Al-Ma’mun and the triumph of the Mu‘tazilites; the Mihna and
Ahmad ibn Hanbal; al-Farabi; the Fatimids and the Ikhwan
as-Safa; the early mystics, ascetic and pantheistic; al-Hallaj.
Such for long was the situation between the Mu‘tazilites and their
orthodox opponents. From time to time the Mu‘tazilites received more
or less protection and state favor; at other times, they had to seek
safety in hiding. Popular favor they seem never to have enjoyed. As the
Umayyads grew weak, they became more stiff in their orthodoxy; but with
the Abbasids, and especially with al-Mansur, thought was again free. As
has been shown above, encouragement of science and research was part of
the plan of that great man, and he easily saw that the intellectual hope
of the future was with these theological and philosophical questioners.
So their work went slowly on, with a break under Harun ar-Rashid, a
magnificent but highly orthodox monarch, who understood no trifling with
things of the faith. It is an interesting but useless question whether
Islam could ever have been broadened and developed to the point of
enduring in its midst free speculation and research. As the case stands
in history, it has known periods of intellectual life, but only under
the protection of isolated princes here and there. It has had Augustan
ages; it has never had great popular yearnings after wider knowledge.
Its intellectual leaders have lived and studied and lectured at courts;
they have not gone down and taught the masses of the people. To that the
democracy of Islam has never come. Hampered by scholastic snobbishness,
it has never learned that the abiding victories of science are won in the
village school.
[Sidenote: AL-MA’MUN]
But most unfortunately for the Mu‘tazilites and for Islam, a Khalifa
arose who had a relish for theological discussions and a high opinion
of his own infallibility. This was al-Ma’mun. It did not matter that
he ranged himself on the progressive side; his fatal error was that he
invoked the authority of the state in matters of the intellectual and
religious life. Thus, by enabling the conservative party to pose as
martyrs, he brought the prejudices and passions of the populace still
more against the new movement. He was that most dangerous of all beings,
a doctrinaire despot. He had ideas and tried to make other people live up
to them. Al-Mansur, though a bloody tyrant, had been a great statesman
and had known how to bend people and things quietly to his will. He had
sketched the firm outlines of a policy for the Abbasids, but had been
cautious how he proclaimed his programme to the world. The world would
come to him in time, and he could afford to wait and work in the dark.
He knew, above all, that no people would submit to be school-mastered
into the way in which they should go. Al-Ma’mun, for all his genius,
was at heart a school-master. He was an enlightened patron of an
enlightened Islam. Those who preferred to dwell in the darkness of the
obscurant, he first scolded and then punished. Discussions in theology
and comparative religion were his hobby. That some such interchange of
letters between Muslims and Christians as that which crystallized in
the Epistle of al-Kindi took place at his court seems certain. Bishr
al-Marisi, who had lived in hiding in ar-Rashid’s time on account of his
heretical views, disputed, in 209, before al-Ma’mun on the nature of the
Qur’an. He founded at Baghdad an academy with library, laboratories, and
observatory. All the weight of his influence was thrown on the side of
the Mu‘tazilites. It appeared as though he were determined to pull his
people up by force from their superstition and ignorance.
At last, he took the final and fatal step. In 202 a decree appeared
proclaiming the doctrine of the creation of the Qur’an as the only
truth, and as binding upon all Muslims. At the same time, as an evident
sop to the Persian nationalists and the Alids, Ali was proclaimed the
best of creatures after Muhammad. The Alids, it should be remembered,
had close points of contact with the Mu‘tazilites. Such a theological
decree as this was a new thing in Islam; never before had the individual
consciousness been threatened by a word from the throne. The Mu‘tazilites
through it practically became a state church under erastian control. But
the system of Islam never granted to the Imam, or leader of the Muslim
people, any position but that of a protector and representative. Its
theology could only be formed, as we have seen in the case of its law,
by the agreement of the whole community. The question then naturally
was what effect such a new thing as this decree could have except to
exasperate the orthodox and the masses. Practically, there was no other
effect. Things went on as before. All that it meant was that one very
prominent Muslim had stated his opinion and thrown in his lot with
heretics.
For six years this continued, and then a method was devised of bringing
the will of the Khalifa home upon the people. In 217 a distinguished
Mu‘tazilite, Ahmad ibn Abi Duwad, was appointed chief qadi, and in 218
the decree was renewed. But this time it was accompanied by what we would
call a test-act, and an inquisition (_mihna_) was instituted. The letter
of directions for the conduct of this matter, written by al-Ma’mun to his
lieutenant at Baghdad, is decisive as to the character of the man and the
nature of the movement. It is full of railings against the common people
who know not the law and are accursed. They are too stupid to understand
philosophy or argument. It is the duty of the Khalifa to guide them and
especially to show them the distinction between God and His book. He who
holds otherwise than the Khalifa is either too blind or too lying and
deceitful to be trusted in any other thing. Therefore, the qadis must
be tested as to their views. If they hold that the Qur’an is uncreated,
they have abandoned _tawhid_, the doctrine of God’s Unity, and can no
longer hold office in a Muslim land. Also, the qadis must apply the same
test to all the witnesses in cases before them. If these do not hold that
the Qur’an is created, they cannot be legal witnesses. Other letters
followed; the Mihna was extended through the Abbasid empire and applied
to other doctrines, _e.g._, that of free-will and of the vision of God.
The Khalifa also commanded that the death penalty for unbelief (_kufr_)
should be inflicted on those who refused to take the test. They were to
be regarded as idolaters and polytheists. The death of al-Ma’mun in the
same year relieved the pressure. It is true that the Mihna was continued
by his successor, al-Mu‘tasim, and by his successor, al-Wathiq, but
without energy; it was more a handy political weapon than anything else.
In 234, the second year of al-Mutawakkil, it was abolished and the Qur’an
decreed uncreated. At the same time the Alids and all Persian nationalism
came under a ban. Practically, the _status quo ante_ was restored and
Mu‘tazilism was again left a struggling heresy. The Arab party and the
pure faith of Muhammad had reasserted themselves.
[Sidenote: AHMAD IBN HANBAL]
In this long conflict, the most prominent figure was certainly that of
Ahmad ibn Hanbal. He was the trust and strength of the orthodox; that he
stood fast through imprisonment and scourging defeated the plans of the
Mu‘tazilites. In dealing with the development of law, we have seen what
his legal position was. The same held in theology. Scholastic theology
(_kalam_) was his abomination. Those who disputed over doctrines he cast
out. That their dogmatic position was the same as his made no difference.
For him, theological truth could not be reached by reasoning (_aql_);
tradition (_naql_) from the fathers (_as-salaf_) was the only ground on
which the dubious words of the Qur’an could be explained. So, in his
long examinations before the officials of al-Ma‘mun and al-Mu‘tasim, he
contented himself with repeating either the words of the Qur’an which
for him were proofs or such traditions as he accepted. Any approach to
drawing a consequence he utterly rejected. When they argued before him,
he kept silence.
What, then, we may ask, was the net result of this incident? for it was
nothing more. The Mu‘tazilites dropped back into their former position,
but under changed conditions. The sympathy of the populace was further
from them than ever. Ahmad ibn Hanbal, saint and ascetic, was the idol
of the masses; and he, in their eyes, had maintained single-handed the
honor of the Word of God. For his persecutors there was nothing but
hatred. And after he had passed away, the conflict was taken up with
still fiercer bitterness by the school of law founded by his pupils. They
continued to maintain his principles of Qur’an and tradition long after
the Mu‘tazilites themselves had practically vanished from the scene, and
all that was left for them to contend against was the modified system of
scholastic theology which is now the orthodox theology of Islam. With
these reactionary Hanbalites we shall have to deal later.
[Sidenote: SCHOOLS OF MU‘TAZILITES]
The Mu‘tazilites, on their side, having seen the shipwreck of their
hopes and the growing storm of popular disfavor, seem to have turned
again to their scholastic studies. They became more and more theologians
affecting a narrower circle, and less and less educators of the world
at large. Their system became more metaphysical and their conclusions
more unintelligible to the plain man. The fate which has fallen on all
continued efforts of the Muslim mind was coming upon them. Beggarly
speculations and barren hypotheses, combats of words over names, sapped
them of life and reality. What the ill-fated friendship of al-Ma’mun had
begun was carried on and out by the closed circle of Muslim thought.
They separated into schools, one at al-Basra and another at Baghdad. At
Baghdad the point especially developed was the old question, What is a
thing (_shay_)? They defined a thing, practically, as a concept that
could be known and of which something could be said. Existence (_wujud_)
did not matter. It was only a quality which could be there or not.
With it, the thing was an entity (_mawjud_); without it, a non-entity
(_ma‘dum_), but still a thing with all equipment of substance (_jawhar_)
and accident (_arad_), genus and species. The bearing of this was
especially upon the doctrine of creation. Practically, by God’s adding
a single quality, things entered the sphere of existence and _were_ for
us. Here, then, is evidently an approach to a doctrine of pre-existent
matter. At al-Basra the relation of God to His qualities was especially
discussed, and there it came to be pretty nearly a family dispute between
al-Jubba‘i (d. 303) and his son Abu Hashim. Orthodox Islam held that
God has qualities, existent, eternal, added to His essence; thus, He
knows, for example, by such a quality of knowledge. The students of Greek
philosophy and the Shi‘ites denied this and said that God knew by His
essence. We have seen already Mu‘tazilite views as to this point. Abu
Hudhayl held that these qualities _were_ God’s essence and not _in_ it.
Thus, He knew by a quality of knowledge, but that quality _was_ His
essence. Al-Jubba‘i contented himself with safeguarding this statement.
God knew in accordance with His essence, but it was neither a quality nor
a state (_hal_) which required that He should be a knower. The orthodox
had said the first; his son, Abu Hashim, said the second. He held that we
know an essence and know it under different conditions. The conditions
varied but the essence remained. These conditions are not thinkable by
themselves, for we know them only in connection with the essence. These
are states; they are different from the essence, but do not exist apart
from it. Al-Jubba‘i opposed to this a doctrine that these states were
really subjective in the mind of the perceiver, either generalizations
or relationships existing mentally but not externally. This controversy
spun itself out at great length through centuries. It eventually
resolved itself into the fundamental metaphysical inquiry, What is a
thing? A powerful school came to a conclusion that would have delighted
the soul of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Things are four, they said, entities,
non-entities, states and relationships. As we have seen above, al-Jubba‘i
denied the reality of both states and relationships. Orthodox Islam has
been of a divided opinion.
But all this time, other movements had been in progress, some of
which were to be of larger future importance than this fossilizing
intellectualism. In 255 al-Jahiz died. Though commonly reckoned a
Mu‘tazilite he was really a man of letters, free in life and thought. He
was a maker of books, learned in the writings of the philosophers and
rather inclined to the doctrines of the Tabi‘iyun, deistic naturalists.
His confession of faith was of the utmost simplicity. He taught that
whoever held that God had neither body nor form, could not be seen with
the eyes, was just and willed no evil deeds, such was a Muslim in truth.
And, further, if anyone was not capable of philosophical reflection, but
held that Allah was his Lord and that Muhammad was the Apostle of Allah,
he was blameless and nothing more should be required of him. Here we have
evidently in part a reaction from the subtilties of controversy, and in
part an attempt to broaden theology enough to give even the unsettled
a chance to remain in the Muslim Church. Something of the same kind we
shall find, later, in the case of Ibn Rushd. Finally, we have probably
to see in his remark that the Qur’an was a body, turned at one time into
a man and at another into a beast, a satirical comment on the great
controversy of his time.
[Sidenote: AL-JAHIZ; AL-KINDI]
Al-Jahiz may be for us a link with the philosophers proper, the students
of the wisdom of the Greeks. He represents the stand-point of the
educated man of the time, and was no specialist in anything but a general
scepticism. In the first generation of the philosophers of Islam, in
the narrower sense, stands conspicuously al-Kindi, commonly called the
Philosopher of the Arabs. The name belongs to him of right, for he is
almost the only example of a student of Aristotle, sprung from the
blood of the desert. But he was hardly a philosopher in any independent
sense. His rôle was translating, and during the reigns of al-Ma’mun
and al-Mu‘tasim a multitude of translations and original works _de omni
scibili_ came from his hands; the names of 265 of these have come down
to us. In the orthodox reaction under al-Mutawakkil he fared ill; his
library was confiscated but afterward restored. He died about 260, and
with him dies the brief, golden century of eager acquisition, and the
scholastic period enters in philosophy as in theology.
[Sidenote: PLATO; PLOTINUS; ARISTOTLE]
That the glory was departing from Baghdad and the Khalifate is shown by
the second important name in philosophy. It is that of al-Farabi, who
was born at Farab in Turkestan, lived and worked in the brilliant circle
which gathered round Sayf ad-Dawla, the Hamdanid, at his court at Aleppo.
In music, in science, in philology, and in philosophy, he was alike
master. Aristotle was his passion, and his Arabic contemporaries and
successors united in calling him the second teacher, on account of his
success in unknotting the tangles of the Greek system. It was in truth
a tangled system which came to him, and a tangled system which he left.
The Muslim philosophers began, in their innocence, with the following
positions: The Qur’an is truth and philosophy is truth; but truth can
only be one; therefore, the Qur’an and philosophy must agree. Philosophy
they accepted in whole-hearted faith, as it came to them from the Greeks
through Egypt and Syria. They took it, not as a mass of more or less
contradictory speculation, but as a form of truth. They, in fact, never
lost a certain theological attitude. Under such conditions, then, Plato
came to them; but it was mostly Plato as interpreted by Porphyrius,
that is, as neo-Platonism. Aristotle, too, came to them in the guise
of the later Peripatetic schools. But in Aristotle, especially, there
entered a perfect knot of entanglement and confusion. During the reign of
al-Mu‘tasim, a Christian of Emessa in the Lebanon—the history in details
is obscure—translated parts of the “Enneads” of Plotinus into Arabic
and entitled his work “The Theology of Aristotle.” A more unlucky bit
of literary mischief and one more far-reaching in its consequences has
never been. The Muslims took it all as solemnly as they took the text of
the Qur’an. These two great masters, Plato and Aristotle, they said, had
expounded the truth, which is one. Therefore, there must be some way of
bringing them into agreement. So generations of toilers labored valiantly
with the welter of translations and pseudographs to get out of them and
into them the one truth. The more pious added the third element of the
Qur’an, and it must remain a marvel and a magnificent testimonial to
their skill and patience that they got even so far as they did and that
the whole movement did not end in simple lunacy. That al-Farabi should
have been so incisive a writer, so wide a thinker and student; that Ibn
Sina should have been so keen and clear a scientist and logician; that
Ibn Rushd should have known—really known—and commented his Aristotle
as he did, shows that the human brain, after all, is a sane brain and
has the power of unconsciously rejecting and throwing out nonsense and
falsehood.
But it is not wonderful that, dealing with such materials and
contradictions, they developed a tendency to mysticism. There were many
things which they felt compelled to hold which could only be defended
and rationalized in that cloudy air and slanting light. Especially,
no one but a mystic could bring together the emanations of Plotinus,
the ideas of Plato, the spheres of Aristotle and the seven-storied
heaven of Muhammad. With this matter of mysticism we shall have to deal
immediately. Of al-Farabi it is enough to say that he was one of the most
patient of the laborers at that impossible problem. It seems never to
have occurred to him, or to any of the others, that the first and great
imperative was to verify his references and sources. The oriental, like
the mediæval scholastic, tests minutely the form of his syllogism, but
takes little thought whether his premises state facts or not. With a
scrupulous scepticism in deduction, he combines a childlike acceptance on
tradition or on the narrowest of inductions.
[Sidenote: AL-FARABI]
But there are other and more ominous signs in al-Farabi of the scholastic
decline. There appears first in him that tendency toward the writing
of encyclopædic compends, which always means superficiality and the
commonplace. Al-Farabi himself could not be accused of either, but
that he thus claimed all knowledge for his portion showed the risk of
the premature circle and the small gain. Another is mysticism. He is a
neo-Platonist, more exactly a Plotinian; although he himself would not
have recognized this title. He held, as we have seen, that he was simply
retelling the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. But he was also a devout
Muslim. He seems to have taken in earnest all the bizarre details of
Muslim cosmography and eschatology; the Pen, the Tablet, the Throne, the
Angels in all their ranks and functions mingle picturesquely with the
system of Plotinus, his ἕν, his ψυχή, his νοῦς, his receptive and active
intellects. But to make tenable this position he had to take the great
leap of the mystic. Unto us these things are impossible; with God, i.e.,
on another plane of existence, they are the simplest realities. If the
veil were taken from our eyes we would see them. This has always been the
refuge of the devout Muslim who has tampered with science. We shall look
for it more in detail when we come to al-Ghazzali, who has put it into
classical form.
Again, he was, in modern terms, a monarchist and a clericalist. His
conception of the model state is a strange compound of the republic of
Plato and Shi‘ite dreams of an infallible Imam. Its roots lie, of course,
in the theocratic idea of the Muslim state; but his city, which is to
take in all mankind, a Holy Roman Empire and a Holy Catholic Church at
once, a community of saints ruled by sages, shows a later influence than
that of the mother city of Islam, al-Madina, under Abu Bakr and Umar.
The influence is that of the Fatimids with their capital, al-Mahdiya,
near Tunis. The Hamdanids were Shi‘ites and Sayf ad-Dawla, under whom
al-Farabi enjoyed peace and protection, was a vassal of the Fatimid
Khalifas.
This brings us again to the great mystery of Muslim history. What was the
truth of the Fatimid movement? Was the family of the Prophet the fosterer
of science from the earliest times? What degree of contact had they with
the Mu‘tazilites? With the founders of grammar, of alchemy, of law? That
they were themselves the actual beginners of everything—and everything
has been claimed for them—we may put down to legend. But one thing does
stand fast. Just as al-Ma’mun combined the establishment of a great
university at Baghdad with a favoring of the Alids, so the Fatimids in
Cairo erected a great hall of science and threw all their influence and
authority into the spreading and extending of knowledge. This institution
seems to have been a combination of free public library and university,
and was probably the gateway connecting between the inner circle of
initiated Fatimid leaders and the outside, uninitiated world. We have
already seen how unhappy were the external effects of the Shi‘ite, and
especially of the Fatimid, propaganda on the Muslim world. But from
time to time we become aware of a deep undercurrent of scientific and
philosophical labor and investigation accompanying that propaganda, and
striving after knowledge and truth. It belongs to the life below the
surface, which we can know only through its occasional outbursts. Some of
these are given above; others will follow. The whole matter is obscure
to the last degree, and dogmatic statements and explanations are not in
place. It may be that it was only a natural drawing together on the part
of all the different forces and movements that were under a ban and had
to live in secrecy and stillness. It may be that the students of the
new sciences passed over, simply through their studies and political
despair—as has often happened in our day—into different degrees of
nihilism, or, at the other extreme, into a passionate searching for, and
dependence on, some absolute guide, an infallible Imam. It may be that
we have read wrongly the whole history of the Fatimid movement; that it
was in reality a deeply laid and slowly ripened plan to bring the rule of
the world into the control of a band of philosophers, whose task it was
to be to rule the human race and gradually to educate it into self-rule;
that they saw—these unknown devotees of science and truth—no other way of
breaking down the barriers of Islam and setting free the spirits of men.
A wild hypothesis! But in face of the real mystery no hypothesis can seem
wild.
[Sidenote: IKHWAN AS-SAFA]
Closely allied with both al-Farabi and the Fatimids is the association
known as the Sincere Brethren (_Ikhwan as-safa_). It existed at al-Basra
in the middle of the fourth century of the Hijra during the breathing
space which the free intellectual life enjoyed after the capture of
Baghdad by the Buwayhids in 334. It will be remembered how that Persian
dynasty was Shi‘ite by creed and how it, for the time, completely clipped
the claws of the orthodox and Sunnite Abbasid Khalifas. The only thing,
thereafter, which heretics and philosophers had to fear was the enmity
of the populace, but that seems to have been great enough. The Hanbalite
mob of Baghdad had grown to be a thing of terror. It was, then, an
educational campaign on which this new philosophy had to enter. Their
programme was by means of clubs, propagating themselves and spreading
over the country from al-Basra and Baghdad, to reach all educated people
and introduce among them gradually a complete change in their religious
and scientific ideas. Their teaching was the same combination of
neo-Platonic speculation and mysticism with Aristotelian natural science,
wrapped in Mu‘tazilite theology, that we have already known. Only there
was added to it a Pythagorean reverence for numbers, and everything,
besides, was treated in an eminently superficial and popularized
manner. Our knowledge of the Fraternity and its objects is based on its
publication, “The Epistles of the Sincere Brethren” (_Rasa’il ikhwan
as-safa_) and upon scanty historical notices. The Epistles are fifty
or fifty-one in number and cover the field of human knowledge as then
conceived. They form, in fact, an Arabic _Encyclopédie_. The founders of
the Fraternity, and authors, presumably, of the Epistles, were at most
ten. We have no certain knowledge that the Fraternity ever took even
its first step and spread to Baghdad. Beyond that almost certainly the
development did not pass. The division of members into four—learners,
teachers, guides, and drawers near to God in supernatural vision—and the
plan of regular meetings of each circle for study and mutual edification
remained in its paper form. The society was half a secret one and lacked,
apparently, vitality and energy. There was among its founders no man of
weight and character. So it passed away and has left only these Epistles
which have come down to us in numerous MSS., showing how eagerly they
have been read and copied and how much influence they at least must have
exercised. That influence must have been very mixed. It was, it is
true, for intellectual life, yet it carried with it in a still higher
degree the defects we have already noticed in al-Farabi. To them must be
added the most simple skimming of all real philosophical problems and a
treatment of nature and natural science which had lost all connection
with facts.
[Sidenote: THE IKHWAN AND THE FATIMIDS]
It has been suggested, and the suggestion seems luminous and fertile,
that this Fraternity was simply a part of the great Fatimid propaganda
which, as we know, honey-combed the ground everywhere under the Sunnite
Abbasids. Descriptions which have reached us of the methods followed
by the leaders of the Fraternity agree exactly with those of the
missionaries of the Isma‘ilians. They raised difficulties and suggested
serious questionings; hinted at possible answers but did not give them;
referred to a source where all questions would be answered. Again,
their catch-words and fixed phrases are the same as those afterward
used by the Assassins, and we have traces of these Epistles forming a
part of the sacred library of the Assassins. It is to be remembered
that the Assassins were not simply robber bands who struck terror by
their methods. Both the western and the eastern branches were devoted
to science, and it may be that in their mountain fortresses there
was the most absolute devotion to true learning that then existed.
When the Mongols captured Alamut, they found it rich in MSS. and in
instruments and apparatus of every kind. It is then possible that the
elevated eclecticism of the _Ikhwan as-safa_ was the real doctrine of
the Fatimids, the Assassins, the Qarmatians and the Druses; certainly,
wherever we can test them there is the most singular agreement. It is a
mechanical and æsthetic pantheism, a glorification of Pythagoreanism,
with its music and numbers; idealistic to the last degree; a worship and
pursuit of a conception of a harmony and beauty in all the universe,
to find which is to find and know the Creator Himself. It is thus far
removed from materialism and atheism, but could easily be misrepresented
as both. This, it is true, is a very different explanation from the one
given in our first Part; it can only be put along-side of that and left
there. The one expresses the practical effect of the Isma‘ilians in
Islam; the other what may have been their ideal. However we judge them,
we must always remember that somewhere in their teaching, at its best,
there was a strange attraction for thinking and troubled men. Nasir ibn
Khusraw, a Persian Faust, found peace at Cairo between 437 and 444 in
recognizing the divine Imamship of al-Mustansir, and after a life of
persecution died in that faith as a hermit in the mountains of Badakhshan
in 481. The great Spanish poet, Ibn Hani, who died in 362, similarly
accepted al-Mu‘izz as his spiritual chief and guide.
[Sidenote: IBN KARRAM]
Another eclectic sect, but on a very different principle, was that of the
Karramites, founded by Abu Abd Allah ibn Karram, who died in 256. Its
teachings had the honor to be accepted and protected by no less a man
than the celebrated Mahmud of Ghazna (388-421), Mahmud the Idol-breaker,
the first invader of India and the patron of al-Beruni, Firdawsi, Ibn
Sina and many another. But that, to which we will return, belongs to a
later date and, probably, to a modified form of Ibn Karram’s teaching.
For himself, he was an ascetic of Sijistan and, according to the story,
a man of no education. He lost himself in theological subtleties which
he seems to have failed to understand. However, out of them all he put
together a book which he called “The Punishment of the Grave,” which
spread widely in Khurasan. It was, in part, a frank recoil to the
crassest anthropomorphism. Thus, for him, God actually sat upon the
throne, was in a place, had direction and so could move from one point
to another. He had a body with flesh, blood, and limbs; He could be
embraced by those who were purified to the requisite point. It was a
literal acceptance of the material expressions of the Qur’an along with a
consideration of how they could be so, and an explanation by comparison
with men—all opposed to the principle _bila kayfa_. So, apparently,
we must understand the curious fact that he was also a Murji’ite and
held faith to be only acknowledgment with the tongue. All men, except
professed apostates, are believers, he said, because of that primal
covenant, taken by God with the seed of Adam, when He asked, “Am I not
your Lord?” (_Alastu bi-rabbikum_) and they, brought forth from Adam’s
loins for the purpose, made answer, “Yea, verily, in this covenant
we remain until we formally cast it off.” This, of course, involved
taking God’s qualities in the most literal sense. So, if we are to see
in the Mu‘tazilites scholastic commentators trying to reduce Muhammad,
the poet, to logic and sense, we must see in Ibn Karram one of those
wooden-minded literalists, for whom a metaphor is a ridiculous lie if it
cannot be taken in its external meaning. He was part of the great stream
of conservative reaction, in which we find also such a man as Ahmad ibn
Hanbal. But the saving salt of Ahmad’s sense and reverence kept him by
the safe proviso “without considering how and without comparison.” All
Ahmad’s later followers were not so wise. In his doctrine of the state
Ibn Karram inclined to the Kharijites.
Before we return to al-Jubba‘i and the fate of the Mu‘tazilites, it
remains to trace more precisely the thread of mysticism, that _kashf_,
revelation, which we have already mentioned several times. Its
fundamental fact is that it had two sides, an ascetic and a speculative,
different in degree, in spirit and in result, and yet so closely
entangled that the same mystic has been assigned, in good and in bad
faith, as an adherent of both.
[Sidenote: WOMEN SAINTS]
It is to the form of mysticism which sprang from asceticism that we must
first turn. Attention has been given above to the wandering monks and
hermits, the _sa’ihs_ (wanderers) and _rahibs_ who caught Muhammad’s
attention and respect. We have seen, too, how Muslim imitators began
in their turn to wander through the land, clad in the coarse woollen
robes which gave them the name of Sufis, and living upon the alms of the
pious. How early these appeared in any number and as a fixed profession
is uncertain, but we find stories in circulation of meetings between
such mendicant friars and al-Hasan al-Basri himself. Women, too, were
among them, and it is possible that to their influence a development of
devotional love-poetry was due. At least, many verses of this kind are
ascribed to a certain Rabi‘a, an ascetic and ecstatic devotee of the most
extreme other-worldliness, who died in 135. Many other women had part in
the contemplative life. Among them may be mentioned, to show its grasp
and spread, A’isha, daughter of Ja‘far as-Sadiq, who died in 145; Fatima
of Naysabur, who died in 223, and the Lady Nafisa, a contemporary and
rival in learning with ash-Shafi‘i and the marvel of her time in piety
and the ascetic life. Her grave is one of the most venerated spots in
Cairo, and at it wonders are still worked and prayer is always answered.
She was a descendant of al-Hasan, the martyred ex-Khalifa, and an example
of how the fated family of the Prophet was an early school for women
saints. Even in the Heathenism we have traces of female penitents and
hermits, and the tragedy of Ali and his sons and descendants gave scope
for the self-sacrifice, loving service and religious enthusiasm with
which women are dowered.
All these stood and stand in Islam on exactly the same footing as men.
The distinction in Roman Christendom that a woman cannot be a priest
there falls away, for in Islam is neither priest nor layman. They lived
either as solitaries or in conventual life exactly as did the men. They
were called by the same terms in feminine form; they were Sufiyas beside
the Sufis; Zahidas (ascetics) beside the Zahids; Waliyas (friends of
God) beside the Walis; Abidas (devotees) beside the Abids. They worked
wonders (_karamat_, closely akin to the χαρίσματα of 1 Cor. xii, 9)
by the divine grace, and still, as we have seen, at their own graves
such are granted through them to the faithful, and their intercession
(_shafa‘a_) is invoked. Their religious exercises were the same; they
held _dhikrs_ and women darwishes yet dance to singing and music in order
to bring on fits of ecstasy. To state the case generally, whatever is
said hereafter of mysticism and its workings among men must be taken as
applying to women also.
To return: one of the earliest male devotees of whom we have distinct
note is Ibrahim ibn Adham. He was a wanderer of royal blood, drifted
from Balkh in Afghanistan to al-Basra and to Mecca. He died in 161.
Contempt for the learning of lawyers and for external forms appears in
him; obedience to God, contemplation of death, death to the world formed
his teaching. Another, Da’ud ibn Nusayr, who died in 165, was wont to
say, “Flee men as thou fleest a lion. Fast from the world and let the
breaking of thy fast be when thou diest.” Another, al-Fudayl ibn Iyad of
Khurasan, who died in 187, was a robber converted by a heavenly voice;
he cast aside the world, and his utterances show that he lapsed into the
passivity of quietism.
Reference has already been made in the chapter on jurisprudence to
the development of asceticism which came with the accession of the
Abbasids. The disappointed hopes of the old believers found an outlet
in the contemplative life. They withdrew from the world and would have
nothing to do with its rulers; their wealth and everything connected
with them they regarded as unclean. Ahmad ibn Hanbal in his later life
had to use all his obstinacy and ingenuity to keep free of the court and
its contamination. Another was this al-Fudayl. Stories—chronologically
impossible—are told how he rebuked Harun ar-Rashid for his luxury and
tyranny and denounced to his face his manner of life. With such an
attitude to those round him he could have had little joy in his devotion.
So it was said, “When al-Fudayl died, sadness was removed from the world.”
[Sidenote: PASSAGE OF ASCETICISM TO ECSTASY]
But soon the recoil came. Under the spur of such exercises and thoughts,
the ecstatic oriental temperament began to revel in expressions borrowed
from human love and earthly wine. Such we find by Ma‘ruf of al-Karkh, a
district of Baghdad, who died in 200, and whose tomb, saved by popular
reverence, is one of the few ancient sites in modern Baghdad; and by
his greater disciple, Sari as-Saqati, who died in 257. To this last is
ascribed, but dubiously, the first use of the word _tawhid_ to signify
the union of the soul with God. The figure that the heart is a mirror to
image back God and that it is darkened by the things of the body appears
in Abu Sulayman of Damascus, who died in 215. A more celebrated ascetic,
who died in 227, Bishr al-Hafi (bare-foot), speaks of God directly as the
Beloved (_habib_). Al-Harith al-Muhasibi was a contemporary of Ahmad ibn
Hanbal and died in 243. The only thing in him to which Ahmad could take
exception was that he made use of _kalam_ in refuting the Mu‘tazilites;
even this suspicion against him he is said to have abandoned. Sari and
Bishr, too, were close friends of Ahmad’s. Dhu-n-Nun, the Egyptian Sufi,
who died in 245, is in more dubious repute. He is said to have been the
first to formulate the doctrine of ecstatic states (_hals_, _maqamas_);
but if he went no further than this, his orthodoxy, in the broad sense,
should be above suspicion. Islam has now come to accept these as right
and fitting. Perhaps the greatest name in early Sufiism is that of
al-Junayd (d. 297); on it no shadow of heresy has ever fallen. He was
a master in theology and law, reverenced as one of the greatest of
the early doctors. Questions of _tawhid_ he is said to have discussed
before his pupils with shut doors. But this was probably _tawhid_ in the
theological and not in the mystical sense—against the Mu‘tazilites and
not on the union of the soul with God. Yet he, too, knew the ecstatic
life and fell fainting at verses which struck into his soul. Ash-Shibli
(d. 334) was one of his disciples, but seems to have given himself more
completely to the ascetic and contemplative life. In verses by him we
find the vocabulary of the amorous intercourse with God fully developed.
The last of this group to be mentioned here shall be Abu Talib al-Makki,
who died in 386. It is his distinction to have furnished a text-book
of Sufiism that is in use to this day. He wrote and spoke openly on
_tawhid_, now in the Sufi sense, and got into trouble as a heretic, but
his memory has been restored to orthodoxy by the general agreement of
Islam. When, in 488, al-Ghazzali set himself to seek light in Sufiism,
among the treatises he studied were the books of four of those mentioned
above, Abu Talib, al-Muhasibi, al-Junayd, and ash-Shibli.
[Sidenote: GROWTH OF FRATERNITIES]
In the case of these and all the others already spoken of there was
nothing but a very simple and natural development such as could easily
be paralleled in Europe. The earliest Muslims were burdened, as we have
seen, with the fear of the terrors of an avenging God. The world was
evil and fleeting; the only abiding good was in the other world; so
their religion became an ascetic other-worldliness. They fled into the
wilderness from the wrath to come. Wandering, either solitary or in
companies, was the special sign of the true Sufi. The young men gave
themselves over to the guidance of the older men; little circles of
disciples gathered round a venerated Shaykh; fraternities began to form.
So we find it in the case of al-Junayd, so in that of Sari as-Saqati.
Next would come a monastery, rather a rest-house; for only in the winter
and for rest did they remain fixed in a place for any time. Of such a
monastery there is a trace at Damascus in 150 and in Khurasan about
200. Then, just as in Europe, begging friars organized themselves. In
faith they were rather conservative than anything else; touched with a
religious passivism which easily developed into quietism. Their ecstasies
went little beyond those, for instance, of Thomas à Kempis, though struck
with a warmer oriental fervor.
The points on which the doctors of Islam took exception to these earlier
Sufis are strikingly different from what we would expect. They concern
the practical life far more than theological speculation. As was natural
in the case of professional devotees, a constantly prayerful attitude
began to assume importance beside and in contrast to the formal use
of the five daily prayers, the _salawat_. This development was in all
probability aided by the existence in Syria of the Christian sect of
the Euchites, who exalted the duty of prayer above all other religious
obligations. These, also, abandoned property and obligations and wandered
as poor brethren over the country. They were a branch of Hesychasts, the
quietistic Greek monks who eventually led to the controversy concerning
the uncreated light manifested at the transfiguration on Mount Tabor and
added a doctrine to the Eastern Church. Considering these points, it can
hardly be doubted that there was some historical connection and relation
here, not only with earlier but also with later Sufiism. There is a
striking resemblance between the Sufis seeking by patient introspection
to see the actual light of God’s presence in their hearts, and the Greek
monks in Athos, sitting solitarily in their cells and seeking the divine
light of Mount Tabor in contemplation of their navels.
But our immediate point is the matter of constant, free prayer. In the
Qur’an (xxxiii, 41) the believers are exhorted to “remember (_dhikr_) God
often;” this command the Sufis obeyed with a correlative depreciation of
the five canonical prayers. Their meetings for the purpose, much like our
own prayer-meetings, still more like the “class-meetings” of the early
Methodists, as opposed to stated public worship, were called _dhikrs_.
These services were fiercely attacked by the orthodox theologians, but
survived and are the darwish functions which tourists still go to see
at Constantinople and Cairo. But the more private and personal _dhikrs_
of individual Sufis, each in his house repeating his Qur’anic litanies
through the night, until to the passer-by it sounded like the humming of
bees or the unceasing drip of roof-gutters, these seem, in the course
of the third century, to have fallen before ridicule and accusations of
heresy.
[Sidenote: TAWAKKUL]
Another point against the earlier Sufis was their abuse of the principle
of _tawakkul_, dependence upon God. They gave up their trades and
professions; they even gave up the asking for alms. Their ideal was to
be absolutely at God’s disposal, utterly cast upon His direct sustenance
(_rizq_). No anxiety for their daily bread was permitted to them; they
must go through the world separated from it and its needs and looking up
to God. Only one who can do this is properly an acknowledger of God’s
unity, a true _Muwahhid_. To such, God would assuredly open the door of
help; they were at His gate; and the biographies of the saints are full
of tales how His help used to come.
To this it may be imagined that the more sober, even among Sufis, made
vehement objection. It fell under two heads. One was that of _kasb_,
the gaining of daily bread by labor. The examples of the husbandman who
casts his seed into the ground and then depends upon God, of the merchant
who travels with his wares in similar trust, were held up against the
wandering but useless monk. As always, traditions were forged on both
sides. Said a man—apparently in a spirit of prophecy—one day to the
Prophet, “Shall I let my camel run free and trust in God?” Replied
the Prophet, or someone for him with a good imitation of his humorous
common-sense, “Tie up your camel and trust in God.” The other head
was the use of remedies in sickness. The whole controversy parallels
strikingly the “mental science” and “Christian science” of the present
day. Medicine, it was held, destroyed _tawakkul_. In the fourth century
in Persia this insanity ran high and many books were written for it and
against it. The author of one on the first side was consulted in an
obstinate case of headache. “Put my book under your pillow,” he said,
“and trust in God.” On both these points the usage of the Prophet and the
Companions was in the teeth of the Sufi position. They had notoriously
earned their living, honestly or dishonestly, and had possessed all the
credulity of semi-civilization toward the most barbaric and multifarious
remedies. So the agreement of Islam eventually righted itself, though the
question in its intricacies and subtilties remained for centuries a thing
of delight for theologians. In the end only the wildest fanatics held by
absolute _tawakkul_.
[Sidenote: SPECULATIVE SUFIISM]
But all this time the second form of Sufiism had been slowly forcing its
way. It was essentially speculative and theological rather than ascetic
and devotional. When it gained the upper hand, _zahid_ (ascetic) was no
longer a convertible term with Sufi. We pass over the boundary between
Thomas à Kempis and St. Francis to Eckhart and Suso. The roots of this
movement cannot be hard to find in the light of what has preceded.
They lie partly in the neo-Platonism which is the foundation of the
philosophy of Islam. Probably it did not come to the Sufis along the
same channels by which it reached al-Farabi. It was rather through the
Christian mystics and, perhaps, especially through the Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite, and his asserted teacher, Stephen bar Sudaili with his
Syriac “Book of Hierotheos.” We need not here consider whether the
Monophysite heresy is to be reckoned in as one of the results of the
dying neo-Platonism. It is true that outlying forms of it meant the
frank deifying of a man and thus raised the possibility of the equal
deifying of any other man and of all men. But there is no certainty that
these views had an influence in Islam. It is enough that from A.D. 533
we find the Pseudo-Dionysius quoted and his influence strong with the
ultra Monophysites, and still more, thereafter, with the whole mystical
movement in Christendom. According to it, all is akin in nature to the
Absolute, and all this life below is only a reflection of the glories of
the upper sphere, where God is. Through the sacraments and a hierarchy
of angels man is led back toward Him. Only in ecstasy can man come to a
knowledge of Him. The Trinity, sin and the atonement fade out of view.
The incarnation is but an example of how the divine and the human can
join. All is an emanation or an emission of grace from God; and the
yearnings of man are back to his source. The revolving spheres, the
groaning and travailing nature are striving to return to their origin.
When this conception had seized the Oriental Church; when it had passed
into Islam and dominated its emotional and religious life; when through
the translation of the Pseudo-Dionysius by Scotus Erigena in 850, it had
begun the long contest of idealism in Europe, the dead school of Plotinus
had won the field, and its influence ruled from the Oxus to the Atlantic.
But the roots of Sufiism struck also in another direction. We have
already seen an early tendency to regard Ali and, later, members of his
house as incarnations of divinity. In the East, where God comes near to
man, the conception of God in man is not difficult. The Semitic prophet
through whom God speaks easily slips over into a divine being in whom
God exists and may be worshipped. But if with one, why not with another?
May it not be possible by purifying exercises to reach this unity? If
one is a Son of God, may not all become that if they but take the means?
The half-understood pantheism which always lurks behind oriental fervors
claims its due. From his wild whirling dance, the darwish, stung to
cataleptic ecstasy by the throbbing of the drums and the lilting chant,
sinks back into the unconsciousness of the divine oneness. He has passed
temporarily from this scene of multiplicity into the sea of God’s unity
and, at death, if he but persevere, he will reach that haven where he
fain would be and will abide there forever. Here, we have not to do with
calm philosophers rearing their systems in labored speculations, but with
men, often untaught, seeking the salvation of their souls earnestly and
with tears.
[Sidenote: PANTHEISTIC SCHOOL]
One of the earliest of the pantheistic school was Abu Yazid al-Bistami
(d. 261). He was of Persian parentage, and his father had been a follower
of Zarathustra. As an ascetic he was of the highest repute; he was also
an author of eminence on Sufiism (al-Ghazzali used his books) and he
joined to his devout learning and self-mortification clear miraculous
gifts. But equally clear was his pantheistic drift and his name has
come down linked to the saying, “Beneath my cloak there is naught else
than God.” It is worth noticing that certain other of his sayings show
that, even in his time, there were Sufi saints who boasted that they had
reached such perfection and such miraculous powers that the ordinary
moral and ceremonial law no longer applied to them. The antinomianism
which haunted the later Sufiism and darwishdom had already appeared.
[Sidenote: AL-HALLAJ]
But the greatest name of all among these early pantheists was that of
al-Hallaj (the cotton carder), a pupil of al-Junayd, who was put to
death with great cruelty in 309. It is almost impossible to reach any
certain conclusion as to his real views and aims. In spite of what seem
to be utterances of the crassest pantheism, such as, “I am the Truth,”
there have not been wanting many in later Islam who have reverenced his
memory as that of a saint and martyr. To Sufis and darwishes of his
time and to this day he has been and is a patron saint. In his life
and death he represents for them the spirit of revolt against dogmatic
scholasticism and formalism. Further, even such a great doctor of the
Muslim Church as al-Ghazzali defended him and, though lamenting some
incautious phrases, upheld his orthodoxy. At his trial itself before
the theologians of Baghdad, one of them refused to sign the _fatwa_
declaring him an unbeliever; he was not clear, he said, as to the case.
And it is true that such records as we have of the time suggest that his
condemnation was forced by the government as a matter of state policy. He
was a Persian of Magian origin, and evidently an advanced mystic of the
speculative type. He carried the theory to its legitimate conclusion, and
proclaimed the result publicly. He dabbled in scholastic theology; had
evident Mu‘tazilite leanings; wrote on alchemy and things esoteric. But
with this mystical enthusiasm there seem to have united in him other and
more dangerous traits. The stories which have reached us show him of a
character fond of excitement and change, surrounding himself with devoted
adherents and striving by miracle-working of a commonplace kind to add
to his following. His popularity among the people of Baghdad and their
reverence for him rose to a perilous degree. He may have had plans of his
own as a Persian nationalist; he may have had part in one of the Shi‘ite
conspiracies; he may have been nothing but a rather weak-headed devotee,
carried off his feet by a sudden tide of public excitement, the greatest
trial and danger that a saint has to meet. But the times were not such
then in Baghdad that the government could take any risks. Al-Muqtadir
was Khalifa and in his weak hands the Khalifate was slipping to ruin.
The Fatimids were supreme in North Africa; the Qarmatians held Syria and
Arabia, and were threatening Baghdad itself. In eight years they were to
take Mecca. Persia was seething with false prophets and nationalists of
every shade. Thirteen years later Ibn ash-Shalmaghani was put to death
in Baghdad on similar grounds; in his case, Shi‘ite conspiracy against
the state was still more clearly involved. We can only conclude in the
words of Ibn Khallikan (d. 681), “The history of al-Hallaj is long to
relate; his fate is well known; and God knoweth all secret things.” With
him we must leave, for the present, consideration of the Sufi development
and return to the Mu‘tazilites and to the people tiring of their dry
subtilties.