Voices of Islam (54 page)

The Path of Blame was originally a Nishapur-based phenomenon. Else- where in northeastern Iran, the spread of Mesopotamian Sufism did not nec- essarily take the form of a blending of this latter trend with indigenous mystical approaches; rather, it appears to have occurred through importation. It is likely that we owe one of the earliest surviving ‘‘surveys’’ of Sufi
Kitab al-luma‘ fi’l-tasawwuf
(The Book of Light Flashes on Sufism) of Abu Nasr al-Sarraj (d. 988
CE
), to this process of transplantation of a mystical school that had first taken shape in Iraq to the different cultural environment of northeastern Iran. Sarraj evidently traveled widely in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt in order to meet Sufi shaykhs and their students and to collect accurate

What Is Sufism?
257

information about their lives and teachings. In all, he managed to gather firsthand information from 39 Sufi authorities on approximately 200 Sufis.
24
Sarraj poured his findings into 157 chapters. He organized the chapters into an introduction on the place of Sufism within Islam and 13 ‘‘books’’ devoted to the subjects of states and stations, adherence to the Qur’an, following the model of the Prophet, Qur’an interpretation, Companions of the Prophet, Sufi conduct, differences of opinion on Sufi doctrine, Sufi writings and poetry, audition, ecstasy, miracles, Sufi terminology, ecstatic utterances, and errors associated with Sufism. The result was a comprehensive compendium as solid in substance as it was rich in detail.

The spread of Sufi to Central Asia is more difficult to trace. Never- theless, we can be confi t that Sufi was defi introduced to the Muslim communities in the region, since one of the earliest extant Sufi man- uals,
al-Ta‘arruf li-madhhab ahl al-tasawwuf
(Introducing the Way of the People of Sufi was written in Bukhara by Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi (d. 990
CE
).
25
Representatives of Baghdad Sufism were probably still rare in Cen- tral Asia, but there is no doubt that some Sufis were to be found there. None- theless, even if they were present, Sufi were clearly not very well known in these regions. Indeed, the organization of Kalabadhi’s book, true to the somewhat prosaic and distanced ring of its title, also gives the impression that its author was engaged in an attempt to introduce his readers to a new and foreign subject.

The diffusion of Sufi to regions beyond Iraq during the course of the tenth century
CE
and its fusion with indigenous mystical trends went apace with the emergence of a self-conscious Sufi tradition. The situation in Syria, lower Iraq, Egypt, and North Africa is less than clear, but especially in northeastern Iran, the need to introduce Sufism to new audiences seems to have contributed to the construction of a coherent narrative about Sufi

as exemplifi in the surveys of Sarraj, Kalabadhi, and the various works of Sulami. However, the foreign nature of Sufi in regions other than Iraq was not the main reason for the appearance of academic overviews of
tasaw- wuf
from the mid-tenth century onwards. More significant was the passage of time. Sufism, which had crystallized in Baghdad during the last quarter of the previous century, now literally had a history, and the Sufis of the late tenth century, who were already a generation or two removed from the time of Junayd and his companions, felt the need to preserve, evaluate, and analyze the complex legacy of the first masters. Their life examples, their sayings, and their behavior had to be recorded, their debates scrutinized, and their vision perpetuated. Moreover, as was the case with all modes of piety, the bounda- ries of ‘‘normative’’ Sufism needed to be ascertained in order to consolidate and fortify the tradition and simultaneously to dissociate it from similar but suspect approaches of all kinds.

The emergence of a normative Sufi tradition during the tenth century
CE

can be traced most clearly in the appearance of a specialized literature that

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Voices of Tradition

was self-consciously about Sufi and Sufi Very often, the fundamental building blocks of this body of writing were reports about individual Sufi These were anecdotal in nature and normally transmitted a saying or a state- ment of the Sufi in question. Two major genres of Sufi literature grew out of these historical reports about the Sufis: the survey and the biographical com- pilation. These two genres were sometimes combined in the form of discrete sections into a single work. The material they conveyed was compiled and packaged in various ways to serve different but related functions: pedagogical guidance for those who aspired to become Sufi pious commemoration of past masters, building corporate solidarity among Sufis, and confident self- presentation and self-assertion vis-a`-vis other groups competing for authority within the Muslim community. The specialized Sufi literature of the tenth and eleventh centuries
CE
was produced by Sufi of two divergent orienta- tions: ‘‘Traditionalists’’ who were averse to all scholarship that assigned a prominent role to human reason and ‘‘Academic’’ Sufi who, by contrast, were aligned with legal and theological scholarship.

The Traditionalist camp, which refused to recognize any sources of knowl- edge other than the Qur’an and the example of the Prophet Muhammad, is well represented by Abu Talib al-Makki (d. 996
CE
). Makki was the author of
Qut al-qulub
(The Sustenance of Hearts). This book had a remarkable afterlife: one of the most celebrated Islamic works of all times, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s (d. 1111
CE
)
Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din
(Bringing the Religious Sciences to Life) was in part a reworking and expansion of Makki’s often dense and at times abstruse compendium on piety.
26
Other prominent Traditionalists included Abu Nu‘aym al-Isfahani (d. 1038
CE
), the author of a voluminous biographical compendium titled
Hilyat al-awliya’ wa tabaqat al-asfi

(The Ornament of God’s Friends and Generations of Pure Ones). Another was Abu Mansur al-Isfahani (d. 1027
CE
), a prominent contemporary of Abu Nu‘aym in Isfahan, who authored several works on Sufi including the earliest independent treatise on invocation (
dhikr
) and a short work on Sufi conduct (
adab
). Still another was ‘Abdallah al-Ansari (d. 1089
CE
), a well-known Qur’an commentator, Hadith scholar, and tireless polemicist and preacher on behalf of Traditionalism.
27

Abu Mansur and Ansari in particular directed their formidable talents and energies to the dissemination and popularization of Sufi thought and practice by training disciples and preaching Sufi values to audiences in their native towns, Isfahan and Herat. Ansari dictated many works to his personal secre- tary and to several scribes from among his disciples, among them the first treatise on Sufi written in Persian, a spiritual itinerary in 10 sections of 10 stages titled
Sad maydan
(Hundred Fields). Ansari updated this spiritual itinerary 25 years later, this time in Arabic, with a treatise titled
Manazil al- sa’irin
(The Stages of Wayfarers). The
Stages,
partly because it was in Arabic, proved to be very popular and attracted many commentaries. Remarkably, within less than half a century, it had made its way to Islamic Iberia

What Is Sufism?
259

(al-Andalus), where it formed the basis of Ibn al-‘Arif’s (d. 1141
CE
)
Mahasin al-majalis
(The Beauties of Spiritual Sessions). Ansari’s concern for peda- gogical guidance of his disciples, so conspicuous in the works mentioned so far, gave rise to another major work in Persian. It appears that Ansari used Sulami’s
Generations
as a basis for some of his lectures, and his students’ notes of their master’s commentary and expansion of Sulami’s work were later compiled to form another
Tabaqat al-sufi
(Generations of Sufi However, to this day Ansari is best known among Persian-speaking audiences for a collection of sayings that go under the name
Munajat
(Intimate Conversations).
28

For the Traditionalists, Makki, Abu Nu‘aym, Abu Mansur, and Ansari, as well as the circles of followers and students around them, Sufism was an inte- gral part, even the very core, of Islam. In their writings on Sufi subjects, they spoke ‘‘from within’’ with a confident and self-assured voice, and they gener- ally did not acknowledge the existence of contending views on Islam, such as semi-rationalist and rationalist legal and theological discourses, except when they denounced them. Their counterparts Sarraj, Sulami, and Kalabadhi, however, struck a different note in their surveys on Sufism. Theirs was a more distanced approach, at times almost academic in tone, and they were moti- vated by a desire to introduce their audiences, the literate cultural elites of northeastern Iran and Central Asia, to this new and largely foreign subject. Because these elites were immersed in legal and theological discourses, these latter authors adopted a more accommodating stance than the Traditionalists vis-a`-vis the prevalent legal schools as well as philosophical theology and did not shirk from using legal and theological vocabulary in explaining Sufi

to their readers. Theological discourses were on the rise, and the legal schools were consolidating themselves in eastern Iran and Central Asia. Thus, the temptation to develop a theologically and legally up-to-date form of Sufism was irresistible. A generation after Sulami, two Sufi authors, Qushayri and Hujviri, rose to this challenge with such skill that the surveys they produced eclipsed most earlier works of this genre and came to assume almost canoni- cal status for later Sufis and observers of Sufism alike.

Abu’l-Qasim al-Qushayri (d. 1072
CE
) was a student of Sulami and a pro- lific scholar, with no less than 22 titles to his name. However, his reputation as a Sufi author rests primarily on his survey of Sufi which was simply known as
al-Risala
(The Treatise).
29
While Qushayri’s
Risala
is comparable in approach to Kalabadhi’s
Ta‘arruf,
in substance it can be viewed as a judi- cious combination and rewriting of Sulami’s
Tabaqat
and Sarraj’s
Luma‘.
Throughout the
Risala,
Qushayri’s voice is authoritative and scholarly. According to Qushayri, there is a complete correspondence between the goals of Islamic scholarship and Sufism, yet scholars should yield to the Sufi shaykhs and show humility toward them since these latter have reached the fi al destination. Conversely, Sufi shaykhs should not shirk from using rational arguments in training their disciples when necessary.
30
This happy

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Voices of Tradition

marriage between Sufism and legal–theological scholarship is the hallmark of the
Risala,
and Qushayri’s harmonious packaging of the two modes of learn- ing and piety, as well as the astute inclusion of biographical notices in his sur- vey of Sufism, assured enduring popularity to his work.

A similar blending of scholarly tendencies and Sufism, albeit in a different cultural milieu and a different language, can be seen in ‘Ali al-Hujviri’s (d. between 1073 and 1077
CE
),
Kashf al-mahjub
(Uncovering the Veiled), the first major survey of Sufism in the Persian language.
31
In this work, Hujviri drew a broad portrait of Sufi and similar mystical movements and suc- ceeded in giving his readers an inclusive and panoramic survey of the different Sufi approaches to some key theoretical issues. This ecumenical approach of Hujviri was another permutation of the fusion of Sufism and legal–theologi- cal scholarship that Qushayri had accomplished so effectively before him. Like Qushayri, Hujviri used scholarly, specifi lly theological, tools to describe Sufism for his readers. In doing so, he not only broadened the scope of Sufism to include indigenous mystical trends but also rendered this inclu- sive model of Sufism intelligible to cultural elites familiar with the approaches and idioms of the world of scholarship. Significantly, he incorporated rational argumentation into his discussion of Sufi doctrines on a regular basis. He not only evoked the authority of legal and theological scholars but also adopted their style of exposition and argumentation over and above the faithful repro- duction of reports about the major Sufi of the past, which had been the method preferred by all previous surveyors of Sufism.

Qushayri and Hujviri succeeded in aligning Sufism with legal and theologi- cal scholarship. The ‘‘ fully accredited’’ and scholastically legitimated Sufism that was forged in northeastern Iran and Central Asia in the eleventh century
CE
gradually assumed authoritative status across the Muslim world. Even more than the surveys of Qushayri and Hujviri, this process was facilitated by the popularity of a seminal work and true Islamic best-seller that carried the fruits of ‘‘accredited’’ Sufi to the farthest reaches of Islam. This was
Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din
(Bringing the Religious Sciences to Life) by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. In time, the bridge thus drawn between Sufis and legal and theo- logical scholars came to be crossed in both directions by an increasing num- ber of Sufi holars and scholar–Sufi leading to a cross-fertilization that ushered in a new phase of Islamic cultural history.

The development of a specialized Sufi literature was only the literary aspect of the emergence of the Sufi tradition as a major social and cultural phenome- non in Islam. The shaping of Sufism as a distinct tradition was also evident in the formation of local groups of disciples around major Sufi masters. Such communities had existed from the fi t phase of Sufi history, as exemplified by what appear to have been tightly knit groups around Junayd in Baghdad and Tustari in Basra. These groups were held together by the charisma of the master and the efficacy of his life example as perceived by his followers. Concomitantly with the formation of these first communities, similar groups