PREFACE

THE Lawa'iḥ is a treatise on Sufi theology or theosophy, as distinguished from the religious emotions experienced by all Sufis, learned and unlearned alike. Catholic authorities have drawn this distinction between "experimental" and "doctrinal" mysticism, and it is a great help towards clear thinking on this subject. The religious emotion common to all mankind is, so to speak, raised to its highest power in the mystics. They are overwhelmed by the sense of the Divine omnipresence and of their own dependence on God. They are dominated and intoxicated by their vivid sense of the close relation subsisting between the soul and God. They conceive themselves as being in touch with God, feeling His motions in their souls, and at times rising to the beatific vision and blinded by excess of light. These religious experiences were the rough material out of which the doctrinal reasoned system, set out in treatises like the Lawa'iḥ, was built up. Psychologists have advanced various theories. as to the genesis of these experiences. With these we are not at present concerned. But as to the origin of the philosophical ideas and terms employed in the Lawā'îḥ and similar works to formulate the Sufi theology, there can be little doubt. The source of Sufi theology was Neoplatonism.

The title of the book, Lawa'iḥ, or "Flashes of Light", suggests the philosophy employed to systematize and give

1 See the article on

Catholic Dictionary.

66

'Mystical Theology in Addis & Arnold's

2 See Dr. William James's Varieties of Religious Experience (Longmans, 1902). It may be doubted whether the "subliminal self" affords a satisfactory solution of the problem.

of

a reasoned basis for the unreasoned “ "experiences unlearned Sufis. It of course refers to the "inner light”. The Platonists were called Ishraqin or Illuminati, because they regarded intellectual intuition or intuitive reason (Nous) as the main source of knowledge, whereas the Peripatetics (Mashsha'in) recognized no sources of knowledge except the senses and the discursive reason (Dianoia). The word Ishraq, or "Lights", is often met with in this connexion. Thus Shams-ud-din Muhammad ash-Shahrazūri is called by Haji Khalfa “a metaphysician learned in the inner lights" (Ishraq).1 Shihāb-ud-din as Suhrawardi, who was put to death at Aleppo in 587 A.H. by advice of that valiant defender of the Faith, Sulṭān Salāh-ud-din, wrote a book entitled Hikmat-ul-Ishrāq, or Philosophy of Inner Light". The author of the Dabistan says that the belief of the pure Sufis is the same as that of the Ishraqin or Platonists, and also that Şufis were classed as orthodox (Mutasharri') and Platonists.4 Haji Khalfa, in his article on Sufism (Tasawwuf), says that anyone who reads Sufi books cannot fail to remark that their terminology is borrowed from the Platonists (Ishrāqīn), and more especially from the later ones-i.e. the Neoplatonists.5 Let any reader who has even a slight acquaintance with the terms used by the Greek philosophers look over treatises like the Lawa'iḥ and the Gulshan i Raz and on almost every page he will recognize some familiar Greek term. Schmölders in his Documenta Philosophic Arabum gives a list of nearly one hundred such terms employed by Avicena (Ibn Sina) and other writers on philosophy in the fifth century of the Hijira.

1 Haji Khalfa, iii, 479.

3

2 Ibn Khallikan, iv, 153. This Shihāb-ud-din must not be confounded with his more famous namesake who died at Baghdad in the odour of sanctity in 632 A.H. Ibn Khallikan, ii, 382.

3 Shea & Troyer's translation, iii, 281. Ibid. ii, 374; see also iii, 139.

5 Haji Khalfa, ii, 308.

It was probably at about the end of the fifth century A.H. that Neoplatonic gnosis began to influence and modify Sufi doctrine. Up to that date the doctrine had been expounded in short precepts, parables (mithāl), and similes like those in the Koran. But educated Moslems had outgrown these primitive methods of truction. They wanted something more systematic. Jalāl-ud-din Rūmi tells us how his critics assailed him for dealing in trivial examples and parables instead of giving a systematic account of the stages of the soul's ascent to God.1 Ibn Khaldun mentions Muḥāsibi and the great Imām Ghazālī as among the first who wrote systematic treatises on the doctrines of the Sufis.2 We have Ghazali's own account of the way in which he was attracted to Sufism, and other passages in his writings prove that he used the forms of Greek thought to explain Ṣūfi principles. If it be asked how Greek philosophy reached Ghazāli, who was a native of Khurasan, the answer is easy. 5 When Justinian closed the schools at Athens, Damascius and his Neoplatonist brethren fled to the court of Nushirvān. They only remained there about a year, and left in 533 A.D.; but Nushirvan had some translations of Neoplatonist books made at the time, and these were followed by many others, made two centuries and a half later, under the Abbasides at Baghdad."

Greek philosophy was expounded by the so-called Arabian, but really Persian, philosophers, Al Farābi and Avicena, and afterwards in the Ikhwān-uṣ-Ṣafā.” Shahrastānī, a contemporary of Ghazāli, gave accounts

1 See Masnavi, p. 168.

2 Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits, xii, 301, 302.

3 See Schmölders' Écoles Philosophiques chez les Arabes, p. 55.

+ See Appendix I.

5 Khurasan was the "focus of culture", as Hammer says, and many of the philosophers came from that Eastern province.

• Whittaker's Neoplatonists, p. 133; and Schmölders' Documenta Philosophia Arabum (Bonn, 1836), Introduction.

7 See Dieterici's Die Weltseele (Leipzig, 1872).

of all the chief Greek philosophers, including the Shaikh of the Greeks" or Plotinus,' his editor Porphyry, and Proclus. The so-called "Theology of Aristotle", which is a summary of the "Enneads" of Plotinus,2 appeared probably soon afterwards. The result was that Neoplatonism, mainly in the form expounded by Plotinus, was used by all the more learned Sufis to explain and justify the simple emotional sayings of the early Sufis. Henceforward Neoplatonism pervades all systematic treatises on Sufism, such as the Fasus-ul-Hikam, the Maqsad-ul-Aqsa,3 the Gulshan i Raz, and the Lawā'iḥ. Even the poets use the Greek terminology. Thus Ḥakim Sana'i, who lived at the same time as Ghazāli, introduces "Universal Reason" and "Universal Soul", the second and third hypostases of the Trinity of Plotinus, and the principal later poets follow suit.5

The first Sufis differed from ordinary Moslems only in their quietism (taslīm) and their puritan ideal of life. They held the orthodox doctrines, with perhaps a few reservations. But when Greek influences came into play all these doctrines underwent more or less modification. Take the following samples:

1. The central doctrine of Islām, "There is no God but Allah," was restated" in the form "There is no real Being and no real Agent (Fail i haqiqi) but the One, The Truth' (Al Haqq)". Allah was not entirely stripped of personal attributes such as will and consciousness, but

See Haarbrücker's German translation of Shahrastani's Book of Sects, ii, 192 (Halle, 1850).

See Dr. Brönnle's note, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, April, 1901. The book was published with a Latin translation by Petrus Nicolaus in 1518.

3 The late Professor Palmer published a summary of this book under the title of Oriental Mysticism (Cambridge, 1867).

Edited and translated by me (Trübner, 1880).

5 Mr. Nicholson has brought this out in his Dīvāni Shamsi Tabrīz (Cambridge, 1898). For a sketch of the system of Plotinus see Appendix II.