Mystics and Saints of Islam Part 9

he said, "repents more deeply than I do for not having been in love before." A third said, "Anyone with intelligence can see that though thou wast our guide, thou hast gone astray." He answered, "Say what you like, I am not ashamed; I break with a stone the vase of hypocrisy."

To many similar remonstrances he made similar replies. At last, finding their efforts of no avail, his disciples left him. Lost in a kind of stupor, he remained the whole night motionless before the balcony.

In the morning the young Christian came out, and seeing that he did not got away, understood that he was in love. He poured out a pa.s.sionate appeal, when she would have dismissed him, and refused to depart. At last she said, "If thou art really in earnest, thou must utterly wash thy hands of Islam; thou must bow to idols,[51] burn the Koran, drink wine, and give up thy religious observances." The Sheikh replied, "I will drink wine, but I cannot consent to the three other conditions."

She said, "Rise, then, and drink; when thou hast drunk, thou mayest, perchance, be able." Accordingly the Sheikh drank wine, and, having done so, lost his senses entirely, complied with her requests, and became her abject slave. He then said to her, "O charming maiden, what remains to be done? I have drunk wine, I have adored idols; no one could do more for love than I have done." She, though she began to requite his affection, wis.h.i.+ng still further to prove him, answered, "Go, then, and feed my swine for a year, and then we will pa.s.s our lives together in joy or in sorrow."

So this saint and great Sheikh consented to keep swine for a year. The news of his apostasy spread all over Roum, and his disciples again came to remonstrate with him, and said, "O thou who disregardest religion, return with us again to the Kaaba." The Sheikh answered, "My soul is full of sadness; go whither your desires carry you. As for me, the Church is henceforth my place, and the young Christian the happiness of my life." He spoke, and turning his face from his friends, went back to feed his swine. They wept, and looked at him wistfully from afar. At last they returned sadly to the Kaaba.

Now there was a friend of the Sheikh, who happened to have been absent when the Sheikh left Mecca. On the arrival of the Sheikh's disciples, he questioned them, and learned all that had happened. He then said, "If you are really his friends, go and pray to G.o.d night and day for the Sheikh's conversion." Accordingly, forty days and nights they prayed and fasted, till their prayers were heard, and G.o.d turned the sheikh's heart back again to Islam. The secrets of divine wisdom, the Koran, the prophecies, all that he had blotted out of his mind, came back to his memory, and at the same time he was delivered from his folly and his misery. When the fire of repentance burns, it consumes everything. He made his ablutions, resumed his Moslem garb, and departed for Mecca, where he and his old disciples embraced with tears of joy.

In the meantime the young Christian saw the Prophet appearing to her in a dream, and saying, "Follow the Sheikh! Adopt his doctrine; be the dust under his feet. Thou who wert the cause of his apostasy, be pure as he is." When she awoke from her dream, a strong impulse urged her to seek for him. With a heart full of affection, though with a feeble body, she went to seek for the Sheikh and his disciples. While she was on the way, an inner voice apprised the Sheikh of what was pa.s.sing. "This maiden,"

it said, "has abandoned infidelity; she has heard of Our sacred House,[52] she has entered in Our way; thou mayest take her now, and be blameless."

Forthwith, the Sheikh set out on the way towards Roum to meet her; his disciples essayed to stop him and said, "Was thy repentance not real?

Art thou turning back again to folly?" But he told them of the intimation which he had received, and they set out together till they arrived where the young Christian was. But they found her prostrate on the ground, her hair soiled by the dust of the way, her feet bare, her garments torn. At this sight tears ran down the Sheikh's cheeks; she, when she saw him, said, "Lift the veil that I may be instructed, and teach me Islam."

When this lovely idol had become one of the Faithful, they shed tears of joy, but she was sad; "O Sheikh!" she cried, "my powers are exhausted; I cannot support absence. I am going to leave this dusty and bewildering world. Farewell, Sheikh Sanaan, farewell! I can say no more; pardon me and oppose me not." So saying, her soul left the body; the drop returned to the ocean.

Other anecdotes which occur in the Mantiq-ut-tair are the following:--

THE ANGEL GABRIEL AND THE INFIDEL.

One night Gabriel was near the Throne, when he heard Allah p.r.o.nouncing words of acquiescence in answer to someone's prayer. "A servant of G.o.d,"

said Gabriel to himself, "is invoking the Eternal just now; but who is he? All that I can understand is that he must be a saint of surpa.s.sing merit, whose spirit has entirely subdued his flesh. Gabriel wished to know who the happy mortal was, but though he flew over lands and seas, he did not find him. He hastened to return to the proximity of the Throne and heard again the same answer given to the same prayers. In his anxiety to know the suppliant, he again sought for him throughout the world, but in vain. Then he cried, "O G.o.d, show me the way that conducts to his dwelling." "Go," was the answer, "to the country of Roum; enter a certain Christian convent, and thou shalt find him." Gabriel hastened thither, and saw the man who was the object of the divine favour; at that very moment he was adoring an idol. Then Gabriel said to G.o.d, "O Master of the world, reveal to me this secret; How canst Thou hear with kindness him who prays to an idol in a convent?" G.o.d answered him, "A veil is upon his heart; he knows not that he is astray. Since he has erred through ignorance, I pardon him, and grant him access to the highest rank of saints."

THE CLAY OF WHICH MAN IS MADE.

One day the Prophet drank of a stream and found its taste more sweet than rose-water. As he was sitting by the stream, someone came and filled his clay pitcher from it, and the Prophet drank out of that also.

To his amazement, he found the water bitter. "O G.o.d," he said, "the water of the stream and the water in the pitcher are one; disclose to me the secret of the difference in their taste. Why is the water in the pitcher bitter, and the other sweet as honey?" From the pitcher itself came the answer. "I am old; the clay of which I am made has been worked over and over again into a thousand shapes. But in every shape I am impregnated with the bitter savour of mortality. It exists in me in such a way that the water which I hold cannot be sweet."

THE DEAD CRIMINAL.

A poor criminal died, and as they were carrying him to burial, a devotee who was pa.s.sing by stood aloof, saying that funeral prayers should not be said over such an one. The next night, in a dream, the devotee saw the criminal in heaven, with his face s.h.i.+ning like the sun. Amazed, he said to him, "How hast thou obtained so lofty a place, thou who hast spent thy life in crime, and art foul from head to foot?" He answered, "It is because of thy want of compa.s.sion towards me that G.o.d has shown me mercy, though so great a sinner. Behold the mystery of G.o.d's love and wisdom. In His wisdom, He sends man, like a child with a lamp, through the night as black as a raven; immediately afterwards he commands a furious wind to blow and extinguish the lamp. Then He asks His child why the lamp is blown out."

"Night and day, O my child, the seven spheres carry on their revolutions for thee. Heaven and h.e.l.l are reflections of thy goodness and of thy wickedness. The angels have all bowed down to thee.[53] The part and whole are lost in thy essence. Do not, therefore, despise thine own self, for nothing is higher than it. The body is part of the Whole, and thy soul is the Whole. The body is not distinct from the soul, but is a part of it, neither is the soul distinct from the Whole. It is for thee that the time arrives when the rose displays its beauty; for thee that the clouds pour down the rain of mercy. Whatever the angels do, they have done for thee."

ANECDOTE OF BAYAZID BASTAMI.

One night Sheikh Bayazid went out of the town, and found reigning everywhere profound silence. The moon was s.h.i.+ning at the full, making the night as clear as day. The sky was covered with constellations, each fulfilling its course. The Sheikh walked on for a long while without hearing the least sound, and without perceiving anyone. He was deeply moved, and said, "O Lord, my heart is pained. Why is such a sublime audience-hall as Thine without throngs of wors.h.i.+ppers?" "Cease thy wonder," an inner voice replied to him. "The King does not accord access to His Court to everyone. When the sanctuary of Our splendour is displayed, the careless and the slumbering are without. Those who are to be admitted to this Court wait whole years, and then only one in a million enters."

In his latter years, Fariduddin Attar carried his asceticism to such a degree that he gave up composing poetry altogether. The story of his death ill.u.s.trates in a striking way the indifference to external things cultivated by the Sufis. During the invasion of Persia by Jenghiz Khan (1229 A.D.) when Attar had reached the great age of 110, he was taken prisoner by the Mongols. One of them was about to kill him, when another said, "Let the old man live; I will give a thousand pieces of silver as his ransom." His captor was about to close with the bargain, but Attar said, "Don't sell me so cheaply; you will find someone willing to give more." Subsequently another man came up and offered a bag of straw for him. "Sell me to him," said Attar, "for that is all I am worth." The Mongol, irritated at the loss of the first offer, slew the saint, who thus found the death he desired.

[47] _i.e.:_ The stages of the Sufi's progress to G.o.d.

[48] c.f. G. Meredith

"Out of hundreds who aspire, Eighties perish, nineties tire; Those who bear up in spite of wrecks and wracks, Were seasoned by celestial blows and thwacks."

[49] It should be remembered that the name Simurgh means "thirty birds."

[50] The niche in the mosque wall facing Mecca, towards which Muhammadans pray.

[51] Christians are regarded as idolators by Moslems.

[52] The Kaaba.

[53] Alluding to the Koran (Sura 18) where the angels are represented as wors.h.i.+pping Adam by the command of G.o.d.

CHAPTER XIII

Suhrawardy[54]

(1153-1191 AD)

Very few remains in writing, except their Persian poems, have come down to us from the older Pantheistic mystics. In the Kingdom of the Caliphs heretical books were suppressed by stronger measures than being placed on the Index. To express views openly at variance with the established religion was to imperil one's life. The Persian Sufis, therefore, who in their mystical works generally used Arabic, veiled their views in a sort of technical language, which was quite unintelligible to the uninitiated. Still some works are preserved which give us an insight into their tendencies.

The Sheikh Suhrawardy, who was a martyr to his convictions, must be regarded as the chief representative of this free-thinking tendency in Sufism. His works have been more appreciated by the Persians and Turks than by the Arabs, among whom copies of them are no longer to be found, while they may be met with in Turkish libraries.

Suhrawardy belonged to the orthodox school of the Shafiites, and gained a great reputation for his learning. He studied jurisprudence in Maraghah, then went to Ispahan, and later to Bagdad and Aleppo, where he occupied himself chiefly with philosophical studies. He gave himself the t.i.tle "Disciple of the Spirit-world." In the Arabic biographies of him, his teaching is said to have aimed at overthrowing Islam; this, however, is always said of anyone who ventures to oppose the dominant orthodox party. As a matter of fact, he founded a sect who bore the name Ishrakiyya--"The Illumined." For them he composed a work, "Hikmat al Ishrak," _i.e._, "The philosophy of illumination," containing mystical and fantastic teaching. In Aleppo, where he finally took up his abode, he seems to have exercised a powerful influence on Prince Malik Zahir, the son of the famous Saladin. The orthodox party persuaded the latter to pa.s.s sentence of death on him as a heretic, which sentence Malik Zahir caused to be carried out (1191 A.D.), but not till he had received a threatening letter from his father for his dilatoriness. Suhrawardy is said when he heard the sentence, to have quoted a Persian verse:

"It is not worth while to draw the sword."

By his own consent, he was then shut up in a separate chamber and deprived of meat and drink till he pa.s.sed into the world for which he longed. His tomb is still preserved in Aleppo, where the memory of him as "the murdered Suhrawardy" has by no means faded. The inhabitants say that no tree or shrub will grow in the tomb-enclosure. His real character has, for the most part, been forgotten, and he is represented as a magician and sorcerer who possessed the philosopher's stone, and knew how to make gold. Many even believe that he was never killed at all, but disappeared, while a phantom was put to death in his place.

They say that at night weird sounds are heard from his grave.

These popular legends give us reason to suppose that Suhrawardy's life and death in Aleppo really made an extraordinary impression on the people, and that his teaching penetrated more deeply than Muhammedan writers find convenient to admit. Suhrawardy's writings were preserved from entire destruction by the Persians and Turks. The most important of them are the above-mentioned Hikmat al Ishrak, Haikal-un-nur (The Temple of Light) and others. From the two first a few pa.s.sages may be quoted, which suffice to show that the theosophy of this Persian Sufi took a much bolder flight than that of the Arabian Sufis, and that for it Islam was a mere outward form.

In the Hikmat al Ishrak we find the influences of two entirely different schools of thought fantastically blended into an extraordinary compound of philosophy and mysticism. In this, Neo-platonic ideas are brought into connection with a theory of light obviously derived from Zoroastrian doctrine, and both are variously modified by the influence of Islamic monotheism and presented in the abstract terminology of the Arabic Sufis. With these last, Suhrawardy found himself in harmony with regard to their "ecstatic" stages and arrival at the knowledge of G.o.d by way of intuition. He also betrays the influence of the Perso-s.h.i.+te dogma of the hidden spiritual Imams, of whom only one is believed to be on earth at any given time, and he is the highest spiritual and religious authority among his contemporaries.

The following is an abridged translation of the preface to the "Hikmat al Ishrak": "Long have ye, O worthy friends and companions--may G.o.d protect you!--prayed me to write for you a book wherein I should describe what has been revealed to me by way of inspiration in my lonely contemplations and soul-combats. Spiritual science is no cla.s.s privilege reserved for the elect, behind whom the doors of the spirit-world are closed, and thereby he who would learn somewhat of the supernatural is excluded. Nay, He who graciously granted us this knowledge, He, the Horizon of Illumination, is not miserly with the secrets of the other world. The worst of all ages is that in which the carpet of free spiritual investigation is rolled up, the wings of thought are cramped, the gates of intuition closed and the road of contemplation barricaded.

"The world was never wholly without philosophy, and without someone who cultivated it and was declared a philosopher by manifest proofs and facts. This man is the real Caliph or representative of G.o.d on earth, and his successors will be so, as long as heaven and earth shall endure.

The difference between the old and new philosophers only consists in the variations of their phraseology and of their methods of exposition and proof. All in common acknowledge the three worlds (the earthly world, the spirit world, and the world of Deity); all alike are agreed in Monotheism and in their fundamental principles.

"As regards the first teacher, Aristotle, it is clear that he is of incomparable value, that his wisdom is great and his faculty of penetration profound; yet we should not so exaggerate our reverence for him as to undervalue his masters, among whom especially are to be counted the travelling and law-giving philosophers, such as Agathodaemon, Hermes, aesculapius and others. The line of their succession is long; the chief cla.s.ses into which they may be divided are as follows: (1) The Theosophist without philosophy; (2) the speculative philosopher without theosophy; (3) the philosopher who is equally strong in both; (4) the Theosophist who is strong in theosophy but mediocre or weak in philosophy; (5) the philosopher who is strong in philosophy but mediocre or weak in theosophy, etc. Now if the complete mastery of both philosophic and theosophic science is found in one man, _this_ man is the representative of G.o.d on earth. Failing such a person, the t.i.tle devolves on him who is complete in theosophy, though he may be mediocre in philosophy. Failing him, the representative of G.o.d is he who is complete in theosophy without possessing any philosophy at all. There never fails to be in the world _one_ great theosophist.

"But the speculative philosopher, fully equipped in philosophy, has no claim to the rule in this earth. For there is always a theosophist on earth and he is better fitted for the post than the philosopher, as the place of G.o.d's Vicar on earth cannot remain unoccupied. By this 'rule,'

however, I do not mean the possession of political power; only the Imam who is also a theosophist _may_ take over the political power and exercise it publicly, or he may rule in secret. In the latter case he is termed the mystical pole ("qutb"); to him the rule belongs, even though he live in the deepest poverty. If the political power should really come into his hand, the age becomes illuminated; but if it lacks such divine guidance, it is overwhelmed by darkness.

"It is n.o.bler to aim at a high attainment at theosophy and philosophy alike than to confine one's effort to one or the other. This book is intended for those who devote themselves to both, and not to the latter only; in it we address ourselves only to the untrammelled thinker in the reign of theosophy; the lowest step which the reader of it should have attained, if he would derive any benefit therefrom, is at any rate to have felt a flash of the divine light reach him, and in some measure to have made it his own. Whoever merely wishes to study philosophy, let him attend the school of the Peripatetics; for that purpose it is good and sufficient. Just as we form certain sense-perceptions and recognise their conditions with certainty, and base further scientific investigations upon them, so in the spiritual realm we form certain perceptions and build upon them; but he who does not adopt this method, understands nothing of philosophy."