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Khargūshī, Tahdhīb al-asrār

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2010

Christopher Melchert
Christopher Melchert*
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University of Oxford
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Abstract

Khargushi (d. Nishapur, 407/1016?), Tahdhīb al-asrār, is a fairly large collection of sayings in the renunciant/Sufi tradition, comprising over twice as many items as Sarrāj, al-Lumaʿ and Sulamī, Ṭabaqāt al-sufiyya. A first printed edition appeared in 1999. Examination of the Tahdhīb confirms that Khargūshī was Shāfiʿi in law, Ashʿari in theology, but mainly a preacher devoted to piety. It also tends to confirm current common wisdom about the history of Sufism: that it developed out of the earlier renunciant tradition, that Malāmatism was a distinctive Nishapuran school of mystical piety with such affinities to Baghdadi Sufism as make it easily assimilable to it, and that Khargūshī's time was still that of the teaching master, the training master not appearing till half a century later. Its similarities to Sarrāj, al-Lumaʿ and Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilyat al-awliyā’ make both of those appear more mainstream than has sometimes been feared.

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , February 2010 , pp. 29 - 44
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2010

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References

1 Arberry, A. J., “Khargūshī's manual of Ṣūfism”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 9, 1937–39, 345–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Al-Kharkūshī, , K. Tahdhīb al-asrār, ed. Bārūd, Bassām Muḥammad (Abu Dhabi: al-Majmaʿ al-Thaqāfī, 1999)Google Scholar. For MSS, v. Sezgin, GAS 1: 670, no. 1. Berl. 2819 290 ff., 848 H.; Şehid A. 1157 231 ff., 863 H.; Feyz. 280, 292 ff., 863 H.

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4 Brockelmann, GAL 1: 218 (200); S 1: 361; Sezgin, GAS 1: 670–1. The fullest modern study is Aḥmad Ṭāhirī ʿIrāqī and Naṣr Allāh Pūrjavādī, “Abū Saʿd-i Khargūshī-yi Nīshābūrī”, Maʿārif, 15/3, 1377/1999, 2–33. V. also now the first and last sections of Sviri, Sara, “The early mystical schools of Baghdad and Nīshāpūr”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 30, 2005, 450–82Google Scholar.

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6 al-Baghdādī, Al-Khaṭīb, Tārīkh Baghdād, 14 vols (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1349/1931)Google Scholar, 10: 432 = Tārikh madīnat al-salām, ed. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf, 17 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1422/2001), 12: 188; Samʿānī, Ansāb, s.n. kharkūshī; al-Ṣayrafīnī, , al-Muntakhab min K. al-Siyāq li-Tārīkh Naysābūr, ed. Ḥaydar, Khālid (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1414/1993)Google Scholar, 357. On Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad, v. al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-islām, ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām Tadmurī, 52 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1407–21/1987–2000), 25 (a.h. 331–50), 409; on al-Aṣamm, v. ibid., 362–9. V. also Ṭāhirī and Pūrjavādī, “Abū Saʿd”, 7–8, for an annotated list of Khargūshī's principal shaykhs in hadith. In the eleventh century, it was normal in Nishapur to begin hearing hadith at five, for which v. Bulliet, Richard, “The age structure of medieval Islamic education”, Studia Islamica, 57, 1983, 105–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My guess is that it was normal a little later, probably eight to ten, in the mid-tenth century. For example, Khargūshī's illustrious contemporary, al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī (d. 405/1014), born 321/933, first heard hadith in 330/941–2 at nine according to Khaṭīb, Tārīkh 5: 473 = ed. Maʿrūf, 3: 510.

7 Samʿānī, Ansāb, s.nn. kharkūshī and māsarjisī (alt.: māsirjisī); Ṣayrafīnī, Muntakhab, 357; Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn kadhib al-muftarī (Damascus: al-Qudsī, 1347), 234, 236 = ed. Aḥmad Ḥijāzī al-Saqqā (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1416/1995), 232. On the importance of Abū Isḥāq al-Marwazī and Ibn Abī Hurayra, v. Melchert, Christopher, The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law (Islamic Law and Society 4, Leiden: Brill, 1997), 103–6Google Scholar.

8 Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 233–6 = ed. Saqqā, 231–4.

9 Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 234 = ed. Saqqā, 232; Samʿānī, Ansāb, s.n. kharkūshī; both evidently drawing on al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī.

10 Khaṭīb, Tārīkh 10: 432 = ed. Maʿrūf, 12: 188.

11 For al-Fārisī, v. Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 236 = ed. Saqqā, 233; al-Ṣayrafīnī, al-Muntakhab min K. al-Siyāq li-Tārīkh Naysābūr, ed. Khālid Ḥaydar (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1993/1414), 357. For the year 406, v. Khaṭīb, Tārīkh 10: 432 = ed. Maʿrūf, 12: 188; Samʿānī, Ansāb, s.v. kharkūshī, although Samʿānī also confirms Jumādā I 407 s.n. kharjūshī.

12 Apud Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 235 = ed. Saqqā, 232–3; slightly abridged apud Dhahabī, Tārīkh 28: 162.

13 Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 234 = ed. Saqqā, 232–4; Dhahabī, Tārīkh 28: 163; al-Subkī, , Ṭabaqāt al-shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, ed. al-Ṭanāḥī, Maḥmūd Muḥammad and al-Ḥulw, ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ, 10 vols (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1964–76)Google Scholar, 5: 223.

14 On Ibn Nujayd's connection with ʿUthmān, Abū, v. Sulamī, Kitāb Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya, ed. Pedersen, Johannes (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960), 476Google Scholar. On the Malāmatiyya, v. esp. Chabbi, Jacqueline, “Remarques sur le développement historique des mouvements ascétiques et mystiques au Khurasan”, Studia Islamica, 46, 1977, 5–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sviri, Sara, “Ḥakīm Tirmidhī and the Malāmatī movement in early Sufism”, Classical Persian Sufism, ed. Lewisohn, Leonard (New York: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi Publications, 1993), 583–613Google Scholar; and Melchert, Christopher, “Sufis and competing movements in Nishapur”, Iran, 39, 2001, 237–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The last makes out Abū ʿUthmān to have virtually founded the Malāmati school (238–9).

15 Extant sources preserve very little on the life of Sarrāj. Ahmet Karamustafa comments, “It appears … that although Sarrāj most likely lived as a Sufi, he was in the first instance a scholar of Sufism rather than a Sufi master”: Karamustafa, Ahmet T., Sufism: The Formative Period (New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. On Abū Nuʿaym, v. for now Encyclopædia Iranica, s.v. “Abu Noʿaym al-Eṣfahāni”, by W. Madelung.

16 GAL S 1: 361; GAS 1: 670–1. Sharaf al-muṣṭafā has recently been published: Manāḥil al-shifā' wa-manāhil al-ṣafā' bi-taḥqīq Kitāb Sharaf al-muṣṭafā, ed. Abū ʿĀṣim Nabīl ibn Hāshim al-Ghamrī, 6 vols (Mecca: Dār al-Bashā’ir al-Islāmiyya, 2003). A 1967 Egyptian edition of Dalā'il al-nubuwwa is mentioned by Ṭāhirī and Pūrjavādī, “Abū Saʿd”, 19–20.

17 Çelebī, Kātib, Kashf al-ẓunūn, ed. Yaltkaya, Şerefettin and Bilge, Rifat, 2 vols (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1941–43)Google Scholar, 1045, 1047, 1569. Storey notes an extant Persian translation of the first with the alternative title of Dalā’il al-nubuwwa (Persian Literature 1: 175–6). Brockelmann evidently identifies Sharaf al-muṣṭafā with Dalā’il al-nubuwwa (GAL S 1:361, no. 3), so it is possible that Storey is talking about a Persian abridgement of it, also that what Kātib Çelebī refers to as Sharaf al-nubuwwa is an Arabic abridgement of Sharaf al-muṣṭafā.

18 Dhahabī, Tārīkh 28: 162.

19 On the commentary of Sulamī (d. 412/1021), v. Böwering, Gerhard, “The Qur’ān commentary of al-Sulamī”, Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams, ed. Hallaq, Wael B. and Little, Donald K. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), 41–56Google Scholar. It has now been published as Ḥaqā'iq al-tafsīr, ed. Sayyid ʿImrān, 2 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1421/2001). On the commentary of Thaʿlabī (d. 437/1035?), v. Saleh, Walid A., The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qur’ān Commentary of al-Thaʿlabī (Texts and Studies on the Qur’ān 1, Leiden: Brill, 2004)Google Scholar. As Saleh's title indicates, he wishes to make out Thaʿlabī's place in the tradition, at which he is severely hampered by our lack of extant commentaries between those of al-Ṭabarī and Thaʿlabī.

20 Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 234 = ed. Saqqā, 232; Subkī, al-Ṭabaqāt al-wusṭā, apud Ṭabaqāt 5: 223fn; also without direct attribution apud Samʿānī, Ansāb, s.v. kharkūshī.

21 Similarly, Pūrjavādī and Ṭāhirī, observing how seldom later writers quote any history of Nishapur by Khargūshī: “Abū Saʿd”, 15.

22 On Tārīkh al-ṣūfiyya, v. Johannes Pedersen, introduction to Sulamī, Ṭabaqāt, 50–9 (Fr.). For K. al-Zuhd, v. Sulamī, Ṭabaqāt, 5 (Ar.).

23 Sviri, “Early mystical schools”, 457–62 (quotation from 457).

24 On Muʿtazili disbelief in post-prophetic miracles, particularly the karāmāt of the awliyā’, v. provisionally Sobieroj, Florian, “The Muʿtazila and Sufism”, Islamic Mysticism Contested, ed. De Jong, Frederick and Radtke, Bernd (Islamic History and Civilization, Studies and Texts 29, Leiden: Brill, 1999), 68–92Google Scholar, at 90–1, also Richard Gramlich, Die Wunder der Freunde Gottes (Freiburger Islamstudien 11, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1987), 98–110.

25 On the controversy in Andalusia, v. Fierro, Maribel, “Women as prophets in Islam”, Writing the Feminine: Women in Arab Sources, ed. Marín, Manuela and Deguilhem, Randi (The Islamic Mediterranean 1, London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 183–98Google Scholar. Khargūshī's polemics somewhat weaken Fierro's hypothesis that the Andalusian controversy was specifically related to conversion from Christianity.

26 On Qushayrī and Hujvīrī, v. Karamustafa, Sufism, 97–103.

27 V. Melchert, Christopher, Ahmad ibn Hanbal (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006)Google Scholar, ch. 5.

28 The first name appears in both editions as “Ibn al-Mubārak”, but Sara Sviri clearly shows that this is a mis-reading: “Early mystical schools”, 465–8. She refers to “Ibn al-Munāzil” with u, but I prefer to follow the recommendation of Ibn Ḥajar, Tabṣīr al-muntabih, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad al-Najjār and Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Najjār, 4 vols (Cairo: al-Dār al-Miṣriyya, 1964?–7, repr. Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿIlmiyya, n.d.), 4: 1247.

29 For ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Khayyāṭ, v. Samʿānī, Ansāb, s.v. khayyāṭ. For Abū ’l-Ḥasan al-Ḥuṣrī, v. Sulamī, Ṭabaqāt, 516–22.

30 See note 14 above.

31 Meier, Fritz, “Khurāsān and the end of classical Sufism”, Essays on Islamic Piety and Mysticism, trans. O'Kane, John (Islamic History and Civilization, Studies and Texts 30, Leiden: Brill, 1999), 189–219Google Scholar, at 216.

32 Abū ’l-ʿAlā’ ʿAfīfī, al-Malāmatiyya (Mu'allafāt al-jamʿiyya al-falsafiyya al-miṣriyya 5, n.p.: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1364/1945), which includes an edition of R. al-Malāmatiyya at 86–120; also Deladrière, Roger (trans.), La lucidité implacable (Retour aux grands textes, Domaine arabe, Paris: Arléa, 1991)Google Scholar.

33 Al-Khallāl, , K. al-Ḥathth ʿalā ’l-tijāra, ed. Abū ʿAbd Allāh Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥaddād (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀṣima, 1407), 143–5Google Scholar.

34 Al-Muḥāsibī, , al-Makāsib, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Kutub al-Thaqāfiyya, 1987)Google Scholar, 61 = al-Masā’il fī aʿmāl al-qulūb, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Cairo: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1969), 194.

35 Nuʿaym, Abū, Ḥilyat al-awliyā’, 10 vols (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1352–7/1932–8)Google Scholar, 8: 37–8.

36 On the Sālimiyya, v. for now Massignon, Louis, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, trans. Clark, Benjamin (Notre Dame, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1997), 199–203Google Scholar, probably overcorrected by Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edn, s.v. “Sālimiyya”, by L. Massignon and B. Radtke, and Gerhard Böwering, “Early Sufism between persecution and heresy”, Islamic Mysticism Contested, 45–67, at 61–3.

37 Khargūshī, Tahdhīb, 299 271; Sarrāj, , The Kitáb al-Lumaʿ fí ’l-taṣawwuf, ed. Nicholson, Reynold Alleyne (E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Ser. 22, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1914, repr. London: Luzac, 1963), 195–6Google Scholar.

38 Nicholson, Introduction, Lumaʿ, x–xi. Louis Massignon went so far as to assert that Sarrāj was the third head of the Sālimiyya, : The Passion of al-Hallāj, trans. Mason, Herbert, 4 vols (Bollingen Series 98, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982)Google Scholar, 2: 130.

39 For a letter from Ḥallāj (al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr) to Ibn ʿAṭā’, v. Khargūshī, Tahdhīb, 538 499; noted by Massignon, Passion 3: 337. Massignon also quotes a couplet from the Berlin MS (lā kuntu in kuntu adrī kayfa 'l-sabīlu ilaykā …) that Khargūshī attributes to himself in the printed edition, 386 354: Massignon, Passion 3:348. On the death of Ibn ʿAṭā’, v. Sarrāj, Lumaʿ, 211, and Khaṭīb, Tārīkh 8: 128 = ed. Maʿrūf, 8:706–7.

40 Sviri, “Ḥakīm Tirmidhī”; Sulamī, Ṭabaqāt, 454.

41 Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, Nawādir al-uṣūl (Istanbul, 1294; repr. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, n.d.), 70–1.

42 So Melchert, Christopher, “The transition from asceticism to mysticism at the middle of the ninth century C.E.”, Studia Islamica, 83, 1996, 51–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 65–6. For this Inquisition, v. also Massignon, Passion 1: 80–1; Ernst, Carl, Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985)Google Scholar, 101; Gramlich, Richard, Alte Vorbilder des Sufitums 1: Scheiche des Westens (Veröffentlichungen der Orientalischen Kommission 42/1, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995), 383Google Scholar; and Günther, Sebastian and Jarrar, Maher, “ulām Ḫalīl und das Kitāb Šarḥ as-sunna”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 153, 2003, 11–36Google Scholar, at 23–5.

43 Khargūshī, Tahdhīb, 286–7 258–9; cf. Ibn al-Jawzī, Naqd al-ʿilm wa-’l-ʿulamā’ (n.p.: Idārat al-Ṭibāʿa al-Munīriyya, 1368), 167 = Talbīs Iblīs, ed. Khayr al-Dīn ʿAlī (Beirut: Dār al-Waʿy al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 193 = Talbīs Iblīs, ed. ʿIṣām Fāris al-Ḥarastānī (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1414/1994), 225.

44 Almost the same apud Sarrāj, Lumaʿ, 188, suggesting that Khargūshī was quoting from memory.

45 On the question of his discipleship, v. Dhahabī, Tārīkh 19 (a.h. 251–60): 310, quoting al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī; also Chabbi, “Mouvements”, 30, inferring the same from his being buried next to Aḥmad ibn Ḥarb; cf. Massignon, Essay, 180–2, identifying him directly with Ibn Karām himself. For the opposition of the Karāmiyya to the Malāmatiyya, see note 14 above. Medieval sources are indecisive between “Ibn Karrām” and “Ibn Karām”. Recent scholars have usually chosen the former, but I incline towards the latter because of two lines of poetry that demand takhfīf for metrical consistency: al-Zarkashī, al-Kitāb ʿalā Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ed. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn ibn Muḥammad Bilā Furayj, 4 vols (Riyadh: Maktabat Aḍwā’ al-Salaf, 1419/1998), 2: 288–9. For the Murji’ connection, v. al-Maqdisī, , Le livre de la création et de l'histoire, ed. and trans. Huart, M. Cl., 6 vols (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1899–1919)Google Scholar, 5: 153 (Fr.) = 145 (Ar.).

46 For quotations of Abū Yazīd, v. ʿAfīfī, Malāmatiyya, 91–2, 94–5, 96–7 (twice), 101–2, 106 (twice), 115.

47 V. Qushayrī, , al-Risāla, bāb al-ṣaḥw wa-’l-shukr = Al-Qushayri's Epistle on Sufism, trans. Knysh, Alexander D., rev. Muhammad Eissa (Great Books of Islamic Civilization, Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2007), 95Google Scholar. Qushayrī also relates how Yaḥyā ibn Muʿādh once spoke on the superiority of wealth to poverty, whereupon he was given 30,000 dirhams, which provoked an unnamed shaykh to pray that God not bless him in it, the 30,000 then being stolen (biography of Yaḥyā ibn Muʿādh = Knysh, trans., 35).

48 The classic account is Meier, “Khurāsān”. V. also Karamastufa, Sufism, ch. 5.

49 Sulamī, , Kitāb Ādāb al-ṣuḥba, ed. Kister, M. J. (Oriental Notes and Studies 6, Jerusalem: Israel Oriental Society, 1954)Google Scholar.

50 Radtke, Bernd, “The eight rules of Junayd”, Reason and Inspiration in Islam, ed. Lawson, Todd (London: Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2005), 490–502Google Scholar, particularly 492.

51 On the origins of samāʿ in the mid-ninth century, v. During, Jean, “Musique et rites: le samāʿ”, Les voies d'Allah, ed. Popovic, Alexandre and Veinstein, Gilles (Paris: Fayard, 1996), 157–72Google Scholar, esp. 159; Gribetz, Arthur, “The samāʿ controversy”, Studia Islamica, 74, 1991, 43–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 44. On Fuḍayl, v. Chabbi, Jacqueline, “Fuḍayl b. ʿIyāḍ, un précurseur du Ḥanbalisme”, Bulletin d’Études Orientales, 30, 1978, 331–45Google Scholar.

52 Cf., among other parallels, Bukhārī, al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, k. aḥādīth al-anbiyā’ 50, bāb mā dhukira ‘an Banī Isrā’īl, no. 3452, also 3479; more distant variants at k. al-riqāq 25, bāb al-khawf min Allāh, nos. 6480–1.

53 Where I have al-Nūrī, the printed editions have rather al-Thawrī, which does sound anachronistic. Cf. Sulamī, Ṭabaqāt, 153, where the same quotation (“Joining with the truth is parting with all else, while parting with all else is joining with it”) is attributed to Nūrī. On Ibn al-Aʿrābī, v. GAS 1: 660–1 and Dhahabī, Tārīkh 25 (a.h. 331–50): 184–6, with additional references. Khargūshī cites him seldom but he admittedly does use the form Abū Saʿīd ibn al-A‘rābī; e.g. 395 362.

54 Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (attrib.), Aʿmāl al-nabiyyīn wa-’l-salaf wa-'l-ṣāliḥīn min thamarāt ʿilm al-qulūb, ed. Muṣṭafā Ibrāhīm Ḥamza and ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Duqr (Damascus: Maktabat al-Fārābī, 1998/1419) = ʿIlm al-qulūb, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir Aḥmad ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2004/1424); Pūrjavādī, Naṣr Allāh, “Bāzmāndahā’yi kitāb-i al-Ishāra wa-'l-ʿibāra-yi Abū Saʿd-i Khargūshī dar kitāb-i ʿIlm al-qulūb”, Maʿārif, 15/3, 1999, 34–41Google Scholar.

55 Arberry, “Khargūshī's manual”, 349.