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Palāsī's Memoir of Shaykh Kujujī, a Persian Sufi Saint of the Thirteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2009
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Khwāja Muhammad ibn Sadīq ibn Muhammad Kujujī or “Kujūjānī” (d. Dhū-hijja 677/April, 1279), as Hamdu'llāh Mustawfī Qazwīnī called him, was a Sufi master whose sons later occupied the post of Shaykh al-Islām in Tabriz under the early Jalā'irids, the Tīmūrids and early Safavids. Born in 614/1217–18, Kujujī's life coincides with the commencement of Mongol rule in northern Persia under Chingiz Khān in 1219, the conquest of Tabrīz in 1220 by the Mongols, the later subjugation of all of Persia under Hülegü (1256–65) and the reign of his successor Abaqa Khān (1265–82).
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References
1 Sharī'a.
2 Ṭarīqa.
3 Cited by Sulṭān al-Qurrā'ī, Ja'far in the annotations to his edition of Ḥāfiẓ Ḥusayn ibn Karbalā'ī Tabrīzī's Rawḍāt al-jinān wa jannāt al-janān, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1965–1970), ii, p. 533.Google Scholar (Henceforth abbreviated as “RJ”).
4 This date is that which is found on his tombstone, which is still standing, according to Ja'far Sulṭān al-Qurrā'ī, ibid., p. 532. See also RJ, ii, p. 38.Google Scholar
5 Tā'rikh-i guzida, ed. Άbd al-Ḥusayn, Nawā'ī (Tehran, 1364 A.Hsh./1985), p. 672.Google Scholar According to Qazwīnī he died in 670/1272–3.
6 His chain of initiation in Sufism (silsila-ye ṭariqat) is cited by Ibn Karbalā'ī (RJ, ii, p. 10Google Scholar) as follows: Akhī Faraj Zanjānī (d. 454/1062) → Khwāja Khūshnām → Khwāja Muḥammad Khūshnām → Bābā Ni'mat → Bābā Aḥmad → Bābā Aḥmad → Bābā Aḥmad Shādabādi → Pīr Ṣadīq Kurdī → Pīr Mamad (Muḥammad) → Shaykh Kujujī.
7 Tadhkirat al-shu'arā (The Memoirs of the Poets), ed. Browne, E. G. (London, 1901), p. 310;Google Scholar Mashkūr, J., Tārikh-i Tabriz tā pāyān-i qarn-i nuhum-i hijri (Tehran, 1352 A.Hsh./1973), pp. 846–7.Google Scholar
8 Tarbiyat, Muḥammad Άli, Dānishmandān-i Ādharbāyjān (Tehran, 1314 A.Hsh./1935), p. 313,Google Scholar claims Kujujī died at age 63. Thus, he must have been born in 1217–18.
9 See Kolbas, Judith Grace, Mongol Money: The role of Tabriz from Chingiz Khan to Uljaytu, 616 to 709 AH/1220 to 1309 AD (Michigan: U.M.I. dissertation services, 1992), p. 122.Google Scholar
10 EI'1, s.v. “Tabriz”, p. 586; also cf. The Geographical Part of the Nuzhat al-Qulīb composed by Ḥamd-Allāh Mustawfi of Qazwin in 740 (1340), ed. Le Strange, G. (London, 1915), Persian text, p. 76.Google Scholar For a detailed discussion of the role of Tabrīz in the spiritual and literary culture of the period, see Lewisohn, Leonard, “The political milieu of Mongol Persia,” in Beyond Faith and Infidelity: The Sufi Poetry and Teachings of Maḥmūd Shabistarī (London, 1995). pp. 55–103.Google Scholar
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12 Muwaḥḥid, Ṣamad (ed.), Majmū'a-i āthār-i Shaykh Maḥmūd Shabistari (Tehran, 1365 A.Hsh./1986), Sa'ādatnāma, p. 169;Google Scholar cited below in my conclusion. (Henceforward abbreviated as “MAS.”)
13 See the verses cited under the title of this article.
14 RJ, ii, p. 533;Google Scholar Takhkira-yi Shaykh Muḥammad Ibn Ṣadiq al-Kujuji (Tehran, 1947), p. 6.Google Scholar The translation was made at the request of a certain Shaykh Mughīth [al–Dūn?] Kujujī. Ja'far Sulṭān al-Qurrā'ī claims that an edition of the same work was published in Tabriz in 1367 A.Hsh. (sic.) but I have not seen a copy of that edition. The original 1947 edition of the Risāla has since been republished in Tehran (1368/1989), with minor editorial improvements and a brief introduction by Aḥmad Khwushnivis.
15 A brief account of Najm al-Dīn Ṭāramī is given by Ibn Karbālā'ī who describes him as a “learned man” and praises the beauty of his translation of this Tadhkira. RJ, ii, pp. 22–3.Google Scholar Kamāl Khujandī wrote a dūbayti in his honour, speaking of him hyperbolically, by way of a pun upon his name, as a “Star in Heaven” rivalling the Creator of the Firmament in his brilliance.
16 See note 14 above.
17 RJ, ii, pp. 9–38.Google Scholar Also cf. Tārīkh-i Tabriz tā pāyān-i qarn-i nuhum-i hejri, pp. 846–7.
18 It does not seem to be extant.
19 RJ, ii, pp. 12–13.Google Scholar
20 See his Nuzhat al-qulūb, pp. 76–7.
21 The Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, trans. Gibb, H. A. R (London, 1962), i, pp. 101–2.Google Scholar
22 In one famous passage of the Mathnawī, he depicted Tabrīz as “the Holy City of the mystic's quest, the home of the perfect saint and murshid through whose favour the soul finds peace in union with God.” See R. A. Nicholson's commentary on Daftar VI, vv. 3106ff, in The Mathnawí of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí. (Gibb Memorial Series N.S, translated and edited by Nicholson, R. A., 8 vols., London, 1924–1940).Google Scholar
23 Netton, referring to Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (whose chronology: 1304–77, neatly parallels Kujujī's lifetime) describes this paradigm as comprising “a series of four searches: for the shrine and/or its circumambient religious geography; for knowledge; for recognition and/or power; and for satisfaction of a basic wanderlust” in his “Arabia and the pilgrim paradigm of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa: a Braudelian approach,” in Netton, I. R. (ed.), Arabia and the Gulf: From Traditional Society to Modern States (London, 1986), pp. 29–42.Google Scholar For further discussion of this same theme, see the same author's (ed.) Golden Roads: Migration, Pilgrimage and Travel in Mediaeval and Modem Islam (Surrey, 1993).Google Scholar
24 Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shi'ite Iran (London, 1990), p. 60.Google Scholar Although saints do indeed belong to history, “sainthood” itself “overshadows history,” as M. Chodkiewicz eloquently argues in his Seal of the Saints: Prophethood and Sainthood in the Doctrine of Ibn Άrabī. Translated from the French by Sherrard, Liadain. (Cambridge, 1993), p. 15.Google Scholar
25 Tadhkira-yi Shaykh … Kujuji, p. 20.
26 Hodgson, Marshall, “The Ṣūfism of the Ṭarīqah Orders” in The Venture of Islam (Chicago, 1977), ii, pp. 201–54Google Scholar and Leonard Lewisohn, “Overview: Iranian Islam and Persianate Sufism,” in idem., (ed.), The Legacy of Mediœval Persian Sufism (London, 1992), pp. 33–6. On the ascendancy of theosophical mysticism, see Schimmel, Annemarie, “Theosophical Sufism,” in her Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, 1975), chap. 6, pp. 279–86.Google Scholar
27 See chapter IV: “The Mystical Milieu” of my Beyond Faith and Infidelity, pp. 104–42.
28 Chodkiewicz, M., Seal of the Saints, p. 12.Google Scholar
29 MAS, Sa'ādat-nāma, p. 240, vv. 1547.Google Scholar
30 For a discussion of this divide, see Lewisohn, Leonard, “Sufis and Mullas” in The Legacy of Mediœval Persian Sufism, pp. 19–24.Google Scholar Hodgson notes that, during this period, “The Sharī'ah-minded guardians of the single godly moralistic community maintained a frustrated tension with the sophisticated culture of Islamdom [the Sufis], which they could successfully condemn but not effectively destroy.” The Venture of Islam, p. 200.
31 Hodgson, Marshall, The Venture of Islam, ii, p. 203.Google Scholar
32 Tadhkira-yi Shaykh Muḥammad Ibn Sadīq al-Kujujī, p. 8.
33 See Mashkūr, M. J., Tarīkh-i Tabrīz tā pāyān-i qarn-i nuhum-i hijrī, p. 828.Google Scholar The only Western source to mention Muḥammad Kujujī and the importance of his descendants in medieval Tabriz has been Aubin, Jean, “Etudes Safavides I: Shāh Ismā'īl et les notables de l'Iraq persan,” in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, II (1959), pp. 60–3.Google Scholar
34 Ardabīlī, Ibn Bazzāz, Ṣafwat al-ṣafā, edited by Ṭabāṭabā'ī-Majd, Ghulām-Riḍā (Ardabīl, 1373 A.Hsh./1994), p. 839.Google Scholar Also cf. p. 1178.
35 RJ, ii, p. 10.Google Scholar
36 Tadhkira-yi Shaykh … Kujujī, p. 19.
37 Tirmidhī, Zuhd, 35. Cited by Chodkiewicz, M., Seal of the Saints, p. 25.Google Scholar
38 Tadhkira-yi Shaykh … Kujujī, p. 25.
39 A saying attributed to Ma'rūf-i Karkhī (d. 200/816). See Άṭṭār, , Tadhkira al-awliyā', i, ed. Nicholson, R. A. (London/Leiden, 1905), p. 272, lines 4–5.Google Scholar
40 RJ, ii, p. 33.Google Scholar
41 Tadhkira-yi Shaykh … Kujujī, p. 49.
42 The phrase “pure-hearted” (Qalb-i salim): a reference to “The day when wealth and sons avail no man, save him who brings unto God a pure heart.” Qur'ān, XXVI: 88–9.
43 “Tuḥfa ahl al-badāyāt wa hadiyya ahl al-nahāyāt,” Tadhkira-yi Shaykh … Kujujī, pp. 19–20.
44 Tadhkira-yi Shaykh … Kujujī, p. 20.
45 A ḥadith often used by the Sufis. See Rūmī, , Mathnawī, iv: 2577–84.Google Scholar
46 Tadhkira-yi Shaykh … Kujujī, p. 9.
47 Hodgson, Marshall, The Venture of Islam, ii, p. 408.Google Scholar
48 Ibid., p. 217.
49 Qur'ān, XLI: 51. Pickthall's translation.
50 Kuwāsh is one of the districts of Mosul. This scholar died in 680/1281 according to the Shadharāt at-dhahab, v. 5, pp. 365–6.Google Scholar See Ja'far Sulṭān al-Qurrā'ī's note, RJ ii, p. 533.Google Scholar
51 Wansbrough, John, Quranic Studies (London, 1980), p. 242–3,Google Scholar compares these four hermeneutic degrees in Qur'ān exegesis to the hermeneutics of the Biblical lexicon, drawing equivalences as follows: ẓāhir = historia; bāṭin = allegoria; ḥadd = tropologia; maṭla' ' anagoge. Also see note 54 below. Böwering, Gerhard, describing The Mystical Vision of Existence in Classical Islam: The Qur'ānic Hermeneutics of the Sūfi Sahl At-Tustari (d. 283/896) (Berlin/New York, 1980), p. 139,Google Scholar comments on this ḥadith as follows: “Throughout his commentary on the Qur'ān, Tustarī differentiates between a literal, exoteric (ẓāhir) and a hidden, esoteric (bāṭin) meaning of the Qur'ān. Thus, he states on the first page of his Tafsir with reference to the Qur'ān: “Its literal meaning (ẓāhir) is beautiful (aniq) and its hidden meaning (bāṭin) is profound (‘amiq), and no mind is capable of fathoming it.” Tustarī further explains the twofold meaning which he discovers in the Qur'ān and says: “Each verse (āyah) of the Qur'ān has four senses (ma'ānin), a literal (ẓāhir) and a hidden sense (bāṭin), a limit (ḥadd) and a point of transcendency (maṭia'). The literal sense is the recitation (tilāwah), the hidden sense the understanding (fahm, of the verse). The limit (defines what is declared) lawful (ḥalāl) and unlawful (ḥarām) by (the verse) and the point of transcendency is the command of the heart (išrāf al-qalb) over the meaning intended (murād) by it as understood from (the vantage point) of God (fiqhan min Allāh). The knowledge of the literal sense ('ilm al-ẓāhir) is common knowledge ('amm), the understanding of its hidden sense and the meaning intended (murād) by it is select knowledge (ḫāṣṣ).”
52 Also, cf. Waley, Muhammad lsa, “Contemplative disciplines in Persian Sufism,” in Lewisohn, L. (ed.), Classical Persian Sufism: from its Origins to Rūmī (London, 1993), pp. 509–11.Google Scholar
53 Unfortunately, any thorough examination of the influence of Ibn Άrabi on Kujujī – evident in the latter's use of his terminology (such as a'yān-i mumkināt, & etc., cited in RJ, ii, p. 21Google Scholar infra) – is outside the scope of the present article.
54 Makdisi, George, “The Koran as model” in his The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 141–7.Google Scholar
55 Louis Massignon investigated the intra-Islamic roots of Sufi practices and belief in Quranic vocabulary in his Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane (Paris, 1922; 2nd ed., 1968),Google Scholar a project which was continued by Nywia, Paul, Exégèse Coranique et Langage Mystique (Beirut, 1970).Google Scholar Also cf. Böwering, Gerhard, “Sufi hermeneutics in medieval Islam,” (discussion paper, Tokyo, Sophia University, 1987).Google Scholar
56 Morris, James W., “At the end of time: translation of Chap. 366 on the ‘Mahdi's Helpers’ from the Futūḥāt,” in Chodkiewicz, M.(ed., et al. ) Les Illuminations de la Mecque (Paris, 1988), pp. 134–5.Google Scholar
57 Ibid. For the place of this anecdote in the Shaykh's biography, see Addas, Claude, Quest for the Red Sulphur: the Life of Ibn Άrabi (Cambridge, 1994), p. 161.Google Scholar
58 As Shāh Ni'matu'llāh (d. 834/1431) in his treatise Majmū' al-laṭā'if, pronounces: “The Qur'ān must be the Guide (imām) of the Sufi, so that wherever God Almighty ascribes to his divine Essence some descriptive attribute, the Sufi can also, whatever his condition, characterize himself with that attribute.” In DrNurbakhsh, Javad (ed.), Risālahā-yi Shāh Ni'matu'llāh Walī (Tehran, 1357 A.HSh./1978), iv, pp. 269–70.Google Scholar
59 See Heer, N., “Abū Ḥamīd al-Ghazālī's esoteric exegesis of the Koran,” in Lewisohn, L. (ed.), Classical Persian Sufism: from its Origins to Rūmi, pp. 235–57.Google Scholar
60 Mathnawi, iii: 4244–9. For further discussion of the interior dimensions of meaning in the Qur'ān, see Guilliot, C., Exégèse, Langue et Théologie en Islam (Paris, 1990), pp. 120–5.Google Scholar
61 See his “The book and the master as poles of cultural change in Islam,” in Vyronis, S. Jr (ed.), Islam and Cultural Change in the Middle Ages (Wiesbaden, 1975), pp. 9–10.Google Scholar
62 An allusion to the Qur'ān, XXVII: 34.
63 RJ, ii, pp. 14–18.Google Scholar The above translation also drew on slight textual variants found in the Tehran 1947 edition of this Tadhkira referred to above.
64 The first sentence is a ḥadīth of the Prophet and the second is a saying of Άlī.
65 This phrase is found in Ibn Karbalā'ī's text but is omitted in the 1947 published edition of the Tadhkira-yi Shaykh Muḥammad Ibn Sadiq al-Kujujī.
66 An apparent allusion to organized and institutionalized “Paths” (tarā'iq) or “Orders” (silāsil) of Sufism, another epithet for which was faqr (spiritual poverty).
67 On the meaning of the technical terms “time” and “breath” in Sufism see DrNurbakhsh, Javad, Spiritual Poverty in Sufism, trans. Lewisohn, Leonard (London, 1984),Google Scholar “Metaphysical Time,” pp. 134–9. A poetic expression of the same doctrines of “time” and “breath” is also found in two of Kujujī's famous contemporaries, who lived only a few miles away from him in Ādharbāyjān: Maghribī and Shabistarī. See the latter's Gulshan-i rāz, edited by DrNurbakhsh, Javad (Tehran, 1976), p. 43,Google Scholar vv. 8–12 and Lewisohn, Leonard (ed.), Dīwān-i Muḥammad Shīrīn Maghribi (Tehran and London, 1993), p. 169,Google Scholar ghazal 80.
68 An allusion to the Qur'ān, VII: 128.
69 RJ, ii, pp. 18–20;Google Scholar Al-Palāsī, , Tadhkira-yi Shaykh Muḥammad Ibn Sadīq al-Kujujī, pp. 12–14.Google Scholar
70 Tadhkira-yi Shaykh Muḥammad Ibn Sadīq al-Kujujī, pp. 12–15.
71 Ibid., p.16.
72 Translation by Arberry, A. J., The Koran Interpreted (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar with minor changes.
73 Tadhkira-yi … al-Kujujī, p. 17.
74 See Ridgeon, Lloyd, “Azīz Nasafi and Visionary Experience,” Sufi, XXIV (1994), pp. 22–9.Google Scholar
75 “It can seem paradoxical that the subjective, ineffable, extraordinarily personal experience of Ṣūfism could become a basis for social life and become historically decisive; that the most personal and esoteric form of piety should be the most popular. This is in part due to the effective way in which mystical forms and language can sanction elements of religious life downgraded by a strongly kerygmatic approach. … If such [mystical] experiences carry authority and are found relevant to the ordinary course of living – the decisive criterion of mysticism from a historical point of view – then their consequences will be unpredictable and may invade any sphere of human activity. Once their validity is accepted, they must determine all of life.” Hodgson, Marshall, The Venture of Islam, ii, pp. 204–5.Google Scholar Also cf. Chittick, W. C.,“Mysticism versus philosophy in earlier Islamic history: the al-Tūsī, al-Qūnawi correspondence,” Religious Studies, XVII (1981), pp. 87–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
76 Cf. Shepherd, John, “Phenomenological perspectivism,” in BASR Bulletin, No. LXXI (1994), pp. 11–16.Google Scholar
77 See L. Gardet,“Kashf,” EI2.
78 See Jabre, Farid, La notion de certitude selon Ghazālī (Paris, 1958),Google Scholar index, s.v.
79 See Chittick, W. C., The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-Άrabi's Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany, 1989), pp. 63, 70, 153.Google Scholar
80 I.e. you are aware of ethical injunctions which determine man's relationship to God, and are aware of your obligation in respecting those who train you and lead you in prayer and the danger of transgressing these boundaries, even if your spiritual experience seems to lead you elsewhere.
81 Ha'iri, Mehdi, The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy: Knowledge by Presence (Albany, 1992), p. 176.Google Scholar
82 And even if we did manage to rationalize or explain these experiences, we would still have far to go before we overcome the epistemological impasse of object-language versus subject-experience which is expressed by Shaykh Kujujī's comment that “wisdom (ḥikmat) is substantially different from inner reality of the Sage (ḥaqiqat-i ḥakim), gnosis (ma'rifat) substantially different from inner reality of the gnostic (ḥaqīqat-i 'ārif), and theological knowledge ('ilm) is substantially different from inner reality of the knower (ḥaqīqat-i 'ālim).”
83 As the ample references to him by Dawlatshāh, , Tadhkirat al-shu'arā, ed. Άbbāsī, M. (Tehran, 1337 A.Hsh./1958), pp. 345–6,Google Scholar and Ibn Bazzāz (cited above in the introduction) would suggest.
84 Edited by Dr Javad Nurbakhsh, Gulshan-i rāz, and also by Ṣ. Muwaḥḥid (ed.), MAS.
85 Shabistarī, , Sa'āatnāma, in MAS, p. 169.Google Scholar For a further study of Kujujī's relationship to Shabistarī, see Lewisohn, L., Beyond Faith and Infidelity, pp. 128–34.Google Scholar
86 Shabistarī actually writes “Kujujān.”
87 MAS, S'ādat-nāma, pp. 169–70, vv. 320–33.