TOPAll these authors regarded by Ibn Khaldun as critical in the formulation of the canons of Sufism are known to us, and one could easily compose a history of Sufism, particularly of its more moderate type, from their theoretical writings on the subject. Let us turn instead to personal statements by two very different men who experienced the Sufi life and left us their recollections: Abu Said ibn Abi al-Khayr (967–1049 C.E.) and al-Ghazali (d. 1111 C.E.).
Whatever else it might eventually become, Sufism began, and to some extent always remained, an exercise in the same kind of self-restraint and even self-chastisement that was present in the early Christian tradition. The annals of Christianity, particularly as that faith was understood and practiced in Syria, are filled with tales of the most extraordinarily severe asceticism, and while Islamic piety rarely indulged in such extremes of self abasement, physical and psychological severity were not entirely alien to it, as witnessed by this account of the early days of Abu Said ibn Abi alKhayr. The narrator at the outset is his father, who was curious about the doings of his son and one night followed him.
My son walked on till he reached the Old Cloister. He entered it and shut the gate behind him, while I went up on the roof. I saw him go into a chapel which was in the convent and close the door. Looking through the chapel window, I waited to see what would happen. There was a stick lying on the floor, and it had a rope fastened to it. He took up the stick and tied the end of the rope to his foot. Then, laying the stick across the top of a pit that was in a corner of the chapel, he slung himself head downwards, and began to recite the Quran. He remained in that posture until daybreak, when, having recited the whole Quran, he raised himself from the pit, replaced the stick where he found it, opened the door, came out from the chapel, and commenced to perform his ablution in the middle of the convent. I descended from the roof, hastened home and slept till he came in. (Abu Said, The Secrets of Oneness 32.4) [Cited by NICHOLSON 1921: 13–14]
Here it is Abu Said himself who explains his manner of life in those earliest days of his career as a Sufi, and incidentally provides an explanation of why he recited the Quran hanging upside down.
When I was a novice, I bound myself to do eighteen things: I fasted continually; I abstained from unlawful food; I practiced recollection of the name of God uninterruptedly; I kept awake at night; I never reclined on the ground; I never slept but in a sitting posture; I always sat facing the Kaaba; I never leaned against anything; I never looked at a handsome youth or a woman whom it would have been unlawful for me to see unveiled; I did not beg; I was content and resigned to God's will; I always sat in the mosque and did not go into the market because the Prophet said that the market is the filthiest of places and the mosque the cleanest. In all my acts I was a follower of the Prophet. Every twenty-four hours I completed a recitation of the Quran.
In my seeing I was blind, in my hearing deaf, in my speaking dumb. For a whole year I conversed with no one. People called me a lunatic, and I allowed them to give me that name, relying on the Tradition that a man's faith is not made perfect until he is supposed to be mad. I performed everything I had read or heard of as having been done or commended by the Prophet. Having read that when he was wounded in the foot at the battle of Uhud, he stood on his toes in order to perform his devotions—for he could not set the sole of his foot on the ground—I resolved to imitate him, and standing on tiptoe I performed a prayer of forty genuflections. I modeled my actions, outward and inward, upon the Custom of the Prophet, so that habit at last became nature.
Whatever I had heard or found in books concerning the acts of worship performed by the angels, I performed the same. I had heard and seen in writing that some angels worship God on their heads. Therefore I placed my head on the ground and bade the blessed mother of Abu Tahir tie my toe with a cord and fasten the cord to a peg and then shut the door behind her. Being left alone, I said "O Lord! I do not want myself; let me escape from myself!" and I began a recitation of the entire Quran. When I came to the verse, "God shall suffice you against them, for He hears and knows all" (Quran 2:131), blood poured from my eyes and I was no longer conscious of myself.
At that point began Abu Said's conversion from mere asceticism to the life of a mystic saint. As he himself tells us, what had previously been simply his efforts were now transformed into God's spiritual gifts, the "graces" and "blessings" with which Sufi literature is filled.
Then things changed. Ascetic experiences passed over me of a kind that cannot be described in words, and God strengthened and aided me therein, but I had fancied that all these acts were done by me. The grace of God became manifest and showed me this was not so, and that these acts were acts of divine favor and grace. I repented of my belief and realized that it was mere self-conceit. Now if you say that you will not tread this path because it is self-conceit, I reply that your refusal to tread it is likewise self-conceit, and until you undergo all this, its self-conceit will not be revealed to you. Self-conceit appears only when you fulfill the Law, for self-conceit lies in religion and religion is of the Law. To refrain from religious acts is unbelief, but to perform such acts self consciously is dualism, because if "you" exists and "He" exists, then two exist, and that is dualism. You must put your self away altogether.
I had a cell in which I sat, and sitting there I was enamored of passing-away from myself. A light flashed upon me, which utterly destroyed the darkness of my being. God Almighty revealed to me that I was neither that nor this: that this was His grace even as that was His gift.
Abu Said was well aware of the sudden adulation that accompanied Sufi "celebrity" in medieval Islam, and the equally swift reversal to which all such celebrity is subject.
Then the people began to regard me with great approval. Disciples gathered round me and converted to Sufism. My neighbors too showed their respect for me by ceasing to drink wine. This proceeded so far that a melon-skin I had thrown away was bought for twenty pieces of gold. One day when I was riding on horseback, my horse dropped dung. Eager to gain a blessing, the people came and picked up the dung and smeared their heads and faces with it.
After a time it was revealed to me that I was not the real object of their veneration. A voice cried from the corner of the mosque, "Is not your Lord enough for you?" (Quran 41:53). A light gleamed in my breast and most veils were removed. The people who had honored me now rejected me, and even went before the judge to bear witness that I was an infidel. The inhabitants of every place that I entered declared that their crops would not grow on account of my wickedness. Once, while I was seated in a mosque, a woman went up on to the roof and bespattered me with filth; and still I heard a voice saying, "Is not your Lord enough for you?" The congregation desisted from their prayers, saying, "We will not pray together so long as this madman is in the mosque. …"
This joyous transport was followed by a painful contraction of spirit. I opened the Quran and my eye fell on the verse, "We will prove you with evil and with good, to try you; and to Us shall you return" (Quran 21:36), as though God said to me, "All this which I put in your way is a trial. If it is good, it is a trial, and if it is evil, it is a trial. Do not stoop to good or to evil but swell in Me!" Once more my self vanished and His grace was all in all. (Abu Said, The Secrets of Oneness 37.8) [Cited by NICHOLSON 1921: 15–17]
What affected people's attitude toward Ibn Abi al-Khayr were changes in his own external behavior. From a severe asceticism he turned to what appeared to be a profligate life-style, luxurious feasts and splendid entertainments filled with song and dance. This caused another ambitious but somewhat naive Sufi to think that perhaps the famous Abu Said had been overrated, a serious miscalculation. He approached the Master.
O Shaykh (he said), I have come in order to challenge you to a forty days' fast. The poor man was ignorant of the Shaykh's novitiate and of his forty years of austerities: he fancied that the Shaykh had always lived in this same manner. He thought to himself, "I will chasten him with hunger and put him to shame in the eyes of the people, and I shall be the object of their regard." On hearing this challenge, the Shaykh said, "May it be blessed!" and spread his prayer rug. His adversary did the like, and they both sat down side by side.
While the ascetic, in accordance with the practice of those who keep a fast of forty days, was eating a certain amount of food, the Shaykh Abu Said ate nothing; and though he never once broke his fast, every morning he was stronger and fatter and his complexion grew more and more ruddy. All the time, by his orders and under his eyes, his dervishes feasted luxuriously and indulged in spiritual concerts, and he himself danced with them. His state was not changed for the worse in any respect. The ascetic, on the other hand, was daily becoming feebler and thinner and paler, and the sight of the delicious viands which were served to the Sufis in his presence worked more and more upon him. At length he grew so weak that he could scarcely rise to perform the obligatory prayers. He repented of his presumption and confessed his ignorance.
When the forty days were finished the Shaykh Abu Said said, "I have complied with your request: now you must do as I say." The ascetic acknowledged this and said, "It is for the Shaykh to command." Abu Said said, "We have sat for forty days and eaten nothing and gone to the privy; now let us sit another forty and eat nothing but never go to the privy." His adversary had no choice but to accept the challenge, though he thought to himself that it was impossible for any human to do such a thing. (Abu Said, The Secrets of Oneness 160.18) [Cited by NICHOLSON 1921: 71–72]
The man ended, of course, by becoming the disciple of Abu Said ibn Abi al-Khayr.
Ghazali (d. 1111 C.E.), whose distinguished intellectual career spanned philosophy, theology, and law, was a Sufi as well, and it was chiefly his moderate and sympathetic writing on the subject of Sufism that made the Islamic world a safer place for the sometimes extravagant likes of Ibn Abi al-Khayr. There is an extended treatment of Sufism in his Revivification of the Sciences of Religion. Ghazali gives a personal but still highly schematic and intellectualized sketch of his own search for certitude in the autobiographical Deliverer from Error. After experimenting with the other disciplines, Ghazali tells us, he came at length to Sufism.
When I had finished with those sciences, I next turned with set purpose to the method of Sufism. I knew the complete mystic "way" includes both intellectual belief and practical activity; the latter consists of getting rid of obstacles in the self and stripping of its base characteristics and vicious morals, so that the heart may attain to freedom from what is not God and to constant recollection of Him.
Ghazali, ever the intellectual, begins by reading the Sufi classics.
… I thus comprehended their fundamental teachings on the intellectual side, and progressed, as far as is possible by study and oral instruction, in the knowledge of Sufism. It became clear to me, however, that what is most distinctive of Sufism is something which cannot be apprehended by study, but only by tasting, by ecstasy and by moral change. … From the sciences I had labored at and the paths I had traversed in my investigation of the revelational and revealed sciences, there had come to me a sure faith in God Most High, in prophethood and the Last Day. These three credal principles were firmly rooted in my being, not through any carefully argued proofs, but by reason of various causes, coincidences and experiences which are not capable of being stated in detail.
It has already become clear to me that I had no hope of the bliss of the world to come save through a God-fearing life and the withdrawal of myself from vain desire. It was clear to me too that the key to all this was to sever the attachment of the heart to worldly things by leaving the mansion of deception and returning to that of eternity.
Next Ghazali, the distinguished professor on the faculty of Islamic law at the university of Baghdad, takes stock of his life.
I considered the circumstances of my life, and realized that I was caught in a veritable thicket of attachments. I also considered my activities, of which the best was my teaching and lecturing, and realized that in them I was dealing with sciences that were unimportant and contributed nothing to the attainment of eternal life. After that I examined my motive in my work of teaching, and realized that it was not a pure desire for the things of God, but that the impulse moving me was the desire for an influential position and public recognition. I saw for certain that I was on the brink of a crumbling bank of sand and in imminent danger of hell-fire unless I set about to mend my ways. …
For nearly six months beginning in July 1095 I was continuously tossed about between the attractions of worldly desires and the impulses towards eternal life. In that month the matter ceased to be one of choice and became one of compulsion. God caused my tongue to dry up so that I was prevented from lecturing. One particular day I would make an effort to lecture to gratify the hearts of my following, but my tongue would not utter a single word nor could I accomplish anything at all.
Now in the full grip of spiritual impotence, Ghazali quits Baghdad, his family, and his post there and disappears into a ten-year seclusion, some of it spent in Jerusalem, some on pilgrimage to Mecca, and two years on spiritual retreat in Damascus.
In due course I entered Damascus and there I remained for nearly two years with no other occupation than the cultivation of retirement and solitude, together with religious and ascetic exercises, as I busied myself purifying my soul, improving my character and cleansing my heart for the constant recollection of God Most High, as I had learnt from my study of Sufism. I used to go into retreat for a period in the mosque of Damascus, going up the minaret of the mosque for the whole day and shutting myself in so as to be alone. …
I continued at this stage for the space of ten years, and during these periods of solitude there were revealed to me things innumerable and unfathomable. This much I shall say about that in order that others may be helped: I learnt with certainty that it is above all the Sufis who walk on the road of God; their life is the best life, their method the soundest method, their character the purest character; indeed, were the intellect of the intellectuals and the learning of the learned and the scholarship of the scholars, who are versed in the profundity of revealed truth, brought together in the attempt to improve the life and character of the Sufis, they would find no way of doing so; for to the Sufis all movement and all rest, whether external or internal, brings illumination from the lamp of prophetic revelation; and behind the light of prophetic revelation there is no other light on the face of the earth from which illumination may be received. (Ghazali, Deliverer 122–132) [GHAZALI 1953: 54–60]