The Concept of Love in {Eraqi and Ahmad Ghazzali

Persica 21, 51-62. doi:THE 10.2143/PERS.21.0.2022786 CONCEPT OF LOVE IN {ER © A2006-2007QI AND AHMAD by Persica. GHAZZ All rightsALI reserved. 51

THE CONCEPT OF LOVE IN {ERAQI AND AHMAD GHAZZALI

N. Pourjavady University of Tehran

In the introduction to his mystical treatise on love entitled the Lamaät, the famous Per- sian Sufi poet and writer of the 7th/13th century Fakhroddin Ëraqi (d.688/ 1289) states that in writing his book, he is going to follow the way or the ‘traditions’ (sonan) of Ahmad Ghazzali (d.5201126). Ëraqi has been a more famous author and poet in the history of Persian literature than Ahmad Ghazzali, and hence his words ‘sonan-e Savaneh’ has come to draw the attention of Ëraqi’s readers. If a writer like Ëraqi credited Ahmad Ghazzali, a less known author, by saying that he was going to follow the ‘traditions’ of his book, then Ghazzali’s book must have been considered an important work. But what did Ëraqi actually mean by the words ‘sonan-e Savaneh’ and how was this expression understood by people who read his book. I am raising these questions because it seems that it has not been quite clear even to most of the commentators of the Lamaät, if not all of them, as to how Ëraqi actually followed Ghazzali. The important reason for the lack of clarity in Ëraqi’s word is most likely the fact that the readers of the Lamaät, in general, had not read the Savaneh, so they did not really have a vivid idea of what Ëraqi had in mind when he said he was going to follow the traditions of Ghazzali’s book. Unlike the Lamaät, the Savaneh was not widely read by the Sufis, even by the commentators of the Lamaät. I still have not found even one direct reference to the Savaneh in any one of the several commentaries of the Lamaät I have seen. This was not because people did not know that Ahmad Ghazzali wrote such a book, or that they knew it but they ignored it. It was rather because the copies of this book were not readily available to them. It is true that Ahmad Ghazzali was a rather well-known Sufi, but his book did not move to different cities as quickly as the author’s fame. For example, we know that Rumi’s master Sham-e Tabrizi had very much respect for Ahmad Ghazzali and mentioned his name in his Maqalat on several occasions, particularly when he was discussing his shahed-bazi (the practice of contemplating divine Beauty as manifested in the face of a young human being), a practice in which both Shams and Ëraqi engaged, yet there is no indication that Shams ever saw or read the Savaneh.1 The lack of clarity in Ëraqi’s words was also due to the vagueness of the word sonan (sing. sonnat). In saying that he was going to follow the sonan of the Savaneh,

1 See my “Stories of Ahmad al-Ghazali ‘playing the witness’ in Tabriz (Shams-i Tabrizi’s interest in shahid-bazi), in Reason and Inspiration in Islam, Edited by Todd Lawson. London 2005, p. 202.

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Fakhroddin may have meant that he was going to imitate the style and the formal or literary characteristics of Ghazzali’s composition (which he did) and/or that he was going to adopt the ideas expressed in the Savaneh and reformulate them. The Savaveh is indeed an unprecedented mystical work in the history of Persian, as well as Arabic, Sufi literature, mainly because of the way that its author discusses the metaphysics of love, the states and the psychology of the lover, and the qualities of the beloved, not in a dry and theological language but in a literary and poetic style. Some of the profoundest mystical ideas are expressed in this book in short sentences, sometimes in a cryptic style, and then illustrated by anecdotes and poems. Ëraqi also wanted to discuss the metaphysics of love and the mystical psychology of the lover, and he did that in the same manner and style that the author of the Savaneh had done. Thus, just as Ghazzali’s book is divided into short chapters and written in a mixed prose and poetry, and just as anecdotes are used to illustrate the metaphysical and psychological ideas, Ëraqi also uses the same style and devices. In fact, Fakhroddin even quotes some of the poems and anecdotes of the Savaneh. However, the most important idea that Ëraqi had in mind when he used the word sonan was obviously the central idea or the main theme of the Savaneh, that is the idea of love itself. It is with reference to this central idea that the words “sonan-e Savaneh” primarily came to be understood by all the commentators of the Lamaät. What did Ëraqi actually do in following Ahmad Ghazzali when he adopted love as the central idea of his book? Did he have the same notion, or the same concept, when he was using the word ‘love’ and developed it in the same way that Ghazzali had done, or did he have a different concept, and proceeded differently in developing it, albeit he considered himself to be following the sonan-e Savaneh? The significance of this question is better understood when we compare Ëraqi’s Lamaät with a similar book also written in imitation of the Savaneh entitled Lavayeh, a book wrongly attributed to Ahmad Ghaz- zali’s famous disciple Aynolqozat-e Hamadani, but in fact written by the Indian author Hamidoddin Naguri almost the same period as the Lamaät. The author of the Lavayeh is simply an imitator of Ahmad Ghazzali, in the formal aspect of his composition as well as the content and ideas. The idea of love, as a metaphysical entity, in the Lavayeh is also the same as in Ghazzali’s book. {Eraqi’s way of following the way of the Savaneh, however, is different. Unlike Naguri who calls himself an imitator (moqalled) and is satisfied with it, Ëraqi is not an imitator, but rather an innovative thinker and writer. Not only has he introduced changes and new ideas in the course of his book, but he has even used the idea of love in a different way. To explain how the concept of love in Ëraqi’s Lamaät differs from that of Ahmad Ghazzali in the Savaneh, is a task I intend to undertake in this paper. In doing so, I will actually go to the Savaneh and try to compare its author’s notion of love with that of Eraqi. Before making this comparison, we need to say something briefly about the mystical school of the author of the Lamaät, and the point of view he had when he was look- ing at love in his book. Eraqi’s view point when he discusses the mystical idea of love is directly influenced by the school of the Andalusian Sufi Mohyiddin Ibn Ärabi (d.638/ 1240), through the teachings of Sadroddin Qunavi (d.673/1274). After joining the Sufi circle of Shaykh Baha’oddin Zakariya in Multan in 641/1261 and spending more or less twenty years with him, as his close disciple and son in law, Eraqi left Multan in 661/1262

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or 666/1267 for a pilgrimage to Mecca. After his pilgrimage, he moved to Anatolia and settled in Konya, where Jalaloddin Rumi (d.672/ 1273) and Sadroddin Qunavi were both spending the last years of their lives, and attended the lectures of Sadroddin Qunavi.2 As is well known, the Lama ät is precisely the outcome of these lectures, and the fundamental ideas in this book are those of Ibn Ärabi as explained and formulated by his disciple Sadroddin Qunavi. It is an interesting coincidence that during Ëraqi stay in Konya two outstanding Sufi masters, namely Rumi and Qunavi, each representing a different Sufi tradition, were living there. While Rumi represented the Persian love mysticism, which could be traced back to Faridoddin Attar, Sana’i, and the Neo-Hallajian Sufism of Ahmad Ghazzali, Qunavi’s teachings were basically the semi-philosophical mysticism of his master and step father Ebn Ärabi. These two mystical doctrines were not only present in the teachings of the two great masters living in the same city, but they were actually held by some Persian students of Qunavi, such as Fakhroddin Ëraqi and Sa{idoddin Farqani. Before at- tending Qunavi’s lecture and being introduced to his ideas, Fakhroddin had already been trained by Baha’oddin Zakariya in Multan and become fully acquainted with the school of Persian love mysticism which was the school of mystical thoughts in Khorasan, Transoxania, Indian Sub-Continent, and even to a great extent Anatolia and Mesopo- temia3. Ëraqi’s master Baha’oddin was himself a disciple of Shehaboddin Sohravardi (d.632/1234) whose spiritual lineage went back to Ahmad Ghazzali. Another student of Qunavi, who had a similar background, was Saïdoddin Farqani (d. 699/1300), the author of Mashariq ad-darari. It is not unlikely that Qunavi himself somehow perceived the difference and even made some attempts to reconcile them in his lectures. In any case, the difference between the two mystical schools was considered serious enough by the two students of Qunavi just mentioned, i.e. our author Ëraqi and Farqani, to encourage them to try to bring the two together. Consequently, Farqani wrote the Mashareq ad-daraari which is a commentary on the love poem of Ebn al-Farez, called at-Ta’iyat al-kobra according to the views of Qunyavi4, while using the ideas of Persian love mysticism as well. This was similar to what Ëraqi had done when he tried to follow the tradition of Ahmad Ghazalli’s book and reformulate his ideas in the light of Qunavi’s teachings. The first and the most important step that Ëraqi took in the Lamaät in order to bring these two schools together was when he identified Ghazzali’s idea of Love in the Savaneh with Ebn Ärabi’s concept of Being or Absolute Reality (al-Haqq). This identification can clearly be seen in the commentaries of Shah Ne¨matollah5 and Äbdorrahman

2 For a short account of Eraqi’s life and works in English, see William C. Chittick, “Ëraqi” (art.), Iranica, Vol. VIII, pp. 538-540. 3 That Ëraqi simply expounded Qunavi’s thoughts in his book seems to have been a controversial is- sue for some Sufi scholars in the past. In his hagiography of Indian Sufi Shaykhs the Siar al-ärefin, Jamali- e Dehlavi writes that when he met Abdorrahman Jami in Herat, he disagreed with Jami and another commentator of the Lamaät by the name of Khavari who both thought that Ëraqi’s Lama’at was the outcome of Qunavi’s lecture on Ebn Ärabi’s Fosus, and Jamali claimed that what Ëraqi had said in his book was a drop of the ocean of the teachings of Ëraqi’s Indian master Bahaoddin Zakariya. (Jamali, Siar al-ärefin, Delhi 1311 a.h.l., pp. 109, 139-140.) 4 See W.C. Chittick, “Fargani”, (art.) Iranica, Vol. IX, pp. 255-256. 5 Shah Ne’matullah Wali, Sharh-e Lama’at, ed. Dr. Javad Nourbakhsh, Tehran 1354 s.h.

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Jami, as well as other commentators of this book who lived in the same period,6 all of whom were thus stepping on a path that had already been trodden by previous masters. These commentators thought that there was no question about these two mystical doctrines being in harmony and both of them basically saying the same thing. Not only those who commented on Fakhruddin’s Lamaät, but also some other Sufi writers, such as Shamsoddin Lahiji (d.912/1507), who wrote the well-known commentary on Mahmud Shabestari’s Golshan-e Raz in the light of Ebn Ärabi/Qunavi’s teachings, held the same belief. Despite the fact that some Persian followers of Ebn Ärabi believed that his mysticism was in harmony with Persian love mysticism, there were voices among other, and more genuine, Persian Sufi writers and poets who spoke against this belief and held that these two schools of mystical thoughts were incongruent with one another. The corre- spondence between Ala’od-daulah Semnani (d.736/1336) with the famous follower of Enb Ärabi’s school and himself a commentator of his Fosus al-hikam Äbdur Razzaq Khashani, which has been dealt with and quoted by Abdorrahman Jami in his Nafahat al- uns7, is already a well known case. Another voice which spoke against Ebn Ärabi’s doctrine belonged to Emadoddin Ärabshah Yazdi, an early contemporary of Shah Ne¨matollah and a Sufi Poet who put Shehabuddin Sohravardi’s Persian love treatise Munis al-ushshaq (the Companion of the Lovers) into verse in 781/1379. In his masnavi, also entitled Munesh ul-ushshaq, Yazdi has no qualm in denouncing Ebn Ärabi and his followers, whom he refers to as vojudian along with the philosophers Aristotle and Ibn Sina, and considers their ideas ill-omened, crooked or confused (pich dar pich), and poly- theistic (sherk). In his objection to Ebn Ärabi and his followers, Yazdi, and in fact most opponents of Ebn Ärabi, were opposing the pantheistic doctrine of unity of Being. This is in fact what the term vojudian (lit. those who believed in being) indicated. Despite his severe criticism of Ebn Ärabi and his followers, neither Yazdi, who was himself writing on the idea of mystical love, nor other poets and writers, examined the claim of those writers, such as Eraqi and Farqani, who believed in the harmony between Persian love mysticism, particularly the one expressed in Ghazzali’s Savaneh, and the doctrine of the Unity of Being. If the idea of love in Ghazzali’s metaphysics could correspond exactly with the idea of Being in Ibn Ärabi’s school, then the opponents of Ebn Ärabi’s doctrine among the Persian Sufis would have lost their ground for objection. So we may ask why did no body make an effort to actually compare these two doctrines? The answer to the above question, I believe, lies in the fact that the copies of Ahmad Ghazzali’s Savaneh was rather scarce and hence inaccessible to most people. In fact, it seems that this book was not accessible even to Shah Ne¨matollah and there is not enough evidence to show that Abdorahman Jami, who was exceptional in having access to many sources, had read this book. Shah and Jami both took Ëraqi’s claim for granted, and they simply tried to explain the ideas in the Lamaät, without trying to examine the author’s basic assumption. Thanks to the printed critical editions of the Savaneh, we are now able to study this book and examine the claim of Fakhroddin Ëraqi and his followers Shah Ne¨matollah 6 Such as Yar Ali Shirazi and Ebn-e Torkeh Esfahani. 7 Edited by Mahmood Äbedi, Tehran 1370, pp. 483-492.

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Vali and Abdor-Rahman Jami and see whether or not Fakhroddin and his commentators were right in thinking that the ideas of Love in the Savaneh could be interpreted in terms of Ebn Ärabi’s pantheism. In other words, we want to see whether or not Fakhroddin did follow the way or the traditions established by Ahmad Ghazzali in the Savaneh when he claimed to have done so in his introduction. To examine Ëraqi’s claim fully we would need to do a careful comparison between most of the chapters as well as the introductions of these two works, a task that is far beyond the scope of this paper. But we can study what Ëraqi has basically said about love in the beginning of his book and then compare that with the basic idea of Ahmad Ghazzali on love. We could even make a short cut by taking up an important ghazal which Ëhraqi has composed himself and placed in his prologue, a marvelous and expres- sive poem, probably intended to be a synopsis of the whole book. In this poem, Love be- gins to speak, introducing itself as the Absolute Being.

1) I am Love, having no place in this world or the next, Having no signs, like the ¨Anqa, the fabulous bird.

2) With my eyebrow and my wink, I have captured this world and the next as my prey. Yet you see me not carrying arrows and a bow.

3) In every mote I am reflected and seen like the sun, But the sun of my face, for its extreme brightness, cannot be seen.

4) With every tongue I speak and with every ear I listen, Yet, strangely enough, my own tongue and ear cannot be seen.

5) Since I am all and everything that exist in the universe, I am unique, nothing resembles me in this world or the next.

As we can see, Ëraqi has personified Love and employed a literary device that was common in Persian literature at his time, what was called zaban-e hal (lit. language of the state). He has also employed some of the metaphors that were used in Persian love poetry, profane as well as sacred, though in a way somewhat different from the way of Ahmad Ghazzali. One of these metaphors is Änqa, a fabulous bird generally identified in Persian literature with the legendary bird Simorgh. Ahmad Ghazzali has used this metaphor in his “Treatise of the Birds” (Risalat ot-tayr) too, where this bird is said to be the king of all the birds, while the other birds represent the souls of the travelers on the mystical path, just as in Faridoddin Attar’s Manteq ot-tayr. In both these works, Simorgh symbolizes God or the Ultimate Reality, the Essence that transcends all Attributes. In the Savaneh, Ghazzali uses also the metaphor of the bird to speak about Love, but the bird he has in mind there is not Simorgh’, the bird who is said to reside in the island of absolute transcendence (jazireh-e ëzzat)8, but rather the falcon, whose nest is also said to be in the 8 Ahmad Ghazali, Spiritual Flight (The Risalat al-Tayr), edited by N. Pourjavady, Tehran 1976, p. 27.

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eternal world beyond, nevertheless it flies and descends into the temporal world for a short sojourn. Thus the bird which represents Love in Ëraqi is significantly different from the one which represents the same idea in Ahmad Ghazzali. Another metaphor that Ëraqi uses is the eyebrow and the amorous wink. The eyebrow is said to be a bow and the winks are the arrows by which the beloved shoots at his/ her lover’s heart and kills him/her. Ghazzali calls this bow the bow of the beloved’s will.9 Hence, the eyebrow and the winks are the qualities of the beloved, by which she/he enamors and captures the lovers, and not the qualities of love itself, as Ëraqi has indicated. Another metaphor is that of the sun and the mote. The metaphor of the sun, used by Plato as well as Plotinus, was also employed by mystical poets such as Sana’i in one of his verses where he addresses God, the Creator, as the Sun, and says: You are the sun, and we are the motes, How could we appear without your face shining?10 Though this verse is quoted in some of the manuscripts of the Savaneh, it does not seem to have been quoted by Ghazzali himself, but rather it seems to have been interpo- lated by a later scribe11. In any case, the poet Sana’i here is addressing God, the Creator, or the Source of beings in the world, and not Love. If Ëraqi is using this metaphor to refer to Love, it is because he thinks that Love could be viewed as identical with the Creator, or the Source of emanation, as he has clearly stated in the last verse of his poem. Let us now turn to the commentaries of Shah Ne¨matollah and Jami on this synoptic poem. Being generally selective and brief in his commentary, Shah Ne¨matollah has skipped the first four verses of this poem and gone directly to the last verse. Jami, on the other hand, being more perceptive and elaborative, has had some comments to make about every line. About the first verse, he says that the poet Ëraqi is speaking of the Re- ality in its absolute transcendence. Love at this stage has absolutely no sign (bi-neshani-e serf). This means that Love, at this stage, is utterly unknown and unknowable. That is why It calls itself Änqa, the bird who has no trace, no sign, and has never been seen. Using the terminology of the school of Ebn Ärabi, we could call this stage “Divine Unity” (ahadiyat). About the second verse, Jami says that when the poet speaks of the eyebrow and the wink, he is already implying the plurality of beings that are going to be manifested, and so he is referring to the stage of Oneness (wahidiyat). In the second line of the same verse, however, Jami adds, the poet goes back to the previous stage which is “Unity” (ahadiyat). About the third verse, we would normally think that Ëraqi is speaking there of the idea of Cosmic Love, or Cosmic Yearning (shawq), but Jami has a somewhat different

9 See Ahmad Ghazzali, Savaneh, edited by N.Pourjavady, Tehran 1359s, P.20-21; Sawanih, translated from the Persian by Nasrollah Pourjavady, London 1986, p 40. Sometimes the eyelashes (mojgan) fulfill the same function in Persian love poetry. 10 Sana’i, Divan, ed. Modarres-e Razavi, Tehran 1354s, p. 946. . 11 See my “Mas’alah-ye äshär-e Sana’i dar athar-e Ahmad-e Ghazzali”, Maärif, Vol. XVI, no. 1, pp. 3-17.

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interpretation of the verse. He believes that the poet is speaking there of two kinds of perceptions: simple and composite, the object of both perceptions evidently being identified with absolute Reality (al-Haqq). Thus, when the poet speaks of love being present in every being, he means, according to Jami, that every being has some kind of conscious- ness, what he calls “simple perception” (edrak-e basit). This kind of perception is shared by most people. On the other hand, there are few people who are able to have another perception as well. These people not only have the simple perception, but they also real- ize that they are perceiving the absolute Reality (Haqq), the Creator, rather than creatures. These few are said to have apperception (edrak-e morakkab). Ebn Ärab’s rather famous idea of combining two theological attitudes, namely an- thropomorphism and transcendentalism (tashbih wa tanzih)12, as the right position of a mystic in regards to God and His attributes, is expressed, according to Jami, in the fourth verse. In the first line of this verse, where Love states that it speaks and hears with every (one’s) mouth and ear, Ëraqi speaks of the position of the anthropomorphist; i.e. he who thinks that the Creator is like His creatures. In the second distich, however, when Love says no tongue and ear belonging to It can be seen, the poet is referring to the position of those who believe that the Creator is incomparable to His creatures because He transcends them all. According to Ebn Ärabi and his followers, neither one of these two po- sitions by itself is the right one, but rather both should be combined by the mystic, a position that is pointed out when the whole verse is taken into consideration. Jami thinks that even the second distich by itself may be interpreted as expressing the right position, since on the one hand Love refers to its having a tongue and an ear and on the other hand it says that this tongue and ear cannot be seen at all. We now come to the fifth and the last verse which expresses the gist of the whole problem, a verse that has been commented upon briefly both by Jami and Shah Ne¨matollah. Both these commentators have concentrated on the second line of this verse by quoting the Koranic verse “There is nothing like unto Him” (42:11). Jami proceeds to explain this verse from the Koran by saying: “How could there be anything like unto Him, when everything is essentially identical with Him. Glory be to Him! He has created all things and He is their very essence (and thus essentially identical with them)”. Thus, according to both Jami and Shah N¨matollah, for Ëraqi Love is identical with Absolute Reality (al-Haqq) and since everything is essentially the Real, then everything can be said to be essentially Love. It is from the point of view of this identification that Ëraqi proceeds to write the chapters that follow this synoptic poem. What Ëraqi has said from the mouth, as it were, of Love is in accordance with the doctrine he has learned from Sadroddin Qunavi, but then is this also what Ahmad Ghazzali had in mind when ho spoke about Love in the Savaneh and when he emphasized on the transcendental unity of Love, a unity in which the duality of the lover and beloved is finally nullified? In other words, was Ëraqi really following “the traditions of the Savaneh” when he was composing this poem and writing the 28 chapters of his book? My answer to the question I have just posed is negative, and in order to show why Ëraqi’s idea of Love is not that of Ahmad Ghazzali, I need to introduce the notion of the 12 On the problem of “tashbih wa tanzih” in Islamic Theology see J. van Ess, “TASHBIH WA TANZIH” (art.) EI2, Vol. X, pp. 341-344.

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“Essential Love” (hubb-e dhati) that was held by Ghazzali, as well as by Ëraqi, a notion that has been traced back to Hallaj (executed in 309/922) in the history of Sufism.13 Ac- cording to this notion, love is considered not simply as a psychological state in the creatures but a divine attribute identical with the Essence of God. This notion can be detected in the Savaneh, particularly in the chapter where the author uses the metaphor of the bird (the falcon)14, to refer to Love’s movement and descent from its primordial state into the phenomenal world. Love is called the bird of the pre-temporal domain (morgh-e azal) who makes a journey into this world of temporarily, while destined to fly back to the post-temporal domain (abad). About this bird of love, Ghazzali writes in another chapter: It is its own bird and its own nest, its own essence and its own attribute, its own feather and its own wing. It is both the air and the flight, the hunter and the game, the goal and the searcher for the goal, the seeker and the sought. It is its own beginning and its own end, its own king and subject, its own sword and scabbard. It is both the garden and the tree, the branch and the fruit, the bird and the nest.15 Ghazzali is clearly making here a statement about the transcendental unity that Love enjoys in its primordial state, when it is itself one with the divine Essence. This unity, however, does not remain intact once the bird of Love, to use Ghazzali’s metaphor, leaves its pre-eternal nest and enters the world of creation. Upon its arrival in this world, Love immediately meets another being and that is the Spirit, the first created being who may be identified as the Universal Intellect of the neo-Platonic philosophers. Thus, despite the fact that Love is fundamentally one with the divine Essence, once it descends to the world of plurality, it does not remain identical with the Essence, nor will it be the only thing that is manifested or created in the world. Now, when we turn to Ëraqi’s Lamaät, we are confronted with a different picture of how Love comes into this world and how the duality of the lover and the beloved is formed. While Ghazzali starts his drama of Creation with the emergence of the Spirit, and the concomitant appearance of love, Ëraqi has one and only one thing to make its appearance on this stage, and that is Love. Since there is only one divine Essence which manifests itself, be it called Being or Love, there is nothing but this Being who manifests itself. But then how can we explain the duality of the lover and the beloved? How does this one thing differentiate in itself and makes room for two things? Ëraqi’s answer to this question lies in one of Ebn Ärabi’s favourite ideas, namely the idea of the outward (zaher) and the inward (baten). Love, as the sole Reality, has two aspects, the outer and the inner, and while the outer aspect is the Beloved, the inner one is the Lover. In the first chapter (lamä) of the Lamaät, Eraqi writes: Though in its sublime abode, Love is beyond all determinations, and in its sanctuary of Es- sence, it transcends inwardness and outward-ness; when It wants to manifest its perfection, It shows itself to itself in the mirror of lover-hood and beloved-ness, and reveals its Beauty to itself to contemplate on. (We say it shows itself to itself and reveals its Beauty to itself, because there is nothing but Love.) It is its own Essence and its own Attributes16.

13 See L. Massignon, “Interfereces philosophic et precees metaphysiques dans las mystique Hallajienne: Notion Del’essentiel Desir”, Opera Minora, Tome II, Paris 1969, pp. 226-53. 14 Savaneh, Persian text, p. 12. 15 Ibid, p. 13; English translation, p. 31. 16 Fakhroddin ¨Eraqi, Kolliyat, edited by S. Nafisi, Tehran 1338s, p. 377.

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Thus the Lover and the Beloved come into being from nothing but Love itself. Ëraqi has no need for another being to mix with love or to act as Love’s locus of manifestation. To have the duality of lover- beloved nothing other than Love itself is needed. In one of its aspects Love is the Lover and in another aspect it is the Beloved. To explain this, Ëraqi writes in the same chapter: “Love in its aspect of beloved-ness is the mirror image of the Lover so that it can contemplate its own beauty in that image, and in its aspect of lover-hood, It is a mirror image in which It can behold its own Names and Attributes. Since there are two mirrors, and each one makes a reflection, there are inevitably two images, though in reality there is only one thing (which stands before the mirrors). ”17 What Ëraqi has just said relates to the self-manifestation of Love in the realm of divine Knowledge or Mind. In the phenomenal world, where different individuals are said to be lovers and beloveds, the idea of oneness also holds. This view is expressed through the idea of Cosmic Love, an idea that was held by Muslim philosophers such as Farabi and Ebn Sina, and among the poets by Nezami, before it was adopted by the Sufis18. Ëraqi explains this idea in the seventh chapter of his book, where he writes: Love flows in everything, and therefore all things are Love. How can it be denied (this sta- tus) when there is nothing in existence but Love? In fact, if it were not for It (i.e. Love), then nothing would have made its appearance in this world. Thus, whatever has appeared (or come into being) has done so from Love and by Love, and therefore Love flows in it. No (it would be more correct to say that) everything is totally Love.19 Though the idea of Cosmic Love was regarded even by the commentators of the Lamaät to belong to the philosophers (hokama),20 yet behind Ëraqi’s idea of Cosmic Love in the above passage, there lies Ebn Ärabi’s pantheistic Monism. That is why, in his commentary on this chapter, Shah Ne¨matollah quotes the following saying by Ebn Ärabi in the Fusus al-hikam: In the chapter “Of the Divine Wisdom in the Word of Adam”, the master (i.e. Ebn Ärabi) writes: “If God (al-Haqq) did not flow by His Form in everything, the world would not exist.” He means that if God did not manifest Himself to the world by His Form, i.e. His Attribute, then the world would have had no existence. This is because everything other than God is in itself non-existent.21 Ëraqi’s view of the idea of cosmic love, from the point of view of Ebn Ärabi’s pantheism, is something quite alien to Ahmad Ghazzali’s metaphysics of love and even to the metaphysics of those Persian mystics who had adopted the idea of Cosmic Love, while staying away from Ebn Ärabi’s pantheistic Monism. We have already shown that Ghazzali’s idea of the oneness of Love, and the idea of removal of the duality of the lover and beloved is not monistic. Ghazzali does not identify everything that exists with love and nothing else. Here we must add that he does not even mention the idea of Cosmic Love in the Savaneh, or any other of his extant works. Ghazzali may well have been ac-

17 Loc.cit. 18 See my “Eshq-e keyhani”, Nashr-i Danish, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 22-30. 19 ¨Eraqi, Kulliyat, p. 384. 20 See Ebn Torkeh, Chahardah resala, edited by Musavi and Dibaji, Tehran, 1351s, p. 6. 21 Shah Ne¨matollah, Sharh-e Lama’at, p. 49.

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quainted with this idea through the works of Ebn Sina or other philosophers, but he does not seem to have been fond of incorporating it into his metaphysical system. In general, we can even say that this idea had not entered the neo-Hallajian love mysticism of the Persian Sufis at the time of Ahmad Ghazzali, himself being the most important exponent of this school. If Ahmad Ghazzali did not believe that Love permeates everything or flows in everything, and if he did not think that all there is in existence is Love, then what did he say which made other mystics like Ëraqi presume that his metaphysics of Love could be interpreted and reformulated in a way that could accommodate Ebn Ärabi’s Monism? The answer to this question lies, I believe, in Ahmad Ghazzali’s concept of love’s unity and universality. In the prologue of the Savaneh, Ghazzali makes it clear that the idea of love he has in mind is not a particular one, such as the love of human beings to one another, or the love of man to God, or even the love of God to human beings, but rather the general or universal notion which is both in God and all His creatures. This is because for Ghazzali love is a single reality in the whole universe. It is the same reality that binds a man and woman together as a man or a woman feels towards his or her Creator, or the Creator has towards His creatures when He is being merciful to them. It is even the same love that Satan experienced at the dawn of Creation for the Creator. This reality is indeed called by different names. In the Koran the word that is used, both for the love of God for man and the love of man for God, is mahabbat, and the word commonly used for the loves between a woman and a man, with erotic connotation, is ëshq. In Persian, the words maher and dusti are also used. Ghazzali, and later on Ëraqi, believed that all these words stand for one and the same reality and so they have no qualm in using them inter- changeably, though they prefer the word ëshq, with its erotic connotation, to others. Even though love, with all its different names, is a single reality in the whole universe, and it is essentially divine and sacred, that which is in the Creator is different from that which is in His creatures, i.e. human beings. There are also differences between love of different people to one another. The erotic love between a woman and a man or the non-erotic one between a parent and the child, is obviously different from the feeling of friendship between two friends. If all these affections are one thing, then where do the differences come from? The reason for the differences between all these instances of love, according to Ahmad Ghazzali, is simply degrees of strength and weakness. The love of God for man being the strongest and the most intense of all other instances of love, even from the love of the mystics for God, which is in fact the reflection, or the image, of the divine Love. Likewise, the love of a human being for God has the same nature as his/ her love for another human being, albeit weaker and less intense. That is why human love, in the Sufism of Ahmad Ghazzali, can lead to the divine love, for the weaker love directed to a particular beauty in a creature can lead the lover to a stronger love for the source all beauty. In other words, since Beauty is also one single reality manifested in various degrees, the transcendental contemplation of a beautiful human face can lead to the perception of divine Beauty. This is one way of explaining the practice of contemplating and playing with a shahed (lit. witness) by Ahmad Ghazzali, Ëraqi, Shams-e Tabrizi, and several other well-known Sufis.

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So far both Ghazzali and Ëraqi agree with each other in that love is the same reality where ever it appears. But from here on, Ëraqi, and his commentators, take one step fur- ther. Ëraqi seems to believe that the idea of the unity of love makes one eligible to infer the idea of Cosmic Love. This, however is not a step that Ghazzali takes. The idea of the transcendental unity of love, though fundamental in Ahmad Ghazzali’s Sufism, does not lead him to the idea of Cosmic Love. No where are we told, in the Savaneh, that love is everywhere and in everything. Despite the fact that Ahmad thought that God’s love for man and man’s love for him, as well as for other human beings, and even Satan’s love for God, was essentially one thing, he did not say anywhere that love flows in everything. There is one chapter in the Savaneh where the author, following Hallaj, uses the metaphor of the moth and candle fire to illustrate the idea of annihilation (fana) as the final stage of mystical union of the lover, but this is only an anecdote or a metaphor (tamsil∞) not a statement about Cosmic Love. Not only did he not claim that love flows in everything and is in everything, Ghazzali did not identify love with Being either, and hence he did not interpret the unity of Love as the Unity of Being. Unlike Ëraqi, Ghazzali did not believe that all there is in existence is but love. On the contrary, as we mentioned before, in its journey and descent to the world, love is accompanied by the Spirit. Speaking from the mouth of the spirit who has become a lover, Ghazzali says in one of the first quatrains of the first chapter of the Savaneh: It was for my sake that love came into existence form non-existence, Indeed I was the object of love’s intention in the world. (O love,) I shall not cut myself away from you for as long as the perfume lives in the incense, (Thus, I shall be at one with you for) days and nights, months and years, despite (all the malice) of the one who envies me.22 The duality of love and spirit remains throughout their journey to this world and back to their Origin. Only when the lover is identified with the beloved through his/her annihilation does this duality disappear, an experience that no other beings, even angels, can par- take, except human beings. The difference in our authors’ notion of love naturally had its effect on the content and the topics discussed in the chapters of their books. We have already seen one example of this contextual difference when we were discussing the idea of Cosmic Love, and pointed out that while Ëraqi dedicates an entire chapter to this idea in the Lamaät, Ghazzali has nothing to say about it. I shall finish this paper with one other example and that is in the chapters where each of our authors discuss the psychological state called jealousy (ghayrat), a state that every lover is bond to be affected by one way or another. Jealousy is one of the favourite topics for Ahmad Ghazzali, so much so that he has mentioned it in several chapters of the Savaneh. Jealousy is closely connected to the idea of blame (malamat), an idea to which Ghazzali has dedicated a long chapter of his book.

22 Savaneh, Persian text, p. 3; English translation, p. 17.

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Jealousy, in fact, is an idea by which Ghazzali explains the whole plan of the love’s journey back to the Origin. Briefly stated, blame has three aspects or faces (ruy), each aspect functioning at one of the three main stages in Love’s venture. The first aspect relates to the world of Creation, the second to the lover herself/himself, and the third to the beloved. The lover, who is the spirit in love, must go through these stages with three different kinds of jealousy. Each jealousy, in fact, functions as a sword which cuts the attach- ment of the lover to anything other than Love. The first jealousy is that which the beloved has for the lover. With this jealousy the lover is cut off and detached from the world and everything other than the beloved. The second jealousy is that of Time, the eternal Now (waqt), by which the lover is detached from his/her self, whereupon the lover pays no attention to himself/herself and the spiritual states he/she might be experiencing. And finally the third jealousy is that of Love itself which detaches the lover even from the beloved who is considered “other” (ghar). The lover must seek nothing but love and be content with nothing but love. This is the only way that the unity of love (tawhid) is real- ized. When we turn to the Lamaät and look for Ëraqi’s discussion of jealousy, we find only one short chapter where this idea is discussed (chapter four), and in this chapter only one kind of jealousy is mentioned, namely the jealousy of the Beloved for His lover: The beloved’s jealousy demands that the lover does not love anyone but the beloved and has no need for anyone but him/her. Because of that, He (God) made Himself identical with all things, so that whatever the lover loves and needs is Him (and nothing else). This is all that Eraqi has to say about jealousy. It is only one kind of jealousy and that is the kind felt by the beloved. But even this one jealousy, unlike the ones discussed by Ahmad Ghazzali, has no effect on the lover. Jealousy, in fact, has no role to play in love’s venture for Eraqi, because for him there is no “other” (ghayr). The unity of Being, in the guise of the unity of Love, leaves no room for anything other than love. All there is is love and anything other than love is in fact non-being. The divine Beloved, out of jealousy, did not allow anything other than Him to exist for his lovers, the whole created beings. With this kind of monism, Ëraqi not only overlooks the metaphysical subtleties in regard to the idea of jealousy in the Savaneh, but he also deprives his book of a discussion on the psychological states connected to this idea.

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