The Mystics of Islam

Let us suppose that the average Moslem could read English, and that we placed in his hands one of those admirable volumes published by the Society for Psychical Research. In order to sympathise with his feelings on such an occasion, we have only to imagine what our own would be if a scientific friend invited us to study a treatise setting forth the evidence in favour of telegraphy and recording well-attested instances of telegraphic communication. The Moslem would probably see in the telegraph some kind of spirit—an afreet or jinnī. Telepathy and similar occult phenomena he takes for granted as self-evident facts. It would never occur to him to investigate them. There is something in the constitution of his mind that makes it impervious to the idea that the supernatural may be subject to law. He believes, because he cannot help believing, in the reality of an unseen world which ‘lies about us,’ not in our infancy alone, but always and everywhere; a world from which we are in no wise excluded, accessible and in some measure revealed to all, though free and open intercourse with it is a privilege enjoyed by few. Many are called but few chosen.

The Sūfīs have always declared and believed themselves to be God’s chosen people. The Koran refers in several places to His elect. According to the author of the Kitāb al-Lumaʿ, this title belongs, firstly, to the prophets, elect in virtue of their sinlessness, their inspiration, and their apostolic mission; and secondly, to certain Moslems, elect in virtue of their sincere devotion and self-mortification and firm attachment to the eternal realities: in a word, the saints. While the Sūfīs are the elect of the Moslem community, the saints are the elect of the Sūfīs.

The Mohammedan saint is commonly known as a walī (plural, awliyā). This word is used in various senses derived from its root-meaning of ‘nearness’; e.g. next of kin, patron, protector, friend. It is applied in the Koran to God as the protector of the Faithful, to angels or idols who are supposed to protect their worshippers, and to men who are regarded as being specially under divine protection. Mohammed twits the Jews with professing to be protégés of God (awliyā lillāh). Notwithstanding its somewhat equivocal associations, the term was taken over by the Sūfīs and became the ordinary designation of persons whose holiness brings them near to God, and who receive from Him, as tokens of His peculiar favour, miraculous gifts (karāmāt, χαρίσματα); they are His friends, on whom “no fear shall come and they shall not grieve”;[13] any injury done to them is an act of hostility against Him.

The inspiration of the Islamic saints, though verbally distinguished from that of the prophets and inferior in degree, is of the same kind. In consequence of their intimate relation to God, the veil shrouding the supernatural, or, as a Moslem would say, the unseen world, from their perceptions is withdrawn at intervals, and in their fits of ecstasy they rise to the prophetic level. Neither deep learning in divinity, nor devotion to good works, nor asceticism, nor moral purity makes the Mohammedan a saint; he may have all or none of these things, but the only indispensable qualification is that ecstasy and rapture which is the outward sign of ‘passing-away’ from the phenomenal self. Any one thus enraptured (majdhūb) is a walī,[14] and when such persons are recognised through their power of working miracles, they are venerated as saints not only after death but also during their lives. Often, however, they live and die in obscurity. Hujwīrī tells us that amongst the saints “there are four thousand who are concealed and do not know one another and are not aware of the excellence of their state, being in all circumstances hidden from themselves and from mankind.”

The saints form an invisible hierarchy, on which the order of the world is thought to depend. Its supreme head is entitled the Qutb (Axis). He is the most eminent Sūfī of his age, and presides over the meetings regularly held by this august parliament, whose members are not hampered in their attendance by the inconvenient fictions of time and space, but come together from all parts of the earth in the twinkling of an eye, traversing seas and mountains and deserts as easily as common mortals step across a road. Below the Qutb stand various classes and grades of sanctity. Hujwīrī enumerates them, in ascending series, as follows: three hundred Akhyār (Good), forty Abdāl (Substitutes), seven Abrār (Pious), four Awtād (Supports), and three Nuqabā (Overseers).

“All these know one another and cannot act save by mutual consent. It is the task of the Awtād to go round the whole world every night, and if there should be any place on which their eyes have not fallen, next day some flaw will appear in that place, and they must then inform the Qutb in order that he may direct his attention to the weak spot and that by his blessing the imperfection may be remedied.”

We are studying in this book the mystical life of the individual Moslem, and it is necessary to keep the subject within the narrowest bounds. Otherwise, I should have liked to dwell on the external and historical organisation of Sūfism as a school for saints, and to describe the process of evolution through which the walī privately conversing with a small circle of friends became, first, a teacher and spiritual guide gathering disciples around him during his lifetime, and finally the head of a perpetual religious order which bore his name. The earliest of these great fraternities date from the twelfth century. In addition to their own members—the so-called ‘dervishes’—each order has a large number of lay brethren attached to it, so that their influence pervades all ranks of Moslem society. They are “independent and self-developing. There is rivalry between them; but no one rules over the other. In faith and practice each goes its own way, limited only by the universal conscience of Islam. Thus strange doctrines and grave moral defects easily develop unheeded, but freedom is saved.”[15] Of course, the typical walī is incapable of founding an order, but Islam has produced no less frequently than Christendom men who combine intense spiritual illumination with creative energy and aptitude for affairs on a grand scale.

The Mohammedan notion of the saint as a person possessed by God allows a very wide application of the term: in popular usage it extends from the greatest Sūfī theosophists, like Jalāluddīn Rūmī and Ibn al-ʿArabī, down to those who have gained sanctity only by losing sanity—victims of epilepsy and hysteria, half-witted idiots and harmless lunatics.

Both Qushayrī[16] and Hujwīrī discuss the question whether a saint can be conscious of his saintship, and answer it in the affirmative. Their opponents argue that consciousness of saintship involves assurance of salvation, which is impossible, since no one can know with certainty that he shall be among the saved on the Day of Judgment. In reply it was urged that God may miraculously assure the saint of his predestined salvation, while maintaining him in a state of spiritual soundness and preserving him from disobedience. The saint is not immaculate, as the prophets are, but the divine protection which he enjoys is a guarantee that he will not persevere in evil courses, though he may temporarily be led astray. According to the view generally held, saintship depends on faith, not on conduct, so that no sin except infidelity can cause it to be forfeited. This perilous theory, which opens the door to antinomianism, was mitigated by the emphasis laid on fulfilment of the religious law. The following anecdote of Bāyazīd al-Bistāmī shows the official attitude of all the leading Sūfīs who are cited as authorities in the Moslem text-books.

“I was told (he said) that a saint of God was living in such-and-such a town, and I set out to visit him. When I entered the mosque, he came forth from his chamber and spat on the floor. I turned back without saluting him, saying to myself, ‘A saint must keep the religious law in order that God may keep him in his spiritual state. Had this man been a saint, his respect for the law would have prevented him from spitting on the floor, or God would have saved him from marring the grace vouchsafed to him.’”

Many walīs, however, regard the law as a curb that is indeed necessary so long as one remains in the disciplinary stage, but may be discarded by the saint. Such a person, they declare, stands on a higher plane than ordinary men, and is not to be condemned for actions which outwardly seem irreligious. While the older Sūfīs insist that a walī who breaks the law is thereby shown to be an impostor, the popular belief in the saints and the rapid growth of saint-worship tended to aggrandise the walī at the expense of the law, and to foster the conviction that a divinely gifted man can do no wrong, or at least that his actions must not be judged by appearances. The classical instance of this jus divinum vested in the friends of God is the story of Moses and Khadir, which is related in the Koran (18. 64-80). Khadir or Khizr—the Koran does not mention him by name—is a mysterious sage endowed with immortality, who is said to enter into conversation with wandering Sūfīs and impart to them his God-given knowledge. Moses desired to accompany him on a journey that he might profit by his teaching, and Khadir consented, only stipulating that Moses should ask no questions of him.

“But first,” he said, “I will tell thee the meaning of that with which thou couldst not have patience. As to the boat, it belonged to poor men, toilers on the sea, and I was minded to damage it, for in their rear was a king who seized on every boat by force. And as to the youth, his parents were believers, and I feared lest he should trouble them by error and unbelief.”

The Sūfīs are fond of quoting this unimpeachable testimony that the walī is above human criticism, and that his hand, as Jalāluddīn asserts, is even as the hand of God. Most Moslems admit the claim to be valid in so far as they shrink from applying conventional standards of morality to holy men. I have explained its metaphysical justification in an earlier chapter.

A miracle performed by a saint is termed karāmāt, i.e. a ‘favour’ which God bestows upon him, whereas a miracle performed by a prophet is called muʿjizat, i.e. an act which cannot be imitated by any one. The distinction originated in controversy, and was used to answer those who held the miraculous powers of the saints to be a grave encroachment on the prerogative of the Prophet. Sūfī apologists, while confessing that both kinds of miracle are substantially the same, take pains to differentiate the characteristics of each; they declare, moreover, that the saints are the Prophet’s witnesses, and that all their miracles (like ‘a drop trickling from a full skin of honey’) are in reality derived from him. This is the orthodox view and is supported by those Mohammedan mystics who acknowledge the Law as well as the Truth, though in some cases it may have amounted to little more than a pious opinion. We have often noticed the difficulty in which the Sūfīs find themselves when they try to make a logical compromise with Islam. But the word ‘logic’ is very misleading in this connexion. The beginning of wisdom, for European students of Oriental religion, lies in the discovery that incongruous beliefs—I mean, of course, beliefs which our minds cannot harmonise—dwell peacefully together in the Oriental brain; that their owner is quite unconscious of their incongruity; and that, as a rule, he is absolutely sincere. Contradictions which seem glaring to us do not trouble him at all.

The thaumaturgic element in ancient Sūfism was not so important as it afterwards became in the fully developed saint-worship associated with the Dervish Orders. “A saint would be none the less a saint,” says Qushayrī, “if no miracles were wrought by him in this world.” In early Mohammedan Vitæ Sanctorum it is not uncommon to meet with sayings to the effect that miraculous powers are comparatively of small account. It was finely said by Sahl ibn ʿAbdallah that the greatest miracle is the substitution of a good quality for a bad one; and the Kitāb al-Lumaʿ gives many examples of holy men who disliked miracles and regarded them as a temptation. “During my novitiate,” said Bāyazīd, “God used to bring before me wonders and miracles, but I paid no heed to them; and when He saw that I did so, He gave me the means of attaining to knowledge of Himself.” Junayd observed that reliance on miracles is one of the ‘veils’ which hinder the elect from penetrating to the inmost shrine of the Truth. This was too high doctrine for the great mass of Moslems, and in the end the vulgar idea of saintship triumphed over the mystical and theosophical conception. All such warnings and scruples were swept aside by the same irresistible instinct which rendered vain the solemn asseverations of Mohammed that there was nothing supernatural about him, and which transformed the human Prophet of history into an omnipotent hierophant and magician.

The popular demand for miracles far exceeded the supply, but where the walīs failed, a vivid and credulous imagination came to their rescue and represented them, not as they were, but as they ought to be. Year by year the Legend of the Saints grew more glorious and wonderful as it continued to draw fresh tribute from the unfathomable ocean of Oriental romance. The pretensions made by the walīs, or on their behalf, steadily increased, and the stories told of them were ever becoming more fantastic and extravagant. I will devote the remainder of this chapter to a sketch of the walī as he appears in the vast medieval literature on the subject.

The Moslem saint does not say that he has wrought a miracle; he says, “a miracle was granted or manifested to me.” According to one view, he may be fully conscious at the time, but many Sūfīs hold that such ‘manifestation’ cannot take place except in ecstasy, when the saint is entirely under divine control. His own personality is then in abeyance, and those who interfere with him oppose the Almighty Power which speaks with his lips and smites with his hand. Jalāluddīn (who uses incidentally the rather double-edged analogy of a man possessed by a peri[17]) relates the following anecdote concerning Bāyazīd of Bistām, a celebrated Persian saint who several times declared in ecstatic frenzy that he was no other than God.