Seeing God in Sufi Qur’an Commentaries: Crossings between This World and the Otherworld 9781474435079

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Seeing God in Sufi Qurʾan Commentaries

EDINBURGH STUDIES IN ISLAMIC APOCALYPTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY This series features studies devoted to end-­time expectations in Islam and the intellectual, social and political contexts in which they occur and become virulent, from the beginning of Islam until the twenty-­first century. Concerning the apocalyptic aspect, the series is dedicated to investigating apocalypticism in Muslim thought and history: notions of the catalytic events ushering in the end of history, mahdism and other forms of (political and non-­political) millenarianism. Eschatologically, studies in this series will examine traditions of imagining and reasoning about the hereafter: judgment, salvation, and reward and punishment in paradise and hell. Series Editors Professor David Cook (Rice University) and Professor Christian Lange (Utrecht University)

Editorial Advisory Board Professor Abbas Amanat, Professor Fred Donner, Professor Jean-­Pierre Filiu, Professor Yohanan Friedman, Professor Mercedes García-­Arenal, Professor Mohammed Khalil, Professor Daniel De Smet and Professor Roberto Tottoli

Titles in the series ‘The Book of Tribulations’: The Syrian Muslim Apocalyptic Tradition, An Annotated Translation by Nuʾaym b. Ḥammād al-Marwazī Edited and translated by David Cook Seeing God in Sufi Qurʾan Commentaries: Crossings between This World and the Otherworld Pieter Coppens Eschatology in Classical Islamic Mysticism: From the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries Michael Ebstein The Jihadist Preachers of the End Times: ISIS Apocalyptic Propaganda Bronislav Ostransky The World of Image in Islamic Philosophy: Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi, Shahrazuri and Beyond L. W. C. van Lit An Apocalyptic History of the Early Fatimid Empire Jamel A. Velji edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/esiae

Seeing God in Sufi Qurʾan Commentaries Crossings between This World and the Otherworld

Pieter Coppens

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Pieter Coppens, 2018

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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 3505 5 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 3507 9 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 3508 6 (epub)

The right of Pieter Coppens to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Contents

List of Figures and Tables List of Abbreviations

viii ix

1 Introduction 1 Main Questions and Objectives 2 The Study of Sufism in its Circles of Influence: Some Notes on Nomenclature 6 Sufism and ‘Orthodoxy’: Periphery and Centre? 10 History and Eschatology in Early Sufism 13 What is a ‘Sufi’ Qurʾan Commentary? Defining the Genre 16 Using Tafsīr as a Source for Intellectual History: Some Notes on Method and Sources 19 Structure of the Work 23 2 Sufi Qurʾan Commentaries: The Rise of a Genre 39 Introduction 39 Nishapur in the Fourth/Tenth and Fifth/Eleventh Centuries 40 Al-Sulamī and his Commentary: Witness to the Formative Period of Sufism 46 Al-Qushayrī and his Commentary 54 Maybudī and his Commentary  57

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Al-Daylamī and his Commentary 61 Rūzbihān al-Baqlī and his Commentary 65 Conclusion 68

3 The Ultimate Boundary Crossing: Paradise and Hell in the Commentaries 83 Introduction 83 Attitudes towards the Hereafter in the Formative Period of Sufism 83 Eschatological Commentary of al-Sulamī’s Major Sources 85 Eschatological Commentary in al-Qushayrī’s Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt 97 Hierarchies in the Hereafter: Maybudī 100 Paradise as Ṣadaqa and Shirk: Al-Daylamī’s Taṣdīq al-maʿārif 104 Eschatological Commentary in Rūzbihān’s ʿArāʾis al-bayān 109 Conclusion 120

4 The First Boundary Crossing: Adam Descending 135 Introduction 135 Adam in the Qurʾan 137 The Banishment of Adam in Tafsīr, Narrative Religious Literature and Theology 138 The Banishment of Adam in Sufism: Non-tafsīr Sources 140 Loss of Nearness and Vision: The Tafsīr of al-Sulamī 143 Teaching Good Manners: The Banishment in al-Qushayrī 146 Elevation through Degradation: The Banishment in Maybudī 148 The Banishment in al-Daylamī 151 The Banishment in Rūzbihān 151 Conclusion 160 5 Excursus: Embodying the Vision of God in Theology and Sufism 174 Introduction 174 Theological Discussions on the Vision of God 176 A Typology of This-worldly Vision in Early Sufism  178

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The Commentators on the Vision of God in their Non-tafsīr Works 184 Conclusion 191

6 Arinī: Declined at the Boundary? 201 Introduction 201 Arinī anẓur ilayk: Q 7:143 between Exegesis and Theology 203 Polyvalence: The Early Sufi Readings in al-Sulamī 208 From Sobriety to Intoxication: Al-Qushayrī Reading Moses 214 Vision of the Heart as a Foretaste of Paradise: Maybudī 215 Vision through Annihilation (Fanāʾ): Al-Daylamī 217 Indirect Vision through God’s Attributes and Acts: Rūzbihān 218 Conclusion 221 7 A Vision at the Utmost Boundary 227 Introduction 227 The Qurʾan and the Night Journey 228 Divine or Angelic Manifestation: Readings of Sūrat al-Najm 229 Vision and Nearness: Al-Sulamī 235 Angelic Manifestation: Al-Qushayrī 236 Muhammad Surpassing Moses: Maybudī 237 Muhammad’s Light Entering God’s World: Al-Daylamī 239 God Seeing God: Rūzbihān’s Vision through Unification (Ittiḥād) 240 Conclusion 246 8 Conclusion

256

Bibliography 267 Index  288

Figures and Tables

Figures 1.1 Eschatological scheme of Baghdadi Sufism 15 1.2 Eschatological structure and crossings of the prophets 24 3.1 Interiorised gardens 119 8.1 Eschatological structure and crossings of the prophets 259 Tables

3.1 Gardens of the knowers 116 7.1 ‘Two bow-lengths away or even closer’ 231 7.2 ‘The heart did not belie what he/it saw’ 233 7.3 ‘He saw him/Him at another descent, at the lote tree of the utmost boundary’ 234 7.4 Genealogy of Sufi sayings in the sources 249 8.1 Visions of God  259

Abbreviations

BSOAS EI2 EI3 EIr

EQ ER2 IJMES JAOS JQS JSS MIDEO SI

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by H. A. R. Gibb et al. Second edition. 12 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1954–2004. The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by Kate Fleet et al. Third edition (online). Leiden: Brill, 2007–. Encyclopaedia Iranica. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater et al. Online edition. New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 1996–. The Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾan. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe et al. 5 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2001–6. Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Lindsay Jones. Second edition. 14 vols. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005. International Journal of Middle East Studies Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Qurʾanic Studies Journal of Sufi Studies Mélanges de l’Institut dominicain d’études orientales du Caire Studia Islamica

TG

ZDMG

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Ess, Josef van. Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam. 6 vols. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1991–7. Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft

introduction | 1

1

Introduction

The Qurʾan commentary attributed to the early Islamic mystic Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896) mentions a story where Sahl is leading the night prayer for his students. When he recites the verse ‘And their Lord gives them a pure drink’ (Q 76:21), he moves his mouth as if he is drinking. When his students ask him afterwards whether he was drinking something during the prayer, he answers, ‘By God, if I had not experienced its taste when I recited it as if I was drinking it, I would not have acted so.’1 Elsewhere in the commentary, another example of this-worldly consumption of a paradisiacal delight is mentioned. While on a seashore a friend of God (walī) offers Sahl a pomegranate from Paradise to eat. When he eats it, in astonishment the walī says, ‘Receive glad tidings of Paradise, for I did not know your rank before you ate it; no one eats of the food of Paradise in this life except the people of Paradise.’2 These two anecdotes testify to the fact that in early Islamic mysticism forms of boundary crossing from the ‘otherworld’ into this world through mystical senses were considered conceivable; in both stories an experience of a taste (dhawq) of the delights of Paradise is claimed. In the first story it is the contemplation and recitation of a Qurʾanic verse during prayer that evokes this experience; according to the author the Qurʾan is at the heart of being able to taste this ­paradisiacal 1

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drink. These two stories from the Qurʾan commentary attributed to Sahl raise several questions about the nature of Sufi conceptions of the boundary between the here and the hereafter, as well as on the place, role and function of the Qurʾanic text within Sufi imaginations of this boundary. It also shows that works of tafsīr (exegesis) composed by Sufis may be a rich source for arriving at a better understanding of Sufi conceptions of the relation between the here and the hereafter. It is these matters that are addressed in this study. In this introductory chapter, the main issues are specified and contextualised, and some aspects of the terminology, theory and method attached to them are discussed. In so doing the salient contributions to each of these themes in the secondary literature are also reviewed. Main Questions and Objectives

This study has two main objectives, which are complementary and mutually inform each other. First, it aims to write a history of Sufi conceptions of the hereafter in what Marshall Hodgson defined as the ‘Islamic Earlier Middle Period’ (950­–1250 ce).3 Second, it aims to provide a better understanding of five Sufi Qurʾan commentaries hailing from the same period. The complementarity of these two subjects lies in the expectation that the vast and little-studied material that is available in Sufi commentaries will prove to be a valuable source for reconstructing Sufi conceptions of the hereafter in this period, while simultaneously the case study of Sufi eschatology serves as a good tool to learn more about the development and characteristics of this genre of Qurʾan commentary in the same period. As for the aspect of Sufi eschatology, the central point of interest in this study is the boundary crossing from this world to the otherworld and vice versa in the form of the vision of God. In his monograph on the Islamic hereafter, Christian Lange contends that typical of Muslim conceptions of the hereafter is that the boundary between the two abodes is ‘rather thin and permeatable’ and frequently crossed, and that ‘the otherworld is in a continuous and intimate conversation with the world of the here-and-now’.4 In this study, I pursue the hypothesis that this is also and even more the case for Sufi conceptions of

introduction | 3

the otherworld. I explore the possibility that in the case of Sufism this boundary crossing revolves especially, though not exclusively, around the topic of meeting with and vision of God. In Sufi imaginations, the otherworld is, I suggest, primarily conceived to be the domain of meeting with God, communion with Him and vision of Him. While most Sunni traditionists and theologians restricted the vision of God to specific moments in Paradise, in some Sufi imaginations this vision would become eternal and uninterrupted. The hereafter is thus God-centred: the enjoyments of Paradise become mere veils to this encounter with God, while the punishment of Hell consists of being deprived from nearness to and vision of Him. Some Sufis also considered nearness to and vision of God to be the main characteristics of the primordial Paradise inhabited by Adam. With Adam’s banishment from this primordial Paradise, humankind was deprived of these characteristics: this-worldly life, then, means to be deprived of His nearness and of the vision of Him. For some Sufis, especially within those strands of Sufism stressing the passionate love (ʿishq) of and longing (shawq) for God, the longing for this meeting with and vision of God in the hereafter was purportedly so strong that they wished to attain it in this world. Some of the stations and states that they claimed to attain during this-worldly life thus took the form of a ‘taste’ of the otherworldly encounter with God. To support these claimed experiences, some Sufi scholars theologically argued that God may also be seen in this world: the highest reward of Paradise could be brought into the present. Two Qurʾanic narratives were often used to legitimise their viewpoint on this issue, centred around two prophetic models: Moses’s request to see God during his seclusion on Mount Sinai (Q 7:143) and Muhammad’s contested visionary encounter with God during his night journey, which is read into Q  53:1–18. These two Qurʾanic passages will form two case studies of boundary crossing during this-worldly life in separate chapters in this study (Chapters 6 and 7), together with Sufi conceptions of the first boundary crossing, namely the banishment of Adam from primordial Paradise (Chapter 4), and the final boundary crossing of humankind to the hereafter (Chapter 3).

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As for the Sufi Qurʾan commentaries, our main point of interest is the relation with contemporary ‘conventional’ strands of exegesis and the question of genealogy and originality. Concerning the first issue, we position ourselves in the historicist and constructivist approach to mysticism, as posed by Steven Katz in his series of essays.5 Along the lines of his approach we argue that to make sense of the Sufi commentaries a mere description of the individual authors’ ideas and systems of thought does not suffice. One has to take into account the broader milieu in which these texts were written and read, and analyse the genealogy of their ideas and systems of thought. Sufi authors did not operate in a vacuum and Sufism does not transcend, nor is separable from, the broader religious tradition from which it emerged. Thus these authors and texts can be properly understood only within their wider religious and historical contexts. By juxtaposing the themes discussed in Sufi Qurʾan commentaries with other, contemporaneous, traditionist and theological narratives in ‘conventional’ works of tafsīr, we can reach a better understanding of the relation between Sufism and its broader religious tradition, and how they mutually influenced each other. Our interest in the issue of genealogy and originality is driven by claims in recent scholarship that the genre of tafsīr is essentially genealogical and conservative in nature: a commentator would only carefully express his own opinions against the backdrop of earlier traditions and opinions.6 Whether this notion of genealogy can equally be applied to Sufi tafsīrs is still to be considered; it conflicts with the general perception of Sufi hermeneutics being determined by ‘experience’, which suggests higher levels of subjectivity and originality. The question is to what extent does the genre of Sufi tafsīr carry the same genealogical characteristics as other, more conventional, genres of tafsīr, and did such Sufi readings of the Qurʾan indeed result in more subjective and ‘original’ commentaries on the Qurʾanic text? The academic study of Sufi works of tafsīr is important for another, more general, reason. To date there has been no academic work available that maps the genre of tafsīr in all its aspects, nor one that depicts a longue durée history of tafsīr through the centuries. Goldziher’s pio-

introduction | 5

neering endeavour in this field evidently deserves mention, and is impressive considering the limited amount of works available to him in his age, but it is outdated in many respects. Much has changed in the field and his Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung cannot count as a proper history or overview. This field is in dire need of a new standard work.7 For a comprehensive understanding of the history of tafsīr we are, therefore, dependent not only on the various single studies produced by scholars in Western academic contexts, but also on the modern and contemporary works of Muslim authors writing from a specific normative background. These works are often influenced by ideological selections and categorisations, in which Sufi works of tafsīr do not always have a place as a matter of course.8 Our dependence on these works is problematic and leaves us at risk of developing an implicitly normative and reductionist view of the history of the genre, often a normativity which leaves Sufism out of the picture. To achieve a complete, non-ideological and non-reductionist understanding of the history of the genre in the future – one that pays proper attention to its inner dynamics and diversity ­– it is necessary to develop a good appreciation of the place of Sufi Qurʾan commentaries within this history. Ultimately, this research hopes to contribute to the history of this subgenre of tafsīr literature, thus giving it its proper place within the larger history of tafsīr that still remains to be written. The importance of studying Sufi eschatology should also be explained in broader conceptual terms. A study of eschatology is not merely a study of the human imagination. It is also, perhaps even more so, a study of anthropology; eschatology is not only about what humans expect will happen in the hereafter, it also influences how they conceive of their lives in the here: their sense of identity, what meanings and purposes they ascribe to their lives, how they value this-worldly life, and ultimately how they structure their lives in the this-worldly realm. In the case of Sufism, then, eschatology is not only about what to expect in the hereafter, it is also, perhaps even more so, about the question of what it means to become a complete human being (insān kāmil) in this world, and so how to rise in the spiritual

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hierarchy of believers. Sufi imaginations of the hereafter and ideas on soteriology may thus have very tangible consequences for power structures and hierarchies in societies in which Sufism plays a significant role. Therefore, it is my hope that this study not only proves to be useful to historians of religion, but that it also provides valuable historical data for anthropologists. Of course, Sufism is not just an old tradition found in books, but it is still a lived reality for many communities worldwide. In this study, the social and political implications of the eschatological imagination and the spiritual authority that a claimed this-worldly vision of God provides within religious communities can only be hinted at, and cannot be delved into more deeply due to a lack of concrete data. For anthropologists, it may be worthwhile to look at the practical implications of conceptions of the hereafter and claims to visions of God in modern Sufi communities.9 The Study of Sufism in its Circles of Influence: Some Notes on Nomenclature

In the above-mentioned story of Sahl, he tasted the pure drink from Paradise while performing the night prayer in congregation and reciting the Qurʾan.10 This embedding of the claimed mystical experience into a conventional ritual like the congregational prayer and the intimate relation of the perceived experience to the recital of the Qurʾan is not a coincidence: it shows that the mystical realm was considered to be deeply embedded within the teachings and practices of the broader religious tradition. This may sound obvious to the modern-day reader, but for a long time this was not considered self-evident in the academic study of mysticism. In Religious Studies there has been a vivid debate on the nature of mysticism and its relation to religious traditions. The study of mysticism has long been dominated by an essentialist approach that portrays mysticism as perennial and ahistoric; in this view mysticism transcends prevailing cultural, intellectual and theological norms, as well as historical and social influences.11 Moreover, mysticism has often been portrayed as radically antidogmatic and as a departure from ‘orthodoxy’.12 During the last three decades this approach has been increasingly contested.

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It has been argued that mysticism is in fact highly influenced by its historical context, that the mystical is always mediated and can be understood only by taking the broader context into consideration. In addition, several scholars have argued that mysticism in general is firmly grounded in the sacred scriptures and languages of its religious traditions, and much more rooted in ‘orthodoxy’ and determined by its socioreligious milieu than was generally believed.13 This debate can be viewed as a continuum, with perennialist universalism at one end and ‘hard’ constructivism at the other. Different arguments can be found in between these two poles that try to define a middle way.14 Part of the problem with this decontextualisation of mysticism is the way that the term taṣawwuf is translated into European languages. It is commonly, but debatably, translated as ‘Sufism’ or ‘Islamic mysticism’.15 While the term ‘Sufism’ as a translation of taṣawwuf may feel natural, and indeed it is commonly used, it is problematic to a certain extent. Some have argued that the ‘-ism’ suffix reifies taṣawwuf as a mystical trend that has an existence separate from Islam, and not simply a discipline of religious learning within Islam like kalām or fiqh, albeit with other goals and methods.16 Carl Ernst, for example, has convincingly shown how this new ‘-ism’ was introduced by British orientalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in their descriptions of Sufism in order to denote a mystical trend in the Muslim world that had no intrinsic relation to Islam: ‘The religious and political imperatives of modern Europe had created the term, which was duly entered in the list of doctrines and philosophies deserving the suffix –ism.’17 However, Ernst also notes that it has become a widely used standard term, whether we like it or not.18 In an excellent introduction to his global history of Sufism, Nile Green suggests speaking of ‘Sufi Islam’ rather than ‘Sufism’, to stress its rootedness in and entanglement with the broader Islamic tradition. He also recognises the strong convention of the term Sufism, however, and ultimately does not break with this convention himself.19 I agree with these scholars that it is difficult to avoid using the term completely, if only because using the Arabic equivalent taṣawwuf throughout a book is tiring for the eyes. The term has become so common and is almost

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unavoidable as a descriptive category; it suffices to be conscious of the term’s conceptual history and not to be lured into the pitfall of considering this ‘-ism’ as essentially separate from or even in opposition to Islam, or into other forms of essentialism. The use of the term ‘mysticism’ is perhaps even more complicated and needs an even greater awareness of the ideological underpinnings of its conceptual history. When we look at the most prominent introductory handbooks to the study of Sufism, the prominence of the term ‘mysticism’ immediately catches the eye: Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Annemarie Schimmel); Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism (Julian Baldick); Islamic Mysticism: A Short History (Alexander Knysh).20 Apparently the idea that taṣawwuf is indeed the ‘mystical’ dimension of Islam is quite widespread. However, in recent scholarship on Sufism we can find vivid reflection on whether we do justice to the tradition of taṣawwuf by applying a term to it that has a conceptual history in a different tradition.21 This needs deeper reflection. What in fact do we mean by the term ‘mysticism’ and what is the conceptual history of this term? What relation to religion and what concept of religion does it imply? I am interested not so much in whether the term is an accurate translation (it is not a translation, after all), but more in how our employment of the term shapes our expectation of what Sufism is or should be, and what issues it deals with or should deal with. Several authors have pointed out how modern perceptions of the term ‘mysticism’ have been shaped by Protestantism and the Enlightenment, and thus have ideological presuppositions that hinder a non-ideological and non-reductionist study of traditions such as taṣawwuf. For example, Richard King states, ‘The prevailing attitudes and presuppositions we have about mysticism are culturally specific and ultimately derive from the philosophical presuppositions of Western thought since the Enlightenment.’22 King considers the privatisation of mysticism and the stress on ‘experience’ as typical for this period. The ‘mystical’ is further juxtaposed with the ‘rational’. The ‘rational’ governs the public realm, while the ‘mystical’ belongs in the ‘private’ realm. King states that under influence of Protestantism

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and the Enlightenment mysticism becomes decontextualised (and thus easy to universalise), élitist (‘experience’ only being attainable by some), antisocial, otherworldly and domesticated (the ‘experience’ is held to be private and not engaged with the world; it does not interfere with the social and political order). This narrowly experiential and privatised approach to mysticism, so states King, occludes or suppresses other aspects of the phenomenon of the mystical that tend to be more important for these figures and the traditions to which they belong – for example, the ethical dimension of the mystical, the link between mysticism and the struggle for authority, or the extent to which the statements and activities of mystics may relate to issues of politics and social justice.23

Something similar has been argued by Omid Safi in relation to Sufism. Safi also takes issue with the conceptualisations of mysticism by the likes of Evelyn Underhill, Margaret Smith and William James, whom he holds to have had a significant influence on the study of Sufism.24 He too considers them to be the products of a post-Enlightenment, Protestant world view. His biggest issue with these conceptualisations is that it seems to leave no space for the interpretation of Sufism in its broader social context. According to this conception, Sufism is considered to be a highly personal endeavour that takes place in the private realm, as does religion in general in the post-Enlightenment world, and that only focuses on ‘mystical experience’. By forcing such a conceptualisation of mysticism onto the Sufi tradition, he argues, one remains stuck in the decontextualised study of individuals who are perceived to best fit the profile of a ‘true’ mystic looking for a personal experience of the divine. One comes to deny the deep social and political implications of Sufism, and the more often communal and institutionalised than individual character of Sufi devotional practices.25 This narrow understanding of mysticism, instead of helping us to give a proper historical analysis of mystical thoughts and expressions, both on the level of ideas and on their social and political causes and implications, rather becomes an agent for modern privatised forms of

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spirituality, which within the framework of post-Enlightenment ideas about religion is considered to be a form of ‘good’, ‘warm’, spiritual religion in opposition to the ‘bad’, ‘cold’ orthodoxy. It is a confusion of ‘is’ and ‘ought’: scholars of mysticism project their wish of what ‘true’ mysticism or ‘true’ religion ought to be onto whom they hold to be exemplary historical figures, who according to them represent the perennial wisdom and truth of the ideas they wish to propound for their own time.26 Following this line of criticism, I prefer to avoid use of ‘Islamic mysticism’ as a direct equivalent for the tradition of taṣawwuf as a whole. Although the less problematic ‘Sufism’ and ‘Sufi’ are used as much as possible in this study, it is sometimes unavoidable to indeed use terms like ‘mysticism’ and ‘mystical’. When this is done, it is important to realise that taṣawwuf for many Islamic scholars, more than an overwhelming personal experience, was first and foremost approached as a discipline of religious knowledge of the self and of approaching the divine that was bound to rules and restrictions. It would be more accurate to consider mysticism – in its epistemological dimension, such as the concept of maʿrifa (experiential knowledge), and its metaphysical, cosmological and visionary dimensions (for example, spiritual travels to malakūt and jabarūt), about which there is no consensus in the Sufi tradition ­– as an aspect of taṣawwuf, but certainly not its absolute essence. It is true that taṣawwuf from its very beginning has had many elements that relate to ‘experience’ (in this study, most notably the experience of seeing God), an inner life and experiential knowledge. However, the concept has historically entailed much more – ritual, cultivation of good character and ethics, social organisation, political engagement – and Sufi scholars themselves have differed throughout history about what has a legitimate place in the science.27 To force a modern understanding onto taṣawwuf is a distortion of this historical reality. Sufism and ‘Orthodoxy’: Periphery and Centre?

In line with this historicising and constructivist approach, the relation of Sufism to Islamic ‘orthodoxy’ becomes problematised as well.

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We are concerned not so much with the question of whether Sufism was historically considered part of orthodoxy or not – no generalised claims can be made about this ­– but rather with what exactly we mean by ‘orthodoxy’, and whether this term can be used legitimately within an Islamic context. As with ‘Sufism’ and ‘mysticism’, scholars of Islam have vividly reflected on the problems of applying this concept to an Islamic context.28 Norman Calder has stressed that Islamic ‘orthodoxy’ is determined by Islamic scholars in a ‘discursive process, an ongoing process of interpreting their own past’.29 In addition, Ahmed El Shamsy has pointed out that ‘orthodoxy’ is a process rather than a ‘thing’, and how this negotiation of (credal) ‘orthodoxy’ in the case of Islam took place in a social and institutional environment, and was constructed in a process in which Islamic scholars, political authorities and even lay believers shared to different extents.30 Brett Wilson has made an excellent overview of the different uses of the term among Islamicists, and raises some critical points. He holds that use of the term ‘orthodoxy’ in Islamic Studies comes from the need to explain Islam to European and American audiences in terms they are familiar with from their ‘own’ tradition. This leads to a Procrustean use of the term, distorting either the term or the tradition to make it fit. This quest for defining ‘orthodox’ Islam, he states, comes from a quest for the ‘essence’ of religion, which is in itself problematic. He concludes that within Islamic Studies there is a lack of clarity over what the term ‘orthodoxy’ means and to what it should be applied; it has been projected onto legal schools (mostly the Ḥanbalī and Shāfiʿī), theological schools (Ashʿarī/Māturīdī), Sunni Islam as a whole, non-Sufis, the ahl al-ḥadīth, the opponents of the philosophers and Muʿtazila, the synthesis of moderate Sufi piety and Ashʿarī theology, the opponents of reform and Muslim modernism, and so on. Generally, there is a Jamāʿī-Sunnī bias in the application of the term.31 One can state that all the above points express concern with certain forms of essentialism and implicit normativity when determining what is ‘orthodox’ Islam by Islamicists, and stress that for Muslims themselves the meaning of what is correct belief and practice has always been and still is constantly negotiated. Both Calder and El Shamsy seem to propagate the

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idea of Islam and its ‘orthodoxy’ as a ‘discursive tradition’, as coined by Talal Asad, as processual and as a network of power.32 One may then ask, as Wilson does, why we still use the term ‘orthodoxy’ at all? What is the term’s function when it has been stripped of its original, essentialist and normative meaning and has been ‘anthropologised’? It may be worthwhile investigating whether it is possible to describe the relation of Sufism to the religion perceived as the status quo in a certain age without mentioning the term ‘orthodox’ at all. The terms ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ might be helpful in that. What I would like to argue is that using these terms, as understood by the sociologist Edward Shils, might be a fruitful way to speak about the relation between Sufism and the religion propagated and institutionalised by the ‘centre’ and its institutions, thus avoiding the reductionist and normative pitfalls of the term ‘orthodoxy’.33 For Shils the centre is not primarily a spatial phenomenon, but one of ‘the centre of the order of symbols, of values and beliefs, which govern the society’.34 These are embodied and propounded by the activities of institutions and organisations, which in their turn are governed by an authority, by elites which see themselves as the custodians of society’s sacred norms. The values and beliefs that these elites pursue through these institutions are what Shils calls the ‘central value system’.35 Therefore, to understand the relation of Sufism to the ‘orthodoxy’ of the age, it may be more rewarding to drop the term ‘orthodoxy’ completely and instead scrutinise the relation of the particular Sufi author to the ‘centre’ and its values and institutions. This implies a move from a pure descriptive history of ideas to a historical­–­sociological analysis of these texts and ideas, a contextual reading of Sufi ideas against the backdrop of the ideas propounded by other intellectual disciplines and their sociohistorical contexts. The texts containing the ideas should be read within their broader confluent circles of influence; not only should the author and his intellectual environment be taken into account, but other contemporaneous intellectual environments and the broader social and political environments all have their influence on the ideas and the ways in which they are captured in a text.36

introduction | 13

Although this study is primarily a text-based history of ideas, and thus closest to the authors’ inner circles, other circles of influence can be found in the background throughout the study. For example, as we shall see, Sufi conceptions of the hereafter served to establish and confirm spiritual hierarchies. These hierarchies had tangible sociopolitical causes and consequences.37 Dealing with as much as five authors unfortunately limits the depth of the analysis of these outer circles. It is mainly in the second chapter that we hope to shed light on the broader circles of influence for each individual author and to determine how close they were to the ‘centre’ and its institutions. History and Eschatology in Early Sufism

Not much is written on Sufi eschatology from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. The only two monographs that have devoted a specific chapter to Sufi conceptions of the hereafter are Soubhi El-Saleh’s La vie future selon le Coran and Christian R. Lange’s Paradise and Hell in Islam.38 El-Saleh, on the one hand, structures his overview around four historical periods and is mostly interested in the question of how Sufis conceived of the nature of punishment and reward in the hereafter, especially whether they recognised its concrete outward character as described in the Qurʾan. On the other hand, Lange discerns six distinct synchronic attitudes towards the hereafter. He identifies these with three different trends within Sufism, not necessarily bound to specific historical periods.39 Both studies are largely based on non-tafsīr sources. However, these sources from Sufism’s formative and classical periods do not show a strong interest in the hereafter. As El-Saleh and Lange have also noted, the theme of love and longing for God had largely superseded the occupation with Paradise and Hell in Sufi imaginations from the third/ninth century onwards, which led to a disregard for issues pertaining to the hereafter.40 Consequently, well-known handbooks from the likes of al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988), Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 386/996), al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) and al-Hujwīrī (d. 465/1072­–469/1077) do not contain separate sections on issues pertaining to the hereafter.41 It is therefore not easy to precisely reconstruct Sufi conceptions of the

14 | seeing god in sufi qur ʾan commentaries

hereafter based only on these sources. It is here that a close reading of Sufi Qurʾan commentaries may prove to be rewarding. Since a significant number of verses in the Qurʾan deal with Paradise and Hell, one may also expect that a significant portion of commentary reflects upon them from a Sufi perspective. It is therefore hoped that a careful reading of our sources will shed new light on, or at least add extra details to, the valuable studies of El-Saleh and Lange. Lange describes the Islamic conception of the relation between dunyā and ākhira in two modes: a diachronic mode and a synchronic mode. The diachronic mode takes the fall from the primordial Paradise and the banishment to dunyā as the starting point of history. With the Day of Judgement history will come to an end and be replaced by ākhira, the domain of recompense in Paradise and Hell. This structure thus has a linear conception of history as its basis. The synchronic mode that Lange describes is interested not so much in the linear understanding of dunyā and ākhira, but rather in an immanent as well as imminent conception of the otherworld: ‘There is a continuum between the two, a relationship of synchronity, in the Jungian sense of a meaningful coincidence.’42 Paradise and Hell do not only coexist with this world, states Lange, they are ‘everywhen’, and may thus also immanently appear within this world.43 In the case of Sufism, I propose a combination of these two modes: while a linear understanding of history and eschatology remains integral to Sufi theories, the otherworld may also be synchronically immanent in this world, most poignantly in the form of certain Sufi stations and states. For example, Karamustafa defines the grander eschatological scheme of Baghdadi Sufism as determined by proximity to God. According to this scheme, all humans experienced this proximity to God during the audience at the primordial covenant (Q 7:172), with the promise that this proximity would become even more intimate in Paradise. During this-worldly life, this sense of proximity is principally lost. However, it can be preserved and renewed during this-worldly life by living in constant recognition of God. The ultimate goal of Sufi training and the cultivation of an inner life is the reactualisation and reattainment of this proximity to God.44 The state

introduction | 15 Figure 1.1. Eschatological scheme of Baghdadi Sufism

Figure 1.1 Eschatological scheme of Baghdadi Sufism

of the primordial covenant – and of Paradise ­– can thus be reattained in the inner constitution of the Sufi. Figure 1.1 shows a visualisation of this scheme. Böwering has distilled a similar scheme from the works of Sahl al-Tustarī (d.  283/896). This-worldly life according to Sahl, states Böwering, finds its God-oriented motivation in the reactualization of the Day of Covenant ( yaum al-mītāq) and is driven in its tendency towards the anticipatory integration of the Day of Resurrection ( yaum al-qiyāma). Both ‘Days’ fall outside the phenomenal existence of man and lie within the realm of man’s pre-existence and post-existence in the very presence of God.45

This scheme also takes the primordial covenant as a starting point. Böwering defines this ‘Day of Covenant’ as pre-existential infinity (ibtidāʾ). On this day humankind professed the oneness of God and confessed His Lordship (rubūbiyya). The ultimate return after ‘phenomenal existence’ is to ‘post-existential infinity’ (intihāʾ). On the Day of Resurrection humans are reintegrated into the lasting presence of the Real, that is God (ḥaqq). Humanity has an encounter with God (liqāʾ al-ḥaqq), exists in His permanence (al-baqāʾ maʿ al-ḥaqq) and has a visual perception of God (al-naẓar ilā al-ḥaqq). During this-worldly life, we try to reach these moments by travelling the mystical path, thus overcoming our lower selves (nafs) in favour of our hearts (qalb). The reactualisation of the Day of the Covenant happens by means of experiential knowledge of God (maʿrifa). The Day of Resurrection is anticipated in the experiences of unveiling (mukāshafa), visual



16 | seeing god in sufi qur ʾan commentaries

beholding (muʿāyana) and contemplative witnessing (mushāhada) of the realities of faith.46 It is thus in the mystical moment that thisworldly life is temporarily transcended and that a foretaste of states from the world to come can be attained. The conceived meta-structures of both Karamustafa and Böwering hint at a form of boundary crossing from this world to the otherworld during this-worldly life. In the mystical moment, by attaining a mystical state, the same state as that of pre-existence can be experienced, as well as that of the hereafter. The mystic either temporarily crosses the boundary from this world to the otherworld, or an otherworldly reality temporarily bursts into this world. It is this notion of boundary crossing through Sufi stations and states that I hold to be typical, though not universal, in Sufi conceptions of the relation between this world and the otherworld during the period of our interest. It is also this meta-structure which shapes this study, albeit with some slight modifications. What is a ‘Sufi’ Qurʾan Commentary? Defining the Genre

In his article ‘Mysticism and the Interpretation of Sacred Scripture’, Steven Katz points out how the decontextualising attitude towards mysticism in most extant scholarly literature has led to ‘a nearly uniform neglect of the significance of sacred scriptures’.47 This strong claim cannot equally be made for the study of the Qurʾan in relation to Sufism. Pioneers in the study of Sufism such as Louis Massignon and Paul Nwyia have indeed paid substantive attention to the role of the Qurʾan in the shaping of Sufism and its technical terms, arguing that the Qurʾan itself formed the basis of this religious discipline.48 A fair amount of attention has also been paid to the appropriation and use of the Qurʾan in Sufism, going as far back as Ignaz Goldziher’s Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung.49 He was the first to write about mystical exegesis as a distinct approach within the discipline of Qurʾanic exegesis. He defines mystical exegesis quite broadly, broader than one would do in the present, to even include the appropriation of the Qurʾan by the Neoplatonic Ikhwān al-ṣafāʾ (Brethren of Purity). To Goldziher, Sufism and ‘der ursprüngliche, traditionelle Islam’ are in

introduction | 17

radical opposition to each other.50 Contrary to Nwyia and Massignon, in this way he suggests that Sufi approaches to the Qurʾan are a form of eisegesis: Sufi ideas do not emerge from the reading of the Qurʾan, they are often even in opposition to its text. They come into existence independently of the Qurʾan, or have foreign origins, and are only later read into it. He states that Sufis therefore needed to apply allegorical reading to the Qurʾan to find a way to relate their ideas to it. Besides the Ikhwān al-ṣafāʾ, Goldziher is mainly concerned with the views of ‘major’ Sufi figures like Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) and Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) on allegorical exegesis and the use of the Qurʾan in their works. He does not pay specific attention to purposely written Qurʾan commentaries, as is done in this study.51 The idea of a separate Sufi genre of tafsīr seems to be a modern invention. Premodern Muslim biographical encyclopaedias on exegetes (ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn) do include authors of Sufi commentaries such as al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) and al-Simnānī (d. 736/1336), but they do not mention a separate ‘genre’ of Sufi tafsīr. The identity of the authors as Sufis or renunciants is specifically mentioned, but is not considered to define their works of tafsīr as such.52 However, a normative judgement is sometimes made on these works. Al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), for example, categorised al-Sulamī’s commentary as not being worthy of praise (ghayr maḥmūd) because of its alleged Ismāʿīlī (bāṭinī) and Qarmatian tendencies.53 Modern Muslim historians of tafsīr do distinguish a separate Sufi genre within tafsīr. For example, the most prominent twentieth-century historiography by al-Dhahabī treats Sufi commentaries on the Qurʾan in a special chapter.54 He distinguishes between two forms of Sufi tafsīr, the first by method of speculative philosophy (naẓarī), the second by method of allusion (ishārī). The first he considers to be a form of eisegesis, where thoughts that the author has developed independently from the Qurʾan are read into and forced upon the Qurʾanic text. The second he defines as: ‘Interpretation of the verses of the Qurʾan differing from its apparent meaning, in accordance with hidden allusions that appear to the masters of the path (arbāb al-sulūk). This may be in conformity with the intended apparent meanings.’ 55 Among the exegetes

18 | seeing god in sufi qur ʾan commentaries

he mentions are al-Tustarī, al-Sulamī, al-Qushayrī and Rūzbihān, all of whom also figure prominently in our study. The Turkish scholar of Sufism and tafsīr, Süleyman Ateș, like his Egyptian colleague, considers the hermeneutical method of allusion (ishāra) to be the common denominator for the Sufi genre; he speaks of a school of ishārī tafsīr (işârî tefsîr okulu) and includes this study’s authors in his overview, with the exception of al-Daylamī.56 The academic study of Sufi Qurʾan commentaries seems to have followed this modern Muslim tendency to define the genre according to their hermeneutical methods: a commentary is considered to be ‘Sufi’ when it refers to terms like ‘allusion’ (ishāra), ‘unveiling’ (kashf ), and ‘inward’ (bāṭin) to describe its method of interpretation. Alan Godlas, like Ateș, speaks of a genre of ishārī tafsīr, or tafsīr bi’l-ishāra. According to Godlas, what all of these commentaries have in common, despite large differences in style and content, is that the interpretative method involves an element of ‘unveiling’ (kashf ) and is thus experiential. The ‘unveiled’ meanings of the verses mostly relate to Sufi practice and doctrines, and the authors did not consider them to negate the apparent meanings of the Qurʾanic text. He places the commentaries in his overview on a continuum of ‘moderate’ and ‘esoteric’ works, the ‘moderate’ ones being works that also include exoteric forms of exegesis.57 Kristin Zahra Sands also upholds the idea of a genre defined by a shared set of hermeneutical assumptions and elements that can be characterised as ‘Sufi’. She argues that these works can legitimately be considered a subgenre of tafsīr because ‘they follow the lemma and comment format of tafsīr, and address the Qurʾān in a sequential, even if in a more selective manner’.58 She does make it clear that Sufi authors themselves hardly ever self-defined as Sufis and preferred to label themselves as, for example, ‘the people of allusion and understanding’ (ahl al-ishāra wa’l-fahm), ‘the people of meanings’ (ahl al-maʿānī) or ‘the people of love’ (ahl al-ʿishq).59 More recently, Jamal Elias has taken a critical stance against the notion of a ‘genre’ of Sufi tafsīr. His main objection to the notion of a separate genre is that Sufi commentaries on the Qurʾan, according to him, ‘lack a shared structure or identifiable set of concerns that distinguish them

introduction | 19

from the wider category of tafsīr literature’.60 Moreover, he claims that the term ‘Sufi’ is not defined properly in relation to tafsīr. We will come back to this issue of a ‘genre’ of Sufi tafsīr at the end of Chapter 2. There, after a careful reading of the authors’ own introductory statements, I propose that it is indeed justified to speak of a separate ‘genre’ of Sufi tafsīr. The main arguments for this are that most of our authors refer to the same set of hermeneutical terms in their introductions and use the same sayings from earlier generations to legitimise them, and all refer back to the same earlier works of tafsīr, thus considering themselves part of the same genealogical tradition. Using Tafsīr as a Source for Intellectual History: Some Notes on Method and Sources

The study of tafsīr in general, and Sufi tafsīr in particular, has seen a remarkable bloom in recent years, to the extent that one can now legitimately speak of a discipline of tafsīr studies within Islamic Studies. While scholarly interest in tafsīr was historically largely determined by its usability for reconstructing meanings of the Qurʾanic text, there is now a strong trend for genuine interest in the works of tafsīr themselves as a literary genre and their function in their wider historical contexts.61 In previous scholarship, as Görke and Pink state, ‘commentaries on the Qurʾan were usually consulted rather than studied’.62 Although in this study commentaries are indeed also used as consultation for the case study of eschatology and the vision of God, we do wish to generate new knowledge on the workings of the genre as well: the works themselves have intrinsic value for our study. Why use tafsīr as a source for intellectual history? In general, the Qurʾan has been accepted as the single most important religious source by all Muslims throughout Islamic history, regardless of sectarian affiliation, region or era. Each of these sectarian affiliations, regions and eras has produced its own works of tafsīr, reflecting the most important viewpoints and deliberations on the Qurʾan from their respective traditions and socioreligious milieus. Each work of tafsīr represents an accumulated and communal understanding of the

20 | seeing god in sufi qur ʾan commentaries

Qurʾan in a certain time and context.63 It thus ‘may validly be treated as a window looking into the Islamic Weltanschauung of any given generation’.64 By making an analysis and comparison of commentaries from our specific period of interest on verses relevant to our case study, a bird’s-eye view of the historical development of the commentary on the verse in that period is possible. In this study, one of the main questions is how the notion of tafsīr as a ‘genealogical’ genre relates to the widely shared idea that Sufi hermeneutics are ‘experiential’, most notably in the form of allusive (ishārī) interpretations of the Qurʾan. The claim of an ‘experiential’ reading of the Qurʾan made by Sufi authors, and followed by some academic scholars, implies a higher level of originality and subjectivity.65 Is it indeed the case that our commentaries have a higher degree of originality and diversity in their style and content? Do the same rules of genealogy and tafsīr as an essentially ‘conservative’ genre apply to this branch? The genre of tafsīr being ‘genealogical’ basically means that later works draw on earlier works, adapting, refuting, abridging and modifying the extant material. This seemingly repetitive and noninnovative characteristic of an ever-growing body of tafsīr literature is one of the reasons why the academic study of tafsīr has long been disregarded. However, the potential of precisely this genealogical character for understanding the identity of the individual author is increasingly being discovered and explored in more recent studies. As Norman Calder notes in his classical article ‘Tafsīr from Ṭabarī to Ibn Kathīr’: The process of citing authorities and providing multiple readings is in part a declaration of loyalty: it defines the tradition within which one works. It is also a means to establish the individuality or the artistry of a given mufassir: the selection, presentation and organization of citations constitutes always a process that is unique to one writer.66

On a similar note McAuliffe states: ‘It is in the very process of selection, organization, presentation, and assessment of this material from one’s exegetical predecessors that the individuality and originality of

introduction | 21

the particular commentator demonstrates itself.’67 For this reason, Saleh writes: ‘One cannot study any given Qurʾan commentary in isolation. It has to be seen in conjunction with the tradition that produced it and the influence it left behind.’68 Following this notion, the study of a sequence of commentaries as proposed in this study thus not only gives insight into the interaction between the Sufi commentary and its peculiar historical circumstances, but also enables one to see how a specific verse was interpreted in relation to previous commentaries.69 How did the interpretation ‘grow’ within the period? Which sources, references and technical terms were added or omitted, and what continuities and changes can be perceived, and why did these occur? How do they relate to the historical particularities of the author’s era? When approached with these questions in mind, tafsīr literature may prove to be a gold mine for a better understanding of the intellectual history of a certain age. The scope of this study may look overambitious at first sight, covering as it does five Qurʾan commentaries authored in a time frame of no less than two centuries. However, in recent years valuable monographs have been published on some of these sources, which make more longue durée studies of the genre, especially with a clear thematic focus like eschatology, a conceivable enterprise. The body of literature on Sufi tafsīr is growing steadily, as is the body of available primary sources. Therefore, I believe it is the right moment to look beyond a single source or author and attempt instead a bird’s-eye view of a whole period through a specific case study such as eschatology. In Chapter 2 our main authors, their Qurʾan commentaries and their Sitz im Leben will be discussed. Here we will shortly introduce them, the sources that are available to us and the possible problems with the editions. A general problem in the study of Sufi tafsīr is the lack of critical editions, which in some cases means taking a leap of faith in trusting the uncritical editions that are available. It is hoped that the critical editing and publishing of the available manuscripts will become a larger priority for the field, enabling more meticulous future studies.70 Our study begins with Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī’s

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(d. 412/1021) Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr and stretches all the way to Rūzbihān al-Baqlī al-Shīrāzī’s (d. 606/1209) ʿArāʾis al-bayān fī ḥaqāʾiq al-Qurʾān. It encompasses nearly all of the Sufi commentaries in between these two that are known to us as integral texts: Abū’l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī’s (d. 465/1072) Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt, Rashīd al-Dīn Maybudī’s (fl. second half of the fifth/eleventh to first half of the sixth/twelfth century) Kashf al-asrār wa-ʿuddat al-abrār and Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī’s (d. 587/1191?) Taṣdīq al-maʿārif.71 Most of these sources are authored by relatively well-known and well-studied figures in the history of Sufism, who are generally recognised as important figures in the ‘formative’ and ‘classical’ periods of Sufism. Their commentaries have appeared in at least one or more editions (unfortunately mostly uncritical editions) and have provoked some scholarly interest. Al-Sulamī is widely recognised as an important collector and compiler at the end of the formative period. Several of his works have been critically edited, among which is his minor Qurʾan commentary, the Ziyādāt Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr.72 A critical edition of his major Qurʾan commentary is in preparation and an uncritical edition is available.73 In addition, al-Qushayrī and his Qurʾan commentary have seen warm scholarly interest. There are two uncritical editions available of his Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt, as well as a monograph on this tafsīr.74 On the life of Maybudī (d. early sixth/ twelfth century) and his non-tafsīr works precious little is known, and very few studies are available. His voluminous Qurʾan commentary has appeared in several printed editions, and has mainly been studied by Annabel Keeler.75 The life and works of Rūzbihān al-Baqlī are relatively well studied, several critical editions of his texts and monographs being available.76 His ʿArāʾis al-bayān fī ḥaqāʾiq al-Qurʾān is still awaiting a critical edition, but has been published uncritically.77 The exception to this relatively developed scholarly interest is Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī and his Qurʾan commentary. There is hardly any biographical information available, and none of his works have been critically edited and published thus far. Furthermore, for his tafsīr we have to rely on manuscripts.78 He may be considered a minor figure in the history of Sufism. He has certainly not made it into the canon of great Sufi figures, neither in the biographical writings of

introduction | 23

the Sufi tradition that he himself was part of, nor in the contemporary academic study of Sufism.79 Still, it is worthwhile including him and his commentary in this study. Making minor figures part of one’s endeavour to understand the history of ideas in a certain era may very well help to elucidate the broader intellectual contexts in which the grander names flourished. One should understand not only the pinnacles of higher culture to understand the thought of a certain era, but also those we have come to consider as lesser figures.80 Structure of the Work

The structure of this study is inspired by the perceived eschatological metanarratives discussed above, with some adjustments. In line with the themes of proximity and experiential knowledge that are central to the boundary crossings that Karamustafa and Böwering perceive, we take the vision of God as the main eschatological theme for the boundary crossing from this world to the otherworld. We consider the vision (ruʾya) of God in the hereafter, together with the meeting (liqāʾ) and nearness (qurb) of Him to be the most dominant in Sufi descriptions of the hereafter. The narrative that structures our study does not necessarily appear as such in all of the commentaries explicitly, nor is it necessarily present implicitly. As we shall see, the commentaries differ significantly in their modes of Sufi thought, and not all authors attach the same value to the themes of nearness and vision. Although this structure can be found in some works, it in the first place serves as an analytical tool and narrative structure. We feel that it delivers a suitable larger narrative for the themes of our interest. It also serves well to locate the major differences of the authors in their approaches to Sufism. The structure depicts four (attempted) crossings of the boundary between this world and the otherworld. It begins with the banishment of Adam from Paradise, continues with attempts by Moses and Muhammad to reattain the vision of God, and ends with the final crossing after the Day of Judgement. My proposed structure is visualised as seen in Figure 1.2. To be able to tackle the main themes of the study it is necessary

24 | seeing god in sufi qur ʾan commentaries

Figure 1.2 Eschatological structure and crossings of the prophets

to first be properly aware of the historical background of the authors in the Islamic Earlier Middle Period in Persia, and to come to a more intimate knowledge of the source material we are working with; they have to be placed within their circles of influence. In Chapter 2, therefore, we first discuss the historical background to the rise of Sufi commentaries of the Qurʾan in Nishapur in the fifth/eleventh century, based largely on secondary literature. After that, we chronologically introduce the five authors that are central to this study. After highlighting the most important facts from their biographies and placing them within their broader circles of influence, we discuss their tafsīr works and the hermeneutical practices that they proposed and defended in those works. Based on this analysis, we conclude that it is indeed legitimate to consider these works as part of a ‘genre’ of Sufi tafsīr that takes al-Sulamī’s tafsīr as its collective reference point. For our case study of Sufi eschatology, we consider it most appropriate for understanding the larger narrative to begin with the end in mind. Chapter 3, therefore, first deals with the theme of ‘the ultimate boundary crossing’ from this world to the otherworld in Sufism. We conclude that the most dominant themes are indeed nearness to God in the hereafter, the meeting with Him and the vision of Him. This general conclusion does not result from being selective with the source material to ‘argue’ for this specific point. We aim to sketch as complete

introduction | 25

a picture as possible of the conceptions of the hereafter found in the five main Sufi Qurʾan commentaries. Therefore, this chapter is rather descriptive and inclusive. We consider this to be justified, since this is the first in-depth study of these sources on this particular theme, and the findings may prove to be relevant for future research on the topic of Sufism and the hereafter. After having covered the ‘ultimate boundary crossing’ and having established the God-centredness and focus on nearness and vision of the Sufi hereafter, in Chapter 4 we concentrate on discussions of the first boundary crossing: Adam’s banishment from Paradise. Instead of the primordial covenant that Böwering and Karamustafa take as the anchor point of Sufi imaginations, our interest is in the role played by the loss of the primordial Paradise in Sufi eschatology. First, we consider why Adam had to be banished, according to our authors: how did they interpret the story to fit within God’s larger (eschatological) plan for humankind, and how did they deal with the questions of predestination and theodicy related to it? Second, we try to understand what exactly our authors held to have been ‘lost’ by the banishment: what constitutes the yearning for Paradise in this-worldly life? What did Sufis hope might be regained? Is it indeed the typical Sufi eschatological themes of nearness to and vision of God? After discussing the final and then the first boundary crossings, which together form the first part of our case studies, Chapter 5 offers an excursion into theoretical debates on otherworldly and thisworldly visions of God in theology and Sufism, before moving on to the second part, which considers two prophetic case studies of visionary crossings from this world to the otherworld. This is important to adequately contextualise and appreciate the discussions on the vision of God in the following two chapters. After presenting an overview of theological positions on the vision of God and their main arguments, we analyse the positions of our study’s Sufi authors on this specific issue through a reading of their non-tafsīr works. Chapter 6 focuses on the discussions in our Qurʾan commentaries about Moses’s request to see God (Q 7:143). We argue that within some Sufi understandings this story signifies an attempt to ­temporarily

26 | seeing god in sufi qur ʾan commentaries

restore a paradisiacal state of constant vision in this world; the yearning for the vision of God promised in Paradise was so strong that they looked for ways to have a similar experience in the earthly abode. As we shall see, for some this took the form of a visionary encounter, a foretaste of what was to come in the hereafter. In Chapter 7, another prophetic model of travelling to the otherworld and experiencing the vision of God is scrutinised. We discuss the commentaries on the first eighteen verses of Sūrat al-Najm, which exegetes have generally identified with the heavenly journey of Muhammad. We pay particular attention to a couple of verses that address a visionary meeting between two unidentified entities. Finally, we discuss whether our commentators considered this to be Muhammad’s vision of God and, if so, which modalities of vision they proposed, before arriving at a number of important conclusions in Chapter 8. Notes

 1 Sahl al-Tustarī, Tafsīr al-Tustarī, trans. Annabel Keeler and Ali Keeler (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011), 260.  2 Ibid., 15.  3 Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 2:6–7.  4 Christian R. Lange, Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 11–12.  5 Steven T. Katz, ‘The “Conservative” Character of Mysticism’, in Mysticism and Religious Traditions, ed. Steven T. Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 3–60; Steven T. Katz, ‘Mysticism and the Interpretation of Sacred Scripture’, in Mysticism and Sacred Scripture, ed. Steven T. Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 7–67; cf. Niklaus Largier, ‘Mysticism, Modernity and the Invention of Aesthetic Experience’, Representations 105, no. 1 (2009): 37–60; Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 52–8.  6 Walid Saleh, The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qurʾān Commentary of al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 9, 14–15;

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 7

 8

 9

10 11

Jane D. McAuliffe, Qurʾānic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 291. Ignaz Goldziher, Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung: an der Universität Upsala gehaltene Olaus-Petri-Vorlesungen (Leiden: Brill, 1970). This was already noted by Andrew Rippin in 1982: ‘One of the surprising elements in tafsīr studies is that we still lack a general introduction to the genre as a whole . . . The other point which needs attention is the production of a historical synthesis of Islamic exegesis to finally replace Goldziher’s Richtungen.’ Andrew Rippin, ‘The Present Status of Tafsīr Studies’, The Muslim World 72, nos 3–4 (1982): 237–8. Three decades later, the same still holds true, although many more publications on the subject of tafsīr are available. Walid Saleh has convincingly shown how normative and ideological choices play an important role in the selections and representations made in modern historiographies of tafsīr from the Arab and Muslim worlds, and how this influences the categorisations and conceptual frameworks utilised in the academic study of the genre. He has also pointed out how ideological choices in the printing of works of tafsīr at the time of the rise of the printing press in the Arab world has distorted our understanding of the history of the genre. Walid Saleh, ‘Preliminary Remarks on the Historiography of Tafsīr in Arabic: A History of the Book Approach’, JQS 12 (2010): 6–11. A good recent example of this is Benedikt Pontzen, who has researched claims of seeing God and the construction of spiritual authority among the Tijaniyya in Asante, Ghana. Benedikt Pontzen, ‘On ‘Seeing God’ and its Ambiguities: Religious Claims and Counterclaims among Muslims in Asante, Ghana’ (unpublished paper, 2015). Tustarī, Tafsīr al-Tustarī (trans. Keeler and Keeler), 260. Seyyed H. Nasr, for example, gives one of his chapters the subtitle ‘Reflections on the Manifestation of Sufism in Time and Space’, stating in that chapter that ‘it is necessary to recall how important it is to escape the entrapment of historicism in order to understand a reality that transcends time and history’. Sufism is here portrayed as having a reified perennial existence; it is not determined by history, its reality transcends history and merely manifests itself differently within the particularities of a certain age. Its essence perennially remains the same in this conception. Seyyed H. Nasr, The Garden of Truth: The Vision and

28 | seeing god in sufi qur ʾan commentaries

12

13

14

15

16

17

Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition (New York: Harper One, 2007), 164. For an overview, typology and criticism of such approaches, see ER2, s.v. ‘Mysticism [Further Considerations]’, by Peter Moore, 4:6355–9. Katz, Mysticism and Sacred Scripture; Katz, Mysticism and Religious Traditions; Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘The Mystic East’ (London and New York: Routledge, 1999). For a typology and some examples of these middle ways, see Jerome Gellman, ‘Mysticism’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2014 edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ spr2014/entries/mysticism (accessed 1 February 2015); Wolfson, Speculum, 52–8. The issue of translating the technical vocabulary of Sufis reaches further than this term. When working with Sufi texts one is confronted with the problem that often equivalents from (the study of) Christian mysticism are used, concepts and terms that have their own genealogies within a different religious tradition (e.g. ‘saints’ being used for  awliyāʾ). In this study, such equivalents are avoided as much as possible. We have tried to stay as close as possible to the literal Arabic meanings. See Sara Sviri, ‘Sufism: Reconsidering Terms, Definitions and Processes in the Formative Period of Islamic Mysticism’, in Les maîtres soufis et leurs disciples. IIIe–Ve siècles de l’hégire (IXe–XIe  s.). Enseignement, formation et transmission, eds Geneviève Gobillot and Jean-Jacques Thibon (Beirut: Institut français du Proche-Orient, 2012), 17–34; Barbara R. von Schlegell, ‘Translating Sufism’, JAOS 122, no. 3 (2002): 578–86. This can perhaps be felt more strongly in the German ‘translation’ of taṣawwuf used by Richard Gramlich. He uses the suffix ‘-tum’, which evokes the association of a ‘Sufitum’ as a religion besides ‘Judentum’ and ‘Christentum’. Richard Gramlich, Alte Vorbilder des Sufitums (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1995–6). Carl W. Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism: An Essential Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of the Mystical Tradition of Islam (Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 1997), 16. Linda Sijbrand has pointed out that these orientalists did not form their ideas on Sufism in a vacuum, and were influenced by anti-Sufi tendencies within the Islamic world

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itself that also considered Sufism to be outside the realm of Islam. Linda Sijbrand, ‘Orientalism and Sufism: An Overview’, in Orientalism Revisited: Art, Land and Voyage, ed. Ian R. Netton (London: Routledge, 2013), 98–114. 18 Ernst, Shambhala Guide to Sufism, 18–19. 19 Nile Green, Sufism: A Global History (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 8. 20 Julian Baldick, Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism (London: I.  B. Tauris, 1989); Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); Alexander D. Knysh, Islamic Mysticism: A Short History (Leiden: Brill, 2000). 21 See Sviri, ‘Reconsidering Terms’; Ernst, Shambhala Guide to Sufism, 1–31. 22 King, Orientalism and Religion, 34. 23 Ibid., 24. 24 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans Green, 1902); Margaret Smith, An Introduction to Mysticism (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1931); Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness (London: Methuen, 1911). Safi sees this type of thought on mysticism represented in, among others, Annemarie Schimmel’s Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Omid Safi, ‘Bargaining with Baraka: Persian Sufism, “Mysticism”, and Pre-Modern Politics’, The Muslim World 90 (2000): 260–3. 25 Safi, ‘Bargaining with Baraka’, 260–3. Fairness requires one to mention that this decontextualising essentialist approach, although certainly present, has never been the only dominant approach in the study of Sufism, and that generally speaking proper historical and philological studies have been present in the study of Sufism from very early on, even before the criticism of Katz and his like. See Ahmet Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), vii–viii. In recent years especially, more and more valuable historicising work has been done. An excellent recent example is John J. Curry and Erik S. Ohlander, eds, Sufism and Society: Arrangements of the Mystical in the Muslim World, 1200–1800 (London and New York: Routledge, 2012). 26 Also Bernd Radtke, in a polemical and sometimes slightly unfair article, takes issue with what he holds to be the ‘suppression’ and ‘projection’ of Sufism by Western scholars. He states that the ‘long-lived cliché that

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27

28

29 30 31

Sufism is in opposition to the Law’ is an attempt by scholars of Sufism, whom he describes as ‘the convinced, the believers’ (in ‘mysticism’, that is), to create a ‘warmer Islam’ for those who tend to find orthodoxy unsympathetic. Radtke stresses how deeply Sufism is actually rooted within Islamic tradition, and from its very early beginnings was an ‘orthodox’ movement. He accuses scholars of Sufism of suppressing the textual evidence to the relation of Sufism with this ‘colder’ Islam. The ‘projection’ lies in their tendency to read their own expectations and aspirations into their object of study. He holds that conviction is more important to them than scholarly knowledge. Bernd Radtke, ‘Between Projection and Suppression: Some Considerations Concerning the Study of Sufism’, in Shīʿa Islam, Sects and Sufism: Historical Dimensions, Religious Practice and Methodological Considerations, ed. Frederick de Jong (Utrecht: M. Th. Houtsma Stichting, 1992), 70–82. See also Bernd Radtke, ‘Warum ist der Sufi orthodox?’, Der Islam 71, no. 2 (1994): 302–7. See Ovamir Anjum, ‘Sufism without Mysticism? Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Objectives in Madārij al-sālikīn’, in A Scholar in the Shadow: Essays in the Legal and Theological Thought of Ibn Qayyim al-Ğawziyyah, edited by Caterina Bori and Livnat Holzman, Oriente Moderno monograph series 90, no. 1 (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 2010), 161–88. See Brett Wilson, ‘The Failure of Nomenclature: The Concept of “Orthodoxy” in the Study of Islam’, Comparative Islamic Studies 3, no. 2 (2007): 169–94; Norman Calder, ‘The Limits of Islamic Orthodoxy’, in Defining Islam: A Reader, ed. Andrew Rippin (London: Equinox, 2007), 222–36; Ahmed El Shamsy, ‘The Social Construction of Orthodoxy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology, ed. Tim Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 97–117; Alexander Knysh, ‘“Orthodoxy” and “Heresy” in Medieval Islam: An Essay in Reassessment’, The Muslim World 83, no. 1 (1993): 48–67; Robert Langer and Udo Simon, ‘The Dynamics of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Dealing with Divergence in Muslim Discourses and Islamic Studies’, Die Welt des Islams 48, nos 3–4 (2008): 273–88; Bernard Lewis, ‘Some Observations on the Significance of Heresy in the History of Islam’, SI 1 (1953): 43–63. Calder, ‘Limits of Islamic Orthodoxy’, 224. El Shamsy, ‘Social Construction of Orthodoxy’, 97. Wilson, ‘Failure of Nomenclature’, 169–94.

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32 ‘An Islamic discursive tradition is simply a tradition of Muslim discourse that addresses itself to conceptions of the Islamic past and future, with reference to a particular Islamic practice in the present.’ Talal Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam (Washington, DC: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, 1986), 14. Wilson explicitly discusses Talal Asad’s idea on orthodoxy in the light of his idea that Islam has a discursive tradition. For Asad, states Wilson, ‘orthodox appears to be a purely sociological concept which simply means “conventional,” “established,” or “correct” for a particular context, its configuration of power, and its current understanding of the discursive tradition’. Wilson himself is critical of this approach. Wilson, ‘Failure of Nomenclature’, 185. 33 Edward Shils, ‘Centre and Periphery’, in The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Michael Polanyi, ed. Polanyi Festschrift Committee (London: Routledge/Kegan Paul, 1961), 117–30. 34 Ibid., 117. 35 Ibid., 117. 36 For a good overview of the relation of ‘classical’ Sufism to its sociopolitical context, see Ovamir Anjum, ‘Mystical Authority and Governmentality in Medieval Islam’, in Sufism and Society: Arrangements of the Mystical in the Muslim World, 1200–1800, eds John J. Curry and Erik S. Ohlander (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 71–93. 37 Ibid. 38 Soubhi El-Saleh, La vie future selon le Coran (Paris: J. Vrin, 1971); Lange, Paradise and Hell. There are only two other monographs on Islamic eschatology to date. Neither touches upon Sufism at all. Nerina Rustomji, The Garden and the Fire: Heaven and Hell in Islamic Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Jane I. Smith and Yvonne Y. Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1981). The monograph by Lange promises to be the determining work on Islamic eschatology for years to come, and to supersede the former studies in analytical depth and in the range of material studied. For an overview of the earlier works on Islamic eschatology, see Lange, Paradise and Hell, 24–31. 39 In Chapter 3, we further discuss the value of these contributions as an analytical tool to understanding our source material. 40 El-Saleh, Vie future, 97–102; Lange, Paradise and Hell, 225–31. See also Ahmet Karamustafa, ‘Eschatology in Early Sufi Thought’, paper delivered

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at the HHIT International Symposium ‘Crossing Boundaries: Mystical and Philosophical Conceptualizations of the Dunyā/Ākhira Relationship’, Utrecht University, 5 July 2013, http://vimeo.com/85067251 (accessed 4 January 2015). 41 Some exceptions deserve to be mentioned. Al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī’s (d. 243/857) Kitāb al-tawahhum deals almost exclusively with eschatology. Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥārith b. Asad al-Muḥāsibī, Une vision humaine des fins dernières: le ‘Kitab al-tawahhum’ d’al-Muhasibi, ed. André Roman (Paris: Klincksieck, 1978). The book on eschatology falsely attributed to Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), al-Durra al-fākhira fī kashf ʿulūm al-ākhira is partly based on this work. See Roberto Tottoli, ‘Muslim Eschatological Literature and Western Studies’, Der Islam 83, no. 2 (2008): 452–77. In addition, ʿAzīz-i Nasafī ( fl. middle of seventh/thirteenth century) and Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) showed interest in eschatological topics. See Christian Lange, ‘A Sufi’s Paradise and Hell: ʿAzīz-i Nasafī’s Epistle on the Otherworld’, in No Tapping around Philology: A Festschrift in Honor of Wheeler McIntosh Thackston Jr.’s 70th Birthday, eds Alireza Korangy and Daniel J. Sheffield (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014), 197–211; William C. Chittick, ‘Death and the World of Imagination: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Eschatology’, The Muslim World 78, no. 1 (1988): 51–82. While this early period of Sufism may indeed be described as a period of relative disinterest in eschatology, this changes a bit in later periods. In the eighteenth century, Aḥmad al-Lamaṭī (d. 1156/1743), for example, included special chapters with descriptions of limbo (barzakh), Paradise and Hell in his collection of the sayings of Abd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh (d. 1132/1719). See Aḥmad b. Mubārak al-Lamaṭī, Pure Gold from the Words of Sayyidī ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh (Al-Dhahab al-Ibrīz min Kalām Sayyidī ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh), trans. John O’Kane and Bernd Radtke (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Also, the seventeenth-century Indian Naqshbandī scholar Aḥmad Sirhindī reflected on issues of the hereafter in his writings. See Abdollah Vakily, ‘Some Notes on Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī and the Problem of the Mystical Significance of Paradise’, in Reason and Inspiration in Islam: Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism in Muslim Thought, ed. Todd Lawson (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 407–17. This indicates that Saleh’s opinion that there were no worthwhile developments after the seventh/thirteenth century must be corrected. Saleh, Vie future, 120. A longue durée history of Sufi conceptions of the hereafter cannot possibly be achieved within the scope

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of a single study at this stage. This study may be considered a Baustein for that grander purpose. 42 Lange, Paradise and Hell, 11. 43 Lange is, therefore, critical of the use of such terms as ‘hereafter’, ‘afterlife’, ‘afterworld’ or ‘world to come’, terms that all hint at a diachronic understanding of the relation between dunyā and ākhira. He prefers to use the term ‘otherworld’, to stress the aspect of Paradise and Hell being ‘everywhen’. Lange, Paradise and Hell, 11–12. 44 Karamustafa, Formative Period, 19. See also Karamustafa, ‘Eschatology in Early Sufi Thought’. 45 Gerhard Böwering, The Mystical Vision of Existence in Classical Islam: The Qurʾānic Hermeneutics of the Ṣūfī Sahl al-Tustarī (d.283/896) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1980), 145–6. 46 Ibid., 145–84. 47 Katz, ‘Mysticism and Interpretation’, 7. 48 Louis Massignon, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, trans. Benjamin Clark (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997); Paul Nwyia, Exégèse coranique et langage mystique: nouvel essay sur le lexique technique des mystiques musulmans (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 1970). 49 Goldziher, Koranauslegung, 180–262. 50 Ibid., 180. 51 Ibid., 180–262. Only the tafsīr of al-Qāshānī (d. 730/1329), which he falsely attributes to Ibn al-ʿArabī, is given some space. 52 Of the authors treated in this study, only al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī show up in works of ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn. Maybudī ( fl. second half of the fifth/eleventh to first half of the sixth/twelfth century), al-Daylamī (d. 587/1191?) and Rūzbihān (d. 606/1209) are not mentioned for reasons unclear. It may have been that they were simply not well known enough as authors of tafsīr to make it into these works and not considered ‘canonical’. It may also be that their works were not considered tafsīrs in the proper sense and excluded on normative grounds. The second option is doubtful, however, since ṭabaqāt authors generally did not exclude people for normative reasons, and would rather simply add their normative objections to the lemma. A good example of this is al-Sulamī, who is mentioned alongside a criticism of his tafsīr. Al-Suyūṭī mentions al-Sulamī as ‘the shaykh of the Sufis and their scholar in Khurasan’, and

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53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61

al-Qushayrī as ‘the renunciant, the Sufi, the shaykh of Khurasan, the master of the community and the leader of the group’. See Jalāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suyūṭī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿUmayr (Cairo: Maktabat Wahba, 1976), 73–4, 97–8. Al-Adnarwī mentions the same titles for al-Qushayrī, adding that he was ‘elegant in allusion’ (malīḥ al-ishāra). See Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Adnarwī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn, ed. Sulaymān b. Ṣāliḥ al-Khazī (Medina: Maktabat al-ʿulūm wa’l-ḥikam, 1997) 125–7. Al-Dāwūdī also mentions al-Sulamī as shaykh mashāyikh al-ṣūfiyya (master of Sufi shaykhdom), and quotes both sayings in favour of and in opposition to him and his tafsīr. He also has very favourable words for al-Qushayrī and recognises him as the leader of the Sufis of Khurasan. Shams al-Dīn Muhāmmad b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 1983), 1:344–52; 2:142–3. Suyūṭī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn, 98. Muḥammad Ḥusayn al-Dhahabī, al-Tafsīr wa’l-mufassirūn (Cairo: Maktabat Wahba, 2003), 2:250–307. Dhahabī, Tafsīr wa’l-mufassirūn, 2:261. Al-Dhahabī is explicitly negative on naẓarī tafsīr. He does defend ishārī tafsīr as a legitimate form of exegesis as long as the apparent (ẓāhir) meaning of the Qurʾan is respected, and quotes favourable opinions of earlier authorities such as Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazurī and Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftazānī. Dhahabī, Tafsīr wa’l-mufassirūn, 2:256–60, 264–70. For an analysis of the implicit and explicit ideological choices made in this work, see Walid Saleh, ‘Historiography of Tafsīr in Arabic’, 6–11. Süleyman Ateș, İşârî tefsîr okulu (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi, 1974). Alan Godlas, ‘Ṣūfism’, in The Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān, ed. Andrew Rippin (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 350–1. Kristin Z. Sands, Ṣūfī Commentaries on the Qurʾān in Classical Islam (London: Routledge, 2006), 67. Ibid., 1–4. Jamal Elias, ‘Ṣūfī Tafsīr Reconsidered: Exploring the Development of a Genre’, JQS 12 (2010): 45. Two recent edited volumes testify to this interest: Karen Bauer, ed., Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qurʾanic Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Andreas Görke and Johanna Pink, eds, Tafsīr and Islamic Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre (Oxford: Oxford

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University Press, 2014). Both works contain useful introductions that give a good overview of the situation in this field. 62 Görke and Pink, Tafsīr and Islamic Intellectual History, 1. 63 As Karen Bauer states, ‘At its essence,  tafsir is each scholar’s attempt to relate his world to the world of the Qurʾan; it is his attempt to relate his intellectual, political and social contexts to the Qurʾan’s text. It is a process of meaning-creation, because what the scholars read into the text is not always explicitly there.’ Bauer, Aims, Methods and Contexts, 8. 64 McAuliffe, Qurʾānic Christians, 27. McAuliffe does recognise the importance of tafsīr for intellectual history, but is more sceptical than Bauer about the potential of tafsīr as a source for a better understanding of the social, political or economic environments of classical exegetes. ‘Contemporary context does not count as a hermeneutical element’ (McAuliffe, Qurʾānic Christians, 35). 65 For example, Annabel Keeler strongly emphasises the ‘experiential’ component of Sufi readings of the Qurʾan, which according to her ‘results in a diversity that mirrors the degree and variety of mystical experience of each and every commentator’. See Annabel Keeler, ‘Ṣūfī Tafsīr as a Mirror: Al-Qushayrī the Murshid in his Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt’, JQS 8, no. 1 (2006): 2. 66 Norman Calder, ‘Tafsīr from Ṭabarī to Ibn Kathīr: Problems in the Description of a Genre, Illustrated with Reference to the Story of Abraham’, in Approaches to the Qurʾān, eds G. R. Hawting and AbdulKader A. Shareef (London: Routledge, 1993), 103–4. 67 McAuliffe, Qurʾānic Christians, 312. 68 Saleh, Formation, 15. 69 Saleh, Formation, 9, 14–15; McAuliffe, Qurʾānic Christians, 291. 70 The long time that the field has waited for Böwering and Godlas’s next contributions, combined with the limited amount of scholars active in this niche and the general ‘crisis’ of philology within Islamic Studies, is not encouraging. It may well be an indication that we should not expect the larger spectrum of Sufi commentaries to be covered anywhere in the near future. This would need a collective scholarly enterprise and resources that are not currently available to the field. 71 Excepted are the tafsīr works by Ibn Barrajān (d. 536/1141), which could arguably be labelled as Sufi commentaries as well: the Tanbīh al-afhām and Īḍāḥ al-ḥikma. The main reason for not including these

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sources is that they are not genealogically part of the tafsīr tradition as it developed in Nishapur and the larger Persia region, and do not refer back to the same authorities. For a concise monograph on this author and his Qurʾan commentaries, see Yousef Casewit, The Mystics of al-Andalus: Ibn Barrajān and Islamic Thought in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), as well as Casewit’s critical edition of his tafsīr: ʿAbd al-Salām b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Barrajān, A Qurʾān Commentary by Ibn Barrajān of Seville (d. 536/1141): ‘Īḍāḥ al-ḥikma bi-aḥkām al-ʿibra’ (Wisdom Deciphered, the Unseen Discovered), eds Gerhard Böwering and Yousef Casewit (Leiden: Brill, 2015). To ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1165), a tafsīr has also been attributed, but the authorship is unclear (see Ateș, İşârî tefsîr okulu, 134–5). We have thus left him out of this analysis. Godlas also mentions that a commentary by a certain al-Darwājikī (d. 549/1154) was authored in the same period (Godlas, ‘Ṣūfism’, 354–5). This is only available in manuscripts and nothing is known about the author. Its study may be a worthwhile enterprise for another time, but would complicate this particular study too much. 72 Only one manuscript copy of this tafsīr is currently known to exist, in Sarajevo, probably dating to the seventh/thirteenth century. This has been critically edited. See Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Sulamī, Ziyādāt Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr, ed. Gerhard Böwering (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 1997). 73 The field is in dire need of a critical edition of this work, which is in preparation by Gerhard Böwering. There is currently only one non-critical printed edition, based on only one manuscript, from which the commentary on Sūrah Yūsuf is missing. Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Sulamī, Tafsīr al-Sulamī wa-hiya Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr, ed. Sayyid ʿUmrān (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 2001). This study largely relies on this edition and refers to it in the notes. Prof. Böwering has generously provided me with a preview of his critical edition of the commentary on Sūrah Yūsuf, which is missing from the Sayyid ʿUmrān edition. 74 ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Hawāzim al-Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt: tafsīr ṣūfī kāmil li’l-Qurʾān al-karīm, ed. Ibrāhīm Basyūnī (Cairo: al-Hayʾat al-miṣriyya al-ʿāmma li’l-taʾlīf wa’l-nashr, 1981–3). This is the oldest and most authoritative edition to date, and the work that we will refer to in our notes. A more recent edition is ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Hawāzim al-Qushayrī, Tafsīr al-Qushayrī al-musammā Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt, ed. Saʿīd Quẓayfa

introduction | 37

(Cairo: al-Maktabat al-tawfīqiyya, n.d.). The monograph is by Martin Nguyen, Sufi Master and Qurʾān Scholar: Abū’l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī and the ‘Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 75 I have used the following edition: Abū’l-Faḍl Rashīd al-Dīn Maybudī, Kashf al-asrār wa-ʿuddat al-abrār: maʿrūf bi-tafsīr khwājī ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī, ed. ʿAlī Aṣghar Ḥikmat (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Ibn Sīnā, 1965–91). Keeler has authored a valuable monograph on this commentary. See Annabel Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics: The Qurʾan Commentary of Rashīd al-Dīn Maybudī (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Significant parts of the commentary have been translated and analysed in William C. Chittick, Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2013). 76 For an overview of the field of ‘Rūzbihān studies’, see Carl W. Ernst, Ruzbihan Baqli: Mysticism and the Rhetoric of Sainthood in Persian Sufism (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1996), xi–xiii. 77 Alan Godlas is working on a critical edition and translation of the complete work, which will be an important addition to the field. For our study of the text, we depend on Godlas’s unpublished critical edition of the introduction and the commentary on Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, and on an uncritical edition of the complete work. This uncritical edition, published by Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, is based on an Indian lithograph that, according to Godlas, is ‘riddled with significant errors’. See Godlas, ‘Ṣūfism’, 354; Rūzbihān al-Baqlī, ʿArāʾis al-bayān fī ḥaqāʾiq al-Qurʾān, ed. Aḥmad Farīd al-Miziyadī (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 2008); Alan A. Godlas, ‘The ʿArāʾis al-bayān: the Mystical Qurʾānic Exegesis of Rūzbihān al-Baqlī’ (PhD dissertation, University of California, 1991). 78 For this study, I have made use of two manuscripts: ‘Kitāb al-tafsīr al-Daylamī’, Yeni Cami, Istanbul, MS 57 and ‘Futūḥ al-Raḥmān fī ishārāt al-Qurʾān’, Veliyuddin Efendi, Istanbul, MS 430. In the notes, I refer to the folio numbers of Yeni Cami MS 57. Besides these manuscripts, I have thankfully relied on an unpublished critical edition in the form of a PhD dissertation submitted at Sakarya University in Turkey. This critical edition is based on three manuscripts (Yeni Cami MS 57, Veliyuddin Efendi MS 430, and Bağdatlı Vehbî Bölümü MS 185) and takes Yeni Cami MS 57 as its basis. See Yahya Yaşar, ‘Şemsuddîn Ebû Sâbit Muhammed b. Abdulmelik Ed-Deylemî’nin (v. 589/1193) Kitâbü Tasdîkı’l-Maârif Adlı Eserinin Edisyon Kritiği’ (PhD dissertation, Sakarya University, 2010).

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79 For a discussion of the problem of reconstructing the biographical details of this author and the relative oblivion into which he fell, see Chapter 2. 80 On the importance of involving minor figures in the study of intellectual history, see Richard Rorty, ‘The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres’, in Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy, eds Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 67–74.

sufi qurʾan commentaries: the rise of a genre  | 39

2

Sufi Qurʾan Commentaries: The Rise of a Genre

Introduction This chapter discusses the five main sources used in this study, and what their compositions and exegetical methods teach us about the development of Sufi tafsīr in the period under scrutiny. We will elaborate on some of the issues raised in Chapter 1 concerning what we understand to be a ‘Sufi’ commentary, what might be considered the ‘Sufi’ exegetical method and how these Sufi commentaries relate to general developments in the history of tafsīr until the seventh/­ thirteenth century. The authors are placed into their broader circles of influence and historical context. As explained in Chapter 1, to understand how Sufi ideas were constructed, one has to look at the full network of relations in the personal, linguistic, religious, social and political spheres. The period we are dealing with in this study is what Marshall Hodgson defined as the ‘Islamic Earlier Middle Period’ (950­–1250 ce).1 All of the authors in this study – al-Sulamī, al-Qushayrī, Maybudī, al-Daylamī and Rūzbihān – fall within this period. They lived, studied, authored and taught in the major Persian centres of learning: Nishapur, Yazd, Herat, Shiraz and Hamadan. These cities were under Saljūq rule for the larger part of the Islamic Earlier Middle Period. This period is 39

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characterised by the ‘transformation of Muslim society’.2 It saw the restoration of a Jamāʿī-Sunnī political order in the Islamic world and the further institutionalisation of both Islamic learning in the form of madrasahs and Sufism in the form of khānaqāhs. Sufism in this period found a firmly established place within Islamic society and produced some prominent figures, besides the authors of our present study, such as Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī (d. 430/1038), the famous al-Ghazālī brothers Abū Ḥāmid (d. 505/1111) and Aḥmad (d. 520/1126), and ʿAyn al-Quḍāt al-Hamadhānī (d. 525/1131).3 It was also the period in which the genre of Sufi commentaries on the Qurʾan became well established, with several commentaries being written that were quite diverse in style and content. To properly contextualise the rise of the genre of Sufi Qurʾan commentaries, we must first have a closer look at the rise of this genre in Nishapur, where al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī lived and taught, and then move on to the other authors and their historical contexts.4 Nishapur in the Fourth/Tenth and Fifth/Eleventh Centuries

It is not my intention to provide a detailed history of Nishapur in these centuries or to present new facts based on unexplored sources. I only highlight some general developments on the sociopolitical level as well as on the religious level, which are of course intimately intertwined. These developments are directly relevant to a better understanding of the appearance of Sufi tafsīr as a literary genre, and of the works of al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī, its first representatives in Nishapur. This is largely based on existing research. Social and Political Background

The city of Nishapur was one of the four great cities in the region of Khurasan in north-western Persia, the others being Marv, Herat and Balkh. It went through a period of great religious and cultural flourishing and prosperity from the fourth/tenth to the sixth/twelfth century. It was the market centre for a rich agricultural region as well as a hub of industry and commerce, mostly ceramics and fine clothes.5 Its population in this period is estimated to have been between 30,000

sufi qurʾan commentaries: the rise of a genre  | 41

and 40,000.6 At the beginning of the tenth century, it was under the rule of the Persian Sāmānid dynasty. From the second half of the tenth century, the Turkic Ghaznavids ruled the city, until the Saljūqs took over the city in 428/1037 and made it their capital for six years. They continued to rule it until the sacking of the old city by the Ghuzz in 548/1153. This meant the end of the city’s prominence in the region.7 Culturally, Nishapur was a Persian city with Persian as its main language, but it also comprised an Arabic and Turkic presence.8 The social and political history of Nishapur under Sāmānid and Ghaznavid rule mainly revolves around a number of patrician families that ruled the city in relative autonomy. They ruled in a subtle power balance with the higher external authorities, which in their turn patronised different factions according to their interests. These patrician families were landowners, merchants and religious scholars, often all three at once, and managed the city’s affairs largely by themselves.9 Under Saljūq rule, their autonomous position weakened due to factional strife and attempts by the Saljūqs to gain a stronger hold on the city. This eventually led to the downfall of the city’s prominence.10 The Religious Scene

By the end of the eleventh century, the majority of Nishapur was Islamised. Small communities of Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians continued to exist. The Islamic religious sphere was divided between Ḥanafīs and Shāfiʿīs, Muʿtazilīs and Ashʿarīs, the Karrāmiyya, and a minor Shīʿī presence.11 The patrician families patronised and dominated most of the religious scene and its institutions of learning. With their income from the agricultural hinterlands they financed awqāf (endowments), religious edifices and public works. Merchants spent their leisure time on religious study with scholars.12 They were, as was most of eastern Iran and Transoxania, roughly divided in two camps: a Ḥanafī camp and a Shāfiʿī camp. Most of the Ḥanafīs, though not exclusively, were Muʿtazilī in creed. The Shāfiʿīs were initially not homogeneous in credal matters, but from the eleventh century onwards were predominantly Ashʿarī.13 To be affiliated to either the Ḥanafī or Shāfiʿī

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school was a legal necessity for the patrician families, since the social order depended upon Islamic law. The Islamic legal order guaranteed them, as representatives and patrons of the religious order, a sense of independence from the higher political authorities, who were subject to the same law.14 However, this affiliation to a legal school represented more than practical necessity. It was the basis for group solidarity (ʿaṣabiyya) and it thus regularly led to factionalism and political tensions within the city. The two camps sometimes even clashed violently. In the eleventh century, the Saljūqs under Ṭughril Beg (d. 455/1063) patronised Ḥanafism and gave preference to Ḥanafīs in religious and government appointments. This culminated in the violent persecution of the Shāfiʿīs, who followed the Ashʿarī creed, starting around 439/1048. This persecution ended only when, after the death of Ṭughril Beg, the Shāfiʿī Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092) was appointed as vizier of Khurasan, and patronised the Shāfiʿī school and Ashʿarī creed instead.15 The only segment of the religious scene that was not dominated and patronised by the patrician families, and could perhaps even be considered a countermovement, was the more populist and proselytising movement of the Karrāmiyya, who had their own distinct views on credal matters, jurisprudence and asceticism. The poorer segments of society that were not patronised by the patrician families seem to have been more attracted to their preaching. With their militant social activism and emphasis on poverty ( faqr), prohibition on working for profit (taḥrīm al-makāsib) and reliance on God for sustenance (tawakkul), they profiled themselves as leaders of the oppressed poor as a force against the trading class of the patricians and their religious elite.16 Therefore, this movement had quite a strong mobilising power among the lower classes and was thus able to play a significant role on the political scene. They were patronised by the Ghaznavids for some time and shortly held the influential position of raʾīs (leader) around the year 1010 ce.17 Although the patricians were divided among themselves by madhhab (school of law), and now and then had violent clashes with each other, they tended to unite against the common threat of the Karrāmiyya.18

sufi qurʾan commentaries: the rise of a genre  | 43

Religious Education It was also the Karrāmiyya who started with the practice of establishing khānaqāhs and madrasahs to institutionalise their communal life, missionary work and education. Only at the end of the tenth century did other groups, notably the Sufis from the Shāfiʿī school, start to establish similar institutions.19 These institutions flourished especially in Nishapur. They were often built for famous teachers and stayed within their families after their deaths, as was the case with the madrasah built for al-Qushayrī’s teacher and father-in-law Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq (d. 405/1015).20 The works of scholars were kept in libraries inside these madrasahs.21 Islamic education was not strictly limited to these institutions. A teacher–student relationship could develop outside the madrasah as well. A thoroughly systematised curriculum with age restrictions or required courses was not present. The person teaching was considered important more for the quality of the education than the institutional environment. The teacher granted the student an ijāza (licence) when a subject or text had been sufficiently studied. Linked by this ijāza to a chain of oral authority, the student was himself then certified to teach.22 By excluding people of low birth from obtaining ijāzas, the patricians used this educational system to buttress their own position and to keep monopolising the production, transmission and dissemination of religious knowledge.23 The Position of Sufism

For Sufism, the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries were a period of consolidation and organisation of what had been established in the previous centuries, and of making the material available to a larger audience. Much of what we know about early Sufism is through works composed in this period.24 Different strands of proto-Sufism, notably the Sufism of Baghdad (which was the only proto-strand that actually defined itself with the word taṣawwuf ), the People of Blame (Malāmatiyya) of Khurasan, and the Sages of Transoxania definitively merged into one movement from then on known as ‘Sufism’.25 During

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the third/ninth century, the movement of renunciants (zuhhād) was still dominant, while the Malāmatiyya gradually emerged. Sufism appeared in Nishapur around the middle of the fourth/tenth century and dominated the scene by the end of the fifth/eleventh century.26 This process mostly took place through the ascendancy of the Sufism of Baghdad in these regions, more or less integrating the other regionally existing trends, including the Karrāmī khānaqāhs and the Malāmatī chivalry ( futuwwa) lore.27 Besides this merging of traditions on an intellectual level, the popular support of these Sufi ideas was enhanced as well. Until the fourth/tenth century, the different strands of proto-Sufism had mostly been an endeavour for an elite, but now several authors made the effort to spread Sufi ideas and concepts to a larger audience.28 In this transformation the region of Khurasan, and Nishapur in particular – as we shall see partly through the works of al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī – played a crucial role. The main movement with a renunciant-mystical orientation in Nishapur to merge with the Sufism of Baghdad was that of the People of Blame (Malāmatiyya). It emerged in Nishapur around the third/ ninth century and is, among others, associated with Ḥamdūn al-Qaṣṣār (d. 271/884), who is included in al-Sulamī’s commentary. Their teaching was centred on a basic radical doctrine of denunciation of any form of outward appearance of piety, which should lead to an attitude of constant self-blame and the attraction of blame by others (hence the name ‘Malāmatiyya’, rooted in Q 5:54 and Q 75:2), and the struggle against hope for divine reward or approval by man. In opposition to the Karrāmiyya, they stressed the importance of working for one’s livelihood and assimilating into mainstream social life. They were closely related to the craftsmen who were practitioners of chivalry ( futuwwa). Their negative attitude towards the outward appearance of piety resulted in apparent assimilation into the mainstream and a lack of distinct institutions or even their own textual tradition.29 Some of its leading figures were in contact with the Sufis of Baghdad and so some exchange of ideas must have taken place.30 It is not clear to what extent the renunciant attitude of the Karrāmiyya influenced the development of Sufism in Nishapur.

sufi qurʾan commentaries: the rise of a genre  | 45

Al-Sulamī did not quote Ibn Karrām once in his works, and did not include him in his Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya.31 He was not unique in this. Most of the Sufi authors of his time tended to ignore the Karrāmiyya, which indicates they were not highly regarded by the Sufis and that despite their renunciant tendencies they were not considered part of the same mystical trend, as opposed to the Malāmatiyya.32 A popular narrative on the history of Sufism is that it developed as a counterculture to, and often in conflict with, the religious establishment engaged in exoteric Islamic sciences which were perceived as spiritually unsatisfactory, only to be moulded into the Islamic mainstream by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111).33 The history of Sufism in Nishapur brings nuance to this narrative and shows that al-Ghazālī’s synthesis was rather the conclusion of a process of reconciliation of traditions that had been going on for much longer, and was probably quite deep-rooted in the formative period of Sufism.34 Many of the ʿulamāʾ (scholars) of Nishapur had Sufi affiliations and many Sufis were teachers or scholars in religious institutions of learning.35 It was especially in the circles of Shāfiʿī learning that Sufism was embraced.36 Nishapur and the Rise to Prominence of the Genre of Tafsīr

The regions of Khurasan and Transoxania saw activity in the field of tafsīr as early as the beginning of the second/eight century. Nishapur was the epicentre of this activity.37 It reached its zenith in the fourth/ tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries and produced such prominent exegetes as Ibn Ḥabīb (d. 406/1015), al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035) and al-Wāḥidī (d. 468/1076), whose commentaries had significant influence on the development of the genre in subsequent centuries.38 Most of the authors of works of tafsīr belonged to the Shāfiʿī intellectual milieu. Ḥanafīs and Muʿtazilīs also produced some works, and the Karrāmiyya and Shīʿīs were productive in the genre as well.39 On the reason for the rise and success of this genre we can only speculate. It has been suggested that it was part of a ‘philological revolution’, or an attempt to bring the Qurʾan to the heart of Muslim devotional life.40 When a strand of Islamic thought or an Islamic ­science

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matured, it would relate itself to the Qurʾan in the form of tafsīr to show how it was reconcilable with or even rooted in the Qurʾanic text.41 One could say that tafsīr thus functioned as an apologetic genre. It also had the capacity to create like-mindedness among a group of readers, to control and set boundaries for the activity of reading meaning into the Qurʾan, and to make this a communal practice.42 Another function of its encyclopaedic variant may have been the creation of a broad consensus through its polyvalence and relative inclusiveness.43 The success of shorter summarising works of tafsīr in Nishapur may have been to do with the development of the educational system as well, and the need for suitable texts for instruction in the madrasahs.44 More fundamental research is needed to give conclusive answers on the function of tafsīr in Nishapur’s religious and cultural landscape. Al-Sulamī and his Commentary: Witness to the Formative Period of Sufism His Life, Education and Works Coming from an upper-class family of religious learning and Arabic descent, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Azdī al-Sulamī al-Naysābūrī (d. 412/1021) spent most of his life studying and teaching in the city of his birth, and death: Nishapur. This city was under the rule of the Ghaznavids during his entire life. His first teacher was his father, al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad b. Mūsā al-Azdī, who later entrusted him to his maternal grandfather, Abū ʿAmr Ismāʿīl b. Nujayd al-Sulamī (d. 366/976), himself an adherent of the Malāmatiyya in Nishapur and a disciple of Abū ʿUthmān al-Ḥīrī (d. 298/910), a well-known Shāfiʿī scholar of hadith. His grandfather was also in contact with al-Junayd (d. 298/910) of Baghdad. It was allegedly al-Sulamī’s grandfather’s colleague, the prominent Ḥanafī scholar and judge Abū Sahl b. Sulaymān al-Ṣuʿlūkī (d. 369/980), who is said to have initiated al-Sulamī into Sufism and given him an ijāza to teach pupils (murīdūn).45 However, his most important teacher in Sufism was Abū’l-Qāsim Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Naṣrābādhī (d. 367/978), who allegedly granted him the khirqa (initiatory cloak) as

sufi qurʾan commentaries: the rise of a genre  | 47

well. Al-Naṣrābādhī was a Shāfiʿī scholar of hadith and a pupil of Abū Bakr al-Shiblī (d. 334/946) of Baghdad.46 Al-Sulamī was an avid student of hadith himself as well and travelled throughout Khurasan and Iraq for this. After his pilgrimage to Mecca together with al-Naṣrābādhi in 366/977, he spent the rest of his life in Nishapur as a resident scholar. He worked and taught in his own duwayra,47 containing the extensive library that he inherited from his grandfather and teacher, Ismāʿīl b. Nujayd. He seems to have been highly respected throughout Khurasan as a teacher of hadith and as a Shāfiʿī man of learning. It is said that he was a prolific author, with allegedly more than a hundred works to his name. Around thirty of these have been preserved, remarkably all related to Sufism: Sufi hagiographies, Sufi commentaries on the Qurʾan and treatises on Sufi traditions and customs.48 As mentioned previously, al-Sulamī lived in an age in which the initial formation of Sufism had come to an end and the different strands of Islamic mysticism, under the dominant Sufism of Baghdad, had become more or less synthesised. Al-Sulamī himself is considered to have played a significant role in the merging of the Malāmatiyya with the Sufism of Baghdad.49 Al-Sulamī was connected to the Malāmatiyya through several teachers. Through his teachers, at an early stage in his intellectual development he was already well acquainted with both the sober and the ecstatic thought of the Sufis of Baghdad, such as al-Junayd, al-Shiblī and even Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (d. 309/922).50 His Commentaries: Self-definition

Two separate but very similar Qurʾan commentaries are known to have come from al-Sulamī’s hand. All current schemes of periodisation of Sufi tafsīr place these two tafsīrs at the end of the first, formative period, and consider them to have been witnesses to the most important Sufi sayings on the Qurʾan from this period.51 The first is the Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr. Based on its exclusively Sufi content, it is estimated that he authored this work at a comparatively early stage in his career, probably between 360/970 and 370/980.52

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In the introduction to the work, there are some hints as to how alSulamī conceived of a Sufi tafsīr and what he intended with this work. It starts with a praise of God for making the ‘people of realities’ (ahl al-ḥaqāʾiq) understand His speech. They have, he states, ‘reported on the meanings of His speech from the subtleties (laṭāʾif ) of its secrets and meanings, according to what God has disclosed to every one of them’ and ‘spoken about the understanding of His book according to its marvels that occurred to them’.53 However, he stresses that they can have only a limited understanding of the Qurʾan’s realities due to the greatness of the book and the one to whom it has been revealed, that is Muhammad. He points out how the outward (ẓāhir) sciences of the Qurʾan had developed, until nearly everything had been said, but that no one had worked on understanding it according to its reality (ʿalā ḥisāb al-ḥaqīqa), except for some unordered fragments attributed to Ibn ʿAṭāʾ al-Ādamī and Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad, that he is aware of. 54 He therefore felt the need to bring those together, including sayings from other shaykhs of the ‘people of reality’ (ahl al-ḥaqīqa) and organising it according to the order of the surahs in the Qurʾan.55 He then quotes four sayings that explain the method of tafsīr used by the ‘people of reality’. These sayings are typically used by proponents of Sufi readings of the Qurʾan and have largely determined their hermeneutical terminology.56 Al-Sulamī does not further elaborate on the meaning of these four sayings and its consequences for his own work of tafsīr, nor does he explain why he mentions them.57 The first is an account attributed to ʿAlī in which he is asked whether any other revelation (waḥy) from the Prophet besides the Qurʾan is available. His answer is no, ‘except for a servant who has understood His book’, implying that a correct understanding of the Qurʾan is a form of revelation.58 The second is a hadith in which Muhammad states that the Qurʾan was sent down upon seven ‘letters’ (aḥruf ), that every verse has an outer side (ẓahr) and an inner side (baṭn), and that every ‘letter’ has a terminal point (ḥadd) and a starting point (muṭṭalaʿ).59 The third is a saying attributed to Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad:

sufi qurʾan commentaries: the rise of a genre  | 49 The book of God is according to four things: worship (ʿibāda), allusion (ishāra), subtleties (laṭāʾif ) and realities (ḥaqāʾiq). Worship is for the laymen (ʿawāmm), allusion for the elect (khawāṣṣ), the subtleties for the friends [of God] (awliyāʾ), and the realities for the prophets (anbiyāʾ).60

The last quote is again attributed to ʿAlī and similar to the first quote. It again states that every verse of the Qurʾan has four meanings: an outer meaning (ẓāhir), an inner meaning (bāṭin), a terminal point (ḥadd) and a starting point (muṭṭalaʿ). The saying then further defines these four: the outer meaning is recitation (tilāwa); the inner meaning is understanding ( fahm); the terminal point is interpretation (ʿibāra), allusion (ishāra) and the rulings of what is permitted and what is not. The starting point is what God expects from the servant with the verse. ʿAlī then concludes: ‘He has made the Qurʾan an interpretation, allusion, subtleties and realities. Worship is for the hearing, allusion for the intellect (ʿaql), the subtleties are for contemplation (mushāhada), and the realities for submission (istislām).’61 His second work is Ziyādāt Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr (Additions to ‘The Realities of Tafsīr’).62 Al-Sulamī wrote it, so he states in his introduction, after he finished Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr and realised he wanted to add more material: ‘To this end I prepared a special book so that neither the hearing of one listening nor the writing of one copying may be corrupted.’63 Here again he quotes without further explanation from some early Sufi authorities on hermeneutics of the Qurʾan, quite similar to those mentioned earlier. For example, he quotes al-Junayd stating that the Qurʾan comes in four meanings: outer, inner, truth (ḥaqq) and reality (ḥaqīqa). According to a quote from Sahl al-Tustarī, the Qurʾan consists of five parts: clear (muḥkam), ambiguous (mutashābih), permitted (ḥalāl), forbidden (ḥarām) and similitudes (amthāl). The believer with experiential knowledge of God (al-ʿārif bi’llāh), then, ‘acts upon the clear, believes in the ambiguous, considers the permitted to be permitted and the forbidden to be forbidden, and understands the similitudes’.64 A quote by Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq even mentions nine different approaches to reading the Qurʾan: truth (ḥaqq), reality (ḥaqīqa),

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realisation (taḥqīq), realities (ḥaqāʾiq), pledges (ʿuhūd), agreements (ʿuqūd), boundaries (ḥudūd), cutting of ties (qaṭʿa al-ʿalāʾiq), and exaltation of the worshipped (ijlāl al-maʿbūd).65 It is striking that he does not use the word taṣawwuf once in the introduction to either work. Other terminology does catch the eye, of which the most dominant are the ẓāhir and bāṭin dichotomy, ḥaqīqa and its variants, ahl al-ḥaqāʾiq, ishāra and laṭāʾif. Since he does not really expand on these terms, it is hard to give clear-cut definitions of what they must have meant for al-Sulamī in this context or to determine what exactly he understood to be their hermeneutical significance. This is made even more complicated by the fact that he, as we shall see, does not explicitly use these terms and divisions in modes of explanation as organising principles for his commentaries. What each of the sayings that he quotes do seem to have in common is that they testify to a meaning of the Qurʾan that goes ‘deeper’ than its apparent meaning. He does not consider this meaning to be equally accessible to every reader; it demands a certain level of refinement in one’s inward life, resulting in, for example, maʿrifa or ḥaqīqa. Does this lack of engagement with the concept of taṣawwuf mean he did not himself consider his work to be explicitly a Sufi tafsīr? A possibility might be that, as an agent in merging the strands of proto-Sufism, he avoided the term taṣawwuf and opted for more ecumenical terms like ahl al-ḥaqāʾiq to express a mystical understanding of the Islamic tradition that was in his time still broader than only Sufism. This way he could navigate between these two still distinct but slowly fusing trends of Sufism and Malāmatiyya, both of which he identified with and was linked to through several teachers. His assessment in the introduction to Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr that the Qurʾanic sciences have matured while an understanding ‘according to its reality’ is still lacking might say something about his intention in compiling the work. As Wolfhart Heinrichs has stated, it is in the fourth/tenth century that the various fields of intellectual pursuit within Islam come of age. The traditions that had steadily been growing during the preceding two centuries now

sufi qurʾan commentaries: the rise of a genre  | 51 begin to reflect upon themselves: commentaries, compilations, and handbooks make the available material accessible by clarifying or organizing it.66

Al-Sulamī’s Qurʾan commentaries may be understood as an attempt to ascertain a place for the Sufi tradition within that process of reflection and consolidation of the matured Islamic sciences. It was by organising the heritage of mysticism from the previous centuries within the format of a literary genre, which had become mainstream by the tenth century and especially thrived in Nishapur, that he could create space for, or perhaps even ‘canonise’, this particular understanding of the Qurʾan within the consolidating Islamic tradition. From al-Sulamī’s statement in his introduction to the Ziyādāt – that he ‘prepared a special book so that neither the hearing of one listening nor the writing of one copying may be corrupted’67 ­– we can understand that he did not just write these commentaries with an encyclopaedic motive. He intended to dictate and teach the texts, and as a traditionist who granted ijāzas he probably wanted them to be dictated and taught after him by his students as well. This makes it difficult to classify the works using Walid Saleh’s distinction between encyclopaedic and madrasah commentaries.68 Al-Sulamī appears to have intended both purposes: on the one hand, to document all of the sayings known to him from the earlier generations of Sufis that relate to the Qurʾan; on the other, to use these sayings as instruction for his students within the context of the broader method of Islamic learning in Nishapur. His Commentaries: Practice

So how did the intentions he described in his introductions work out in practice? Al-Sulamī was trained as a traditionist (muḥaddith, or scholar of hadith) rather than as a theologian.69 In addition, in his Sufi commentaries he showed himself to be more a collector and compiler of sayings from the earlier generations than an original author. In Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr, he commented on around 3,000 Qurʾanic verses, about half of the whole Qurʾan. The larger part of this commentary

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consists of sayings from other authorities, some of them anonymous. Only a negligible portion of the work consists of his own sayings. One could say that this makes these works rather impersonal, and it is not an easy task to understand the religious identity of the author through them. Thibon has suggested that, influenced by the Malāmatī aversion to public display of piety, he consciously put himself in the background of his writings and left the main stage to other authorities, thus protecting himself from pride and adulation.70 He also states that the stress on prophetic traditions and sayings of early Sufi masters should be understood against the background of his alliance with the Shāfiʿī faction of Nishapur, rooted in the principles of the ahl al-ḥadīth against the Ḥanafīs, who were rooted in the principles of the ahl al-raʾy.71 The fact that he often quotes these sayings with a chain of transmission or explicitly mentions his ijāza supports this. These quoted sayings are either direct commentaries on specific verses by earlier authorities or more general sayings that al-Sulamī himself thematically associated with the subject of the verse.72 He ordered this material according to the traditional order of the Qurʾanic chapters and verses, thereby following what had already much earlier become a well-established form in conventional exegesis. He refrained from including conventional commentary though. He compiled only those items of interpretation that he regarded as genuinely mystical ways of reading the Qurʾan, as ‘the understanding of the divine discourse on the basis of the language of the People of Reality’ (fahm kitābihi ʿala lisān ahl al-ḥaqīqa).73 He has therefore been called an ‘esoteric’ al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), a systematic collector of practically all extant Sufi sayings on or related to Qurʾanic verses.74 By doing so, he made space for a specific Sufi genre to develop in the period in which tafsīr literature rose to prominence. His works contain the commentaries of illustrious figures of early Islamic mysticism such as, among others, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), Dhū’l-Nūn al-Miṣrī (d. 246/861), Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896), Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz (d. 286/899), al-Junayd (d. 298/910), Ibn ʿAṭāʾ al-Ādamī (d. 311/923), Abū Bakr al-Wāsiṭī (d. 320/932) and al-Shiblī (d. 334/946).75 Therefore, in his commentaries different strands of

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early Islamic proto-Sufism are fused: Baghdadi Sufism, Khurasanian mysticism, and the Meccan renunciants. According to Böwering, ‘Al-Sulamī’s work documents the persistence of a significant esoteric vein among the Sufi elite of the fourth/ tenth century in coexistence with Sufi works attempting a harmonization with orthodoxy.’76 Despite my objections to the use of the term ‘orthodoxy’ in this context, I tend to agree with Böwering that the work is not as obvious as other prominent Sufi works appearing in this period meant as an ‘apology’ for the Sufi tradition towards (or an attempt at harmonisation with) the Sunni mainstream. However, I believe that this does not necessarily mean that al-Sulamī held the ideas propounded in the work to be in obvious conflict with that Sunni mainstream. Rather, it seems that he simply wanted to refer to a different register, one that he considered was not necessarily interacting with the outward sciences of the Qurʾan, but with which it could easily coexist. From his words in his introduction to Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr it becomes clear that he does not defer the ‘outward’ (ẓāhir) approaches to the sciences of the Qurʾan, but considers this ‘inward’ (bāṭin), allusive (ishārī) approach to be an ‘extra’ step that has to be taken in Qurʾanic sciences.77 Besides, one could also argue that the act of linking Sufi experience to Qurʾanic verses, the founding texts of the religious tradition, and organising them according to the conventions of a by then well-established literary genre (tafsīr, that is) within the Sunni mainstream was in itself an attempt to show its ‘genuine’ Islamic roots and to thus give it legitimacy within that Sunni mainstream. However, in light of the reception that the work received, we can note that some other prominent contemporary scholars of tafsīr did not consider it to be a justified ‘extra’ step and instead considered it to be in conflict with the ‘correct’ understanding of the Qurʾan. For example, the aforementioned al-Wāḥidī from Nishapur held that ‘should he [al-Sulamī] claim that this book is a commentary on the Qurʾān, then he is an unbeliever’.78

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Al-Qushayrī and his Commentary His Life, Education and Works

Like his teacher al-Sulamī, Zayn al-Islām Abū’l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Hawāzin al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) was born to a family of Arab ancestry. Through his father’s line he belonged to the tribe of Qushayr; through his mother’s line to the tribe of Sulaym. He was born in 376/986 into an aristocratic milieu. After the death of his father, his maternal uncle Abū ʿAqīl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī al-Māyiqī (d.  414/1023–4), a nobleman (nabīl) and landowner (dihqān), raised him in Ustuwā, close to Nishapur. This uncle initially provided al-Qushayrī with a typical aristocratic education, preparing him for administrative tasks, with a strong focus on the Arabic language and belles-lettres. He also learned the art of horsemanship (ʿilm furūsiyya) and received modest military training. It was only when he came to Nishapur for administrative reasons that his training in the religious sciences started.79 During his stay in Nishapur, he by chance met the Shāfiʿī Sufi scholar Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan al-Daqqāq (d. 405/1015), a former student of al-Sulamī’s mentor al-Naṣrābādhī. Al-Daqqāq had his own madrasah built for him in Nishapur, and this is where al-Qushayrī obtained most of his religious education. His relationship with al-Daqqāq became so close that he married his daughter and took over the directorship of his madrasah after he passed away. Through al-Daqqāq and other scholars linked to him, he was thoroughly educated in the different branches of the religious sciences. He devoted himself to the study and transmission of hadith, studied kalām (theology) according to the principles of the Ashʿarī school and steeped himself in the Shāfiʿī school of law. This meant that he became part of the social structure attached to this school of law as well, which had momentous consequences for his further life and career.80 When tensions between the Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī factions in Nishapur rose from the 430s/1040s onwards, and as a consequence the Ashʿarīs were actively persecuted, al-Qushayrī took an active stance by writing a defence of the Ashʿarī creed which was cosigned by leading schol-

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ars.81 This had serious consequences. As a part of the Ashʿarī-Shāfiʿī elite, he was persecuted as well. He went into exile, going on hajj, to ultimately settle in Baghdad in 448/1056. There he resumed his scholarly activities. Only after the death of Ṭughril Beg (d. 455/1063) could he return to Nishapur, under the patronage of Niẓām al-Mulk.82 His works show a keen interest in several disciplines of religious learning. He wrote philological Qurʾan commentaries, works on Ashʿarī creed, on Shāfiʿī fiqh, and on Sufism. In his Sufi works, states Nguyen, he sought, in the tradition of al-Junayd, ‘to authenticate Sufism by the standards of the perceived Sunni mainstream’.83 In Sufism, he first sought training from al-Daqqāq. After al-Daqqāq passed away, he studied with al-Sulamī in his duwayra. In his famous Sufi work al-Risāla, one can witness a continuation of al-Sulamī’s project of incorporating Malāmatī thought into Sufi works.84 His approach to Sufism was generally sober, trying to integrate his mystical understanding of Islam with the traditional religious sciences. According to Fritz Meier, al-Qushayrī was a central figure in the definitive shift from the more academic instruction in Sufism by a shaykh al-taʿlīm (master of instruction) to a more rigorous spiritual ‘training’ by a shaykh al-tarbiyya (master of training).85 He was indeed considered a Sufi shaykh in his own right, and in that capacity had a major influence on the development of Sufism in the period that followed him. He trained a new generation of pupils, among whom was al-Faḍl al-Fārmadhī, the later teacher of Abū Ḥāmid (d. 505/1111) and Aḥmad al-Ghazālī (d. 520/1126).86 His Sufi Commentary: Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt

Al-Qushayrī lived in a vibrant community of commentators on the Qurʾan. Through several scholarly connections he stood in close contact with many figures from the Nishapuri school of tafsīr. He thus had access to knowledge of different strands of Qurʾanic exegesis. Throughout his career he himself produced three Qurʾan commentaries that are known to us. Two of them, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr (The Great Commentary) and al-Taysīr fī’l-tafsīr (Facilitation in Tafsīr), mainly deal with philological, theological and legal themes.87 The c­ ommentary

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of our specific interest, Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt (Subtleties of Allusions), integrates linguistic, theological and Sufi themes.88 The title of the work draws on one of the sayings attributed to Jaʿfar that al-Sulamī mentioned in his introduction. Unlike al-Sulamī, al-Qushayrī does not make a clear introductory statement in his work in which he defines his approach to the Qurʾan. However, there are some indications in the introduction that point to the same core themes that al-Sulamī addressed: the idea that there is indeed a ‘deeper’ approach to the Qurʾan, an approach that unveils the ‘subtleties (laṭāʾif ) of His mysteries and His illuminations in order to give insight into the subtleness of His signs (ishārāt) and the hiddenness of His symbols that encompass Him’.89 This is complementary to the exoteric understanding and is an approach that is not equally accessible to every reader. These subtleties, so al-Qushayrī explains, God bestows only upon the pure ones (aṣfiyāʾ) among His servants, which for al-Qushayrī means the friends of God (awliyāʾ). It is a form of experiential knowledge (maʿrifa). It thus represents, in the words of Nguyen, an epistemology of ‘divine giving’ rather than of ‘active acquisition’.90 Like al-Sulamī, al-Qushayrī does not apply the word taṣawwuf to this class of people. He defines them as the ‘people of experiential knowledge and the possessors of realities’ (ahl al-maʿrifa wa-aṣḥāb al-ḥaqāʾiq), whom he considers to be a special category of religious scholars (ʿulamāʾ) that are highest in the religious hierarchy and represent that section within the Islamic sciences through which the religion flourishes.91 Likewise, when he defines in his introduction what he has tried to achieve, the word taṣawwuf is not explicitly mentioned: ‘This book of ours details, in accordance with the language of the people of experiential knowledge, some of the allusions (ishārāt) of the Qurʾan, either in regard to their stated meanings or the matters of their foundations (uṣūl).’92 Although he quotes a large number of the sayings mentioned in al-Sulamī’s commentary, and probably studied this commentary at his feet, al-Qushayrī significantly differs from his former teacher in his method of tafsīr. Whereas al-Sulamī only connects Sufi sayings

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to a limited number of Qurʾanic verses, al-Qushayrī also integrates the exoteric Islamic sciences while working systematically through the Qurʾan in its entirety. Philological, theological, legal and allusive (ishārī) approaches to the Qurʾan are not clearly separated in his commentary. He subtly switches from one approach to the other. Sometimes, but not as a general rule, there seems to be a hierarchy at work in the commentary, starting from conventional readings and culminating in a Sufi climax: to get the ḥaqīqa right, one must first grasp the shariah.93 The hermeneutical practice of al-Qushayrī shows a profound linguistic interest in the Qurʾan and is often illustrated with secular poetry, where his training in the Arabic language and belles-lettres clearly shows through.94 This high level of Arabic, as well as the concern with theological issues, shows that the work was carefully and thoughtfully composed, and was not the result of an ‘inspired’ ecstatic way of writing.95 The commentary most probably served to instruct his students at the madrasah, and may be seen as the result of years of teaching tafsīr to a specialised audience. The tone is often pedagogical with a strong emphasis on adab, in its meaning of both literature as well as good manners, and the style shows traces of dictation to a specialised group.96 One might say that the purpose of the work was to create conceptual like-mindedness among his followers, with a stress on harmony between the Ashʿarī creed, Shāfiʿī law and mystical ideas. One could indeed say that the aspects of both taʿlīm and tarbiyya are reflected in the work, and that the work thus appears to be located in the middle of the shift that Meier described.97 Maybudī and his Commentary His Life, Education and Works Unlike in the cases of al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī, there is a dearth of biographical information on Rāshid al-Dīn Abū’l-Faḍl Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Maybudī. Even a death date is lacking. He supposedly lived from sometime in the second half of the fifth/eleventh century to sometime in the first half of the sixth/twelfth century in the region

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of Yazd.98 The city of Yazd in this time was nominally part of the Saljūq dynasty, but the local lords, the Kākūyids, governed this part of western Persia in relative independence. Yazd flourished in this period and it was an important centre for intellectual life.99 It is assumed that Maybudī was the son of Jamāl al-Islām Abū Saʿd b. Aḥmad b. Mihrīzad (d. 480/1087), a religious scholar and mystic of some standing. This makes it probable that he grew up in a stimulating environment for Islamic learning, and it is very likely that he travelled to other centres of Islamic learning such as Herat, Marv or Nishapur to enhance his knowledge in the various Islamic sciences.100 Only two of his works are still extant: Kitāb al-fuṣūl (Book of Divisions), which is a short treatise on the virtues of officials of state and religion, and his voluminous Qurʾan commentary Kashf al-asrār wa-ʿuddat al-abrār (The Unveiling of Secrets and the Provision of the Pious). Besides these, we know that he composed a collection of forty hadith, the Kitāb-i arbaʿīn, which no longer survives.101 Given the richness of Kashf al-asrār, his religious profile can be partly reconstructed. He was a follower of the Shāfiʿī school of jurisprudence, but unlike most Shāfiʿīs he did not follow the Ashʿarī school in credal matters. He was inclined towards Ḥanbalism in this respect, which becomes apparent in his treatment of such issues as the ‘direction’ of God (which he considered to be ‘above’), the createdness of the Qurʾan (which he believed to be uncreated in meaning, letters and sounds) and the attributes of God (he believed that anthropomorphic references to God in the Qurʾan should not be interpreted metaphorically, but taken as they are without interpretation).102 If he indeed spent time in Khurasan, it is probably there that he came into contact with followers of ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī (d. 481/1089). Al-Anṣārī, to whom he refers as pīr-i ṭarīqat (the master of the path) in his commentary, influenced him greatly in matters of creed and mysticism, and put a stamp on his commentary.103 His approach to mysticism was, according to Annabel Keeler, largely determined by the rise of a love-oriented form of Sufism in Khurasan. This focus on divine love had been present since the early times of Sufism, but it was during Maybudī’s lifetime that it

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saw a definitive breakthrough on the Sufi scene of Khurasan, largely because scholars like Aḥmad al-Ghazālī and Abū’l-Majd Majdūd Sanāʾī (d. 525/1131) expressed their thoughts in Persian. Maybudī probably picked up this love mysticism during his study stays in the cities of Khurasan.104 His Commentary: Kashf al-asrār wa-ʿuddat al-abrār

In his introduction, Maybudī makes a clear statement about the purpose of writing his Qurʾan commentary: he intends to help the ‘student seeking guidance’ (al-mutaʿallim al-mustarshid) attain their goal and to satisfy the one ‘who ponders and seeks insight’ (al-mutaʾammil al-mustabṣir).105 Thus, his explicit goal was to provide spiritual ­guidance to the reader. Apparently, he thought that for this guidance the reader would need an understanding of both the exoteric and the esoteric aspects of the Qurʾan. From several passages in the commentary it appears that he, like al-Qushayrī, saw an understanding of shariah as being a prerequisite for the understanding of the aspects of ḥaqīqa. This understanding of shariah is that it is both necessary for and accessible to the masses (ʿawāmm), while ḥaqīqa is only accessible to the elect (khawāṣṣ).106 The commentary was thus intended to be an encompassing work offering the aspirant all that is needed to embark on the path of Sufism. Maybudī’s commentary brought some innovations to the genre. First, he was the first commentator to write a Sufi tafsīr in Persian. Second, where al-Sulamī only collected and presented mystical understandings of the Qurʾanic text and al-Qushayrī subtly integrated different strands of tafsīr, in Maybudī’s commentary we see for the first time a strict separation of the exoteric from the mystical in different sections within one work. The commentary is divided into sessions (majlishā), which may be an indication that the work was meant to be taught and perhaps even composed of notes from teaching sessions. These sessions are subsequently divided into three ‘turns’ (nawbathā, sing. nawbat). In the first nawbat, a Persian translation of the verses of the Qurʾan is given.107 The second nawbat then consists of straightforward philological, theological and legal

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commentary, in both Arabic and Persian. It is in the third nawbat that mystical reflections on the verses are presented, and that Maybudī’s more artistic, mostly Persian literary, side comes through.108 In the expression of his mystical ideas, Maybudī allowed himself a freer and more effusive style than al-Qushayrī. It is perhaps because of his clear separation of the exoteric from the mystical that the exoteric interpretations do not have too much of a ‘sobering’ effect on his mystical utterings. For his exoteric nawbat, he quotes scores of mainstream exegetical works including the likes of al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) and Ibn Qutayba (d. 247/887). The major source for the mystical parts of his commentary is the (no longer extant) tafsīr of ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī, whom he quotes throughout his commentary preceded by the words pīr-i ṭarīqat guft (the master of the path said…). He quotes munājāt (intimate conversations with God) related by al-Anṣārī, aphorisms and theological sermons.109 Only at the end of the commentary does he further unfold his criteria for interpretation. He advocates a combination of tafsīr bi’lmaʾthur (exegesis by transmitted reports) and tafsīr bi’l-raʾy (exegesis by opinion); when a scholar has mastered the sciences needed for tafsīr bi’l-maʾthūr, the scholar can within those boundaries freely engage with the text and express opinions beside the transmitted interpretations. For someone with traditionist-Ḥanbalī inclinations, quite some space is reserved for expressing his own opinion and benefiting spiritually and intellectually from the mutashābih verses.110 This already shows in his second section (nawbat), where transmitted opinions are interwoven with his own observations, anecdotes and devotional passages.111 But it is also this created space for a personal engagement with the Qurʾanic text that paves the way for his mystical understanding of the Qurʾan. Further, he does not explicitly seek to justify his mystical understanding of the Qurʾan as al-Sulamī did, which may mean that it had become an accepted and established practice when he wrote his work.

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Al-Daylamī and his Commentary Who was Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī?

As is the case with Maybudī, we are confronted with a dearth of biographical information on Shams al-Dīn Abū Thābit Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Malik al-Ṭūṣi al-Daylamī.112 Though his full name is known and we have manuscripts of his major Sufi works, biographical details about the author are lacking. This makes it hard to properly contextualise his works within the circles of influence of the intellectual, social and political environment in which he worked. We know nothing about his education, his teachers, his students, his institutional affiliation, his whereabouts and so on. Islamic biographers did not seem to care a great deal about him and his works have remained in relative obscurity. Even the period in which he lived is not entirely clear. Brockelmann, following an entry in Pertsch, dated one of his works as written in 899/1493, probably based on a misprint in Ḥājjī Khalīfa’s Kashf al-ẓunūn. The 1941 Istanbul edition of Kashf al-ẓunūn corrects this date and places the work no less than two hijri centuries earlier, in 699/1300. To further add to the confusion, the same Ḥājji Khalīfa in another entry states that he died yet another century earlier, after 589/1193.113 Jāmī mentions him in his Nafaḥāt al-Uns and places him in the seventh/fourteenth century. Arberry confirms 589/1193 as his death date. Böwering holds this date to be a copying mistake as well and states that it should be 587/1191.114 However, a close reading of al-Daylamī’s tafsīr reveals small autobiographical hints. The first hint comes in his introduction to the tafsīr and gives the impression of a Ghazālī-like trope of spiritual crisis. Not devoid of drama, he states that he spent years of his life, like many other people, despising the Sufis and cursing them in his books and writings.115 However, this attitude eventually made him feel extremely unwell. Physicians thought melancholy (sawdāʾ) had taken control of him, and he tried their prescribed cure for it. He states that his situation grew worse and worse and that he was cured from this only after a mystical experience of travelling through the cosmos, from the highest point of creation (al-ʿilliyīn) to the lowest of the lowest (asfal al-sāfilīn),

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and to the worlds of divine power and dominion (ʿālam al-jabarūt wa’l-malakūt). Back on his feet again, he realised that his mystical experiences were the same as those that the awliyāʾ described in their sayings, which he always used to rebuke. It was from that point that he started defending the claims and sayings of the Sufis by referring to Qurʾan and sunna.116 It is, I think, from this remark that his intention to write a Qurʾan commentary should be understood: as an attempt to show that the concepts and ideas of Sufis have a sound basis in the verses of the Qurʾan; an apology for Sufism in the form of a tafsīr. A second remarkable passage in his commentary on Q 6:68 deals with the question of whether it is permissible to sit with the worldly authorities: The verse contains a prohibition on sitting with oppressors, with no distinction between the oppressor (ẓālim), the unjust ( fāsiq) and the unbeliever (kāfir). His saying {Do not sit after the reminder},117 meaning: after the conveyance of the message regarding the oppressors. I myself have repeatedly been forbidden from the company of the people of oppression of our time. He [probably one of his teachers in Sufism] once said: ‘Do not set one step with this oppressor’, and he pointed to a specific person from the leaders of the army. When I neglected that and aimed to go to the army camp to see him, and when I put on my shoes, I saw the gate of the town being closed, which is the gate of the army camp. So I took off my shoes and left [the idea of] seeing them. Then after a while, in the period of the sojourn of the Sultan and the leaders in Hamadan, he said: ‘Do not see any of those oppressors!’ I said: ‘Were I to refrain from seeing them, then they would accuse me of treachery (tanammus).’ He said: ‘No, commit treachery. Treachery is more beloved to me than seeing them.’ So I said: ‘A person among them is my sergeant (ʿarīf ), and we know each other a long time, I certainly must see him.’ He said: ‘Perhaps, but you will be lost.’ And when he gave permission by his saying ‘perhaps’, I went to see them and they inflicted a lot of damage upon me, and I became needy of their assistance to me, that I desired to the extent that those people in whom I put most of my

sufi qurʾan commentaries: the rise of a genre  | 63 hope handed me over to my enemy. This story serves to teach that the company of oppressors is the ruination of this world and the veil from the otherworld.118

A couple of tentative conclusions can be drawn from this passage. First, it confirms that al-Daylamī spent at least some time of his life in or near the city of Hamadan, the capital (dār al-mulk) of the empire of the Iraqi Saljūqs, and that he was there at a time when the sultan and his entourage sojourned there.119 According to Bert Fragner in his study on Hamadan, this was a yearly habit of the Saljūq sultans during a couple of weeks in summer. The Saljūq reign of the city ended in 590/1193.120 This makes it plausible that al-Daylamī must have lived before this date, and that the year of death proposed by Arberry and Böwering is more plausible than those that place it in later centuries. Second, it shows that apparently it was the habit for religious scholars to visit the sultan at that time, and that not to go there was considered an act of disloyalty, which is probably what the word tanammus alludes to.121 Furthermore, the fact that he states that his former sergeant (ʿarīf ) is among the army might mean that al-Daylamī himself had a history in the army, or at least some form of relationship with the worldly authorities through patronage. Given the remarkable ending of this autobiographical anecdote, he apparently got involved with them again and bitterly regretted it, which made him turn away from them completely. Al-Daylamī seems to have been not only a bit of a ‘lone wolf’ and a minor figure in the history of Sufism, but also relatively detached from the centre and its institutions. To call him a peripheral figure would perhaps go too far, but it is clear that he was not close to the central power of his age.122 The passage just discussed shows a reluctance to engage oneself with the worldly authorities, and thus a detachment from the political centre. Marshall Hodgson has stated that the ‘Middle Periods’, the period in which al-Daylamī lived, may be defined as the period in which the Islamicate world lacked a central political and bureaucratic authority.123 The typical population of the cities was divided into three groups: the amir and his troops and

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dependants, the ordinary people, and the religious classes, especially the ʿulamāʾ.124 The amirs and the ʿulamāʾ formed essentially independent institutions, each with its own channels of authority. Sufis were reluctant to accept revenues from the amir out of fear that it could consist of illicit (ḥarām) money.125 Bert Fragner confirms this image in his study on the history of Hamadan: the larger part of the sixth/ twelfth century, in which al-Daylamī most likely lived, was a time of political instability for the city and the region.126 Besides his Qurʾan commentary, he wrote a fair amount of other works and treatises, both major and minor, and most of them related to either kalām or Sufism, or a combination of both. His major works consist of a collection of hadith, a summary of glosses on Sufi sayings, a compendium of Sufi cosmology, an epitome of Sufi ethics, a digest of Sufi theology and a tract on Sufi psychology.127 His works testify to an engagement with Sufism that is shaped by theological, cosmological and metaphysical concepts combined with personal visionary mystical elements. Böwering holds that as such Daylamī’s writings mark a stage of transition in Sufi thought breaking away from karāmāt and legend and turning to wāqiʿāt and dreams. The visionary world of the mystic is seen as totally real and fully identical with the spiritual world of the invisible realm.128

His Commentary: Taṣdīq al-maʿārif

Al-Daylamī’s commentary is known by two different titles: Taṣdīq al-maʿārif (The Confirmation of the Experiential Forms of Knowledge) and Futūḥ al-raḥmān fī ishārāt al-Qurʾān (Revelations of the Merciful in the Allusions of the Qurʾan). It is not clear why it has reached us under two different titles or whether the author himself had chosen these titles. What is clear though, through the choice of terms such as maʿārif and ishārāt in the title, is that the works were considered to be part of the growing number of commentaries that used this vocabulary to describe its hermeneutics. Indeed, in his introduction al-Daylamī quotes the same sayings as al-Sulamī about the multiple meanings of Qurʾanic verses.129

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We have already discussed the ‘conversion’ to Sufism that he describes in his introduction to the work. He further makes a clear statement of what he intends with this commentary: ‘This is a commentary on some verses of the Qurʾan, which Sufis need in their affairs, sayings and acts, and it demonstrates the correctness of their sayings and acts, and it testifies to the trustworthiness of their sayings in their stations.’130 So the commentary is clearly perceived to be an apology for his and others’ Sufi ideas, legitimising them by linking them to Qurʾanic verses. Approximately half of the tafsīr consists of al-Sulamī and his sources. Al-Daylamī did not just import it, but elaborated on it as well. The other half is his own. He did not use al-Qushayrī as a source directly, but does occasionally quote al-Qushayrī’s teacher al-Daqqāq.131 He sometimes quotes exoteric authorities as well, but it would be an exaggeration to say that the work is partly exoteric. The commentary is eclectic in its content and considers, often in a dialectic manner, many mystical, theological, cosmological and metaphysical ideas that are also reflected in his other works. It is sometimes polemical in its tone and content, for example in its argumentation against the ḥulūliyya (incarnationists) and the philosophers. It seems that through his commentary he wanted to provide the reader with argumentative underpinnings for his visionary mysticism. Unlike the commentaries that went before, his commentary does not show any clear signs of an intention to teach the work. We do not have enough biographical information to know whether he had the institutional affiliation to do this, or even whether he had a group of students or pupils that he guided on the mystical path, but the lack of teaching-related terms and style further supports the impression that al-Daylamī operated largely from outside the institutionalised framework of Sufism at the time. Rūzbihān al-Baqlī and his Commentary His Life, Education and Works Ṣadr al-Dīn b. Abī Naṣr Rūzbihān al-Fasāʾī al-Daylamī al-Baqlī al-Shīrāzī (d. 606/1209) was born in 522/1128 in the Persian town

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of Pasā, to a family with Daylamite roots.132 According to his mystical autobiography, Kashf al-asrār, he grew up in an environment that had a disregard for religious matters.133 He claimed to have had mystical visionary experiences from his early childhood. He also claimed that in his early adulthood he had an ‘unveiling’ (kashf ) that persuaded him to leave everything behind and wander through the desert in a state of ecstasy (wajd) for one and a half years. He is said to have joined the Sufis in a hospice (ribāṭ) around 538–9/1143–4, where he obtained his Sufi education and disciplinary training, and memorised the Qurʾan. It is not clear where this happened or how long this period lasted, but it may have been in Shiraz. It was probably also in Shiraz that he received his training in the religious sciences from the leading scholars of his time. After that, there is a gap of two decades in his biography, in which he allegedly travelled extensively through Syria, Iraq, Kirman and made the pilgrimage to Mecca.134 He finally settled in Shiraz, where he established his own lodge in 560/1165. He became a preacher at the grand mosque, the masjid-i ʿatīq, and spent the rest of his life preaching and teaching until he passed away in 606/1209.135 Rūzbihān lived in a time of political unrest. The region of Shiraz nominally fell under Saljūq rule, but their central government was in decline. The political power was largely shifting towards semiautonomous atabegs who had started their own hereditary rule in Fārs.136 This process took place during Rūzbihān’s lifetime and caused instability. It is not really clear how this might have affected him.137 There are some, possibly hagiographic, anecdotes that speak of a positive relationship with the atabegs.138 He was very productive as a writer, in both Arabic and Persian. Around thirty Sufi works are ascribed to him. Besides his numerous Sufi works, he wrote treatises in several exoteric Islamic sciences as well, among which are an exoteric Qurʾan commentary, works of hadith, Islamic law and its fundamentals, Arabic language and grammar, and creed.139 His Sufi works testify to an ecstatic visionary approach to Sufism, expressed in a dense prosaic style. They contain rich descriptions of theophanies (tajalliyāt) and mystical states of

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ecstasy. His preference for ecstatic utterances earned him the title shaykh-i shaṭṭāḥ (Doctor Ecstaticus).140 His Commentary: ʿArāʾis al-bayān fī ḥaqāʾiq al-Qurʾān

Although it is an important and in many ways interesting work, the ʿArāʾis al-bayān fī ḥaqāʾiq al-Qurʾān has not yet been the subject of a monograph as the works of al-Qushayrī and Maybudī have been. We are still waiting on a proper and in-depth analysis of Rūzbihān’s Qurʾanic hermeneutics and the complex system of thought he tried to link to the Qurʾan in his commentary. This will be a crucial enterprise for a better understanding of Rūzbihān’s life and works. In this study, I can offer only a modest first step towards that goal. As in al-Sulamī’s works, Rūzbihān’s commentary contains an introductory statement. There he explains his motivation for embarking on this project in his typical ecstatic style: I did not become occupied with this affair until after experiential knowledge and divine wisdom had overwhelmed my heart … [and] when I found that the pre-eternal Word had no limit in the outer and the inner, and that none of God’s creation had reached its perfection and the ultimate degree of its meanings – because underlying each of Its letters is an ocean of secrets and a river of lights.141

He subsequently also quotes the same sayings on the multiple meanings of the Qurʾan that al-Sulamī mentions in his introduction.142 Motivated by these sayings and the realisation that the meanings of the Qurʾan are endless, he decided to compose his commentary with ‘handfuls of pre-eternal wisdom and post-eternal indications of which the understanding of the scholar and the mind of the philosopher fall short’.143 He considers this to be following in the footsteps of the awliyāʾ and prophets, and expresses his debt to commentators who have preceded him. He states that he wanted to be brief and that he therefore left out many of their sayings. Where he mentions them, however, he does it after his own sayings, to seek their blessing through it.144 The content of ʿArāʾis al-bayān is entirely mystical and leaves out

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exoteric aspects of interpretation. The work follows the sequence of the Qurʾan from Sūrat al-Fātiḥa to Sūrat al-Nās. Rūzbihān does not comment on every Qurʾanic verse, but only on verses that he deems relevant. He first gives his own commentary and only then mentions the opinions of his predecessors. He relies heavily upon al-Sulamī’s material and the Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt by al-Qushayrī, whom he quotes as al-ustādh (the master). In the following chapters we will have ample space to see what this looks like in practice. Conclusion

Have we now come closer to an understanding of what a ‘Sufi’ Qurʾan commentary entails? Are we justified in speaking of Sufi tafsīr as a separate genre? On the one hand, we see a great variety in hermeneutical approaches and literary style, which clearly gives every tafsīr its own distinctive identity. While al-Sulamī was first and foremost a collector and organiser of existing esoteric material, al-Qushayrī smoothly combined a sober mystical approach with theological and philological concerns, in a very sophisticated level of Arabic. Maybudī gave a lot of space to the exoteric sciences and had a more literary artistic and less sober style in his mystical parts in Persian. With al-Daylamī we see yet again a new dimension, with his dialectic-theological and visionary mysticism, and the disappearance of exoteric commentary. In the work of Rūzbihān we see a continuation and amplification of this strictly esoteric style. He is hardly comparable to his predecessors in his ecstatic, visionary flowing style and content. While the works of al-Sulamī, al-Qushayrī and Maybudī were probably intended to teach and to guide and train pupils, it is doubtful whether this was the intention of the last two authors. There seems to be a shift between the former and the latter in authorial intent in this respect, as well as in style and content. Nevertheless, there is continuity as well. Drawing upon the same authoritative statements of the likes of ʿAlī and Jaʿfar, all seem to agree upon certain hermeneutical principles and the authors use more or less the same vocabulary to signify these principles.145 The fact that they all fall back on the same earlier authorities provides a strong

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reason to consider their works as a separate genre and to assume that the authors themselves considered them as such. This makes these works genealogical: the authors placed themselves in a tradition of scholarship and only propounded their own ideas and allusions against the background of earlier authorities. Al-Sulamī collected all the sayings about Qurʾanic verses made by earlier generations of mystics. Al-Qushayrī cited al-Sulamī. Maybudī cited, albeit through the lost tafsīr of al-Anṣārī, both al-Qushayrī and al-Sulamī. Al-Daylamī cited al-Qushayrī’s teacher al-Daqqāq, as well as al-Sulamī. Rūzbihān cited al-Qushayrī and al-Sulamī.146 It is evident from this that al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī started something new within the genre of tafsīr, something that the later authors felt the need to relate to in order to give legitimacy to their own additions. How this genealogical nature of the genre works in practice, and what it teaches us about the theological and mystical choices of the authors, we further examine in the case studies in the second part of this study. Although it is certainly justifiable to conceive of these works as a genre on these grounds, to conceive of it as a genre of ‘Sufi’ tafsīr does remain problematic. The authors themselves did not once use the term ‘Sufi’ to describe their own works or hermeneutical method.147 The fact that all authors can be identified as Sufis cannot be the only criterion to classify these works as Sufi tafsīrs. After all, Sufis also wrote works of tafsīr according to conventional methods of interpretation, focusing on the apparent (ẓāhir) meanings of the Qurʾanic text – sometimes even interwoven within their ishārī works, as in the cases of al-Qushayrī and Maybudī. The issue of terminology thus remains unresolved. We will get back to this issue at later points in this study. In this chapter I have offered some biographical context to the five main authors of this study and their works. It may be clear that all authors were situated quite close to the ‘centre’, all functioning as scholars of the ‘outward’ (ẓāhir) disciplines of religious knowledge alongside their specialism in Sufism, and to varying degrees (with al-Daylamī as the exception) maintaining constructive relationships with the worldly powers of their time. In the following chapters I

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hope to show how their approach to the Qurʾan in their commentaries worked out in practice, and how their wider ‘circles of influence’ are reflected in their ideas on the hereafter and the vision of God. We will now make the first step in this endeavour, by discussing their ideas on Paradise and Hell as reflected in their commentaries. Notes

1 Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 2:6–7. 2 Richard W. Bulliet, ‘The Political-Religious History of Nishapur in the Eleventh Century’, in Islamic Civilization, 950–1150: A Colloquium Published under the Auspices of the Near Eastern History Group, Oxford, the Near East Center, University of Pennsylvania, ed. D. S. Richards (London: Bruno Cassirer/Faber, 1973), 72. 3 For an introductory overview of Sufism in this period, see Hamid Dabashi, ‘Historical Conditions of Persian Sufism during the Seljuk Period’, in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, ed. J. A. Boyle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 137–74. Though overstating the rivalry and opposition between ‘jurists’ and ‘Sufis’ – many Sufis were, after all, also jurists and vice versa – he gives a proper description of some key figures and their relations with their social and political environments. 4 The most important primary sources for the understanding of Nishapur in this period are Taʾrīkh Naysābūr by Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Ḥākim (d. 405/1015) and Siyāq li-taʾrīkh Naysabūr by Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Ghāfir al-Fārisī, both published in facsimile in Richard N. Frye, The Histories of Nishapur (The Hague: Mouton, 1965). These are the most important sources for the standard work by Richard W. Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur: A Study in Medieval Islamic Social History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972) and the chapters on Nishapur in Clifford E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 94–1040 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963). 5 Bosworth, Ghaznavids, 153. 6 Ibid., 162. 7 EI2, s.v. ‘Nīshāpūr’, by E. Honigmann [C. E. Bosworth], 8:62–4; EIr, s.v. ‘Nishapur’, by C. E. Bosworth (accessed 13 November 2014).

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8 Bulliet, Patricians of Nishapur, 16–18. 9 Ibid., 26–7, 75. 10 Ibid., 76. 11 Ibid., 15; Bosworth, Ghaznavids, 165. 12 Bulliet, Patricians of Nishapur, 11–14. 13 Wilferd Madelung, Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran (Albany, NY: Bibliotheca Persica, 1988): 27–30; Alessandro Bausani, ‘Religion in the Saljuq Period’, in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, ed. J. A. Boyle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 283–90. 14 Under Saljūq rule this relative independence would reduce and religious institutions became more and more patronised and directed by the state. In Nishapur this was also felt during the reign of Niẓām alMulk (d. 485/1092). See Bulliet, Patricians of Nishapur, 74–5. For a description of the earlier relative independence of religious authority from the political authority, see Ira Lapidus, ‘The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society’, IJMES 6 (1975): 363–85. 15 Madelung, Religious Trends, 32–4; Bulliet, Patricians of Nishapur, 30, 33, 37–9. This persecution, although primarily targeted at the Shāfiʿīs, whose leaders were all Ashʿarīs by that time, seems to have been more framed as a conflict over the Ashʿarī creed, since it was easier to dismiss the other as heretical over credal issues than over legal differences. Bulliet still holds it to have been primarily a social conflict, albeit framed as a religious one. 16 Margaret Malamud, ‘The Politics of Heresy in Medieval Khurasan: The Karramiyya in Nishapur’, Iranian Studies 27, no. 1 (1994): 43–5. Not much is known about the exact content of the teachings of the Karrāmiyya, and what we do know is mostly through the eyes of its opponents. The most important work of its founder, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Karrām (d. 255/869), ʿAdhāb al-qabr, is lost. Some lesser known texts have been analysed by Josef van Ess, Ungenützte Texte zur Karrāmiyya: Eine Materialsammlung (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1980). They seem to have had their own views on both credal matters (very literalist) and jurisprudence, thus offering a complete alternative to the prevailing trends in Sunnism and Shīʿism to its followers. See Clifford E. Bosworth, ‘The Rise of the

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Karāmiyyah in Khurasan’, The Muslim World 50 (1960): 5–14; TG, 4:346, 531. 17 Bulliet, ‘Political-Religious History of Nishapur’, 74–6. 18 Bulliet, Patricians of Nishapur, 39. 19 Madelung, Religious Trends, 45; EI2, s.v. ‘Khānḳāh’, by J. Chabbi, 4:1025; Malamud, ‘Politics of Heresy’, 41–2, 48; EIr, s.v. ‘Ḵānaqāh’, by G. Böwering and M. Melvin-Koushki (accessed on 2 November 2014). 20 Heinz Halm, ‘Die Anfänge der Madrasa’, ZDMG, supplement 3, no. 1, XIX Deutsche Orientalistentag (1975): 439. 21 EI2, s.v. ‘Madrasa’, by R. Hillenbrand, 5:1126. The introduction of madrasahs is often associated with Niẓām al-Mulk. Whether this is correct is part of an ongoing debate. Some have claimed that the institution is at least two centuries older than that, as the history of Nishapur shows. Niẓām al-Mulk can be credited with popularising the practice among leaders outside of Khurasan however. See the list of the madrasahs of Nishapur in Bulliet, Patricians of Nishapur, 249–55. See also EIr, s.v. ‘Education’, by C. Melchert, 4 ‘The Medieval Madrasa’ (accessed on 8 November 2014); George Makdisi, ‘Muslim Institutions of Learning in Eleventh-Century Baghdad,’ BSOAS, 24 (1961): 1–56; Abdel-Latif Tibawi, ‘Origin and Character of al-Madrasah’, BSOAS 25 (1962): 225–38; Halm, ‘Die Anfänge der Madrasa’. 22 Bulliet, Patricians of Nishapur, 48–54. 23 Ibid., 55–6. 24 Lutz Berger, ‘Geschieden von allem ausser Gott’: Sufik und Welt bei Abū ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān as-Sulamī (936–1021) (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1998), 12. For a thorough description of the development of Sufism in this period, see Karamustafa, Formative Period. 25 Jacqueline Chabbi, ‘Remarques sur le développement historique des mouvements ascétiques et mystiques au Khurasan: IIIe/IXe siècle– IVe/Xe siècle’, SI 46 (1977): 29–38; Christopher Melchert, ‘Sufis and Competing Movements in Nishapur’, Iran 39 (2001): 237–47. See also Harith Bin Ramli, ‘The Rise of Early Sufism: A Survey of Recent Scholarship on its Social Dimensions’, History Compass 8, no. 11 (2010): 1299–315. 26 Bulliet, Patricians of Nishapur, 41–2. In Nishapur the rise of Sufism and the absorption of the Malāmatī strand is clearly visible in the development of onomastic practices, as described by Chabbi, ‘Mouvements

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ascétiques’, 29–38. A convenient table of these data is provided by Bulliet, Patricians of Nishapur, 41. 27 Karamustafa, Formative Period, 60–2; Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 99. 28 See Margaret Malamud, ‘Sufi Organizations and Structures of Authority in Medieval Nishapur’, IJMES 26, no. 3 (1994): 427–42; Melchert, ‘Sufis and Competing Movements’. 29 The main source for our knowledge of the Malāmatiyya is a description by al-Sulamī in his Risālat al-Malāmatiyya. Ḥamdūn al-Qaṣṣār also prominently figures in other works of al-Sulamī, among which his Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr. 30 EI2, s.v. ‘Malāmatiyya’, by C. H. Imber, 6:223–8. 31 Berger, Sufik und Welt, 33; Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Sulamī, Kitāb Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya, ed. Johannes Pederson (Leiden: Brill, 1960). 32 Chabbi, ‘Mouvements ascétiques’, 67–72; Karamustafa, Formative Period, 61. 33 For a criticism of this narrative, see Malamud, ‘Sufi Organizations’. Bernd Radtke has argued, with reason, that the narrative of a conflict between Sufism and the exoteric sciences (Radtke uses ‘the Law’) only to be reconciled by al-Ghazālī is ‘a particularly tenacious and longlived cliché about the history of Sufism’. He claims that this narrative is a form of suppression and projection to create ‘a form of “warmer Islam” with which the expectant can identify’. Radtke, ‘Between Projection and Suppression’, 78. See also Radtke, ‘Warum ist der Sufi orthodox?’, 302–7. Of course, various aspects of Sufism have never become completely uncontroversial, and its place within the Islamic mainstream has continually been contested throughout its history. See Fred de Jong and Bernd Radtke, eds, Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden: Brill, 1999). 34 Berger, Sufik und Welt, 12. 35 Malamud, ‘Sufi Organizations’, 427–30. 36 Bulliet states that the Shāfiʿī intellectual scene in Nishapur was more ‘progressive’ than the Ḥanafī milieu, and as a consequence more open to relatively new trends such as Sufism and Ashʿarism. Bulliet, Patricians of Nishapur, 39. Melchert disagrees with him and states that it has more to do with the roots of Shāfiʿism in earlier traditionist scholarship that appealed to the Sufis. Melchert, ‘Sufis and Competing Movements’, 243.

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37 Claude Gilliot, ‘L’exégèse du Coran en Asie Centrale et au Khorasan’, SI 89 (1999): 130, 138. 38 Walid Saleh, therefore, even speaks of the ‘Nishapuri school’. Walid Saleh, ‘The Last of the Nishapuri School of Tafsīr: Al-Wāḥidī (d. 468/1076) and his Significance in the History of Qurʿanic Exegesis’, JAOS 126, no.2 (2006): 225–6. 39 Gilliot, ‘Exégèse du Coran’, 146–7. A Karrāmī tafsīr by an unknown author has been identified by Aron Zysow, ‘Two Unrecognized Karrāmī Texts’, JAOS 108, no. 4 (1988): 577–87. Saleh believes that al-Thaʿlabī’s commentary also bears traces of Karrāmī tafsīr. Saleh, Formation, 6. 40 Saleh, Formation, 63; Walid Saleh, ‘Word’, in Key Themes for the Study of Islam, ed. Jamal J. Elias (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2010), 361. 41 Saleh, ‘Word’, 374. 42 Ibid., 372–3. The idea that Sufi commentaries were composed to create like-mindedness among an audience has been posed by Elias, ‘Ṣūfī Tafsīr Reconsidered’, 50. 43 Saleh, Formation, 18–20. 44 Ibid., 20–2. 45 Berger doubts this, since this is only mentioned in much later sources. He thinks it is a topos. Berger, Sufik und Welt, 41. 46 Gerhard Böwering, ‘The Qurʾān Commentary of al-Sulamī’, in Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams, eds Wael B. Hallaq and Donald P. Little (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 43–5. The most encompassing study on the life and works of al-Sulamī, and a standard work for decades to come, is Jean-Jacques Thibon, L’œuvre d’Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (325/937–412/1021) et la formation du soufisme (Damascus: Institut français du Proche-Orient, 2009). 47 A duwayra is a small dār, or ‘house’, and is considered to be an equivalent of the khānaqah. 48 Böwering, ‘Commentary of al-Sulamī’, 43–5; Berger, Sufik und Welt, 35–47; Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 125–7. 49 Karamustafa, Formative Period, 60–3. 50 Berger, Sufik und Welt, 42. 51 Böwering, ‘Commentary of al-Sulamī’, 42–3; Godlas, ‘Ṣūfism’, 351–2; Ateș, İşârî tefsîr okulu, 3–8. For a critique on these periodisations, see Elias, ‘Ṣūfī Tafsīr Reconsidered’, 43–4. 52 Nwyia argues that in an earlier stage al-Sulamī was less concerned with

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‘defending’ Sufism and reconciling it with the exoteric sciences than he was in his later works, notably the Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya. Since Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr does not bear marks of that concern, he considered it to be an earlier work. Paul Nwyia, Trois oeuvres inédites de mystiques musulmans Šaqīq al-Balhī, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ, Niffarī (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 1973), 26; Böwering, ‘Commentary of al-Sulamī’, 49. 53 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:19. 54 The identity of Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad is problematic. It is tempting to identify him as Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, but this cannot be done with absolute certainty. For a discussion of this problem, see Gerhard Böwering, ‘The Major Sources of Sulamī’s Minor Qurʾān Commentary’, Oriens 35 (1996): 35–56. Nwyia has pointed out that, although we’re not certain from when these sayings attributed to Jaʿfar hail, we can at least say with certainty that they correspond with the technical vocabulary of third-century Sufis, and that they thus are a primordial source for the study of the formation of mystical language in Islam. Paul Nwyia, ‘Le tafsīr mystique attribué à Jaʿfar Ṣādiq’, ed. Paul Nwyia, Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 43 (1962): 201–6. Massignon states that it was probably Dhū’l-Nūn al-Miṣrī who first edited the sayings attributed to him. Massignon, Essay, 206. Böwering is of the opinion that the works of al-Sulamī do not testify of this. Böwering, ‘Major Sources’, 56. Mayer concludes from the thematic coherence and consistency of thought of the sayings in the Sulamī recension that it is very likely that the corpus has emanated as a unity. Farhana Mayer, trans., Spiritual Gems: The Mystical Qurʾān Commentary Ascribed to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq as Contained in Sulamī’s ‘Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr’ from the Text of Paul Nwyia (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011), xxii. 55 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:19–20. 56 Sands, Ṣūfī Commentaries, 8–13. Sands gives an overview of the discussions among medieval Islamic scholars on the legitimacy of Sufi commentaries and the role of these quotes in these discussions. 57 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:19–23. 58 Ibid., 1:20. 59 Ibid., 1:21. 60 Ibid., 1:23. 61 Ibid., 1:23. 62 Sulamī, Ziyādāt.



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63 Ibid., 19. 64 Ibid., 1. 65 Ibid., 2. 66 Wolfhart Heinrichs, ‘Contacts between Scriptural Hermeneutics and Literary Theory in Islam: The Case of Majāz’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaft 7 (1991–2): 253. Quoted in Saleh, Formation, 67. 67 Sulamī, Ziyādāt, 1. 68 Saleh, Formation, 16. 69 Al-Sulamī lived in a period in which the Shāfiʿīs of Nishapur were not yet exclusively Ashʿarī in credal matters. It is not clear whether al-Sulamī adhered to this creed, although he surely had scholarly connections with the Ashʿarīs of his time. Berger, Sufik und Welt, 42. 70 Thibon, L’oeuvre, 128. 71 Melchert stresses that the terms ahl al-ḥadīth (people of hadith) and ahl al-raʾy (people of reasoning) had not yet disappeared from the scene in the tenth century, and that the process of absorbing local traditions was still going on. Melchert, ‘Sufis and Competing Movements’, 243. 72 Böwering, ‘Commentary of al-Sulamī’, 50–1. 73 Ibid., 49–50. 74 The comparison with al-Ṭabarī is made by Böwering, ‘Commentary of al-Sulamī’, 56; Böwering, Mystical Vision, 110. When one accepts the opinion of Walid Saleh – which I do – that to understand the impact of a commentary one must trace its influence on later commentaries, it is indeed justified to compare al-Sulamī with al-Ṭabarī. All commentaries under scrutiny in this study clearly relied on al-Sulamī’s commentary as a source. Saleh, Formation, 11. 75 None of these early figures independently left behind a work of Qurʾanic commentary that is known to us in its original form, and indeed probably only al-Tustarī, al-Wāsiṭī and Ibn ʿAṭāʾ composed a work in the format of the genre. Al-Sulamī’s works are our main source to reconstruct them. An exception to this is the tafsīr of Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896), which has survived more or less independently, albeit in the form of notes and additional narrations by his students. See Böwering, Mystical Vision, 128–35. Paul Nwyia has reconstructed the tafsīrs of Jaʿfar and Ibn ʿAṭāʾ based on al-Sulamī. See Nwyia, ‘Tafsīr mystique’, 181–230 and Nwyia, Trois oeuvres, 23–182.

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76 Böwering, ‘Commentary of al-Sulamī’, 56. 77 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:19–20. 78 Translation from Saleh, ‘Nishapuri School’, 232; Böwering, ‘Commentary of al-Sulamī’, 52. This criticism of al-Sulamī’s work continued long after that. In his Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn, al-Suyūṭī categorised al-Sulamī under the innovators in tafsīr and said about him: ‘I put him in this category because his commentary is not praiseworthy.’ He quotes al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348) to have stated, ‘If only he had not written it. It contains alteration of the scripture (taḥrīf ) and Qarmatianism (qarmaṭa)’ (Suyūṭī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn, 97–8). The Qarmatians were a third-/ ninth-century Muslim sect associated with the Ismāʿīlīs, who believed the Qurʾan should be read allegorically. The term qarmaṭa was later used to designate Ismāʿīlī-like esoteric groups. EI2, s.v. ‘Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ’, by W. Madelung, 3:123–4. See also Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:11–12. 79 Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn, 1:344–52; Richard Gramlich, trans., Das Sendschreiben al-Qušayrīs über das Sufitum (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1989), 11; Nguyen, Sufi Master, 23–30. 80 Nguyen, Sufi Master, 32–6. For a list of al-Qushayrī’s teachers and the subjects of study, see Gramlich, Sendschreiben, 12–16. 81 For a translation of this document, see Heinz Halm, ‘Der Wesir al-Kundurī und die Fitna von Nīšāpūr’, Die Welt des Orients 6, no. 2 (1971): 214–15. 82 Nguyen, Sufi Master, 40–5; Gramlich, Sendschreiben, 14. 83 Nguyen, Sufi Master, 65–6. 84 For a scholarly translation into English of this work, see Alexander D. Knysh, trans., Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism: ‘Al-Risāla al-Qushayriyya fī ʿilm al-tasawwuf’ (Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2007). For a thorough and eloquent German translation, see Gramlich, Sendschreiben. 85 Meier borrows this distinction from Ibn ʿAbbād al-Rundī (d. 1390). Fritz Meier, ‘Khurasan and the End of Classical Sufism’, in Essays on Islamic Piety and Mysticism, trans. John O’Kane with editorial assistance from Bernd Radtke (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 217. 86 Nguyen, Sufi Master, 75–9. 87 For a discussion of the authenticity of two existing manuscripts commonly identified as al-Tafsīr al-kabīr, see Martin Nguyen, ‘Al-Tafsīr al-kabīr: An Investigation of al-Qushayrī’s Major Qurʾan Commentary’, JSS 2 (2013): 17–45.

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88 Nguyen, Sufi Master, 94–5. 89 Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 1:41. The translation of the fragment is, with slight adaptations, by Nguyen, Sufi Master, 122. 90 Nguyen, Sufi Master, 122. 91 Ibid., 123–5. 92 Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 1:41. 93 Nguyen, Sufi Master, 127. 94 Kristin Z. Sands, ‘On the Subtleties of Method and Style in the Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt of al-Qushayrī’, JSS 2 (2013): 7–8. 95 This is noted by Keeler, ‘Ṣūfī Tafsīr as a Mirror’, 3. She contrasts it with Sahl al-Tustarī’s commentary, which she describes as the result of ecstatic authorship. 96 Nguyen, Sufi Master, 130–1; Ibrāhīm Basyūnī, al-Imām al-Qushayrī: sīratuhu, āthāruhu, madhhabuhu fī’l-taṣawwuf (Cairo: Majmaʿat al-buḥūth al-islāmiyya, 1972), 53; Sands, ‘Subtleties’, 15. 97 For the distinction between taʿlīm and tarbiyya, see Meier, ‘Khurasan’, 190–2. 98 EIr, s.v. ‘Meybodi’, by A. Keeler (accessed on 30 September 2013). Maybud is a town near Yazd. The tomb of Maybudī’s possible father, Jamāl al-Islām Abū Saʿīd b. Aḥmad b. Mehrizad (d. 1087), is situated there, which makes it plausible that this is indeed the place of birth of Rashīd al-Dīn. 99 EI2, s.v. ‘Kākūyids’, by C. E. Bosworth, 4:465–7. 100 EIr, s.v. ‘Meybodi’, by A. Keeler (accessed on 30 September 2013). Keeler believes he sojourned in Herat for some time, because he uses the dialect of Herat in his commentary. 101 Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 18–19. 102 Maybudī, Kashf, 1:123; 2:237; 3:29, 169; 4:111; 8:507. See also EIr, s.v. ‘Meybodi’, by A. Keeler (accessed on 30 September 2013); Annabel Keeler, ‘Mystical Theology and the Traditionalist Hermeneutics of Maybudī’s Kashf al-asrār’, in Sufism and Theology, ed. Ayman Shihadeh (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 15–30. 103 EIr, s.v. ‘Meybodi’, by A. Keeler (accessed on 30 September 2013). ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī is known for his staunch position against kalām, a position that Maybudī seems to have shared with him. Keeler, ‘Mystical Theology’, 16–17. 104 Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 110. For a study of the theme of love in

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Ḥanbalism, see Joseph N. Bell, Love Theory in Later Ḥanbalite Islam (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1979). 105 Maybudī, Kashf, 1:1. Translation from Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 40. 106 Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 55–7. 107 This was not unusual in Maybudī’s time. For early translations of the Qurʾan into Persian and their relation to the genre of tafsīr, see Travis Zadeh, The Vernacular Qurʾan: Translation and the Rise of Persian Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Zadeh also treats Maybudī in this work. 108 Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 19. 109 Ibid., 20–2. 110 Maybudī, Kashf, 10:679; Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 41–2. 111 Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 50–1. 112 He is not mentioned in the Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn of al-Dāwūdī, al-Suyūṭī or al-Adnarwī. Thus far only a few articles have appeared on al-Daylamī and the extant manuscripts of his works and these only scratch the surface of some of his ideas and do not contain substantial biographical details. See Arthur J. Arberry, ‘The Works of Shams al-Dīn al-Dailamī’, BSOAS 29, no. 1 (1966): 49–56; Gerhard Böwering, ‘The Writings of Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī’, Islamic Studies 26, no. 3 (1987): 231–6. In recent scholarship, some specific aspects of his works have been analysed, but these studies have not revealed new biographical material. Elizabeth R. Alexandrin, ‘Witnessing the Lights of the Heavenly Dominion: Dreams, Visions and the Mystical Exegeses of Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī,’ in Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies, eds Özgen Felek and Alexander D. Knysh (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012), 215–32; Elizabeth R. Alexandrin, ‘“Minding the Body”: Corporeality in Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī’s Treatises’, Ishraq: Islamic Philosophy Yearbook 4 (2013): 526–39. 113 Arberry, ‘Works of al-Dailamī’, 4. 114 Böwering, ‘Writings of al-Daylamī’, 231–2. 115 These writings must not have been too impressive to the scholarly audience, since it is only his Sufi writings that are still known to us in manuscript form and apparently were deemed worthy of copying and spreading. 116 Abū Thābit Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī, ‘Kitāb al-tafsīr al-Daylamī’, Yeni Cami, Istanbul, MS 57, fols 1b­–2a.

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117 When parts of Qurʾan commentaries are presented in translation, the Qurʾanic text that is commented upon has been placed between curly brackets. This is to stay true to the style of the original commentary as much as possible. 118 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fols 45a­–b. 119 One manuscript, Radd ʿalā al-ḥulūliyya, indeed adds the nisba al-Hamadānī to his name, which may show that his relationship to the city was more than superficial. Abū Thābit Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī, ‘Radd ʿalā al-ḥulūliyya’, Ibrahim Efendi, Istanbul, MS 860, fol. 108a. 120 Bert Fragner, Geschichte der Stadt Hamadān und ihrer Umgebung in den ersten Sechs Jahrhunderten nach der Hiğra – Von d. Eroberung durch die Araber bis zum Untergang d. ‘ʿIrāq-Selčuken’ (Vienna: Verlag Notring, 1972), 178. 121 This habit is indeed confirmed in other studies. On the relationship of the Saljūq rulers with the scholarly class and Sufi authorities, see Deborah G. Tor, ‘“Sovereign and Pious”: The Religious Life of the Great Seljuq Sultans’, in The Seljuqs: Politics, Society and Culture, eds Christian Lange and Songül Mecit (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 49–53; Dabashi, ‘Historical Conditions’; Omid Safi, The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 122 Fragner also points out how Hamadan more and more became a centre of ‘unorthodox’ movements. Fragner, Stadt Hamadān, 128. 123 Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 2:68. 124 Ibid., 2:109–10. 125 Ibid., 96. 126 Fragner, Stadt Hamadān, 111–33. 127 Böwering, ‘Writings of al-Daylamī’, 232. Unfortunately, we do not have the scope in this study to give a thorough representation of the ideas he exposes in these works. All of these works are still waiting to be critically edited and to be properly studied. Showing the personal visionary character of the works in combination with cosmology, theology and metaphysics may be rewarding for a better understanding of the shifts that take place in Sufi thought in this period. According to Böwering, ‘Daylamī bridges the gap in 6th/12th century Sufism between ʿAyn

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al-Quḍāt al-Ḥamadānī and Najm al-Dīn al-Kubrā and foreshadows ideas that emerge in the Kubrawī school and the Ḥurūfī sect.’ Böwering, ‘Writings of al-Daylamī’, 235. 128 Böwering, ‘Writings of al-Daylamī’, 235. 129 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 2a. 130 Ibid., fol. 1b. 131 Böwering, ‘Writings of al-Daylamī’, 232. 132 Not everyone is in agreement on the year of birth. For a detailed discussion of all possibilities, see Godlas, ‘The ʿArāʾis al-bayān’, 4–11. 133 For a critical edition of this autobiography, see Firoozeh Papan-Matin and Michael Fishbein, eds, The Unveiling of Secrets ‘Kashf al-asrār’: The Visionary Autobiography of Rūzbihān al-Baqlī (1128–1209 ad) (Leiden: Brill, 2006). For a translation into English, see Carl W. Ernst, trans. The Unveiling of Secrets: Diary of a Sufi Master (Chapel Hill, NC: Parvardigar Press, 1997). 134 Ernst, Ruzbihan, 1–6; EI2, s.v. ‘Rūzbihān’, by C. W. Ernst, 8:651–2. 135 Paul Ballanfat, Quatre traités inédits de Ruzbehân Baqlî Shîrâzî: textes arabes avec un commentaire (Tehran: Institut français de recherche en Iran, 1988), 71–5. 136 EI2, s.v. ‘Atabak’, by C. Cahen, 1:731; Godlas, ‘The ʿArāʾis al-bayān’, 1–3. 137 Godlas suggests, without presenting convincing evidence, that some of his mystical conversions and wanderings may have had something to do with this unrest. Godlas, ‘The ʿArāʾis al-bayān’, 4. In Kashf al-asrār, Rūzbihān mentions the troubled, epidemic times in which he lives and asks God to keep him away from the rulers: ‘Then I asked God most high that he free me from entering the courts of princes. After dawn, one of God’s orders (glory be to him) came down, and he freed me from seeing them or associating with them at that time’ (Baqlī’s Kashf translated in Ernst, Unveiling of Secrets, 141). 138 Ibid., 13–16; Ernst, Ruzbihan, 132–4. 139 For a list of his works, see appendix A in Ernst, Ruzbihan, 151–60. 140 EI2, s.v. ‘Rūzbihān’, by C. W. Ernst, 8:651–2. 141 Translation from Godlas, ‘The ʿArāʾis al-bayān’, 60. 142 Ibid., 60–4. 143 Ibid., 65. 144 Ibid., 65–6. 145 For an overview of the continuity in these principles and their

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­ocabulary, see Sands, Ṣūfī Commentaries, 35–46 and Keeler, Sufi v Hermeneutics, 69–74. 146 For the influence of most notably al-Qushayrī on the works of Maybudī and Rūzbihān, see Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 22, 34 n. 135, 90–2, and Alan Godlas, ‘Influences of Qushayrī’s Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt on Sufi Qurʾanic Commentaries, Particularly Rūzbihān al-Baqlī’s ʿArāʾis al-bayān and the Kubrawi al-Taʾwīlāt al-najmiyya’, JSS 2 (2013): 78–92. Godlas suggests that Rūzbihān’s purpose in quoting al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī was ‘to demonstrate the presence of a historical tradition of Sufi esoteric Qurʾan commentary of which he was a continuing and contributing member’ (Godlas, ‘Influences’, 87). 147 This is also noted by Sands, Ṣūfī Commentaries, 4.

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3

The Ultimate Boundary Crossing: Paradise and Hell in the Commentaries

Introduction In this chapter we give an overview of the dominant eschatological themes found in the commentaries, starting with a discussion of the existing literature on eschatology in the formative and ‘classical’ periods of Sufism and offering a typology of themes. After this, we analyse sayings about the Qurʾanic verses on Paradise and Hell collected in al-Sulamī’s Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr, and to a lesser extent in Ziyādāt Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr. Through his works we try to reconstruct the developments in Sufi thought on Paradise and Hell in the formative period. From there, we move on to the other four commentaries. We seek to understand if, how and why conceptions of the hereafter changed, what main topics and themes are shared by all commentaries, as well as any significant differences between the approaches of the commentators towards the hereafter. Attitudes towards the Hereafter in the Formative Period of Sufism

In a recent study on Sufi eschatological conceptions, Christian Lange discerned seven attitudes towards the hereafter.1 The first two attitudes are both rooted in the early renunciant movement (zuhd) in 83

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Islam. The general tendency within the zuhd movement was to stress that a pious person should strive for the hereafter by disentangling themselves from this lower life and struggling against worldly desires and aspirations. This roughly led to two attitudes, emphasising either the punishment or the reward in the hereafter. The first attitude emphasised the fear of Hell (khawf ) as a way to cultivate piety. The second attitude focused on the longing for Paradise (rajāʾ). The third and fourth attitudes took shape as a ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ antithesis to the attitudes of these early zuhhād. Both take as axiomatic that an exaggerated fixation on either the enjoyment of Paradise or the punishment of Hell distracts from what truly matters in the hereafter: God Himself, His contentment, being near Him and the vision of Him. The ‘cold’ response did not deny the reality of the otherworldly reward and punishment, but merely stressed that the true reward and punishment was to be either near to or far from God. The ‘hot’ response, then, was a form of dhamm al-ākhira, an outright contempt of Paradise and Hell, considering them something that veils the believer from God.2 The fifth and sixth attitudes are related to trends of monism in Sufi thought and conceive of an immanent Paradise and Hell. The fifth attitude recognises Paradise and Hell in aspects of this-worldly creation, in the macrocosm. The sixth attitude considers Paradise and Hell to be immanent in the microcosm; they can be found within the inner constitution of man. The seventh attitude consists of cosmological speculation on themes such as the isthmus (barzakh), and finds its most prominent proponent in Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240).3 Another, older, study on Sufi conceptions of the otherworld is contained in La vie future selon le Coran by Soubhi El-Saleh. Rather than analyse these conceptions thematically and classify them according to their attitude towards the otherworld as Lange does, he takes historical periods as the basis of his analysis. The central question for him is how the Sufis perceived joy and torment: did they do away with the concrete character of Qurʾanic descriptions of Paradise and Hell or were they forced to recognise its reality to a certain extent? In the first case, how did they do away with it, and in the second case, what was the nature of this reality? He distinguishes five different periods:

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(1) the first two centuries of Islam; (2) the third and fourth centuries; (3) the fifth century; (4) the sixth and seventh centuries; and (5) after the seventh century. In the first period, El-Saleh identifies two different ascetic trends, neither of which denied the reality of reward and punishment: an asceticism in which the fear of punishment and desire for recompense is equally dominant, represented by al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728) and the mystics of Basra, and an asceticism in which the accent is on the love of God as the essential motivation for obedience rather than reward and punishment, represented by Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya (d. 185/801). This second trend, although considered secondary, certainly did not wholly deny the physical reality of Paradise and Hell. In the second period, this focus on love for God was further developed, with a whole new lexicon to describe it. The idea became more abstract and the religious sciences became separated into exoteric and esoteric. However, this did not lead to a rejection of the exoteric sciences by mystics. They kept recognising the physical reality of Paradise and Hell. In the third and fourth periods, this remained the dominant idea: Paradise and Hell are real, but only secondary to the meeting with and contemplation of God.4 (The fifth period El-Saleh considers to have been a period of decadence and decline, in which nothing worth mentioning happened.) In what follows, we combine the approaches of Lange and El-Saleh and undertake a diachronic study of the attitudes found in the works of tafsīr written by the five authors discussed in Chapter 2. All of them were composed in what El-Saleh has defined as the second and third periods, which are generally considered to be at the end of the formative, classical period of Sufi tafsīr.5 Eschatological Commentary of al-Sulamī’s Major Sources

In our reading of al-Sulamī’s Qurʾan commentaries, we have identified sayings with an eschatological character from no less than twentythree different authorities. Since our goal is to understand the development and dynamics of Sufi eschatological ideas in the formative period, we now discuss in chronological order the ideas of the most significant and most frequently quoted personalities by al-Sulamī.

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We will relate them to the six attitudes described by Lange, and the chronological development as outlined by El-Saleh. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765)

The oldest personality that al-Sulamī quotes in his commentary is the Medina-based Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. Only a few eschatological remarks can be found in the quotes attributed to Jaʿfar. None of these are focused on Hell, all on Paradise and especially the ultimate reward therein: the meeting with and vision of God. Commenting on Q 39:25, he states: ‘If you look to other than Him, meeting with Him in the otherworld is forbidden for you.’6 This theme comes up in more sayings, for example regarding Q 43:71 (‘And therein is whatever the souls desire and delights the eyes’): What a difference between what is desired and what delights the eyes. Because all that is situated in the Garden of happiness, desires and delights is in comparison to what delights the eyes like a finger dipped into the sea, because the desires of the Garden have a limit and an end, because they are created. The eyes are not delighted in the enduring abode (dār al-qarār) except by looking at the Remaining, the Exalted, and that has no limit, no attribute and no end.7

The men ‘whom neither trade nor commerce distract from the remembrance of God’ (Q 24:37) are described as people who are distracted neither by this lower world nor by the hereafter and its rewards. The interior gardens of intimacy with God and remembrance of Him (basātīn al-uns wa-riyāḍ al-dhikr) are enough for them.8 Commenting on Q 68:34 (‘Indeed, for those wary of God (muttaqīn) are the gardens of bliss with their Lord’), he further states that who wards oneself from sins is rewarded with the Garden. Whoever belongs to those wary of God attains more than that: they will be unveiled and will witness the Real (al-ḥaqq) in all states.9 Entering the Garden by His mercy and gazing (naẓar) upon His noble face are among the gifts of God.10 The sweetness of this gazing ‘continues to shine on their faces, like the sun, when they return from visiting God to their homelands [in Paradise]’.11 The friends of God (awliyāʾ) are especially entitled to

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this honour according to Jaʿfar. On Q 54:55 (‘In a trustworthy place, near a Sovereign Omnipotent’), he comments: He praised the place by [using the concept of] trustworthiness. No one sits in it except the people of trustworthiness, which is the seat in which God fulfills the promises to his awliyāʾ, that is, He allows them to look at His noble face.12

If one accepts these sayings as Jaʿfar’s, they would imply that the focus on God rather than the enjoyments of Paradise was already present at a quite early stage of Sufism, indeed earlier than (or at least contemporary with) Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya (d. 185/801), who is often associated with the introduction of this theme into Sufism.13 This combined with the absence of sayings on Hell makes one wonder whether these sayings are perhaps indeed later than claimed. As El-Saleh has pointed out, the early renunciants were known for their emphasis on Hell and their fear of it, and it is only in the third century that love mysticism appears.14 Based on this, it might indeed be likely that the sayings attributed to Jaʿfar are rather a reflection of thirdcentury ideas being projected back onto him, rather than coming from an authentic source. Dhū’l-Nūn al-Miṣrī (d. 246/861)

From the Egyptian mystic Dhū’l-Nūn al-Miṣrī, only one long eschatological quote attributed to him is included.15 In the commentary on Q 22:27, which deals with the hajj pilgrimage, he links the rituals of the pilgrimage to several stages of death, the resurrection and the hereafter. Dhū’l-Nūn equates the first stage of hajj, the intention, with writing a will in the event of one’s death, in which the pilgrim seeks the obedience to and contentment of God. After this, one travels from dunyā to ākhira, a travel without return, on which the riding camel is trust in God (tawakkul) and the provision is wariness of God (taqwā).16 During travel the pilgrim must behave as if being carried towards the grave. When entering into the state of ritual consecration (iḥrām), it is as if the pilgirm has died and been resurrected from the grave, and is being called to stand between the hands of the

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Lord. That, according to Dhū’l-Nūn, is alluded to in the Qurʾanic saying ‘And proclaim the pilgrimage to the people; they will come to you on foot’ (Q  22:27). The talbiyya is the response to this call, the major ritual ablution (ghusl) of the iḥrām is like the washing of the deceased (ghusl al-mayyit), and the clothes of iḥrām are like the death shroud. Standing on Mount ʿArafat is like being raised from death, covered in dust, and the sojourn at al-Muzdalifah is like the permission ( jawāz) on the bridge (ṣirāṭ) towards the afterlife. Running between Safa and Marwa is like the balance of good and bad deeds, leaning over from the one side to the other. The ritual of sacrifice (mansik) is like the heights (aʿrāf ) between the Garden and the Fire. The Sacred Mosque (al-masjid al-ḥārām) is like the Garden: whoever enters it is safe. The Kaʿba is like the throne of God, and the circumambulation (ṭawāf ) around it is like the ṭawāf of the angels around the throne.17 In the work of al-Sulamī, this immanentist approach to eschatology seems to be unique to Dhū’l-Nūn; al-Sulamī does not quote similar sayings from other authorities. It is not easy to classify this saying into one of the seven attitudes mentioned above. One could argue that it is an expression of the fifth attitude: conceiving of an immanent otherworld in the macrocosm. One could also argue that it comes close to the approach of the early renunciants. It contains elements of the first and second attitudes, not so much in an explicit form of fear of Hell or hope for Paradise (or perhaps anticipating both), but a strong awareness of the inevitability of death and of resurrection.18 Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896)

As mentioned in Chapter 1, Basra-based Sahl al-Tustarī is the only personality prior to al-Sulamī whose independent work of tafsīr is still known to us in its original form today.19 He thus deserves a little more attention here in the form of a small excursion into the tafsīr that is attributed to him, to see how the transmissions in this tafsīr relate to the commentary that al-Sulamī included. It is hoped that by analysing al-Sulamī’s reception and redaction of Sahl’s sayings we can reconstruct some of al-Sulamī’s doctrinal developments and personal preferences.

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Globally, we can state that both the third and fourth attitudes ­– namely the ‘cold’ and the ‘hot’ rejection of Paradise and Hell – are present in Sahl’s tafsīr, and that the stress on the vision of and meeting with God is equally dominant as in the sayings by Jaʿfar. Besides these themes, Sahl introduces another theme: consuming the delights of Paradise during this-worldly life. Sahl’s tafsīr shows the same prominence of the themes of nearness to and vision of God as focal points of the hereafter that we have observed in the sayings attributed to Jaʿfar. An example of this is the commentary on Q 19:61, where the Gardens of Eden are explained as ‘the visual beholding (muʿāyana) of God, in the sense of nearness which He facilitated between Him and them’.20 This proximity to and vision of God is apparently so intense that to be cut off from it even for a moment after having come to know Him is similar to the punishment of Hell: Truly God, Exalted is He, has servants in Paradise who, if they were veiled from the encounter (liqāʾ) [with their Lord] for a blinking of the eye, would cry out for help against it, just as the inhabitants of the Hellfire plead for help against the Hellfire. This is because they have come to know Him (ʿarafūhu).21

Subsequently, Sahl mentions Moses as an example of someone constantly yearning for this visionary encounter. Being God’s interlocutor (kalīm Allāh), having experienced the sweetness of hearing the unmediated voice of God, he wanted nothing else but to behold Him with his eyes as well, and requested this. However, God refused, stating that nobody could see Him in this world without dying. Moses then said, so states Sahl: ‘O Lord! Let me behold You and die, for that is preferable to me than not seeing You and remaining alive.’22 The commentary contains more sayings in a similar vein. The ultimate death of the heart is imagined as being cut off (qaṭīʿa) from God, while the ultimate life of the heart is considered to be the encounter (liqāʾ) with God.23 The blindness in the hereafter that is mentioned in Q 17:72 as a consequence of (metaphorical) blindness in this world is explained as ‘being prevented from seeing the Bestower of ­blessings

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(al-Munʿim)’.24 The true worshippers are declared to be those who worship God out of pure love, not because of the recompense of Paradise and Hell.25 For the one who enjoys Paradise with his appetitive self (al-nafs al-ṭabīʿī), the eternal vision of God will be lost.26 Who is diverted from his Lord by the hereafter is said to have a despicable nature and base aspiration.27 It is the luminous spiritual self (nafs al-rūḥ al-nūrī) that is given the vision (ruʾya) in the heavenly kingdom (malakūt).28 In the hereafter, the believer is in an even greater need (iftiqār) of God than in this world, because of his constant yearning for the encounter.29 For Sahl, the fear and hope mentioned in Q 32:16, which in conventional works of tafsīr is explained as fear of punishment and hope for reward, comes to mean the fear of separation (hijrān) from God and the hope for meeting (liqāʾ) with Him.30 When God interrogates the truthful on the Day of Judgement and testifies that they speak the truth, His affirming their truthfulness is more dear to them than Paradise and its bliss.31 The abhorrence of God for their deeds is more difficult to bear for them than the Fire.32 Gratitude is said to lead to the vision of Paradise (ruʾyat al-janna).33 Paradise itself is the reward for one’s bodily acts – ‘whatever the souls desire’ (Q 43:71) – while the visionary encounter with God – ‘and delights the eyes’ (Q 43:71) – is the reward for the realisation of God’s oneness.34 The forgiveness of their Lord mentioned in Q 47:15 is interpreted as the lights of God that cover the believers during their vision of God in Paradise.35 They become able to bear this vision because God grants them stability (tamkīn) as a reward for the realisation of God’s oneness.36 In the commentary on Q 75:22–3, which itself speaks of the vision of God, Sahl states that whoever is killed by his love for God will be rewarded with the vision of Him.37 While it is true that verses that deal with the hereafter in its physical sense are largely neglected (rather than denied) in Sahl’s commentary, his tafsīr contains some remarkable quotes that do not so much extol the enjoyments of Paradise in the hereafter, but describe instances of experiencing the enjoyments of Paradise in this world.38 The two most illustrative examples have been briefly discussed in Chapter 1. One quote speaks of a man (Sahl) consuming a pomegran-

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ate from Paradise in this world as proof that he is of the people of Paradise; only those preordained to eat it in the hereafter are also capable of eating it in this world.39 Another example of this boundary crossing is found in the commentary on Q 76:25, where Sahl claims to experience the drinking of a paradisiacal drink mentioned in the verse he recites during the congregational night prayer.40 Besides these cases of encountering, or tasting, Paradise in the phenomenal world, there are also some cases of internalisation of the hereafter, namely Paradise and Hell metaphorically being found within the inner constitution of the believer. Commenting on Q 73:9, for example, Sahl states: There is a Paradise and a Hellfire in this life. Paradise is safety (ʿāfiya), and safety is that God takes care of your affairs, and Hellfire is tribulation (balwā). Tribulation is when He leaves you in charge of your self.41

The inner meaning of the gardens and springs mentioned in Q 51:15 is said to be that the God-conscious inhabit gardens of God’s contentment (riḍā) in this world and swim in springs of intimate companionship (uns). The mercy mentioned in Q 17:57 is said to be Paradise in its outer meaning, while it is the reality of experiential knowledge (ḥaqīqat al-maʿrifa) in its inner meaning. The people of the Heights mentioned in Q  7:46 are equated with the people of experiential knowledge. As the people of the Heights can see into Paradise and Hell, the people of experiential knowledge can see into ‘the secrets of His servants and their states in this world’.42 A significant number of the sayings mentioned in the tafsīr attributed to Sahl did not find their way into the two tafsīr works of al-Sulamī. Only one saying that explicitly deals with the pure love for God instead of reward and punishment as the only sincere motive for worship is mentioned as it is in Sahl’s tafsīr.43 In addition, al-Sulamī includes the saying that being hated by God is more difficult for the unbeliever than the punishment of the Fire.44 Al-Sulamī mentions one saying by Sahl that explicitly deals with the physical pleasures of Paradise, stating in the commentary on

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Q 55:56 that, ‘Whoever restrains his glance in this world from the forbidden, and obscure matters, and from enjoyments and their beauty, God gives him in the otherworld women restraining their glances which He has promised.’45 This saying is also mentioned in Sahl’s tafsīr.46 The pomegranate story is not mentioned by al-Sulamī at all. Probably the idea of the physical consumption of paradisiacal objects in this world had become too controversial by his time, to the extent that he decided to omit it from his redaction. The discussion on this issue must have taken place somewhere in the era between these two authors, and must have been decided in favour of those arguing against the idea. For example, Abū’l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/936), who lived in the era between Sahl and al-Sulamī, speaks about the idea of consuming fruits of Paradise in this world in a negative manner in his Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn. 47 However, the story of drinking the pure drink of Paradise during prayer is mentioned by al-Sulamī. This was probably not considered controversial since it is clear in the anecdote that the drinking is imaginary and not physical. Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz (d. 286/899)

Originally from Baghdad, Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz is said to have travelled extensively to Basra, Qayrawan, Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem and Egypt, where he studied with the Sufi masters of his age. His teachings in general stressed, like those of his contemporary al-Junayd, that interior (bāṭin) ideas must not contradict exterior (ẓāhir) doctrine or law. For example, he had a correspondence with a group of Sufis in Damascus, who held the view that they could see God with their hearts in this world as the inhabitants of Paradise will see God with their eyes. He considered this to be a heretical view.48 The few sayings transmitted by al-Sulamī attributed to him do not clearly testify to this concern. He is quoted as saying that ‘he in whose heart experiential knowledge (maʿrifa) resides, does not perceive (lā yubṣiru) anything beside God in the two abodes’.49 Another saying also indicates a stress on the theme of experiential knowledge, stating that the people of experiential knowledge in this world are like the people of the Garden in the otherworld.50 That the importance of

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otherworldly proximity to and vision of God does not lead to a renunciation of otherworldly joy, but rather is highest in the hierarchy of joys, becomes clear in his saying that he who repents has to wait a long time for death while fearing temptation in this world, has to wait a long time for the reward in the grave while hoping for abundant givings in the otherworld, and he has to wait a long time for the resurrection while hoping for eternal dwelling in the proximity of the Merciful and looking at Him.51

Al-Junayd al-Baghdādī (d. 298/910)

Al-Junayd, who together with al-Muḥāsibī is considered one of the most important early proponents of a more sober form of Sufism alongside the emerging ‘ecstatic’ trend, also showed a more modest concern for the vision of God in the otherworld. He claimed that whoever is blind to witnessing of the grace of God in this world will not witness the essence (dhāt) of God in the otherworld, and that ‘who in this [abode] is blind to the witnessing of His doing good, is blind in the otherworld to the vision of Him and astray from His nearness’.52 In another saying, al-Junayd quotes al-Sarī (d. 243/857), who related that he had seen God in his sleep and who said the following to him: O Sarī, I created humankind, and I created this world (al-dunyā), and with this world went away nine tenths of humankind, and one tenth stayed with Me. Then I created the Garden, and with the Garden nine tenths of what remained went away, and from it one tenth stayed with Me. Then tribulation (al-balāʾ) ruled over them, and from the tribulation nine tenths of what remained fled, and a tenth of a tenth remained. So I said: ‘What do you want if it is not this world that you wanted, and not the Garden that you sought, and you did not flee from tribulation?’ And they answered me. They said: ‘You know what we want.’ I said: ‘I will send tribulations down on you which the mountains cannot bear.’ They said: ‘Are you not the one who does this to us? So we are content.’53

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This narration is first of all important because it shows that for these early Sufis, even the more sober-minded, the claim of seeing God in a dream, and by this mode receiving wisdom from God, was apparently not a strange thing. Both al-Junayd and al-Sulamī were not shocked by such a claim to the point of censoring it from their corpuses or problematising it in an added comment of their own.54 Second, it is important for the notion that both this world and the Garden are seen to keep humankind away from what really matters, expressed in the rhetorical answer ‘You know what we want’. What it is that they want, al-Sarī does not make explicit, but it is quite obvious that God is implied. It is only a very small group of people who realise this, and who attain this highest level. Ibn ʿAṭāʾ al-Ādamī (d. 309/922)

One of the authorities that al-Sulamī quotes most often, both on eschatological verses and in general, is the Baghdad-based Abū’lʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAṭāʾ al-Ādamī (d. 309/922). He was an associate of al-Junayd and al-Ḥallāj (d. 309/922), whom he supported until his death by execution and whose fate he would therefore more or less share, dying from torture in captivity for refusing to testify against him.55 Ibn ʿAṭāʾ was an adherent of the Ḥanbalī school. In Sufism, he was instructed by al-Junayd’s friend Ibrāhīm al-Māristānī. Not much is known about his life. He is said to have had a life full of tribulations, losing many of his children. Several hagiographies mention his intimate relationship with and deep understanding of the Qurʾan, the recitation of which is said to have consumed most of his daily time, completing the recitation of its entirety once every day, and three times a day during the month of Ramadan. Ibn ʿAṭāʾ is said to have had a difference of opinion with al-Junayd on the definition of ecstasy (wajd). According to al-Junayd, the stress should be on rejoicing, while Ibn ʿAṭāʾ preferred an ecstasy of grief. He argued that rejoicing only befitted man when returned to the original abode of Adam, Paradise. Therefore, in this world grief and weeping should be dominant.56 This gives the impression of a renunciant attitude towards this-worldly life and a hope-driven orientation towards

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Paradise. However, most of his sayings fall within the scope of both the third and fourth attitudes, altogether making his response ‘tepid’ rather than ‘hot’ or ‘cold’. Commenting on Q  3:131, for example, he ‘coldly’ states that God in this verse commanded the normal people (ʿawāmm) to be conscious of the Fire, to fear it and to leave sins for the sake of it, while in another verse ‘He commanded the elect (khawāṣṣ) to be conscious of Him and to look at none other than Him’.57 The reward for the God-conscious he held to be the vision of God.58 The verse ‘We have wronged ourselves’ (Q 7:23) comes to mean that people wrong themselves ‘by being occupied with the Garden and desiring it, instead of God’.59 The obligation that God gave to Adam (Q 20:115), according to Ibn ʿAṭāʾ, was that he should not look at anything other than Him. However, Adam, in his lack of firmness mentioned in the same verse, forgot this obligation and looked to the Gardens instead, thus being disobedient.60 In addition, ‘Adam’s departure from the Garden, his crying much, his need (iftiqār), and the emergence of the prophets from his loins, were better for him than the Garden and the enjoyment and luxury in it.’61 That the otherworldly vision of God was considered the most important by Ibn ʿAṭāʾ also appears in several other sayings: ‘The complete blessing in this World is experiential knowledge, and in the otherworld the vision.’62 When the believers of Q 18:31 are ‘resting on the benches’, they are constantly looking at their King.63 Quotes from Other Authorities

Abū Bakr al-Wāsiṭī (d. 320/932) also mainly showed interest in the vision of God. In line with the conventional explanation, regarding Q 10:26 he is quoted to have said that al-ziyāda is the glance (naẓar) at God. The highest degree in the hereafter he holds to be the ‘carpet of nearness’ (bisāṭ al-qurb) and witnessing (mushāhada) God is even more elevated and majestic. The degree one reaches is determined by the degree of one’s longing (shawq).64 All that is attributed to al-Shiblī (d. 334/945) is that he commented upon Q 3:152 (‘Among you are those who want this world and among you are those who want the otherworld’), saying: ‘Among you are those who want this world for obedience, and among you are those

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who want the otherworld for the Garden. But where is the desirer (murīd) of God the Exalted?’ Being a desirer of God is then connected to the moral quality of God-centred motivation in all of one’s acts: ‘The desirer of God the Exalted is the one who when they speak, speak for God, and when they remain silent, it is for none other than God the Exalted.’65 These quotes, selected by al-Sulamī, are significantly more ‘cold’ than al-Shiblī’s sayings elsewhere, which represent a ‘hot’ contempt for the otherworld. For example, he likens Hell to sugar when compared to being separated from God, and claims that he can extinguish the fire of Hell by spitting on it.66 That al-Sulamī did not include these sayings in his selection may mean that al-Sulamī did not look favourably on these sayings and preferred a more moderate understanding of Sufism in his selection. Al-Sulamī relates several sayings from his teacher, Abū’l-Qāsim al-Naṣrābādhī, himself a student of al-Shiblī. Commenting on a verse that deals with almsgiving – ‘You will not reach piety until you give from what is dear to you (Q 3:92) – he states that the Garden is what should be given away and that ‘arrival’ at God (wuṣūl) can be reached only by freeing oneself of the two abodes and what is in them.67 Commenting on a part of Q 16:21 – ‘Dead, not alive, and they do not know’ – he is quoted to have said: The people of the Garden are dead and do not know, because of their being distracted by other than the Real (al-ḥaqq), and the people of presence (ḥaḍra) are alive because they are in a state of witnessing the Living (mushāhadat al-ḥayy).68

There are many passages that allude to the idea of Paradise and Hell being a veil (ḥijāb) from God. Commenting on Q 2:82 ‘(And those who believe and do good works, they are the companions of the Garden, forever dwelling therein’), he quotes an unnamed Iraqi as having stated that ‘works only make one reach something created like itself, and the biggest veil of the knowers (ʿārifīn) is the Garden, and distracting oneself by it from God is the biggest calamity (al-muṣība al-ʿuẓmā), because the Garden emanated from “Be” (kun)’.69 The hereafter is only created, and thus ‘only’ a reward for one’s works, which

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are created as well. The focus should only be on the true, intrinsic reward, which is the Creator Himself. Conclusions

We may conclude that the sayings of the early renunciants, many of whom stressed the fear of Hell, did not make it into al-Sulamī’s redaction. The hope for the physical rewards of Paradise is also not present very strongly. Most dominant already in the time of al-Sulamī, and probably even before that, was a God-centred conception of the hereafter expressed in the themes of the meeting with and vision of God. The fourth, ‘hot’, attitude seems to have been especially strong with those personalities generally identified with ‘ecstatic’ Sufism, although it seems that al-Sulamī suppressed some of their more radical statements, as he was also reluctant to convey trends of immanentist eschatology. The more sober-minded personalities did not completely lose sight of reward and punishment. Eschatological Commentary in al-Qushayrī’s Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt

Ishārī (allusive) explanations do not form the bulk of al-Qushayrī’s commentary on issues of Paradise and Hell. Generally, when he comments on eschatological verses in his commentary, he remains close to conventional understandings of the verses and elaborates on them in his distinctive literary style. An example is his commentary on Q 27:87, on ‘the day the horn will be blown’, about which he states: It is related that the day on which the trumpet is blown, is the day of the passing away of the spirits, and their parting from the bodies. There are spirits that ascend to ʿIlliyyīn, and there are spirits that go to Sijjīn. Those are set in birds which move in the Garden, [and] take their refuge in the night to lanterns attached to the underside of the [Divine] Throne, its attribute being praise (tasbīḥ), refreshment (rawḥ) and comfort (rāḥa), and for some of them the witnessing (shuhūd) and the vision (ruʾya), according to the merit that they held in their this-worldly existence. And as for the spirits of the unbelievers, they are in the Fire, being punished according to their crimes.70

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These eschatological ideas of the separation of body and spirit, and a temporary spiritual punishment or reward between death and the ultimate eternal bodily recompense are well established in the Jamāʿī-Sunni idea of limbo (al-barzakh).71 In addition, on other issues al-Qushayrī follows these conventional ideas conscientiously. Believers will not abide in the Fire forever and will ultimately go to Paradise, while unbelievers will remain in an eternal punishment.72 Regarding those who choose this world over the otherworld, ‘God does not speak to them, and does not look at them on the Day of Resurrection and does not purify them. Then, with that He lets them abide in the eternal punishment.’73 However, this eternal punishment will be a bit lighter for sincere people among the unbelievers.74 Remarkably, al-Qushayrī neglects all of the Sufi quotes that we discussed earlier in al-Sulamī’s commentary on the centrality of the vision of God or nearness to Him in the hereafter. Moreover, the trend of contemptus ultramundi remains unmentioned in his selection of quotes from al-Sulamī. Does this mean he did not have any interest in these topics? Not quite. For example, on Q 43:71 he comments: The people of experiential knowledge (ahl al-maʿrifa) and the lovers (muḥibbūn), they have the gaze at God (naẓar) that delights their eyes according to the length that they have measured of excess of longing with their hearts, and [according to] the burning they have undergone because of the heaviness of their ardent desire (ghalīl).75

This quote is in its content not much different from Jaʿfar’s statement on the same verse before him. We cannot then conclude that his omission of these quotes was because he disagreed with their approach to mysticism or on the topic of the vision of God. Furthermore, in other places he shows interest in the theme of vision. When speaking of the good in this world and the good in the otherworld as mentioned in Q 2:201, he states that the good in this world ‘is the witnessing with the inmost selves (shuhūd bi’l-asrār), and the good in the hereafter is the vision with eyesight (ruʾyat al-abṣār)’.76 The topic of nearness appears now and then as well, for example when al-Qushayrī states that ‘death is a joy for the believer,

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and the message of nearness to Him is good news for him, because it is a cause for being connected to God. Whoever loves to meet God, God loves to meet him’.77 For al-Qushayrī, the ‘heavy punishment’ (ʿadhāb shadīd) so often mentioned in the Qurʾan alludes to the humiliation of the lowering of the veil between God and man (dhull al-ḥijāb).78 There is no greater punishment than to be returned to creation after having reached God, and to be veiled from God again.79 Moreover, a mild form of disregard for otherworldly recompense appears every now and then. The best reward in the hereafter, states al-Qushayrī, is to enter the Garden while being freed from it, and not entering it imprisoned by it. He then quotes an anonymous source not mentioned by al-Sulamī, stating that ‘the reward of this world and the otherworld is absence [of the heart’s concern for] the two abodes through seeing (ruʾya) their Creator.’80 True repentance is only made for the sake of God, not out of fear of the Fire or desire for the Garden.81 Al-Qushayrī also uses Qurʾanic verses on taqwā (wariness of God) to construct a hierarchy of ways to instil fear in different classes of believers, a hierarchy that is typical for his combination of conventional and ishārī hermeneutics. Into the generality (ʿawāmm), so states al-Qushayrī, God instils fear through His acts (afʿāl) by reminding them to protect themselves from (ittaqū) the Day of Judgement and the Fire. The elect (khawāṣṣ), then, are subject to fear through His attributes (ṣifāt), because they realise that God constantly sees and witnesses them as is mentioned in Q  9:105 and Q  10:61. Into the elect of the elect (khawāṣṣ al-khawāṣṣ), God instils fear only through Himself, as reflected in the saying in Q 3:28 that ‘God warns you of Himself’.82 The higher one’s level on the Sufi path, the more God-centred one’s motivation becomes, and the less important otherworldly recompense becomes for one’s fear and wariness of God. To conclude, an important note should be made concerning what constitutes a ‘Sufi’ approach to the Qurʾanic text, an issue we have raised in the previous two chapters. Since al-Qushayrī does not emphasise ishārī explanations of eschatological verses as much as other authors and puts more stress on the conventional meanings, it would be tempting to say that his approach to eschatology was less

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motivated by ‘Sufi’ concerns. However, I think this is wrong. It would be more correct to state that although he did not opt for an ishārī approach in many cases, his intention was still shaped by Sufi concerns. Since his goal with Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt was to guide and train his pupils on the Sufi path, he apparently saw a conventional understanding of eschatology as being part of a decent Sufi training. Whether the work is ‘Sufi’ or not then is not so much determined by the extent of the ishārī material quoted, but depends more on the reception and usage of the text. For a text to be a ‘Sufi’ text, what is defining is that the Sufis somehow consider it important in their path and claim it as their own. What makes al-Qushayrī’s approach to eschatology ‘Sufi’, then, is the fact that it was valued in the context of instruction and creating like-mindedness among his group of Sufi pupils, who considered these conventional readings of eschatological verses to be just as much a part of their training as the ishārī readings. To cultivate the character traits for becoming an exemplary Sufi, one needed these conventional understandings as well.83 Hierarchies in the Hereafter: Maybudī

With its ten volumes, Maybudī’s Qurʾan commentary is the most voluminous of the works under study. Whereas we have been able to study the other works from cover to cover in order to reconstruct their eschatological conceptions, here we can offer only a selective reading of the vast material available in Maybudī’s tafsīr.84 Maybudī’s commentary shows a certain amount of ambiguity on issues pertaining to the hereafter: several seemingly conflicting attitudes coexist. On the one hand, he does not completely do away with the attitude of the early renunciants towards the hereafter. He holds both fear of Hell and hope for Paradise as being necessary. However, he does show himself as critical of an isolated cultivation of these attitudes. They should always come together and should be in balance. In his commentary on Q 52:13, about the punishment of Hell, and Q 52:17–18, about the reward of Paradise, he states that these verses demand both fear and hope. God mentions the reward of Paradise directly after the punishment of Hell as a signal to the believer that

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the two should be in balance. One should neither despair of God’s mercy, nor feel secure from His punishment. To exemplify his point, he makes a similitude with a lamp. He compares fear to fire, hope to oil, belief to a wick, and the heart to a lamp holder. For a lamp to burn, it needs both fire and oil. Likewise, a religious person needs both fear and hope.85 On the other hand, an attitude of disregard for the hereafter is also present in Maybudī’s commentary. For example, he says that someone who has reached intimacy with God will not be satisfied by the bliss of Paradise.86 He also quotes Abū ʿAlī Rūdbārī (d. 322/934), a Persian disciple of al-Junayd, who preferred one ‘breath’ of God to all the material delights of Paradise.87 On Q 36:55 (‘The companions of the Garden are joyfully in occupation today’), he quotes his teacher ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī (referred to only as pīr-i ṭarīqat) saying that this occupation is that of the generality of believers of whom Muhammad has said: ‘The majority of the people of the Garden are the simpleminded.’88 The elect of the believers who have experienced proximity and the presence of witnessing (ḥaḍrat-i mushāhada) cannot be interested in the bliss of Paradise at all. What Maybudī seems to mean by this is that the generality of believers are simple-minded because they do not realise that the true value of Paradise does not lie in the material enjoyments with which they occupy themselves, but in the nearness to and vision of God. He stresses this further by describing how a group of people standing before God on the Day of Resurrection will not want to leave to go to Paradise. When they are commanded to go, they will answer that they already have what they want: they are already standing before God.89 In several instances Maybudī criticises people who are motivated only by reward or punishment. He takes specific issue with religious scholars who confine themselves to the outward aspects of religion. He considers them to be on the lowest level of tawḥīd. All they care about is safety in this world and well-being in the hereafter. He quotes al-Junayd to this effect: ‘These are the filling of the Garden, which has companions other than these. The stuffing of the Garden are its prisoners, and the companions of the Garden are its commanders.’90

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In his commentary on Q 73:8 he pleads for a complete focus on God at the expense of Paradise and Hell. This is embodied in the state of devotion (tabattul).91 In this state only God enters the mind, pushing Paradise and Hell to the background: Tabattul is one of the stations of [spiritual] wayfarers; those who in their states (munāzilāt) and unveilings have reached a point where Paradise with all its trees and rivers does not enter the beauty of their imagination, while hellfire with all its shackles and chains trembles in fear at the burning in their breasts.92

Maybudī more often uses his commentary on eschatological verses to establish and confirm a hierarchy in religious understandings and levels of inner life that are typical of Sufism.93 He distinguishes three degrees within Paradise, related to three different stages of God-wariness (taqwā). The first stage is the Garden of Refuge ( jannat al-maʾwā), reserved for those who avoid forbidden things and the desires of the lower self.94 The highest degree is the Garden of Eden ( jannat ʿadn), coupled with the greatest contentment (riḍwān-i akbar), reserved for those most wary of God.95 This highest level consists of considering anything created as one’s enemy, thus being completely focused on God and passionate love for reality (ʿishq-i ḥaqīqat) in one’s heart.96 Maybudī also expresses his belief that in the hereafter everybody is rewarded according to their goals and aspirations. Those who abide by the law are rewarded with the Garden of Refuge, those with renunciant aspirations with the abode of eternity (dār al-khuld). The highest aspiration is of those who do not have any otherworldly hopes and desires and show disregard for the rewards of Paradise. Maybudī describes how this group is offered all types of material reward by the maidens and boy-servants of Paradise, but refuse everything. They want only to give their hearts to God.97 Everyone ultimately receives what he hopes for. The highest hope one can have is the vision of God: From inside the court of Majesty comes the call of generosity with the attribute of mercy: ‘O Muhammad! The work of your community

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falls within three kinds: either they are believers, or they are knowers, or they are disobedient. If they are believers hoping for paradise, here then is Our paradise. If they are the disobedient hoping for Our mercy, here then is Our mercy and forgiveness. If they are the knowers hoping for vision, here then is Our vision.’98

Elsewhere Maybudī elaborates further on this idea of separate stages of reward corresponding with varying attitudes towards both the here and the hereafter. Those who aspire only to this world will gain nothing in the hereafter, except by God’s mercy. Those whose aspiration aims at the hereafter are too attached to the otherworldly reward to experience intimate conversation with God and His unveiling. The highest aspiration is of one whose ‘heart is captive to love and his spirit drowned in face-to-face vision (ʿiyān). He has no news of this world and no mark of the otherworld’.99 The knower (ʿārif ) takes the highest position in Maybudī’s hierarchy of reward, above the normal worshipper (ʿābid) and the renunciant (zāhid). The normal worshipper is like a mercenary (muzdūr) to him, only worshipping for the sake of the hereafter. The knower, however, disregards the hereafter and is aiming only for the vision of God.100 In the hereafter, God will oblige the renunciant to enjoy Paradise as a reward for his disregard of worldly matters. The knower, who did not outright despise thisworldly life but was simply inattentive to it as a result of his occupation with his love for God, will end up at the highest station, ‘in an assembly of truth, in the presence of a sovereign’ (Q 54:55).101 Maybudī is the first to explicitly interpret the sensory experiences of Paradise from a Sufi perspective. In a lengthy commentary on Q 36:55 (‘The companions of the Garden are joyfully in occupation today’), he gives a description of the role of the senses of taste, audition and vision in Paradise. He describes how the faithful will engage in the Sufi practice of listening (samāʿ) in Paradise. The angel Isrāfīl will read the Qurʾan to them and David will recite from the Psalms.102 This auditory spectacle arouses the desire in the heart of the believer to taste the pure wine of Paradise (Q 76:21), which is an allusion to the state of communion (waṣl) with God,103 and in the spirit and the

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eye to hear and see God directly. God then ultimately lifts the veil and shows Himself. He will provide His servants with cups of wine and will recite from the Qurʾan to them. This then, states Maybudī, is the true samāʿ. This listening does not take place through the body or the heart, but through the spirit ( jān). This is the only organ that is capable of becoming truly solitary with God.104 The vision of God is the most important sensory experience in the hereafter according to Maybudī. He describes it as the splendour of the spirit (bahāʾ-i jān), as what makes the Garden good and makes the poor person happy.105 Longing for this vision should lead to a disregard for this-worldly matters: it is God’s rightful due that only He be looked at with the eye of love.106 This vision in the hereafter takes place by three different ‘eyes’. First, there is the vision by the eye of the head, which sees the ‘light of bounty’ and is for pleasure. The second vision is by the eye of the heart, which is for experiential knowledge (maʿrifa) and sees the ‘light of proximity’. Third, one sees God with the eye of the spirit through the ‘light of finding’ (wujūd); this is for witnessing (mushāhada).107 In conclusion, we can state that Maybudī deployed all the attitudes and grander themes present in al-Sulamī’s Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr. However, to bring forward these themes he hardly used the material collected by al-Sulamī. He found his own language to express these ideas, and saw no need to stand on the shoulders of his predecessors to convey them. Paradise as Ṣadaqa and Shirk: Al-Daylamī’s Taṣdīq al-maʿārif

In al-Daylamī’s thought, the fourth, ‘hot’, attitude has clearly won over the third, ‘cold’, attitude, which was dominant in al-Qushayrī and still somewhat in balance in the works of al-Sulamī and Maybudī. In his tafsīr, we see a further continuation, or even radicalisation, of the theme of belittling the importance of reward and punishment as a motivation for one’s belief and actions, focusing one’s otherworldly aspirations fully on God. One should only call people to God, not to Paradise or this world.108 He considers both this world and the otherworld a tribulation (ibtilāʾ) by God.109 One’s supplications should be

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only for the face of God, not for this world or the otherworld.110 In his renunciation of the hereafter, al-Daylamī makes a similar distinction in levels of inner life as Maybudī. Through the Qurʾan’s summoning of the people to ‘take heed’ (ittaqū), he establishes a hierarchy in orientations on the hereafter. To ‘take heed’ is sometimes meant in the sense of fearing God and sometimes in the sense of fearing the Fire or the Resurrection. The knower (ʿārif ) is supposed to fear only God, while the ordinary people (ʿawāmm) are called to fear the Fire and the Day of Resurrection.111 Al-Daylamī therefore forbids his intended audience, whom he apparently wishes to see on the level of the knowers, to worship God out of hope for Paradise or fear of Hell. The refuge to God should not be motivated by thought of punishment, but of God alone, and the escape to God should be from God alone.112 Those who direct themselves towards this world turn away from the otherworld, and those who direct themselves towards the otherworld turn away from God. To direct oneself towards God alone one has to turn away from this world and the otherworld altogether.113 The two sandals that Moses is summoned to leave behind for his auditory meeting with God in Q 20:12 are this world and the otherworld and what is in them.114 He holds that the Garden is better than this world, and that the contentment (riḍwān) of God is better than the Garden and all that is in it. This is because riḍwān is an attribute of God and as such is an instrument for reaching the greatest proximity by witnessing (mushāhada) and eye-witnessing (muʿāyana) God.115 In his commentary on several verses that deal with the giving of alms, he states that the true meaning of these verses is that to attain God one should give away not only from one’s dunyā, but from one’s ākhira as well. Commenting on Q  2:267 (‘Give away from the good things that you have earned’), he states that God can only be attained by giving away the best of what one has earned. Paradise is the best one can rightfully attain by one’s pious acts. One can give it away by removing the desire for it from one’s heart (qalb) and inmost self (sirr), so that one does not love it and does not want it, and so that one comes to see Paradise as enchainment and prison. To support this idea al-Daylamī quotes Abū Yazīd al-Basṭāmī, who is said to have

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stated: ‘If God were to punish me on the Day of Resurrection, He would do it by distracting me by means of the Garden and its bliss.’116 Al-Daylamī states this is the true meaning of the alleged saying of Muhammad that this world and the otherworld are forbidden for the people of God (ahl Allāh).117 He then continues to state that it is clear that this world is not intended in the verse, since it is clear from many other Qurʾanic verses and sayings of the Prophet that this world does not belong to the good things.118 The verse ‘You will not reach piety until you give away from what is beloved to you’ (Q 3:92) is explained similarly. One is supposed to give away one’s dunyā and ākhira, and one’s self (nafs) and one’s spirit (rūḥ).119 Al-Daylamī even goes so far in this dhamm al-ākhira to state that fear of the Fire and hope for the Garden can lead to a form of idolatry (shirk). These emotions are part of one’s desires, and the Qurʾan speaks negatively about taking one’s desires as a god.120 Whoever connects their heart to something other than God is considered to be a polytheist (mushrik) or an unbeliever (kāfir). Whoever loves God for the sake of His bliss in this world and the otherworld, or fears God out of fear for His tribulations and punishments in this world and the otherworld, has taken partners beside God in their love (maḥabba), fear (khawf ) and hope (rajāʾ). He compares it to the people of this world (ahl al-dunyā) who love only their possessions for the benefit they give to them, and not for the sake of these possessions themselves.121 The scholars of Sufism, he states, define idolatry as the inclination of the inmost self to other than God (al-iltifāt bi’l-sirr ilā ghayr Allāh). The punishment for that is to be cut off from God, covered and far removed from Him.122 Sincerity (ikhlāṣ) is to take neither dunyā nor ākhira as one’s lord and to be focused only on the Creator, not on creation. The Garden and the Fire belong to the realm of creation and are thus unworthy of our attention.123 Al-Daylamī labels those who fulfil this demand of complete focus on God alone, instead of on the Garden and the Fire, as those who do good (muḥsinūn).124 While the general believers are satisfied with the Paradise that they earned by their works of obedience, these exceptional people end up in ‘the world of doing good’ (ʿālam al-iḥsān) and are ‘with God in a

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grace which is not to be described and whose description cannot be understood’.125 The motive of otherworldly vision is also present in his work. He considers seeing God to be the reward for the believers, while being veiled from God by His anger is the punishment of the unbelievers.126 Al-Daylamī agrees with the idea of vision and nearness as the ultimate otherworldly desire, quoting Ibn ʿAṭāʾ on Q 21:102: The hearts have a desire, the spirits have a desire, and the selves have a desire. All of those [desires] come together in the Garden. The desire of the hearts is witnessing (mushāhada) and vision (ruʾya), the desire of the spirits is nearness (al-qurb), and the desire of the self is delight in comfort.127

In his commentary on Q  75:22–3 (‘Faces on that day are radiant, gazing at their Lord’),128 crucial verses commonly used as proof for the vision of God in the hereafter in theological disputes, he proves himself to be a proponent of the otherworldly vision of God with the naked eye.129 Most of his commentary on these verses consists of a theological polemic against the Muʿtazila and Najjāriyya, who deny this vision, favouring an Ashʿarī perspective on the matter himself.130 He also cites a lengthy hadith attributed to Muhammad that gives a detailed description of the lifting of the veil and the vision of God in the hereafter by the believers. He additionally quotes an early Sufi authority to underline the importance of the vision of God. The early renunciant Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī (d. 215/830) is quoted to have said that these particular verses are enough for the people of experiential knowledge (ahl al-maʿrifa) to be happy, since there is no greater joy for the lover than to arrive at the Beloved, and for the knower to arrive at the One about whom experiential knowledge has been attained.131 Remarkable is that al-Daylamī uses this verse not only to prove the otherworldly vision, but also to plead for the possibility of a kind of visionary boundary crossing: he claims that God can also be seen in this world, and indeed is seen in this world by Sufi masters.132 Also on Q 12:108, he states that a shaykh should call people to God only if

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he has seen and witnessed God Himself (ʿalā ruʾya wa-mushāhada).133 The vision of God is thus not only limited to the hereafter, but can be experienced in this world as well. While boundary crossing was thus far mainly a theme for Sahl al-Tustarī in the form of tasting fruits and drinks from Paradise, the boundary crossing from ākhira to dunyā in these passages from al-Daylamī is through the vision of God.134 In another passage, al-Daylamī brings the vision of God to an even more unexpected place than this world. Not only are Paradise and this world places where God can be seen with the eye and the heart respectively, according to al-Daylamī God can also be seen in Hell. He states that some of the Sufi masters have said that the people of the Fire will indeed see Him in His attributes of punishment, anger and revenge, to increase their fear, awe and anxiety.135 Regarding Q  6:127 (‘And for them is the abode of peace [dār al-salām]’), he stresses that dār al-salām does not refer to the Garden, which is the interpretation usually given by commentators. The abode of peace is the abode of God, since God Himself is al-Salām. The abode of God is ‘in an assembly of truth, in the presence of a sovereign’ (Q  54:55) and is not a physical location. It is here that Muhammad had his visionary meeting with God during the heavenly journey and prostrated before Him. Neither the Garden nor the Fire is in the presence of God, because material substances ( jusmāniyāt) are not capable of being in the presence of God.136 The straight path (al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm) leads to God, who Himself is al-Salām, and not to Paradise.137 In addition, the idea of a return (rujūʿ) to God is present in al-Daylamī’s work. Quoting a number of Qurʾanic verses, he states that everything is constantly and continuously returning and on its way towards God, in either a voluntary (ṭawʿan) or compulsory (karhan) way, gratefully or ungratefully. Ultimately, all will reach God. If one asks what then is the difference between the righteous and the wicked, when all ultimately reach God, he states that the difference is that the righteous will eventually enjoy the attributes of kindness (ṣifāt al-ilṭāf ) and generosity (nuʿūt al-karam), while the wicked will burn by the fire of wrath and revenge (nīrān al-qahr wa’l-naqm).138

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Eschatological Commentary in Rūzbihān’s ʿArāʾis al-bayān In Rūzbihān’s thoughts on the hereafter, the most important new trends in comparison with his predecessors are the explicit discussions on the (leniency of) punishment in Hell and on Paradise as imagined immanently in the inner life of the believer in the form of Sufi stations and states. Hell in Rūzbihān’s Commentary

In Rūzbihān’s tafsīr, for the first time we see a genuine interest in the topic of Hell, albeit in a rather optimistic way, diminishing the harshness of punishment. In a number of his commentaries on verses that deal with the punishment of Hell, Rūzbihān seems to make a case for leniency in that punishment, and for the kindness and mercy of God being stronger than His wrath. Not only is there certainty of salvation for believers, a kind of relief in Hell is anticipated also for unbelievers. Even the possibility of eventual salvation is hinted at.139 For example, when commenting on Q 2:136 (‘And fear the Fire which has been prepared for the unbelievers’), Rūzbihān states that this verse makes it clear that the punishment of the Fire is not meant for the believers. Still, they have to fear it, since it serves as a reprimand and a warning for them, ‘like the pious father who is compassionate towards his son, who frightens his son with a lion or a sword, even though he does not hit him with the sword and does not throw him to the lion’.140 This reprimand is out of kindness (talaṭṭuf) and compassion (shafaqa) for the believers. The purpose of God threatening the believers with the Fire when it is actually not meant for them is a way for God to manifest His coercive power (tajallī al-qahr) to the believers, which should make them stand in awe. God manifests His greatness (ʿaẓama) in the Fire, and it is as if God wants to say, ‘Fear me through the Fire, because I make the Fire burn and make it into a punishment.’141 Remembrance of the Fire is thus first and foremost a way for the believer to come to a realisation of the attributes of power and greatness of God. Thus, unlike al-Daylamī, Rūzbihān does not completely forbid finding one’s religious motivation in fear of

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the Fire, as long as the believer keeps in mind that God manifests His attributes by the Fire. Even the unbelievers who do end up in Hell experience a form of kindness and generosity from God, according to Rūzbihān. In a lengthy commentary on Q 7:50 in which the inhabitants of the Fire call upon the inhabitants of the Garden to pour some water over them and grant them some of what God has provided to them, which is then refused, he states: It is out of the kindness and generosity of God for His creation that He lifts the veil from the Garden for the people of the Fire so that they can bear the pains of the punishment by seeing the Gardens and their inhabitants, and this is out of His hidden kindnesses.142

Generally, this verse is interpreted to mean the reverse of that: their vision of Paradise and its people and the refusal to share water is to stress the heaviness of the punishment in Hell and the hopelessness of their situation.143 Rūzbihān compares the state of the people in the Fire on the moment of the lifting of the veil to that of a passionate lover (ʿāshiq) who is surrounded by snow but does not feel the bitter cold because he is too overwhelmed by the sweetness of looking at the face of his beloved. He compares this to the female companions of Joseph, who did not feel pain when cutting their hands because they were too occupied with witnessing Joseph’s beauty.144 To make his point even stronger, he speaks about a shaykh on his way to perform the night prayer who sees two lovers speaking in the snow. When he makes his way to the dawn prayer later in the morning, they are still standing in the snow up to their waists without having noticed the cold or the passing of time. The shaykh then falls down, losing consciousness. When he stands up again, he rips his robe apart and exclaims: These two persons in their passionate love and witnessing did not know the difference between the dawn and the dark night, and did not notice the pains of the snow in the cold, and I claim to have love for the Creator of creation, while I am heedless of this attribute [of love].145

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For the request of the inhabitants of the Fire to pour water over them or to give them some of what God has provided them, Rūzbihān gives a couple of explanations. He says it is a request to the people in the presence (ḥaḍra) of God, who are capable of doing this. The water symbolises God’s compassion (shafaqa), and their provision is the station of intercession (maqām al-shafāʿa). Another possible meaning he gives is that it is the water of mercy or the proximity (qurba) that God has provided them. He also states it might mean that the people in Hell are not able to cry anymore because they have run out of tears, and ask for water to be able to cry again. He then quotes lines of poetry, which seems to imply that the reason for their crying is being separated from God: O you who has left, my tears are exhausted from the separation, Grant me some tears with which I can weep about you.146

Commenting on Q 11:107 (‘Abiding therein as long as the heavens and the earth endure, except what your Lord wills’), he states that although it is not part of the creed of the ahl al-sunna that nonMuslims will eventually be saved from Hell when the heavens and the earth cease to exist, it is a thing hoped for because of the generosity (karam) and kindness (luṭf) of God.147 When God wants to bring them into the Garden, He throws them into the sea of life (baḥr al-ḥayawān), a place of purification from the traces of Hell’s punishment, and from there brings them into the Garden with the believers.148 In yet another place, Rūzbihān claims that Jahannam (Hell) has a passionate longing for God, just as the Garden has a passionate longing for Him.149 When God realises the passionate longing of Jahannam for Him, He will manifest His greatness (ʿaẓama) to it, compared to which Jahannam becomes like ‘nothing in something’ (lā shayʾ fī shayʾ). First Jahannam will be a place of sighing and sobbing, but eventually it will change into a watering place and sweet-smelling plant (wird wa-rayḥān), by the effect of the blessing of His appearance to it.150 At several instances, Rūzbihān defines the punishment of Hell as being distant or veiled from God. ‘A great punishment’ (Q  2:7) reserved for the unbelievers he defines as being so far away from God

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that one is unaware of His blessings. The punishment of the Fire is the punishment of distance and separation from God. The inhabitants of the Fire are defined as those who have left the witnessing of the Merciful (aṣhāb al-hijrān ʿan mushāhadat al-Raḥmān). Jahannam is described as the ‘fire of heedlessness’ (nīrān al-ghaflāt), the greatest punishment for those who are veiled from God by their bad deeds.151 Paradise in Rūzbihān’s Commentary

In the commentary on verses about Paradise two themes are dominant: nearness to, communion with and vision of God as the ultimate enjoyments of Paradise, and immanent conceptions of Paradise. These two are sometimes intertwined: the inner-worldly gardens that Rūzbihān imagines are often gardens related to communion with God, the manifestation (tajallī) of God, or to the vision (ruʾya) and witnessing (mushāhada) of Him. Through experiencing these immanent gardens and visionary encounters with God an inner-worldly boundary crossing occurs: otherworldly eternal rewards are temporarily attained during this-worldly life through Sufi stations and states. The eternal and unchanged vision and witnessing of God in the hereafter and communion with Him signifies the ultimate reward for Rūzbihān, a recompense for what one has endured in this world by passionately longing for God.152 In several passages he compares these rewards to or contrasts them with stations and states in this world. In the otherworld the believer can be rewarded with witnessing and nearness, just as he receives experiential knowledge and love of God as a reward in this world.153 The ‘glad tidings in this world and the otherworld’ (Q 10:64) Rūzbihān holds to be the witnessing of God. The otherworldly witnessing is by eye-witnessing (muʿāyana), while this-worldly witnessing is indirect: In this world they witness clear proof (mushāhadat al-bayān) and in the otherworld they witness with the eye (mushāhadat al-ʿiyān). In this world they have unveilings (mukāshafāt), and in the otherworld witnessings (mushāhadāt). In this world they have divine manifestation (tajallī) and in the otherworld the station of coming

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near (maqām al-tadallī). In this world they have the vision (ruʾya) of God in dreams, and in the otherworld eye-witnessing (ʿiyān al-mushāhadāt).154

One’s state in dunyā determines one’s state in ākhira. Whoever is cut off from God during this-worldly life will return to the same state on the Day of Resurrection. Whoever during this life is in a state of togetherness ( jamʿ) will be together with God in the hereafter as well.155 Related to the themes of nearness and vision as being the essence of the hereafter, the trend of dhamm al-ākhira is also present in Rūzbihān’s commentary, mostly in a relatively moderate fashion, but sometimes as radically as in al-Daylamī’s commentary. For example, Rūzbihān considers the Qurʾanic supplication ‘Save us from the punishment of the Fire’ (Q 2:201) as a prayer to be saved from ‘the punishment of the veil by us being burned in the fire of the bliss (naʿīm) of the otherworld’.156 The enjoyments of Paradise are thus considered to be a veil between the believer and God, and to be consumed by this bliss is like being burned in a fire. Rūzbihān interprets Q 2:229 (‘divorce is twice [al-ṭalāq marratān]’) to mean that the knower (ʿārif) should divorce from both this world and the otherworld and all that it contains: there should be place in one’s heart only for God.157 Whoever turns away from God towards something else, even if it is Paradise, has committed idolatry with regard to the realities of divine unity (ḥaqāʾiq al-tawḥid).158 Rūzbihān holds, like Maybudī, that those who are ‘joyfully in occupation’ (Q 36:55) are the simple-minded (bulh) in the Garden. In their simple-mindedness, they are so distracted by the bliss of the Garden that they are distracted from the Bestower of that bliss.159 For Rūzbihān the rewards of Paradise also serve to establish hierarchies according to the level of inner development of the believers. The general believers, who live with wariness and fear of God, are not the same as the pious (abrār), who have a higher level of piety and thus a higher reward. The first are rewarded with the Garden, while the latter are in nearness and witnessing of God. On the verse

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‘What is with God is better for the pious’ (Q 3:198), he states that the witnessing of, nearness to and communion with God enjoyed by the abrār who have reached the presence of God are better than what the people who are wary of God (ahl al-taqwā) will enjoy of the bliss of the Garden.160 Moreover, in other passages he stratifies Paradise. He mentions different types of gardens for the generality (ʿumūm) and for the elect (khuṣūṣ) from among the believers, each inhabiting a different cosmological layer with a different reward. The Gardens of Dominion (basātīn al-malakūt) are for the generality. The Garden of the Elect is eye-witnessing the essence of omnipotence (muʿāyanat dhāt al-jabarūt). They are in a constant state of communion (wiṣāl) with their Lord.161 While the general believers in Paradise see God only temporarily and are veiled from Him most of the time, the knowers and those inflicted by love of and longing for God are in an eternal communion with God, and are in a constant state of unveiling. Both groups receive the reward that their inner constitution is capable of bearing. If the elite were to be cut off from God for the blink of an eye, ‘they would die in the Garden because of the vanishing of that state’. The general believers, on the other hand, were they to remain in a state of continuously witnessing God, ‘they would dissolve from the force of the strength of His majesty and beauty’.162 Turning to the immanent conceptions of Paradise, these are significantly more dominant in Rūzbihān’s commentary than we have thus far seen in the other commentaries. In Qurʾanic passages that deal with the gardens of Paradise, Rūzbihān links several attributes of these gardens to Sufi stations (maqāmāt) and states (aḥwāl). Paradise is thus to be found in the inner constitution of man, leading to a thisworldly experience of Paradise by attaining certain stations and states on the Sufi path. As Rūzbihān says, ‘So blessed be who has the likes of these gardens in the abode of examination (dār al-imtiḥān).’163 Frequently in Rūzbihān’s commentary this interiorisation of Paradise takes place in the form of this-worldly nearness to and witnessing (mushāhada) of God. When experiencing these states of nearness and witnessing, the believer is in ‘the gardens of witnessing’, ‘the gardens of communion’ or ‘the gardens of nearness to and communion with

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Him’.164 In addition, Rūzbihān depicts the manifestation (tajallī) of God’s majesty and beauty as a garden.165 He conceives of these gardens as a foretaste of what they can expect in the hereafter. Commenting on Q 2:25 (‘This is what we have been provided with before’), Rūzbihān explains that to the people who witness God during this world, God appears in the hereafter as well, appearing by the same attribute according to which they witnessed Him during this-worldly life.166 In a couple of passages Rūzbihān gives quite detailed descriptions of the structures of these interior gardens and for whom they are attainable. These passages unfortunately do not teach us more about Rūzbihān’s structuring of the gardens of the hereafter and their significance. However, it does teach us a whole lot about his understanding of stations and states, and about how he perceives the progress of the seeker on the Sufi path. We will discuss two of them in a bit more detail.167 First, the ‘gardens under which rivers flow’ mentioned in Q 2:25 are reason for Rūzbihān to sum up a list of different interiorised gardens for the people of experiential knowledge (ahl al-maʿrifa), all of which carry the name of a station (maqām) or state (ḥāl). For example, there are the gardens of servanthood (ʿubūdiyya), of lordship (rubūbiyya), of experiential knowledge (maʿrifa), of love (maḥabba), of nearness (qurba), and of witnessing (mushāhada). Each of these gardens, he states, has a further specification and its own river, which flows underneath. He thus links certain stations and states to each other: those symbolised as rivers emanate from those symbolised by gardens. The garden of lordship is witnessing the pureness of omnipotence (mushāhadat ṣirf al-qudra) to which belongs the river of seeing the manifestation of God reflected in the signs (ruʾyat tajallī al-ḥaqq fī mirʾāt al-āyāt); the garden of witnessing is astonishment over God’s beauty (al-dahsha fī jamāl al-ḥaqq) and its river is the subtleties of allusion (laṭāʾif al-ishāra).168 He mentions a total of nineteen gardens for the knowers, with corresponding rivers, which results in a neat overview of the most important technical terms and their relationships according to Rūzbihān’s mysticism. This can be visualised in the scheme in Table 3.1. The second example can be found in the commentary on another

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Table 3.1 Gardens of the knowers Garden of

Consists of

Servanthood Miracles (karāmāt) (ʿubūdiyya) Lordship Witnessing of unadulterated (rubūbiyya) omnipotence (mushāhadat ṣirf al-qudra) Experiential Grasping of divine phenomena knowledge (idrāk nawādir al-ulūhiyya) (maʿrifa) Love Witnessing of blessings (maḥabba) (mushāhadat al-ālāʾ) Proximity (qurba)

Pursuit of the lights of the attribute (mubāsharat anwār al-ṣifa) Witnessing Astonishment for the beauty of (mushāhada) God (al-dahsha fī jamāl al-ḥaqq) Drawing Familiarity with the vision of closer communion and dissociation (mudānāh) from creation (al-istiʾnās bi-ruʾyat al-wiṣāl wa’l-tabarrī min al-ḥadthān) Communion Delight in passionate love (waṣla) (al-ladhdha fī’l-ʿishq) Divine unity Clothing in divine clothing (tawḥīd) (al-talabbus bi’l-libās al-rabbānī) Subsistence Stability (tamkīn) (baqāʾ) Expansion Relief by witnessing (al-faraj (basṭ) bi’l-mushāhada) Hope (rajāʾ) Longing (shawq) Extension Unification (ittiḥād) (inbisāṭ) Intoxication (sukr) Sobriety (ṣaḥw)

Angelic realm (malakūt)

Sweetness of annihilation (ḥalāwat al-fanāʾ)

Prophetic miracles and alteration of individualities (al-muʿjizāt wa-taqallub al-aʿyān) Vision of images of the figures of the spirits (ruʾyat taṣāwīr ashkhāṣ al-arwāḥ)

Contains river of Realities of wisdom (ḥaqāʾiq al-ḥikma) Vision of the manifestation of God in the mirror of life (ruʾyat tajallī al-ḥaqq fī mirʾāt al-ḥayāt) Purity of sincerity (ṣafāʾ al-ikhlāṣ) Contentment with the will of the Beloved (al-riḍā bi-murād al-maḥbūb) Particularity of love (khāṣṣiyyat al-maḥabba) Subtleties of allusion (Laṭāʾif al-ishāra) Unveiling of the peculiarities of the manifestation of the attributes (kashf gharāʾib tajallī al-ṣifāt) Love (maḥabba)

Stripping off human clothing (al-insilākh ʿan al-libās al-insānī) Tranquillity (sakīna) Serenity (ṭamʾanīna)

Intimacy (uns) Solitariness and judgement in presence (al-farīda wa’l-ḥukm fī’l-ḥaḍra) Purity of life of the spirit in witnessing (ṣafāʾ ʿīsh al-rūḥ fī’l-mushāhada) Direct knowledge from God (al-ʿilm al-ladunī) Increase of certainty (mazīd al-yaqīn)

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Table 3.1 Gardens of the knowers Garden of

Consists of

Unveiling Awareness [of God] by the (mukāshafa) characteristic of the ecstasy of pure experiential knowledge (al-murāqaba bi-naʿt wijdān ṣafāʾ al-maʿrifa) Reality Ecstasy of the spirit on the (ḥaqīqa) stations of togetherness and separation (wijdān al-rūḥ fī maqām al-jamʿ wa’l-tafriqa) Knowledge Repose in ecstatic utterings (ʿilm) (al-rāḥa fī’l-shaṭḥiyyāt)

Contains river of Secrets of perspicacity (asrār al-firāsāt)

Inconstancy and stability (al-talwīn wa’l-tamkīn) Diving of the spirit into the sea of reality (ghawṣ al-rūḥ fī baḥr al-ḥaqīqa)

verse on the rivers of Paradise: Q 47:15. Again, it does not teach us much about Rūzbihān’s conceptions of the physical hereafter, but more about how Rūzbihān conceived of the structure of Sufi stations and states and their interdependence. We will quote it at full length here to fully appreciate the manner in which Rūzbihān describes these interiorised gardens: For the people of truth (ahl al-ḥaqq) there are gardens in their hearts and minds in this world, and in their spirits and inmost selves. The garden of the hearts is the garden of perfection (rawḍat al-itqān), the garden of the minds is the garden of experiential knowledge (bustān al-ʿirfān), the garden of the spirits is the garden of clear proof (ḥadīqat al-bayān), and the garden of the inmost selves is the paradise of eye-witnessing ( firdaws al-ʿiyān). Each of these gardens has trees, fruits and flowers. The river of the garden of the hearts is the water of eternal life, which flows in it by the characteristic of [divine] manifestation (naʿt al-tajallī) from the springs of [divine] unity (ʿuyūn al-waḥdāniyya), and it is not altered by the muddiness of the human condition (kudūrāt al-bashariyya). It makes the hearts alive through the light of certainty so that the death of ignorance does not come to them. Its trees are the trees of faith, and its fruits are the lights of certainty.

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The river of the garden of the minds is from the milk of omnipotence (albān al-qudra) from which God gives them to drink, to show them the purity of the lights of His omnipotence, whose experiential knowledge is inherited by His might. Its trees are wisdom and its flowers are intelligence. The river of the garden of the spirits is the river of the unveiling of Beauty ( jamāl), whose spring is the sea of Majesty ( jalāl), from which God gives to drink to make it good through the delight of beauty and the vision of Majesty. Its trees are love (maḥabba), its flowers are longing (shawq), and its fruits are passionate love (ʿishq). The river of the garden of inmost selves is the unveiling of the holy essence (al-dhāt al-muqaddas) from the separation of His endless emanation ( fayḍ). God strengthens it with drinking until it straightens in its communion (waṣl). And there its trees are unification (tawḥīd), its flowers are solitariness (tafrīd), and its fruits are realisation (taḥqīq). The companions of the hearts are the people of witnessing (ahl al-shuhūd), the companions of the minds are the people of unveiling (ahl al-kushūf), the companions of the spirits are the people of drunkenness (sakr) and ecstasy (wajd), and the companions of the inmost selves are the people of erasure (maḥw) and sobriety (ṣaḥw). The people of the witnessing are the companions of awareness [of God] (murāqaba), the people of unveiling are the people of stations (maqāmāt), the people of ecstatic finding (wujūd) are the people of states (aḥwāl), and the people of erasure and sobriety are the people of uprightness (istiqāma). So blessed be who has the likes of these gardens in the abode of examination (dār al-imtiḥān).169

Schematically, this structure of interiorised gardens, rivers, trees, fruits and flowers would look like Figure 3.1. This approach comes closest to the description of what Böwering considers typical for the method and style of commentary in ishārī works of tafsīr; the Sufi commentator concentrates upon a short phrase or specific term from a verse, which becomes the focal point for

Figure 3.1 Interiorised gardens

Figure 3.1. Interiorised G ardens



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his commentary. This is then associated with ‘the mystical matrix of a Ṣūfī world of ideas’ in the mind of the interpreter. ‘Exegesis’ becomes ‘eisegesis’ in this process; the commentary is no longer about what the text itself is supposed to mean, it is about what the interpreter reads into it.170 In the two passages discussed above, the short phrase ‘gardens under which rivers flow’ is enough for Rūzbihān to allude to a whole spectrum of grander themes of Sufism, which have virtually nothing to do with the apparent meaning of the Qurʾanic verse anymore. Conclusion

Taking into consideration that a significant number of the verses in the Qurʾan deal with Paradise and Hell, one might expect to see the subject covered to a similar degree in the Sufi tafsīr literature.171 These tafsīr works would thus have great potential as the ideal sources for reconstructing the early Sufi conceptions of Paradise and Hell that are so underrepresented in other early Sufi works. The sources do not entirely live up to that expectation. A close reading of our sources has taught us that the hereafter was indeed not a major concern of the authors under scrutiny, and that a large number of eschatological verses were not commented upon. When these verses did provoke commentary, it was rather by way of allusion – as one would expect from an ishārī tafsīr – using an isolated phrase or term from a verse to allude to ideas, terms and concepts from the broader world of Sufi imagination instead of using them to further elaborate on the perceived realities of Paradise and Hell from a Sufi perspective. This lack of significant commentary on the content of the verses itself to build structured thought on the hereafter is a clear indicator of the general disregard by Sufi authors in this period for physical descriptions of Paradise and Hell, as one finds them in the Qurʾan. The hope expressed in the introduction to this study, that these Qurʾan commentaries would fill a significant gap in our knowledge on Sufi eschatology, has therefore only been partly fulfilled thus far. Still, we have been able to construct a more complete picture of some salient themes. So which grander eschatological themes do these five commentar-

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ies have in common in the passages that they did comment upon? The one theme that clearly stands out is that of nearness to, meeting and communion with, and the vision of God in the hereafter. This theme was present from the earliest sources included by al-Sulamī, and remains dominant in all works up to and including Rūzbihān. From that we can conclude that of the six attitudes identified by Lange, in our period and our sources the third and fourth attitudes stand out. Paradise and Hell are not considered the main focus for the believer: the true motivation should be nearness to, contentment with and the vision of God. The attitudes of fear of Hell and hope for Paradise typical of the early renunciants are scarcely found in our sources. A God-centred Sufism that stresses the love and longing for God has quite pervasively surpassed these earlier attitudes in the period of our interest. Paradise only maintains its relevance as an abode of meeting with and seeing God. With Rūzbihān as the exception, the theme of Hell is virtually absent in the commentaries for the same reasons. If it is mentioned, it is rather to stress that distance from God and being veiled from Him is the true punishment. The authors are only interested in both abodes of recompense when it is somehow related to the meeting with and vision of God, or the lack thereof. This has indeed become the most dominant attitude in the ‘classical’ period. The earlier renunciant attitudes from the formative period have not even made it into al-Sulamī’s redaction, and thus have not become part of the canon of ishārī tafsīr. Another common theme, very much related to the former, is the tendency to stratify the rewards of Paradise. In all commentaries we have come across a variant of the division between general believers and the elite, in which the general believers are distracted by the physical pleasures of Paradise, while the elite realises that only God matters. Especially from Maybudī onwards, this comes to the fore very clearly. This may have something to do with the rise of more hierarchical structures within Sufism around the same time, in which the terminology of ʿāmm and khāṣs played an important role.172 This stress on otherworldly nearness to and vision of God and the related stratification of rewards in Paradise is not unique to Sufi approaches

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to Paradise per se. The importance of nearness to and vision of God is well established in Islamic eschatological literature, as well as the exclusivity of this reward for the highest class of believers.173 Although Sufis were keen and eager to employ these traditions, as we have seen in the case of al-Daylamī, they are not typically Sufi or ishārī as such. What is unique to the Sufis that we have studied is the radicalness with which they have embraced the idea of the vision of God, and their use of this idea to establish a hierarchy between the common believers, who do not understand what Paradise is really about, and the Sufi elite, who do have this proper understanding. This is also perhaps the best example of how the hereafter was ‘politicised’ in Sufi thought. This stratification was not a purely spiritual matter; it had very tangible consequences for the social and political stratification of Sufi networks and wider society.174 Two major departures from these general trends can be discerned in the attitudes towards the hereafter, in the two latest commentaries under discussion. The first variation is in al-Daylamī’s tafsīr, in which we have witnessed a radicalisation of the concept of dhamm al-ākhira. Where the earlier commentaries showed a mere disregard for the hereafter, al-Daylamī goes as far as to warn that too strong a focus on recompense in Paradise and Hell can lead to shirk. This is no longer a mild disregard; this is outright contempt for the hereafter. Although similar ideas already existed in the formative period, it is nowhere so pervasively dominant as in al-Daylamī’s commentary.175 It is difficult to estimate whether this radicalisation was a common characteristic of Sufi thought in al-Daylamī’s age or whether it was typical only of al-Daylamī. I tend to believe the latter is the case. Al-Daylamī has been described as a ‘lone wolf’, and later authorities have not adopted his writings and thought.176 The fact that this radicalisation was already being tempered again in the work of Rūzbihān, and that it did not herald an epistemic shift in the commentary tradition, testifies to this. Al-Daylamī’s ideas on this matter did not leave a clear mark on the later tradition. The second deviation from the earlier tradition is the interiorisation of Paradise and Hell in Rūzbihān’s tafsīr. This might perhaps be considered an ‘epistemic shift’ in thinking on the hereafter. Although

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immanent conceptions of the hereafter were present from the formative period onwards and did show up in other commentaries every now and then, in Rūzbihān’s work it really became a grander theme. His ideas on the manifestation (tajallī) of God in this world and the possibility of seeing and witnessing Him foreshadow later developments in the schools of Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) and Najm al-Dīn Kubrā (d. 654/1256). Moreover, Rūzbihān’s ideas on the nonperpetuity and leniency in the punishment of Hell foreshadow ideas that would become more common, and would be more profoundly elaborated on, in the thought of Ibn ʿArabī and his school. This study stops at Rūzbihān, however, and more research is needed to see how Rūzbihān marks a shift from the ‘classical’ period of Sufism to the period of the larger Sufi schools.177 In this chapter, we have analysed what our Sufi exegetes thought Paradise and, to a lesser extent, Hell to be like, and how, therefore, they conceived of the final boundary crossing of humankind in Islam’s eschatological meta-structure, from this world to the otherworld. In the next chapter, we will focus on the initial boundary crossing from the otherworld to this world: Adam’s banishment from Paradise. Elaborating, in particular, on the dominance of nearness and vision that we witnessed in this chapter, we will analyse how these themes were present in the initial crossing. To what extent was nearness and vision lost with the banishment from Paradise? Notes

1 Lange, Paradise and Hell, ch. 7; Lange, ‘Sufi’s Paradise and Hell’, 193–6. 2 Dhamm al-ākhira is our own term for this concept, derived from dhamm al-dunyā, a common concept in Sufism. Christian Lange calls this contemptus ultramundi, derived from contemptus mundi (Lange, Paradise and Hell, ch. 7). Massignon holds that the idea that focusing on the recompense of Paradise distracts from God is a theme that Islam has borrowed from Hinduism (Massignon, Essay, 67). 3 Lange, Paradise and Hell, ch. 7. 4 El-Saleh, Vie future, 91–111. See also Vakily, ‘Mystical Significance of Paradise’, 407–11.

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5 El-Saleh, Vie future, 91; Böwering, ‘Commentary of al-Sulamī’, 42–3; Godlas, ‘Ṣūfism’, 351–2; Ateș, İşârî tefsîr okulu, 3–8. 6 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 2:203. 7 Ibid., 2:236. A variant on this quote is also included by al-Sulamī in his minor commentary. At the end of that quote, a credal statement is added on the modality of the vision of God: ‘{What the souls desire} is the Garden and its bliss and the breeze (al-rawḥ) therein to the greatest contentment (al-riḍwān al-akbar). {And enraptures the eye} [means that] a knower (ʿārif) and a lover (muḥibb) is enraptured only by looking at the object of his experiential knowledge (maʿrūf) and his beloved (maḥbūb). And what the souls desire is in comparison to what enraptures the eyes of the bliss (al-naʿīm) like a drop in the oceans. The souls desire food and drink and the bliss in the Garden, and the eyes are enraptured by looking at God without mentioning how (bi-lā kayfiyya).’ Sulamī, Ziyādāt, 168. 8 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 2:53. 9 Ibid., 2:345. 10 Ibid., 2:369. 11 Ibid., 2:382. 12 Ibid., 2:291. 13 El-Saleh, Vie future, 95–6. To Rābiʿa the following saying is attributed, which is often considered the symbol of the shift from asceticism to love-based mysticism: ‘I have not served God from fear of Hell, for I should be but a wretched hireling if I did it from fear; nor from love of Paradise, for I should be a bad servant if I served for the sake of what was given me, but I have served Him only for the love of Him and desire of Him.’ EI2, s.v. ‘Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya al-Ḳaysiyya’, by. M. Smith, 8:355. 14 El-Saleh, Vie future, 93. 15 Dhū’l-Nūn still deserves more historicising research than is currently available. A good recent overview can be found in Michael Ebstein, ‘Dū l-Nūn al-Miṣrī and Early Islamic Mysticism’, Arabica 61 (2014): 559–612. A previous attempt to place Dhū’l-Nūn in his historical environment was made by Josef van Ess, ‘Der Kreis des Dhū al-Nūn’, Die Welt des Orients 12 (1981): 99–106. 16 The root w-q-y has multilayered meanings within the Qurʾanic discourse, with its most important derivations being the noun taqwā and the verb ittaqa. In this book I have chosen to translate the noun as

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‘God-wariness’ and the verb as ‘being wary’. I believe these are closest to the original meaning of the root letters, which have the connotation of ‘to guard oneself from’ or ‘to be wary of’. For a discussion of the word taqwā in the Qurʾan, see Erik S. Ohlander, ‘Fear of God (Taqwā) in the Qurʾān: Some Notes on Semantic Shift and Thematic Context’, Journal of Semitic Studies 50, no. 1 (2005): 137–52. 17 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 2:20–1. 18 As Josef van Ess explains it in the context of al-Muḥāsibī (d. 243/857): ‘Das tawahhum führt ihn dazu, das Gericht zu fürchten und reuig umzukehren; darum wird er sich im Jenseits nicht mehr zu fürchten brauchen.’ Josef van Ess, Die Gedankenwelt des Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī (Bonn: Selbstverlag des Orientalischen Seminars der Universität Bonn, 1961), 137–8. 19 For a detailed monograph on this tafsīr, see Böwering, Mystical Vision. All English quotes from the Tafsīr al-Tustarī in this study are taken from the translation by Annabel Keeler and Ali Keeler (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011). 20 Tustarī, Tafsīr al-Tustarī (trans. Keeler and Keeler), 120. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 121. 23 Tustarī, Tafsīr al-Tustarī (trans. Keeler and Keeler), 116. 24 Ibid., 114. 25 Ibid., 130, 149, 169. 26 Ibid., 181. 27 Ibid., 233. 28 Ibid., 171. 29 Ibid., 239. 30 Ibid., 156. 31 Ibid., 158. 32 Ibid., 176. 33 Ibid., 170. Ruʾyat al-janna most likely means the vision of God in Paradise here. The Arabic is ambiguous, however, and might also mean the vision of Paradise itself. 34 Tustarī, Tafsīr al-Tustarī (trans. Keeler and Keeler), 184–5, 258. 35 Ibid., 193. 36 Ibid., 185, 193. 37 It is only then that he, in one of two instances in the entire tafsīr,

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quotes one of the famous sayings by Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya (d. 185/801) renouncing the otherworld: ‘My Lord, I love this world only that I might remember You in it, and I love the Hereafter only because I may see You there . . . My Lord, do not bring upon me these two things for I will not be able to bear them: burning in Hell and separation from You.’ Tustarī, Tafsīr al-Tustarī (trans. Keeler and Keeler), 258. 38 In the Tustarī tradition there is also a story, not mentioned in the tafsīr, of Sahl crossing the boundary the other way, visiting Paradise and conversing with three hundred prophets assembled there. Gerhard Böwering, ‘From the Word of God to the Vision of God: Muḥammad’s Heavenly Journey in Classical Ṣūfī Qurʾān Commentary’, in Le voyage initiatique en terre d’Islam: ascensions célestes et itineraires spirituels, ed. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (Leuven and Paris: Peeters, 1996), 211. 39 Tustarī, Tafsīr al-Tustarī (trans. Keeler and Keeler), 15. 40 Ibid., 260. 41 Ibid., 253. 42 Ibid., 73, 113, 207. 43 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 2:17. 44 Ibid., 2:207. 45 Ibid., 2:296. 46 Tustarī, Tafsīr al-Tustarī (trans. Keeler and Keeler), 217. 47 Abū’l-Ḥasan Ismāʿīl al-Ashʿarī, Kitāb maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn wa-ikhtilāf al-muṣallīn, ed. Helmut Ritter (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1963), 289, 438–9. The students of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Zayd (d. c. 132/750) also claimed to enter Paradise every night during this-worldly life and to eat from its fruits. This is disapprovingly mentioned by al-Sarrāj in his Kitāb al-lumaʿ as a deception by devils. Abū Naṣr ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī al-Sarrāj al-Ṭūṣī, The ‘Kitāb al-lumaʿ fī’l-taṣawwuf’, ed. Reynold A. Nicholson (Leiden: Brill, 1914), 429. For more discussions on similar issues of boundary crossing, see Chapter 5. 48 EI2, s.v. ‘al-Kharrāz’, by W. Madelung, 4:1083–4. Unfortunately this treatise, Kitāb ruʾyat al-qulūb, is lost. See Chapter 5, note 26. 49 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:388. This does not necessarily have to be in conflict with the view mentioned before. Lā yubṣiru might well have the connotation of ‘does not pay attention to’, and have nothing to do with the actual vision of God. 50 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 2:170.

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51 Ibid., 2:202. 52 Ibid., 1:393. 53 Ibid., 1:322. 54 The claim to see God in a dream can be found in canonical hadith literature and is not restricted to Sufism per se. See Pierre Lory, ‘La vision de dieu dans l’onirocritique musulmane médiévale’, in Reason and Inspiration in Islam: Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism in Muslim Thought: Essays in Honour of Hermann Landolt, ed. Todd Lawson (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 353–63. However, these sometimes seemingly anthropomorphic traditions were not always considered unproblematic and were discussed and debated in special treatises. Some of this material on seeing God in the form of a beardless young man later made it into literature on problematic narrations, e.g. al-Suyūṭī’s al-Laʾālī al-maṣnūʿa fī’l-aḥādīth al-mawḍūʿa and ʿAlī al-Qārī’s al-Asrār al-marfūʿa, perhaps because of its too explicit anthropomorphism. See Helmut Ritter, ‘Philologica II’, Der Islam 17, no. 1 (1928): 256–7; Richard Gramlich, Der eine Gott: Grundzüge der Mystik der islamischen Monotheismus (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1998), 136–7. We will come back to this more profoundly in Chapter 5. 55 Carl W. Ernst, Words of Ecstacy in Sufism (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1985), 105–6. 56 Richard Gramlich, Abu l-ʿAbbās B. ʿAṭāʾ: Sufi und Koranausleger (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995), 1–5. 57 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:119. 58 Ibid., 2:297. 59 Ibid., 1:224. 60 Ibid., 1:449. 61 Ibid., 1:225. 62 Ibid., 1:371. 63 Ibid., 1:410. 64 Ibid., 1:289, 385. 65 Ibid., 1:123. 66 See Lange, Paradise and Hell, ch. 7. 67 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:107. Similar quotes are attributed to al-Wāsiṭī and Ibn ʿAṭāʾ. 68 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:364. 69 Ibid., 1:65.

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70 Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 3:51. 71 For a thorough study of the ideas on al-barzakh in the Islamic tradition, see Ragnar Eklund, Life between Death and Resurrection according to Islam (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1941). 72 Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 1:246, 251. 73 Ibid., 1:252. 74 Ibid., 1:251. 75 Ibid., 3:374. 76 Ibid., 1:168–9. 77 Ibid., 1:349. 78 Ibid., 1:219. 79 Ibid., 1:303. 80 Ibid., 1:283–4. 81 Ibid., 3:352. 82 Ibid., 1:88–9. 83 Carl W. Ernst has made a similar point on Sufi poetry. Ernst contends that whether a poem is ‘Sufi’ or not depends more on whether it is being read in a Sufi context than on whether it was written by a Sufi or has explicitly Sufi content. The intent of the reader matters more than the intent of the author. Carl W. Ernst, ‘What is Early Arabic Sufi Poetry? Prologomenon to a Translation of the Poetry of al-Hallaj’ (unpublished essay, 2014). A lot of the love poetry cited in the Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt, for example, was originally composed in a non-religious context referring to secular love. Al-Qushayrī subsequently quotes it in an explicitly religious context and plays with the love content in the relationship of the believer to God. Thus he transforms secular love poetry to Sufi poetry by his readership of it rather than by its authorial intent. See Sands, ‘Subtleties’, 9–10. For a full account of the poetry cited by al-Qushayrī, see Aḥmad Amīn Muṣṭafā, Takhrīj abyāt Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-saʿāda, 1986). 84 For my selection of relevant passages, I am greatly indebted to Keeler’s Sufi Hermeneutics and to Chittick’s Divine Love, which have proven very helpful in navigating this voluminous Qurʾan commentary. 85 Maybudī, Kashf, 9:346–7. 86 Ibid., 8:441. 87 Maybudī, Kashf, 1:469. The same quote later reappears attributed to Anṣārī. Maybudī, Kashf, 8:441.

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88 ‘Akthar ahl al-janna al-bulh’. See Abū Bakr Aḥmad al-Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Ḥāmid (Riyadh: Maktabat alRushd li’l-nashr wa’l-tawzīʿ, 2003), 2:391. 89 Maybudī, Kashf, 8:250. 90 Maybudī, Kashf, 6:574–5; Chittick, Divine Love, 220. 91 Tabattul is a term hardly ever found in the handbooks of Sufism. It is derived from Q 73:8: wa-tabattal ilayhi tabtīlan (and devote yourself to Him with devotion). See Nwyia, Exégèse coranique, 54. 92 Maybudī, Kashf, 10:274. Translation from Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 163­–4. 93 For the sociopolitical implications of this Sufi tendency to establish spiritual hierarchies, see Anjum, ‘Mystical Authority’, 71–81. 94 He derives this relationship from Q  79:40–1: ‘Who fears the standing before his Lord and forbids the lower self from caprice, surely the Garden is the refuge.’ 95 Again, he derives this relationship from a Qurʾanic passage. Q  9:72 reads ‘and good dwellings in the Garden of Eden; and contentment from God is greater’. 96 Maybudī, Kashf, 2:42–3; Chittick, Divine Love, 174. 97 Maybudī, Kashf, 2:42–3. 98 Maybudī, Kashf, 3:311; Chittick, Divine Love, 96. 99 Maybudī, Kashf, 8:168–9; Chittick, Divine Love, 178-79. 100 Maybudī, Kashf, 7:152; Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 167-68. 101 Maybudī, Kashf, 5:167; Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 168. 102 Although not quoted explicitly by Maybudī, the tradition of samāʿ in Paradise and David reciting from the Psalms goes back to Dhū’l-Nūn al-Miṣrī. See Massignon, Essay, 144. 103 This pure wine is elsewhere described as ‘the wine of communion [with God]’ (sharāb-i waṣl) (Maybudī, Kashf, 7:377). In my translation of waṣl as ‘communion’ instead of the more common ‘union’, I follow the opinion of Barbara von Schlegell, who warns of too excessive use of the term ‘union’ as translations for Sufi terminology. Von Schlegell, ‘Translating Sufism’, 583–4. 104 Maybudī, Kashf, 8:249–50. 105 Ibid., 1:27; 7:377. 106 Ibid., 1:469. 107 Ibid., 7:377–8.

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108 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 78a (Q 12:108). 109 Ibid., fol. 38b (Q 5:41). 110 Ibid., fol. 88a (Q 18:28). 111 Ibid., fols 28a­–b (Q 4:1). 112 Ibid., fols 85b–86a (Q 17:23). To support this idea, he quotes a hadith that is more frequently quoted by Sufi authors, which states: ‘O God, I take my refuge in You from You, and I escape from You towards You.’ 113 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 144b (Q 76:14). 114 Ibid., fol. 93a (Q 20:12). This example was more widespread in Sufi writings. It can, for example, also be found in al-Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-anwār. W. H. T. Gairdner, trans., Al-Ghazzālī’s ‘Mishkāt al-anwār’ (The Niche for Lights): A Translation with Introduction (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1924), 75. 115 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 20a (Q 3:14–15). In the same passage, al-Daylamī holds yet another opinion about the meaning of al-riḍwān: ‘Know that in the world of omnipotence (ʿālam al-jabarūt) there is a tree whose length, number of branches and its permeation to the sides only God the Exalted knows. It is pure, sanctified, and its lowest foundation is in the paradisiacal gardens of al-Quds ( farādīs al-Quds). And it is clear as cold water or as crystal. Its colour is green-like. That tree is called al-riḍwān. Who attains it, has attained the biggest contentment (al-riḍwān al-akbar), God willing.’ 116 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 17b (Q 2:269). 117 ‘Al-Dunyā ḥarām ʿalā ahl al-ākhira, wa’l-ākhira ḥarām ʿalā ahl al-dunyā, wa-humā ḥarāmān ʿalā ahl Allāh.’ The Turkish editor of the commentary traces this obscure hadith back to a collection of forgeries. See Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad al-ʿAjlūnī, Kashf al-khafāʾ wa-muzīl al-ilbās ʿammā ishtahara min al-aḥādīth ʿalā alsinat al-nās, ed. Aḥmad al-Qalāsh (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-risāla, n.d.), 1:410. 118 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fols 17b–18b (Q 2:267–9). 119 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fols 25b–26a (Q 3:92). 120 Q 5:43. 121 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 103a (Q 25:43). 122 Ibid., fol. 30b ( Q4:48). 123 Ibid., fols 55a–b ( Q7:29). 124 ‘He described al-muḥsinīn in this surah when He said: {Those who live in awe for the fear of their Lord; and those who believe in the signs of

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their Lord; and those who do not associate anything with their Lord} (Q 23:57–9), which means they do not take as partners the Garden and the Fire, this world, and the otherworld in the longing for it and the fear of it, to His saying, the Exalted:{And those who give what they give while their hearts are full of fear because of the return to their Lord} (Q 23:60), which means they perform their works of obedience {while their hearts}, meaning their interiors, are afraid of inclining towards the acts of obedience, and see {that they return to their Lord} not to the Garden or the Fire.’ Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 98a (Q 23:1–11). 125 Ibid. 126 Ibid., fol. 146b (Q 83:15). 127 Ibid., fol. 95b (Q 21:102). This saying is also to be found in al-Sulamī’s Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr. See Paul Nwyia, ‘Le tafsīr d’Ibn ʿAṭā (m. 309/921) extrait des Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsir de Sulamī’, in Trois oeuvres inédites de mystiques musulmans: S̆ aqīq al-Balḫī, Ibn ʻAṭā, Niffarī, ed. Paul Nwyia (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 1973), 96. 128 The Muʿtazilīs, arguing against the vision of God, would understand ilā rabbihā nāẓira as ‘waiting for [the reward of] their Lord’ rather than ‘gazing at’. Anthony K. Tuft, ‘The Origins and Development of the Controversy over “Ruʾya” in Medieval Islam and its Relation to Contemporary Visual Theory’ (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1979), 103–19. 129 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fols 143b–145a (Q  75:22–3). Also in his commentary on that other central Qurʾanic verse used as proof of otherworldly vision, Q 10:26, he gives the conventional Ashʿarī position that ziyāda is the vision of God with the eye in the hereafter. Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 71a. 130 For a more detailed discussion of these different theological perspectives on the issue of the vision of God, see Chapter 5. 131 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fols 143b–145a (Q 75:22–3). 132 In his commentary on Q  6:101 he further confirms this view, stating that who sees God in this world and does not die by what he saw, is not capable of understanding, nor of expressing what he saw. Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 48b (Q 6:101). 133 Ibid., fol. 78a (Q 12:108). 134 Ibid., fol. 143b–145a (Q 75:22–3). 135 Ibid., fol. 43b (Q  6:30). This question reappears in later periods of

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Sufism. Aḥmad b. ʿAjība (d. 1224/1809), for example, mentions ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (d. 827/1424) to have held that some people in Hell are more privileged than some people in Paradise, because God will manifest Himself to them and they will see Him, a privilege not everyone in Paradise enjoys. Aḥmad b. ʿAjība, al-Baḥr al-madīd fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-majīd, ed. ʿUmar Aḥmad al-Rāwī (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 2010), 5:270–1. 136 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 53b (Q 6:129). 137 Ibid., fol. 71a (Q 10:25). The same idea we can find in his treatise Mirʾāt al-arwāḥ, in which he describes how dunyā, ākhira and ʿaql form deviating paths which keep one away from the only path that matters, the path of God (ṣirāṭ Allāh). Abū Thābit Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī, ‘Mirʾāt al-arwāḥ’, Şehid Ali Pasha, Istanbul, MS 1346, fol. 61a. 138 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fols 74a–b (Q 11:123). We most famously know the idea of eschatology as a return to God from the works of Ibn al-ʿArabī, who distinguishes between a compulsory return (rujūʿ iḍṭirārī), which is death as we know it, and a voluntary return (rujūʿ ikhtiyārī), which is a symbolic ‘death before death’. For an analysis, see Chittick, ‘Death and the World of Imagination’. Al-Daylamī predates Ibn al-ʿArabī and his choice of terms is clearly different, but some conceptual similarities can be found. For example, he holds that a return to God in the form of repentance is chosen (bi’l-ikhtiyār). 139 For a discussion of the ‘certainty of salvation’ in medieval Islamic tradition, see Christian Lange, Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 101–15. 140 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:195. 141 Ibid., 1:195. 142 Ibid., 1:438. 143 Abū’l-Qāsim Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf ʿan ḥaqāʾiq al-tanzīl wa-ʿuyūn al-aqāwīl fī wujūh al-taʾwīl (Beirut: Dār al-maʿrifa, n.d.), 2:81–2; Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿat al-bahiyya al-miṣriyya, 1938), 14:92–4. 144 See Q 12:31. 145 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:439. 146 Ibid., 1:439. These lines of poetry are also quoted by al-Qushayrī in his commentary on the same verse (Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 1:538). Neither Rūzbihān and al-Qushayrī mentions the original author of the verses.

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It is attributed to the collection of poetry al-Basīṭ by the Basran Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Hāshim al-Khālidī (d. 380/990). See Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā b. Faḍl Allāh al-Qurashī al-ʿAdawī al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār (Abu Dhabi: Al-Majmaʿ al-thaqāfī, 2002), 15:261. 147 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 2:136. This verse has frequently been used as proof of the idea that Hell is not eternal. For the theme of the non-perpetuity of the punishment in Hell and of salvation for non-Muslims, see Mohammad H. Khalil, Islam and the Fate of Others: The Salvation Question (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 148 The sea of life seems to be a variant reading of the more common concept of the ‘river of life’ (nahr al-ḥayawān or nahr al-ḥayyāt). This concept is mentioned in eschatological hadiths, and refers to a river in which the inhabitants of Hell are washed clean from the black marks of the burning in Hell before they enter Paradise. See Lange, Justice, Punishment, 147. 149 See Q 50:30: ‘The day that God says to Jahannam “Are you filled?” and Jahannam answers, “Is there more?”’ 150 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 3:336. These are ideas that in approximately the same period are also expressed by Ibn al-ʿArabī. See William C. Chittick, ‘Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Hermeneutics of Mercy,’ in Mysticism and Sacred Scripture, ed. Stephen T. Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 153–68; Khalil, Islam and the Fate of Others. 151 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:33, 88, 104, 221. 152 Ibid., 3:28, 41, 49, 97. 153 Ibid., 1:201. 154 Ibid., 2:93. 155 Ibid., 3:112. 156 Ibid., 1:83. 157 Ibid., 1:93. 158 Ibid., 1:379. 159 Ibid., 2:170. 160 Ibid., 1:224. 161 Ibid., 2:238. 162 The same idea is attributed to Abū Yazīd al-Basṭāmī (d. c. 261/874–5), also quoted by Rūzbihān in the same passage: ‘Abū Yazīd – may God sanctify his spirit – said: ‘Were they veiled in the Garden for the blink of

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an eye from the meeting with Him, life would be spoilt for the people of the Garden.’ Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 2:465–6. 163 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 3:305–6. 164 Ibid., 1:38; 2:68, 293, 316, 534. 165 Ibid., 2:7. 166 Ibid., 1:38. 167 For another example of interiorised gardens, see Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 2:466. 168 Ibid., 1:38. 169 Ibid., 3:305–6. 170 Gerhard Böwering, ‘The Scriptural “Senses” in Medieval Ṣūfī Qurʾān Exegesis’, in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, eds Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish and Joseph W. Goering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 348. 171 Lange estimates the amount of eschatological verses in the Qurʾan to be around one tenth of the total, perhaps even more. Part of the trouble in counting the verses that deal with Paradise and Hell, is that many verses allude to them implicitly. See Lange, Paradise and Hell, 37–9. 172 See Anjum, ‘Mystical Authority’; Jonathan A. C. Brown, ‘The Last Days of al-Ghazzālī and the Tripartite Division of the Sufi World: Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī’s Letter to the Seljuq Vizier and Commentary’, The Muslim World 96 (2006): 89–113. 173 See Aziz al-Azmeh, ‘Rhetoric for the Senses: A Consideration of Muslim Paradise Narratives’, Journal of Arabic Literature 26, no. 3 (1995): 227–31; Lange, Paradise and Hell, ch. 5. 174 See Anjum, ‘Mystical Authority’. 175 For more sayings representative of this contempt for the hereafter, see Lange’s description of the fourth attitude (Lange, Paradise and Hell, ch. 7). 176 ‘The conclusion seems inescapable that al-Dailamī was something of a lone wolf; and this would account for the oblivion into which his voluminous writings have fallen’ (Arberry, ‘Works of al-Dailamī’, 51). 177 A further in-depth study of Rūzbihān’s commentary – especially on the concept of tajallī – may offer a better understanding of how Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ideas related to ideas that already existed in his broader environment.

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4

The First Boundary Crossing: Adam Descending

Introduction In Islamic traditions, as well as in Jewish and Christian traditions, Adam represents more than his own identity as a prophet or the first man: he is a paradigmatic human being. Adam’s constitution is considered to be that of humankind as a whole. Therefore, when we as historians of religion study narratives of Adam in these traditions, we study more than just Adam; we are engaged in anthropology and our question becomes what is a human according to these religious traditions? When we discuss narratives on Adam’s banishment from Paradise to this-worldly life, it is thus not only about the event as such; the narratives under scrutiny express deeper concerns within these religious traditions about the meaning and appreciation of thisworldly life for the whole of humankind. This is equally the case with Sufism. Paul Nwyia has noted that ‘intériorisation des figures prophétiques’ is emblemic for Sufi understandings of the Qurʾan: In their meditation on the Qurʾan, the figures of the prophets become prototypes of mystic experience or figures of religious consciousness. That which they read in the stories of the ancients (akhbār al-awwalīn) are not ‘histories’ but a lesson (ʿibra), a doctrine on the 135

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relationships between God and man. In this way Abraham becomes the figure of suffering but faithful consciousness or the prototype of friendship with God, Moses, the figure of spiritual experience as dialogue with God, etc.1

The question of Adam’s banishment from Paradise has raised some fundamental questions about the nature of evil in the religious thought of the monotheistic traditions.2 Von Grunebaum has argued that evil is only accidental in Islam, not structural, as opposed to Christianity where it is both structural and accidental. The banishment from Paradise is the effect of an act of human fallibility, nothing more, nothing less. He holds that the question of evil, and with it the fall of Adam, is thus not as constitutive for Islam as it is for Christianity, where the coming of Christ is necessary to resolve the primal disorder brought about by Adam’s fall.3 In Islamic tradition, the character of Iblīs (Satan), the story of his refusal to bow down before Adam and his subsequent banishment could be more important than Adam’s fall for understanding the place of evil within Islam.4 As we will see in this chapter, in the case of Sufism one could even legitimately argue whether the word ‘fall’ should be used at all for the banishment of Adam, since not all Sufi authors saw it as a degradation of Adam’s status at all, or that of humankind, but in fact quite the contrary. Therefore, we use the more neutral word ‘banishment’ to signify this event. So, if the primary function of the Adam narrative in Islamic traditions is not there to explain the presence of evil in the world, then what function does it have? In this chapter, we look for an answer by discussing several aspects of Adam’s banishment within Sufi imaginaries. First, we consider why, according to our authors, Adam ‘had’ to be banished: how do they place the narrative within God’s larger (eschatological) plan for humankind, and how do they deal with the questions of predestination and theodicy related to it? Second, we try to understand what exactly our authors held to have been ‘lost’ by the banishment: what constitutes the yearning for Paradise during this-worldly life? What is it that can be regained?

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To start with, we will take a short look at the Qurʾanic narrative and note some general points of discussion in the conventional works of theology and tafsīr, most notably the school of Nishapur. Then, after presenting a typology of attitudes towards the banishment found in non-tafsīr sources, we will go through our Sufi commentaries chronologically. Adam in the Qurʾan

Adam as an individual person is mentioned eighteen times in different verses in the Qurʾan. A significant part of these verses deals with the creation of Adam and his sojourning in and banishment from Paradise, most notably Q  2:30–5, 7:11–25 and 20:115–23. In these specific passages, the narrative is preceded by the story of the refusal of Iblīs to bow down before Adam and his subsequent banishment. In short, we read in the Qurʾan the following. God announces the creation of humankind from clay (Q 15:26; 17:61) to be a ‘vicegerent’ (khalīfa) on earth. The angels question God’s plan because they foresee humanity shedding blood and spreading corruption on earth, to which God responds, ‘I know what you do not know’ (Q  2:30). God then teaches Adam the names of everything and the angels recognise that they do not possess this knowledge (Q 2:31–3). God subsequently demands from the angels that they prostrate before Adam, which they all do except for Iblīs, who arrogantly refuses because ‘You created me from fire and created him from clay’ (Q 7:11–12; 2:34; 15:31; 17:61; 18:50; 20:116; 38:74). God places Adam and his unnamed spouse in the Garden (al-janna), where they can eat what they want as long as they do not approach one specific tree, ‘lest you do not become angels or immortal’ (Q 7:20). However, Satan causes them to ‘slip up’ ( fa-azallahumā al-shayṭān ʿanhā) (Q 2:36) and to eat from ‘the tree of immortality and a power that does not yield’ (shajarat al-khuld wa-mulkin lā yablā) (Q 20:120). After this, they become aware of their nakedness and try to clothe themselves with leaves from Paradise (Q  20:121; 7:22). God banishes them from Paradise, commanding them to descend together with Satan as enemies of each other (Q 2:36; 20:122–3). On earth they have ‘a dwelling place and a provision for

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a time’ (Q  2:36). God gives Adam ‘words’ (kalimāt) to repent and accepts his repentance (Q 2:37).5 The Banishment of Adam in Tafsīr, Narrative Religious Literature and Theology

Before moving on to the discussion of the banishment of Adam in Sufism in general and in Sufi Qurʾan commentaries in particular, we will have a closer look at some aspects of the banishment as discussed in conventional tafsīr works, in narrative religious literature (the genre of qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ or ‘tales of the prophets’) and in theology. In Jamāʿī-Sunnī Islam the banishment of Adam has mainly been discussed in hadith literature, tafsīr and in qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ.6 Apart from a lot of details on the particularities of the story, some attention has been paid in this literature to Adam’s sin and to the theological problems it poses in relation to the impeccability (ʿiṣma) of the prophets and to predestination (al-qadr wa’l-qaḍāʾ).7 Once the doctrine of impeccability had become dominant in Islamic theology, it challenged the interpretation of Adam’s banishment in the Qurʾan and hadith.8 The general tendency is to belittle the sin of Adam – if considered a sin at all – by referring to it as a mere mistake (for example, Adam did not understand the prohibition properly and thought it applied only to the specific tree alluded to, not the entire species), forgetfulness (using Q 20:115 in the argument), or by imposing the burden of the sin on his spouse, Eve.9 On the issue of predestination, the general tendency is to point out how all events that happened to Adam and Eve were decreed thousands of years in advance and were thus inevitable.10 The consequences of Adam’s sin have received a fair amount of attention in the narratives on Adam. The most important consequences were considered a loss of ‘completeness’ in several aspects, both physical and intellectual.11 The loss of nearness to God, a typical Sufi eschatological theme as we have seen in Chapter 3, also found its way into more conventional retellings of the Adam story. For example, al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035) reports a long quote in his Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ from the early Sufi authority al-Shiblī, who says in relation to Q 7:24

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(‘Go down as enemies to each other’) that ‘it does not befit who disobeys Us [God] to be in Our proximity’.12 The commentaries of the contemporaries to al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī in the school of Nishapur are most important for us to understand how these two Sufi Qurʾan commentaries are placed within their wider scholarly context. They generally do not offer elaborate narratives on the nature of Adam’s sin, the deeper reasons for the banishment, or its place within God’s greater plan for humankind; at least, it is not given as much attention as one would expect for such a seemingly pivotal cornerstone of religious anthropology. They deal mainly with ostensibly trivial questions such as what kind of tree it was, how Satan was able to enter the Garden, whether the Garden was in Heaven or on Earth, where Adam and Eve were sent down to, and so on. Al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058) mentions four prevailing opinions about Adam’s act in his commentary al-Nukat wa’l-ʿuyūn.13 The first is that Adam forgot the prohibition, as mentioned in Q  20:115. The argument, then, is that prophets forgetting a prohibition is a form of disobedience to God, because of their superior knowledge and high rank. The second is that he ate from it while he was drunk and was held responsible for it as if he was sober. The third is that he ate from it wilfully and with knowledge of the prohibition. He indeed slipped up (zalla) and he should indeed be blamed for wilful disobedience. The fourth is the most remarkable explanation: Adam justified it to himself by interpreting (taʾwīl) the prohibition falsely. He slipped up because the evidence (dalīl) was covered up by Iblīs (Q 7:22). It should not, therefore, be considered a major sin (kabīra), of which prophets are free.14 Al-Māwardī himself is quite sure that indeed they did not realise that it was an act of disobedience. Otherwise Adam would not have done it, since he could not commit a major sin.15 Al-Thaʿlabī, in his commentary Al-Kashf wa’l-bayān ʿan tafsīr al-Qurʾān, treats neither the issue of impeccability nor the issue of predestination extensively. He only briefly states that God’s announcement that He shall make a vicegerent on earth indicates that God predestined Adam’s banishment from the Garden by his sin to fulfil this

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vicegerency on earth. Al-Thaʿlabī also mentions the hadith in which Adam and Moses debate Adam’s responsibility for the banishment of the whole of humankind.16 Al-Thaʿlabī’s direct student al-Wāḥidī (d. 468/1076) mentions a couple of the aforementioned interpretations of Adam’s sin in his largely philological and linguistic extended commentary al-Basīṭ. He concludes his summary by stating that it surely was an act of disobedience (maʿṣiya), but that it was committed before he had the status of a prophet.17 In so doing, he follows the mainstream Ashʿarī position on the issue of the impeccability of ­prophets: prophetic figures are capable of committing major sins (kabāʾir) before their prophetic mission begins. As for the main loss caused by the banishment, he mentions status (manzila) and easy livelihood.18 In his conventional commentary (the second nawbat), Maybudī shows a specific interest in Adam’s slip-up, and gives a lengthy explanation on the nature of mistakes and sins among prophets. He upholds a typical Ḥanbalī perspective on the matter, recognising minor sins (ṣaghāʾir) as possible, but ruling out major sins (kabāʾir). The wisdom of the prophets committing minor sins is that it humbles them and leads them to the praiseworthy, pious acts of asking pardon and supplication. He also quotes the aforementioned argument between Adam and Moses, and points out that Adam’s sin was predestined with the aim of making him vicegerent on earth.19 In conclusion, we can state that the conventional tafsīr literature of the period is rather brief and technical on the verses related to the banishment of Adam. It hardly offers larger narratives or deeper reflection on the theological problems that the Adam narrative in the Qurʾan poses. The Banishment of Adam in Sufism: Non-tafsīr Sources

In early Sufism there was hardly an elaborate prophetology of Adam available in separate treatises. Most Sufi material on Adam deals with the refusal of Iblīs to follow the command of God to prostrate before him. In fact, the main character of interest in these narratives is Iblīs. Adam mainly figures in the background to make a point about the character of Iblīs.20 Where Adam does receive specific mention, we

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can roughly distinguish between two approaches to his descending to this-worldly life. The first is an explicitly negative approach in early renunciant Sufism that stresses the vileness of this-worldly life. The second is a slightly more positive approach that considers Adam’s sin an act that elevated humankind by bringing them an experience that they would not otherwise have attained. This-worldly life is not a negative consequence of Adam’s act in this approach, but something that humankind has to go through – and that God intended them to go through – for their own benefit. Adam’s banishment evoked some interest among early authors, mostly in isolated sayings. Some of these sayings seem to have a background in the early zuhd movement, and express an explicitly negative attitude towards this-worldly life, insinuating that it is comparable to a place for defecation. Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī allegedly stated that the first thing Adam did when he descended from Paradise was to relieve himself of excrement.21 Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 386/996) wrote in his Qūt al-qulūb that one consequence of eating from the tree was that Adam developed the need to evacuate his bowels; it was only the fruits of this specific tree that had that quality, which was the reason for the prohibition to eat from it. Adam requested a place to defecate, but was answered that no place in Paradise was suitable for that purpose. He had to be banished to this world in order to relieve himself.22 Another approach to Adam’s banishment is related to the Sufi tendency to direct all attention and motivation to God, at the cost of being motivated by anything that is created, even otherworldly recompense. For Ibn ʿAṭāʾ, for example, eating from the tree was a form of idolatry, because Adam sought eternity through something other than God. He quotes Adam as saying that he does not understand why God has punished him; after all, his motivation to eat from the tree was to be eternally near to God. God reproaches him: Adam, you have sought your immortality (khulūd) from the tree, not from Me, while immortality is through my power ( yad, lit. hand) and might (mulk). So you have ascribed partners to Me, even though you

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did not realise it. But I called [this to] your attention by expelling you, so that you would not forget Me at some point.23

It is interesting to note how Ibn ʿAṭāʾ seemingly did not feel hindered by notions of ʿiṣma at all, and could make the statement that Adam, though unintentionally, had committed idolatry. As a Ḥanbalī, it is likely that he adhered to a non-theological, strictly text-based form of creed that did not problematise the idea that prophets could sin. The result of the sin, the sojourn in this-worldly life, was something explicitly negative for Ibn ʿAṭāʾ; he argued that joyfulness only befitted humankind when returned to Adam’s original abode, namely Paradise. Therefore, in this-worldly life, grief and weeping should be dominant.24 Other approaches to the banishment seem to have been more influenced by fundamental theological questions, and take the form of a mystical theodicy. They are generally more positive in approach and tend to see the descent to this-worldly life as something that elevated rather than degraded humankind. For example, the early, more mystically oriented, authority Sahl al-Tustarī (contrary to the more zuhdoriented ones) dedicated a whole chapter in his Laṭāʾif al-qiṣaṣ to the ‘subtleties’ involved in the Adam story.25 This maintains that the subtlety of Adam’s banishment from Paradise for eating wheat from a tree – a seemingly disproportionate punishment for a minor sin perpetrated only once – is that it effectuated the divine decree that Adam should be vicegerent on earth, although he himself wished to stay in Paradise. Sahl compares this with Muhammad, who preferred to stay in Mecca but had to leave for Medina because of the harshness he encountered in Mecca. This was necessary in order to fulfil what was decreed by God, to grant him power and elevate his words. The sincere servant Adam could not, as it were, help his sin; ultimately, it was God who wanted him to do it, to fulfil a certain aspect of His divine decree. It was in this way that God granted the possibility of repentance, forgave him and granted mercy. Also, unlike Satan, Adam did not believe in the sin that he had committed and recognised his mistake. Another reason that Sahl mentions for Adam’s banishment is

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that he had to leave because he was also the progenitor of unbelievers, and unbelievers cannot be in Paradise.26 The polymath Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), in his chapter on Maʿrifat-i dunyā (Knowledge of this World) from his Kīmiyā-yi saʿādat, describes the banishment of humankind in general to thisworldly life as a positive event, something that enriched humankind. By descending to earth humankind could come to true self-­knowledge, knowledge of creation and thus of God. Moreover, by going through this-worldly life, humankind receives the extra reward that God has promised.27 We find a more elaborate mystical-theological expression of this same idea in a treatise on the names of God by a contemporary of Maybudī, the Marv-based Persian Shāfiʿī author Aḥmad al-Samʿānī (d. 534/1140). In his work, the Rawḥ al-arwāḥ fī sharḥ asmāʾ al-malik al-fattāḥ, he discusses Adam’s banishment in his explanation of God’s mercy. He argues that God created Adam to know God. Adam’s banishment was necessary to come to a full understanding of the names of God. While Paradise is ruled by the names of mercy and gentleness, Hell is governed by the names of wrath and severity. In this-worldly life, both names are manifest. In Paradise, Adam experienced only God’s beauty and mercy. By the banishment, Adam attained knowledge of the attributes of ‘majesty’ and ‘wrath’ as well, and thus attained a fuller understanding of God.28 Al-Samʿānī stresses the importance of love and mercy; Adam was created to love God and to be loved. Love can only exist by coming together (with God), but also demands separation, testing and trial. By experiencing God’s wrath in these forms, the love of humankind for God becomes stronger. Adam ate from the tree because he knew that would be the way for him to strengthen his love for God through separation and tribulation.29 Loss of Nearness and Vision: The Tafsīr of al-Sulamī

In Chapter 3 we came across the dominance of the vision of and nearness to God in Sufi eschatology. This theme also dominates in al-Sulamī’s commentary of the verses on Adam’s banishment from Paradise. Several authorities quoted by al-Sulamī hold the idea that the banishment of Adam was a punishment for looking at the tree

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instead of at God during his stay in Paradise. The punishment then consists of being deprived of the vision of God during this-worldly existence, only to be restored in the hereafter. When Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq is quoted on Adam’s banishment from Paradise, the themes of nearness, vision and a God-centred motivation again appear; God had ordered Adam to be occupied only with Him and not to forget Him in any state. Adam broke this covenant, states Jaʿfar, by preoccupying himself with the bliss of the Garden instead of with the Benefactor. God expelled Adam from the Garden ‘so that he would know that the bliss (naʿīm) lies in being close to the Benefactor, not in the enjoyment of eating and drinking’.30 The banishment from Paradise is only temporary, until the Day of Judgement, because Adam viewed Paradise and its bliss with ‘only’ the eye, but still kept his heart occupied with God: Had he looked at it with his heart, a complete abandonment would have been proclaimed against him for all eternity. But then God had compassion on him and was merciful to him, (as seen) in His words: {then his Lord chose him and relented towards him and guided (him)} (20:122).31

In the commentary on Q 7:23 (‘Our Lord, we have wronged ourselves’), a certain al-Ḥusayn32 defines ẓulm (wrong-doing) as being distracted from God by something other than Him. Ibn ʿAṭāʾ states they have wronged themselves by being distracted from Him by the Garden.33 In addition, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Qurashī stresses that the result of eating from the tree is estrangement from God; what is lost is nearness (qurb). While God first addresses Adam in plain speech (qawl; Q 2:35), when he tells him to enter the Garden, a sign of nearness, this changes to summoning (nidāʾ; Q 7:22) him to leave after eating from the tree, a sign of distance.34 Al-Sulamī’s commentary contains two specific quotes that can be read as early instances of reconciling the ʿiṣma doctrine with the Qurʾanic suggestion that Adam committed a sin. These quotes both represent a different strategy. One strategy is to argue that what appears to be a sin is actually something that elevated Adam’s status. Al-Sulamī quotes al-Dārāni in the commentary on Q 7:20 (‘So Satan

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whispered to them’). Although he whispered to them because he wanted evil for them, it had the opposite effect of causing the elevation of Adam and his reaching the highest rank. The sin (khaṭīʾa) of Adam was the most complete action he ever did, because it disciplined him and placed him on the station of realities (maqām al-ḥaqāʾiq). Al-Shiblī offers a similar idea, that when prophets commit a sin (dhanb) it leads them to honour and an elevated rank. The sin of Adam led him to electedness (ijtibāʾ) and chosenness (iṣṭifāʾ). The other strategy is to argue that it was not a sin at all, rather a misunderstanding. On the verse ‘And do not come near this tree’ (Q 7:19), al-Sulamī quotes an anonymous source to have said that Adam thought the command to be for the specific tree that God pointed to, while God actually meant the entire species. He mistakenly approached a different tree from the same species. The repentance, then, was not for a violation of God’s command, but for lack of caution.35 Al-Sulamī has more sayings to offer, mostly on the prostration of the angels and the stubbornness and arrogance of Satan in the narrative. He quotes Abū Ḥafṣ (al-Ḥaddād, d. 265/878–9) to have said that the command to the angels to prostrate before Adam was a way for God to teach the angels that He is completely independent of their worship of Him. Had their worship added but a grain’s weight to His might, he would not have commanded them to turn to Adam. In the commentary on Q 7:11, Abū Ḥafṣ stresses that the prostration of the angels and all of creation does not add anything to the might of God, ‘because He is Almighty before He created them, Almighty after He makes them vanish, and Almighty when He resurrects them’.36 An anonymous quote makes clear that the prostration before Adam was an act of obedience to God for the angels, and a mere greeting to Adam.37 Several authorities quoted by al-Sulamī take issue with Satan using the pronoun ‘I’ (anā khayrun minhu; Q 7:12).38 The reason for the curse of Satan is the use of this pronoun; even if he had left away khayrun minhu and only said anā, it would still have ruined him. Subsequently, it is said that he was cursed for not admitting his sin to himself, not repenting, not blaming himself, not considering repentance necessary, and despairing of God’s mercy. Satan thus becomes a

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negative example prominent in Sufi literature for the danger of putting oneself at the centre of things, giving any value to one’s ego and being too proud to recognise one’s sins and repent. Adam, on the other hand, is a positive example of proper behaviour towards God for the Sufi: he admits his sin to himself, regrets it, considers repentance necessary, blames himself and does not despair of God’s mercy.39 Adam is for these reasons considered different from Iblīs, although they both transgressed against God’s command.40 Teaching Good Manners: The Banishment in al-Qushayrī

Al-Qushayrī does not show himself to be a man of grand narratives and themes in his treatment of the story of Adam. His commentary being intended as a mode of instruction for his direct pupils, he mainly takes the verses on Adam as a reason to speak about aspects of good manners (adab) and controlling one’s desires. A primary motive that al-Qushayrī mentions for the banishment of Satan is a lack of good manners (sūʾ al-adab) in his nearness to God.41 His arrogance and haughtiness while being on the carpet of nearness (bisāṭ al-qurb) necessitated his removal from Paradise. Arrogance is a challenge to God’s Lordship (rubūbiyya) by claiming a similar place for oneself.42 This goes for Adam as well. He was in the spring of nearness (ʿayn al-qurba) when he showed improper manners, which necessitated his banishment.43 In a similar vein, Adam’s eating from the tree mainly helps al-Qushayrī to teach something about humankind’s inclination towards sin. Although everything in the Garden was generally allowed for Adam, he did not stretch out his hand to it, and instead patiently waited for the one tree that was forbidden to him. Such, claims al-Qushayrī, is the nature of humankind.44 However, despite this inclination to sin, humanity is still more elevated in rank than the angels, he holds. Although the angels are superior in acts of obedience, humans are superior in knowledge, and knowledge is more elevated than actions.45 When Adam wanted to eat from the tree in order to become like the angels (Q 7:20) it was not because he envied a supposed higher position of the angels, but because Adam wanted

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to be without desires like the angels. The desire to be immortal like the angels was a mistake that caused fear, trial and degeneration, because the cause of every tribulation is desire. Al-Qushayrī takes this example as a mode of instruction. If even in the everlasting abode (dār al-khulūd) desire causes so much trouble, then one must certainly protect oneself from desire in the ephemeral abode (dār al-fanāʾ).46 Al-Qushayrī is also concerned with the preordained nature of Adam’s act. The banishment of Adam was a necessity to make him a vicegerent (khalīfa) on earth, as God had announced to the angels (Q 2:30).47 Although it was Satan who enticed Adam and Eve to slip up, it was in reality God’s omnipotence (qudra) that caused it.48 When God made Adam enter the Garden, He also decreed that the tree of tribulation would be there. Had the decree not already preceded the act of Adam, he argues, the tree would have lost its bloom and greenness, and Adam could not have reached the leaves. Had the divine decree been such that the tree had grown longer, to the extent that his hands could not have reached it, all the difficulties that befell them would not have happened. What Adam did was bound to happen because God had decreed it, and even his firm will could not do anything against it: ‘And no firm will was stronger than his firm will, but the omnipotence (qudra) [of God] cannot be surpassed, and the decree (ḥukm) cannot be opposed.’49 Al-Qushayrī also has the tendency to belittle Adam’s sin. The result of the sin was not necessarily bad. Apparently God had made them leave their elevated rank, but for God they only increased in rank and degree.50 Iblīs was cursed after being sent down and did not recover from his degradation, while Adam was granted mercy and kept his elevated rank.51 Al-Qushayrī is the first (and only) author until now to explicitly mention Adam’s spouse as the cause for the tribulation ( fitna). However, he does not specify in what way this was so.52 It is interesting to note that these particular passages from al-Qushayrī hardly incorporate the material cited by al-Sulamī.53 Some anonymous authorities are quoted, but this material is from another unclear source. Why he did not include the sayings from al-Sulamī’s commentary when these were available to him, we can only speculate.

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It might be that these sayings went too far beyond the boundaries of the apparent meaning of the Qurʾanic text for al-Qushayrī, and that he was not as fond of the themes of nearness and vision that dominate al-Sulamī’s material. Elevation through Degradation: The Banishment in Maybudī

Maybudī is the first commentator who, besides quoting earlier authorities, offers his own quite rich and varied material on Adam. The banishment of Adam as perceived by Maybudī is very similar to his contemporary al-Samʿāni.54 According to Annabel Keeler, for Maybudī the significance of the creation and banishment of Adam primarily lies in love and experiential knowledge (maʿrifa). This argument entails the same inevitability of God’s decree that we witnessed earlier in the work of Sahl al-Tustarī: Adam had to sin and leave Paradise so that the love and mercy of God could fully manifest, and Adam could fully bring about the love of God for which he was destined. The suffering of Adam in this-worldly life was necessary to attain love; without suffering, true love is not possible. Suffering the pain of love is a way to reach chivalry ( jawānmardī). Moreover, it is a way for humankind to realise its own weakness and dependence on God.55 This theme of love and mercy dominates Maybudī’s discussion of the creation of Adam. While God created Heaven, Earth and inanimate beings to manifest His power, the angels and jinn to instil awe, He created Adam and humankind (the Adamites) to manifest His forgiveness and mercy. This is the big difference between the angels and humankind. While the angels are capable of only obedience, praising and hallowing, Adam brings something extra: the capability of love, affection and companionship.56 Where the themes of passionate love (ʿishq), passionate longing (shawq) and friendship (dūstī) show up, the theme of the vision of God is never far away.57 For Maybudī, in pre-eternity on the Day of the Covenant (rūz-i alast) the seed of this love was sown, by the vision of God. As Keeler states: It was the moment when humanity was able to see God as well as hearing Him and, since vision is the mainspring of love, it was the

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moment when the seed of human love for God was sown . . . In this world, the spiritual vocation of the human being can be understood as the fulfilment of the pact agreed in pre-eternity with God; it is to return to that state of being with Him, cut off from all other.58

Maybudī shows a positive attitude towards the banishment of Adam and this-worldly life, and sees it as an event that completed and elevated Adam, rather than degraded him. He quotes a question posed to ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī (consequently addressed as pīr-i ṭarīqat), whether Adam was more complete in Paradise or in this world. Al-Anṣārī’s answer is that Adam was more complete in this world, because there he was confronted with passionate love (ʿishq). One should not, Maybudī quotes his teacher al-Anṣārī, make the mistake to think that the banishment of Adam from Paradise was because of his lowliness. On the contrary, it was because of his high aspiration (ʿulū-y himmat). Although Maybudī does not state it so explicitly, it is my impression from the context of the statement that he considered this ‘high aspiration’ to be Adam’s quest to fulfil his passionate love for God through seeing the beauty of God. In Paradise, so the quote continues, the creditor of passionate love (mutaqāḍī-y ʿishq) came to Adam and rhetorically told him: ‘The beauty of meaning ( jamāl-i maʿnā) has been unveiled, and you stay in the bliss of the abode of peace?’59 An infinite beauty was then unveiled to Adam that Maybudī describes as more beautiful than the eight paradises and all that is in them. Although this beauty is not specified, this is most probably an allusion to the unveiling of the beauty of God: a beatific vision that evokes a passionate longing. After that, the command came to leave Paradise. Paradise is the abode of peace (dār al-salām) and thus not a suitable place for a passionate lover; passion is in need of tribulation.60 This is the reverse of the motive that we witnessed in al-Sulamī’s tafsīr. Where the likes of Jaʿfar and Ibn ʿAṭāʾ seek the reason for the banishment in turning away from the vision of God towards the created, for Maybudī it was exactly the vision of God’s beauty that necessitated the banishment. When one shows friendship in this-worldly life, says Maybudī

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with the words of al-Anṣārī, one will be rewarded with the vision in the hereafter: ‘The drinker of the wine of friendship (sharāb-i dūstī) is promised the vision (dīdār). Whoever is truthful, attains what he wishes.’61 Maybudī considers the vision of God in the hereafter to be the ultimate outcome of Adam’s sojourn in this-worldly life. While in this world, humankind can compensate for the lack of this vision by remembrance (dhikr) of God: His impudence and nearness reached the point that, when He commanded him to travel from Paradise to the earth, he said, ‘O Lord, travellers do not go without provision. What will You give us on this path as our provision?’ He said, ‘O Adam, your provision in that land of exile will be the remembrance of Me. After that, on that day of your return, your vision of Me is promised.62

This confirms Keeler’s view that the main interpretation of Adam’s banishment is rooted in love mysticism; Adam becomes a more complete human by his sojourn in this-worldly life, because its tribulations lead to a more complete love from and for God and, ultimately, a return to the vision of His beauty that first engendered this passionate love and longing.63 The lack of vision in this-worldly life is not a punishment or deprivation. Rather it is something that makes Adam a more complete human, due to the suffering and longing that it causes. Maybudī distinguishes between two existences of Adam (Ādam-rā dū wujūd būd): first the Adam of this world and, second, the Adam of Paradise. Adam is banished from Paradise, only to return in victory: ‘Suffer a bit of trouble, then in a few days take the treasure.’64 When Adam was commanded to leave Paradise and go into this world, he had to leave behind his honorary possessions to travel the ‘road of passionate love’ (rāh-i ʿishq). However, upon his return he would have much more honour. The angels would stand in awe of him and remember how he left, and how much more honoured he returned. Maybudī, like Sahl al-Tustarī, likens Adam’s banishment from Paradise to the forced migration of Muhammad to Medina. He fled alone and abased, but returned victoriously to Mecca with a complete army.65 In sum,

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this-worldly life is an enriching experience. It is something humankind has to go through to return to God in a better state. The Banishment in al-Daylamī

In al-Daylamī’s commentary, there is not a very prominent place for Adam. The crucial passages in al-Baqara (Q 2:30–8), al-Aʿrāf (Q 7:11– 25) and Ṭāhā (Q 20:115–23) hardly provoke reaction or reflection in his commentary. Al-Daylamī does not bother to give explanations for the deeper reasons for the creation of Adam, the significance of his sin or his banishment. He mainly highlights the idea that God is not in need of the prostration of anything to Him, and that the prostration of creatures serves only their own interests. The angels are commanded to prostrate before Adam because he is created in the image of God.66 Satan’s refusal to prostrate stems from his wrong understanding of dignity; he thinks dignity is something fundamental that simply belongs to him, not something related to God-wariness (taqwā) as the Qurʾan teaches (Q 49:13). Al-Daylamī also deems it important to point out that the prostration of the angels took place after the formation of all of Adam’s offspring in his loins, and their testimony that God is indeed their Lord (Q 7:172).67 The Banishment in Rūzbihān

Rūzbihān is a challenging author to deal with. The difficulty of his writings is widely recognised, and may be one of the reasons why he never really earned a well-established place within the later Sufi tradition.68 At first glance, his ideas appear articulated intuitively and not always consistently. Of all the authors under scrutiny, Rūzbihān has the most to say on Adam and will thus be treated a bit more extensively. In what follows, I have tried to reconstruct several snippets from his commentary into a more or less chronological narrative of the story of Adam, from his creation to the banishment from Paradise. The Creation of Adam and the Conference of the Angels

Rūzbihān mentions several motivations God might have had for the creation of Adam. Most of them contain aspects of both

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a­ nthropology and angelology. These narratives serve to define the unique characteristics of man and angels and the hierarchy between them, mainly through the themes of experiential knowledge (maʿrifa), love and vision. First, Rūzbihān states, the angels worshipped God ignorantly. Through their worship alone they were not capable of coming to true experiential knowledge of God. Being turned away by God ‘from the gate of Lordship (bāb al-rubūbiyya) by . . . the attacks of [His] might (saṭwāt al-ʿizza) upon them’, they were incapable of grasping divine reality (idrāk al-ḥaqīqa), and understanding of Lordship was unattainable for them. He thus brought them Adam so that they could acquire knowledge through him, as well as to teach them good manners in servitude. The angels may have preceded Adam in worship, he states, but Adam was their master in experiential knowledge, since his knowledge was imparted directly from God (al-ʿulūm al-laduniyya).69 This implies a unique characteristic of humankind that makes them superior to the angels: the capability to obtain experiential knowledge of God’s Lordship. God has given knowledge of the divine attributes only to humans: ‘He blew a spirit into his spirit, which is the knowledge of the attributes . . . Through these attributes he has precedence over the noble, dutiful angels.’70 Second, at the conference of the angels, God noticed that the angels did not love Him properly, focused as they were on worshipping Him. While God created angels for the sake of worship, He created Adam for the sake of love.71 This love was mutual; God wanted a beautiful witness (shāhid jamīl) in the world that He Himself could love. He therefore created Adam with His hand and ‘clothed’ him with one of His attributes. He loved him by His attributes for the sake of His attributes.72 This obscure formulation might be explained with some help from Rūzbihān’s treatise on love, the ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn. In it Rūzbihān equates God with love and states that passionate love (ʿishq) is an attribute of His.73 So when a human feels love for God, this is because God has ‘clothed’ this human with His attribute of love. Thus, the attribute in which God clothed Adam could well be the attribute of love.

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Third, the angels desired to see God. Therefore, God gave them Adam so that they would be able to see Him through him: God knew their incapability of looking at Him, so He made Adam for them to look at him, because God created him with His hand, and formed him with His form, and put a reflection of His spirit in him.74 When they looked into it, God manifested Himself to them.75

Like Maybudī, Rūzbihān intertwines the theme of passionate love and longing with the theme of the vision of God. Carl Ernst has pointed out how Rūzbihān in ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn connects the witnessing and vision of God with different stages of love. On one of the stages, the lover is transformed into a mirror of God. When one looks at a lover, one sees God reflected in him and becomes a lover oneself.76 This concept also appears in Rūzbihān’s commentary. When the angels prostrated to Adam, he states, some of the angels reached the station of love and passionate love (maqām al-maḥabba wa’l-ʿishq), as a consequence of which God manifested Himself to them through His reflection in the face of Adam.77 The human face, in this case Adam’s, became a mirror of God.78 The indirectness of this manifestation was a necessity, because created beings are not capable of having a pure and unmediated vision of God: ‘Had the lights of His attributes and His essence been exposed to them unadulterated (ṣirfan), they would burn in the first bit that appears from the light of Godliness (ulūhiyya).’79 By this vision of Him through Adam, God also intended to teach the angels a lesson in humility. Rūzbihān points out that when God created Adam the angels had a bad opinion of him and showed poor manners towards him, while they praised themselves.80 Despite God calling him vicegerent (khalīfa), which according to Rūzbihān meant that he would not deal unjustly nor deviate, they still assumed that he would shed blood and misbehave. Rūzbihān interprets this as an act of disobedience against God by the angels. When God removed the ‘veil of sanctity’ (niqāb al-quds) from the face of Adam and the light of his beauty spread, the angels became ashamed of their allegations, realised their ignorance and proclaimed: ‘Glory to You, we have no knowledge except for what You have taught us’ (Q 2:32).81

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God clothed the angels in the cloth of worship (libās al-ʿubūdiyya), while Adam was clothed in the cloth of vision (libās al-ruʾya). God thus showed him to the angels ‘so they saw him clothed in the cloth of God’, and became embarrassed with how astonished they were over their own deficient worship. The command to prostrate to Adam was a lesson that their worship does not reach the level of understanding of Lordship (rubūbiyya). The angels saw the secret (sirr) of God in Adam, and saw that the ‘cloth’ of God was upon him, and that he was dyed with the ‘colour’ of God.82 Iblīs did not prostrate because he did not see what was unveiled to them.83 He was veiled from God’s beauty ( jamāl) and majesty ( jalāl) because he was looking only to himself. He did not belong to the ‘people of witnessing of the attributes (ahl shuhūd al-ṣifāt) and seeing of the majesty of the essence (ruʾyat jalāl al-dhāt)’.84 He claimed not to prostrate because he did not want to look at anything but God. He failed to realise that Adam at that moment was like the Kaʿba. Just as prostrating to the Kaʿba, a created object, in reality is a prostration to God, prostrating to Adam is just a symbolic means to prostrate to God. Because of his refusal to follow God’s command, his prostration was in reality to himself.85 The Dwelling in Paradise and the ‘Slip-up’

Rūzbihān states that before Adam existed, even before anything existed, God had already decreed that Adam was chosen and elected (muṣṭafā mujtabā) for prophethood, for knowledge of God’s names and for experiential knowledge of God through these names. It was by these names that Adam would be led to His characteristic (naʿt), through His characteristic to His attribute (ṣifa) and through His attribute to the ultimate vision of His essence (ruʾyat dhātihi).86 This aspect of Adam being chosen (iṣṭifāʾiyya) appears to be crucial in one of the narratives of the banishment that Rūzbihān offers: leaving Paradise was a necessity to fulfil exactly this aspect of Adam being chosen for these things in pre-eternity. In Rūzbihān’s commentaries there are two banishments of Adam: the first is a banishment from the nearness of God to Paradise, the

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second from Paradise to this world. The command from God to Adam and his spouse to live in the Garden (Q 2:35) Rūzbihān first interprets as being in proximity ( jiwār) to God, so that they would not be separated from Him. Only a few lines after that, he seemingly contradicts this earlier interpretation by suggesting that dwelling in the Garden was not in proximity ( jiwār) to God; that is, before they were placed in the Garden, they were in proximity to God. By placing them in the Garden, God removed them from proximity to Him. He states that God actually wanted Adam and his spouse to sin, without specifying why, or of what exactly the sin consisted. He therefore put them in charge of themselves (wakkalahumā ilā anfusihimā) and removed them from His proximity ( jiwār) by placing them in the Garden, so that the sin could take place. God wanted to set apart the eternal (qadīm) from the created (ḥadthān), and therefore made them take their refuge in eating from the fruits of the trees of Paradise. Since Adam and his spouse were ‘children of time’ (ṭiflā al-zamān) – that is, part of the created realm and not divine – they were not entitled to reside in the realm of might of the Merciful ( jabarūt al-raḥmān).87 He quotes an earlier authority to support this idea: ‘Living in the Garden is estrangement from God. He brought the created back to the created, and He brought imperfection back to imperfection, to separate the pre-eternal (azal) from the created (ḥawādith).’88 Before entering the Garden, Adam was afraid in his inmost self (sirr) that he would be distracted from the delights of witnessing God (ladhāʾidh mushāhadatihi) and communion (wiṣāl) with God, and be veiled from the spirit of intimacy (rūḥ al-uns) and from looking at the beauty of sanctity ( jamāl al-quds). God, therefore, comforted him by stating that ‘you shall not be hungry therein, and not naked’ (Q 20:118). Rūzbihān interprets this to mean that Adam would not be hungry in the sense of longing to witness God (mushāhada), because in the Garden he also would ‘drown in the sea of communion with Us’, and that he would not be naked from ‘the cloth of the light of electedness’ (libās anwār al-iṣṭifāʾiyya). God promises Adam that he would be forever clothed in the cloth of ‘chosenness’ (kiswat al-ijtibāʾiyya), that he would not be thirsty of the water of nearness (zulfa), that he would

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be in communion (waṣla) and would not become burned by the heat of the sun of separation ( firāq).89 Rūzbihān offers several explanations for the special significance of the tree, the reason for the prohibition of the tree to Adam and his attraction to it. More than once he states that God hid the secrets of Lordship (asrār al-rubūbiyya) in the tree. He forbade Adam and Eve from approaching it, so that they would not be banished from Paradise and in consequence burdened with ordinary human life (ʿaysh al-insāniyya).90 This prohibition had the opposite effect of exciting them, so they approached it. When they approached it, God clothed the tree with the lights of sanctity (anwār al-quds) and He manifested Himself to them through the tree. This manifestation caused them to fall into passionate love (ʿishq) with the tree, which made them completely forget the prohibition to approach it.91 God clothed the forbidden tree with the lights of His splendour (bahāʾ) and made Adam see that lordly light and splendour. He commanded him to avoid the tree, while placing love of being near to it in his heart as well, by manifesting the reflection of His majesty ( jalāl) through it to Adam. This love of being near to it won over the command to avoid it, and Adam ‘fell into the excitement of longing for it and the hazard of the delight of the splendour of witnessing it’.92 It had now become easy for Satan to deceive them, because they were passionate lovers. In his longing for the face of his passionately beloved (maʿshūq), says Rūzbihān, a passionate lover (ʿāshiq) is willing to listen to ‘the speech of every pious and insolent so that they perhaps come somewhat close to their beloved’.93 When they ate from the tree, they learned the knowledge of ‘the inmost of the inmost secrets’ (sirr al-asrār) and ‘the subtlety of the divine decrees’ (laṭīf al-aqdār). As a consequence, the Garden filled up with the heaviness of the lights of the inmost secrets (anwār al-asrār) and the gravity of the strength of Lordship (rubūbiyya). They were considered transgressors (Q 2:35) because they acquired knowledge of the inmost secrets of Godliness (asrār al-ulūhiyya). He quotes ‘one of the immoderates’ (musrifīn) to have said:

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That tree is the tree of knowledge of fate (qaḍāʾ) and divine decree (qadr). Who has knowledge [of that] has knowledge of what God has hidden in it, [and] has arrived at the might of the kingdom (ʿizz al-mulk) and of immortality (khuld) by the description of Lordship (naʿt al-rubūbiyya) and independence (ḥurriyya).94

When ‘the cursed one’ (al-malʿūn) said to Adam and Eve ‘Shall I point you to the tree of immortality and a power that does not vanish?’ (Q 20:120), Satan was well aware that it was indeed the tree of immortality and power (shajarat al-khuld wa’l-mulk) and that it was forbidden to them. However, he wanted the tree to be touched, to challenge Lordship (rubūbiyya) by its strength. He grieved because he himself did not have the ability to do so, and saw the treasures of the unseen being filled in it in the form of fruits. Therefore, he pointed Adam to it, so that at least someone of the created beings would enjoy this. But he mixed his will (irāda) with envy of Adam. Satan wanted them to be shown those secrets (asrār) that would make the one who knew them naked and intoxicated.95 Ultimately, it was God who wanted part of His secrets to be shown to Adam. He thus gave Iblīs the ability to whisper to Adam, which caused this secret to be unveiled to him. Adam’s rank was elevated by his newly gained knowledge, while Iblīs was damaged by it. Thus Iblīs did not obtain what he wanted; he had wished for Adam to fall from his rank, but instead Adam’s rank was elevated and his honour was increased. He himself lost his rank because of his envy of Adam and became forever rejected (maṭrūd al-abad), whereas Adam became forever accepted (maqbūl al-azal wa’l-abad).96 When Satan tempted Adam to eat from the tree, he thought that he had put Adam in ‘the haughtiness of eternal separation’ (al-firqa al-abadiyya). He did not realise that Adam’s act would cause the exact opposite, eternal communion (al-waṣla al-abadiyya), and that in reality the tree was the tree of eternity (shajarat al-khuld), because the tree was clothed in the lights of power (anwār al-sulṭāniyya) and the secrets of divinity (asrār al-rabbāniyya).97 For the idea that Adam was actually elevated by eating from the tree, Rūzbihān finds support in the

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earlier ­authority of Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī (d. 215/830), whom he quotes: Satan whispered to them because he wanted evil for them. That was the cause of Adam’s elevation and his reaching the highest rank. Adam had never done an act more complete than the sin (khaṭīʾa) which disciplined him and positioned him on the station of realities (maqām al-ḥaqāʾiq). What might have pervaded his inmost self (sirr) from the angels’ prostration to him fell away from him, and made him return to the blessing of the beginning, in being created by the hand, until he returned to his Lord, by His saying: {We have wronged ourselves}.98

In the Qurʾan it is stated that when Adam and his spouse both ate from the tree, their private parts became apparent to them (Q  20:121). According to Rūzbihān, this means that their inmost selves (asrār) were unveiled to them after eating from the tree, which made them obtain the divine secrets (al-asrār al-ulūhiyya). It was Satan, aiming for the opposite, who guided them to this elevated state. To elucidate this, Rūzbihān gives the comparison of a snake that walks towards a treasure. Behind him is a human who tries to kill it. When he kills the snake, he finds the treasure, thus reaching success through his enemy. This, says Rūzbihān, is similar to the case of Adam and ‘the cursed one’ (al-malʿūn; Satan): He guided him to one of the treasures of Lordship (rubūbiyya), his target was enmity and deviation, and Adam attained post-eternal chosenness (al-ijtibāʾiyya al-abadiyya) after pre-eternal electedness (al-iṣṭifāʾiyya al-azaliyya), while the cursed one reached pre- and post-eternal cursedness (al-laʿna al-azaliyya al-abadiyya).99

Rūzbihān explicitly links God’s manifestation through the tree to Adam to another story of divine manifestation to a prophet through a tree: the manifestation to Moses through a burning bush. In one instance, when he mentions the manifestation to Adam and Eve, he explicitly makes this comparison: ‘And God manifested Himself to them from the tree, as He manifested Himself from the tree of Moses

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to Moses.’100 He criticises people who differentiate between both trees for the wrong reasons. Some, he complains, would state that at the tree of Adam a test and tribulation occurred, while at the tree of Moses the way was opened for his messengership and prophethood. Rūzbihān holds that one would never make such a statement if one knew the true reality (ḥaqīqa) of the tree of Adam. The tree, he states, is an allusion to the tree of Lordship (rubūbiyya), and therefore it was forbidden to Adam. When Adam discovered the attributes of God, he wanted a sample of their reality. God denied him this though, saying: ‘This is something that is not for you. It is forbidden for the created (ḥadathiyya).’ His pre-eternity (azaliyya) became apparent from the tree, which intoxicated Adam and tempted him to eat from it. He ate the grain of Lordship (rubūbiyya), which made his state (ḥāl) in the presence (ḥaḍra) of God so enormous that the Garden did not have the capacity to contain him. Therefore, he was sent down from it to this world, the ‘treasure-trove of the passionate lovers’ (maʿdin al-ʿushshāq).101 The Exile from Paradise and the Sojourn in This-worldly Life

Rūzbihān states that the ‘provision for a time’ promised to Adam and his spouse in this world in Q 2:36 has the meaning of ‘the lights of the manifestation of God (anwār tajallī al-ḥaqq) thronging to their hearts, to comfort them for the lack of witnessing ( fuqdān al-mushāhada)’.102 By abandoning Paradise, they lost their witnessing of God. As a compensation for that loss, they would receive some of the light from the manifestation (tajallī) of God upon their hearts in this-worldly existence.103 In his commentary on Q 20:117 (‘Let him [Satan] not remove you from the Garden so that you suffer’), God says that His reprimand comprises hunger, thirst and nakedness, because that is what the lower self (nafs) truly fears. If they eat from the tree, God will tire them in this-worldly life by the need to look after food, drink, clothing, agriculture and so on, while ‘these punishments do not exist close and near to Me’.104 It is a kindness and generosity from God that He punishes Adam in this world (dunyā) for a sin that he committed in

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His presence (ḥaḍra), while his fellow human beings are punished in the otherworld (ākhira) for the sins they commit in this world. This is something specifically for Adam, because the punishment in this world is easier. It is only because God tested Adam with eating from the tree that the secrets of the realities of His subjugation (ḥaqāʾiq qahramānihi) are attainable for the people of experiential knowledge (ahl al-maʿārif) from among the trustworthy (ṣiddīqīn).105 Concluding Rūzbihān

So what is the point that Rūzbihān wants to make regarding Adam’s banishment? It is hard to find a structured argument or an overarching theme in his seemingly loose and spontaneous statements. Although vision is not the overarching theme in Rūzbihān’s narrative of the banishment, it is a theme that is constantly present in the background, linked with the more strongly present themes of love and experiential knowledge. It seems that Rūzbihān, unlike Maybudī and Samʿānī, is not preoccupied with the deeper questions of theology and theodicy attached to the banishment of Adam. Although he does state that God wanted Adam to sin, and that Adam’s banishment was a way to fulfil his electedness (iṣtifāʾiyya), he does not really specify why the banishment from Paradise was a prerequisite for its fulfilment. Rūzbihān mostly presents his own independent thought in these passages on Adam. Material from al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī is quoted from time to time, but does not play a significant role in the ideas that he himself poses. He mainly quotes them after having given his own interpretation, as is his habit in most of his work.106 Conclusion

Let us now return to the two central questions that we posed in our introduction. Have we found in our authors an answer to the question of why Adam ‘had’ to descend from Paradise, in how they placed this descent within God’s larger (eschatological) plan for humankind and how they dealt with the questions of the predestination and theodicy related to it? And what did our authors exactly hold to have been

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lost by the banishment? What constitutes the yearning for Paradise during this-worldly life? It is somewhat surprising to see the large diversity in approaches to the Adam story, and the seeming lack of intertextuality and genealogy between the different commentaries. Although they surely are genealogical in the sense that they all subtly refer back to predecessors and interweave them into their own impressions, they all develop their own thoughts independently from each other. There seemed to be enough space for their own creativity in describing their individual perspectives on the meaning of the Qurʾan. Maybudī and Rūzbihān have some themes in common, most notably the themes of love and vision, but there is no clear textual lineage between the two and there is no hint at all that Rūzbihān felt the need to relate to (or even had knowledge of) Maybudī’s work. The one theme that all of the commentaries in one way or another (had to) deal with is the question of the predetermination of Adam’s transgression. Here the lack of genealogy and intertextuality is also striking. Although quite similar solutions are found to the problem, later commentators hardly felt the need to quote their predecessors on the issue. When dealing with the issue of ʿiṣma in the commentaries (most notably, in those of al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī), one may even legitimately ask whether the suggested interpretations are typically ‘Sufi’ or whether they at all reflect the hermeneutical principles of ishārī tafsīr. Many ideas correspond almost entirely with ideas propounded in the conventional works of tafsīr and Islamic theology. In the case of predestination, one extra dimension is added: where conventional explanations state only that Adam’s sin was predestined, some Sufi explanations – most notably Rūzbihān’s – go a step further and try to answer the question of why God had ordained what He ordained. These issues of impeccability and predestination clearly show that the Sufi authors did not compose their work in a vacuum from, or in opposition to, the theological doctrines that were current in their broader environment. They actively endeavoured to understand how Adam’s sin fitted within theological doctrines and sought to explain this by way

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of theology themselves, sometimes adding a small, typically Sufi, twist to their argument. The biggest difference in theme and style between the commentaries is the theme of love mysticism. This theme is practically absent in the commentaries of al-Sulamī (with the sayings of Jaʿfar being an exception) and al-Qushayrī. It does not play a prominent role in their understanding of the Adam story or of the meaning and purpose of this-worldly life. For Maybudī and Rūzbihān, on the other hand, it is a core theme in their reading of the Adam narrative, paired with the vision of God, the fuel of love. It is, I believe, the shift from a more sober zuhd-oriented Sufism to a more ecstatic love mysticism that explains the difference between these more negative and more positive approaches to the banishment of Adam. Concerning the question of what was lost by Adam’s banishment, one finds a clear answer only in the early authorities quoted by al-Sulamī, for whom the loss was that of the vision and nearness to God, to be restored only in the hereafter. This deprivation is a punishment for Adam’s act, and the loss is what makes this-worldly life unpleasant and negative. Although Maybudī shows a similar interest, in this-worldly life as a deprivation of vision, one cannot consider it a ‘loss’ in his account. Rather, this lack of vision is the cause of the passionate longing that makes humankind unique, and gives his existence a quality that other creatures lack. By losing the vision and going through the torment of being distant and veiled from God in thisworldly life, humanity truly becomes human and ‘gains’ something rather than loses. Even if we do not agree with Eliade’s notion that the yearning for and return to Paradise is a phenomenon shared by all religions, I believe this concept might indeed offer a framework for understanding the place of Adam’s banishment in the eschatological imagination of the Islamic love mystics, most notably Jaʿfar, Maybudī and Rūzbihān. With the banishment of Adam, even when considered to be an elevating rather than denigrating event, something pivotal was indeed lost: the vision of God, and the nearness to and communion with Him. The purpose of mystical experience in this-worldly life,

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then, is to restore this paradisiacal state. In states of ecstasy, a glimpse of the nearness, communion and vision of Paradise can be attained, a ‘taste’ of what humanity experienced before the banishment, and will experience again in the hereafter. This may explain the centrality of the vision (ruʾya) and manifestation (tajallī) of God in most notably Rūzbihān’s mystical thought, a centrality we further expand on in the case studies of Chapters 6 and 7. We conclude this chapter with two quotes that show how the themes discussed in this chapter effect two other prophetic narratives. The first is a passage from Rūzbihān’s ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn that hints at a similar scheme as Maybudī’s on primordial vision, loss of vision and attempts to reattain it in this-worldly life. Rūzbihān relates how humankind, once in their earthly existence, could only yearn to see God. When speaking of rūz-i alast, the Day of the Covenant, Rūzbihān states: They asked the Real for beauty, so that gnosis would be perfect. The Real removed the veil of might, and showed them the beauty of majesty’s essence. The spirits of the prophets and saints became intoxicated from the influence of hearing [the divine speech and seeing] the beauty of majesty. They fell in love with the eternal beloved, with no trace of temporality. From that stage, their love began to increase with degrees of divine improvement, because when the holy spirits entered earthly form, from their prior melancholy they all began to say ‘Show me!’ They found the locus of delight, so that whatever they saw in this world, they saw all as him.107

The second is a passage from al-Samʿānī’s Rawḥ al-arwāh, also mentioned by Maybudī. It considers the fall of Adam a necessity for the ascension of Muhammad: It was said to Adam, ‘Fall down!’ It was said to Muṣṭafā, ‘Ascend!’: O Adam! Go to the earth so that the world of dust may settle down in the awesome majesty of your sultanate. O Muḥammad! Come up to heaven so that the summit of the spheres may be adorned by the beauty of your contemplation. The secret here is that I said, ‘Fall down!’ to your father so that I could say, ‘Ascend!’ to you.108

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In Chapters 6 and 7 we analyse these two other prophetic narratives that are related to the themes of nearness to and vision of God: Moses’s request for the vision of God and Muhammad’s ascension. First, however, we must survey a spectrum of theoretical discussions on the vision of God. This, we think, will help us to develop a proper understanding of the modes of vision proposed in these case studies. Notes

1 English translation from Sands, Ṣūfi Commentaries, 70. Original quote from Nwyia, Exégèse coranique, 178. 2 Not accidentally, some Christian theoreticians of the study of religion and mysticism have taken the story as a paradigm for their theories. For example, Mircea Eliade stated, based on Christian mysticism and his observations of what he calls ‘archaic’ religion, that every religion, and more specifically ‘primitive’ religion, has a notion of a fall, a sense that something pivotal from a ‘time out of time’ (illud tempus) was lost at the beginning of human history, resulting in a ‘nostalgia’ or ‘yearning for Paradise’. One of the main purposes of mystic ecstasy, both in ‘primitive’ and ‘Judeo-Christian’ mysticism, then, is the return to Paradise. Mircea Eliade, ‘The Yearning for Paradise in Primitive Tradition’, Daedalus 88, no. 2 (1959): 264–6; Daniel P. Pals, Seven Theories of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 168. More theoreticians of mysticism have shown interest in the fall of Adam as a key event for humanity, and as an explanatory model for mystical experience, mostly with an implicit Christian theology. Zaehner, in a Christocentric approach to non-Christian mysticism, uses the fall of Adam to come to a typology of the phenomenon of mysticism itself. He holds that the doctrine of the fall serves as an explanation for monistic mysticism, which he defines as ‘realising the eternal oneness of one’s own soul’ and opposes to the ‘mysticism of the love of God’ found in the monotheistic traditions. Robert C. Zaehner, At Sundry Times: An Essay in the Comparison of Religions (London: Faber, 1958), 132; Robert C. Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 191–2. For a critique of Zaehner, see Ninian Smart, ‘Interpretation and Mystical Experience,’ Religious Studies 1, no. 1 (1965): 75–87.



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3 Gustave E. von Grunebaum, ‘Observations on the Muslim Concept of Evil’, SI 31 (1970): 117–19. 4 One could indeed argue, as has Steenbrink, that Satan is more prominent in the Qurʾanic narrative. The question of the origin of evil, he states, does not centre as much around Adam and Eve in the Qurʾan as it does in the biblical narrative. Perhaps Satan, suggests Steenbrink, should be considered the one who commits the original sin by refusing to prostrate to Adam. Karel Steenbrink, ‘Created Anew: Muslim Interpretations of the Myth of Adam and Eve’, in Out of Paradise: Eve and Adam and their Interpreters, eds Bob Becking and Susanne Hennecke (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010), 174–5. Cf. Whitney S. Bodman, The Poetics of Iblīs: Narrative Theology in the Qurʾān (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 10–12; Adnan Aslan, ‘The Fall, Evil and Suffering in Islam’, in Ursprung und Überwindung des Bösen und des Leidens in den Weltreligionen, ed. Peter Koslowski (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2001), 31–62; Lloyd Ridgeon, ‘A Sufi Perspective of Evil’, Iran 36 (1998): 116–19. 5 See EQ, s.v. ‘Adam and Eve’, by C. Schöck, 1:22–6; EI2, s.v. ‘Ādam’, by J. Pedersen, 1:176–8; EI3, s.v. ‘Adam’, by R. Tottoli; EQ, s.v. ‘Fall of Man’, by A. H. Johns, 2:172–3. For an encompassing study of Adam in tafsīr, hadith and qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, see Cornelia Schöck, Adam im Islam: Ein Beitrag zur Ideengeschichte der Sunna (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1993) and M. J. Kister, ‘Ādam: A Study of Some Legends in Tafsīr and Ḥadīth Literature’, Israel Oriental Studies 13 (1993): 113–74. 6 In this paragraph, we will focus on only the Jamāʿī-Sunnī tradition, which is most directly relevant for the Sufi interpretations under scrutiny. Shīʿī readings are represented in Kister, ‘Ādam’. For an account of Adam’s fall in Ismāʿīlī thought, see Bernard Lewis, ‘An Ismaili Interpretation of the Fall of Adam’, BSOAS 9, no. 3 (1938): 691–704. 7 Schöck, Adam im Islam, 89; Josef van Ess, Zwischen Ḥadīth und Theologie. Studien zum Entstehen prädestinatianischer Überlieferung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975), 162. 8 The idea of ʿiṣma of the prophets first appeared in Muʿtazilī theology as early as the second/eighth century, and had become the mainstream Muʿtazilī position by the time of al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935). In the fifth/ eleventh century, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Baghdādī (d. 429/1037) claimed

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a consensus among Ashʿarīs that prophets were impeccable, but this consensus seems not to have existed undisputedly. A variety of positions can be found within the school. In Ashʿarism, the main position became that prophets were free from major sins (kabāʾir) from the beginning of their prophetic mission, but could possibly commit minor sins (ṣaghāʾir), while being free from unbelief before the beginning of their prophetic mission. In the Māturīdī school, the doctrine of ʿiṣma indeed seems to have been practically undisputed, both before and after the prophetic mission. Traditionists were generally more reluctant to accept the idea of ʿiṣma, since the idea conflicted with clear texts according to them. See EI2, s.v. ‘ʿIṣma’, by W. Madelung; E. Tyan, 4:182–4; Schöck, Adam im Islam, 127. For an exposition of the polemic on the issue between traditionists and Ashʿarīs in Damascus as late as the eighth/fourteenth century, see Younus Mirza, ‘Was Ibn Kathīr the “Spokesperson” for Ibn Taymiyya? Jonah as a Prophet of Disobedience’, JQS 16, no. 1 (2014): 1–19. 9 Kister, ‘Ādam’, 147–52. Some interesting ideas can especially be found in commentaries that are more theologically than philologically inclined. For example, the prominent theologian Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) mentions an opinion in his Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān that Adam and Eve did not properly understand why they should not approach the tree. Fear of sickness or leaving it for someone else could have been possibilities for God’s command not to approach it. Had they known it was because eating from the tree was religiously prohibited (ḥarām), they would not have touched it. Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān, ed. Bekir Topaloğlu (Istanbul: Mizan Yayınevi, 2005), 1:90–1. 10 Kister, ‘Ādam’, 154–5; Schöck, Adam im Islam, 89–94. Central in Islamic theological debates on predestination is a hadith in which Adam responds to an accusation by Moses that it is because of his sin that humankind is not in Paradise. Adam acquits himself from this arguing that he should not be held accountable for something that was already predestined before he was even created. Van Ess, Zwischen Ḥadīth und Theologie, 161–8. 11 Schöck, Adam im Islam, 111–17. 12 Schöck, Adam im Islam, 120–1. Schöck refers to an unspecified edition from Cairo that I was not able to locate: Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad al-Thaʿlabī,

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Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ al-musammā ʿarāʾis al-majālis (Cairo), 27–8. The editions available to me do not refer to the saying. It is thus not clear to me whether the saying can indeed be found in al-Thaʿlabī’s work. However, al-Thaʿlabī is known for incorporating Sufi material into his conventional works, for example into his Qurʾan commentary. See Saleh, Formation, 20. 13 Strictly speaking, Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Ḥabīb al-Māwardī al-Baṣrī does not belong to the Nishapuri school of exegesis as defined by Walid Saleh. We consider it justified, however, to include him under this label, since he resided in the environment of Nishapur for some time and was the teacher of two sons of al-Qushayrī. Saleh, ‘Nishapuri School’; Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Ḥabīb al-Māwardī al-Baṣrī, al-Nukat wa’l-ʿuyūn, ed. al-Sayyid b. ʿAbd al-Maqṣūd b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 1990), 1:12. 14 Māwardī, Nukat, 1:105–6. 15 Ibid., 2:211. 16 Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf wa’l-bayān, ed. Abū Muḥammad b. ʿĀshūr (Beirut: Dār iḥyāʾ al-turāth al-ʿarabī, 2002), 1:177. For the debate between Adam and Moses, see note 10 in this chapter. 17 ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Wāḥidī, al-Tafsīr al-basīṭ, ed. Muḥammad b. Ṣāliḥ al-Fawzān (Ryadh: Jāmiʿat Muḥammad b. Saʿūd al-islāmiyya, 2009), 2:382–3. 18 ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Wāḥidī, al-Wasīṭ fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-majīd, ed. ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 1994) 1:122. 19 Maybudī, Kashf, 1:152–4. 20 For a thorough study of the fall of Satan in Sufi thought, see Peter Awn, Satan’s Tragedy and Redemption: Iblīs in Sufi Psychology (Leiden: Brill, 1983) and Bodman, Poetics of Iblīs. 21 Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb fī muʿāmalat al-maḥbūb wa-waṣf ṭarīq al-murīd ilā maqām al-tawḥīd (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿat al-Maymaniyya, 1893), translated by Richard Gramlich, Die Nahrung der Herzen: Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī’s ‘Qūt al-qulūb’ (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1992), 1:244; Richard Gramlich, Weltverzicht: Grundlagen und Weisen islamischer Askese (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag, 1997), 109. 22 Makki, Qūt al-qulūb translated in Gramlich, Die Nahrung der Herzen, 1:244. Gramlich mentions this particular saying to a couple of sayings that, in the spirit of asceticism (zuhd) and contemptus mundi all liken

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this world to a place of defecation (Gramlich, Weltverzicht, 109). The idea probably has its origin in the early zuhd movement but finds, as do so many zuhd sayings, its way into later Sufi literature. 23 ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Aḥmad al-Shaʿrānī, al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Azhar, 1925), 1:82; Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 261. 24 Gramlich, Sufi und Koranausleger, 1–5. 25 It is uncertain whether this treatise is indeed authored by Sahl al-Tustarī. See Böwering, Mystical Vision, 16–17. 26 Sahl al-Tustarī, Laṭāʾif al-qiṣaṣ, ed. Kamāl ʿAllām (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 2004), 21–4. 27 Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, Kīmiyā-i saʿādat (Tehran: n.p., 1960), 1:72–3. 28 William C. Chittick, ‘The Myth of Adam’s Fall in Aḥmad Samʿānī’s Rawḥ al-arwāḥ’, in The Heritage of Sufism, vol. 1: Classical Persian Sufism from its Origins to Rumi (700–1300), ed. Leonard Lewisohn (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999), 344–5. A similar, yet more theocentric, argument can be found in the kalām tradition. For example, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya reasoned that the banishment of Adam from Paradise was necessary for all attributes of God to be effectuated. Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr b. Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Miftāḥ dār al-saʿāda wa-manshūr wilāyat al-ʿilm wa’l-irāda (Cairo: Dār al-ḥadīth, 1994), 12–17; Jon Hoover, ‘God’s Wise Purposes in Creating Iblīs: Ibn Qayyim al-Ğawziyyah’s Theodicy of God’s Names and Attributes’, in A Scholar in the Shadow: Essays in the Legal and Theological Thought of Ibn Qayyim al-Ğawziyyah, eds Caterina Bori and Livnat Holzman, Oriente Moderno monograph series 90, no. 1 (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 2010), 114. It is very likely that Ibn al-Qayyim elaborated on themes that were already much older in kalām. This needs further investigation. 29 Chittick, ‘Adam’s Fall’, 348–9. 30 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:450. 31 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:450–2; Mayer, Spiritual Gems, 90. 32 It is unfortunately not clear whom al-Sulamī means by al-Ḥusayn. His Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya does not mention anyone specifically. It could be al-Ḥusayn b. Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (d. 309/922), but equally al-Ḥusayn b. al-Faḍl or al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Rāzī. 33 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:224. 34 Ibid., 1:224. 35 Ibid., 1:223–5.

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36 Ibid., 1:221. 37 Ibid., 1:221. 38 This is a recurring theme in Sufi literature. See Awn, Satan’s Tragedy, 90–6. 39 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:221–2. 40 Ibid., 1:224. 41 Exegetes differ on the banishment of Satan, specifically on whether it was from Paradise or from Heaven. The text of the Qurʾan is ambiguous and both are mentioned in conventional tafsīr of Q 7:13. Sunnis generally consider it to be from Paradise, the Muʿtazila from Heaven. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr (Beirut: Dār iḥyāʾ al-turāth al-ʿarabī, 2008), 5:210. 42 Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 1:522. 43 Ibid., 1:83. 44 Ibid., 1:80. 45 Ibid., 1:75. 46 Ibid., 1:524. 47 Ibid., 1:80. This idea can also be found in conventional commentaries from al-Qushayrī’s milieu. Al-Thaʿlabī quotes ‘one of the wise’ (ḥukamāʾ) to have said: ‘God had made Adam leave the Garden already before He made him enter it, by His saying: “I shall make a vicegerent on earth.” Then his departure from the Garden by his sin shows that it was by fate (qaḍāʾ) and decree (qadr) of God.’ Al-Thaʿlabī, Kashf, 1:176–7. 48 Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 1:81. 49 Ibid., 1:80. 50 Ibid., 1:81. 51 Ibid., 1:527. 52 Ibid., 1:523. 53 Martin Nguyen holds that the influence of al-Sulamī on Qushayrī’s commentary is overstated by Suleyman Ateş, and that he depended much more on other contemporary non-Sufi commentaries. For a detailed case study of al-Qushayrī’s dependence on other commentaries and his manner of quotation, see Martin Nguyen, ‘Letter by Letter: Tracing the Textual Genealogy of a Sufi Tafsīr’, in Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qurʾanic Exegesis, ed. Karen Bauer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 217–40. 54 It would be worthwhile taking up the task of tracing the intertextual-

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ity between these two sources, and thus analysing the incorporation of ­non-tafsīr literature into Maybudī’s commentary. In the preface to his latest study, Divine Love, William Chittick mentions he has investigated the matter, but without further elaborating on the textual evidence. His conclusion is that Maybudī knew Samʿānī’s treatise, and that it is clear that he incorporated passages of the treatise into his commentary from Surah 17 onwards, without citing the source. Chittick, Divine Love, xviii–ix. 55 Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 132–9. 56 Maybudī, Kashf, 3:570–1. 57 Naṣr Allāh Pūrjavādī has convincingly shown how in Sufi thought the theme of vision is intimately connected with the themes of passionate longing (shawq) and passionate love (ʿishq). It is the vision of God that is passionately longed for and that is loved. Naṣr Allāh Pūrjavādī, Ruʾyat-i māh dar āsmān: bar-rasī-yi tārīkhī-yi masʾala-i liqāʾ Allāh dar kalām wa taṣawwuf (Tehran: Markaz-i Nashr-i Dānishgāhī, 1996), 185–8. 58 Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 139. 59 Maybudī, Kashf, 1:162. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 3:573. 62 Ibid., 1:163. Note the relation with Eliade’s theory of mystical experience as a recapturing of the paradisiacal state. Man is no longer in Paradise and capable of seeing God. However, dhikr consists a substitute to survive the time until the paradisiacal state of vision is restored. Eliade, ‘Yearning for Paradise’. 63 Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 136̧–7. 64 Maybudī, Kashf, 6:190. 65 Ibid., 6:190–1. 66 Al-Daylamī mentions that he treats the issue of Adam being created in the form/image of God in detail in his work ʿUyūn al-maʿārif. 67 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, 17–18, 101. 68 Carl Ernst, who himself calls Rūzbihān’s works ‘at times admittedly . . . convoluted and obscure’, quotes prominent figures as Jāmī (‘he has sayings that have poured forth from him in the state of overpowering and ecstasy, which not everyone can understand’) and Dārā Shikūh (‘fatiguing’) to affirm this. Carl W. Ernst, ‘The Symbolism of Birds and Flight in the Writings of Rūzbihān Baqlī’, in The Heritage of Sufism,

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vol. 2: The Legacy of Mediaeval Persian Sufism, ed. Leonard Lewisohn (Oxford: Oneworld, 1992), 355–6. 69 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:40. 70 Ibid., 1:143; Kazuyo Murata, ‘God is Beautiful and He Loves Beauty: Ruzbihan Baqli’s Sufi Metaphysics of Beauty’ (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2012), 158. 71 Although Rūzbihān does not quote it explicitly in this context, this seems to draw on the motive of the ḥadīth qudsī of the ‘hidden treasure’ that figures so prominently in Sufi literature: ‘I was a hidden treasure that was not known, so I wanted to be known. So I created the creatures and I made Myself known to them, and thus they came to know Me.’ See Chittick, Divine Love, 18–19. 72 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:40. 73 Rūzbihān al-Baqlī, Kitāb ʿabhar al-ʿāshiqīn, eds Henry Corbin and Muḥammad Muʿīn (Tehran: Institut français d’Iranologie de Téhéran, 1968), 139; Carl W. Ernst, ‘The Stages of Love in Early Persian Sufism, from Rābiʿa to Rūzbihān’, in The Heritage of Sufism, vol. 1: Classical Persian Sufism from its Origins to Rumi (700–1300), ed. Leonard Lewisohn (Oxford: Oneworld, 1992), 452–3. 74 This is a reference to a well-attested hadith that states that ‘God created Adam in his/His image/form (ʿalā ṣūratihi)’. See Christopher Melchert, ‘God Created Adam in His Image’, JQS 13, no. 1 (2011): 113–24. See also William Montgomery Watt, ‘Created in His Image’, Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society 18 (1961): 38–49; Kister, ‘Ādam’, 137–8. Elliot R. Wolfson has noted a similar idea in Jewish medieval mysticism: ‘We can speak of the convergence of anthropomorphism and theomorphism in the visionary experience: to attribute human form to God is to attribute divine forms to humans.’ Wolfson, Speculum, 69. 75 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:40–1. 76 Ernst, ‘Stages of Love’, 452–3. 77 Note the contradiction with Rūzbihān’s earlier statement that the angels were created only for worship and were incapable of loving God properly. 78 This idea may itself be a reflection of the controversial practice of some Sufis of gazing at the beautiful faces of young boys, believed to reflect the beauty of God. See Lloyd Ridgeon, ‘The Controversy of Shaykh Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī and Handsome, Moon-Faced Youths: A Case

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Study of Shāhid-Bāzī in Medieval Sufism’, JSS 1 (2012): 3–30; Bell, Love Theory, 139–44. 79 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:418. 80 Q 2:30. 81 Q 2:32; Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:41. 82 Being dyed with the ‘colour of God’ is a reference to ṣibghat Allāh mentioned in Q 2:138. 83 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:43. Rūzbihān presents a similar argument in his Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyāt. Iblīs failed to see God in Adam, because he did not look at Adam with the eyes of a true monotheist. He claimed to have lost the light of his eyes when he saw other than God, not realising that there is none other than God: ‘He rejected the non-divine, because he saw the non-divine [in Adam]. But there was no non-divine . . . By looking at Adam he became veiled from the uniqueness of the Unique ( fardāniyat-i fard). [If this had not been the case], then how would someone looking for the Unique be distracted by Adam and the world? God had veiled him by Adam. Because he saw Adam in Adam, he became veiled from Adam through himself, so that he did not see the reality of Adam.’ See Rūzbihān al-Baqlī, Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyāt, ed. Henri Corbin (Tehran: Institut français d’Iranologie de Téhéran, 1981), 513–15; see also this passage in Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 45. 84 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:419. 85 Ballanfat, Quatre traités, 172–3. See also Awn, Satan’s Tragedy, 124–9; Ridgeon, ‘Sufi Perspective of Evil’, 114.   86 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 2:503–4. 87 Carl Ernst defines Rūzbihān’s concept of jabarūt as ‘locus for experiencing the wrathful and powerful manifestations of the Attributes of majesty’. Ernst, Ruzbihan, 31. 88 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:44. 89 Ibid., 2:504–5. 90 Ibid., 1:44–5. 91 Ibid., 1:45. 92 Ibid., 2:504. 93 Ibid., 1:424. 94 Ibid., 1:422. 95 Ibid., 1:422–3. 96 Ibid., 1:423.

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97 Ibid., 2:506. 98 Ibid., 1:423. 99 Ibid., 2:506. 100 Ibid., 1:44. 101 Ibid., 3:87. 102 Ibid., 1:45. 103 Ibid., 1:45. 104 Ibid., 2:505. 105 Ibid., 2:505. 106 Godlas, ‘Influences’, 87. 107 Baqlī, ʿAbhar, 13 (translation from Ernst, ‘Stages of Love’, 452). 108 Aḥmad al-Samʿānī, Rawḥ al-arwāḥ fī sharḥ asmāʾ al-malik al-fattāḥ, ed. Najīb Māyil Hirawī (Tehran: Shirkat-i intishārāt-i ʿilmī wa farhangī, 1989), 206. Translation from Chittick, Divine Love, 153. See also Maybudī, Kashf, 5:503; Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 138.

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5

Excursus: Embodying the Vision of God in Theology and Sufism

Introduction While this study is intended to be on Sufi eschatology in a broader sense, the first two case studies have shown that focusing on one dominant aspect of the Sufi eschatological imagination – the vision of God – is almost unavoidable. Although this theme is not equally dominant in all of the works under discussion – al-Qushayrī in particular seems not to have been interested in it – it does stand out as the most significant theme among the majority of authors. It is certainly the most relevant for the theme of boundary crossing. This raises a theoretical challenge to our proposed contextualist approach: it was precisely this theme of vision that was much favoured by those scholars who wished to decontextualise and ‘perennialise’ mysticism. According to their approach, the theme of vision is paradigmatic for the ‘experiential’ and private experience that, similar to the theme of ‘mystical union’, transcends the particularities of religious traditions and is deemed universal.1 In the context of the issue of the vision of God, the scholar of Jewish mysticism Elliot R. Wolfson has theoretically elaborated on this contextualist/perennialist debate. One may say that his study is the most prominent study available on seeing God in (Jewish) mysti174

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cism to date. He is, therefore, also worth mentioning in the context of our study. Although being in favour of a contextualist and constructivist approach, he shuns the ‘hard constructivist’ end of the perennialist–constructivist continuum and proposes a softer contextualist approach. On the one hand, he confirms that the mystic’s ­understanding of his or her vision of God, and the way that he or she works towards this vision, is determined by the mystic’s own religious tradition and context, and ‘pre-experiential beliefs’.2 On the other hand, borrowing elements from Eliade’s theory of mysticism, he leaves some space for the idea that there may be a shared phenomenal structure among those religious traditions, and that a comparison between different religious traditions is possible along these structural lines despite the differences in context. He believes that the category of ‘vision’ may well be such a common structure that it enables comparison between different religious and mystical traditions.3 Given the fact that the faculty of vision is a common human characteristic, it is not surprising that ‘vision’ is also a universally recognised common structure of mystical experiences. It is, therefore, legitimate to compare different traditions, and different modalities of vision within a tradition, along similar structures. However, this does not mean that, as perennialists would claim, all of these claimed visions are essentially the same, though expressed differently. This approach still leaves space to recognise the particularities of each claimed vision, their rootedness in their specific traditions and even their mediated and genealogical nature; the form of a claimed vision may incorporate elements of claimed visions passed on by one’s predecessor or teacher. Wolfson proposes the following typology of visions of God, which may be useful to keep in mind for the following three chapters. He first stresses that the vision of God that Jewish mystics sought and claimed to have were never understood to be physical visions within the spatial-temporal world. Rather, it was understood as a contemplative vision.4 I believe the same holds true for the vision of God claimed by Islamic mystics. These contemplative visions he divides in two types: introvertive and cognitive. The introvertive kind finds

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its roots in Neoplatonism and considers the vision of God to be purely intellectual, beyond image and form, rejecting the idea that senses or sensory imagery play any meaningful role in how the vision is experienced and described.5 The cognitive visions, however, are considered to be ‘within the phenomenological parameters of human experience as such’.6 God, according to this type, is perceived in an image and a form that is derived from the images and symbols present in one’s own religious tradition, and mediated by the senses.7 With these divisions in physical, contemplative-introvertive and contemplative-cognitive visions in mind, in this chapter we offer an overview of modes of vision as understood by Sufis in the period of our interest. In Chapters 3 and 4, we focused on, respectively, the final boundary crossing from this world to the otherworld and the first boundary crossing from the otherworld to this world. In both cases, we have witnessed the centrality of the theme of vision to these boundary crossings. In the case studies in Chapters 6 and 7, we will focus on two examples of this-worldly boundary crossing in the form of the vision of God by first Moses and then Muhammad. This current chapter forms an important background study to the modes of vision proposed and discussed in the following two chapters. First, we take a closer look at the theological discussions about the possibility and modalities of the vision of God in this world and the otherworld. Next we discuss a set of Sufi approaches to the same issue that testify to the contemplative approach to the vision of God within Sufism. We conclude with a discussion of the views of our main authors on the issue of the vision of God in their non-tafsīr writings. Theological Discussions on the Vision of God

Several verses in the Qurʾan allude only fragmentarily to the existence of the idea of a vision of God, while other verses seemingly speak against the concept. The request for a vision in this world is mentioned three times in an apparently negative sense. Q 2:55 and 4:153 mention a request from the people of Israel to Moses to show them God, after which they are thunderstruck. In Q  7:143 Moses himself requests this, and is apparently refused the vision and faints. A meet-

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ing (liqāʾ) with God is alluded to in several verses dealing with the Day of Judgement, for example Q 6:31, 9:77 and 18:105.8 Hadith literature contains more explicit references in favour of a vision as a reward in the hereafter.9 It is not exactly clear when the issue first became controversial, and whether it has non-Islamic roots.10 Van Ess indicates that the issue was already discussed by Jahm b. Ṣafwān (d. 128/746) and his opponents, as well as by alleged anthropomorphists like Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767), and thus predates the rise of the Muʿtazila.11 From the early fourth/tenth century onwards, with the careers of al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935–6) and al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), and the late Muʿtazilī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025), the formal dialectic discussions by theological schools on the issue have reached us. The positions of these different schools are fairly well documented,12 thus a brief overview suffices. Three main issues have occupied theologians concerning the vision of God: its theoretical possibility in both this world and the otherworld, its actual occurrence and its modality.13 The main positions are divided between the Muʿtazila and Jahmiyya on the one side of the spectrum, from the viewpoint of categorically denying its possibility and occurrence, and the Ashʿarīs, Māturīdīs and Ḥanbalī traditionists on the other side confirming its possibility in both abodes and its occurrence in the hereafter, but differing on its modality. The general trend in the Muʿtazilī and Jahmī schools was to deny the ocular vision of God on grounds of the incorporeality of God: what has neither body nor direction cannot be seen. The Jahmiyya refused the vision of God both in the otherworld and this world, as well as in dreams. In addition, they rejected the ascension of Muhammad and his subsequent vision: Paradise was not yet created according to their theology and they held God to be everywhere and nowhere, not in heaven.14 The Muʿtazilīs did not base their reasoning on the Qurʾanic texts, but rather saw certain Qurʾanic texts as being confirmation of the doctrine they had reached through dialectic reasoning. It was rationally impossible to see God, and thus were the Qurʾanic passages interpreted and understood.15 The Ashʿarīs, Māturīdīs and Ḥanbalī traditionists generally agreed on the theoretical possibility of the vision of God in both this world

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and the otherworld, and on its occurrence in the otherworld, but they differed on its modality. For Ḥanbalī traditionists, texts of Qurʾan and hadith in their apparent meaning sufficed to confirm the existence of ruʾya (vision) in the hereafter for the believers, and its modality by the physical eye.16 The position of the Ashʿarīs was rooted in the view of the traditionists, but added dialectical reasoning to textual, philological and exegetical arguments (to a larger extent than the Māturīdīs, who mostly relied on the latter). They deemed vision theoretically possible in both this world and the otherworld, based on the argument of existence: God exists and by definition everything that exists can be seen.17 They stated that it only occurs in the otherworld as a reward for the believers. On the modality of the vision, they were more equivocal. Although early voices insisted on a non-comprehensive physical vision with the eye, sometimes nuanced by the clause ‘without mentioning how’ (bi-lā kayf), later thinkers, among whom were Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), had more complicated positions on the issue and proposed a ‘vision’ on an imaginary and cognitive level.18 It would be a step too far to treat these arguments extensively here; for now it suffices to conclude that there was still significant movement and debate on the issue in the time frame that we are dealing with.19 A Typology of This-worldly Vision in Early Sufism

In early Sufism, generally speaking the idea of an otherworldly ocular vision of God as being the ultimate reward in the hereafter was widely accepted as both possible and existent. This vision was thus considered to be physical, not only contemplative. This wide acceptance can be explained by the fact that the Muʿtazilī and Jahmī creeds were historically insignificant among Sufis. Most Sufis from the formative period had either Ashʿarī or traditionist leanings.20 The concept of this-worldly vision led to more discord. Some Sufi authorities rejected the idea completely, while others formulated theories of a vision of the heart (ruʾya bi’l-qalb) that allowed an abstract, contemplative, nonanthropomorphic and non-indwelling vision of God, often referred to as mushāhada (witnessing).21

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The inception of these different views must be sought in early proto-Sufism. In the circles of the renunciants (zuhhād or nussāk), the denial of a this-worldly vision was not self-evident. Rather bold and seemingly anthropomorphic claims were made about the possibility of a this-worldly vision, sometimes in the sense of God’s incarnation in humans and animals (ḥulūl).22 In his Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn, the famous theologian al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/936) three times mentions a group that he calls the nussāk, and three times links them to the possibility of a this-worldly vision of God: Among the nussāk of the Sufis are those who speak about ḥulūl, that the Creator is incarnated in creatures, and that it is possible that he incarnates in a human, a wild animal and other individuals. The people who say this, when they see something that they deem beautiful they say: ‘We do not know whether God is maybe incarnated in it.’23 Among them are those who presume that worship can bring them to the point that they see God, eat from the fruits of the Garden and embrace the beautifully eyed women (ḥūr al-ʿayn) in this world.24

However, this vision of God appears to have been controversial even among this group: A group from among the Sufis deemed it possible that miracles (muʿjizāt) become manifest to the upright, and that the fruits of the Garden come to them in this world and they eat from them, and they have sexual intercourse with the ḥūr al-ʿayn in this world, and the angels appear to them, and the devils (shayāṭīn) appear to them and they fight them, and they do not deem it possible to see God in this world . . . And others deemed all that we mentioned about their predecessors possible, and also deemed it possible to see God in this world, and to accompany Him and to sit with Him.25

It is very likely that these passages refer to figures like Abū Ḥulmān al-Dimashqī (d. c. 340/951), who claimed that God could be heard and seen through creation; Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī (d. 215/830),

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who did not go as far as claiming a this-worldly vision, but whose students did claim intimacy with the otherworldly ḥūr al-ʿayn in this world; Walīd b. Zayd (d. 177/793), who believed God would be seen in this world according to one’s pious acts; or Kahmas (d. 149/766), who was indicted for believing that God could even be touched.26 Such conceptions of God were more widespread. Abū Yazīd al-Basṭāmī (d. c. 261/874–5) claimed a vision of God as a beardless young man and Abū Bakr al-Qaḥṭabī even claimed to have seen God in the form of his mother.27 Such sensory conceptions of God also made it into hadith traditions that had their root in Syrian jihad circles, the same milieu that early renunciants like al-Dārāni were part of.28 A prophetic tradition attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās relates how in a dream Muhammad sees God ‘in his most beautiful form’ and feels how God touches him between his shoulders.29 Other transmissions also relate a vision by Muhammad of God in the form of a beardless young man, of a young man with long hair, as a young man sitting on a throne with his foot in a meadow of light, as a beardless young man behind a veil of pearls, with his feet in green, or on a camel in a cloak of wool.30 Al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī (d. 243/857) firmly criticised these ideas, stating that whoever claimed to have seen God, the angels or the ḥūr al-ʿayn was a liar.31 He himself was much more careful and modest when speaking of the possibility of a this-worldly vision, speaking rather as a theoretician than from experience. Following the traditionist position, he considered the otherworldly vision to be ocular. The yearning for this vision is the basis for the enrapturing love of God.32 The vision of God is such an overwhelming experience that the technique of imagining it into presence (tawahhum) cannot be applied to it as it can to Paradise and Hell. Thus a vision of God in this world does not exist, not even with the heart or in the imagination.33 A similar denunciation was expressed by al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988) in his Kitāb al-lumaʿ, albeit in ambiguous language. It first discusses the question of the vision of God by the heart briefly and neutrally, defining it as ‘the gazing of the hearts towards what has been inherited in the unseen by the lights of certainty (anwār al-yaqīn) by means of the realities of faith (ḥaqāʾiq al-īmān)’.34 He quotes ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib as

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being in favour of it.35 However, a later passage is specifically dedicated to ‘those who are wrong concerning the vision of the hearts’. He mentions that he has heard of a group from Syria through a treatise of al-Kharrāz who believed that they could see God in this world with their hearts just as they would see Him in Paradise with the eye.36 He gives an example of the followers of al-Ṣubayḥī in Basra, who thought they had seen God on a throne while it was in reality Satan deluding them. He also denounces the Sufis who claim to have travelled to Paradise and to have seen God there.37 This experience he holds to be unique to the Prophet Muhammad (Q  53:11). He warns the Sufis that all lights in this world are created and cannot be identified as God.38 To al-Sarrāj, the only possible this-worldly vision is by the mode of witnessing (mushāhada). To explain its meaning, he quotes al-Kharrāz supporting the witnessing of God with the heart: who witnesses God with the heart, has nothing other than God in his heart. The vision (ruʾya) of the heart, which al-Kharrāz refuted in his treatise to the Damascenes, al-Sarrāj considers not to be the same as witnessing (mushāhada) with the heart. Witnessing, Sarrāj explains by quoting ʿAmr b. ʿUthmān al-Makkī (d. 291/903 or 297/910), is a form that combines the vision of the heart with that of the eye, and looks upon things with a contemplative eye to see God in it. The vision of the heart is less pure. It is merely a form of Vergegenwärtigung (tawahhum, or ‘imagining it into presence’), as in the hadith ‘Worship God as if you see Him’.39 Moreover, al-Kalābādhī (d. 380/990 or 384/994) denied the possibility of this-worldly vision, with either the eye or the heart, and held this to be the position of the Sufis. He argued that such a noble blessing as seeing God could only occur in a place as noble as Paradise. Since this world is a passing abode, the Eternal is not seen here. In addition, since Moses was rejected the vision in this world (Q 7:143), others, who are all lower in rank than he, certainly could not reach it. In the case of Muhammad, Kalābādhī’s Taʿarruf does note the difference of opinion on whether he saw God during his ascension (miʿrāj), mentioning the names of the different authorities in favour of and against Muhammad’s this-worldly vision, whether with the

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physical eye or with the heart.40 However, his discussion of the issue still concludes with a confirmation that he does not know ‘of a single shaykh of this order – that is, not one who is recognized as a valid authority – [who agrees] that God is seen in this world, or that any of His creation has seen Him’.41 Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz and al-Junayd are specifically mentioned as having written refutations on deluded Sufis who claimed that God could be seen in this world.42 However, these authors did not have the last word on the matter. A century after al-Muḥāsibī, Sufis indeed proposed a vision of God with the heart by the manifestation (tajallī) of God’s light on it, or a vision of God through creation rather than in creation, thus differing from the understanding of the early ḥulūliyya. While these early understandings still had a physical idea of the vision, later interpretations took it to be a strictly contemplative vision through the ocular contemplation of creation.43 On vision by the heart, al-Shiblī (d. 334/946) stated in a line of poetry that ‘When the eye does not see You, then still the heart does see You.’44 Ibn ʿAṭāʾ (d. 309/922) said about Q 50:37 (‘who has a heart’) that it signifies a heart that sees God.45 Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Niffarī (d. c. 366/976–7) also endorsed the idea of a this-worldly vision of God. In his work al-Mawāqif, direct this-worldly vision of God is described as being the final station (mawqif) on the mystical path. To him, the latter depends on the former: who does not see God in this world, will not see Him in the otherworld.46 The vision of God is ultimately all that matters to him, and the only thing that can save one from the Fire: He let me stand in the Fire. I saw it consuming knowledge (ʿilm), works (ʿamal), wisdom (ḥikma) and experiential knowledge (maʿrifa), standpoints (mawāqif) and stations (maqāmāt). I saw the intellects in their drawing near as firewood for it. I saw the hearts in their sincerity as firewood for it. So I became hot! And it said to me: ‘If you have seen God, then you will come to me with knowledge, works, wisdom, experiential knowledge and will say to me: this is your firewood so consume it. And if you have not seen God, then you are my firewood, not your knowledge, not your works, not your wisdom and not your experiential knowledge.’47

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Al-Hujwīrī’s Kashf al-maḥjūb explains manifestation (tajallī) as follows: The blessed effect of Divine illumination on the hearts of the blest, whereby they are made capable of seeing God with their hearts. The difference between spiritual vision (ruʾyat ba-dil) and actual vision (ruʾyat-i ʿiyān) is this, that those who experience tajallī (manifestation of God) see or do not see, according as they wish, or see at one time and do not see at another time, while those who experience actual vision in Paradise cannot but see, even though they wish not to see; for it is possible that tajallī should be hidden, whereas ruʾyat (vision) cannot possibly be veiled.48

As for seeing God through creation (rather than His indwelling in creation), al-Wāsiṭī stated that one’s belief in one God is only complete when one sees God in every speck of dust from God’s throne to the lowest earth (min al-ʿarsh ilā al-tharā). Many similar sayings can be found in later authorities. Vision is here not so much seeing God Himself, but rather contemplating what is created in such a way that one understands that God is responsible for it, works through it, and in a way manifests in it: creation is a mirror for the Creator, as it were.49 This trend could be considered a rudimentary form of the later, more systematic, doctrine of tajallī of the school of Ibn al-ʿArabī, also present, albeit less systematically, in the work of Rūzbihān.50 The discussion in early Sufism never chrystallised into a definitive position. Although the anthropomorphic and immanentist aspects had largely been swept aside by the concepts of ruʾyat al-qalb and mushāhada, and thus the yearning to see God in this world had been brought into harmony with the outward (ẓāhir) interpretation of religion, Sufi authorities still did not reach a consensus on vision by the heart. It must be noted that in the understanding of the later Sufis, who held vision by the heart to be possible, mostly by using the term mushāhada, this ‘vision’ did not give a specific form to God. The claimed vision was considered to be what Wolfson calls ‘introvertive’ rather than cognitive. Although the language chosen to express the alleged experience may have been visual, they most likely did not mean to

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have really seen God in a form: the ‘vision’ was abstract. Rather, it was meant as what Gramlich has called ‘Gott vor Augen haben’ (having God in mind): the Sufi must expel from the heart everything other than God, and totally direct all thought and ambitions, all of the heart, towards God alone, thinking of and envisioning none other than God.51 It is as such a contemplative state of being totally directed towards God, rather than a physical visionary experience. The Commentators on the Vision of God in their Non-tafsīr Works

In the other works of our commentators, several remarks are made about the possibility and the modality of the vision of God. From al-Sulamī, there are no clear statements of his own available on credal matters. Moreover, we have no credal works from Maybudī, and we can rely on only his commentary for his opinions on the vision. However, it is a different scenario for al-Qushayrī, al-Daylamī and Rūzbihān: all three wrote texts on creed that contain explicit and intended statements on the question of the vision of God. What becomes clear from them is that there is quite a difference between the first and the latter two: al-Daylamī and Rūzbihān enthusiastically defend and describe the possibility, actual occurrence and modality of this-worldly visions of God, while al-Qushayrī is much more reserved and is not even particularly sympathetic towards forms of contemplative vision. Al-Qushayrī

It may not come as a surprise that al-Qushayrī, as an Ashʿarī partisan in a time of political unrest between Muʿtazilī and Ashʿarī factions, gave some space to the subject of the vision of God in his works. In his formal credal work, Lumaʿ fī’l-iʿtiqād, he conforms with Ashʿarī positions on the matter: [That] He be seen is theoretically possible and, on the basis of revelation, is certain for the believers when they are in paradise. As we know Him today, although ‘No being is like Him’ (42.11), the believ-

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ers shall see Him tomorrow when they are in paradise, although ‘No being is like Him’.52

In al-Fuṣūl fī’l-uṣūl, he repeats this position with added theological nuance: It is possible that the Creator (let Him be praised) be visually seen. The evidence for this is that visibility does not entail the temporal contingency of the visible in any way. Vision can, thus, have the Eternal (let Him be praised) as its object, just as knowing and predication can.53

This position also entails the theoretical possibility of the vision of God in this world. For the actual occurrence of such a this-worldly vision, even in the inner contemplative sense, al-Qushayrī seems to have had less enthusiasm than for its otherworldly counterpart. In his famous work al-Risāla, he responds negatively to the question of whether the vision of God in this world is possible by a God-given miracle (karāma), claiming a scholarly consensus on the matter and mentioning that al-Ashʿarī himself refuted it.54 Furthermore, he discusses very few terms related to the vision of God in his Risāla.55 He does discuss the term mushāhada as the last stage of a threefold experience also comprising of divine presence (muḥāḍara) and unveiling (mukāshafa). However, he does not explicitly link it to this-worldly visionary experience of God. Quoting ʿAmr b. ʿUthmān al-Makkī approvingly, he defines it as an experience of the manifestation (tajallī) of God upon the heart. By this witnessing, one comes to experiential knowledge (maʿrifa) of God, by which one’s self is erased.56 The possibility of seeing God in a dream may have been open to him. Tradition has it that he once saw God in a dream and complained to Him about his sick son, to which God responded by prescribing a litany for his cure.57 Al-Daylamī

Al-Daylamī tackles the issue of the vision of God extensively and polemically in his mystical-theological treatise Jawāhir al-asrār.58

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Although his affirmative position of the otherworldly vision fits well within the Sunni mainstream, his argumentation is slightly different and has its peculiarities. When he introduces the topic, he polemically takes aim at the Muʿtazilīs and the philosophers, who according to him have an inaccurate approach to the texts of Qurʾan and hadith and thus to the vision of God. His issue with the Muʿtazilīs is that they hold vision (ruʾya) to mean merely knowledge (ʿilm), and that the ‘vision’ of God should thus be understood as knowledge of God. In a lengthy passage, he blames the philosophers for falsely taking the intellect (ʿaql) as the foundation for understanding the Qurʾan and hadith, and compares their approaches with the Ismāʿīlīs, to whom he applies by the polemic epithets ‘libertines’ (ibāḥiyya) and ‘deviators’ (mulḥidīn).59 God, he holds, is known by necessity by both the believers and the unbelievers in the hereafter. God creates this necessary knowledge in them to fully grasp His eternal existence, and in so doing the perpetuity of His reward and punishment. The vision of God with the eye of the head (ʿayn al-raʾs) is the means of obtaining this knowledge.60 He further involves typical verses (Q 75:22–3; 6:103; 7:143; 10:7, 26; 29:5) and hadiths in his argument to support his case for the existence of the otherworldly vision and for the possibility of the vision in both this world and the otherworld.61 On the issue of this-worldly vision, he claims to follow the mainstream Sunni position. He specifies what he holds to be the correct approach of the Sufi masters, even claiming a consensus among them. He is explicit on both its possibility and its modality: God can be seen in this-worldly life by the vision of the heart (baṣīrat al-qalb).62 In the treatise he himself claims to have experienced it, stating that ‘after having finished writing it on Thursday evening I saw God the entire Friday night from its beginning to its end’.63 He holds the idea that God is seen in the hereafter with the eye of the head and in this world with the eye of the heart in a sleeping state, or somewhere between a sleeping and a waking state, to be a position that was shared by many of earlier generations among scholars, renunciants and Sufis.64 To him there is no difference between seeing God in a sleeping or a waking state: the essence as a vision of the heart is the same.65 He also names

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a list of earlier Sufi authorities who stated that they had experienced the vision of God by the heart in this world, and who testified of this experience in their sayings and writings.66 Their claim of this experience is sufficient evidence for him of the possibility of this vision, and because of their piety and sincerity naturally overrules the claims of those denying it: experience has a higher epistemic value than rationality for al-Daylamī.67 He differentiates between the speculative theologians (mutakallimūn) and the philosophers ( falāsifa) on the one side and the masters of taṣawwuf on the other. The last of these recognise that the essence (dhāt) and attributes (ṣifāt) of God may be experientially known by means of witnessing (mushāhada) and vision (ruʾya) through the vision of the heart (baṣīrat al-qalb), while the first two believe that in this-worldly life knowledge of God can be obtained only through the intellect (ʿaql).68 He thus describes a typical epistemological conflict between mystical-experiential and rational ways of knowing. One could argue that this is where he and al-Qushayrī diverge. Al-Qushayrī did not as explicitly recognise the epistemic value of mystical experience, or of the vision of God, as al-Daylamī. Rūzbihān

With the writings of Rūzbihān the issue becomes even more complex. From his autobiography, Kashf al-asrār, it becomes very clear that he subscribed to the possibility of a this-worldly vision of God, or at least of His attributes and actions in the form of a visual divine manifestation (tajallī). Carl Ernst has even claimed that ‘vision (ruʾya) is the most important general category for mystical experience in Rūzbihān’s vocabulary’.69 It appears that for Rūzbihān, this vision – imagining God in human forms – is neither just an abstract introvertive witnessing, nor a full vision with the physiological eye. Rūzbihān may be the clearest example thus far of what Wolfson calls a cognitive vision: God is perceived in an image and a form that is derived from the images and symbols present in his own religious and cultural environment. Rūzbihān himself claims that theological argumentation becomes irrelevant once overwhelmed by the ecstatic vision of

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God. In Kashf al-asrār he describes how he feels when experiencing this vision: ‘In my ecstasy and my spiritual state my heart did not remember arguments about understanding God in human terms or reducing him to abstraction, for in seeing the Most High, all traces of intellects and sciences are erased.’70 However, when we read both the descriptions of his visions and his theological statements on vision a bit more closely, we can see that his claimed visionary encounters are not devoid of theological presuppositions and are embedded in and conditioned by his religious and cultural landscape. In Masālik al-tawḥīd he shows himself to be true to the Ashʿarī perspective on the matter. He confirms the vision with the eye in the hereafter, and denies its occurrence in this world. 71 However, he does not deny its possibility in this world, following the typical Ashʿarī argument that Moses as an impeccable prophet would not have requested something impossible from God. Above all, he supports a vision in sleep and in the heart, in different states: But it is not impossible (mustaḥīl), rather the vision with the outer eye (ruʾyat al-ʿayn al-ẓāhira) is conceivable ( jāʾiz). The evidence of that is the request of Moses for the vision of God when he said, ‘My Lord show [Yourself] to me, [so] I [can] look at you.’ It is impossible that the prophet who was spoken to and elected for the message and the Book would ask something that is impossible, and attributing ignorance [in religious matters] to him is unbelief (kufr). And just as God is known without [specifying] how (bi-lā-kayf), he is also seen without [specifying] how (bi-lā-kayf), and he is not ‘owned’ by creatures because seeing Him is confirmed. And the vision of God is conceivable in sleep, and in wakefulness with the heart, because of the saying of the Prophet [Muhammad]: ‘Who sees God in one’s sleep will not be punished by the Fire.’ And he said: ‘Make your bellies hungry and make your livers thirsty, then you will see God with your heart.’ That is possible in states (ḥāl), in ecstasy (wajd), in intoxication (sukr) and sobriety (ṣaḥw).72

In addition, in his work Mashrab al-arwāḥ – his explanation of Sufi stations, states and technical vocabulary – he discusses the

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vision of God. Commenting on the station of seeing God outwardly ( jahratan), he again confirms its possibility in this world. As proof of this possibility he mentions Moses’s request to see God, as well as several traditions attributed to Muhammad in which he states he has seen God. Rūzbihān asserts that in most cases this station is reached at the time of death. Only perfect human beings (ahl al-kamāl) can reach the vision of God during their lifetime.73 When discussing the term ruʾya itself, he distinguishes three levels of this-worldly visions to which his autobiography also testifies. The first is the vision of the Garden, the second of God’s presence (muḥāḍara) and the third the vision of God Himself. The highest level of seeing God Himself is experienced when one is on the station of observance (riʿāya). He mentions Q 53:11 (‘The heart did not belie what it saw’) to imply that he means a vision of the heart.74 However, the heart is a passive organ that is completely dependent on and subordinated to the spirit (rūḥ) to be capable of vision. When the heart sees, it is a consequence of the vision of the spirit. The human spirit is an eye in its origin, made of God’s light, unveiled from God and capable of contemplating God’s attributes, and through them His essence. While the heart observes God’s attributes, the locus of the vision of God’s essence is primarily the spirit. The heart, however, is the witness of the veracity of the vision by the spirit, and thus of the sincerity of the spirit.75 In describing the modality of this vision, Rūzbihān follows the Ashʿarī distinction between God’s essence (dhāt), attributes (ṣifāt) and acts (afʿāl). Although God’s essence is impenetrable for the human, and this essence cannot be known, seen nor witnessed directly except by one’s spirit, one can see or witness manifestations of His attributes and acts in and through creation, and through them come to indirect vision and knowledge of God’s essence.76 These attributes and acts become apparent in creation through visual divine manifestations of majesty ( jalāl) and beauty ( jamāl), in a process that Ernst has defined as ‘an endless game of hide and seek’.77 Rūzbihān connects this mode of vision of God to iltibās (lit. ‘clothing’), a term typical for his mystical thought that signifies a bestowal of divine qualities on humanity or creation, a clothing with divinity.78 When in the state of iltibās, the

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believer is granted a vision of God through His attributes. Only that is attainable, the vision of God’s unadulterated essence is rejected, however: God has granted him with what he is capable of grasping and does not disturb the purity of intimacy for him, and makes him see himself in the cloth of His action ( fiʿl) until his existence (wujūd) with God remains, and takes the fortune of the vision of the attributes (ruʾyat al-ṣifāt) from His beauty. Don’t you see how God forbade Moses from seeing the unadulterated (ruʾyat al-ṣirf), and turned him away from Him, only after the iltibās, by His saying when he asked what he asked, ‘You shall not see Me, but look at the mountain.’ The Prophet clarified the realities of iltibās by his saying: ‘I have seen my Lord in the best form.’79

Passionate love (ʿishq) is closely intertwined with vision: it is both caused by as well as leads to the vision of God. Here a new term is introduced: appearance (badāʾ). When God, the Passionately Loved (al-Maʿshūq) also passionately loves the passionate lover (ʿāshiq), He will show Himself to the lover with goodness and beauty. After God has shown Himself to the passionate lover, the lover will want to see Him. God then reveals Himself even more, so that the lover’s yearning for the vision of God increases: God is beyond appearance (badāʾ), but He wants to show to the one who loves Him the majesty of His attributes ( jalāl ṣifātihi) and lights of His essence (anwār dhātihi) that are hidden, and all that is wanted. Regarding this God says to His beloved: ‘Have you not looked towards your Lord’ (Q 25:45). The knower (ʿārif) said: ‘God showing Himself is only at the end of passionate love.’80

Rūzbihān is the only one who is explicit on the modality and form by which he beholds God in his vision of His manifestations. In Kashf al-asrār, he relates how God manifests to him according to two categories: either as a manifestation of His majesty ( jalāl) and wrath (qahr), or of His beauty ( jamāl) and grace (luṭf).81 Although Rūzbihān as an Ashʿarī would never state that God has an actual body, still

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he corporealises his claimed vision of these manifestations of God and often explicitly chooses bodily imagery. His embodiment of these visions of God was a process mediated by the religious and cultural environment of which he was a part. Ernst has noted the references to Persian court culture in Rūzbihān’s visions of God: for example, he sees God on his roof speaking to him in Persian or playing on drums (ṭabl), a ritual court accessory of Persian kingship, and he approaches the ‘court of God’ that he describes as guarded like princes by angels and prophets.82 On manifestations of beauty, he refers to a prophetic saying that states that the Prophet Muhammad saw God in His most beautiful form.83 God also takes the form of a beautiful Turkish warrior, sometimes with a bow in his hand, sometimes with a lute, or is dressed as a great Sufi shaykh; God manifests a shepherd dressed in a woollen cloak or takes the form of Adam, wearing white clothes, or He appears in the form of a lion.84 One could state that in a way these descriptions signify a return to the understandings of the early nussāk, appealing to the senses of sight, hearing and touch, albeit in a non-physical, metaphysical appearance. One would expect God to appear as a young beardless or long-haired boy in his visions as well, following the hadith literature that depicts God in this form, but this theme is absent, remarkably enough. Ernst has suggested that Rūzbihān deliberately left this theme out, because he negatively associated it with the practice of gazing at young boys.85 Conclusion

All of the modes of this-worldly vision proposed by our Sufi authors in their non-tafsīr works fall within Wolfson’s category of contemplative vision. This corresponds with the general trend within Sufism in this period to eschew the older idea of physical visions related to indwelling (ḥulūl) that were present in the early circles of the renunciants (zuhhād). To reconcile this yearning to see God with the idea of a transcendent God as developed in theology, they abstracted the ocular vision of God of the zuhhād to an indirect inner vision by the heart or by witnessing (mushāhada). Although the theoretical possibility of seeing God during this-worldly life by the physical eye

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was generally upheld, none of the Sufis wished to claim the actual occurrence of such a physical vision that had been disallowed even to Moses. A contemplative vision, however, was considered conceivable, to differing degrees. As we have seen, al-Qushayrī was very reluctant to discuss the theme of vision, even in a contemplative mode. This stands in stark contrast with the enthusiasm shown by al-Daylamī and Rūzbihān. While in the case of al-Daylamī it remains somewhat unclear whether God could be perceived in forms and images within human categories of perception, or whether he meant an introvertive abstract vision, this is more explicit in the case of Rūzbihān: his self-described visions clearly fall within the category of cognitive ­contemplative vision. In the discussion of both theologians and Sufi authors, two examples keep appearing in the arguments of both advocates and adversaries of seeing God during this-worldly life: the request by Moses to see God (Q 7:143) and Muhammad’s heavenly journey (Q 53:1–18). It is to these two case studies that we turn in the next two chapters. Notes  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8

 9

See Underhill, Mysticism, 279–97; Wolfson, Speculum, 52. Wolfson, Speculum, 54. Ibid., 52–5. The Arabic mushāhada, which we translate as ‘witnessing’, is often translated as ‘contemplation’ or ‘contemplative vision’. Wolfson, Speculum, 58–9. Ibid., 60. Ibid., 60–1, 66–7. See Claude Gilliot, ‘La vision de Dieu dans l’au delà. Exégèse, tradition et théologie en Islam’, in Pensée grecque et sagesse d’Orient. Hommage á Michel Tardieu, eds Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 241–7; Tuft, ‘Controversy’, 6–16; Wesley W. Williams, ‘Tajallī wa-Ruʾya: A Study of Anthropomorphic Theophany and Visio Dei in the Hebrew Bible, the Qurʾān and Early Sunnī Islam’ (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2008), 76–100. Hadith literature on the question of ruʾya is a genre in itself, worthy of a

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separate study. For fourth-/tenth-century collections of hadith material specifically on the vision of God, see Abū’l-Ḥasan al-Dāraquṭnī, Ruʾyat Allāh jalla wa-ʿalā, ed. Abū Uways al-Kurdī (Cairo: Dār Ibn Tayimiyya, 2013) and the Kitāb ruʾyat Allāh by Ibn al-Naḥḥās (d. 416/1025) transcribed and translated into German in Bernd Radtke, Materialen zur alten islamischen Frömmigkeit (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 195–214. Al-Daqqāq al-Aṣbahānī (d. 516/1122) also dedicated a treatise to the subject. Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Muḥammad al-Aṣbahānī al-Daqqāq, Majlīs imlāʾ fī ruʾyat Allāh, ed. al-Sharīf Ḥātim b. ʿĀrif al-ʿAwnī (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd li’l-nashr wa’l-tawzīʿ, 1997). As late as the ninth/fifteenth century, the renowned hadith scholar Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449) composed a treatise specifically on the issue of whether Muhammad had seen God during his night journey. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Ghunya fī masʾalat al-ruʾya (Ṭanṭā: Dār al-ṣahāba li’l-turāth, 1992). For further discussion of the use of hadith material in the debate on the vision of God, see Williams, ‘Tajallī wa-Ruʾya’, 155–203. 10 On the possible non-Islamic origins, see Tuft, ‘Controversy’,  47–54; Sarah Stroumsa, ‘Voiles et miroirs: visions surnaturelles en théologie judéo-arabe médiévale’, in Autour du regard: mélanges Gimaret, ed. Éric Chaumont (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 78–80. 11 Muqātil believed in an anthropomorphic otherworldly vision of God and even a physical touch by God. Similar ideas were proffered by other early anthropomorphists. TG, 1:345, 362, 383; 2:208, 379, 528–30. Tuft has suggested that the beginning of the controversy should be located at the start of the ninth century ce. He dates the start of the controversy e silentio on the basis of the earliest mention in early credal texts. He locates the earliest mention of the vision of God (more specifically liqāʾ Allāh, the meeting with God) in the Waṣīya attributed to Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 148/767), which he believes to have been authored somewhere between Abū Ḥanīfa’s death year and the death of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855). Tuft, ‘Controversy’, 34–45. 12 See Tuft, ‘Controversy’; Éric Chaumont, ed., Autour du regard: mélanges Gimaret (Leuven: Peeters, 2002); Pūrjavādī, Ruʾyat-i māh; Williams, ‘Tajallī wa-Ruʾya’; Gilliot, ‘Vision de Dieu’; Louis Gardet, Dieu et la destinée de l’homme (Paris: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin, 1967), 338–46; EI2, s.v. ‘Ruʾyat Allāh’, by D. Gimaret, 8:649; see also the index in TG,

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under ruʾyat Allāh. Shīʿī approaches on the issue are close to the Muʿtazilī approaches. They are not presented in this overview, because of their limited influence on Sufi thought in the period under scrutiny. For a discussion of Shīʿī positions, see Georges Vajda, ‘Le problème de la vision de Dieu (ruʾya) d’après quelques auteurs šīʿites duodécimains’, in Etudes de théologie et de philosophie arabo-islamiques à l’époque classique, eds Daniel Gimaret, M. Hayoun and J. Jolivet (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986), 31–54. 13 Gardet, Dieu, 338–40. 14 On the position of the Jahmiyya, see TG, 1:139; 2:186, 502, 504, 528, 535, 700–1; 3:49, 184; 5:220–1. 15 On the Muʿtazila, see Tuft, ‘Controversy’, 175–212; TG, 3:382, 472–4, 496; 4:9, 57; 5:398. 16 The Ḥanbalī traditionist Ibn al-Qayyim, in his work on eschatology Ḥādī al-arwāḥ, states at the start of the chapter on the vision of God: ‘This chapter is the most honourable, most significant and most important chapter of the book, the most dear to ahl al-sunna wa’l-jamāʿa and the most difficult for the people of innovation and error (ahl al-bidʿa wa’lḍalāla).’ Thus he confirms both the centrality of the vision of God to the Sunni eschatological imagination and the importance of the issue in polemics between theological schools. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Ḥādī al-arwāḥ ilā bilād al-afrāḥ (Cairo: Maktabat al-Mutanabbī, n.d.), 195. 17 Gardet, Dieu, 339; Tuft, ‘Controversy’, 133–66. 18 For a discussion of al-Ghazālī, see Tuft, ‘Controversy’, 167–74. On al-Rāzī, see Guy Monnot, ‘Vision de Dieu et bonheur de l’homme dans le commentaire coranique de Fahr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’, in Autour du regard: mélanges Gimaret, ed. Éric Chaumont (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 63–75. 19 For a more elaborate discussion of the complexity and evolution of these dialectical discussions, I once again refer to Tuft, ‘Controversy’. 20 Karamustafa has satisfactorily described the link between Sufis and the traditionists and schools of kalām. See Karamustafa, Formative Period, 87–108. Some authors have pointed out that most Sufis preferred Ashʿarism to Muʿtazilism due to the former’s acceptance of miracles (karāmāt), refuted by the latter. Also their emphasis on God’s omnipotence and the limitation of reason made it more acceptable for Sufis who preferred an epistemology of experience to rationalism. See Ernst, Ruzbihan, 28; Melchert, ‘Sufis and Competing Movements’, 243;

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Madelung, Religious Trends, 46–7. However, some Muʿtazilī Sufis are in fact known to us, the so-called Ṣūfiyyāt al-muʿtazila. They seem not to have been part of the Muʿtazilī mainstream and to have had some theological particularities. Sviri even suggests that the term Muʿtazilī originally must have had the connotation of ‘renunciant’ or ‘ascetic’, rather than a theological meaning. Bernd Radtke, ‘Von den hinderlichen Wirkungen der Exstase und dem Wesen der Ignoranz’, in Neue Kritische Gänge: Zu Stand und Aufgaben der Sufikforschung, ed. Bernd Radtke (Utrecht: M. Th. Houtsma Stichting, 2005), 280; TG, 3:130–4; 4:88–94; EI2, s.v. ‘Muʿtazila’, by D. Gimaret, 7:784; Sviri, ‘Reconsidering Terms’, 23–8. 21 The suggestion of a vision by the heart was also made by the Muʿtazilī Abū’l-Hudhayl (d. 227/841) pertaining to the hereafter. TG, 3:256. 22 Josef van Ess, ‘Schönheit und Macht. Verborgene Ansichten des islamischen Gottesbildes’, in Schönheit und Mass: Beiträge der Eranos-Tagungen 2005 und 2006, eds Erik Hornung and Andreas Schweizer (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2007), 15–24. 23 Ashʿarī, Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn, 13–14. 24 Ibid., 289. 25 Ibid., 438–9. 26 Karamustafa, Formative Period, 105; Massignon, Essay, 80. Van Ess has suggested that Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz’s correspondence with a group of Sufis in Damascus, Kitāb ruʾyat al-qulūb, is directed to the followers of Abū Ḥulmān. In this treatise, al-Kharrāz is said to refute a group who held the view that they could see God with their hearts in this world as the inhabitants of Paradise will see God with their eyes. Unfortunately this treatise is lost. The treatise is mentioned by al-Sarrāj and al-Kalābādhī in their Sufi handbooks. Sarrāj, Lumaʿ, 428; Abū Bakr al-Kalābādhī, Kitāb al-ta’arruf li-madhhab ahl al-taṣawwuf, translated by Arthur J. Arberry as The Doctrine of the Ṣūfīs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 27; Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz, Rasāʾil, ed. Qāsim al-Sāmarrāʾī (Baghdad: Maṭbaʿat al-majmaʿ al-ʿilmī al-ʿirāqī, 1967), 18; TG, 1:144; EI2, s.v. ‘al-Kharrāz’, by. W. Madelung, 4:1083–4. It may have something to do with the Sālimiyya as well, who are said to have believed in a vision of God in human form (and thus with the eye), allegedly even in the form of Muhammad and Adam. TG, 2:109; Baldick, Mystical Islam, 52; Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 104.

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27 Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 137. 28 Van Ess, ‘Schönheit und Macht’, 15–24. 29 Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 136–7; van Ess, ‘Schönheit und Macht’, 15–24; Ritter, ‘Philologica II’, 256–7. 30 Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 136–7; van Ess, ‘Schönheit und Macht’, 15–24; Josef van Ess, The Youthful God: Anthropomorphism in Early Islam (Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University, 1988), 9–13. 31 For a German translation of this passage from Muḥāsibī’s Naṣāʾiḥ, see van Ess, Gedankenwelt, 216. 32 Margaret Smith holds that yearning for the vision of God was the basis for the mystical love of God in the work of al-Muḥāsibī. Margaret Smith, An Early Mystic of Baghdad: A Study of the Life and Teaching of Ḥārith b. Asad al-Muḥāsibī, a.d. 781–857 (London: Sheldon Press, 1977), 244–8. 33 Van Ess, Gedankenwelt, 213–18. 34 Sarrāj, Lumaʿ, 350. 35 ‘When ʿAlī was asked “Do you see our Lord?” he said, “How can we worship who we do not see?” Then he said, “The eyes do not see Him, meaning in this world by the uncovering of the eye-vision (kashf al-ʿiyān), but the hearts see Him by the realities of faith. God has said: ‘The heart did not belie what it saw.’” He thus confirmed the vision by the heart in this world.’ Sarrāj, Lumaʿ, 350. The role of the cited Qurʾan verse in the issue will be further scrutinised in the next chapter. 36 See note 26 in this chapter. 37 This is very likely a criticism of al-Basṭāmī, whose claim of a miʿrāj is, although not unique, the most famous. 38 Sarrāj, Lumaʿ, 428. 39 Ibid., 68–9. 40 For the different positions in this discussion, see Chapter 7. Here it is worthwhile noting that al-Kalābādhī conceptualised the contested vision of Muhammad during his night journey as a this-worldly vision, despite its taking place during a journey to an otherworldly realm. This shows that the concept of dunyā to him was rather temporal than spatial. Although Muhammad allegedly visited the otherworld, it is still considered as taking place in dunyā. The otherworld only becomes ākhira after the Day of Judgement, and a visit to the otherworldly realm thus takes place in dunyā. Everything before the Day of Judgement is dunyā by definition.

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41 Kalābādhī’s Taʿarruf translated in Arberry, Doctrine of the Ṣūfīs, 27. 42 Ibid., 24–7. 43 For a comprehensive discussion of different Sufi approaches to ‘seeing’ God (Gott überall sehen [seeing God everywhere], Gott in allen Dingen sehen [seeing God in all things], Nur Gott sehen [seeing only God], Alle Dinge in Gott sehen [seeing all things in God]), see Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 229–52. Gramlich confusingly translates different modes of vision (Schau) that have separate names in Arabic (e.g. ruʾya, mushāhada) and subtle differences in meaning, which makes it necessary to refer back to the primary sources for a nuanced understanding of the modes of vision he describes. 44 Ibid., 230. 45 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 2:269; Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 231. 46 Arthur J. Arberry, ed. and trans., The ‘Mawāqif’ and ‘Mukhāṭabāt’ of Muhammad ibn ʿAbdi ‘l-Jabbār al-Niffarī with Other Fragments (Cambridge: EJW Gibb Memorial Trust, 1935), 18–20. 47 ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Niffarī, ‘Kitāb al-mawāqif’, in Trois oeuvres inédites de mystiques musulmans: S̆ aqīq al-Balḫī, Ibn ʻAṭā, Niffarī, ed. Paul Nwyia (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 1973), 203. 48 Translation from Reynold A. Nicholson, trans., ‘Kashf al-maḥjūb’: The Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism (London: Luzac & Co., 1959), 389. Note the difference between the permanent state of vision in paradise, and the impermanent character of the this-worldly vision. 49 Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 233. 50 See Michel Chodkiewicz, ‘The Vision of God according to Ibn ʿArabī’, in Sufism: Love and Wisdom, eds Jean-Louis Michon and Roger Gaetani (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2006), 33–48. 51 Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 231. 52 Richard M. Frank, ‘Two Short Dogmatic Works of Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī, Part 1: Edition and Translation of Lumaʿ fī l-iʿtiqād’, MIDEO 15 (1982): 68. 53 Richard M. Frank, ‘Two Short Dogmatic Works of Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī, Part 2: Edition and Translation of al-Fuṣūl fī l-uṣūl’, MIDEO 16 (1983): 81. 54 Qushayrī’s Risāla, translated in Knysh, Epistle on Sufism, 362. 55 Böwering has explained the relative absence of visionary experience in the early handbooks by pointing to the aural sense as the preferred

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mode of communication with God in classical Sufism. Böwering, ‘From Word to Vision’, 208. 56 Qushayrī’s Risāla, translated in Knysh, Epistle on Sufism, 97­–9. 57 Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn, 1:349. 58 Abū Thābit Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī, ‘Jawāhir al-asrār’, Şehid Ali Pasa, Istanbul, MS 1346. 59 Daylamī, ‘Jawāhir’, fols 4a–b, 5a. 60 Ibid., fol. 11a. 61 Ibid., fols 12a–b. 62 Ibid., fol. 11a. For hadith material and discussions on seeing God in one’s sleep, see Chapter 3 note 54. 63 Daylamī, ‘Jawāhir’, fols 6a–b. 64 From among the scholars, he mentions Abū Ḥanīfa, Sufyān al-Thawrī, al-Shāfiʿī, Mālik and their companions, as well as the people of hadith like Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal and Yaḥyā b. Maysar. Daylamī, ‘Jawāhir’, fol. 11a. In another treatise, ʿUyūn al-maʿārif, he also deals with this question. However, in this treatise he rebukes the ‘normal’ scholars (as opposed to the Sufi elite) who deny this vision. He states the following: ‘Concerning the vision of God in waking state in the this-worldly abode before death by the eye of the inmost self (ʿayn al-sirr) and the light of faith, that is a favor of God that He gives to whom He wills among His servants, but with the eye of the heart, not with the eye of the head. And the common people they all deny that, except those Sufis. They necessarily confirm it because they see God, and few of their disciples believe them because of their following of them. The majority of the people denying it are those who do confirm it in the otherworldly abode with their eyes staring. They are the Ḥanbalīs, the Ashʿarīs, the Karrāmiyya and their likes of the people of ḥadīth. This is a big ignorance of them that contradicts the foundations of the religion.’ Translated in Arberry, ‘Works of al-Dailamī’, 51. The same passage can be found in Abū Thābit Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī, ‘Muhimmāt al-wāṣilīn’, Şehid Ali Pasha, Istanbul, MS 1346, fol. 206a. 65 Daylamī, ‘Jawāhir’, fol. 11b. 66 He names the illustrious and well-known early figures Dhū’l-Nūn al-Miṣrī, Abū Yazīd al-Basṭāmī, al-Maʿrūf al-Karkhī, Sahl al-Tustarī, al-Sarī al-Saqaṭī, al-Junayd, al-Ruwaym, al-Nūrī, Ibn ʿAṭāʾ, al-Shiblī, Abū Bakr al-Wāsiṭī, Abū ʿAlī al-Rūdhabārī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥafīf al-Shīrāzī,

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Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz and Abū’l-Ḥasan al-Kharaqānī. Daylamī, ‘Jawāhir’, fol. 11b. Whether all these authorities indeed claimed such experience is contestable. Note, for example, his mentioning of al-Junayd and al-Kharrāz, which goes against the claims of al-Sarrāj and al-Kalābādhī about them. See Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 229–32. 67 Daylamī, ‘Jawāhir’, fol. 11a. 68 Ibid., fol. 11a. 69 Ernst, Ruzbihan, 18. 70 Baqlī’s Kashf translated in Ernst, Unveiling of Secrets, 102–3. 71 Rūzbihān al-Baqlī, ‘Masālik al-tawḥīd’, in Quatre traités inédits de Ruzbehân Baqlî Shîrâzî: textes arabes avec un commentaire, ed. Paul Ballanfat (Tehran: Institut français de recherche en Iran, 1988), 177. 72 Ibid., 177. 73 Rūzbihān al-Baqlī, Kitāb Mashrab al-arwāḥ, ed. Nazif M. Hoca (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Matbaası, 1974), 195. 74 Ibid., 172. 75 Ballanfat, Quatre traités, 106, 141–4. 76 Ernst, Ruzbihan, 29–30, 35. 77 Ibid., 36. 78 Ernst translates this with ‘divine clothing’ or ‘clothing with divinity’, Gramlich with ‘Verwirrung’, Ballanfat with ‘equivocité’, Corbin with ‘amphibolie’, which Ernst criticises as an ‘excessively abstract overtranslation’. Ernst, Ruzbihan, 35, 104; Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 133; Ballanfat, Quatre traités, 144; Henry Corbin, En Islam iranien: aspects spirituels et philosophiques, vol. 3: Les fidèles d’amour: shî’isme et soufisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), 18. 79 Baqlī, Mashrab, 119. 80 Ibid., 240. 81 This division of divine attributes is common in Sufi circles. Hujwīrī also links the manifestation of God’s beauty with longing for the vision of Him: ‘Those whose witness in gnosis is the beauty of God continually long for vision (ruʾyat), while those whose witness is the majesty of God continually reject their own qualities, and their hearts are in the state of awe.’ Translation from Ernst, Ruzbihan, 45. See also Nicholson, Kashf al-maḥjūb, 253. For an analytical discussion of the modes and forms of divine manifestation (tajallī) in this work, see Ernst, Ruzbihan, 37, 44–79. See also Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 136–9; Paul Nwyia, ‘Waqāʾiʿ al-

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82 83 84 85

Shaykh Rūzbihān al-Baqlī al-Shīrāzī muqṭatafāt min kitāb Kašf al-asrār wa-mukāšafāt al-anwār’, al-Mashriq 64 (1970): 385–406. Ernst, Ruzbihan, 13, 49, 57–8. Ernst, Unveiling of Secrets, 123. Ernst, Unveiling of Secrets, 18, 23, 41, 52, 54, 58, 62, 71–2, 84, 110–11, 118, 121; Ernst, Ruzbihan, 44–65. Ernst, Words of Ecstasy, 108.

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6

Arinī: Declined at the Boundary?

Introduction In Chapter 3, we witnessed the centrality of the meeting with and vision of God in the hereafter in Sufi eschatological imaginations; the final boundary crossing is a crossing towards a visionary meeting with God. In Chapter 4, we saw how the first boundary crossing, Adam’s banishment from Paradise, was for some authors a deprivation of this vision. This chapter is about an attempt to attain this vision of God in this-worldly life: Moses’s request to see God (Q 7:143). It is my contention that within some Sufi understandings this story signifies an attempt to temporarily restore a paradisiacal state of vision in this world; that is, the yearning for the vision of God promised in Paradise was so strong that they were looking for ways to have a similar experience in the current abode.1 As we shall see, for some this took the form of a visionary encounter, a foretaste of what was to come in the hereafter. I will argue, however, that even for those who believed in some form of this-worldly vision, the interest in the otherworldy vision remained intact, because of the mere fact that the eschatological encounter with God would be more perfect and eternal, instead of the temporary and limited this-worldly experience. This resonates with what has been suggested by other scholars 201

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of Sufism: the possibility of a direct experiential encounter with God in this world motivates the disregard for eschatological themes other than the meeting with and vision of God. Whereas the meeting (liqāʾ) with God is normally an eschatological matter in Islamic theology, some Sufis claimed such a strong this-worldly experience of this encounter that they lost all interest in the world to come. Another more intermediate attitude remained loyal to the idea that the ultimate encounter between man and God can only occur in the world to come. According to that attitude, meeting, vision and divine manifestation are all in Paradise. An experience of a this-worldly encounter is different from the otherworldly then: it is but a taste of what awaits the believer in the hereafter.2 Corresponding with my findings in the earlier chapters, I suggest that the dominance or absence of the theme of vision has been one of the most significant differences between two tendencies within Sufism: on the one hand, a tendency that stresses love and experiential knowledge (maʿrifa) of God; on the other hand, a tendency that stresses good character and religious discipline. Influenced by doctrinal developments in theology, the idea of a this-worldly vision also remained controversial within Sufism. This led to different approaches to verse Q 7:143, varying from a negation of Moses’s vision to a more complex line of thought focused on the modality of the alleged vision. I will argue that, generally speaking, the ishārī understandings of the verse remained within the boundaries of kalām discussions of the same verse. Even authors who argued for the possibility of a this-worldly vision would structure the description of the modality of these visionary experiences in such a way that it would not contradict formal kalām positions. There is another reason why the case of Moses is worth our while. Islam, like Judaism, is generally portrayed as a religion in which God is perceived aurally rather than visually. Believers who want to perceive God in this world are encouraged to listen to God’s word being recited, rather than make themselves an image of God.3 However, one can argue whether this claim can be upheld in the case of Sufism as well, and whether vision does not figure more prominently than

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audition in Sufi thought. Sufis themselves actively reflected on this relation.4 In Islamic tradition, Moses is nicknamed kalīm Allāh, the one to whom God has spoken. In some hadiths, Moses is contrasted with Muhammad: while Moses heard God but was denied the vision of Him, Muhammad allegedly saw God during his heavenly journey (miʿrāj).5 These stories, then, formed models of archetypical experiences of the divine along which Sufis defined, structured, embodied and described their own alleged experiences.6 An analysis of commentaries on the story of Moses, read together with commentaries on the heavenly journey of Muhammad, is thus a good case study to understand the status and hierarchy of the senses in the Sufi imagination. In Sufism, themes related to both audition (samāʿ) and vision have been strongly present. The technical vocabulary of Sufism reflects this centrality of the visual sense. When we look at early Sufi texts, such as the tafsīr of al-Sulamī or the early handbooks of the likes of al-Sarrāj (d. 377/988), al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) and al-Hujwīrī (d. 465/1072), we see that a refined terminology was developed to describe the experience of vision (mostly, but not always) of God. We find terms such as ruʾya (vision), naẓar (gazing), ʿiyān and muʿāyana (eye-vision), tajallī (manifestation), shuhūd and mushāhada (witnessing), and if we dig a little deeper we can even find discussion about the truthfulness and possibility of these visionary experiences among early Sufis.7 By means of the case studies of Moses and Muhammad in the next two chapters, I shall try to shed new light on these discussions, mainly to understand if and how these two functioned as exemplary figures for the claimed visual experiences of Sufis. Arinī anẓur ilayk: Q 7:143 between Exegesis and Theology

Now that we have formed a broader understanding of the various positions on the vision of God in the previous chapter, let us have a closer look at the verse we are dealing with in this chapter and its role in the debates on the vision of God. The verse is part of a series of larger narratives in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf relating to the struggle of Moses with Pharaoh and the subsequent exodus of Moses and his people from Egypt. The verse describes a scene that takes place when

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Moses leaves his people behind for a retreat of forty nights, giving his brother Aaron temporary leadership over them (Q 7:142). The verse reads as follows: When Moses came to Our appointed time and his Lord spoke to him, he said, ‘My Lord, show [Yourself] to me, [so] I [can] look at You.’ He said, ‘You shall not (lan) see Me, but look to the mountain. If it remains in its place you shall see Me.’ When his Lord manifested Himself to the mountain He made it into rubble, and Moses fell unconscious. And when he stood up, he said: ‘Glory to You, I repent to You, and I am the first of the believers.’8

Although theologians generally agreed that the verse implies that Moses did not see God, they disagreed on the possibility of the vision. For opponents of the idea of a vision of God, this verse was used as a confirmation of their dialectic conclusion that God cannot be seen. Proponents of the idea had to find a way to interpret this verse in such a way that it did not categorically rule out the vision of God. A number of issues generally concerned theological exegetes of this verse: the reason for God’s refusal to show Himself to Moses; the meaning of the future negation particle lan; the modality of God’s manifestation (tajallī) to the mountain; the reason for Moses’s repentance and his declaration of belief. The Muʿtazila saw an obvious confirmation of the impossibility of seeing God in the verse. They were, however, confronted with the question of how the impeccability of prophets should be reconciled with the request from Moses. The Muʿtazilī exegete al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1134) offers a fair representation of typical Muʿtazilī concerns when explaining the verse in his Qurʾan commentary al-Kashshāf. After having confirmed that Moses heard God’s created speech, a typical Muʿtazilī standpoint, he states that by his request arinī (show me) Moses asked to be made capable of seeing God (ijʿalnī mutamakkinan min ruʾyatika). On the question of how a knowledgeable and impeccable prophet could ask something that he knew not to be possible, he responds that it was only a rhetorical question to reproach and silence the insolent from among his people who had provokingly asked to see God on several occasions (Q 2:55; 4:153).9

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For al-Ashʿarī, the verse was a confirmation of the possibility of the vision of God rather than a negation, despite Moses being refused the vision. The fact that the impeccable prophet Moses requested to see God is a proof that it is possible in itself. As an impeccable prophet with proper knowledge of God, he would not ask for something that was impossible, and he would never falsely assume that God could be seen. He also holds God’s statement that Moses would see God if the mountain remained stable to be a proof for the possibility of seeing God. God would not make something impossible conditional upon something possible, al-Ashʿarī reasons. Since the mountain remaining stable is theoretically possible, so also must be the vision of God.10 The particle lan, indicating a negation in the future tense (you shall not), did not represent a universal denial, according to the Ashʿarīs. What was meant was that Moses would not see God in his present life.11 Al-Māturīdī dedicates quite some space to the verse in his Qurʾan commentary and takes it as an opportunity to disclose his ideas on the ruʾya controversy alongside the context of this particular verse as well. First, he refutes some Muʿtazilī positions on the verse, for example that Moses did not request the vision for himself, but to reproach his people. He considers this far-fetched and believes that Moses would have formulated his request differently if that had been his goal. His own argument in favour of the possibility of the vision is similar to al-Ashʿarī’s: Moses as a prophet could not have been so ignorant as to ask something concerning God that was impossible. His request is a proof of the possibility of the vision.12 In the chapter on the vision of God in his eschatological treatise, Ḥādī al-arwāḥ, Ibn al-Qayyim mentions seven arguments, mostly linguistic, some lightly dialectic, that can be considered as representative of the Ḥanbalī traditionist standpoint, and are very close to the Ashʿarī and Māturīdī arguments: (1) Moses would never ask something that was impossible; (2) God did not disapprove of his question; had it been impossible, He would have disapproved of it; (3) God responded with ‘You shall not see Me’, not with ‘You cannot see Me’ or ‘I am not seen’ or ‘to see Me is impossible’; this shows that God can be seen, but that humans do not have the strength for it in this-worldly life; (4) if the mountain could not bear

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God’s manifestation, then a human in this life surely could not; (5) it is possible that God would have left the mountain in its place; He would not have linked something impossible to something possible; (6) that God manifested to the mountain is a proof of the possibility of vision in itself; (7) Moses could hear God directly; if hearing is possible, then vision must be possible a fortiori; Moses asked God to see Him after he had heard Him; by hearing Him he realised it was possible to see Him as well.13 To understand how the Sufi commentaries are embedded in their broader religious context, we must once again look at the major commentaries written by the school of Nishapur. What becomes clear from them is that no exegete would explain the verse in such a way that any type of vision, either with the eye or with the heart, actually took place. Most of the aforementioned arguments appear in one way or another in these commentaries as well. As al-Māwardī’s commentary shows, Muʿtazilī ideas were still current in Nishapur and the controversy over ruʾya had sociopolitical significance in the strife between different scholarly factions and their patron networks. It was not merely an intellectual issue. Al-Thaʿlabī shies away from the explicit theological reasoning of the commentators discussed above, and confines himself to implicit theology by quoting a score of earlier exegetes who all stated that the negation lan tarānī (You shall not see Me) applies only to this world, but that God will be seen in the hereafter. Who sees God in this world will die because the experience is too overwhelming to bear. He lets Moses respond to God’s refusal in a way that resonates with a Sufi motif of love and longing.14 Hearing the speech of God aroused an uncontrollable yearning in Moses for the vision of Him: ‘I heard Your speech and long to look at You. To look at You and to die is more beloved to me than to live and not seeing You.’ 15 Here the visual is given a higher rank in the sensory hierarchy than the aural. The audition of God is only a ‘prelude’, as it were, for the true enjoyment of the lover of God: the vision of Him. The passion to reach this vision is so strong that it is unbearable to wait until the hereafter, to the extent that Moses was even ready to die for it.16

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Al-Māwardī has a remarkably short commentary on the verse compared with the other exegetes so far considered, and it is not used to polemicise about the question of the vision of God. A fair overview is given of the positions apparently current in Nishapur, with a slight emphasis on the Muʿtazilī positions.17 Without problematising or choosing sides, he summarises three positions, the first two being Muʿtazilī positions: (1) that Moses wanted to silence the insolent among his people who requested to see God; (2) that he knew that it was impossible through reasoning, but that he wanted to have necessary knowledge of it, that is, confirmation by a divine revelation; (3) that the position transmitted by al-Rabīʿ, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and al-Suddī holds that vision in this world is possible and thus the request by Moses was as well. As for al-Māwardī’s own view, that the mountain could not bear the vision, he holds to be proof that a human could not bear it either. On the modality of God’s manifestation (tajallī) to the mountain, he mentions three positions: (1) that He appeared through his signs (āyāt) that He made occur in the mountain to show to the other mountains; (2) that He only showed from His heavenly kingdom (malakūt) what would make the mountain crumble, because the world would not have remained if He had shown the full kingdom of Heaven (malakūt al-samāʾ); (3) that He only showed the amount of a little finger of His throne, or that He showed His command (amr) to the mountain, which was enough to crush it. On the repentance of Moses he again mentions several options, some Muʿtazilī, some Sunni: he repented for asking without awaiting permission; he repented for believing that a this-worldly vision was possible; he repented as a manner of praise of God, as is the habit of believers.18 He does not mention anything about the vision in the hereafter at all, nor take a conclusive position on the issue of the vision of God: he seems to be on his guard, perhaps in an attempt to shun controversy. From this we may deduce that the controversy over the vision of God in Nishapur was animated, and that al-Māwardī did not mention it to avoid a direct confrontation with his colleagues and the authorities in the highly polarised and politicised scholarly climate between the Muʿtazilīs and Ashʿarīs in Nishapur.

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Al-Wāḥidī is a typical representative of Ashʿarī readings of the verse, proving his theological conviction that the vision is possible by focusing on the linguistic particularities of the verse. He stresses that Moses requested to see God and nothing else. From a linguistic analysis of the verse he concludes that the verse cannot be interpreted otherwise. He subsequently quotes the Ashʿarī position that Moses’s request itself is a proof of the possibility of the vision of God. In addition, God’s answer ‘You shall not see Me’ is a proof of this. Were it impossible to see God, He would have answered ‘I cannot be seen’.19 ‘You shall not see Me’ pertains only to this world; in the hereafter, God will be seen. It is also a proof that Moses requested the vision for himself, not for his people as some Muʿtazilīs believed. Otherwise God would have answered with ‘They shall not see Me’.20 In conclusion, we can state that there is great diversity in the interpretation of the verse and in the theological arguments either in favour of or against the possibility of this-worldly vision. Although all seem to have agreed that indeed Moses did not see God, not everybody used the verse to rule out the possibility of a this-worldly vision. On the contrary, for some the fact that Moses as an impeccable prophet requested the vision is considered the most important proof that God can indeed be seen in this world. Let us now have a look at Sufi explanations of the verse and how these broader theological issues reverberate in them. Polyvalence: The Early Sufi Readings in al-Sulamī

The commentary that al-Sulamī offers on Q 7:143 is remarkably more extensive than on the verses in the rest of his work. This shows that already in early Sufism this particular verse played an important role in legitimising a sensory relation to God, both auditory and visionary, taking Moses as an exemplary mystic, thus provoking more commentary. What also catches the eye is the relative dominance of ‘ecstatic’ readings of the verse and the more cryptic and mystical nature of the presented meanings than elsewhere: Moses apparently represented a mystical model of a more ecstatic and esoteric kind. In addition, the early authorities quoted by al-Sulamī show an interesting degree of

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different perspectives on the verse, all of which al-Sulamī mentions on an equal footing: the commentary is truly polyvalent. The structure of the commentary can be divided into a couple of stages, corresponding with the structure of the verse. First, on the verse preceding the request for the vision, al-Sulamī offers some quotes that refer to the forty-day seclusion that Moses underwent before reaching the elevated state in which he requests the vision. Second, the modality of the speech of God to Moses is described, as well as the state that Moses was perceived to be in when he received the speech. Third, Moses’s request to see God following the hearing of His speech is discussed. The passage ends, as does the verse itself, with God’s manifestation to the mountain, Moses’s fainting and repentance. This structure of seclusion, speech and request of vision also determines the sayings attributed to Jaʿfar on the verse. These sayings figure most prominently in al-Sulamī’s redaction and therefore deserve some extra attention. Jaʿfar denies the vision of God by Moses, and stresses that vision of God does not occur in this world. He does not try to find an exegetical solution for the refusal uttered in the verse, and accepts it as a given fact. However, Moses seems to have come close in his mystical state, transcending his human form in the process of receiving God’s speech. According to Jaʿfar, Moses’s fortyday seclusion led to his withdrawal from his usual form (rasm) and boundary (ḥadd); he was elevated beyond his human condition. In that state of being outside his human condition, he received God’s speech. Jaʿfar holds this to be proof that the attainment of the way stations of Lordship (manāzil al-rubūbiyya) can take place only when one is outside of one’s human form (rusūm al-bashariyya). The reception of God’s speech also took place in a concept of time that was different from the time to which God had subdued the rest of creation. In this state, Moses was himself the medium of the speech; God made the speech ‘rest’ on Moses and He spoke to him through his inner state (nafsiyya) and servanthood (ʿubūdiyya), ‘through the deepest realities of his praiseworthy qualities’.21 This experience of hearing God’s speech was so strong that Moses’s selfhood disappeared. Moreover,

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as a consequence of the speech, nothing would ever grow or live on the mountain again. Jaʿfar uses the verse to establish a hierarchy between the prophets: Muhammad is higher in the hierarchy than Moses because he had a more direct encounter with God’s attribute of speech. Whereas Moses heard God through himself, and thus heard his own attribute of speech rather than God’s, Muhammad did hear God’s attribute of speech directly. This explains, states Jaʿfar, the different locations on which they were granted the speech: while Moses heard God at Mount Sinai, Muhammad reached as far as the ‘lote tree of the utmost boundary’ (sidrat al-muntahā), the highest place of creation, and the ultimate boundary between Creator and created.22 This experience of hearing God, and of seeing the apparition (khayāl) of His speech in his heart, aroused the desire in Moses to see God and made him utter his request. To Jaʿfar, it is clear why God refused this: Moses was incapable of seeing God because he was transient ( fānin) while God is subsistent (bāqin). The subsistent is unattainable for the transient, and Moses would not have been able to bear the vision, with death being the result. To be able to see God with ocular vision (muʿāyana), one first has to reach a state of subsistence (baqāʾ) by one’s Lord, a state apparently not granted to Moses. God therefore distracted Moses by having him look at the mountain. The mountain, then, received knowledge of beholding God (ʿilm al-iṭṭilāʿ), by which it was scattered.23 It ceased to exist by the mere mentioning of the beholding of God, while Moses fainted on seeing the mountain scattered. When Moses regained consciousness and declared that he was ‘the first of the believers’, according to Jaʿfar he meant that he was the first to believe that God is not seen in this world.24 Jaʿfar is not the only authority that al-Sulamī mentions. Regarding the first stage, Abū Bakr b. Ṭāhir al-Abharī (d. c. 330/941­–2) points out that the forty days mentioned in Q 7:142 (‘We appointed Moses thirty nights and completed it with ten more’) were a period of fasting with the intention of speaking with God. It was a special God-given blessed time (awqāt al-karāma) in which Moses did not become hungry because the anticipation of standing before his Lord made him forget about eating and drinking.25 An anonymous source ‘from

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among the later generations’ depicts the meeting between Moses and God as a meeting between lovers. The promises of lovers are a pleasure even when broken.26 After that the focus shifts to the nature of Moses’s meeting with his Lord and His speaking to Moses. As in the sayings of Jaʿfar, it becomes clear that the other authorities also deem the absolute seclusion of Moses from the rest of creation to have been necessary for him to qualify for this auditory meeting. Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz points out how God spoke to Moses only in the deepest of the night and made him invisible for all other conscious beings so that the speech could be exclusively for Moses. The speech of God, explains al-Qurashī, comes to Moses through himself. Had He spoken to him ‘in the full scope of His greatness’, that is through Himself instead of through Moses, Moses would have been annihilated. Al-Qurashī thus shows great similarity to Jaʿfar’s ideas on the matter.27 Al-Ḥusayn also describes the process of seclusion from the rest of creation, of Moses transcending his human form and receiving God’s speech: He [God] removed [the sense of] temporal and spatial order from him, and he came to God according to what He invited him to, and what He wanted him for, and what He placed upon him, and He brought him forth from Himself, and made Himself apparent to him, by taking away every pain, energy, challenge, difficulties and efforts. When nothing remained for him by which he could be hindered, he was lifted to the station of [face-to-face] encounter (muwājaha) and conversation (mukhāṭaba), and He made his tongue loose for request and demand.28

Al-Wāsiṭī also holds that Moses disappeared from his normal human nature when receiving God’s speech and being in his immediate presence. When he realised the sweetness of God’s speech, he requested His unveiling.29 Yet another quote by an unidentified authority similarly describes how God singled Moses out from creation to receive his speech. This unidentified author also makes it lead to the request of the vision, which is then subsequently granted, albeit indirectly. Because of

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Moses’s request to God elsewhere in the Qurʾan (Q 20:25­–6) to widen his breast and ease his affairs, God made him reach the highest station. This station is coming to God through God (al-mujīʾ ilā Allāh bi’Llāh), a state in which all other states disappear from the subject. This state, the anonymous author holds, is what is meant by ‘When Moses came to Our appointed time and his Lord spoke to him’. Only in this elevated state, the highest and most honourable state even, did Moses hear God’s speech directly, invisible ‘from every eye, seeing and being seen, and from every form, being and coming forth, except for the one speaking and the one being spoken to’. In this state, hearing what was never heard before, he made a request never made before: to see God. The subsequent denial of the vision in the Qurʾanic verse, followed by the imperative to look at the mountain, is not seen as a denial per se. In the perspective of this anonymous author, a form of vision had already been granted before his request, through creation: once Moses returned from the highest state he was in, he saw none other than God before him, and saw Him in everything that could be looked and gazed at ( fī kulli manẓūr wa-mubṣar). When Moses experienced this indirect vision, he requested that God show Himself so that he could look on Him. It did not matter to Moses in what form God showed Himself, because he would not see anything other than God in front of him, and God would not leave him anymore after this state that he had reached.30 This is a good example of the state of ‘Gott vor Augen haben’ mentioned by Gramlich. Thus, by imagining the vision as a vision through creation, the official dogma that God is not seen in this world remains intact; the claimed experience of the mystic does not exceed the boundaries of his tradition and is in a way still conditioned by it. Al-Sulamī continues with the next part of the verse that contains the actual request and refusal: ‘He said, “My Lord, show [Yourself] to me, [so] I [can] look at You.” He said, “You shall not see Me, but look to the mountain.”’ In the commentary that follows, he does not name a source and also does not imply that it is a quote of an anonymous source; it could very well be one of the very few instances in his entire commentary when he gives his own opinion, although

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this cannot be verified. The passage explains that only the hearts of the knowers (ʿārifīn) that have attained experiential knowledge of God, supported with the lights of God-granted miracles (karāma) are capable of carrying and enduring the witnessing (mushāhada) of God. This is a very exceptional state that human beings cannot normally endure. The author therefore reassures his readers that the hearts that have reached this state of witnessing God are in fact not witnessing through themselves; it is through God Himself that they endure the witnessing of God and it is God who carries their hearts at that moment.31 This corresponds with Jaʿfar’s commentary in which he states that to be able to see God one must first reach a state of subsistence (baqāʾ) in God; something that is transient cannot reach the subsistent. Here something similar is proposed: when the heart witnesses God, the heart is under God’s complete control, such that the heart is no longer an independent actor. It is God Himself who witnesses God: Subsequently, when those hearts have carried Me, and have endured the witnessing of Me, then I am the one carrying Me, none other, because through Me he carried Me, and through Me he endured the witnessing of Me. There is no witnessing of God except for Him.32

A similar view is expressed by an anonymous quote, be it not through subsistence in God, but through annihilation ( fanāʾ) in God. When Moses requested the vision, God answered that he ‘shall not’ see Him while in human form (bashariyya). Only in a state of annihilation would Moses have been capable of receiving the manifestation of God. Moses then requested his selfhood and humanity to be annihilated (afninī ʿannī wa-ʿan bashariyyatī). Therefore, God made him faint and then manifested to him.33 For al-Ḥusayn, God’s refusal to show Himself was indeed a refusal. He points out how God comforted Moses by saying ‘but look at the mountain’ so that he did not depart in a state of desperate yearning for God, but had something to tranquillise him a bit. Al-Wāsiṭī stresses the temporary character of God’s refusal: it was refused for now, but not for eternity. When God manifests Himself, it is only by a

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measure of His attributes, it is not His complete essence by which He manifests.34 Al-Sulamī thus presents a plurality of opinions that show a rich variety of approaches to the verse, ranging from denials of the vision by Moses to an embrace of indirect modes of vision. It has become clear that by the time of al-Sulamī it was already a matter of controversy, and different positions among mystics were present from the early formative period of Sufism. The hierarchy between audition and vision was already established by the time of al-Sulamī as well: the longing for the vision followed upon hearing God and so is deemed a higher form of contact with the divine, more difficult to attain and demanding a higher spiritual state. From Sobriety to Intoxication: Al-Qushayrī Reading Moses

As described before, to al-Qushayrī it is clear that the vision of God is only granted to the believers in the otherworld. There is no vision in this world. Consequently, in his commentary he denies the vision of God by Moses: the allusive (ishārī) reading of the verse never escapes a solid Ashʿarī framework. However, it would be incorrect to say that al-Qushayrī’s reading of the verse is a ‘sober’ Sufi reading. Where his reading of Adam’s banishment was dominated by ‘sober’ Sufi pedagogical considerations, his reading of the request of Moses takes a more ‘intoxicated’ turn, interwoven with motives of love mysticism. This becomes clear from the very beginning of the passage, in the language with which al-Qushayrī describes the state in which Moses went to his appointment with God: ‘Moses came in the way of those yearning [for God], the way of those madly in love, Moses came without Moses, Moses came and nothing of Moses remained for Moses.’35 For al-Qushayrī Moses represents the highest state of piety: ‘The one yearning the most strongly of all creation for the Beloved is the most near to the Beloved, this is Moses (peace be upon him).’36 On one point al-Qushayrī diverges from a typical Ashʿarī position. Whereas most Ashʿarī theologians would state that Moses would not have asked for something that was impossible, al-Qushayrī considers the request of the vision of God as a sort of slip of the tongue. He cites

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a number of anonymous authorities – not mentioned by al-Sulamī – to stress the idea that Moses’s request was a slip of the tongue that occurred because he was overtaken by a state of ecstasy (wajd) and intoxication (sukr) after hearing the speech of God. The speech alone did not satisfy him and he wanted more: ‘When people drink more and more, their thirst increases, and when people are increasingly enthralled by love, they yearn more and more.’37 So overwhelmed was he by God’s speech, relates al-Qushayrī, that he forgot all the things he intended to say to God on behalf of his people and could only utter, ‘Show [Yourself] to me, [so] I [can] look at You.’38 In addition, the refusal by God is interpreted by invoking the symbolism of an ecstatic yearning. The refusal of the vision hurt Moses, and to look at the mountain was difficult for him, because if he could not look at God, he did not want to see anything else. Yet still he obeyed God and thereafter, when back in a state of sobriety (ṣaḥw), he repented. This repentance was the best replacement for the vision.39 Al-Qushayrī does not pass an explicit judgement on whether a state of sobriety is to be preferred over intoxication, and the fact that a prophet apparently reached this level of ecstasy most likely means that he did not reject it. But the fact that he closes the narrative with the repentance instead of the vision might be a hint that he suggested to his readers, most probably his direct pupils, to strive for that which is attainable for all believers in this world. For a moment al-Qushayrī shows another side, but in the end he returns to the sober Sufi pedagogue that we know so well from the larger part of his commentary. Vision of the Heart as a Foretaste of Paradise: Maybudī

Maybudī’s conventional commentary (separated from the Sufi commentary) gives a clear and unequivocal answer to the question of the vision: it was forbidden for Moses to see God in this world, and he could attain it only after death. Maybudī cites several well-known traditions to support this and mentions the most important theological arguments as to why the vision is not possible in this world, but only in the hereafter. He also defends the Sunni position against the Muʿtazilīs with the typical arguments discussed earlier.40 Then the

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Sufi commentary neatly follows the viewpoint that the vision was not granted to Moses. But in the case of Maybudī this does not lead to a sober understanding of the story either. He chooses to interpret the story in the language of love mysticism: Moses became drunk from the potion of love in his unique aural encounter with God. Maybudī contrasts Moses’s meeting with his Lord with an earlier meeting at the burning bush. The meeting at the burning bush (Q 28:29) was a journey of seeking, while the meeting at this mountain was one of joy. In this meeting, Moses came without a sense of selfhood, having lost himself in his inmost self (sirr). Drunk from the potion of love that he drank from the cup of sanctity, the words ‘Show [Yourself] to me’ boiled up inside him. Burning from having heard God’s speech in a state of intimate speech (munājāt), still drunk from ‘the wine of yearning’ (sharāb-i shawq), he finally exclaimed, ‘Show [Yourself] to me, [so] I [can] look at You.’ After this exclamation, the angels rebuked him. They pointed out that a lowly creature like Moses, a child of menstruating women, created from dust and water, was not qualified to see his Lord. They claimed that there was no chance for a created being to achieve communion (wiṣāl) with the ever-existing God. The angels were then commanded to leave Moses alone, since Moses could not really help having uttered this, having lost all restraint in his state of being in love.41 Annabel Keeler has suggested in her study of Maybudī’s commentary that the stories of Moses and Muhammad serve to establish a hierarchy between the prophets: shortcomings and weaknesses of earlier prophets are there to show the elevated rank of Muhammad.42 Keeler mentions a set of quotes related to the vision of God to support this. Maybudī states that in this life ‘lovers will have only a glimpse of the lights of those secrets and a whiff of the perfume of those traces. Only Muhammad had the capacity for direct witnessing (ʿiyān).’43 Other servants, including Moses, have to wait for the hereafter: ‘Today there can only be a witnessing of the heart (mushāhada-yi dil), tomorrow there will be direct witnessing with the eyes (muʿāyana-yi chashm).’44 The true vision will come only after death and it is this hope that will make death bearable for the believer: ‘Everyone hopes for something,

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and the hope of the mystic is for the vision [of God] (dīdār). Everyone loves life, and death is difficult for them, but the mystic needs death for the sake of vision.’45 Vision through Annihilation (Fanāʾ): Al-Daylamī

Like the authorities quoted by al-Sulamī, al-Daylamī first stresses the importance of the forty-day seclusion and fast as a preparation for reaching the right state to speak with God. He points out how the Sufi practice of a forty-day fast is based on this verse. Al-Daylamī follows a line similar to the Sufi authorities of al-Sulamī that this seclusion and fasting brings Moses to a state outside his human condition so that he is able to reach communion (wuṣūl) with God. Once outside his human condition during his forty-day fast, Moses does not feel hunger or thirst because these are characteristics of humans and animals, characteristics that he has surpassed. Al-Daylamī holds God’s speech with Moses to be an outward speech; different from the inward speech or intimate conversation (munājāt) that God’s friends (awliyāʾ) have with God through their inmost selves (sirr). He quotes al-Sulamī’s citation of Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz to stress that Moses was singled out from the rest of creation when he received this speech.46 On the issue of this-worldly vision, al-Daylamī stays within the boundaries of the theoretical positions embraced in his treatise Jawāhir al-asrār: the physical vision was denied, but a spiritual vision may have been granted to Moses. He cites several quotes from al-Sulamī’s commentary negating a vision by Moses (Ibn ʿAṭāʾ, al-Ḥusayn and Jaʿfar). The vision that Moses requested from God was a vision with the physical eye, as opposed to a vision by the eye of the heart and the inmost self (sirr) that is granted to all prophets and friends (awliyāʾ) of God. With the physical eye, they cannot see God in this world. This is also the meaning of God’s refusal ‘You shall not see Me’; following the conventional interpretation, al-Daylamī holds this to pertain to this world, not to the hereafter. He states that Moses repented for asking to see God while God did not want him to see Him. Had he known that, he would not have asked. The meaning of ‘I am first of the believers’ is that ‘no one sees You except whom You

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will and with whom You are content seeing You’.47 A last anonymous quote, not mentioned by al-Sulamī, explains that Moses was allowed only to speak with God, not to see Him, because vision is emanation of the essence (ishrāq al-dhāt), while speech is merely one of His attributes. Humans have ways to attain His attributes, while God’s essence is unattainable to them.48 Al-Daylamī disagrees with this and does not rule out a this-worldly vision of God’s essence: ‘I hold that the vision of the essence [of God] (ruʾyat al-dhāt) is not impossible for the servants. Impossible is to have an encompassing vision, knowledge and its likes.’ So the vision of God is possible, albeit in an imperfect way: the human faculties or the human mind cannot encompass God. In favour of such a non-physical vision of God’s essence, he mentions one quote from al-Sulamī’s commentary that can be interpreted as an endorsement of a non-physical vision by Moses, in a state of annihilation ( fanāʾ): When the vision was requested, he said: ‘You shall not see Me in your human condition (bashariyya).’ So he said: ‘Annihilate me and my human condition.’ So He annihilated him, and God was without parallel in His essence (dhāt), and He manifested Himself to Moses in his unconscious condition . . . He annihilated him until he saw Him, then He brought him back to His attributes.49

Al-Daylamī shows his sympathy to this idea of a vision through ­annihilation: ‘This is not far-fetched to me.’50 Indirect Vision through God’s Attributes and Acts: Rūzbihān

Moses appears a couple of times in Rūzbihān’s visionary autobiography Kashf al-asrār. For example, in one of his visionary descriptions, he relates: I sought God (glory be to him) at dawn on this night, and he spoke to me as he spoke to Moses there [at Mount Sinai], and several mountains split open. I saw in Mount Sinai a window in the mountain itself on the east side. The Truth (glory be to him) manifested himself to me from the window, and said, ‘Thus I caused myself to appear

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to Moses.’ I saw Moses as though he saw the Most high, and he fell from the mountain, intoxicated, to the foot of the mountain.51

This description shows that according to Rūzbihān God did indeed visually appear to Moses, albeit not directly, but through a window in the mountain. In another vision, he describes how God descended Mount Sinai in the dress of a great Sufi master, whose wrath made the mountain melt. Subsequently, He disappeared, reappeared, disappeared again and so on, to finally say ‘Thus I did to Moses.’52 Rūzbihān thus claimed to be able to experience the speech and vision of God Himself, as Moses did. Moses has become the prophetic model for his own experience. What does this mean for his interpretation of the Moses story in his Qurʾan commentary? Rūzbihān’s tafsīr is the lengthiest in terms of the commentary on this particular verse. It is, again, by far the most difficult to understand and apparently also the most ambiguous on the question of the vision. Rūzbihān creates complex solutions to the problem of the vision and offers a couple of different modes of vision. Like al-Qushayrī and Maybudī, Rūzbihān states that the request of the vision emanated from a state of intoxication, ecstasy and love evoked by the experience of hearing God. He cites the same anonymous quotes as al-Qushayrī to this extent.53 But he goes even further than that. The request for the vision of God follows on not only from an auditory encounter, but also from a different kind of indirect vision of God. He states: Had he not seen Him on the station of clothing (iltibās) in the vision of every atom from the intellect (al-ʿaql) to the earth (al-tharā) from the reflection of existence, he would not have found the way to request the witnessing of the unadulterated (al-ṣirf). Therefore, the vision (al-ruʾya) had become necessary.54

This understanding of a vision through creation preceding the request of a direct vision of God’s essence comes close to the statement of the earlier discussed anonymous authority from al-Sulamī’s commentary,

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who also stated that the request of vision followed on from a vision of God through creation. Rūzbihān quotes this saying verbatim: He saw God in everything visible to him . . . and when these states were realised for him, he said, ‘My Lord show Yourself to me so that I can look at You, because in everything seen I return to you’, meaning, ‘Show me what You wish, and I will not see any other than You in front of me.’55

He presents yet another mode of seeing God. While Moses was still Moses – that is, when not in a state of annihilation ( fanāʾ) – he was not able to see God in terms of His quality of eternity. Therefore, God commanded him to look to a created thing like himself, that is, the mountain: God had made the mountain a reflection of His action ( fiʿl), and He manifested (tajalla) Himself in terms of His attribute (ṣifa) to His specific act ( fiʿl khāṣṣ), and subsequently to the mountain. Moses saw the beauty of eternity ( jamāl al-qidam) in the reflection of the mountain and fainted, because he reached his goal commensurate with his state. Had He manifested Himself to Moses in His pure form (ṣirfan), Moses would have become fine dust. And had He manifested Himself to the mountain in His pure form, the mountain would have burnt to the seventh earth. Rather, He manifested Himself to the mountain in terms of the essence of greatness (ʿayn al-ʿaẓama) and the sublimity of eternity (subuḥāt al-azaliyya).56

Moses could not bear the vision of God’s pure essence, and so was diverted to a vision of the reflection of God’s attributes and acts. Even that made him faint. Rūzbihān offers more sayings like this, not only focused on Moses, but making this a general rule for believers: some of the believers have reached such a high state that they see none but God in creation, from the throne to the earth (min al-ʿarsh ilā al-tharā). His beauty and majesty are manifest in creation and reach the eyes through the heart. He quotes ‘one of those madly in love’ as having said: ‘I did not look at anything, without seeing God in it.’57 This comes close to the concept

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of tajallī as later developed in the schools of Ibn al-ʿArabī and Najm al-Dīn al-Kubrā not long after Rūzbihān. Another mode of vision that Rūzbihān presents is a vision with the eye of the heart and spirit. God manifests Himself to them with His beauty and majesty. The heart can bear this manifestation, because it is created from the light of His angelic realm (malakūt) and imprinted with the light of His realm of might ( jabarūt).58 He connects this mode of vision with a verse from Sūrat al-Najm: ‘The heart did not lie about what it saw’ (Q 53:11), which in tafsīr literature is considered to be about the miʿrāj of Muhammad. Moses, he states, requested the vision with his naked eye, while his eye was veiled from his heart. Therefore, he could not directly see God. The heart of Muhammad, however, was one with his eye when he witnessed the beauty of God. Therefore, he saw God with the heart and the eye.59 This way he establishes a hierarchy between the vision of the heart by Moses and the vision of the naked eye by Muhammad in the night of his ascension; Muhammad’s vision was more complete, corresponding with his higher rank as a prophet and mystical model. Conclusion

Again we have witnessed how relatively confined the genealogy of the Sufi commentary tradition was in this particular period. Although quotes from al-Sulamī’s redaction, and to some extent from al-Qushayrī’s, do indeed reappear in later commentaries, they do not determine the course and content of the later commentaries per se. Their new ideas are not just given against the backdrop of already existing opinions; there is a great deal of new, independent material in each of the later commentaries, and the authors were clearly not afraid to be inventive and introduce new ideas and concepts independently of the existing traditions, and also relatively independently of the conventional text-based and theological tradition. This tradition is hardly quoted (with the exception of Maybudī, albeit in a separate category in his commentary) and there are no explicit references to it. However, we have seen that the Sufi understanding of the verse never really escapes the theological framework of the authors: there

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is a constant implicit presence of these conventional understandings of the verse. One idea all commentaries do seem to share, albeit with some differences, is this: before Moses had reached the point of requesting the vision, he had reached a state in which he had lost his sense of self or had surpassed his human condition. However, on the question of whether the vision was actually subsequently granted, and if so in which mode, there is a great deal of difference. Only two of the commentaries categorically deny Moses’s vision of God: al-Qushayrī and Maybudī. Neither of these two included in their commentaries the quotations from al-Sulamī’s redaction that imply a vision by annihilation ( fanāʾ). On the exact reasons, a definitive answer cannot be given. It may have something to do with the fact that their commentaries are the only ones that do not exclusively contain commentary by the hermeneutical method of allusion (ishāra), but include conventional text-based and theological commentary as well. However, the fact that Maybudī and al-Qushayrī did not shy away from using ecstatic vocabulary and symbolism shows that the incorporation of conventional material does not necessarily ‘force’ a more sober understanding of Sufism. Maybudī could express himself quite freely in the language of a more ecstatic love mysticism, probably because that space was created by strictly separating the ‘outward’ (ẓāhir) from the ‘inward’ (bāṭin) in his commentary. It is perhaps because in al-Qushayrī’s tafsīr the two strands are more or less interwoven and not clearly separated that he could not move too far away from the boundaries of conventional understandings of the verse, and ends his narrative on a sober note. Still, in this specific passage he is much more ecstatic than in the rest of the commentary. As for the hierarchy between the encounters of Moses and Muhammad, I suggest that Q 7:143 should be read and analysed together with the first eighteen verses of Sūrat al-Najm. Some commentators, like Rūzbihān and Maybudī, established this connection themselves. But in cases where this is not the case, it may be worthwhile to read and analyse them together. It is clear that they more or less deal with the same theme and reading them together may show

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how the commentators viewed the position of the prophets and their aural and visual experiences as mystical models. Sūrat al-Najm is, therefore, our case study in the next chapter. Notes

 1 Gramlich even made the statement that longing for the vision is the very core of mysticism: ‘Dem Mystiker geht es um die Schau: er will Gott sehen’ (The vision is the goal of the mystic; he wants to see God). To support this point he quotes al-Dārānī answering the question of what the ʿārifīn want: ‘Bei Gott! Sie wollen nur das Sehen, warum Mose gebeten hat!’ (By God! They only want to see that for which Moses prayed!). Gramlich, Der eine Gott, 229. Böwering also mentions the vision of God as a basic theme in Islamic mysticism (Böwering, ‘Scriptural Senses’, 353).  2 Michael Ebstein has made this suggestion in his reading of passages on a this-worldly vision of God in the work of Dhū’l-Nūn al-Miṣrī. Michael Ebstein, ‘Mystical Ascensions and the Hereafter in the Here and Now: Some Notes on Eschatology in the Traditions Attributed to Dhū l-Nūn al-Miṣrī’, paper delivered at the HHIT International Symposium ‘Crossing Boundaries: Mystical and Philosophical Conceptualizations of the Dunyā/Ākhira Relationship’ (Utrecht University, 5 July 2013), http:// vimeo.com/84535394 (accessed 18 August 2014). See also Karamustafa, ‘Eschatology in Early Sufi Thought’.  3 See Böwering, ‘From Word to Vision’.  4 For example, al-Hujwīrī defends that hearing is a more important sense than seeing, even in relation to God: ‘If it is said that vision of God is better than hearing His word, I reply that our knowledge of God’s visibility to the faithful in Paradise is derived from hearing: it is a matter of indifference whether the understanding allows that God shall be visible or not, inasmuch as we are assured of the fact by oral tradition. Hence hearing is superior to sight’ (Nicholson, Kashf al-maḥjūb, 393–4). See also Gerhard Böwering, ‘From Word to Vision’, 207–9.  5 A transmission by Ibn ʿAbbās reads: ‘Intimate friendship (khilla) is for Abraham, speech (kalām) for Moses, and vision (ruʾya) for Muhammad.’ Maybudī, Kashf, 9:724. As we shall see in the next chapter, this vision of God by Muhammad was disputed by conflicting traditions.  6 See Chapter 4, note 1. On the particular case of Moses as a mystical model, see Georges C. Anawati and Louis Gardet, Mystique musulmane: aspects

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et tendances – expériences et techniques (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1968), 261–71.  7 Nicholson, Kashf al-maḥjūb, 373, 381­–2, 389; Sarrāj, Lumaʿ, 68–9, 335, 350, 96, 116–17. For a list of Sufi terms alluding to visionary experience, see Marcia K. Hermansen, ‘Visions as “Good to Think”: A Cognitive Approach to Visionary Experience in Islamic Sufi Thought’, Religion 27 (1997): 27­–30.  8 Q 7:143. Translation is mine.  9 Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf, 2:111–16; Anthony K. Tuft, ‘The Ruʾyā Controversy and the Interpretation of Qurʾān Verse VII (al-Aʿrāf): 143’, Hamdard Islamicus 6, no. 3 (1983): 21. 10 Tuft, ‘Ruʾyā Controversy’, 13–14. 11 Ibid., 18. 12 Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, 6:47–59. 13 Ibn al-Qayyim, Ḥādī, 196–7. 14 The exact relationship of al-Thaʿlabī to Sufism is not yet clarified. It is certain that he studied with al-Sulamī, and that he incorporated Sufi explanations current in his milieu into his Qurʾan commentary. See Saleh, Formation, 20, 53–66. 15 Thaʿlabī, Kashf, 4:275. 16 That also the overwhelming experience of God’s word could lead to death according to al-Thaʿlabī is indicated in his work Qatlā al-Qurʾān, a collection of stories of pious people who died while hearing or reciting the Qurʾan. Whether this is a typical Sufi theme or a more general expression of piety is matter of debate. See Saleh, Formation, 59–65. 17 Al-Māwardī was indeed criticised by Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 771/1370) in his Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿīyya for having Muʿtazilī leanings. EI2, s.v. ‘Al-Māwardī’, by C. Brockelmann, 6:869. 18 Māwardī, Nukat, 2:257. 19 He compares it with the request to eat a stone or an apple. The first is impossible, the second possible. For the stone one would say ‘The stone cannot to be eaten’, while in the case of an apple one would say ‘You shall not eat the apple’. Wāḥidī, Basīṭ, 9:333. 20 Ibid., 9:331–5. 21 Mayer, Spiritual Gems, 38. 22 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:237–42; Nwyia, ‘Tafsīr mystique’, 196–7; Mayer, Spiritual Gems, 37–40.

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23 Mayer translates ʿilm al-iṭṭilāʿ as ‘knowledge of beholding (God) (imminently)’. Mayer, Spiritual Gems, 39. 24 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:237–42; Nwyia, ‘Tafsīr mystique’, 196–7; Mayer, Spiritual Gems, 37–40. 25 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:237. 26 This is further illustrated by the following line of poetry: ‘Let me wait and postpone, promise me and do not fulfil’ (Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:237). 27 Ibid., 1:238–9. 28 Ibid., 1:238. 29 Ibid., 1:240. 30 Ibid., 1:239. 31 Ibid., 1:239–40. 32 Ibid., 1:240. 33 Ibid., 1:242. 34 Ibid., 1:240–1. See also Laury Silvers, A Soaring Minaret: Abu Bakr alWasiti and the Rise of Baghdadi Sufism (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2010), 75–6. 35 Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 1:564. 36 Ibid., 1:565. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Maybudī, Kashf, 3:723–8. 41 Ibid., 3:731–2. 42 Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 210, 244–7. 43 Maybudī, Kashf, 5:165; Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 195. 44 Maybudī, Kashf, 5:384; Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 195. 45 Maybudī, Kashf, 3:732–3; Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 195. 46 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 57b. 47 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fols 58b–59a. He does mention a minority opinion that Moses had seen God in this world at another occasion, allegedly referred to in Q 32:23. This opinion is not mentioned in any of the other commentaries discussed. 48 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fols 58b–59a. 49 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 58b. 50 Ibid. 51 Baqlī’s Kashf translated in Ernst, Unveiling of Secrets, 92.

52 53 54 55 56 57 58

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Ibid., 22. Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:463–4. Ibid., 1:462. Ibid., 1:463. See also Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 1:239. Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:465. Ibid., 1:466. Carl Ernst explains malakūt as the ‘locus for his visionary encounters with angels, prophets, and God’ and jabarūt as the ‘locus for experiencing the wrathful and powerful manifestations of the Attributes of majesty’. Ernst, Ruzbihan, 31. 59 Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 1:466.

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7

A Vision at the Utmost Boundary

Introduction There is no dearth of scholarship on Muhammad’s night journey and ascension, to the extent that it is quite challenging to write something that has not yet been said.1 Sufi understandings of the vision of God in relation to Muhammad’s ascension (miʿrāj), however, are still underexplored and worthy of further in-depth study.2 This is what is intended with this chapter. Through a detailed reading and discussion of the commentaries by our main authors on verses related to the vision during Muhammad’s night journey (isrāʾ), we hope to shed new light on how Sufi authors understood this vision, and how this relates to conventional understandings of the vision during the isrāʾ and miʿrāj in Islamic tradition. In most Islamic literature that deals with the isrāʾ and miʿrāj, descriptions of Paradise and Hell play a prominent role and are even arguably the most important aspect of the ascension narratives. However, in our Sufi Qurʾan commentaries this theme is strikingly absent. Sufi exegesis of the miʿrāj-related verses shows the same disregard for the otherworld that we observed in Chapter 3. Only the Qurʾanic passages that the authors could interpret in relation to the themes of nearness and vision come to the fore. The journey to 227

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Paradise and Hell was not worth mentioning for Sufi exegetes: only the journey to God mattered to them. In Sufism, the miʿrāj has traditionally functioned as a model for instruction to attain this nearness to and vision of God. The likes of al-Basṭāmī, al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī produced and collected texts that gave a mystical twist to Muhammad’s ascent.3 In our analysis, we focus on one particular aspect of the miʿrāj narrative: the vision of God. Böwering has distinguished four main motifs relating to the vision of God in the ascension narrative, each related to a different early Sufi authority. The first two motifs are reminiscent of what we have encountered in the analysis of Moses’s request for the vision. The first motif is the vision during the ascension as a foretaste of the vision in the hereafter, which Böwering relates to al-Wāsiṭī (d. 320/932). The second motif considers the vision during the ascension not as a foretaste of the world to come, but rather as the recapturing of the primordial vision of God at the Day of the Covenant. Böwering relates this to Sahl al-Tustarī. The third motif is the interiorisation of Muhammad’s vision in the individual mystic. He relates this to Ibn ʿAṭāʾ (d. 309/922). The fourth motif, related to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), links the vision of God to the theme of love: the visionary encounter is an encounter of mutual love and intimacy.4 The first two motifs especially show the relatedness of the theme of vision in this context with the grander scheme proposed in our introductory chapter: the vision of the miʿrāj is either a reactualisation of the primordial vision or an eschatological vision brought into this-worldly life. Böwering’s classification also once again emphasises the relatedness of the themes of love and vision. In what follows, we will see whether this also holds true for the discussions on the miʿrāj in the works of our commentators. The Qurʾan and the Night Journey

The Qurʾan contains two passages that are traditionally associated with the night journey and Muhammad’s ascension: Q 53:1–18 (related to Q 81:19–25) and Q 17:1 (possibly related to Q 17:60, 8:43 and 48:27).5 The verses themselves are rather opaque and do not

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refer to an ascent (miʿrāj, lit. ‘ladder’) explicitly, nor do they reveal the identities of the involved actors: they are merely referred to as ‘he’, ‘him’ or ‘His servant’. Detailed narrative of the night journey and the ascension developed outside the Qurʾan, most notably in hadith literature.6 Only when the narrative was firmly established as part of the Islamic faith was it read into these Qurʾanic passages in exegetical literature, in a process that Neuwirth has called ‘mythologising exegesis’, a process that ‘dissolves the Qurʾanic statements into its individual elements in order to construct out of these elements sideplots and background images’.7 The identities of the subjects involved in the opaque Qurʾanic narratives were thus a matter of speculation in exegetical literature. As we shall see, several options coexisted for a long time in tafsīr literature. All of these verses are important in our analysis, but of special significance are a couple of verses from Sūrat al-Najm that describe a visionary encounter between two unidentified entities. We will first have a closer look at the reception of these verses in the early tafsīr tradition, how these early positions were disseminated in the Nishapur school, and then compare these to our Sufi sources.8 Divine or Angelic Manifestation: Readings of Sūrat al-Najm

When glancing at late premodern and modern commentaries on the Qurʾan, the visionary encounters in Sūrat al-Najm are mostly interpreted as angelic manifestations. Most commentators state that Muhammad saw Gabriel. Very rarely the option of a vision of God is mentioned, mostly only to refute the position.9 The idea that Muhammad saw God was apparently considered problematic in late premodern and modern Islamic thought. This was not always the case. As we shall see, in the period that we are studying, the option of a vision of God by Muhammad during his this-worldly life was a serious and prominent position in Qurʾan commentaries. The option of an angelic vision was present, but not necessarily the most prominent. When Sufi commentators interpreted Sūrat al-Najm within their larger narrative of the possibility of seeing God during this-worldly life, they thus remained within the boundaries of what was perceived

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as a legitimate, even conventional, interpretation in their time. There was no need to overstep the boundaries of the contemporary interpretations for these Sufis; the exegetical option of a vision of God by Muhammad was present and much more widely accepted than in later exegetical traditions. From very early on, whether Muhammad saw God face-to-face during his night journey had been a matter of controversy. The controversy over the meaning of the verses in Sūrat al-Najm that hint at a visionary meeting dated back to opinions attributed to the companions of Muhammad, which may have been back-projections of later theological debates. Conflicting traditions found their way into Qurʾan commentaries. Sayings in favour of the vision of God by Muhammad were attributed to ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbbās (d. 68/687), Anas b. Mālik (d. 93/711) and, a generation later, ʿIkrima (d. 105/723–4). A strong statement against the vision was attributed to Muhammad’s late spouse, ʿĀʾisha (d. 58/678).10 Several positions were taken based on these transmissions. Some confirmed Muhammad’s vision of God by the eye during the night journey, some denied it (mostly replacing God with Gabriel), and some took a middle position claiming that it was a vision of God by the heart. Yet another position held that Muhammad saw God twice, once with the eye and once with the heart.11 The first encounter mentioned in Sūrat al-Najm is a ‘revelation’ (waḥy) that ‘one with mighty powers’ (shadīd al-quwwā) taught ‘him’.12 Most scholars in the field of Qurʾanic Studies understood this as a revelatory meeting between God and Muhammad.13 However, there was a striking consensus from very early on in the tafsīr tradition that the ‘one with mighty powers’ refers to Gabriel and that ‘him’ refers to Muhammad. No one claimed that it was God, nor was this exegetical option mentioned at all. Even among early exegetes such as Ibn ʿAbbās, Mujāhid and Muqātil, the only opinion was that this is a reference to Gabriel revealing the Qurʾan to Muhammad. This remains so in later conventional tafsīrs as well as in the Sufi commentaries. In the Sufi commentaries, only al-Qushayrī and al-Daylamī refer to this issue. Rūzbihān and al-Sulamī do not comment upon the verse

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Table 7.1 ‘Two bow-lengths away or even closer’ Q 53:8–9

Muhammad Gabriel Gabriel to God to Personal to God to God Muhammad Muhammad preference

Early commentaries Ibn ʿAbbās + Mujāhid Muqātil

School of Nishapur Thaʿlabī + Māwardī + Wāḥidī Sufi commentaries Sulamī + Qushayrī + Maybudī II + Maybudī III Daylamī + Rūzbihān +

+ + +

+

+ + + +

+

Gabriel to Muhammad Gabriel to God God to Muhammad

+

Not mentioned Gabriel to Muhammad Not mentioned

+

Not mentioned Not mentioned Gabriel

Muhammad to God Muhammad to God

at all. Maybudī deals with the matter only briefly in his conventional commentary.14 However, it is different regarding the second mention of an encounter, in Q 53:8–9. This passage mentions how someone draws near and comes down, until he is ‘two bow-lengths away or even closer’ (thumma danā fa-tadallā, fa-kāna qāba qawsayni aw adnā). Who or what draws near and comes down, and towards whom or what, does not become clear from the Qurʾanic passage itself and is again the domain of exegesis. Commentaries give roughly four options: Muhammad moved towards God; God moved towards Muhammad; Gabriel moved towards Muhammad; or Gabriel moved towards God (see Table 7.1). These four options are already present among our sample of earliest commentators. Ibn ʿAbbās mentions two opinions: either Gabriel drew near to Muhammad or Muhammad drew near to God. His personal preference is the first option.15 In the commentary by Mujāhid, only the opinion of Gabriel drawing near to God

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is ­mentioned.16 Muqātil sees no difficulty in claiming that God drew near and descended to Muhammad.17 As an avowed anthropomorphist who even believed that God had physically touched Muhammad, this idea was not problematic to him. Only the first three of these early positions find their way into the commentaries of the Nishapur school. Al-Thaʿlabī and al-Māwardī mention them all equally without stating a preference. These commentators from Nishapur do not cite Muqātil’s position, probably because its anthropomorphic implications were not acceptable to them.18 Muqātil’s position reappears only in Maybudī’s conventional tafsīr. He also suggests that God may have descended to Muhammad.19 To Maybudī, the statement may not have been so problematic given the negative attitude towards kalām of his teacher ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī. Al-Daylamī mentions the option as well, but merely says that some have suggested it and that he doubts its correctness.20 It is a salient point that of the Sufi commentators only al-Qushayrī involves Gabriel in his position. All other Sufi commentaries prefer the option that Muhammad drew closer to God. This option fits better with the typical Sufi theme of nearness to God as a mystical objective, and thus pushes the angelic option to the background.21 So far the Qurʾanic verses that refer to an encounter of revelation and an encounter of drawing near have been described. The two passages after these explicitly mention visionary encounters, and this is where things become more equivocal. Q 53:11 reads as follows: mā kadh(dh)aba al-fuʾādu ma raʾā. Two variant readings are extant of the verse, with consequences for its meaning according to exegetes. The variant readings differ with respect to the verb k-dh-b, namely whether the dh should be read with a shadda or not. Read without a shadda, the subject would refer to itself, rendering the meaning: ‘The heart did not belie what it [the heart] saw.’ The heart itself is the locus of the vision according to this reading. When read with a shadda, it emphasises a higher level of belying. The locus of vision is other than the heart, which would imply a less emphasised form of belying; in exegesis this is explained as the vision of the eye, which has a higher level of certainty and would need a stronger form of belying than a vision by the heart: ‘The heart did not belie what it [the eye]

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Table 7.2 ‘The heart did not belie what he/it saw’ Q 53:11–12

Muhammad saw God with the eye

Early commentaries Ibn ʿAbbās + Mujāhid

Muhammad saw God with the heart

Muhammad saw Gabriel

+

+

+ + +

+ + +

+

Muqātil

School of Nishapur Thaʿlabī + Māwardī + Wāḥidī + Sufi commentaries Sulamī + Qushayrī Maybudī II

Maybudī III Daylamī Rūzbihān

+ + +

+ + +

+

+

Personal preference Muhammad saw God with the heart Not mentioned. Cites Gabriel option more often Raʾā min amri rabbihī

Muhammad saw God with the eye Muhammad saw ‘signs’ Muhammad saw God with the eye Muhammad saw God with the eye Muhammad saw God with the eye and the heart

saw.’22 In the commentary tradition, the most important exegetical options are Muhammad’s vision of either God or Gabriel (see Table 7.2). For the vision of God, the modality of the eye and the heart are both mentioned. In addition, minor positions are mentioned, such as Muhammad seeing God in his sleep, seeing the might of God, seeing a light or signs.23 The second passage referring to a visionary encounter follows directly on from the former: ‘He saw him/Him at another descent, at the lote tree of the utmost boundary’ (Q  53:13–14). Here the same basic positions can be distinguished as in the former passage (see Table 7.3). However, the idea of an angelic manifestation instead of a

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Table 7.3 ‘He saw him/Him at another descent, at the lote tree of the utmost boundary’ Q 53:13–14

Muhammad saw God with the eye

Early commentaries Ibn ʿAbbās + Mujāhid Muqātil

School of Nishapur Thaʿlabī Māwardī Wāḥidī

+

Sufi commentaries Sulamī Qushayrī

Muhammad saw God with the heart + + + +

Maybudī II

Maybudī III Daylamī Rūzbihān

+ +

Muhammad saw Gabriel +

+

Personal preference Muhammad saw Gabriel Muhammad saw Gabriel

+ +

+ +

Gabriel saw God

+

Gabriel saw God Muhammad saw Gabriel Essentially same vision as first

divine manifestation is a bit more prominent. The exegetes considered it problematic to attribute the idea of a descent (nazla) mentioned in the verse to God, since they considered God to be transcendent above movement and place. In exegesis then, the passage is often linked to the angelic manifestation described in Q 81:19–23 (‘He saw him at the clear horizon’). In this way, Q 81:19–23 would be the first vision of Gabriel, and the visionary encounter mentioned in Q 53:13 would be the second. Al-Thaʿlabī, for example, followed the opinion attributed to ʿĀʾisha that Muhammad saw Gabriel in his true form at this descent, mentioning it as the best option according to scholars, because the vision is connected to a place and is thus not applicable to God: ‘Describing God with a place and descent, which is relocation, is impossible.’24

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Vision and Nearness: Al-Sulamī Compared with the rich and varied material in his collected commentaries on Q 7:143, al-Sulamī’s commentary on the verses related to the miʿrāj is not very extensive. This may be because he had already collected the bulk of the material available to him in his Laṭāʾif al-miʿrāj and saw no point in collecting all of them twice.25 What does catch the eye is that the verses dealing with nearness and vision attract most commentary in his discussion of Sūrat al-Najm. The commentary on this surah is not at all used to discuss details of the isrāʾ and the miʿrāj, nor to reflect on Muhammad’s visit to Paradise and Hell from a Sufi perspective. Apparently all that mattered to the early Sufi commentators quoted by al-Sulamī were the verses that the Sufis could use to describe a moment of intimacy and nearness to God and, more controversially, the vision of Him. In the commentary on the second verse of Sūrat al-Najm (‘Your companion has not strayed, nor erred’), a link to the theme of nearness and vision has already been established. Al-Sulamī quotes both Ibn ʿAtāʾ and Jaʿfar as stating that Muhammad did not stray from nearness to or vision of God for the blink of an eye.26 The two modes of vision suggested in conventional tafsīr, of the eye and of the heart, both return in al-Sulamī’s commentary. Sahl is quoted in support of a vision of the heart: ‘He is right opposite in his witnessing of his Lord, seeing Him with his heart.’27 Bundār b. al-Ḥusayn (d. 353/964) also considers it to be a vision of the heart. Two words referring to the heart – fuʾād and qalb – are not synonymous for him, however, but are the separate layers of a spiritual organ. The fuʾād contains the qalb: ‘The fuʾād is the vessel of the qalb. The fuʾād did not doubt about what the foundation saw, and that [foundation] is the qalb.’28 According to Jaʿfar, the theme of vision is again related to the theme of divine love. He shrouds the vision in mystery, a secret known only by the two Lovers: ‘No one knows what he saw, except He who showed and he who saw. The Beloved came close to the beloved, a confidant for him, an intimate friend with him.’29 Only Ibn ʿAṭāʾ is quoted in favour of a vision with the eye. He understands the verse according

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to the reading with the shadda: ‘His heart did not belie what he saw with his eyes.’ Not everyone is capable of this, according to Ibn ʿAṭāʾ; sometimes someone is overwhelmed by what his eyes see, while his heart cannot grasp it. However, Muhammad was capable of this.30 Angelic Manifestation: Al-Qushayrī

The commentary of al-Qushayrī differs from the other commentaries in that he chooses Gabriel as the main character in the encounters in the verse. This difference becomes most visible when we look at which sayings from al-Sulamī’s commentary on Sūrat al-Najm are included in al-Qushayrī’s Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt. Al-Qushayrī includes only one quote from al-Sulamī’s commentary, a saying by Jaʿfar (quoted anonymously) in which the verse ‘then he drew near and came down’ is interpreted as Muhammad drawing near to his own heart.31 He leaves out all quotes that describe a vision of God by Muhammad. Al-Qushayrī thus shows himself, contrary to his commentary on Moses’s request to see God, in an extraordinarily sober position, avoiding themes that pertain to nearness, vision or even love mysticism. In his commentary on the verses thumma danā fa-tadallā, fa-kāna qāba qawsayn aw adnā, al-Qushayrī opens with his personal opinion that Gabriel drew close to Muhammad and descended, being two bowlengths away from Muhammad. Why al-Qushayrī made this choice is not easy to reconstruct. It was an unusual choice in the context of his broader intellectual milieu and most of his contemporaries in Nishapur did not even mention this option. Only after having mentioned his own opinion most prominently does his commentary continue with two other voices that interpret the verse as Muhammad drawing near to God. However, these voices consider this drawing near to be an inward matter. Drawing near to God to two bow-lengths, for example, is interpreted as ‘the imminence of blessing’ (dunuw al-karāma) or an increase in experiential knowledge. The descent mentioned in the verse, then, is Muhammad prostrating before his Lord.32 Only in his commentary on verse Q  53:11 does al-Qushayrī neutrally mention the opinion that Muhammad saw God, without specifying the modality of this vision: ‘He saw his Lord that night

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in a way where he knew Him before seeing Him.’33 However, even here it is not framed as his own preferred opinion. Al-Qushayrī prefers to interpret the object of vision as signs (āyāt), referring to the ‘signs’ mentioned in Q  53:18 (‘He saw of the greatest signs of his Lord’). This was all Muhammad saw that night. These signs were seen with the eye, and understood by the heart.34 In his commentary on Q 53:13, he gives only the interpretation that Gabriel saw God a second time. He does not discuss any opinion that claims a vision of God by Muhammad.35 It is tempting to attribute al-Qushayrī’s avoidance of the theme of the vision of God to his Ashʿarī partisanship. However, Ashʿarī doctrine was not against the idea of Muhammad seeing God during the night journey per se. Moreover, other commentators from Nishapur with Ashʿarī leanings did not see a problem in interpreting the verses this way. It is also unlikely that he was somehow careful to express an opinion in favour of the vision of God for fear of a backlash from the Muʿtazilī partisans. After all, al-Qushayrī took a clear stance in the schism in Nishapur and even wrote polemical defences for typical Ashʿarī stances against the Muʿtazila.36 An explanation may be that he, like his predecessors al-Sarrāj (d. 377/988) and al-Kalābādhī (d. 380/990 or 384/994), was very wary of people who claimed a heavenly journey and visionary experience similar to that of Muhammad.37 His wariness of claiming a vision of God by Muhammad and preferring the Gabriel option may have been a way to counter such claims and to let his students refrain from striving for and claiming of similar experiences. Muhammad Surpassing Moses: Maybudī

Before moving to the ishārī part (nawbat III) of Maybudī’s commentary, it is worthwhile focusing first on the conventional part (nawbat II). This will help us to understand how his theological positions on the miʿrāj, and most importantly on the issue of Muhammad’s vision of God, are entangled with his ishārī understandings of the verses. In his commentary on Sūrat al-Najm, Maybudī’s identity as a Ḥanbalī traditionist in credal matters comes to the fore, focusing as he does on

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grammatical explanation and evaluation of transmissions rather than on theological reasoning. Maybudī first takes note of the two variant readings of Q 53:11 and explains the difference in meaning between the two readings of the verb k-dh-b, as discussed above. He then relates the different opinions on the object of the vision: God (with the heart or the eyes) or Gabriel. He has an outspoken preference for the position of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Anas and ʿIkrima in favour of a vision of God with the eyes, mentioning it as the only right position. He dismisses ʿĀʾisha’s position, who allegedly stated that Muhammad never claimed to have seen God, because she referred not to what she heard Muhammad say, but to what she did not hear him say. He prefers the transmission by Ibn ʿAbbās, who claimed to have heard Muhammad say that he saw God. He thinks this is a stronger proof because it contains a confirmation through what was actually heard from the Prophet, while ʿĀʾisha’s negation came from her own opinion. The first type of evidence has more weight for him. On Q 53:13, he notes the same difference of opinion as on the former verse. Here he does not make a clear choice himself, but merely conveys the position that it may have been either Gabriel or God.38 In his ishārī commentary on Sūrat al-Najm, the issue of vision is not Maybudī’s main point of interest. Although he comments only on the verses that are related to nearness and vision, the theme of vision does not form the core of his comments. Most of his comments are a praise of Muhammad and his night journey as the purpose of creation. From several passages it becomes clear that he considered Muhammad’s vision of God to have been a face-to-face encounter with the physical eye. In his commentary on Q 17:1, he confirms that Muhammad saw God. However, he shrouds the details of the meeting with God in mystery and stresses that they are impenetrable for others: ‘He heard the secret, he tasted the wine, he saw the vision of God . . . he saw what he saw, and no one knows about these secrets, intellects and imaginations are deprived of comprehending them.’39 In his commentary on the first verse, he states that ‘By the star when it descended’ is an allusion to Muhammad’s return from the face-to-face vision (ḥaḍrat-i ʿiyān) in the miʿrāj, where his heart also found ‘the

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spirit of witnessing’ (rūḥ-i mushāhadat) and he reached a state of nearness (qurb) and communion (muwāṣala).40 As earlier, in his discussion on Q 7:143 Maybudī uses the theme of the vision of God to establish a hierarchy between Moses and Muhammad, in favour of the latter.41 He explains that Moses thought that his ascension to Mount Sinai was the highest possible level to be reached. While Moses’s request for vision was rejected with the ‘sword of vigilant care’ (ṣamṣām-i ghayrat) – that is, the sharp words ‘You shall not see Me’ (Q 7:143) – Muhammad was commanded not to direct his eyes at anything but Him: ‘Do not divert your eyes’ (Q 15:88). Muhammad’s eyes were not diverted according to Maybudī, quoting Q 53:17 (‘The eyesight did not swerve, nor did it transgress’) as well as some verses of poetry alluding to Muhammad seeing God.42 In addition, in his commentary on Q 17:1, Maybudī links Muhammad’s journey with Moses’s retreat on Mount Sinai. He points out that while Moses came to the mountain by himself – ‘Moses came to Our appointed time’ (Q 7:143) – Muhammad’s journey had an involuntary nature to it – ‘Who took His servant by night’ (Q 17:1).43 Muhammad’s Light Entering God’s World: Al-Daylamī

As in the commentary on Adam’s banishment and Moses’s request for the vision, al-Daylamī’s commentaries on the verses related to Muhammad’s isrāʾ and miʿrāj are rather brief. While Q 17:1 remains completely unaddressed, Sūrat al-Najm provokes only minimal fragmentary comments. This briefness is in stark contrast to the prominence that he gives to the question of ruʾyat Allāh in his other treatises. On Q 53:11, he states only that ‘the heart did not belie, deny or doubt what the eye saw, witnessing with the eye. He witnessed his Lord face-to-face with the sight of the eye (baṣar).’44 He thus is a proponent of an ocular vision of God by Muhammad. He confirms this in the next verse, even stating that Muhammad saw not only the attributes of God, but also His essence. This vision, according to al-Daylamī, is repeated ‘at another descent’, or another ascension, at the lote tree of the utmost boundary (sidrat al-muntahā).45 Al-Daylamī interprets ‘Then he drew near’ to refer to Muhammad

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coming near to his Lord, moving into His world as the veils between them are torn apart. Muhammad is described as a light in veils. ‘And descended’ is an allusion to the beams of Muhammad spreading out in God’s world after these veils have been removed: He was a light in veils. When he went out of them [the veils], his beams were spread there like the sun when it goes out from the clouds. His body was close like the nearness of two bow-lengths. Then what was left of the veils was lifted, and he became nearer and closer.46

According to al-Daylamī, many falsely consider this drawing near to be divine indwelling (ḥulūl). He stresses that ‘it is nothing but the lifting of the veils’.47 He dismisses the opinion of some exegetes that God drew near to Muhammad. God is near by definition and distance is impossible (mustaḥīl) in reference to God,48 while the servant is distant from God because of the veils between them.49 God Seeing God: Rūzbihān’s Vision through Unification (Ittiḥād)

Carl Ernst has noted that Rūzbihān in his visionary autobiography Kashf al-asrār ‘frequently alludes to ascension as the mode by which he, in imitation of the Prophet, journeys to see God’.50 He stresses ‘the importance of the model of the Prophet for the interior ascension of the Sufi’.51 Rūzbihān’s treatment of Muhammad’s ascension in his Qurʾan commentary can indeed be read as a guide for spiritual ascension, taking the reader through the process of seclusion from creation to the different stations on the way, culminating in unification (ittiḥād) with God and a vision of Him in that ultimate state. In his Mashrab al-arwāḥ, Rūzbihān makes it clear that he believes that Muhammad had indeed seen God. In several places, he quotes hadiths in which Muhammad makes statements about the modalities and forms of his visions of God.52 Moreover, in his Qurʾan commentary he takes Muhammad as an example of someone who is constantly in a state of passionate love after having seen God in a face-to-face encounter. On Q 18:28 (‘Keep yourself patient together with those who call upon their Lord in the morning and evening, seeking His face’), he

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comments that God means to comfort His prophet by this verse. Ever since Muhammad had seen the beauty and majesty of God ‘between the two bow-lengths (qāba qawsayn)’, he states, ‘he was with his heart in al-malakūt, with his spirit in al-jabarūt, with his inmost self (sirr) in the witnessing of beginninglessness (mushāhadat al-qidam), and with his mind (ʿaql) in the lights of His unseen longing for God’.53 The overwhelming experience of seeing God made him impatient to see Him again and to transgress the boundaries of created form for a new ascension to two bow-lengths. In Rūzbihān’s commentary, we see the same precondition for the possibility of the vision of God that we witnessed earlier in several commentaries on the request from Moses: Muhammad first has to overcome his human form to be able to reach the state of seeing God. While God is embodied in Rūzbihān’s descriptions of the vision of God, the viewer first has to be disembodied. In Rūzbihān’s conception, once again the theme of vision is intimately intertwined with the theme of passionate love. In Rūzbihān’s words, God advises Muhammad to restrain yourself with those poor intense lovers of My beauty, those who long for My majesty, who at all times ask Me to meet My noble face, and want to fly with the wings of love to the world of communion with Me (ʿālam waṣlatī) so that they are comforted through your company with the station of communion (maqām al-wiṣāl). In your vision is the vision of that beauty for them. You are with them as a confirmation, while your inmost self, mind, spirit and heart are with Me. They are loci of the manifestation (tajallī) of My greatness and the secrets of My might. Creation does not have the power to be near your heart . . . ‘And do not look beyond them’ [Q 18:28] because they look to Me through your eye, when your eye seeks the witnessing of Me in the reflection of My acts.54

Whoever remains close to Muhammad thus has access to the vision of God. One can see God through Muhammad’s presence. When Muhammad witnesses God in the reflection of His acts –  that is, an indirect vision through creation – the believers who are with him and seek God’s face see God through the eyes of Muhammad. An

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echo of the importance of the shaykh–murīd relationship that rose to prominence in the time of Rūzbihān can be found in this idea. Just as the seeker of God (murīd) needs his shaykh to be able to find God, so the community of believers needs Muhammad in order to reach the witnessing and vision of God. Muhammad – just as the shaykh – is the medium (wasīla) between the believer and the vision of God. Muhammad – who actually belongs to God, where his inner constitution still remains – is commanded to reside among the ordinary people for this specific purpose. Rūzbihān is the only one of our commentators who gives a rich and detailed description of the modality of Muhammad’s vision of God during his night journey. In his commentary on Q 17:1, he describes a similar modality as al-Wāsiṭī in the case study of Moses: a vision of God through God. He describes a process of unification (ittiḥād) between Muhammad and God, resulting in a vision of God by God’s own eye.55 His discussion of Q 17:1 is a fine example of how tafsīr bi’l-ishāra (exegesis by allusion) works in practice. Rūzbihān distinguishes four allusions in the verse, using key passages and words to project his own ideas and associations onto the Qurʾanic verse. The first is an allusion of transcendence (taqdīs) in the word subḥān (‘transcendent’ or ‘praised’). According to Rūzbihān, this word in the verse alludes to the non-physical character of Muhammad’s destination; he did not travel towards a place. When Muhammad arrived at ‘behind what is behind’ (warāʾ al-warāʾ) and rose to the kingdom of heavens (malakūt al-samawāt) to meet his Lord it was not an elevation to a specific place. He stresses that God is transcendent above any suggestion of direction or place and cannot be likened to creation in any way. The second allusion Rūzbihān finds is in the word alladhī (the relative pronoun ‘who’), which he holds to be an allusion of vigilant care (ghayra). This vigilant care is expressed in Muhammad being singled out from all of creation to see God. God chose to mention neither His own name in the verse, using the relative pronoun instead, nor the name of Muhammad, so that nobody would try to rise up to Him and Muhammad during their meeting. The third allusion, of the unseen

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(ghayb), he sees in a word play with the verb asrā, which he reads as ‘kept secret’ instead of as ‘made travel by night’. He stresses how Muhammad was singled out into the unseen for a secret meeting with God in the night.56 The fourth allusion of the inmost secret (sirr), then, Rūzbihān uses to describe the spiritual development of Muhammad through several halting places (spiritual way stations), ultimately leading to the halting place of unification (ittiḥād). This passage gives a good impression of the spiritual progress that Rūzbihān strives for, taking Muhammad’s ascension as the model: ‘He made His servant travel by night’, from the halting place of will (irāda) to the halting place of love (maḥabba), and from the halting place of love to the halting place of experiential knowledge (maʿrifa), and from the halting place of experiential knowledge to the halting place of divine unity (tawḥīd), and from the halting place of divine unity to the halting place of solitariness (tafrīd), and from the halting place of solitariness to the halting place of annihilation ( fanāʾ), and from the halting place of annihilation to the halting place of subsistence (baqāʾ), and from the halting place of subsistence to the halting place of acquiring [God’s] attributes (ittiṣāf),57 and from the halting place of acquiring [God’s] attributes to the halting place of unification (ittiḥād).58

Whereas authors like al-Sulamī and al-Daylamī did not go further than the state of annihilation ( fanāʾ) to describe the spiritual progress of Moses leading to the vision, Rūzbihān takes it a few steps further, ultimately leading Muhammad towards ittiḥād, a term that was controversial not only among critics of Sufism, but within Sufi circles as well. It is very rarely used in Sufi texts due to this controversy.59 In what follows, Rūzbihān gives a detailed description of the spiritual process Muhammad went through to reach this state of ittiḥād and subsequently the vision of God. In this description, he is careful to state that ittiḥād does not mean that the divine and the human mingle: there is no indwelling (ḥulūl) and divinity (nāsūtiyya) and humanity (lāhūtiyya) remain strictly separated.60 Once again, as in the case study of Moses, we see that to be able

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to see God one first has to go beyond one’s human form: Muhammad surpassed the forms of createdness (rusūm al-ḥudūthiyya). To illustrate this, Rūzbihān makes a cross-reference to Sūrat al-Najm, to the verse ‘Then he came near and he descended’. In the context of this verse, he describes Muhammad’s state of annihilation: No form of createdness (rusūm al-ḥudūthiyya) remained with him due to the appropriation of the created by the beginningless. He came near to Him and then descended from Him, then annihilated in Him, and between [Him and] his annihilation were the lengths of two bows,61 the bow of pre-eternity (azal) and the bow of post-eternity (abad), and between the two bows he disappeared into the unseen, and his disappearance subsisted. He was on the same level or closer, and made the unseen of his unseen (ghayb ghaybihi) disappear by disappearance (ghayba), as if he was in the annihilation of annihilation, and annihilation due to the annihilation of annihilation. His name subsisted in the demonstrative pronoun (ism al-ishāra) by His saying {subḥān alladhī asrā bi-ʿabdihi}, meaning: he is with his halting place at the station of unification (ittiḥād) upon the characteristic (waṣf) of servanthood (ʿubūdiyya), praised be (subḥān) who is transcendent (subḥān) above being a halting place for created beings, or of the mixture of divinity (lāhūtiyya) with humanity (nāsūtiyya).62

Besides the described journey through the subsequent halting places, Rūzbihān also perceives an ascension within the vision of God itself. He redefines Muhammad’s journey as a journey through the vision of different aspects of God, following the tripartite division in essence, attributes and acts. From the vision of His acts and signs (āyāt), Muhammad travelled to the vision of His attributes, and from there to the vision of His essence. This last vision of the essence is the vision that takes place in unification (ittiḥād). In this state it is God Himself who sees God, since Muhammad in this state of unification sees and hears through the sight and hearing of God63: He saw God through God, and there he became attributed with the attribute of God, and his form (ṣūra) was his spirit, his spirit his

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intellect, his intellect his heart, and his heart his inmost self. He saw God in all of his existence ( jamīʿ wujūdihi), because his existence completely became one of the eyes of God. He saw God by all the eyes, and he heard His speech from all the ears, and he came to experiential knowledge of God by all the hearts, until his eyes, ears, hearts, spirits and intellects were annihilated in God. God looked towards God for the sake of him as a representative of him, because the eyes of createdness had been annihilated in the eyes of God, and the eyes of God had returned to God, so God saw God, and God had experiential knowledge of God, and God heard from God as a mercy from Him to him, and as a kindness to him, because He hears and sees.64

However, the reverse is also taking place in this vision. Muhammad does not only see God through God. God is seeing Himself through his servant. Muhammad sees through the eye of God, while God uses the eye of Muhammad: Do you not consider the end of the verse, His saying: {innahu huwa al-samīʿ al-baṣīr}. He heard the speech from Himself, and saw Himself by Himself. He was in post-eternity Hearing, Seeing, but here He hears and sees by the hearing and seeing of His servant and the seeing of His servant.65

Like al-Daylamī, Rūzbihān holds that Muhammad was capable of seeing God’s unadulterated essence. Since Muhammad was strong enough for the vision of God’s attributes in the highest and lowest malakūt, so argues Rūzbihān, he should also have been ‘capable of seeing His unadulterated essence without veil, reckoning, darkness, fog, detectiveness, without signs and without tokens. But he sees Him by Him, not by anything [else], and not by himself.’66 Also in his commentary on Sūrat al-Najm, he describes a process of Muhammad surpassing his human form. The term ittiḥād is not used explicitly, but the process that Rūzbihān describes may be considered an expression of the same idea that was articulated in the former passage. Commenting on Q 53:8, he describes Muhammad

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coming close to God by being ‘clothed’ in ‘the characteristics of the attributes (nuʿūt al-ṣifāt) and the lights of the essence’.67 By this process of iltibās, Muhammad surpassed the deficiencies of createdness (ḥadthāniyya). Rūzbihān does not explicitly specify the implications of this statement, but one can say that to surpass the deficiencies of createdness implies becoming godlike. What follows does indeed hint at such an understanding by Rūzbihān. He describes how Muhammad first witnessed the attributes and almost stopped there due to the great pleasure that he experienced at that station. However, God made him travel further to His essence, in which he was then annihilated: ‘He drowned in the sea of the essence, and nothing of his knowledge remained with him, nothing of his sight, nothing of his hearing, and nothing of his consciousness.’68 Again Rūzbihān describes a vision of God through God. God ‘clothed’ Muhammad with a light of His sight, so that Muhammad saw God by the light of God.69 Rūzbihān confirms the vision with both the heart and the eye in his commentary on Q  53:11. He explains that only the vision of the heart is mentioned in the verse, while God did not mention the vision of the eye out of vigilant care. The vision of the eye is a secret between God and His beloved and is specific, while the vision of the heart is general. However, in the same passage he stresses that what the heart and the eye see is the same. God made him see His beauty with his eye, which was ‘painted [like kuḥl] with the light of His essence and His attributes’.70 This vision of God’s beauty then arrived at the heart, seeing what the eye saw. This vision did not remain confined to the eye: his entire body, all his senses and all the atoms of his existence saw Him. Therefore the vision of God by Muhammad, the truthful passionate lover (al-ʿāshiq al-ṣādiq), is the most complete: God did His utmost in this vision, leaving no veils between Him and Muhammad.71 Conclusion

Let us now return to the main points raised in the beginning of this chapter. We pointed out that while there is an abundance of studies on the theme of the isrāʾ and miʿrāj in Islamic literature, there is a relative silence on the aspect of the vision of God during that miʿrāj in

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relation to Sufism. In this chapter, we hoped to fill this gap by a close reading of the commentary on verses related to the vision during the miʿrāj. The relative briefness of most Sufi commentators on the verses related to Muhammad’s heavenly journey, with Rūzbihān being the notable exception, comes a bit as a surprise. Given the prominence of the theme of ascension in Sufism and the importance of this narrative for establishing the elevated rank of Muhammad through his ascension and vision of God, one would expect much more. Only Rūzbihān provides a lengthy commentary on the relevant verses, and goes into great detail concerning the mode of vision of God by Muhammad. In the case of al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī, one may explain their brevity by the fact that they had already made separate compilations of sayings on Muhammad’s ascension, which contain commentary on the relevant verses in Sūrat al-Najm. Why Maybudī and al-Daylamī are relatively brief on the issue is more difficult to explain. Despite this relative brevity in their commentary on the relevant verses, the commentaries still offer valuable information for coming to a better understanding of Sufi conceptions of the vision during the miʿrāj, and their relation to conventional understandings. When raising the issue of the interpretation of the verses that deal with the visionary aspect of the miʿrāj in both conventional and ishārī commentaries, we have focused on the relation between these two approaches to the text of the Qurʾan and to the perceived subject and object of vision in the commentaries. Is it considered a vision of God or a vision of the angel Gabriel? Is it a vision by the eye or by the heart? As we have seen, in conventional commentaries there is a difference of opinion on the issue, with the most notable options being a vision of God by either the heart or the eye, or an angelic vision. In our period these options coexisted, with no shared preference among the exegetes for any one ‘strongest’ opinion. We were curious to see whether the Sufi commentaries stay close to these conventional commentaries in their understanding of these verses or whether they offer an approach of their own. On the issue of the vision during the miʿrāj, most of our Sufi authors are clear that they believe it to be a vision of God. The only exception is, as

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in the other case studies, al-Qushayrī, who prefers the option that Muhammad saw Gabriel. He categorically denies the possible interpretation that Muhammad had seen God during his heavenly journey, not even by a contemplative vision with his heart. It appears to be the case that the Sufi exegetes in favour of a divine vision optimally use the existing difference of opinion on the issue in conventional tafsīr, pushing the limits of the conventional intepretations to legitimise their descriptions of the visionary experience of God by Muhammad. They thus, strictly speaking, always remain within the boundaries of conventional interpretations; these intepretations conditioned how far they could go in their understanding of the vision of God. An exception to this is Rūzbihān, whose proposed mode of vision by unification (ittiḥād) could not be anchored in conventional understandings of the verses. Rūzbihān himself does not problematise this, however, nor seek to reconcile his approach to the vision with the mainstream positions. Yet again we have witnessed the relative absence of an element of genealogy in the commentaries. In Table 7.4, we can see how the commentaries collected by al-Sulamī on the first verses of Sūrat al-Isrāʾ and Sūrat al-Najm are not incorporated into the later commentaries of al-Qushayrī, Maybudī and al-Daylamī, with very few exceptions. Only Rūzbihān partly incorporates the sayings of al-Sulamī, more as a form of recognition of his predecessor than as a functionally integrated part of his own reflections. This lack of genealogy also shows in the diversity of style and content in the commentaries. Like in the earlier case studies, the authors do not offer uniform positions at all and although certain themes are shared – for example, transcending above human forms to be able to see God – all five authors bring their own specific concepts, models of seeing, and accents to their discussion of the verses. Again the relative originality of Sufi tafsīr comes to the fore, as compared with its conventional counterparts.

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Table 7.4 Genealogy of Sufi sayings in the sources Q 17:1 in Sulamī

Qushayrī

Maybudī

Daylamī

Rūzbihān

Q 53:8 in Sulamī

Qushayrī

Maybudī

Daylamī

Rūzbihān

Wāsiṭī Abū Yazīd Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Jaʿfar Naṣrābādhī ‘one of them’ Jaʿfar Jaʿfar Qāsim Wāsiṭī Wāsiṭī

Q 53:10 in Sulamī Jaʿfar Wāsiṭī Jaʿfar

Q 53:11 in Sulamī Sahl Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Bundār Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Jaʿfar

-

+ -

Qushayrī -

Qushayrī -

-

Maybudī -

Maybudī -

-

Daylamī -

Daylamī +/-

+ + + + + -

Rūzbihān + + +

Rūzbihān + + + -

Notes  1 Even if we limit ourselves to scholarship from the last two decades the interest is evident. See Brooke Olson Vuckovic, Heavenly Journeys, Earthly Concerns: The Legacy of the Miʿraj in the Formation of Islam (London: Routledge, 2005); Frederick Colby, Narrating Muhammad’s Night Journey: Tracing the Development of the Ibn ʿAbbās Ascension Discourse (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008); Christiane Gruber and Frederick Colby, eds, The Prophet’s Ascension: Cross-Cultural Encounters with the Islamic Miʿrāj Tales (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010); Ronald P. Buckley, The Night Journey and Ascension in Islam: The Reception of Religious Narrative in Sunnī, Shīʿī and Western Culture (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013); Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, ed., Le voyage initiatique en terre d’Islam: ascensions célestes et itineraires spirituels (Leuven

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 2

 3

 4  5  6  7

and Paris: Peeters, 1996). For an overview of earlier scholarship on the miʿrāj, see Vuckovic, Heavenly Journeys, 7–13; EI2, s.v. ‘Miʿrādj’, by J. Horowitz; J. Bencheikh, 7:97–105. For Sufi understandings of the vision during the miʿrāj only Böwering, ‘From Word to Vision’, is currently available. Van Ess has drawn attention to the relation of the miʿrāj to the issue of the vision of God in several publications, relating it to early debates on anthropomorphism. See Josef van Ess, ‘Le miʿrāğ et la vision de Dieu dans les premières speculations théologique en Islam’, in Le voyage initiatique en terre d’Islam: ascensions célestes et itineraires spirituels, ed. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (Leuven and Paris: Peeters, 1996), 27–56; TG, 4:387–90; Josef van Ess, ‘Vision and Ascension: Sūrat al-Najm and its Relationship with Muḥammad’s Miʿrāj’, JQS 1, no. 1 (1999): 47–62; Josef van Ess, The Flowering of Muslim Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 45–77. For a critical edition of al-Sulamī’s Laṭāʾif al-miʿrāj, see Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, ‘Bayān laṭāʾif al-miʿrāj’, in Sufi Treatises of Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), eds Gerhard Böwering and Bilal Orfali (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 2009), 21–30. For a translation and annotation, see Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, The Subtleties of the Ascension: Early Mystical Sayings on Muhammad’s Heavenly Journey, trans. Frederick S. Colby (Louisville: Fons Vitae, 2006). For an analysis of the work, see Frederick S. Colby, ‘The Subtleties of the Ascension: Al-Sulamī on the Miʿrāj of the Prophet Muhammad’, SI 94 (2002): 167–83. For a partial translation of al-Qushayrī’s Kitāb al-miʿrāj, see Martin Nguyen, ‘The Confluence and Construction of Traditions: Al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) and the Intersection of Qurʾanic Exegesis, Theology and Sufism’ (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2009), 424–32. See also Colby, Night Journey, 115–17. On the miʿrāj of al-Basṭāmī, see Pierre Lory, ‘Le miʿrāğ d’Abū Yazīd Basṭāmī’, in Le voyage initiatique en terre d’Islam: ascensions célestes et itineraires spirituels, ed. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (Leuven and Paris: Peeters, 1996), 223–38. Böwering, ‘Word to Vision’, 213. See Colby, Night Journey, 13–28; Böwering, ‘Word to Vision’, 206. Colby, Night Journey; EQ, s.v. ‘Ascension’, by M. Sells, 1:176–81. Angelika Neuwirth, ‘From the Sacred Mosque to the Remote Temple: Sūrat al-Isrāʾ between Text and Commentary’, in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,

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eds Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish and Joseph W. Goering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 398. See also Colby, Night Journey, 17–22. Cf. Josef van Ess, ‘Vision and Ascension’, 47–9.  8 For a diachronic comparison of twelve Qurʾan commentaries on Sūrat al-Najm, see Regula Forster, Methoden mittelalterlicher arabischer Qurʾānexegese am Beispiel von Q53, 1–18 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2001).  9 Already by the ninth/fifteenth century, Tafsīr al-Jalālayn mentions it as the only interpretation of Q 53:11. Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, Tafsīr al-imāmayn al-Jalālayn (Damascus: Maṭbaʿat al-Shurbajī, 2003), 526–7. The nineteenth-century commentator al-Alūsī understands it as only an angelic manifestation, not mentioning the option of a divine manifestation at all. Shihāb al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Ḥusaynī al-Alūsī, Rūh al-maʿānī fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm wa’l-sabʿa al-mathānī (Beirut: Dār iḥyāʾ al-turāth al-ʿarabī, n.d.), 27:49. Al-Qāsimī refutes the vision of God by Muhammad, quoting opinions by Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Kathīr. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, eds Aḥmad b. ʿAlī and Ḥamdī Ṣubḥ (Cairo: Dār al-ḥadīth, 2003), 8:518–23. The modern scholar al-Ṣābūnī does mention the opinion of a divine manifestation but dismisses it. Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Ṣābūnī, Ṣafwat al-tafāsīr (Istanbul: Dersaadet Kitabevi, n.d.), 3:273. Ibn ʿĀshur only mentions Gabriel. Muḥammad b. ʿĀshūr, Tafsīr al-taḥrīr wa’l-tanwīr (Tunis: al-Dār al-tūnisiyya li’l-nashr, 1984), 27:98–100. This looks like a case of the disappearance of polyvalence in the tafsīr tradition that Norman Calder described in his famous article ‘Tafsīr from Ṭabarī to Ibn Kathīr’. It is not unlikely that these later positions have something to do with the large influence of al-Zamakhsharī’s commentary on the later tafsīr tradition, rather than Ibn Kathīr. As a Muʿtazilī, he remained silent on the idea of a vision of God and only mentioned Gabriel as the object of Muhammad’s vision. This issue needs deeper study. 10 For collections of transmissions on this specific issue, see Chapter 5, note 9. The historicity of these accounts is outside the scope of this research. One may presume that they represent later theological debates projected back onto companions of Muhammad through the isnād system to give weight and authority to theological positions. For a thorough analysis of the problem of the historicity of transmissions attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās, see Harald Motzki, ‘The Origins of Muslim Exegesis: A

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11

12 13

14

15 16 17

Debate’, in Analysing Muslim Traditions: Studies in Legal, Exegetical and Maghāzī Ḥadīth, eds Harald Motzki, Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort and Sean W. Anthony (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 231–304. Ibn Ḥajar, Ghunya, 13–14. Van Ess has noted that in the earliest commentaries on Sūrat al-Najm it was not unusual to state that it was Muhammad who saw God. He even brings up non-canonical sources that suggest a physical meeting in an earthly paradise at Jerusalem. He points out that it was the later fear of anthropomorphism and the development of the doctrine of the absolute transcendence (tanzīh) of God that led to the interpretation that Muhammad merely saw the angel Gabriel, which would become the dominant view in later tafsīrs. TG, 4:387–90; van Ess, ‘Vision and Ascension’, 49–53. Q  53:4–7: ‘It is nothing but a revelation revealed; one with mighty powers taught it to him; one of great strength, who stood straight, while he was on the highest horizon.’ Several scholars in the field of Qurʾanic Studies have argued the contrary of the tafsīr tradition and have read this passage as a confirmation that the most early Qurʾanic passages considered revelation to be the result of a direct meeting between God and Muhammad, only to be superseded in newer Qurʾanic passages by an understanding of revelation through an angelic messenger. See Richard Bell, ‘Muhammad’s Visions’, The Muslim World 24 (1934): 102; TG, 4:387; Colby, Night Journey, 17–20; Williams, ‘Tajallī wa-Ruʾya’, 101–9. Nicolai Sinai has recently argued the contrary, stating that Q 81:19–25 is earlier than Q 53. Nicolai Sinai, ‘An Interpretation of Sūrat al-Najm (Q.53)’, JQS 13, no. 2 (2011): 7–9. Muḥammad al-Fīrūzābādī, Tanwīr al-miqbās min tafsīr Ibn ʿAbbās, trans. Mokrane Guezzou (Amman: Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, 2007), 620–2; Mujāhid b. Jabr, Tafsīr Mujāhid b. Jabr, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Salām Abū’l-Nayl (Cairo: Dār al-fikr al-islāmī al-ḥadītha, 1989), 625–6; Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr Muqātil b. Sulaymān, ed. ʿAbd Allāh Maḥmūd Shaḥāta (Cairo: al-Hayʾat al-miṣriyya al-ʿāmma li’l-kitāb, 1988), 4:159; Thaʿlabī, Kashf, 9:136–7; Māwardī, Nukat, 5:391–2; Wāḥidī, Basīṭ, 21:12–15; Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 3:481–3; Maybudī, Kashf, 9:359–60; Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 134a. Fīrūzābādī, Tafsīr Ibn ʿAbbās, 621–2. Mujāhid, Tafsīr Mujāhid, 625–6. Muqātil, Tafsīr Muqātil, 4:160. This interpretation of the verse has also

a vision at the utmost boundary  | 253

found its way into Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī in the form of a much-discussed hadith. See Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, 8:521. 18 Thaʿlabī, Kashf, 9:137–9; Māwardī, Nukat, 5:392–3; Wāḥidī, Basīṭ, 21:16–21. 19 Maybudī, Kashf, 9:359–60. 20 Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 134a. 21 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 2:284–5; Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 3:481–3; Maybudī, Kashf, 9:378–9; Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 134a; Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 3:357. 22 Māwardī, Nukat, 5:393–4; Maybudī, Kashf, 9:359. 23 These minor positions have been left out of Table 7.2 for reasons of convenience. 24 Thaʿlabī, Kashf, 9:142. 25 Here we will leave the Laṭāʾif al-miʿrāj out of our analysis, since our main focus is on the genealogy and originality of ideas in the tafsīr tradition. For an analysis of its content, see Sulamī, Subtleties of the Ascension; Colby, ‘Subtleties’; Böwering, ‘From Word to Vision’. 26 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 2:283. 27 Ibid., 2:285. See Tustarī, Tafsīr al-Tustarī (trans. Keeler and Keeler), 212: ‘At the witnessing (mushāhada) of his Lord, through the vision (baṣar) of his heart as a right opposite encounter (kifāḥ).’ 28 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 2:285. 29 Ibid. Translation from Mayer, Spiritual Gems, 154. 30 Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 2:285. 31 Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 3:482; Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq, 2:284. 32 Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 3:481–2; Nguyen, ‘Confluence of Traditions’, 421. 33 Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 3:483; Nguyen, ‘Confluence of Traditions’, 422–3. 34 This means that al-Qushayrī also read k-dh-b with a shadda. 35 Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif, 3:483. 36 The best example of this is his Shikāyat ahl al-sunna. ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Hawāzim al-Qushayrī, ‘Shikāyat ahl al-sunna’, in al-Rasāʾil al-Qushayriyya, ed. Muḥammad Ḥasan (Karachi: al-Maʿhad al-markazī li’l-abḥāth al-islāmiyya, 1964), 1–49. 37 See Chapter 5. 38 Maybudi, Kashf, 9:359–60. 39 Ibid., 5:504. 40 Ibid., 9:374. 41 See Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, 244–7.

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59

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Ibid., 9:378–9. Ibid., 5:501. Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fol. 134a. Ibid. Ibid., fols 133b–134a. Ibid. This is an implicit reference to the Qurʾanic notion that God is ‘closer to him than his jugular vein’ (Q 50:16), and that Muhammad should tell people who ask him about God that He is close (Q 2:186). Based on these verses, nearness is considered to be one of the attributes of God. Daylamī, ‘Tafsīr al-Daylamī’, fols 133b–134a. Ernst, Ruzbihan, 61. Ibid. ‘I saw my Lord in the most beautiful form’; ‘I saw my Lord with my eye and heart’; ‘I saw my Lord upon the city market.’ Baqlī, Mashrab, 10, 105, 221–2, 256. These hadith are not considered to be canonical, but are widespread in Sufi circles. See Murata, ‘God is Beautiful’, 202–6. Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 2:421. Ibid. The use of this term by Rūzbihān in his commentary is remarkable. In his other works he shows no concern in explaining this term, and it seems that it was not part of his usual technical vocabulary. Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 2:346–7. Rūzbihān describes the station of ittiṣāf as follows: ‘When God manifests Himself to the heart of the lover through the splendour of the attributes, the lover benefits by the condition of intimacy and taste (sharṭ al-muʿāshara wa’l-dhawq) from the vision of some light of every attribute. He forms his character by it and he takes His attribute as his attribute after the created has gone into the beginningless and becomes lordly (rabbānī), as God said: “And be lordly (wa-kūnū rabbāniyyīn)” (Q 3:79), and as the prophet said, blessings and peace be upon him: “Form your character according to the character of God.” And the knower said: “Ittiṣāf only occurs together with the taste of selfhood (anāniyya), because the human attribute has left and the attributes of Godliness have remained.”’ Baqlī, Mashrab, 89. Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 2:346–7. Ittiḥād would be the only word in Sufism that truly signifies the unio

a vision at the utmost boundary  | 255

60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

mystica that is so often held to be the exemplary goal of mysticism. Other words like wiṣāl or jamʿ are often misleadingly translated as such. See von Schlegell, ‘Translating Sufism’, 583–4. The term is practically absent from early Sufism. Al-Qushayrī does not discuss the term in his Risāla, nor does al-Sarrāj in his Kitāb al-lumaʿ; al-Hujwīrī does discuss the term in the section on jamʿ and tafriqa, denouncing the concept: ‘It is impossible that God should be mingled (imtizāj) with created beings or made one (ittiḥād) with His works or become incarnate (ḥāll) in things: God is exalted far above that, and far above that which the heretics ascribe to Him.’ Nicholson, Kashf al-maḥjūb, 254. See also EI2, s.v. ‘Ittiḥād’, by R. Nicholson; G. C. Anawati, 4:282–3. Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 2:347. This paraphrases Q 53:8–9. Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 2:347. Rūzbihān does not quote it, but this idea is related to a ḥadīth qudsī ­– a saying of God, related in the words of the Prophet – attributed to Abū Ḥurayra much quoted in Sufi circles, commonly known as the ‘hadith of supererogatory acts’ (nawāfil). The hadith states: ‘When I love him, I become his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes, and his foot with which he walks.’ See Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 43. Baqlī, ʿArāʾis, 2:347–8. Ibid., 2:348. Ibid. Ibid., 3:357. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 3:359. Ibid.

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8

Conclusion

At the outset of this study, we formulated two complementary objectives. On the one hand, we expressed the wish to construct a history of Sufi eschatology using Qurʾan commentaries as our main source. Our two main hypotheses concerning Sufi eschatology has been that the vision of God is the most central theme for Sufi imaginations of the hereafter, and that Sufis do not strictly uphold the dunyā–ākhira divide. We expected that although Sufis leave a diachronic conception of history and eschatology intact, it goes hand in hand with a synchronic understanding of the dunyā–ākhira relationship. The boundary between this world and the otherworld can be crossed by seeing God in this-worldly life, a ‘taste’ of the vision in the world to come. On the other hand, by using this thematic framework, we had the ambition to generate new knowledge about the genre of Sufi Qurʾan commentaries in the Islamic Earlier Middle Period (950­–1250 ce). Concerning Sufi Qurʾan commentaries, we were mainly interested to see to what extent Sufi commentaries are genealogical, given the popular image of Sufism being ‘experiential’ and thus more subjective and original. In this concluding chapter, I deal with each of these questions and hypotheses in the order in which I have introduced them in the preceding paragraphs. I end by suggesting three avenues for future 256

conclusion | 257

research: the study of both Sufi eschatology and Sufi tafsīr in the later centuries; the need for critical editions of Sufi Qurʾan commentaries; and possible theoretical and methodological advances. Sufi Qurʾan commentaries have proved to be a useful and varied source for the reconstruction of a (partial) history of Sufi eschatology. It must be said, however, that the expectation that verses on Paradise and Hell would provoke a lot of commentary, and could thus be complementary to the scattered discussions in Sufi handbooks, was only partly justified. Just as Sufi authors hardly included eschatological ideas in their handbooks on Sufism, they also mostly skipped those verses that deal with Paradise and Hell in their commentaries. When they did comment on these verses, it was rather to make a point on hierarchies of nearness and vision than to elaborate on understandings of reward and punishment. The study of these commentaries has thus mainly further corroborated the findings of El-Saleh and Lange, that there is a relative disregard, and in some cases even contempt, among Sufis for the rewards and punishments of Paradise and Hell – without denying their physical reality – motivated by a God-centred understanding of the hereafter.1 Early on in our study it was already becoming clear that an analysis of Sufi eschatology would mainly entail looking at the concepts of nearness to and vision of God. If our authors were at all motivated by thoughts of reward or punishment, what interested them was the reward of nearness to and vision of God or the punishment of being cut off from God and veiled from the vision. Fear of the physical punishments of Hell or hope for physical rewards of Paradise were generally considered as a veil separating the seeker from God. In some cases, motivation by way of reward or punishment was even seen as a form of ascribing partners to God (shirk). We could not distinguish a clear linear historical development in the Sufi ideas on eschatology. True, all five commentaries proved to be very varied in style and content. However, it is difficult to explain this difference and variety as a linear development that happened in parallel with broader developments within Sufism. An example is the stratification of the rewards of Paradise. As we have seen, this idea

258 | seeing god in sufi qur ʾan commentaries

is most strongly present in Maybudī, strong enough to consider it a noteworthy change in content compared with the preceding works. The idea was not new, however, and does not come at the end of a clear linear historical development. It can also be found in sayings collected by al-Sulamī and in the work of al-Qushayrī. The same can be said for other salient themes: although they may be more dominant in one work than in the other, they are mostly variants of themes already existent from an early stage, expressed in a style typical for the author in question. An exception to this is Rūzbihān’s ideas on mercy and relief for the inhabitants of Hell. Rūzbihān’s vision on this issue has no precedent, and varieties on this theme cannot be found in the earlier commentaries. Here his position does mirror broader developments in Sufism: Rūzbihān’s position on the non-perpetuity of the punishment of Hell has striking similarities with the ideas of his contemporary Ibn al-ʿArabī. The idea of manifestations of mercy in Hell was relatively new in Sufism at the time of Rūzbihān, and he was the first of the commentators to incorporate this into his Qurʾan commentary. We have also seen that the boundary between this world and the otherworld was generally imagined to be porous and crossable, mainly by means of Sufi stations and states, with communion (waṣla), nearness and vision being the most prominent. To visually capture the structure of the relationship between this world and the otherworld, we proposed the diagram shown in Figure 8.1. Taking the prophets as paradigmatic seekers, this scheme – although not to be found in every commentary – was useful to come to an understanding of discussions on the vision of God in this world and the otherworld. Based on this larger scheme, Table 8.1 gives a simplified but clear overview of the opinions of our authors on the theme of vision. Is the theme of nearness to and vision of God indeed as pervasive as I expected it to be in the introductory chapter? For the greater part, yes. The relative dominance or absence of the theme of vision appears to be one of the most significant differences between two not mutually exclusive tendencies within Sufism: on the one hand, the tendency

conclusion | 259

Figure 8.1 Eschatological structure and crossings of the prophets

that stresses passionate love (ʿishq) and longing (shawq) for God and experiential knowledge (maʿrifa) of God; on the other, a tendency that stresses good character and religious discipline. Most authors are closer to the former trend than to the latter. Only al-Qushayrī is not genuinely interested in the topic of the vision of God, in the same way in which the themes of love and longing are not as pervasively present in his work compared with the other works. He can thus be considered a representative of the second trend, although he is not always as sober in his style and content as he is generally perceived to have been. Especially in the case of the request of Moses to see God, which he considers not to have been granted, al-Qushayrī shows an ecstatic side that is not typical of him, interpreting Moses’s request as ensuing from passionate love and longing for God evoked by hearTable 8.1 Visions of God

Sulamī Qushayrī Maybudī Daylamī Rūzbihān

Vision of God in the hereafter Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Vision of God in this world Yes No No Yes Yes

Vision of God by Adam Yes Yes Yes

Vision of God by Moses Yes No No Yes Yes

Vision of God by Muhammad Yes No Yes Yes Yes

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ing Him. Although he does not interpret it as a fulfilled request, his discussion of Moses’s request does confirm the entangledness of the themes of love, longing and vision. For the other authors, the theme is present to differing degrees. The commentaries of al-Sulamī and Rūzbihān stand out in that the theme of vision is dominant. It is no coincidence that they are also the sources that contain the largest amount of commentary inspired by the themes of love and longing. The same can be said for Maybudī. Although he generally denies thisworldly vision, this-worldly longing for the vision of the hereafter is pervasive and a leading motif in his understanding of the meaning of this-worldly life. The otherworldly journey of Muhammad, in which he sees God, is even mentioned as the main reason for creation and the banishment of Adam. While al-Daylamī gives a lot of space to defending this-worldly vision of the heart in his other works, this is not equally present in his commentary, except for some passages that he seemingly copied from his other treatises. Al-Daylamī does not attach the theme of vision to prophetology very prominently. While some modest commentary is given on the modes of vision by Moses and Muhammad, the story of Adam hardly provokes commentary, and is not related to the vision of God. Can we now reach a typology of this-worldly visions of God in Sufism? Can our five commentators neatly be classified using Wolfson’s typology of contemplative-introvertive and contemplativecognitive vision? There appeared to be a great diversity in approach to the vision of God, with some shared structures. All described modes of this-worldly vision can be categorised as contemplative visions by the eye of the heart: although not denying the theoretical possibility, none of the Sufi commentators claimed an ocular vision of God to have actually taken place in this world. Muhammad admittedly was considered by some to have seen God by the physical eye. This physical vision may have taken place in dunyā in the sense of time, in thisworldly pre-eschatological life, but not in a spatial sense: Muhammad travelled to the otherworld in order to see God. Something similar can be said about the conceptualisation of contemplative visions like Moses seeing God. Even though there was consensus that this vision

conclusion | 261

was a contemplative vision, those authors who claimed Moses saw God let him first pass beyond the boundaries of his human existence. Only outside his human form, after having transgressed the boundaries of this-worldly restraints, was he able to see God. All authors thus seemed to agree that contemplatively seeing God is something that surpasses human form. Sometimes this act of seeing was conceived of as a state of annihilation ( fanāʾ), or in the example of Rūzbihān as unification (ittiḥād) with God. Does this make it an introvertive rather than cognitive vision, to use the distinction that Wolfson makes?2 Are they purely intellectual, beyond image and form, or are they within the phenomenological parameters of human experience and language? This distinction may be more difficult to uphold. Although many proposed modes of contemplative vision are described as taking place after having moved beyond human form, the descriptions are still primarily sensory and seem to be conceived as human experiences. This is most clear in the case of indirect visions of God through creation, a vision of His attributes (ṣifāt) and acts (afʿāl) as manifested in the world, rather than His essence. They fall within the realm of human perception, but still do not attribute a form or image to God – the intellectual vision of God is deduced from and mediated by the sensory perception of creation. Even the somewhat extreme case of Rūzbihān’s idea that Muhammad seeing and hearing God is actually God seeing and hearing Himself in a state of unification with Muhammad may be said to be conceived within parameters of human experience. God, holds Rūzbihān, perceives Himself through the ears and eyes of Muhammad. How did the inward (bāṭin) or allusive (ishārī) approach to the text of the Qurʾan relate to interpretations of the outward (ẓāhir) meanings of the Qurʾan? Did these inward and allusive interpretations divert radically from conventional understandings or did they accommodate these understandings? The claim by Steven Katz that mysticism generally is conservative in its nature and cannot be understood in isolation from its larger religious discursive context seems to apply to our Sufi authors too. Our commentaries generally show great awareness of and respect for theological positions involved in the

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matters of their discussion, and do not exhibit a tendency to contradict outward (ẓāhir), conventional understandings of Qurʾanic verses. This holds equally true for their understandings of the vision of God. While some of the positions taken may at first be seen as going against the grain, closer inspection reveals that the doctrines upheld by their institutional surroundings are always implicitly present in their works and determine their conceptions of the vision of God in this world and the otherworld. They consciously employ themes and discussions present within the broader Islamic tradition to support their claims, and seem eager to respect the theological boundaries of their age. For example, the solution of a contemplative vision by the eye of the heart that the authors in favour of a this-worldly vision propagate correspond with the exegetical and theological discussions on Sūrat al-Najm. The difference of opinion on the modality of the vision described in Sūrat al-Najm, thus, was a window of opportunity for Sufi authors to legitimise their ideas of indirect modes of vision during this-worldly life. They could thus give legitimacy to their mystical longing for the vision of God while remaining within the boundaries of a solid (mostly Ashʿarī) theological framework that they without exception adhered to. All authors remained close to the centre and its institutions, and wished to remain so. Their mystical ideas were rooted in and determined by their broader religious understanding. As for the issue of genealogy and originality, we can conclude that the four Qurʾan commentaries following on from al-Sulamī all contain elements of both genealogy and originality. These elements appear not to be mutually exclusive and could easily coexist within one and the same commentary. There appears to be a great diversity in style and content, and genealogy generally does not determine the structure and content of the commentaries as much as is generally the case in their conventional counterparts. When earlier authorities are quoted, it is in a rather loose, non-binding and unstructured manner, and often only after the author has mapped out his own positions and reflections. Earlier sayings and opinions do not steer new discussions into a specific direction, and although a commentator could incorporate earlier material as he saw fit, he did not necessarily feel the

conclusion | 263

need to express his own thought only against the backdrop of earlier discussions. Sufi tafsīr, in sum, seems to have been less ‘conservative’ in its nature than its conventional counterparts and to leave more room for the individual author: there seems to have been more room for innovation and subjective understandings of the verse. Now, what is the way forward for the study of Sufi eschatology and Sufi Qurʾan commentaries? For Sufi eschatology, a longue durée history that also focuses on later periods would be a worthwhile and promising enterprise. Lange’s overview does not reach far enough into later periods and stops at approximately the thirteenth century with figures like Rūmī, Ibn al-ʿArabī and al-Nasafī. El-Saleh even considers the later periods irrelevant, adhering to a view of decadence and decline in later Islamic history that has long been dominant in the historiography of Islamic civilisation. This notion of a cultural decline in later Islamic history is being more and more revised in Islamic Studies, and it is only logical that later developments in Sufi eschatology up to the present time should be reevaluated as well. As noted in Chapter 1, there are still significant developments in later periods that remain largely unexplored.3 For this goal, Sufi Qurʾan commentaries of these later periods may prove to be a rich and useful source. In order to include Sufi Qurʾan commentaries of the later periods and to make longue durée comparisons of commentaries on specific verses, more critical editions of Sufi works of tafsīr urgently need to be published. This is a tremendous task that does not quite seem to be in sync with the larger developments within Islamic Studies. It is telling that the only critical edition available to me besides Böwering’s edition of al-Sulamī’s Ziyādāt was an unpublished PhD dissertation from Turkey. These critical editions should also lead to more in-depth studies of the individual works of tafsīr and their authors. The current study could only be undertaken because of the recent valuable publications of such monographs within this specific period. The most urgent task, in my opinion, is the publication of a critical edition of Rūzbihān’s ʿArāʾis al-bayān, after which an in-depth study and monograph on this rich source would become possible, comparable to the works of Nguyen and Keeler.4 No other source in this study appeared

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to be equally complex, and no other contained so much creative thinking and original material. Moreover, Rūzbihān’s commentary seems to foreshadow several themes that later become important in the school of Ibn al-ʿArabī. I believe an encompassing study of his tafsīr may be very helpful for a better understanding of the shift from the period that is often called ‘classical’ Sufism to the period of the great ‘schools’ of Sufism. In addition, the study of al-Daylamī’s tafsīr in relation to his other works deserves scholarly attention. Although he admittedly is an obscure author and may indeed be considered a ‘minor’ figure, his thought is remarkable enough to deserve deeper analysis. Publications of his Qurʾan commentary and his other treatises with a content analysis may well elucidate strands of Sufism that have not yet become a part of the Islamic or academic ‘canon’ of Sufi authors and ideas. Furthermore, I believe there is still a world to win in tafsīr studies with respect to methodology. Now that the study of tafsīr is gaining in scholarly popularity and the contours of a separate discipline of study are becoming visible, it may be the right moment to become more innovative and systematic in methodology as well, especially with regard to the issue of the genealogical nature of the genre, where a lot more research should be done based on a more clearly defined and systematic methodology. ‘The process of citing authorities and providing multiple readings is . . . a means to establish the individuality or the artistry of a given mufassir’5 and deserves a systematic methodology that helps to carefully trace and reconstruct lines of ­transmission and dissemination of exegetical opinions, and place them within typologies of exegesis and broader schools of thought. This study has only partially achieved such a systematic reading, partly due to a lack of good examples to follow in this particular respect. The recent trend in Islamic Studies to delve into late medieval commentary traditions may offer a suitable methodological framework for future studies, with adaptations and innovations to fit the particularities of the tafsīr tradition.6 It is my hope that the academic study of tafsīr literature will soon become large enough as a field to take this next step in methodological innovation as a communal enterprise.

conclusion | 265

Another point of attention is the application of theories and approaches developed in Religious Studies to these Sufi sources and the ideas reflected in them. It can be fairly stated that the field of Islamic Studies lags behind other areas of study in Religious Studies in this respect. Now that more and more texts are available to us, and many of them are covered in excellent historicising studies, the time is right to not only engage with these texts by philological and historical methods, but to cautiously go a step beyond that. In this study, I have used some elements of theories developed in the study of Jewish mysticism, most notably by Stephen Katz and Elliot Wolfson, but this can be pushed much further. A good example would be the vivid field of body and sensory studies within Religious Studies, and more broadly in the Humanities and Anthropology. It would be very worthwhile to work on a more encompassing study of ideas on the senses (both spiritual and physical) in Sufism. The study before you may be considered a launch pad for such larger enterprises. To conclude, the study of tafsīr in general, and the study of Sufi tafsīr in particular, has only recently really taken off. I hope that I have been able to give a modest ruʾya into the great potentiality of this field. It is only a dhawq of the many fruits that the branches of the tree of tafsīr have to offer. There are still many gardens to explore. Notes

1 El-Saleh, Vie future, 91–111; Lange, Paradise and Hell, ch. 7. 2 Wolfson, Speculum, 58–61. 3 See Chapter 1, note 41. 4 Nguyen, Sufi Master; Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics. 5 Calder, ‘Tafsīr from Ṭabarī to Ibn Kathīr’, 103–4. 6 Eric van Lit, for example, has been very innovative in his methodology of reading the commentary tradition on al-Suhrawardī. With a highly technical and at times quantitative method he has shown how textual relationships over larger time spans can be reconstructed by a systematic and almost mathematical comparison of form, style and textual content of a sequence of commentaries on a shared text. Such innovations deserve to be taken seriously by the field of tafsīr studies as well, and may give a boost to our understanding of what Calder calls ‘a declaration of loyalty’

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through the process of citing authorities and providing multiple readings. Calder, ‘Tafsīr from Ṭabarī to Ibn Kathīr’, 103–4; Lambertus W. C. van Lit, The World of Image in Islamic Philosophy: Ibn Sīnā, Suhrawardī, Shahrazūrī, and Beyond (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

bibliography  | 267

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Index

Adam, 3, 94, 191, 195n banishment of, 23, 25, 95, 123, 135–73, 201, 214, 239, 260 in the Qurʾan, 137–8 seeing God, 143–6, 148–60, 259 sin of, 138–42, 144–8, 151, 155, 158–61, 165n, 166n, 169 ahl al-ḥadīth see traditionism and traditionists Ākhira, 14, 33n, 84, 87, 105–6, 108, 113, 122, 123n, 130n, 132n, 160, 196n, 256 ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, 48–9, 68, 180–1, 196n angels, 88, 103, 116, 137, 145–8, 150–4, 158, 171n, 179, 180, 191, 216, 221, 226n, 229, 232–6, 247, 251n, 252n al-Anṣārī, ʿAbd Allāh, 58, 60, 69, 78n, 101, 128, 149–50, 232 anthropology, 5–6, 135, 139, 152, 265 anthropomorphism, 58, 127n, 171, 177–9, 183, 193n, 232, 250n, 252n Asad, Talal, 12, 31n ascension see miʿrāj asceticism see renunciation Ashʿarism and Ashʿarīs, 11, 41, 42, 54, 55, 57, 58, 71n, 73n, 76n, 107, 131n, 140, 166n, 178, 184, 185, 188, 189, 190, 194n, 198n, 207, 208, 214, 237, 262 al-Ashʿarī, Abū’l-Ḥasan, 92, 165n, 177, 179, 205

Ateș, Süleyman, 18 attributes (ṣifāt) of God, 58, 99, 108, 109, 110, 116, 143, 152, 153, 154, 159, 168n, 172n, 187, 189–90, 199n, 214, 218, 220, 226n, 239, 243–6, 254n, 261 audition (samāʿ), 49, 89, 103, 104, 105, 129, 148, 156, 163, 191, 202, 203, 206, 208–11, 214–15, 219, 223n, 224n, 244–6, 255, 261 al-Azdī, al-Ḥusayn, 46

Baghdad, 46, 47, 55, 92, 94 Sufism of, 14–15, 43–4, 47, 53 baqāʾ (subsistence), 15, 116, 210, 213, 243 al-Baqlī see Rūzbihān barzakh see limbo al-Basṭāmī, Abū Yazīd, 105, 133n, 180, 196n, 198n, 228, 250n bāṭin (inward), 18, 48–50, 53, 92, 222, 261 Böwering, Gerhard, 15–16, 23, 25, 35n, 53, 61, 63, 64, 80–1n, 118, 197–8n, 223n, 228, 263 Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-ṣafāʾ), 16–17 Bundār b. al-Ḥusayn, 235, 249 Calder, Norman, 11, 20, 251n, 265–6n Chittick, William, 128n, 170n

288

index  | 289

Christianity and Christians, 41, 135–6, 164n; see also mysticism, Christian communion (waṣl or wiṣāl), 3, 103, 112, 114, 116, 118, 121, 129n, 155, 156, 157, 162, 163, 216, 217, 239, 241, 258 constructivism, 4, 7, 10, 175 contemptus ultramundi, 98, 123n

al-Dabbāgh, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, 32n al-Daqqāq, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan, 43, 54, 55, 65, 69 al-Dārānī, Abū Sulaymān, 107, 158, 179, 223n al-Darwājikī, 36n Day of Judgement, 14–15, 23, 90, 98, 99, 101, 105–6, 113, 144, 177, 196n; see also resurrection Day of Resurrection see Day of Judgement Day of the Covenant (rūz-i alast), 14–15, 25, 148, 163, 228 al-Daylamī, Shams al-Dīn, 18, 22, 33n, 37n, 39, 61–5, 68–70, 79–81n, 104–8, 109, 113, 122, 130–2n, 151, 170n, 184, 185–7, 192, 198–9n, 217–18, 225n, 230–4, 239–40, 243, 245, 247–9, 259, 260, 264 al-Dhahabī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn, 17, 34n dhāt see essence of God dhawq (taste), 1, 254n, 265 Dhū’l-Nūn al-Miṣrī, 52, 75, 87–8, 124n, 129n, 198n, 223n Dunyā, 14, 33n, 87, 93, 105–6, 108, 113, 123, 130n, 132n, 143, 159, 196n, 256, 260

ecstatic Sufism, 47, 57, 66, 67, 68, 78n, 93, 94, 97, 118, 162–4, 170n, 187–8, 208, 215, 219, 222, 259; see also wajd eisegesis, 17, 120 Eliade, Mircea, 162, 164n, 170n, 175 El-Saleh, Soubhi, 13–14, 84–7, 257, 263 Enlightenment, 8–10 Ernst, Carl, 7, 128n, 153, 170, 172n, 187, 189, 191, 226n, 240 eschatology, 2, 5, 13–16, 19, 21, 24–5, 31–3n, 83–134, 143, 174, 194n, 256–7, 263

essence of God (dhāt), 93, 114, 118, 153–4, 163, 187, 189, 190, 214, 218–20, 239, 244–6, 261; see also manifestation essentialism, 6, 8, 11–12, 29 experiential knowledge (maʿrifa), 10, 15, 23, 49, 50, 56, 67, 91, 92, 95, 98, 104, 107, 112, 115, 116, 117, 118, 124, 148, 152, 154, 160, 182, 213, 236, 243, 245, 259 fanāʾ (annihilation), 116, 147, 213, 217–18, 220, 222, 243, 261 Fire, 88–91, 95–9, 101, 102, 105, 106, 108, 109–13, 131, 137, 182, 188, 284; see also Hell foretaste, 16, 26, 115, 201, 215, 228 friend of God (walī/awliyāʾ), 1, 28n, 49, 56, 62, 67, 86–7, 136, 217, 223n friendship (dūstī), 136, 148–50, 223n

Gabriel, 229–38, 247–8, 251n, 252n al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid, 17, 32n, 40, 45, 55, 61, 73n, 130n, 143, 178, 194n al-Ghazālī, Aḥmad, 40, 55, 59 Ghaznavids, 41, 42, 46 God acts (afʿāl) of, 99, 189, 218, 220, 241, 244, 261 attributes (ṣifāt) of see attributes of God encounter (liqāʾ) with, 3, 15, 26, 89, 90, 112, 188, 201–26, 227–55 essence (dhāt) of see essence of God experiential knowledge (maʿrifa) of see experiential knowledge friend (walī/awliyāʾ) of see friend of God knower (ʿārif) of see knower longing for see longing (shawq) love for see love, passionate (ʿishq) meeting with (liqāʾ) nearness to see nearness seeing see vision wariness of (taqwā), 86, 87, 99, 102, 113–14, 124–5n, 151, 283 Godlas, Alan, 18, 35n, 36n, 37n Goldziher, Ignaz, 4, 16–17, 27n Gramlich, Richard, 28n, 184, 197n, 212, 223n

290 | seeing god in sufi qur ʾan commentaries

hadith, 11, 46, 47, 48, 51, 52, 54, 58, 64, 66, 76, 107, 127n, 130, 133, 138, 140, 165n, 166n, 171n, 177, 178, 180–1, 186, 191, 192n, 193n, 198n, 203, 229, 240, 253n, 254n, 255n hajj, 55, 87–8 ḥāl see state al-Ḥallāj, Manṣūr, 47, 94, 168n halting place (maqām) see station Hamadan, 39, 62–4, 80n al-Hamadhānī, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, 40 Ḥamdūn al-Qaṣṣār, 44, 73n Ḥanafism and Ḥanafīs, 41–2, 45, 46, 52, 54, 73n Ḥanbalism and Ḥanbalīs, 11, 58, 60, 78–9n, 94, 140, 142, 177–8, 194n, 205, 237 al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, 85, 141, 167n, 207, 238 hearing see audition heaven (samāʾ), 111, 139, 148, 163, 169n, 177, 242 heavenly journey see miʿrāj Hell, 3, 13–14, 32n, 33n, 70, 83–91, 96–7, 100, 102, 105, 108–11, 120–3, 124n, 126n, 132n, 133n, 134n, 143, 180, 227–8, 235, 257–8; see also Fire Herat, 39, 40, 58, 78 hereafter, 2, 3, 5, 6, 13, 14, 16, 23–6, 32n, 33n, 70, 83–134, 144, 150, 162, 163, 188, 195, 201, 256, 259–60 hierarchies in, 5–6, 13, 93, 99, 100–4, 105, 121–2, 129n, 257 reward in, 3, 13, 84–6, 90, 91, 93, 95–104, 107, 112–14, 121–2, 131n, 143, 150, 177, 178, 186, 257 punishment in, 3, 13, 84–5, 91, 97–101, 104–12, 121, 123, 133n, 186, 257–8 al-Ḥīrī, Abū ʿUthmān, 46 historicism, 4, 10, 27n Hodgson, Marshall, 2, 39, 63 al-Hujwīrī, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī, 13, 183,199n, 203, 223n, 255n ḥulūl and ḥulūliyya see indwelling humankind, 3, 15, 25, 93, 94, 123, 135–7, 140–3, 146, 148, 150, 152, 160, 162, 163, 166n

Ibn ʿAbbās, 180, 223n, 230–4, 238, 251n Ibn al-ʿArabī, 17, 32n, 33n, 84, 123, 132n, 133n, 134n, 183, 221, 258, 263, 264 Ibn ʿAṭāʾ al-Ādamī, 48, 52, 76n, 94–5, 107, 141–2, 144, 149, 182, 198n, 217, 228, 235, 236, 249 Ibn Barrajān, ʿAbd al-Salām, 35–6n Ibn Ḥabīb, 45 Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad, 193n, 198n Ibn Karrām, 45 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, 168n, 194n, 205, 251 Ibn Qutayba, 60 ijāza, 43, 46, 51, 52 Ikhwān al-ṣafāʾ see Brethren of Purity iltibās, 189–90, 219, 246 incarnation and incarnationists see indwelling indwelling, 65, 179, 182, 191, 240, 243, 255n al-Iṣfahānī, Abū Nuʿaym, 40 ishāra (allusion) see tafsīr by allusion ʿishq see love [for God] Islamic Earlier Middle Period, 2, 24, 39, 256 Islamic Studies, 11, 19, 35n, 263–5 Ismāʿīlism and Ismāʿīlī (bāṭinī), 17, 77n, 165n, 186 isrāʾ see night journey isthmus see limbo ittiḥād, 116, 240–6, 248, 254n, 255n, 261

jabarūt, 10, 62, 114, 130, 155, 172, 221, 226, 241 Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, 49, 52, 56, 68, 75n, 76n, 86–7, 89, 98, 144, 149, 162, 209–11, 213n, 217, 228, 235, 236, 249 Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad, 48, 75n Jahannam, 111, 112, 133n Jamāʿī-Sunnism see Sunnism and Sunni Islam James, William, 9 jihad, 180 al-Jīlānī, ʿAbd al-Qādir, 36n jinn, 148 Judaism and Jews, 41, 135, 202; see also mysticism, Jewish al-Junayd al-Baghdādī, 46, 47, 49, 52, 55, 92, 93–4, 101, 182, 198–9n

index  | 291

Kaʿba, 88, 154 al-Kalābādhī, Abū Bakr, 181, 195n, 196n, 199n, 237 kalām (theological reasoning), 7, 54, 64, 78n, 168n, 194n, 202, 232 Karamustafa, Ahmet, 14–16, 23, 25, 194n Karrāmiyya, 41–5, 71n, 74n, 198n kashf see unveiling Katz, Steven, 4, 16, 29n, 261, 265 Keeler, Annabel, 22, 35n, 37n, 58, 78n, 128n, 148, 150, 216, 263 khānaqāh, 40, 43, 44, 74n al-Kharrāz, Abū Saʿīd, 52, 92–3, 126n, 181, 182, 195n, 198–9n, 211, 217 Khurasan, 33–4n, 40–5, 47, 53, 58–9 King, Richard, 8–9 knower (ʿārif), 96, 103, 105, 107, 113, 115–17, 124, 190, 213, 223n, 254

al-Lamaṭī, Aḥmad, 32n Lange, Christian, 2, 13–14, 83–4, 85, 86, 121, 123n, 132n, 134n, 257, 263 limbo (barzakh), 32n, 84, 98, 128n listening see audition longing [for God] (shawq), 3, 13, 95, 98, 104, 111, 112, 114, 116, 118, 121, 131n, 148–50, 153, 155–6, 162, 170n, 199n, 206, 214, 216, 223n, 241, 259–60, 262 longue durée history, 4, 21, 32, 263 Lordship (rubūbiyya), 15, 115, 116, 146, 152, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 209 lote tree of the utmost boundary (sidrat al-muntahā), 210, 233–4, 239 love [for God] (ʿishq), 3, 13, 18, 85, 90, 91, 98, 99, 102–7, 110, 112, 114, 115–16, 118, 121, 124n, 128n, 143, 148–50, 152–3, 156, 159–64, 170n, 180, 190, 196n, 202, 206, 211, 214–17, 219–20, 222, 228, 235, 240–1, 243, 246, 254–5, 259–60 madhhab (legal school), 42 madrasah, 40, 43, 46, 51, 54, 57, 72n al-Makkī, Abū Ṭālib, 13, 141 al-Makkī, ʿAmr b. ʿUthmān, 181, 185 malakūt, 10, 62, 90, 114, 116, 207, 221, 226, 241, 242, 245 Malāmatiyya (People of Blame), 43–5, 46, 47, 50, 52, 55, 72n, 73n

manifestation (tajallī) of God, 112, 116, 117, 123, 134n, 153, 156, 158, 159, 163, 182–3, 185, 190, 191, 199n, 203–4, 206, 207, 209, 213, 221, 234 of God’s acts (afʿāl), 187, 189, 220, 261 of God’s attributes (ṣifāt), 109, 110, 111, 115, 143, 148, 172n, 187, 189, 199, 213–14, 218, 220, 221, 226, 241, 254n, 258, 261; see also attributes of God of God’s essence (dhāt), 93, 114, 118, 153–4, 163, 187, 189, 190, 214, 218–20, 239, 244–6, 261; see also essence of God maqām see station maʿrifa see experiential knowledge of Marv, 40, 48, 58, 143 Massignon, Louis, 16–17, 75n, 123n al-Māturīdī, Abū Manṣūr, 177, 205 Māturīdism and Māturīdīs, 11, 166n, 178 al-Māwardī, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī, 139, 167, 206, 207, 224n, 231–4 Maybudī, Rashīd al-Dīn, 22, 33n, 37n, 39, 57–60, 61, 67, 68–70, 78n, 82n, 100–4, 105, 113, 121, 140, 143, 148–51, 153, 160–4, 184, 215–17, 219, 221–3, 231–4, 237–9, 247–9, 258–60 McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, 20–1, 35n miʿrāj, 26, 108, 126n, 163–4, 177, 181, 192, 196n, 203, 221, 223n, 227–55 Moses, 3, 23, 25, 89, 105, 136, 140, 158–9, 164, 166n, 176, 181, 188–9, 190, 192, 201–26, 228, 236, 237–9, 241, 242, 243, 259–61 Mount ʿArafat, 88 Mount Sinai, 3, 210, 218, 219, 239 Muhammad, 3, 23, 26, 48, 101, 102, 106, 107, 108, 142, 150, 163–4, 176, 177, 180, 181, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193n, 195n, 196n, 203, 210, 216, 221, 222, 223, 227–55, 259, 260, 261 al-Muḥāsibī, al-Ḥārith, 32n, 93, 125n, 180, 182, 196n Muqātil b. Sulaymān, 177, 193n, 230–4 Muʿtazilism and Muʿtazila, 11, 41, 45, 107, 131n, 165n, 169n, 177, 178, 184, 186, 194–5n, 204–8, 215, 224n, 237, 251

292 | seeing god in sufi qur ʾan commentaries

mysticism, 4, 6–10, 16, 30n, 164n, 174, 223n, 255n, 261 Christian mysticism, 28, 164 Islamic mysticism, 7–10, 47, 51, 52, 53, 223n Jewish mysticism, 171n, 174, 265 love mysticism, 59, 87, 124n, 150, 162, 214, 216, 222, 236 visionary mysticism, 65, 68

Najm al-Dīn Kubrā, 81n, 123, 221 Nasafī, ʿAzīz-i, 32n, 263 Nasr, Seyyid H., 11 al-Naṣrābādhī, Abū’l-Qāsim, 46–7, 54, 96–7, 249 nearness [to God] (qurb), 3, 14, 23–5, 89, 93, 95, 98–9, 101, 104, 105, 107, 111, 112–16, 121–3, 138–9, 143–6, 148, 150, 154–5, 162–4, 227–8, 232, 235–6, 238–40, 254n, 257–8 Neoplatonism, 16, 176 night journey (isrāʾ), 3, 126n, 193n, 196n, 227–30, 235, 237, 238, 239, 242, 246; see also miʿrāj night prayer, 1, 6, 91,110 Nishapur, 24, 36n, 39, 40–6, 47, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 74, 76n, 236; see also tafsīr, Nishapuri School of Niẓām al-Mulk, 42, 55, 71n, 72n normativity, 5, 11, 12, 17, 27n, 33n nussāk see renunciation and renunciants Nwyia, Paul, 16–17, 74–5n, 76n, 135–6 orientalists, 7, 28–9n orthodoxy, 6–7, 10–13, 30, 31n, 53

Paradise banishment from, 3, 14, 23, 25, 123, 135–73, 201, 214, 239, 260 fall from, 14, 163, 164n, 165n; see also banishment from Paradise fruits of, 92, 108, 117–18, 126n, 141, 155, 157, 179 primordial, 3, 14–15 rewards in see hereafter People of Blame see Malāmatiyya perennialism, 6, 7, 10, 27n, 174–5 Persia, 24, 36n, 39–41, 58, 59, 65, 191 Persian language, 59, 60, 66, 68, 79n philosophers (falāsifa), 11, 65, 186, 187 poetry, 57, 111, 128n, 132–3n, 182, 225n, 239

predestination, 25, 136, 138–9, 160–1, 166n primordial covenant see Day of the Covenant Protestantism, 8–9 proximity see nearness (qurb)

Qarmatianism (qarmaṭa), 17, 77n al-Qāshānī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, 33n qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (tales of the prophets) qurb, qurba see nearness al-Qushayrī, Abū’l-Qāsim, 13, 17, 18, 22, 33n, 34n, 39–40, 43, 44, 54–7, 59–60, 65, 67, 68, 69, 77n, 82n, 97–100, 104, 128n, 132n, 139, 146–8, 160, 161, 162, 167n, 169n, 174, 184–7, 192, 203, 214–15, 219, 221, 222, 228, 230–4, 236–7, 247–9, 250n, 255n, 258–9

Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya, 85, 87, 124n, 126n Radtke, Bernd, 29–30n, 73n al-Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn, 178, 194n Religious Studies, 6, 265 renunciation (zuhd) and renunciants (zuhhād and nussāk), 17, 34n, 42, 44, 45, 53, 83–4, 85, 87, 88, 94, 97, 100, 102, 103, 105, 107, 121, 124n, 141, 142, 162, 167–8n, 179, 180, 186, 191, 195n resurrection, 87, 93, 105; see also Day of Resurrection Rippin, Andrew, 27n rubūbiyya see Lordship Rūdbārī, Abū ʿAlī, 101 Rūzbihān al-Baqlī al-Shīrāzī, 18, 22, 33, 37, 39, 65–8, 69, 81n, 82n, 109–23, 132–3n, 134n, 151–60, 160–4, 170–2n, 183, 184, 187–91, 192, 218–21, 222, 230–4, 240–6, 247–9, 254–5n, 258–61, 263–4 Safi, Omid, 9, 29n Sahl see al-Tustarī Saleh, Walid, 21, 27n, 51 Saljūqs, 39, 41–2, 58, 63, 66, 71n, 80n salvation, 6, 109, 132n, 133n samāʿ see audition al-Samʿānī, Aḥmad, 143, 160, 163, 170n Sāmānids, 41 Sands, Kristin Zahra, 18, 75n

index  | 293

al-Sarrāj, Abū Naṣr ʿAbd Allāh, 13, 126n, 180–1, 195n, 199n, 203, 237, 255n Schimmel, Annemarie, 8 al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad b. Idrīs, 198n Shāfiʿism and Shāfiʿīs, 11, 41–7, 52, 54, 55, 57, 58, 71, 73n, 76n, 143 shariah, 57, 59 al-Shiblī, Abū Bakr, 47, 52, 95–6, 138–9, 145, 182, 198n Shīʿism and Shīʿīs, 41, 45, 71n, 165n, 194n Shils, Edward, 12 Shiraz, 39, 66 sidrat al-muntahā see lote tree of the utmost boundary al-Simnānī, ʿAlā al-Dawla, 17 Sirhindi, Aḥmad, 32n Smith, Margaret, 9, 196 soteriology see salvation state (ḥāl), 3, 16, 26, 66, 86, 102, 103, 109, 112, 113, 114–19, 149, 159, 163, 188, 189, 210, 212, 210–22, 239, 240, 243–4, 261 station (maqām), 103, 111, 112, 115, 145, 153, 158, 189, 211, 212, 219, 241, 244, 246, 254n al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, 17, 18, 21–2, 24, 33n, 34n, 36n, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46–53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 64, 65, 67, 68–70, 75–7n, 82n, 83, 85–97, 98, 99, 104, 121, 124n, 131n, 139, 143–6, 147, 148, 149, 160, 161, 162, 168n, 169n, 184, 203, 208–14, 215, 217, 218, 219, 221–3, 224n, 228, 230, 235–6, 243, 246–9, 258, 259, 260, 262, 263 al-Sulamī, Abū ʿAmr Ismāʿīl, 46 Sunnism and Sunni Islam, 11, 40, 53, 55, 71n, 98, 138, 165n, 169n, 186, 194n, 207, 215 al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, 17, 33–4n, 77n, 79n, 127n, 251

al-Ṭabarī, 52, 60, 76n tafsīr as a genealogical tradition, 4, 19, 20–1, 35–6n, 69, 161, 169n, 175, 225, 248–9, 253n, 256, 262–3, 264 by allusion (ishāra), 17–18, 20, 49, 53, 56, 57, 69, 97, 103, 115, 116, 120, 149, 159, 214, 222, 242, 261 Nishapuri School of, 74n, 137, 139,

167n, 206–7, 229, 231, 232, 233–4, 237 ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn (biographies of Qur’an commentators), 17, 33–4n, 77n, 79n tajallī see manifestation taste, 1, 3, 6, 103, 163, 202, 238, 254n, 256; see also foretaste taqwā see God, wariness of tawakkul (reliance on God), 42, 87 al-Thaʿlabī, Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad, 45, 74n, 138, 139–40, 166–7n, 169n, 206, 224n, 231–4 theodicy, 25, 136, 142, 160, 168n this-worldly life, 3, 5, 14–16, 25, 84, 89, 103, 112, 113, 115, 126n, 135–6, 141–3, 148–51, 159, 161–3, 187, 192, 201, 228, 229, 256; see also Dunyā traditionism and traditionists (ahl alḥadīth), 3, 4, 51, 52, 60, 73n, 166n, 177, 178, 194n, 205, 237 Transoxania, 41, 43, 45 Ṭughril Beg, 42, 55 al-Tustarī, Sahl, 1–2, 6, 15, 49, 52, 76n, 78n, 88–92, 108, 126n, 142, 148, 150, 198n, 228, 235, 249

Underhill, Evelyn, 9 unification see ittiḥād unveiling (kashf, mukāshafa), 15, 18, 66, 102, 112, 114, 116–17, 118, 149, 185, 211; see also veil (ḥijāb)

veil (ḥijāb), 63, 96, 99, 104, 107, 110, 113, 153, 163, 180, 245, 257; see also unveiling vision of God (ruʾya), 23, 90, 97, 98, 99, 107, 108, 112, 113, 115, 116, 125n, 154, 163, 178, 181, 183, 186–90, 193–4n, 195n, 197n, 199n, 203–6, 218, 219, 223n, 239, 265 cognitive vision, 175–6, 178, 183, 187, 192, 260–1 contemplative vision, 175–6, 178, 181, 182, 184, 185, 192, 248, 260–2 introvertive vision, 175–6, 183, 260–1 ʿiyān and muʿāyana (eye-witnessing), 16, 89, 103, 105, 112–14, 117, 183, 196, 203, 210, 216, 238

294 | seeing god in sufi qur ʾan commentaries

vision of God (cont.) mushāhada and shuhūd (witnessing), 16, 49, 95–8, 101, 104, 105, 107, 108, 112–13, 114, 115, 116, 118, 154, 155, 159, 178, 181, 183, 185, 187, 191–2, 197n, 203, 213, 216, 239, 241, 253n naẓar (gaze or glance), 15, 86, 95, 98, 203 primordial, 163, 228 tajallī see manifestation with the eye (bi’l-ʿayn), 92, 98, 107–8, 112, 131n, 178, 181–2, 186–8, 191–2, 195n, 196n, 206, 217, 227–55, 260–2; see also ʿiyān with the heart (bi’l-qalb), 92, 104, 107, 108, 144, 178, 180–9, 191, 195n, 196n, 198, 206, 213, 215–17,

220–1, 230, 232–9, 241, 245–8, 253n, 254n, 260, 262

al-Wāḥidī, ʿAlī b. Aḥmad, 45, 53, 140, 208, 231–4 wajd (ecstasy), 66, 94, 118, 188, 215; see also ecstatic Sufism walī see friend of God al-Wāsiṭī, Abū Bakr, 52, 76n, 95, 127n, 183, 198n, 211, 213, 228, 242, 249 waṣl see communion Yazd, 39, 58, 78

ẓāhir (outward), 34n, 48–50, 53, 69, 92, 183, 222, 261–2 al-Zamakhsharī, Abū’l-Qāsim, 204, 251n Zoroastrianism and Zoroastrians, 41 zuhd see renunciation