‘Sufism of Khorasan’: Concepts, Discourses and People

In his book, Zabān-i shiʿr dar nathr-i ṣūfīya: darāmadī bi sabkshināsīya nigāhi ʿirfānī (The Language of Poetry in Sufi Prose: An Introduction to the Stylistics of the Sufi Viewpoint), Muḥammad Riḍā Shafīʿī Kadkanī distinguishes between two genres of Sufism: that of Khorasan, indigenous to the cultural fabric and national consciousness of Persians on one hand, and the theoretical mysticism of Ibn ʿArabī, which, according to Kadkanī, has always been alien to Iranian ethos, on the other. He goes as far as to warn of the negative consequences of the ever-increasing popularity of Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings for the cultural integrity of modern life in Iran (Kadkanī, 1392 Sh, pp. 99-100). However, and despite this vociferous and apprehensive premonition, Kadkanī leaves his readers with no further explanation about the people, components, and/or epoch that have constructed what he calls the ‘Sufism of Khorasan’. Pertinent to this is its geographical boundary, which is as vague as the definition itself. Adopting Russian symbolism, Kadkanī locates the vast, and at times different varieties of Sufi spiritualty in areas such as Greater Khorasan, Iraq, Syria and Anatolia – linking them together and calling them ‘Sufism of Khorasan’.

Given this, the present paper is an endeavor to discuss the unidentified aspects of this phenomenon, and to this end, it will first read and analyze a number of Sufi manuals from the 4^th/10^th century onwards to shed light on the main components of the so-called ‘Sufism of Khorasan’. Second, it will take a historical look at politico-cultural developments after the establishment of the Safavids in 1501, which resulted in removing the different Sufi schools from the central parts of the empire, pushing them to the frontiers; to places that could be today’s ‘Persianate societies’. By developing a counter-argument to Kadkanī’s, the paper will discuss the impossibility of having ‘Sufism of Khorasan’ as an independent genre of Sufism.

Keywords: Sufism of Khorasan, Persianate societies, Shafīʿī Kadkanī.

Source: Shafīʿī Kadkanī, Muḥammad Riḍā, Zabān-i shiʿr dar nathr-i ṣūfīya: darāmadī bi sabkshināsīya nigāhi ʿirfānī (The Language of Poetry in Sufi Prose: An Introduction to the Stylistics of the Sufi Viewpoint), 4^th edition, 1392 Sh (Tehran: Sukhan Publication).  

I agree with Nile Green’s definition in his book Sufism: A Global History that Sufism is more than just an esoteric lifestyle, based only on piety and direct encounter with the Divine, and that is why it should not be taken as identical to mysticism (Green, p. 1). This is what other scholars, chief among them Karamustafa and A.J. Arberry, adheres to as well. Also, I am not comfortable with this simplistic designation that defines Sufism as “the religion of the masses” (دین عامه) as opposed to “official religion”, which is invented and supported by the clerics and the courts. According to this classification, a considerable part of Sufi heritage in its formative period, which is our concern here, will be left out. Besides, as scholars such as Arberry argue, “Sufism comprised the religious way of both the popular Muslim masses and the smaller number of elevated mystics” (from the main source, p. 25 Green).

This brief conceptual clarification helps us to understand the reasons why Sufi manuals, which is our interest here, were written by a number of sharia and hadith experts, who were also proper theologians (jurisprudence was still being shaped): religious scholars who called themselves everything but “Sufi”, and brought weighty load of kalām, laws and hadith heritage to this tradition. Given this and focusing on what Karamustafa calls “the formative period”, Sufism was not just the religion of the masses (at least in the fourth and fifth centuries), but of the experts as well, and was not conceptualized as opposed to the official religion of its time; however, it benefitted from popular traditions of its epoch such as those of the zuhhād of Baghdad, malāmatīs of Khorasan and hakims of Transoxania.

These people, who were both the bearers of Islamic tradition (hadith, sunnah and sharia), and heirs to the legacy of previous Sufis, such as Junayd (d. 297/880)[1], Bayazid Bastami, Kharaqani, etc., founded a tradition, which had “discursive links to past precedent” (Green, p. 4), and acted as a bridge between the first generation of the Sufis and writers of the manuals, and while being conscious of these two streams of tradition, perpetuated this legacy. My job is not just investigating Sufi historiography, but also the content of these discursive texts, which as history proves, laid the conceptual framework for the subsequent phases of Sufism from the 5^th century onwards up to our time. Also, in contrast to what Nile Green claims, these manuals were not solely in Arabic, but bilingual, as we have a number of manuals in Persian too.

First and foremost, the first manual, Al-Taʿarruf li madhhab-i ahl-i taṣawwuf was written in the 4^th ḥijrī /10^th century by Abū Bakr Kalābādhī (d. 380/990 or 994-5), followed (this is the second one) by Al-lumaʿ fi taṣawwuf, written between 340-360 ḥijrī (or 362) by Sarrāj Ṭūsī, known as the Peacock of the Poor (Sufis). The third one is the writings of Abū Raḥmān Sulamī (d. 412 ḥijrī), the fourth is Risālaya qushayrīya by Abu al-Qāsim Qushayrī, Sulamī’s student in 438 ḥijrī and the fifth manual is the Kashf ul-maḥjūb of Hujwīrī, written between 465-69 ḥijrī. Given the time frame, a considerable part of the Sufi tradition, as a marriage between the teachings of Baghdad Sufism and Islamic creeds, was put together in only one century; a one-hundred-year legacy that comes to play a vital role in the entire Sufi life.

Secondly, all the writers hailed from greater Khorasan or Transoxania; from cities such as Bukhara (al-Kalābādhī), Nishapur (Sulamī), Tus (Sarrāj), Ghazni (Hujwīrī), and Quchān (Qushayrī), from families that went back to the Arab settlers in the eastern frontier of the Caliphate. But what does that mean? Is the location determining the mentality and the worldview of the writers, or giving their work a specific kind of coloring and inclination? And regarding this, can we specify a certain kind of Sufism and call it “Sufism of Khorasan”, as for instance we identify Khorasan music, Kurdish dance or Baloch handicrafts? The present paper is trying to answer these questions, and that is why is focusing on these manuals.

The first theme, which recurs in all these manuals, is tawḥīd and Divine Names and Attributes, however, the writers’ ontology is pretty much shaped by their affiliation to a certain kalāmī school. For instance, in case of al-Kalābādhī (a Ḥanafī traditionist, p. Karamustafa, p. 85), his Māturīdī kalāmī perspective shapes his worldview on tawḥīd (al-Ghumārī al-Ḥasanī, 1434, p. 128).[2] Māturīdī was a stance between the Ashʿarītes and the Muʿtazilīs, but more inclined to the former. Just in parenthesis, the writers developed an identity for themselves out of their controversies with the Muʿtazilīs over the nature of Divine Names and Attributes, and their continuation in the debates on the nature of the Quran whether it is created or qadīm. What is important in Al-Taʿarruf and a commentary written on it by one of Kalābādhī’s followers, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl Mustamlī Bukhārī (d. 434/1044), known as Sharḥ ila al-taʿaruuf, is the writer’s elaborated discussion on the nature of the Divine Names and Attributes and whether they are azalī (or qadīm, lit. eternal) or created (ḥādith).

Mustamlī does not miss any opportunity to attack the Muʿtazilīs, because of their wrong stance on both the Quran and the Divine Names and the Attributes that makes them believe in ghayrīyat and eventually in athnaynīyat (duality اثنینیت). Muʿtazilīs were famous for being the majūs of the community. According to the Muʿtazilīs, who becomes equated with the kuffār (infidels), Jews, Christians, Magi, and Dahrīyyūn by Mustamlī, Divine Names and Attributes are different from dhāt (the Essence) and therefore are created. While for a Sufi like Mustamlī, these two are one and the same, because otherwise one will fall into the abyss of duality, which is against the message of tawḥīd. Mustamlī introduces himself and his theological tendency, which, according to him, is the most loyal to the Sunni creeds, as ‘moderate’, because khayr ul-umūr-i awsaṭahā (lit. the best thing is to stand in the middle), as opposed to Muʿtazilīs, Rāfiḍīs (Shīʿas), and Nāṣibīs, who take non-reasonable positions on sensitive issues such as the nature of the Names and Attributes and of the Quran. 

The second recurring theme is gnosis (معرفت), its classifications into different categories and the nature of Sufi knowledge. The way gnosis is discussed, as well as its nexus to a “good life” are reminiscent of pre-Islamic Persian teachings on the issue, although it has a firm background in Islamic teachings as well. For instance, there exist a number of aḥādīth on it, which are going to be discussed in the following.

  من عرفنی نفسه فقد عرفنی ربه. / العلماء ورثة الانبیاء 

The third theme is awliyā and their attributes. Kalābādhī’s al-Taʿarruf is the first manual, which discusses wilāya and awliyā that pave the way for further discussion by subsequent generations of Sufis. However, for their discussion of sainthood,[3] the writers of the manuals are very much indebted to the famous ḥakīm Tirmidhī, who had died almost 90 years earlier (in 292 /905).

The fourth one is adab (Sufi code of conduct or etiquette), which is discussed extensively, but maybe for the first time in Sharḥ al-taʿarruf and not Al-taʿarruf itself. The fifth theme is khalq, as another pair of the binary of ḥaqq wa al-khalq. Being kind, well-mannered and caring towards people is all that matters in these manuals, which also testifies to the collective and public dimension of Sufism. Also, it attests to the importance of family, household and blood ties among the early Sufis. The sixth theme is Sufi dance (samāʿ), which, again goes back as far as the first Sufi manual. The seventh theme is futuwwa, which, as we see in Sulamī’s work, will come to pave the way for Malāmatī ideas to be infiltrated into Sufism, and as we know, Malāmatīya was more of a Khurāsānī cultural phenomenon than a Baghdādī or Shāmī one.

These themes recur in these manuals in different ways. For instance, in Sharḥ al-taʿarruf written by the abovementioned Mustamlī, Divine Names and Attributes, as well as their relationship with dhāt, are discussed in detail, and it is the kalāmī perspective of the writer that determines his worldview on this matter. Or in al-lumaʿ fi taṣawwuf, which was written between 340-360 (or 362) by Sarrāj Ṭūsī, we see these topics are discussed, but we also see a Sufi manual that delves into the famous prophetic ḥadīth saying that “the scholars are the inheritors of the prophets” for the first time. That the term ʿulema, according to Sarrāj, points to three classes of people, including people of the ḥadīth, jurists, and the Sufis on one hand, and his discussion of the school of Sufi gnosis (مدرسه معرفت صوفیه) on the other, is indicative of the fact that Sufis as people of knowledge and Sufism as a school - along with kalām and jurisprudence - had already been established by his time. They never called themselves Sufi, but obviously they were aware of their crucial status as an heir to divine gnosis. Al-lumaʿ fi taṣawwuf of Sarrāj Ṭūsī is a good example in this regard.

One of the main characteristics of these manuals is their fabric being intertwined with discursive resources, including sunna and ḥadīth (i.e., traditionalism), and from this perspective Risālaya qushayrīya is important, because this book was famous as “the manifesto of official Sufism in the Muslim world”, which attests to this affinity and to the importance of sharīʿa for the early Sufis (Muḥabbatī, 1391, p. 16). As a written text, a manifesto declares the intentions, beliefs, aims and policies of an organization publicly, and this is what these Sufi manuals do: they draw the boundaries within which a Sufi action is accepted and nothing out of this framework is acceptable. Also, the formation of juridical schools was influential for sharīʿa to become the main concern of the writers who tried to fit Sufi ethics and teachings into its framework. By emphasizing the oneness of Islamic authoritative sources and prophetic examples with Sufism, the writers laid the ground for later Sufis like Ghazālī to come and announce that “Sufism is Sunnism and vice versa”.

The rapid growth in the number of manuals in the fifth ḥijrī century, as Muḥabbatī says, harks back to other factors such as the triangle of the Ashʿarī kalām, the caliphate, and the Ghaznawīds, which on the other hand played a negative role in the decline of rationalism and the gradual, yet steady decline of the Islamic civilization (Muḥabbatī, pp. 31-32): a trend that goes so far that Sufis such as Bushr Ḥāfī claims that if Sufis have respect and social weight it is because of observing sunnat. Besides, naturally the writers wanted to purge Sufism of heretic ideas and people who did not fit well into this framework, but figures such as Junayd, Abū Saʿīd Abu al-Khayr, Bāyazīd Basṭāmī, and Kharaqānī, among others, were regarded as the sources of these manuals too, along with the authoritative figures that we mentioned. Indeed, when we reach the last one, Kashf ul-maḥjūb of Hujwīrī, the manuals are well elaborated and lengthier than the first ones, as many new issues are discussed and the theological boundaries of the Sufis with the Muʿtazilīs are now clearly set.

Sulamī of Neyshabur, whose works (all in Arabic) cover the three areas of hagiography, Sufi ḥadīth and Quran exegesis, has the most elaborated thoughts on Sufi teachings. Qushayrī was his student, but did not want to be identified with his master, as he was rather inspired by, and narrated from, Baghdad Sufis (in this case he was like Ibrahim Adham). It is through Sulamī, for instance, that we get to know Abū ʿAṭā’s exegesis as the first Sufi tafsīr. Also, Sulamī was one of the first Sufis who used Shīʿa ḥadīth in his writings. 

Going back to our question: regarding the themes of these manuals (starting from Al-Taʿarruf onwards), their socio-political context (caliphate, Ghaznawīds, Shāfiʿī law and non-rationalist kalām), and the geography (Khorasan and Transoxania), can we still call this body of teachings “Sufism of Khorasan” and pit it against Ibn ʿArabī’s mysticism in the way Kadkanī does? In order to answer this question, we need to be reminded once again that this heritage should be regarded as a marriage between Islamic authoritative sources and non-Islamic spiritual teachings such as futuwwa, self-blaming (malāmatīya), adab, as well as the importance of khalq (and caring about them through ideas such as iḥsān to people) [4], to the extent that neglecting it will make one’s Islam incomplete. Pertinent to this are iconic Sufis such as Junayd, Abū Saʿīd Abu al-Khayr and Kharaqānī, who are revered and mentioned for their contributions to these teachings as well. Also, we need to bear in mind that these manuals were written to purge Sufism of things such as shaṭḥīyāt (abrupt ecstatic utterances) and qalandar lifestyles, as begging was against the teachings of Sufism. 

What kind of gnosis did these manuals contain?

In Al-Taʿarruf, Kalābādhī divides gnosis into the two categories of maʿrifat al-taʿarruf (lit. to get acquainted) and maʿrifat al-taʿrīf (acquaintance). The first is associated with tawḥīd, faith (īmān), theophany, rapture, etc. Quoting Junayd, Kalābādhī defines al-taʿarruf as “God gets people acquainted with His dhāt and shows them things/matters (ashyāʾ) as they are, like the story of Abraham when he said “I love not things that set” (Nasr, 2015, p. 138) [because he wanted to see Him as He was]. Maʿrifat al-taʿrīf, on the other hand, is to see the marks of His power everywhere, both in the universe and in yourself (āfāq wa anfus), which is to show people things and this kind of knowledge can be achieved by the majority of people, whereas, the first one - maʿrifat al-taʿarruf - is endowed to the khawāṣ (elite), but none of them is possible without Him, and this is what Muḥammad ibn Wāsiʾ has spoken about: “I have not seen anything until I see the truth in it” (pp. 138-9). The point here is to see Him before everything else and it is He who gets you to know things.

In another classification, Kalābādhī indicates two kinds of gnosis, that of ḥaqq (Truth) and that of the Reality (ḥaqīqa). The first is to prove His oneness from His attributes, and the second is to know that there is no way to know His oneness, or to get to know His rubūbīyat, because there exists no knowledge to comprehend Him. Ṣamad refers to the One, whose blessings and attributes are not to be grasped, as it is reflected in Sūrat al-Ṭāhā saying that “and they encompass Him not in knowledge” (Nasr, 2015, Op. cit., p. 1430). Knowledge in this meaning is equal to sirr, that is to move between glorifying Him and knowing that He is bigger than being comprehended (Kalābādhī, p. 291). There is also perplexity (ḥayra) and a Sufi must know that He is opposite to what he knows of Him. Furthermore, to know that “the Created” is masbūq (preceded) and masbūq cannot comprehend the Prior (sābiq) or precedent (Ibid.). Knowledge/gnosis in such a context is knowing Him, but to know that one cannot get to know Him fully.

The commentator of Al-Taʿarruf, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl Mustamlī Bukhārī (d. 434/1044) in his Sharḥ ila al-taʿaruuf, the first ever Sufi commentary on a manual, contributes to the legacy of his master on gnosis. First and foremost, heart is the dearest organ to God, as He has made it the locus of gnosis, and therefore, poor or miserable (khasīs himmat) is the one who gives his heart to something other than God and knowledge of Him (Mustamlī Bukhārī, p. 123). The outward belongs to people, but the inward is of Him and the maʿrifat of Him. He recommends people to strive to obtain the companionship of the people of spirituality or Sufis.

Such argument is typical of the early Sufis, as Abu al-Qāsim Qushayrī in Risālaya qushayrīya contends that gnosis is to prove there is ḥaqq and to submit to it (Mustamlī Bukhārī, p. 125), but the best approach is to adopt adab. However, adab is not to be taken unless by the people of gnosis (aṣḥāb-i maʿrifat) who are competent enough to have ḥaqq ul-yaqīn, which is the last attribute in the trilogy of ʿilm ul- yaqīn and ʿayn ul-yaqīn (Mustamlī Bukhārī, p. 186). Qushayrī conveys Wāsiṭī’s wisdom that identifies farāsat (divine light) with gnosis, which illuminates the heart of the believer, and it is this gnosis that elevates him to such a place that he can see the inward/the hidden inside (ḍamīr) of people and be a tongue that speaks from them (Qushayrī, p. 371). But what is the purpose of maʿrifat? The purpose will be horror and perplexity (dihshat wa ḥayrat) (Qushayrī, p. 473).

As well expressed by Maḥmūd and Surūr, this pure Sufi school of knowledge (madrasat al-maʿrifa al-ṣūfīyat al-naqīyah), whose flag is carried by figures such as al-Sarrāj, al-Qushayrī, al-Hujwīrī, al-Sulamī, and Kalābādhī, is a school that is against any kind of philosophical distortion (inḥirāf) or abrupt ecstatic utterance (shaṭḥ) infiltrating into the essence of Islamic Sufism (Maḥmūd and Surūr, 1960, p. 8). Following Kalābādhī, al-Sarrāj also recognizes two kinds of gnosis, that of ḥaqq and that of the reality, ḥaqīqa; the first one, maʿrifa al-waḥdānīya is to disclose Himself to people through His names and attributes, and the second is to know that there is no way around knowing Him due to His ṣamadīyyat (perfection and self-sufficiency) and rubūbīyat (Ibid., p. 56). Sarrāj brings verse one-hundred and ten of Sūrat al-Ṭāhā as proof: “and they encompass Him not in knowledge” (Nasr, 2015, Op. cit., 1430), and rearranges the principles of Islam as tawḥīd, maʿrifa, īmān, yaqīn, ṣidq, and ikhlāṣ (Maḥmūd and Surūr, 1960, Op. cit., p. 433). However, the fact that maʿrifa comes right after tawḥīd, attests to its status in the Sufi worldview.

Hujwīrī mentions four ḥijābs (veils)[5], the first one being kashf ul-ḥijāb ul-awwal fī maʿrifat Allah, which is “to know Him creates a ḥaqq for the believer”,[6] or better to say an obligation or duty for the servant, although “They did not measure God with His true measure” (Nasr, 2015, Op. cit., p. 635). Hujwīrī further explains that this type of maʿrifat is distinguishable between maʿrifat-i ʿilmī and maʿrifat-i ḥālī, the first being central in all the khayrāt of the two worlds, because the best thing for a servant is to strive to know God, and if one’s knowledge of Him is right and faultless, then one can call this sound knowledge maʿrifat, otherwise it is just ʿilm. On the other hand, the people of heart (Sufis) use maʿrifat for a right spiritual state, which makes maʿrifat attainable, and it has priority over ʿilm, but both need each other. It is impossible to find an ʿārif that is not ʿālim of ḥaqq [because the right ʿilm comes before the right spiritual state as a prerequisite], but there exist ʿālims who are not ʿārif and their knowledge is falsehood (Hujwīrī, p. 161).

For Sulamī (himself a link between the Sufisms of Baghdad and Khorasan), maʿrifat is a reservoir from which twelve springs (ʿuyūn) emanate. Springs of tawḥīd (that is, if you do not know Him properly, you cannot perform your duty of worshiping Him adequately), spring of servitude and the rejoice which comes with it, spring of sincerity and devotion (ikhlāṣ), spring of ṣidq (rightfulness), spring of humility (tawāduʿ), spring of consent and delegation (raḍā wa tafwīḍ), spring of sakīnah, spring of generosity and trustworthiness in God, spring of certainty (yaqīn), spring of ʿaql, spring of love, and finally spring of fondness and solitude (uns wa khalwat), which is the spring of maʿrifat al-nafs and all other springs arise from it (Sulamī, p. 53). Defending samāʿ, Sulamī maintains that samāʿ leaves its impact on Sufis depending on a number of factors including his maʿrifat (Ibid., p. 543). Furthermore, for him, taṣawwuf revolves around the three factors of ʿilm-i ʿubūdīyat, ʿilm-i maʿrifat and ʿilm-i rabbānīyat (Sulamī, p. 681). 

In terms of moral philosophy, the Sufi ethics goes by the notion of adab (Sufi etiquette), a term which is broader than its current usages, and stands for codes of conduct and the way of walking a path with the correct attitude and true courtesy, covering areas such as piety (taqwā), modesty (ḥayā), avoiding excesses, and self-control, which is one of the main teachings of Sufism. For instance, when it comes to the servant’s relationship with God, he must beware of His absolute power and grandeur, but in his interactions with the Prophet, adab means respecting sunna and sharia. In the same way, when the servant is in the presence of awlīyā, adab means their respect and makhdūmīyat (lit. servanthood), but when he is dealing with his family, it indicates being good-tempered and well-mannered, and finally adab in the interaction with juhhāl is but praying and showing mercy to them [hopefully they are guided to the right path] (Qushayrī, p. 97).

Such arguments for the importance of adab in every aspect of life is typical of Sufi writings including Al-lumaʿ fi taṣawwuf of Sarrāj Ṭūsī, who goes as far as to maintain that observing God’s right depends on three factors including loyalty, adab and generosity. In Al-lumaʿ, adab covers a set of ethical principles and codes of conduct from keeping secrets from being revealed, to taking care of time, and to staying away from jealousy and animosity, because all the blessings of the two worlds lie in adab (Sarrāj Ṭūsī, p. 302). For Sulamī, to be adorned with adab is more necessary than obtaining maʿrifat and undergoing austerity, because the absence of adab will result in a defect of faith (Sulamī, p. 318). I believe that this legacy was able to create a tradition that impacted on subsequent generations of Sufis, because it stands in the middle of the very early phase of Sufism of Baghdad and the formation of the communities or ṭarīqas, which came later.

Now, it is time to go back to the question that we asked at the beginning of this paper, and that was does this phase in Sufism represented by the manuals have a distinct identity, and can it be labeled as Sufism of Khorasan, as opposed to that of Ibn ʿArabī in the way Kadkanī puts it? And if his anxiety is relevant, when he invites his fellows to go back to the teachings of the Khurāsānī Sufis, because these teachings are for “this regular human being” and Ibn ʿArabī’s are not? The hypothesis is that the theoretical mysticism of Ibn ʿArabī does not care about Man, but just abstract ideas such as waḥdat al-wujūd, Perfect Man, aʿyān thabita, etc. Also, this call for returning to the roots, to what is ‘original’, which is based on a wrong methodology, sounds like Salafism, although secular, and the problem with such a methodology is that it is ahistorical, because it ignores the developments of Sufism from its inception in Baghdad until its transition to Khorasan and Transoxania, and finally its absorption by the philosophical mysticism of al-Shaykh al-Akbar. That is why it is nationalistic and therefore biased. The Sufism of Ibn ʿArabī is not against the previous Sufi heritages, be it Baghdad or Sham or Khorasan, but their culmination in a theoretical manner.

But why does Kadkanī raise his voice now? Answering this question necessitates us going back centuries, to when the Safavids rose to power in 1501; a development with huge consequences for Iran and neighboring territories. The Safavids’ rise to power led to pushing the different Sufi schools to the frontiers of the empire, to countries like today’s Afghanistan and Pakistan, to name only two, and even the word ‘Sufism’ was replaced by ‘mysticism’. On the other hand, the synthesis of Ṣadrīan ḥikmat with the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī as one of its pillars, bore fruit in their further dissemination within the intellectual elites of Isfahan and Tehran, and later all over Iran. Pertinent to this is its connection to Twelver Shīʿīsm, which had started much earlier with individuals like ʿAbdul Razzāq Kāshānī. The rest is history: theoretical mysticism came to fill the void that had been created in the aftermath of the removal of the Sufis and their circles from the central parts of Safavid Persia. Had it not been for the policies of the Safavids in cleansing Iran from what they perceived to be irrelevant Sufism, if not to say heretical, Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings would not have been the only genre of mysticism in seminaries that later became scholastic. 

Besides, although all the Sufi groups, except for the Naqshbandīs, took their spiritual lineage from Ali, they were all Sunnis, and the marriage between Shīʿīsm and theoretical mysticism became possible after considerable interpretation and readjustment. Therefore, it is not the school of Ibn ʿArabī that should be blamed for destroying the Iranian spirit, but the politico- cultural circumstances of the Safavid era onwards, which in the long term, left its mark on the configuration of the current intellectual and political conditions in Iran, and eventually made the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī one of the pillars of the theory of wilāyat al-faqīh. Khomeini was an adept student of Ibn ʿArabī and in contrast to countries like Algeria, where figures such as ʿAbd al-Qādir Al-Jazāʾirī (d. 1883) benefited from Ibn ʿArabī’s mysticism to mobilize people against French colonialism to emancipate their country, in Iran it went in an opposite direction; to a brand new dictatorship wrapped in a spiritual aura.

[1] - Known as Shaykh ul-ṭāifah or Īmām ul- ṭāifah (Shāmī, 1429/2008, p. 4), or “the Father of Islamic Mysticism” or “Imām Hādha al-Ṭarīqat al-Qawīmah” (the Leader of this Strong Path) (Ali Hasan ʿAbdulqādir, 1988, p. 13). As proof, Junayd, more or less, discusses the same topics as the writers of the manuals. Ṣāliḥ Aḥmad al-Shāmī has put together his preachings in a volume called Mawāʿiẓ al-imām al-Junayd, which gives us a proper perspective of Junayd’s Sufi teachings, as well as his initiative to purge Sufism from munḥarifah (distortion) and to prove that Sufism is well-connected to sharia, the Book and “pure tradition” (a-sunnat ul-muṭahharah) (Shāmī, 1429/2008, p. 12), which is exactly why Mawāʿiẓ is structured in the same way as manuals one century later. Here is a list of the topics Junayd covers: tawḥīd, ʿilm al-sulūk (i.e., Sufism), which is, according to Junayd, “confined to the Book and the sunna, and indeed is not suitable for the one who does not read the Quran and/or document the ḥadīth or learn our knowledge [ʿilminā, i.e., Sufism]” (Ibid., p. 22). Furthermore, topics such as gnosis, seclusion, and alike are also discussed. Also, Sufis are identical to ʿulemā (Ibid., p. 32). Another interesting point of the book is the word mukhlaṣūn, which is obviously the highest spiritual degree Man can achieve (Ibid., pp. 33-34). Junayd’s teachings resonance centuries later, when figures such as ʿAllāmah Muḥammad Hossein Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1360 H/1981) brings the same argument for mukhlaṣūn (Ahl al-Ikhlāṣ, or sābiqūn or aṣḥāb al-asrār, lit. the People of Secrets or wilāya). Ṭabāṭabāʾī stresses that mukhlaṣ should be distinguished from mukhliṣ or those who are still at the beginning of the path, while the former have already abnegated them in Him and reached the status of wilāya (Ṭabāṭabāʾī, 1390, pp. 209-211). There exists another book on Junayd’s ideas called Rasāʾil Junayd (Junayd’s Treatises, 1988), consisting of his treatises to his peers such as Yaḥya ibn Muʿādh Rāzī that Ali Hasan ʿAbdulqādir has put together.

[2] - Karamustafa calls it “authoritative written guide” (Karamustafa, p. 87).

[3] - He was an original thinker, and as Karamustafa ascertains, “developed his views on his own, with no detectable contact either with lower Iraq or with the Sufis of Baghdad, in the different cultural environment of Khurāsān and Transoxania” (p. 47).

[4] - The trilogy of Islam, īmān and iḥsān, which is the pinnacle of the first two.  

[5] - Kashf ul-ḥijāb ul-awwal fī maʿrifat Allah, Kashf ul-ḥijāb ul-thānī fī al-tawḥīd, Kashf ul-ḥijāb ul-thālith fī al-īmān, and Kashf ul-ḥijāb ul-rābiʿ fi al-ṭahārat (Hujwīrī, pp. 161-176).

[6] - In Islamic culture, ḥaqq is rather duty or obligation (dhimmi ذمه) than right in the modern sense.