The Illumination of the Intellect

The chief Muslim agent of the turning of both philosophy and mysticism in the direction of theosophy was the philosopher Ibn Sina or Avicenna (d. 1038 C.E.). His contribution to the development and refinement of Islamic philosophy in its then current blend of Plato and Aristotle was enormous, but there are hints throughout his work that Avicenna had, behind and beyond his public and scholastic treatments of philosophical themes, a more esoteric "oriental philosophy" whose contents could only be hinted at. The obliqueness of Avicenna's own allusions make its identification somewhat problematic, but a great many Muslims who came after him understood Avicenna's esoteric philosophy as some form of mysticism, and identified its author as a Sufi.

Whether or not he was a Sufi in any formal sense, Avicenna laid heavy emphasis upon some form of divine illumination (ishraq) as the means whereby the philosopher received the knowledge that was the object of his quest. Avicenna's "illumination" probably owed a great deal more to Neoplatonism than his many commentators and imitators were prepared to admit. It was, at any rate, an individual effort and an individual achievement, this pursuit of union with God, and there is nothing in Avicenna suggesting the classic Sufi theme of the passage of a spiritual baraka from master to novice, no charismatic "chain" upon which to mount on high.

One of Avicenna's most influential interpreters read him somewhat differently, however. Suhrawardi (d. 1191 C.E.) took up and completed Avicenna's "visionary recitals" and interpreted the philosopher's "oriental philosophy" as a genuine renaissance of Eastern, that is, Persian wisdom.

Though the Sunni lawyer and theologian was probably a less congenial figure to him than the Shi’ite philosopher, Suhrawardi learned as much from Ghazali as he did from Avicenna. Ghazali (d. 1111 C.E.) had already anticipated, as we shall see, a new task for that perennial handmaiden, philosophy, and Suhrawardi developed it with enthusiasm. Speculative knowledge, the wisdom that comes from research and investigation, was simply a preparation for the "wisdom that savors," the experimental knowledge of God. Philosophy thus received its justification and at the same time was assigned an appropriate place as a preparation for the final stages of the search for the Absolute. Suhrawardi likewise followed Ghazali in his elaboration of the rich possibilities of allegorical exegesis in the service of mysticism.

Suhrawardi's work, with its assertion of Persia's place in the history of Wisdom, its attractive metaphysic of light, its developed theory of allegorical exegesis, and its valorization of experience over theoretical knowledge, provided a program for both the philosophers and the mystics of Iran, and a convenient bridge upon which they might thereafter meet. That the meetings were frequent and rewarding is attested by the twin traditions of mystical poetry in Persian and the ill-charted but impressive course of theosophical and philosophical speculation during the reign of the Safavids in Iran.

A distinction has been drawn between the "Mysticism of Infinity" and the "Mysticism of Personality," and it has been argued that later Sufism is unmistakably in the former category, which acknowledges God as the Ultimate and Unique Reality whereas the world possesses only the "limited reality" of a distant emanation from the One Being. In the latter view all Reality is in fact One. This position was not very congenial to Muslim revelation, which stresses the gulf between the Creator and His creation, and which preached, in its mystical mode, an approach to God through moral activity and not identity with Him. Union or identity (ittihad) with God was already a troublesome Sufi concept for the traditionists, but even more scandalous was the message broadcast by the influential philosopher and poet Ibn Arabi (d. 1204 C.E.), that of the "unity of Being."

The Muslim scholastics' reverence for Ghazali and Ghazali's own moderating influence may have prevented a full-scale reaction to the rationalist strain in theology. But there are responses other than reaction, and the more radical mystical thinkers in Islam, more radical than alGhazali at any rate, illustrate another view of rationalism. For example, Ibn al-Arabi (1165–1240 C.E.) speaks from a supremely confident position—the text of his book The Bezels of Wisdom, he informs the reader at the outset, was handed to him by none other than Muhammad himself in Damascus in the month of Muharram, 1230 C.E. Ibn al-Arabi simply dismisses the rationalizing and rationalist ways of trying to understand God as at worst ignorant and at best irrelevant. He tells this highly revealing anecdote about a meeting in Cordova between himself, the still very young patron saint of Islamic theosophy, and Ibn Rushd, the "second Aristotle" of Islam, in his Meccan Revelations.

I spent a good day in Cordova at the house of Abu al-Walid ibn Rushd. He had expressed a desire to meet with me in person, since he had heard of certain revelations I had received while in retreat, and had shown considerable astonishment concerning them. In consequence, my father, who was one of his close friends, took me with him on the pretext of business, in order to give Ibn Rushd the opportunity of making my acquaintance. I was at the time a beardless youth.

As I entered the house the philosopher rose to greet me with all the signs of friendliness and affection, and embraced me. Then he said to me, "Yes!" and showed pleasure on seeing that I had understood him. I, on the other hand, when I became aware of the motive of his pleasure, replied "No!" At this Ibn Rushd drew back from me, his color changed and he seemed to doubt what he had thought of me. He then put to me the following question: "What solution have you found as a result of mystical illumination and divine inspiration?" I replied, "Yes and No. Between the Yea and the Nay the spirits take their flight beyond matter, and the necks detach themselves from their bodies." At this Ibn Rushd became pale, and I saw him tremble as he muttered the formula "There is no power save from God." This was because he had understood my allusion. (Ibn al-Arabi, Meccan Revelations 1.153) [IBN AL-ARABI 1980: 2]

We are somewhat less certain than Ibn Rushd about the meaning of the allusion, but there is no mistaking Ibn al-Arabi's views on what and how we know about God—or better, the Reality. He begins with an attack on the very foundation of the rationalist enterprise, the principle of causality.

An indication of the weakness of intellectual speculation is the notion that a cause cannot be (also) the effect of that to which it is a cause. Such is the judgment of the intellect, while in the science of divine Self-revelation it is known that a cause may be the effect of that for which it is a cause. … The most that the intellectual will admit to on this matter, when he sees that it contradicts speculative evidence, is that the essence, after it is established that it is one among many causes, in some form or other, of a (given) effect, cannot be an effect to its effect, so that that effect should become its cause, while the first still remains a cause, but that if its determination becomes changed by its transformation in forms, then it may thus become an effect to its own effect, which might then become its cause. This then is as far as he will go, when he perceives that the matter does not agree with his rational speculation.

There have been none more intelligent than the Messengers, God's blessing be on them, and what they brought us derives from the divine Majesty. They indeed confirmed what the intellect confirms, but added more that the intellect is not capable of grasping, things the intellect declares to be absurd, except in the case of one who has had an immediate experience of divine manifestation; afterwards, left to himself, he is confused as to what he has seen. If he is a servant of the Lord, he refers his intelligence to Him (to respond to his perplexities), but if he is a servant of reason, he reduces God to its yardstick. This happens only so long as he is in this worldly state, being veiled from his otherworldly state in this world. (Ibn al-Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, "Elias") [IBN AL-ARABI 1980: 234]

The "servant of the Lord" and the "servant of reason" are thus neatly distinguished. Other similar distinctions, all to the same point, appear often in his work.

For the believers and men of spiritual vision it is the creation that is surmised and the Reality that is seen and perceived, while in the case of those not in these two categories, it is the Reality Who is surmised and the creation that is seen and perceived by the senses. …

Men are divided into two groups. The first travel a way they know and whose destination they know, which is their Straight Path (Quran 11:56). The second group travel a way they do not know and of whose destination they are unaware, which is equally the Straight Path. The gnostic calls on God with spiritual perception, while he who is not a gnostic calls on Him in ignorance and bound by a tradition.

Such a knowledge is a special one stemming from "the lowest of the low" (Quran 95:5), since the feet are the lowest part of the person, what is lower than that being the way beneath them. He who knows that the Reality is the way knows the truth, for it is none other than He that you progress and travel, since there is naught to be known save Him, since He is Being Itself and therefore also the traveller himself. Further, there is no Knower save Him; so who are you? Therefore, know your true reality and your way, for the truth has been made known to you on the tongue of the Interpreter [that is, Muhammad], if you will only understand. He is a true word that none understands, save that his understanding be true; the Reality has many relations and many aspects. …

… You may say of Being what you will; either that it is the creation or that it is the Reality, or that it is at once both the creation and the Reality. It might also be said that there is neither creation nor the Reality, as one might admit to perplexity in the matter, since by assigning degrees the difficulties appear. But for the limitation (that arises in defining the Reality), the Messengers would not have taught that the Reality transforms Himself in cosmic forms nor would they have described Him (at the same time) as abstracting Himself from all forms. …

Because of this (inevitable limitation by definition), He is both denied and known, called incomparable and compared. He who sees the Reality from His standpoint, in Him and by Him, is a gnostic. He who sees the Reality from His standpoint, in Him, but with himself as the seer, is not a gnostic. He who does not see the Reality in this way, but expects to see Him by himself, he is ignorant.

In general most men have perforce an individual concept of their Lord, which they ascribe to Him and in which they seek Him. So long as the Reality is presented to them according to it, they recognize Him and affirm Him, whereas if it is presented in any other form, they deny Him, flee from Him and treat Him improperly, while at the same time imagining that they are acting toward Him fittingly. One who believes (in the ordinary way) believes only in a deity he has created in himself, since a deity in "beliefs" is a (mental) construction. They see (in this deity) only themselves and their own constructions within themselves. (Ibn al-Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, "Hud") [IBN AL-ARABI 1980: 132–133]

Sufism took eagerly to Ibn Arabi's version of a pantheistic universe and its supporting apparatus of Gnostic esoterics. Such traditionists as Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328 C.E.) were equally quick to discover the dangers of the Sufi metaphysic and its freewheeling exegesis to what had by then been shaped into a consensual version of Sunni Islam. But the Sufis were by no means the only proponents of Gnosticism in the Islamic lands. There are Gnostic premises at the base of most of the occult sciences that flourished in the ancient and medieval world—alchemy for one—and the ease with which so many of them passed from one to another of the very different religious climates of ancient Greco-Roman paganism, Near Eastern Islam, and both Eastern and Western Christianity and Judaism underscores both the appeal and the adaptability of Gnosticism. And in Islam Gnosticism demonstrated that it could adapt itself as readily to political as to scientific ends.

The Ismailis were a subdivision of the Shi’ite movement who, unlike the main body of the Shi’a in the Middle Ages, had a political program for overthrowing the Sunni Caliph and replacing him with a revolutionary Mahdi-Imam (see below). They were not successful, but they had access to and put to effective use the entire Gnostic apparatus of cosmic history, in which the Shi’ite Imams became the Gnostic Aeons: a secret revelation of the "realities" that lay hidden in the concealed (batin) rather than the evident sense of Scripture; an imamic guide who possessed an infallible and authoritative magisterium (ta’lim); and an initiated elite that formed, in the Ismaili case, the core of an elaborate political underground. At their headquarters in Cairo, a city that the Ismaili Fatimids founded in 969 C.E., agents were instructed in the Ismaili gnosis and program, and were sent forth with the "call" of the Mahdi-Imam to cells and cadres that had been set up in the caliphal lands in Iraq and Iran.

Sunni and Ismaili Islam shared a common foundation of reliance on authority and tradition. For the Sunni, that tradition was embodied in the elaborate structure of Muslim law which in turn rested upon hadith reports that went back to the Prophet's own words and deeds, and so constituted a second revelation with an authority equal to the Quran's own. The Quran and the "sunna of the Prophet" prescribed a certain order in the religious sphere. However, that order was impossible to achieve without the establishment of a parallel political order that could guarantee the performance of religious duties by securing for each believer the security of his life and property, and was capable at the same time of maintaining the unity of the community in the face of civil disorders. From this was derived the political authority of the Caliph and his delegates.

For the Ismailis, the Imam was not a political corollary of a religious system but an integral part of the religious system itself. In a famous Shi’ite hadith, already described in chapter 3 above, the Prophet Muhammad, upon his return from his "ascension" to the highest heavens where the truths of creation were revealed to him, cast his mantle over his daughter Fatima and his grandsons Hasan and Husayn and so signified the transmission of those same truths to his Fatimid-Alid descendants. Thus it was the Imam and he alone who held, at least in theory—every Sufi and philosopher from the twelfth century onward claimed the same privilege—the key to ta'wil, the allegorical exegesis of Scripture that penetrated the surface meaning to the Truths beneath.

The intellectual defense of Sunnism against this claim was undertaken by al-Ghazali in a series of tracts that mounted a frontal attack on what he called "the Partisans of the Concealed" (al-batiniyya)." But the issue appears in all its complexity in a more personal statement, his Deliverer from Error, which describes his own investigation of the competing claims upon the faith of the Muslim. Faith tied to simple acceptance on the authority of others was insufficient for Ghazali; it could be shaken by the conflicting claims put forward by different parties and sects within Islam and by the equally strong adherence to their own faith by the Christians and Jews. Unless he was prepared to lapse into an agnostic skepticism, as Ghazali was not, there had to be some other way for the seeker after truth. Four possibilities presented themselves: the way of speculative theology, kalam, which professed to support its religious beliefs with rational argument; the way of the philosophers, who laid claim to true scientific demonstration; the Ismaili way, which promised religious certitude by reliance upon the teaching of an infallible Imam; and finally the way of the Sufis or mystics, who offered intuitive understanding and a certitude born of standing in the presence of God.

The attraction of talim was undeniable, and Ghazali could reply that if such were the answer, then it was far preferable to accept the infallible teaching of the Prophet than of some derivative Imam, whose teachings in any event turned out to be a debased form of Greek philosophy. But neither can really cure the malady: it is part of the human condition to doubt and to disagree, and on the rational level the only solution is not to throw oneself on the authority of another but to work out an answer with patience and intelligence, an answer based equally on the Quran and the principles of right reason. The solution is, in short, Ghazali's own rigorous version of dialectical theology.

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