tawakkul was
developed into a multi-layered science of its own among the early Sufis, but could not be
maintained in its pure form, for that would have formed a complete impediment to any
practical work, not to mention to the believer's duties and responsibilities towards society.
But, as an ideal, it remained a factor that largely coloured the Muslim's life.10

Love is certainly not an attitude which one expects to find on the general map of Islam, and
the use of the term and the concept of love of God, or reciprocal love between God and
humans, was sharply objected to by the normative theologians: love could only be love of
God's commands, that is, strict obedience. Yet, it remained the central issue with the
mystically-minded, whose love was directed first exclusively to God (one of whose names is
al-wadūd, ‘the Loving’, in Sūra 11:90; 85:14) but then turned more and more to God's
beloved, ḥabīb, namely the Prophet, love for whom became a highly important ingredient in
Muslim life. And in many ecstatic love poems written in the Islamic, particularly the
Persianate, world, one can barely discern whether the beloved object addressed is God, the
Prophet, or a human being in whom the poet sees Divine beauty manifested.

Love engenders gratitude and peace of mind: the concept of iṭmi'nān, the resting peacefully
in God's will, plays a distinctive role in the Koran. ‘Is it not that the hearts find peace by
remembering God?’ (Sūra 13:28). It is this peace and stillness reached through constant
recollection of God which characterizes the soul's final stage. The concept of this peace and
stillness, which is a sign of yaqīn, the ‘absolute certainty’, has been combined with the
legend of the opening of Muhammad's breast when he experienced a soothing coolness and
quietude. One finds a beautiful interpretation of his event and the ensuing peaceful serenity
in an unexpected source, namely in a sentence of the German author Jean Paul (d. 1825),
who writes:

Als Gott (nach der Fabel) die Hände auf Muhammad legte, wurd’ ihm eiskalt; wenn ein
unendlicher Genuß die Seele mit dem höchsten Enthusiasmus anrührt and begabt, dann
wird sie still und kalt, denn nun ist sie auf ewig gewiß.

When God, according to the legend, placed His hands upon Muhammad, he turned as cold
as ice; when an infinite pleasure touches the soul and inspires her with the highest
enthusiasm, she becomes quiet and cold, for now she is certain in eternity.

This quiet, cool certainty of having reached the goal seems perhaps to contrast with the
fiery, restless seeking and the never-resting striving on the path, and yet it is often
mentioned by deeply religious people.

Similarly, observers have often emphasized the Muslim's seriousness in demeanour and
general attitude, a seriousness typical of nomos-oriented religions; yet the inner joy does not
lack either; the Sufi Abū Sa‘īd-i Abū' l-Khayr is probably the most radiant example of the joy
which, as Fritz Meier has lucidly shown, is an integral part of true Sufi life.11

Out of such an inner joy grows the praise and laud of God which permeates the whole
universe. As the first Sūra of the Koran begins with the words al-ḥamdu lillāh, ‘Praise be to
God’, thus praise of God fills the created world, audible to those who understand the signs.
Is not Muhammad's very name derived from the root ḥ-m-d, ‘to praise’? Thus he will carry
the ‘banner of praise’ in the field of Resurrection when those who constantly praise the Lord
will be, as popular tradition has it, the first to enter Paradise.12

Gerardus van der Leeuw has offered different typologies of religion, and one may wonder
which one may be most suitable for Islam. When it comes to the human attitude to God, one
would certainly say that Islam is the ‘religion of servitude’ to God: the term ‘abd, ‘slave’, for
the human being points to this truth, as does the idea that ‘abduhu, ‘God's servant’, is the
highest rank that a human being can reach (see above, p. 179). This servitude, in which all
of creation is united, is best expressed in the prostration in ritual prayer.

One can also speak of a ‘religion of the Covenant’, though it is not as outspoken as in
Judaism, where the Covenant is the true heart of religion (a fact mentioned several times in
the Koran). Yet, the Primordial Covenant (Sūra 7:172) is the metahistorical foundation of the
relation between God and humankind: they have promised to acknowledge Him as the Lord
and King at the time before times, and thus are bound to obey Him to the Day of
Judgment—again as His servants.13

Another concept is that of ‘friendship with God’, connected in particular with Abraham, who is
called khalīl Allāh, ‘God's friend’. But such friendship and close bond of relation is much
more important in the use of the term walī (plural awliyā'). This word, which occurs often in
the Koran, points to the relation between the Divine Lord and His friends, or perhaps better
‘protégés’, who are under His protection and ‘have neither fear nor are they sad’ (Sūra
10:62). The whole development of the hierarchy of the awliyā', the ‘friends of God’ in Sufism,
belongs to this sphere. Furthermore, the Shia term for ‘Alī, walī Allāh, singles out the
Prophet's cousin and son-in-law as the one who was especially honoured by God's
protective friendship which He shows to those whom He elects.

G. van der Leeuw speaks of the ‘religion of unrest’ when discussing ancient Israel, but this
term can be applied as well to Islam, for God is never-resting Will: ‘neither slumber nor sleep
seize Him’ (Sūra 2:255), and ‘He is constantly in some work’ (Sūra 55:29).

The concept of a ‘religion of unrest’, often forgotten in times when scholastic definitions
seemed to overshadow and even conceal the picture of the living and acting God of the
Koranic revelation, has been revived in the twentieth century by Iqbāl, who never tired of
emphasizing that Islam is a dynamic force and that it is the Living God of the Koran whom
the Muslims should remember and to whom they should turn instead of indulging in
Hellenizing mystico-philosophical ideas of a mere prima causa which has receded
completely from active involvement in the world. Indeed, many orientalists and religious
historians, especially during the nineteenth century, have regarded Islam as a purely deistic
religion. But many mystics had stressed the living and never-resting activity of God: the story
that Rūmī tells both in his Dīvān (D no. 1, 288) and in Fīhi mā fīhi (ch. 27) is a good example
of this point. One winter day, a poor schoolmaster saw a bear (apparently dead) drifting
down a river in spate and, incited by the school-children to grab this wonderful fur coat,
jumped into the water but was grasped by the bear. Called back by the frightened children,
he answered: ‘I'd love to let the fur coat go, but it does not let me go!’ Thus, Rūmī concludes,
is God's mercy, love and power, which do not leave the poor human beings but follow them
untiringly to draw them near. Already, three centuries earlier, the Iraqi mystic Niffarī (d. 965)
had symbolized God's never-resting will to save His creatures in a parable that was rightly
compared to Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven.14

For God's power shows itself in His will, and He wills that humanity be saved; once humans
understand that, then faith, obedience and gratitude issue naturally from this knowledge.

It is the concept of will and obedience which, in van der Leeuw's scheme, is typical of
ancient Israel's religious stance. But again, the model fits Islam perfectly. Where in the Old
Testament failures and mishaps are ascribed to the people's lack of obedience, the same is
true in Islam. The Koran (Sūra 3:152) blames the Muslim defeat in the battle of Uhud (625)
upon the hypocrites and the disobedient Muslims: misfortune is a punishment for
disobedience. Two of the most eloquent modern expressions of this feeling are Iqbāl's Urdu
poems Shikwa and Jawāb-i Shikwa, ‘Complaint’ and ‘God's answer to the complaint’ (written
in 1911–12), in which the Muslims, lamenting their miserable situation in the modern world,
are taught by God's voice that it is their own fault: they have given up obedience and
neglected their ritual duties, so how can they expect God to guide them after straying off the
straight path? Did not the Koran often mention the fate of ancient peoples who disobeyed
God and His messengers? Thus, in every historical catastrophe, the Muslim should discover
an ‘ibra, a warning example for those who believe and understand.

According to van der Leeuw's model, Islam is the ‘religion of Majesty and Humility’—a
beautiful formulation which certainly hits the mark, as the whole chapter on Islam reveals his
insight into Islam's salient features. Surrender, islām, to the Majesty beyond all majesties is
required, and Temple Gairdner, as cited by van der Leeuw, despite his otherwise very critical
remarks about Islam, speaks of ‘the worship of unconditioned Might’. Islam, according to
another Christian theologian quoted by van der Leeuw, ‘takes God's sovereignty absolutely
seriously’, and Muslims believe in God's power and might without any suspicion or doubt.
Lately, J. C. Bürgel has tried to show how Islamic culture develops out of the tension
between God's omnipotence and the unceasing human attempt to create a power sphere of
one's own.15 It is the attitude of unquestioning faith which, as van der Leeuw says, makes
Islam ‘the actual religion of God’. And it may well be that this feeling of God's absolute
omnipotence, which is the basis of Muslim faith at its best (and which is slightly criticized by
van der Leeuw), shocks and even frightens human beings in a time of increasing distance
from ‘God’, of secularization, of loss of the centre.

The historian of religion would probably be surprised to see that Muslims have also called
Islam the ‘religion of Love’, for Muhammad, so they claim, appropriated the station of perfect
Love beyond any other prophet, since God took him as His beloved—Muḥammad ḥabībī.
Therefore, Muhammad is regarded as the one who shows God's love and His will and thus
guides humanity on the straight path towards salvation, as the Koran states: ‘Say: If you love
God then follow me, so that God loves you’ (Sūra 3:31). He brought the inlibrated Divine
Word in the Koran, and he preached the absolute unity of God around which theology,
philosophy and mystical thought were to develop.

One can well understand that the words of the two-part shahāda are the strong fortress in
which the believer finds refuge; but nothing can be predicated upon God Himself: ‘He was
and is still as He was’.

For the pious Muslim, islām shows itself everywhere in the universe—in the blood
circulation, the movement of the stars in their orbits, in the growth of plants—everything is
bound by islām, surrender and subordination to the Divinely-revealed Law. But this islām—
as at least Mawlānā Mawdūdī holds—then became finalized in historical Islam as preached
by Muhammad.16 The differentiation which is made in Urdu between muslim, someone or
something that practises surrender and order by necessity, and musulmān, the person who
officially confesses Islam, is typical of this understanding. And this differentiation also
underlies Goethe's famous verse in the West—Östlicher Divan:

Wenn Islam Ergebung in Gottes Willen heißt—

In Islam leben und sterben wir alle.

(If Islam means surrender to God's will, then all of us live and die in Islam).

Historians have compared the Divine voice that was heard in Mecca to that of a lion roaring
in the desert, and have often seen Islam as a typical religion of the desert, overlooking the
fact that Islam was preached first and developed later in cities: in the beginning in the
mercantile city of Mecca, later in the capitals of the expanding empire. ‘City’ is always
connected with order, organization and intellectual pursuits, while the desert is the
dangerous land where spirits roam freely and where those possessed by the madness of
unconditioned love may prefer to dwell; those who do not follow the straight path between
two wells will perish there.

It is the city that offers us a likeness of Islam, which can be symbolized as a house, based
on the Koranic expression dār al-Islām.17 It looks indeed like a house, a strong Oriental
house, built of hard, well-chiselled stones and firmly resting on the foundation of the
profession of faith and supported by four strong pillars (prayer, alms tax, fasting and
pilgrimage). We may observe guards at its gate to keep away intruders and enemies, or see
workmen with hammers and swords to enlarge parts of the building lest the shifting sand-
dunes of the desert endanger it. We admire the fine masonry but find it at first glance rather
simple and unsophisticated. But when entering the large building, we see lovely gardens
inside, reminiscent of Paradise, where watercourses and fountains refresh the weary
wayfarer. There is the ḥarīm, the women's sacred quarters, where no stranger may enter
because it is the sanctuary of love and union.

The house is laid out with precious carpets and filled with fragrance. Many different people
bring goods from the seven climates and discuss the values of their gifts, and the Master of
the house admonishes everyone to keep the house clean, for after crossing its threshold and
leaving one's sandals outside, one has entered sacred space.

But where is one to find the builder and owner of the house? His work and His orders give
witness to His presence, awesome and fascinating at the same time, but human reason
cannot reach Him, however much it exerts itself and tries to understand in which way He will
protect the inhabitants of the House of Islam, of the house of humanity.

Perhaps Rūmī can answer the human mind's never-ending question as to how to reach Him
who is the Merciful and the Powerful, the Inward and the Outward, the First and the Last, the
One who shows Himself through signs but can never be comprehended:18

Reason is that which always, day and night, is restless and without peace, thinking and
worrying and trying to comprehend God even though God is incomprehensible and beyond
our understanding. Reason is like a moth, and the Beloved is like the candle. Whenever the
moth casts itself into the candle, it burns and is destroyed—yet the true moth is such that it
could not do without the light of the candle, as much as it may suffer from the pain of
immolation and burning. If there were any animal like the moth that could do without the light
of the candle and would not cast itself into this light, it would not be a real moth, and if the
moth should cast itself into the candle's light and the candle did not burn it, that would not be
a true candle.

Therefore the human being who can live without God and does not undertake any effort is
not a real human being; but if one could comprehend God, then that would not be God. That
is the true human being: the one who never rests from striving and who wanders without rest
and without end around the light of God's beauty and majesty. And God is the One who
immolates the seeker and annihilates him, and no reason can comprehend Him.

NOTES

• 1.

The number of works about different aspects of modem Islam increases almost daily. Some
useful studies are: John J. Donohue and John L. Esposito (eds) (1982), Islam in Transition:
Muslim Perspectives; Gustave E. von Grunebaum (1962), Modem Islam. The Search for
Cultural Identity; Werner Ende and Udo Steinbach (eds) (1984), Der Islam in der Gegenwart,
Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1957), Islam in Modern History; idem (1947): Modem Islam in India
(2nd ed.); and Rotraut Wielandt (1971), Offenbarung und Geschichte im Denken moderner
Muslime.

• 2.

C. H. Becker (1910), ‘Der Islam als Problem’; Johann Fück (1981a), ‘Islam as a historical
problem in European historiography since 1800’. About different ways of dealing with
Muhammad in earlier times, see Hans Haas (1916), Das Bild Muhammads im Wandel der
Zeiten.

• 3.

Johann Fück (1981b) ‘Die Rolle des Traditionalismus im Islam’; Sheila McDonough (1980),
The Authority of the Past. A Study of Three Muslim Modernists; Richard Gramlich (1974b),
‘Vom islamischen Glauben an die “gute alte Zeit”’.

• 4.

See, for example, M. M. Badawi (1971), ‘Islam in modem Egyptian literature’.

• 5.

Thus Ṣalāḥ ‘Abd aṣ-Ṣabūr (1964), Ma'sāt al-Ḥallāj; English translation by K. J. Semaan
(1972), Murder in Baghdad. See also A. Schimmel (1984b), ‘Das Ḥallāğ-Motiv in der
modernen islamischen Dichtung’.

• 6.

About modern movements and problems in America, see Earle Waugh, Baha Abu-Laban
and Regula B. Quraishi (eds) (1983), The Muslim Community in North America; Khalid
Duran (1990), ‘Der Islam in der Mehrheit und in der Minderheit’; idem (1991), ‘“Eines Tages
wird die Sonne im Westen aufgehen”. Auch in den USA gewinnt der Islam an Boden’.

• 7.

Akbar S. Ahmad (1992), Postmodernism and Islam. Predicament and Promise.

• 8.

Qushayrī (1912), Ar-risāla, p. 261; the same idea in Hujwīrī (1911), Kashf al-mahjūb, p. 139.

• 9.

The expression is used in Nāṣir-i Khusraw (1929), Dīvān, p. 161; also in idem, tr. A.
Schimmel (1993), Make a Shield from Wisdom, p. 78.

• 10.

See B. Reinert (1968), Die Lehre vom tawakkul in der klassischen Sufik.

• 11.
F. Meier (1976), Abū Sa‘īd-i Abū'l Hair. Leben und Legende.

• 12.

The glorification of God which, according to the Koran, permeates the universe had led early
Muslims to the idea that ‘a fish or a bird can only become the victim of a hunter if it forgets to
glorify God’ (Abu'l-Dardā, d. 3211/652). See S. A. Bonebakker (1992), ‘Nihil obstat in
storytelling?’ p. 8.

• 13.

R. Gramlich (1983a), ‘Der Urvertrag in der Koranauslegung’.

• 14.

Niffarī (1935), Mawāqif wa Mukhāṭabāt, ed. and transl. by A. J. Arberry, Mawqif 11/16.

• 15.

J. C. Bürgel (1991), Allmachl und Mächagkeit, passim.

• 16.

Mawlānā Mawdūdī's views, often published in Urdu and translated into English, are summed
up in Khurshid Ahmad and Z. I, Ansari (eds) (1979), Islamic Perspectives. In this volume, the
article by S. H. Nasr, ‘Decadence, deviation and renaissance in the context of contemporary
Islam’, pp. 35–42, is of particular interest. See further Muhammad Nejatullah Siddiqi's
contribution, ‘Tawḥīd, the concept and the prospects’, pp. 17–33, in which the author tries to
derive the necessity of technology for communication, organization and management in the
religious and worldly areas from the central role of tawḥīd. An insightful study of the
problems is Fazlur Rahman (1979), ‘Islam: challenges and opportunities’.

• 17.

For the ‘House’, see Juan E. Campo (1991), The Other Side of Paradise, and A. Petruccioli
(1985), Dār al-Islam. Titus Burckhardt has attempted to show the truly ‘Islamic’ city in his
beautiful book (1992) on Fes, City of Islam.

• 18.

Fīhi mā fīhi, end of ch. 10.

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