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Bistamiana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

A. J. Arberry
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Extract

In his interesting and provocative book Hindu and Muslim mysticism (Athlone Press, 1960), Professor R. C. Zaehner has discussed at length the part which lie believes Abū Yazīd al-Bistāmī played in introducing Vedāntin ideas into Muslim mysticism. In this paper it is proposed to re-examine some of the crucial texts upon which this theory has been based.

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 1962 , pp. 28 - 37
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1962

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References

page 28 note 1 Zaehner, HMM, 95; of. Mysticism, sacred and profane, 163. Z. has made some minor changes in his previous version of this passage, but inaccuracies still remain. The phrase ‘As soon as I reached [God's] unity’ (earlier, ‘As soon as I attained to His unity’) represents the Arabic . The adverbial means ‘the first time that’ (see Gaudefroy-Demombynes and R. Blachère, Orammaire de Varabe classique, 284; Massignon, Essai, 248 translates more correctly, ‘Dès que j'allais à Son unicité’), and here has the meaning ‘I pursued a course that brought me to’ (Lane, Lexicon, I,1754). (In his version of this story Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār was also inaccurate when he rendered, Tadhlcirat al-aidiyā’ I, 175, ; but this is not his only inaccuracy, as will be seen below.) The narrative is of a journey to God's pure essence (for waḥdānīya see Massignon, Essai, 59, 265), the first stage of which was Abū Yazīd's ten years’ flight through the phenomenal world (hawā' al-kaifīya; for the technical meaning of kaif and kaifīya see al-Jurjānī, al-Ta‘rīfāt (Cairo, 1938), 165–6); the ‘atmosphere of kaifīya’ is ‘conditioned’ being; cf. J. W. Sweetman, Islam and Christian theology, I, i, 103, 116. The second stage of the journey was through a like ‘atmosphere’ a hundred million times as extensive (presumably the immaterial as contrasted with the physical universe, the malakūt, cf. al-Sahlajī, al-Nūr, p. 1ll), at the end of which Abū Yazīd found himself in (note the change from , and see Lane, loc. cit.) the arena (maidān, the open space outside the city of God; thus, rather than Z.'s ‘expanse’) of eternity-without-beginning (azalīya). It is incidentally noteworthy that the phrase (so printed in Badawi's edition of al-Sahlajī, p. 116, and translated by Z., HMM, 214 as ‘and that was the first glimpse of union’; cf. also ‘Aṭṭār, TA, I, 175, translated by Z., HMM, 215) appears in the older and more authoritative Kitāb al-Luma‘ of al-Sarrāj, loc. cit., as forming part of al-Junaid's commentary on Abū Yazād's with the important variant reading .

page 29 note 1 Zaehner, HMM, 96. The alleged ‘original’ reads: ‘With roots above and branches below the imperishable fig-tree has been declared. Its leaves are the Vedic hymns. Whoso knows it knows the Veda. Below and above extend its branches nourished by the qualities, and the objects of sense are their sprouts. Below are extended the roots from which arise actions in the world of men’. A strange description indeed for a Muslim to borrow in speaking of the Tree of Unity!

page 29 note 2 Zaehner, HMM, 97.

page 29 note 3 For the very ancient antecedents of the Tree of Life, see Widengren's monograph in Uppsala Universitets Årsskrift, 1950. Prime candidate for identification in a Muslim context is obviously the ‘Lote-tree of the Boundary’, farthest point reached by Muḥammad in his mi‘rāj; for which see, inter alia, the commentaries on Qur'ān LIII, 14, and the details there given of its ‘root and branch, its shoots and fruits’, especially the description that it is ‘the limit of the knowledge of all men, both the former and the latter ones’. The Sidra is the terminus also of Ibn ‘Arabī's mi'rāj, see his Kitāb al-Isrā’ (Hyderabad, 1948), 34. G. Widengren argues a Shī'ite source for Abū Yazīd's mi‘rāj (see UUÅ, 1955, 89–93).

page 30 note 1 The phrase in al-Junaid's Kitāb al-Fanā’ (ed. A. Abdul Kader in Islamic Quarterly, I, 2, 1954,81) has been translated by Professor Zaehner as ‘It is only at this point that the law of suffering comes into operation for those who are adapted to it’ (HMM, 222). The word balā’ in this and similar contexts means not so much ‘suffering’ as ‘trial’; the phrase ahl al-balā’ means ‘the people chosen by God for His trial and testing’ (Zaehner, HMM, 223, translates it ‘the mystics who accept suffering’ which puts the shoe on the wrong foot). For the Ṣūfī understanding of balā’ see Hujwīrī, Kashf al-maḥjūb (tr. R. A. Nicholson), 388–9: ‘By balā (affliction) they signify the probation of the bodies of God's friends by diverse troubles and sicknesses and tribulations. … Balā is the name of a tribulation, which descends on the heart and body of a true believer and which is really a blessing. … The degree of balā is more honourable than that of imtiḥán, for imtiḥán affects the heart only, whereas balā affects both the heart and the body and is thus more powerful’. The source is of course Qur'anic, cf. e.g. xxi, 36, and see Lane, Lexicon, I, 256; cf. also al-Kharrāz, Kitāb al-Ṣidq (my edition), 68. (Incidentally, al-Kharrāz, op. cit., 8, is an older source for the famous ḥadīth quoted by Zaehner, HMM, 110, for which he knows no more ancient authority than al-Junaid; see further Massignon, Essai, 106–7.)

page 30 note 2 IQ, I, 2, 1954, 79. The form is not recorded in the native lexicons as a derivative of the root kyd; but see Dozy, Supplément, II, 504, where the form is given as meaning ‘irritate’. Dr. Abdul Kader's remark (IQ, I, p. 83, n. 3) that it ‘literally means “desired me”’ is not quite correct; from the root kwd is also not recorded.

page 30 note 3 IQ, I, 2, 1954, 81Google Scholar.

page 30 note 4 Zaehner, HMM, 222. Abdnl Kader translates (IQ, i, 2, 1954, 86): ‘It is only after this stage has been achieved that it is possible for the worshipper to experience the “testing time”; he struggles and prevails and is faithful to God and then he is conquered by that which obliterates him, that same strength, that elevated spiritual stage, that noble relationship with God’. The sunna of balā’ means of course God's invariable rule of testing and proving men; see p. 30, n. 1, above, and for this use of sunna see Qur'ān XXXIII, 38, 62, xxxv, 41, 42, XL, 85, XLVIII, 23. The word is unexpected, and one is tempted to emend it to ; but if the reading is correct, Z.'s translation ‘they lend themselves to the attractive power of God’ is somewhat bizarre, considering that the word means ‘to contend with in drawing’; the idea here would appear to be that those being tested contend with their afflictions which threaten to draw them away from God. Further comment on the edition and the two versions of the fundamental Kitāb al-Fanā’ is reserved for a future paper.

page 31 note 1 IQ, i, 2, 1954, 82.

page 31 note 2 Zaehner, HMM, 223. The phrase is a quotation from Qur'ān vii, 181: ‘And those who deny Our revelations—step by step We lead them on from whence they know not’ (Pickthall). Clearly al-Junaid had this text in mind, with its reference to God's istidrāj, a term with which the Ṣūfīs were very familiar; see for instance Hujwīrī (tr. Nicholson), 224.

page 31 note 3 ACB 20 (= Mahfuz 77, Rosen 55 with variants): For , see Farhang-i Nafisi, IV, 2557–8:

page 31 note 4 Zaehner, HMM, 97.

page 32 note 1 Ibid., 98.

page 32 note 2 Massignon, Essai, 249–51, with literature there quoted. Zaehner's argument that subḥānī was the whole of the original saying and that mā a‘ẓama sha'nī was a later addition, because al-Sarrāj is our earliest source and he only gives subḥānī, is somewhat invalidated by the fact that Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, who died only eight years after al-Sarrāj, quotes the saying in its full form (Qūt al-qulūb, II, 75).

page 32 note 3 Zaehner, HMM, 98, see al-Sahlajī, 68, 103.

page 32 note 4 Massignon, Essai, 249.

page 32 note 5 A further examination is necessary of Professor Zaehner's contention (HMM, 113) that ‘it is quite plain that he (i.e. Abū Yazīd) claimed to be God in all respects’; the issue is tied up with the interpretation of the Ṣūfī doctrine of fanā’, which I hope to re-examine on a future occasion.

page 33 note 1 al-Sarrāj, 382 (p. 461 in the Cairo edition).

page 33 note 2 Zaehner, HMM, 94; cf. MSP, 162, where the version is slightly different and at one point more accurate.

page 33 note 3 Zaehner, HMM, 94–5.

page 33 note 4 Revelation and reason in Islam, 95.

page 33 note 5 Essai, 248.

page 34 note 1 W. Wright, Arabic grammar, I, 291; Lane, Lexicon, I, 2321.

page 34 note 2 Lane, Lexicon, I, 947.

page 34 note 3 Examples are given on pp. 98–106 of HMM.

page 35 note 1 R. A. Nicholson, Mystics of Islam, 17.

page 35 note 2 RRI, 90. My intention was to suspend judgment pending more substantial proof, rather than to ‘reject as not proven’.

page 35 note 3 Mystics of Islam, loc. cit. In his much later Idea of personality in Ṣúfism, 27, Nicholson appears to regard Abū Yazīd as introducing Persian, and more specifically Shī'ite, thought into Ṣūfism rather than, as he held formerly, Vedānta.

page 35 note 4 Zaehner, HMM, 93-t.

page 35 note 5 al-Sarrāj, 177 (p. 235 of the Cairo edition).

page 35 note 6 Encyclopaedia of Islam (new edition), 1, 162.

page 36 note 1 Sharḥ al-Shaṭḥīyāt, an edition of which is promised by Professor H. Corbin; see his Le Jasmin des fidèles d'amour, 85. Baqlā died in 606/1209.

page 36 note 2 Jāmī, Najaḥāt al-uns (Teheran, 1958), 57.

page 36 note 3 Lisān al-‘Arab, xvii, 275.

page 36 note 4 So e.g. Brockelmann, GAL, 11, 92.

page 36 note 5 See Lane, Manners and customs, 1st ed., II, 302.

page 36 note 6 Ibn Qutaiba, ‘Uyūn al-akhbār, II, 311; cf. Dozy, Supplément, II, 545.

page 37 note 1 Even if it is conceded that Abū ‘Alī's nisba refers to the province of Sind, this by no means implies that he was originally a Hindu, as will be realized by examining the names of those persons recorded as bearing the nisba al-Sindī. Many descendants of the original Arab conquerors of Sind, accomplished by as early as 713, would have called themselves al-Sindī. The traditionist Najīḥ b. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān, known as Abū Ma‘shar al-Madanī, a client of the Banū Hāshim and said to be of Himyarite stock, was called al-Sindī; he quoted on the authority of, among others, Sa‘īd b. al-Musaiyib al-Madanī (d. 94/713), was a favourite of the caliph al-Mahdī, was illiterate for all his pretended learning, and died in 170/787 (see Yāqāt, Mu‘jam al-buldān, V, 151–2; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, X, 419–22; Ibn al-‘Imād, Shadharāt al-dhahab, I, 278, who states that he was called al-Sindī as a laqab bi'l-ḍadd, being white-skinned). His son Abū ‘Abd al-Malik Muḥammad, whom al-Mahdi sent from Medina to Baghdad, was also called al-Madanā al-Sindā (al-Sam‘ānī, Kitāb al-Ansāb, fol. 314a) though he obviously had no connexion whatever with Sind. The poet Abū ‘Aṭā’, a panegyrist of both the Umaiyads and the early Abbasids, was called al-Sindī after his father Yasār who was a foreigner and could not speak correct Arabic (see Abu '1-Faraj, Kitāb al-Aghānī, xvi, 81–7). The traditionist Abū Muḥammad Rajā’ al-Sindī, who died in 221/836, also bore the nisba al-Nīsābūrī (see Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, III, 267) which takes him a long way from Sind; his son and grandson, who followed the same learned profession, also called themselves al-Sindī (Kitāb al-Ansāb, fol. 314a). The famous poet and wit Kushājim (d. 360/971), whose proper name was Maḥmūd b. Ḥusain, was also known as al-Sindī after his ancestor al-Sindī b. Sāhak who was bridge-guard at Baghdad during the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd (al-Sam‘ānī, loc. cit.); his immediate provenance was Ramla in Palestine (Shadharāt al-dhahab, III, 38). The foregoing examples perhaps suffice to demonstrate how hazardous it is to conclude that a man of Abū Yazid's period was a native of Sind and a convert from Hinduism because he bore the nisba al-Sindī.