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MYSTICS AND SAINTS
OF ISLAM
BY
CLAUD FIELD
LONDON:
FRANCIS GRIFFITHS,
34 MAIDEN LANE, STRAND, W.C.
1910.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. PANTHEISTIC SUFISM 1
II. HASAN BASRI 18
III. RABIA, THE WOMAN SUFI 28
IV. IBRAHIM BEN ADHAM 36
V. FUDHAYL BEN AYAZ 46
VI. BAYAZID BASTAMI 52
VII. ZU'N NUN OF EGYPT 60
VIII. MANSUR HALLAJ 68
IX. HABIB AJAMI 79
X. AVICENNA (IBN SINA) 86
XI. AL GHAZZALI 106
XII. FARIDUDDIN ATTAR 123
XIII. SUHRAWARDY 141
XIV. JALALUDDIN RUMI 148
XV. SHARANI, THE EGYPTIAN 164
XVI. MULLAH SHAH 174
APPENDIX I. MOHAMMEDAN CONVERSIONS 192
" II. EXPOSITION OF SUFISM 196
" III. CHRISTIAN ELEMENTS IN
MOHAMMEDAN LITERATURE 202
" IV. CHRIST IN MOHAMMEDAN TRADITION 208
PREFACE
It is a custom in some quarters to represent Mohammadan mysticism as
merely a late importation into Islam, and an altogether alien element in
it. But however much later Islamic mysticism may have derived from
Christian, Neo-platonic, and Buddhist sources, there is little doubt
that the roots of mysticism are to be found in the Koran itself. The
following verse is an instance: "God is the Light of the heavens and the
earth. His light is like a niche in which is a lamp, the lamp encased in
glass--the glass as it were a glistening star. From a blessed tree is it
lighted, the olive neither of the East nor of the West, whose oil would
well nigh shine out even though fire touched it not! It is light upon
light!" (_Koran Sura_ 24).
Indeed it seems strange to accord the title of "a practical mystic" to
Cromwell and to deny it to Mohammad, whose proclivity for religious
meditation was so strong that the Arabs used to say "Muhammad is in love
with his Maker,"[1] and whose sense of the "terror of the Lord" was so
intense that it turned his hair prematurely white. Many of the reported
sayings of the Early Companions of Muhammad show that they shared this
terror. "Verily, you shall see hell, you shall see it with the eye of
certainty" says the Koran, and they thought it very probable. Thus Ali
exclaimed "Alas for the shortness of the provision and the terrors of
the way!" Abu'l Darda said "If ye knew what ye shall see after death, ye
would not eat nor drink, and I wish that I were a tree that is lopped
and then devoured."[2]
This "fear of the Lord" led naturally to an almost fierce asceticism.
Abu Bekr and Ali both founded communities of ascetics,[3] and during the
first and second centuries of Islam there were many orthodox mystics.
Professor Nicholson in the work just quoted, rightly says "I do not
think that we need look beyond Islam for the origin of the Sufi
doctrines.... The early Sufis are still on orthodox ground, their
relation to Islam is not unlike that of the mediæval Spanish mystics to
the Roman Catholic Church."
* * * * *
The following sketches are for the most part translations of papers by
continental scholars such as Alfred Von Kremer, Pavet de Courteille, and
A.F. Mehren. The essays on Ghazzali and Jalaluddin Rumi are, however,
founded on original study of those writers. The translator hopes a
wholesome tonic may be found in some of these Moslem mystics at a time
when many "Christian" pulpits and presses seem anxious to dilute
Christianity "into a presumptuous and effeminate love which never knew
fear."[4]
He desires to thank the Editors of the _Expository Times_, _Church
Missionary Review_, _Irish Church Quarterly_, and _London Quarterly
Review_ for permission to include papers which have appeared in those
journals.
C.F.
[1] Ghazzali, Munqidh.
[2] Nicholson. Literary History of the Arabs (p. 225).
[3] Tholuck. Sufismus.
[4] Sir John Seeley.
CHAPTER I
PANTHEISTIC SUFISM[5]
I.--THE IMPORT OF ISLAMIC MYSTICISM
The moral law proclaimed by Moses three thousand years ago agrees with
that which governs men to-day, irrespective of their various stages of
culture; the moral precepts of a Buddha and Confucius agree with those
of the Gospel, and the sins for which, according to the Book of the Dead
of the ancient Egyptians, men will answer to the judges of the other
world are sins still after four thousand years. If the nature of the
unknown First Cause is ever to be grasped at all, it can only be in the
light of those unchanging moral principles which every man carries in
his own breast. The idea of God is therefore not an affair of the
understanding, but of the feeling and conscience. Mysticism has always
so taken it, and has therefore always had a strong attraction for the
excitable and emotional portion of mankind whom it has comforted in
trial and affliction. Every religion is accordingly rather intended for
the emotions than for the understanding, and therefore they all contain
mystical tendencies. The mysticism of Islam and Christendom have many
points of contact, and by mysticism perhaps will be first bridged the
wide gulf which separates Islam from Christendom, and thereby from
modern civilisation. Just in proportion as the various religions express
the ideals of goodness and truth they approximate to one another as
manifestations of the unchanging moral principle. Inasmuch as they
surmised this, the Motazilites (or free-thinkers in Islam), at a time
when Europe lay in the profoundest intellectual and moral bewilderment,
fought for one of those ideas which, although they are quickly submerged
again in the stormy current of the times, continue to work in silence
and finally emerge victorious. On that day when the Moslem no longer
beholds in God simply omnipotence, but also righteousness, he will
simultaneously re-enter the circle of the great civilised nations among
whom he once before, though only for a short time, had won the first
place.
It is not perhaps too fanciful to hail, as an omen of the triumph of
moral mysticism over the dogmatic rigidity of Islam, the fact that the
present Sultan Muhammad V. was girded with the sword of Osman by the
head of the Mevlevi dervishes, a sect founded by the great mystic
teacher Jalaluddin Rumi of Iconium. Forty-three years ago a Persian
Orientalist Mirza Kasim Beg wrote in the _Journal Asiatique_:--
"_L'unique voie qui dans l'Islam puisse conduire a la reforme
c'est la doctrine du mysticisme._"
II.--EARLIER PHASES
The period during which the asceticism practised by the earlier Sufis
passed into the dreamy pantheism which characterises the later Sufism
is the end of the third century after Muhammad. This introduced a new
element into Islam which for centuries exercised a powerful influence on
national culture, and is still partially operative at present. The
conception of God and of the relation of the finite and human with the
infinite and divine from this time onward formed the chief subject of
inquiry and meditation.
The man who was destined to be the first to give those ideas, which had
hitherto been foreign to Arabian Sufism, definite expression was a poor
workman, a cotton-carder, bearing the name of Hellaj. He was an Arabised
Persian, born in Persia, but educated in Irak, where he enjoyed the
privilege of being instructed by Junaid. The story of his life as handed
down by Shiah or Sunni writers has been much exaggerated. It is clear,
however, that he had a great number of disciples who revered him as
their spiritual guide and ascribed to him almost supernatural powers.
His ever-growing popularity much scandalised the orthodox mullahs, who
moved the authorities to proceed against him, and were successful in
procuring his execution 922 A.D. Before his death he was subjected to
terrible tortures, which he bore with wonderful composure.
The reason of his condemnation was declared to be that he regarded
himself as an incarnation of the Godhead. His disciples honoured him as
a saint after his death. They ascribed to him the famous saying, "I am
the Truth" (_i.e._ God), which they took in a pantheistic sense. He is
said to have taught the doctrine of the incarnation of the Godhead in a
man and to have uttered the exclamation:
Praise to the Most High Who has revealed His humanity and
concealed the overpowering splendour of His Deity. Whoso purifies
himself by abstinence and purges himself from every trace of
fleshiness, unto him the Spirit of God enters, as it entered into
Jesus. When he has attained to this degree of perfection,
whatever he wills, happens, and whatever he does is done by God.
His letters to his disciples are said to have commenced with the
formula, "From the Lord of Lords to His slaves." His disciples wrote to
him:
O Spirit of the Spirit! O highest Aim of the holy: We bear
witness that Thou hast incarnated Thyself in the form of Hosain
the cotton-carder (Hellaj). We flee for protection to Thee and
hope in Thy mercy, O Knower of secrets.
The genuineness of these fragments has much to support it, but is not
entirely beyond doubt. This much, however, is clear, that the disciples
of Hellaj after his death regarded him as a divine being. Ibn Hazm, a
trustworthy author who wrote only 150 years after the execution of
Hellaj, says so expressly. Ghazzali, who wrote about fifty years later
still, does not mention this, but shelters Hellaj from the charge of
blasphemy by construing his exclamation "I am the Truth" in a
pantheistic sense, and excuses it by ascribing it to an excess of love
to God and to mystic ecstacy. In another place he says:
The first veil between God and His servant is His servant's
soul. But the hidden depth of the human heart is divine and
illuminated by light from above; for in it is mirrored the
eternal Truth completely, so that it encloses the universe in
itself. Now when a man turns his gaze on his own divinely
illumined heart he is dazzled by the blaze of its beauty, and the
expression "I am God!" easily escapes him. If from this stage he
does not advance further in knowledge, he often falls into error
and is ruined. It is as though he had allowed himself to be
misled by a little spark from the light-ocean of Godhead instead
of pressing forward to get more light. The ground of this
self-deception is that he in whom the Supernatural is mirrored
confuses himself with it. So the colour of a picture seen in a
mirror is sometimes confounded with the mirror itself.
Hellaj was no more than the representative of an old idea, Indian in
origin, which he combined with Sufism, thereby giving an entirely new
direction to Islamic thought, which was important, as leading to an
entirely new development of the conception of God. Even previous to
Hellaj, the doctrine of incarnation had emerged in Islam. The Caliph Ali
was reported to have been such, and was accordingly venerated by the
Shiahs. The sect of the Khattabiyah worshipped the Imam Jafar Sadik as
God. Another sect believed that the Divine Spirit had descended upon
Abdallah Ibn Amr.
In Khorassan the opinion was widely spread that Abu Muslim, the great
general who overturned the dynasty of the Ommeyads and set up that of
the Abbasides, was an incarnation of the spirit of God. In the same
province under Al Mansur, the second Abbaside Caliph, a religious leader
named Ostasys professes to be an emanation of the Godhead. He collected
thousands of followers, and the movement was not suppressed without much
fighting. Under the Caliph Mahdi a self-styled Avatar named Ata arose,
who on account of a golden mask which he continually wore was called
_Mokanna_, or "the veiled prophet." He also had a numerous following,
and held the Caliph's armies in check for several years, till in 779
A.D., being closely invested in his castle, he, with his whole harem and
servants, put an end to themselves.
Towards the end of the second century after Muhammad, Babek in Persia
taught the transmigration of souls and communism. His followers, named
Khoramiyyah, long successfully resisted the Caliph's troops. He claimed
that the soul of an ancient law-giver named "Bod" had passed into him,
which meant perhaps that he wished to pass for a "Buddha."
It is well known that Shiite teachers were especially active in Persia.
In the apotheosis of Ali, as well as in the cases of Abu Muslim, we find
an assertion of the ideas peculiar to the Persians in pre-Islamic times.
The infusion or indwelling of the Godhead in man as with the Hindu
Avatars was also popular, and widely spread in Persia. In Bagdad, from
the time of the early Abbasides, the Persians had exercised great
influence. Shiahs were able to profess their views freely under the
tolerant or rather religiously indifferent Caliph Mamoun. Bagdad early
harboured within its walls a number of communities imbued with Shiah
doctrine, and the Persian conception of God silently, but widely
prevailed.
Hellaj, educated in the orthodox Sunni school of Junaid, which, through
its laying stress on the idea of love to God, possessed rather a mystic
than dogmatic character, allowed himself to be carried away by his
passionate temperament into not only preaching, but practically applying
to himself the above-mentioned doctrines, which though known to many,
had been discreetly veiled in reserve. When once the populace have been
prepared for a new idea, the mere expression of it is sufficient to act
as a spark on tinder. The fatal word was spoken by Hellaj; the
authorities did their duty, seized the daring innovator and put him to
death in the cruel fashion of the time. But the word once spoken had
been borne on the winds in all directions, and the execution of Hellaj
gave a powerful impulse to the spread of his doctrine. There are periods
in the lives of some nations when the longing for a martyr's crown
becomes epidemic. A few years after the execution of Hellaj, a man of
the people, Ibn Aby Azkyr, from the same village, Shalmaghan, where
Hellaj had spent his youth, gave himself out as an incarnation of the
Godhead. He was put to death with several of his followers under the
reign of the Caliph Radhi, 933 A.D. A century after Hellaj an Egyptian,
Ismail Darazy, from whom the Druses derive their name, proclaimed the
Fatimite Caliph Hakim to be an incarnation.
How great was the influence exercised in general by those ideas for
which Hellaj died a martyr's death we learn most clearly from the pages
of Ghazzali, who wrote not quite two hundred years later. He says:
The speculations of the Sufis may be divided into two classes: to
the first category belong all the phrases about love to God and
union with Him, which according to them compensate for all
outward works. Many of them allege that they have attained to
complete oneness with God; that for them the veil has been
lifted; that they have not only seen the Most High with their
eyes, but have spoken with Him, and go so far as to say "The Most
High spoke thus and thus." They wish to imitate Hellaj, who was
crucified for using such expressions, and justify themselves by
quoting his saying, "I am the Truth." They also refer to Abu
Yazid Bistamy, who is reported to have exclaimed, "Praise be to
me!," instead of "Praise be to God!" This kind of speculation is
extremely dangerous for the common people, and it is notorious
that a number of craftsmen have left their occupation to make
similar assertions. Such speeches are highly popular, as they
hold out to men the prospect of laying aside active work with the
idea of purging the soul through mystical ecstasies and
transports. The common people are not slow to claim similar
rights for themselves and to catch up wild and whirling
expressions. As regards the second class of Sufi speculation, it
consists in the use of unintelligible phrases which by their
outward apparent meaning and boldness attract attention, but
which on closer inspection prove to be devoid of any real sense.
These words of the greatest thinker among the Muhammadans at that time
afford us a deep insight into the remarkable character of the period.
From them we gather with certainty that the division of Sufism into two
classes, one orthodox and outwardly conforming to Islam, and the other
free-thinking and pantheistic, was already an accomplished fact before
Ghazzali's time. We recognise also that the latter kind of Sufism was
very popular among the lowest classes of the people and even among the
agricultural population. The fundamental characteristic of mysticism,
the striving after the knowledge of God by way of ecstatic intuition,
had already come into open conflict with the fundamental principles of
Islam. "Mystical love to God" was the catchword which brought people to
plunge into ecstatic reverie, and by complete immersion in contemplation
to lose their personality, and by this self-annihilation to be absorbed
in God. The simple ascetic character of the ancient Arabian Sufism was
continually counteracted by the element of passive contemplation which
was entirely foreign to the Arab mind. The terms "ascetic" and "Sufi,"
which were formerly almost synonymous, henceforward cease to be so, and
often conceal a fundamental variance with each other. We shall not go
very far wrong if we connect the crisis of this intellectual development
with the appearance of Hellaj, so that the close of the third and
commencement of the fourth century after Muhammad marks the point of
time when this philosophico-religious schism was completed. In Persia
the theosophy of Hellaj and his supporters found a receptive soil and
flourished vigorously; on that soil were reared the finest flowers of
Persian poetry. From the Persians this tendency passed over to the
Turks, and the poetry of both nations contains strongly-marked
theosophical elements.
III.--THE LOVE OF GOD AND ECSTASY
Already in the second century of Islam great stress was laid upon the
cultivation of love to God, an outstanding example of which is the
female Sufi Rabia. With it was connected a gradually elaborated doctrine
of ecstatic states and visions which were believed to lead by the way of
intuition and divine illumination to the spiritual contemplation of God.
We have already endeavoured to describe the religious enthusiasm which
took possession of the Moslems in the first and second century after
Muhammad and have partly traced the causes which led to this phenomenon.
Ecstasy is an invariable concomitant of religious enthusiasm. In the
endeavour to break through the narrow bounds which confine the human
spirit pious and credulous natures are only too easily led astray. The
instruments which man has at his command when he wishes to investigate
the supernatural do not suffice to procure him an even approximately
correct image of the object which he would fain observe. While the
optician with the aid of mathematics can reduce errors arising from the
convexity of his magnifying lens to an infinitesimally small amount, the
theologian has never found a device, and never will find one, to obviate
the errors which arise from the fact that his intellectual insight has
to be exercised through the medium of material senses, which obscure the
clearness of his observation. And yet it is precisely this ceaseless
striving, this irresistible impulse after something higher, this
unquenchable thirst for the fountain-head of knowledge, which
constitutes the highest and noblest side of humanity, and is the most
indubitable pledge of its spiritual future. The net result of these
strivings has been an endless series of self-delusions, and yet humanity
takes on a grander aspect in them than in all its other manifold efforts
and successes. The history of this spiritual wrestling, this hopeless
and yet never relaxed struggle against the impossible, forms the noblest
aspect of the history of mankind.
The phenomena produced by Islam in this respect do not fundamentally
differ from those produced by Christianity and Buddhism. Sufism exhibits
a more remarkable development of these phenomena, simply because it grew
up in an environment which favoured their more luxuriant growth.
The Koran, which Muhammad came, as he said to preach, was regarded as
the very word of God, and must therefore have produced an overpowering
impression on the minds of the faithful. Of this numerous instances are
reported. Abd al Wahid ibn Zaid heard one day a Koran-reader recite the
following verse (Sura 45: 28):--"This is Our book, which announces to
you the truth; for We have caused to be recorded all that ye have done.
Those who believe and do good works shall their Lord admit to His
favour; verily this is the most manifest recompense." On hearing this
Abd al Wahid broke into loud weeping and fainted. Miswar ibn Machramah
was not even able to hear any verse of the Koran read, being so
powerfully affected thereby as to become senseless. Of Jobair ibn Motim
it is reported that he said: "I heard the Prophet recite the following
verses of the Koran:--
1. I swear by Tur.
2. By a book which stands written on outspread parchment.
3. By the house to which pilgrimage is made.
4. By the lofty dome of heaven.
5. And by the swelling ocean.
6. That the judgment of thy Lord is at hand.
Then it appeared to me," said Jobair, "as if my heart would burst in
twain." The pious Cadi Ijad adduces as a special proof of the
inspiration of the Koran the deep impression of fear and terror which
its recital produced on the minds of the hearers.
Muhammad ibn Mansur relates that once passing a house at midnight he
heard the voice of a man praying to God loudly and fervently, lamenting
his sins with deep contrition. Muhammad ibn Mansur could not resist the
temptation; he put his mouth to the keyhole and uttered the verse which
threatens the unbelievers with hell-fire. He heard a heavy fall within
the house, and all was still. As he went down the same street the next
morning he saw a corpse being carried out of the same house, followed by
an old woman. He inquired of her whose body it was, and she answered:
"Last night my son heard a verse of the Koran recited, and it broke his
heart." We are far from believing all these stories, but they show what
a view was held in the earliest times regarding the effect produced by
the Koran on the minds of those who heard it.
The ecstatic bent of mind of the ascetics of Islam and the later Sufis
arose from these beginnings. Then, as now, self-originated phases of
feeling were attributed to outer causes; from the remotest times men
have sought without them the Divinity which they carried within.
The wider spread and greater permanence of ecstatic phenomena among the
Moslems than elsewhere was due to the concurrence of various conditions,
chief among which was the peculiar temperament of the Arab. Capable of
the fiercest momentary excitement, he quickly subsided into a state of
complete apathy which is pain-proof. I[6] have a lively recollection of
the cases mentioned by my late friend Dr. Bilharz, who spoke of the
astonishing anæsthesia which the patients in the medical school of Kasr
al 'ain in Cairo, where he was professor, exhibited under the most
painful operations. They uttered hardly a sound when operated upon in
the most sensitive nerve-centres. The negro, notoriously excitable as he
is, and therefore still more exposed to complete prostration of the
organs of feeling, exhibits this apathy in a yet more marked degree than
the Arab and Egyptian. Many examples of this are found in old Arabic
authors--_e.g._, in the narratives of the martyrdoms of Hatyt, of Hellaj
and of a young Mameluke crucified in 1247 A.D. Of the last Suyuti has
preserved a psychologically detailed description.
Although Christian martyrology is rich in such instances of unshakable
fortitude under the most painful tortures, yet in Islam the ecstatic
temper has attained a higher significance and been more constantly
exhibited. A chief reason of this was the religious fanaticism, which
was incomparably stronger and more widely diffused in Islam than in
mediæval Christendom. The minds of the Moslems were kept in perpetual
tension by severe religious exercises, the effect of which was
intensified by fasts and pilgrimages. The peculiar manner of life in the
desert, the birthplace of Islam, also contributed to this; the scanty
diet, the loneliness of the desert, and in the towns the want of civic
life, the poverty of ideas among the Arabs, all helped to produce the
same result. Finally, deception, hypocrisy, and superstition, as, alas,
so often is the case in religious matters, played a great part. Whoever
did not feel ecstatically moved at the recitation of the Koran pretended
to be so, and often thereby, perhaps unconsciously, exercised a great
effect on others. Men began by pretending to feel religious enthusiasm
and ended by believing that they really felt it. Ghazzali mentions in
the Ihya ul-ulum that the prophet commanded that whoever did not feel
moved to tears at the recitation of the Koran should pretend to weep
and to be deeply moved; for, adds Ghazzali sagely, in these matters one
begins by forcing oneself to do what afterwards comes spontaneously.
Moreover, the fact that religious excitement was looked upon as the mark
of a fervent mind and devout intensity, vastly increased the number of
those who claimed mystic illumination.
When verses of the Koran through frequent repetition lost their power to
awaken ecstasy, single lines of fragments of poems sufficed to produce
it. Once the mystic Taury found himself in the midst of a company who
were discussing some scientific question. All took part in it with the
exception of Taury, who suddenly rose and recited:--
Many cooing doves mourn in the mid-day heat,
Sadly under the roof of foliage overhead,
Remembering old companions and days gone by;
Their lament awakens my sorrow also,
My mourning rouses them, and often theirs disturbs my sleep;
I do not understand their cooing, and they do not understand
my weeping:
But through, my sorrow of heart I know them, and through
their heart-sorrow they know me.
Hardly had those present heard these verses than they all fell into a
state of ecstatic contemplation.
Ibrahim ben Adham, the celebrated Sufi, once heard the following
verses:--
Everything is forgiven thee, except estrangement from Us:
We pardon thee all the past, and only that remains which has
escaped Our eyes (_i.e._, nothing).
They immediately caused him to fall into a trance which lasted
twenty-four hours. Ghazzali, who himself borrowed much from the Sufis,
and was a diligent student of their doctrine, seeks to explain these
strange phenomena on psychological grounds. He divides the ecstatic
conditions which the hearing of poetical recitations produces into four
classes. The first, which is the lowest, is that of the simple sensuous
delight in melody. The second class is that of pleasure in the melody
and of understanding the words in their apparent sense. The third class
consists of those who apply the meaning of the words to the relations
between man and God. To this class belongs the would-be initiate into
Sufism; he has necessarily a goal marked out for him to aim at, and this
goal is the knowledge of God, meeting Him and union with Him by the way
of secret contemplation, and the removal of the veil which conceals Him.
In order to compass this aim the Sufi has a special path to follow; he
must perform various ascetic practices and overcome certain spiritual
obstacles in doing so. Now when, during the recitation of poetry, the
Sufi hears mention made of blame or praise, of acceptance or refusal, of
union with the Beloved or separation from Him, of lament over a departed
joy or longing for a look, as often occurs in Arabic poetry, one or the
other of these accords with his spiritual state and acts upon him, like
a spark on tinder, to set his heart aflame. Longing and love overpower
him and unfold to him manifold vistas of spiritual experience.
The fourth and highest class is that of the fully initiated who have
passed through the stages above-mentioned, and whose minds are closed to
everything except God. Such an one is wholly denuded of self, so that he
no longer knows his own experiences and practices, and, as though with
senses sealed, sinks into the ocean of the contemplation of God. This
condition the Sufis characterise as self-annihilation (Fana).
But he who is bereft of self-consciousness is none the less aware of
what is without him; it is as if his consciousness were withdrawn from
everything but the one object of contemplation, _i.e._, God. While he
who is completely absorbed in the contemplation of the object seen is as
little capable of theorising regarding the act of contemplation as
regarding the eye, the instrument of sight, or the heart, the seat of
joyful emotion. Just in the same way a drunken man is not conscious of
his intoxication, so he who is drowned in joy knows nothing of joy
itself, but only knows what causes it. Such a condition of mind may
occur with regard to created things as well as with regard to the
Creator Himself, only in the latter case it is like a flash of
lightning, without permanence. Could such a condition of the soul last
longer, it would be beyond the power of human nature to endure and would
end in overwhelming it. So it is related of Taury that once in a meeting
he heard this verse recited:--
In my love to Thee I attained to a height where to tread
causes the senses to reel.
He immediately fell into an ecstatic condition and ran into a field
where the newly-cut stubble cut his feet like knives. Here he ran about
all night till the morning, and a few days afterwards died.
In this highest condition of ecstasy the soul is to be compared to a
clear mirror, which, itself colourless, reflects the colours of the
object seen in it. Or to a crystal, whose colour is that of the object
on which it stands or of the fluid which it contains. Itself colourless,
it has the property of transmitting colours. This exposition of Sufistic
ecstasy by Ghazzali shows that in his time, far from being on the wane,
such phenomena were on the increase. For when a man of such
comprehensive mind, such a deep thinker, so well versed in the knowledge
of men and especially of his fellow-Moslems, speaks so plainly and
without doubt upon the matter and seeks to explain it psychologically,
this idea must have already taken deep root and spread widely. Ghazzali
is consequently to be regarded as a decided adherent of Sufism and as
approving of the enthusiastic tendencies accompanying it. He narrates in
his autobiography[7] how he left his family in Bagdad and went to
Damascus, where for two whole years he studied Sufism. Afterwards he
made the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. In his lonely musings things
were revealed to him, which, he said, could not be described, and he
arrived at last at the firm conviction that the Sufis were on the way of
God and that their teaching was the best. It must be admitted that by
Sufism Ghazzali meant that kind of it which held fast to the general
principles of Islam and was in accord, even though only externally, with
the orthodox party. These Sufis adhered to the Koran and the traditions,
but interpreted them allegorically. Mysticism must always be propped up
by a positive religion, as it has no support in itself.
[5] From Von Kremer.
[6] Von Kremer.
[7] "The Confessions of Al Ghazzali" (Wisdom of the East
series).