CHAPTER EIGHT

UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN . THE RISE OF THE ˇARÌQAS

Already at the early stages of Sufism’s history, some Sufi masters occasionally interpreted their mystical experiences in philosophical and metaphysical terms. In attempting to place their mystical insights into a wider existential context they invested them with a cosmic meaning that transcended the experience of an individual mystic. We have already discussed the views of the Persian mystic al-Óakìm al-Tirmidhì who developed an early theosophical system that inte- grated elements of pre-Islamic ways of thinking: above all, the legacy of Classical Antiquity, mainly neo-Platonic as well as Aristotelian concepts of nature. Muslims in general and Sufis in particular were exposed to such pre-Islamic systems of thought through translations or free renditions into Arabic since the beginning of the third/ninth century. They also experienced the influences of Zoroastrian and Manichaean religions and mythologies, which probably circulated in an oral form.1 Al-Ghazàlì’s synthesis of Sufi moral and ethical teaching, theoso- phy, neo-Platonic metaphysics and the mainstream Sunnì piety of the ˙adìth folk was just one vivid example of this trend toward spir- itual and intellectual syncretism. The theosophical and metaphysical elements of this synthesis were taken up and creatively re-interpreted by such mystical thinkers as Ya˙yà al-Suhrawardì (d. 587/1191) of Persia and Ibn 'Arabì of al-Andalus, who spent the second half of his life in Syria and Asia Minor, and died in Damascus in 638/1240. While al-Suhrawardì couched his Aristotelian and neo-Platonic ideas into the evolved mythical imagery and terminology of pre-Islamic Iranian traditions, especially Zoroastrianism, Ibn 'Arabì constructed a complex neo-Platonic-Gnostic system that stressed the underlying unity of all beings (wa˙dat al-wujùd ) and their common origin in the unique and indivisible Godhead. This is not to say that the philo- sophical and metaphysical systems of al-Suhrawardì and Ibn 'Arabì

1 Radtke, “Theologen,’’ pp. 559–563. 170 chapter eight were but foreign implants grafted onto the pristine body of the clas- sical Sufi tradition. It seems more productive to treat them as a nat- ural development of certain tendencies inherent in the Islamic religion from the outset, which in turn reflected the growing sophistication of later Sufism. Already in the classical Sufi tradition God was seen as the only real agent in this world, to whose commands and actions man must submit willingly and unconditionally. In the post-classical period of Sufism’s history, which began in the fifth-sixth/eleventh- twelfth centuries, this perception of God evolved into a vision of God as not just the only agent but also the only reality that exists. This conception, which may somewhat loosely be termed “monistic,’’ was rebuffed by the great Óanbalì scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/ 1328), who condemned its Sufi adherents as out-and-out heretics. Ibn Taymiyya and those ulema who came in his wake laid the foun- dations of the anti-monistic polemical literature which was to play an important role in the Islamic intellectual discourse from the eighth/ fourteenth century until today.2 In addition to non-Islamic philosophical systems, later Sufism inte- grated and institutionalized a number of special spiritual exercises and meditation techniques that have become its distinctive hallmarks. They included such practices as spiritual retreat (), the remem- brance of God () and the mystical concerts (samà' ) during which formulas of dhikr were performed to the accompaniment of various musical instruments. Sufi theorists saw these rituals as a means to intensify relations between the mystic and his divine Master and to release the spiritual energies that the mystic accumulated in the process of direct contemplation of mysteries or even of God him- self. It is with this end in mind that Sufi masters allowed music to be played and love poetry to be recited during the samà' gatherings. In the process, the mystic’s encounter with his divine Beloved acquired a recognizable ritual and artistic expression that set Sufis aside from the commonality of the believers. During such gatherings, mystics often fell into a state of ecstasy (wajd ) that could force them to per- form a spontaneous dance or to make frantic rhythmic gestures to the accompaniment of music. As time went on, these practices became more and more rigidly ritualized. On the psychological level, they allowed the mystic to enter changed states of consciousness during

2 See A. Knysh, Ibn 'Arabì in the Later Islamic Tradition: The making of a polemical image in medieval , Albany, New York, 1998.