Le califat de yazid ier. 1909-21

The most extraordinary case is that of Abu Yazid

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Certain Sufis—we may mention the celebrated Hallaj—end by substituting themselves for God, by speaking in the first person, in the place of Allah. Hallaj one day cries: ‘I am the Truth!’ Here is the explanation given by the Sufis: ‘Such words come from the mouth of the enraptured mystic when he perceives that he has completely realized tauhid or unity, that he is impregnated by it.’ We find ourselves once more in the presence of the phenomenon shath, the interversion of personalities occurring in the course of mystical union. God concedes His part to the ecstatic soul which becomes His mouthpiece; the latter can do no other than speak in the first person, or rather it is God speaking, as it were, by his mouth. Thus the gnostic Gospels make Christ say: ἐγὼ σὺ χαὶ σὺ ἐγώ (S. Epiphanus Heresies, 26, 3).

DEVIATIONS, ESOTERISM. There exists an orthodox Muslim Sufism, the aims of which are revivification by the spirit of a loyally practised religion and detach­ment from the world. This asceticism, at once respect-

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It is this character conjoined with his Christian borrowings and his claim to ‘spiritualize’ the Shari'a which draw down upon him the violent opposition of the Hanbilites. What Sufism has always lacked is the supervision of a duly authorized hierarchy. Its intervention would have—as in the case of Catholicism—‘captured the stream and canalized it before it became a muddy torrent. It would have imposed the rigorous control of moral rule, refusing to encourage a sterile ecstasy which would not become a means of perfection’ (Maurice Barres). Left to itself, the Sufi system was logically bound to end in those excesses which were to bring upon it the just strictures of orthodox Islam.

The latter is, in the eyes of Sufism, the ‘religion of the limbs’ or of ‘outward appearances’, mobsarat, as the Sufis say. It appears to them very inferior to the ‘religion of the heart’ or of the ‘inner consciousness’ (basa’ir). They proclaim loudly the superiority of the ma'rifa, the gnosis or divine Wisdom, over ‘ilm, acquired or discursive knowledge, to wit, that of the ‘ulema, who concern themselves with nothing but the ‘outside’, or external lawfulness. The Sufis are the ‘initiates’. Having reached the stage of ittihad, the ascetic endosmosis of the divine Essence, the Sufi considers himself exempt from the practice of external

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Confident that they have reached the stage of mystic union, some Sufis have spoken in the very name of Allah. Some of these dicta have been admitted into the collection of ‘hadith qudsi (v. p. 81). Starting from the hypothesis that direct mystic union transcends mediatory revelation granted to the prophets, they have imagined they could assume equal rank with the latter. Only the most outspoken have ventured to claim, what many of their brethren thought silently, precedence over the prophets. ‘My standard,’ cries Bistami, ‘is broader than that of Muhammad.’ Ibn al-'Arabi (1249) asserts, ‘We have plunged into the Ocean, while the prophets have remained on the shore.’ There is, therefore, no cause for astonishment if, unlike orthodox doctrine, Sufism is inclined to proclaim the pre-eminence of the walis, namely, the saints, ascetics and mystics, over the prophets.

It did at least succeed in founding, and then in popularizing, the cult of the walis, as well as the belief in their miracles, ‘karamat’, or rather, wonders, prodigies. The orthodox ‘aqida’ recognize only in the prophets the gift of mu'jizat, or miracles, properly so-called. This last word finds no place in the vocabu­lary of the Qoran, which uses only the terms ‘aya’, sign, and ‘borhan’, proof. It seems that the choice

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Certain adepts, more consistent or more audacious than Junaid (†909)—one of the earliest theorists of orthodox Sufism—have gone further still, and have even extended their scorn of the practices of the Shari'a to embrace conventional morality and the interdictions decreed by the laws of the Qoran. These forerunners of Rasputinism affirm that instead of struggling against dissolute proclivities it is better to indulge them, in order to experience their vanity and to break away from them the more easily. It is the attitude adopted by the Malamatiyya, literally the blameworthy, a sect resembling the cynics. They professed to humiliate themselves, to trample pride underfoot by committing the most unpardonable excesses, thereby manifesting their independence of public opinion and human judgment. It will not therefore be surprising to encounter among the Sufis complete agnostics, proclaiming the equality and use­lessness of all professed religions who have reached the most complete doctrinal indifference. At least their aphorisms, taken literally, seem to justify such an attitude.

Ghazali attached, as we have seen (v. p. 119), great value to mystic illumination, without prejudice, however, to the arguments of faith and reason. ‘Woe,’ cries Ibn al-‘Arabi, the celebrated Spanish monist and pantheistic mystic, ‘woe to him who bases his convic­tions on syllogisms, for they are always open to attack. The true faith is the intuitive faith, that of the heart, which is above contradiction.’ Ibn al-‘Arabi visual­izes all creation as emanating from God and the mystic union as evolution in a contrary direction, at the end of which ‘we again become’ God. ‘Since God is everywhere,’ he argues, ‘to attach oneself to a particular

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THE INQUISITION AND THE SUFIS. It is this same Ibn al-'Arabi who achieved the definite rupture between mysticism and the enlightening influence which it might have exercised on society by the salutary example of a life withdrawn from the world and consecrated to prayer. Exaggerating the discretion observed by the orthodox ascetics, such as Junaid and Ghazali, he reduces Sufism to a science which must not be divulged, but reserved for circles of initiates, ‘supernatural opium dens’ (Massignon). Ibn al-'Arabi casts aside humble meditation as well as the discipline of the examination of conscience and gives himself up to the sway of his delirious imagination. The divine Essence reveals itself to him in the form of the vocable ‘Hu’, Him, ‘in the centre of a luminous geometrical design of dazzling whiteness, the whole standing out against a red background. ‘Yet again in his Futuhat makkiyya (I, 8; II, 591) he relates solemnly how, one night, he contracted a mystical union ‘with all the stars of the firmament’, followed by another ‘marriage with the letters of the Alphabet’.

These extravagances show why this Andalusian has been diversely judged by Muslim opinion. Without realizing his incapacity to direct the current of mysti­cism, orthodoxy understood at least the need to watch the heterodox tendencies developed by Sufism. The latter, sheltering behind the screen of esoterism, affected

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After a famous lawsuit, the most celebrated of the Sufi adepts, Hallaj (v. p. 123), was condemned to capital punishment; flogged, mutilated, hung upon a gibbet and finally decapitated after his death (922). His corpse was burned. A Javanese rival of Hallaj got off more lightly. This Sufi had adopted as profession of faith the formula ‘I am Allah!’ His fellow-mystics proposed to demand the death-sentence on this audacious blasphemer, but when the sentence was announced to him the judges thought they recognized by unmistakable signs that the accused Sheikh was in the right. He was only found guilty of having proclaimed ‘a truth’ which was too sublime for earthly minds, and which he should have kept to himself.

These facts show how real was the need of Muslim authorities to keep a watchful eye on the behaviour and the doctrine of the mystical fraternities. The Mamluks of Egypt, in order to keep them under closer observation, were at pains to nominate in Cairo a chief Sheikh of Sufis. In the certificate of investiture issued to this chief the following injunction may be read: ‘He shall take care that no one under his juris­diction admits ittihad or hulul, the infusion into man of the divine nature, nor presumes to believe that it is possible to approach God otherwise than along the path marked out by the prophets.'

Ibn al-'Arabi had lived for a long time in Egypt and

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in Syria under the Ayyubites. He must have recruited adherents in Syria, he who declared that country ‘the best of Allah's lands, the one preferred by His servants’. Was the sentence of the Mamluk government aimed against his monist doctrine? We do not know. But besides pantheism it condemned the very principle of Sufism by proposing to confine it within the narrow limits of the Shari'a. Not everything in the new paths opened up by Sufism was deserving of reprobation. It had shown the inadequacy of a religious practice, which had become set in the mould of formalism and casuistic excesses; it had insisted on the necessity for an inner life where love of God and detachment from the world should find a place.

THE SUFI FRATERNITIES. They are called ‘tariqa’ (pl. turuq). The word signifies ‘path’, an ethical system, and may have been borrowed from the Qoran (46, 29, and passim). The organization of the Sufi fraternities shows a distant analogy with that of the religious orders as well as with the cure of souls which had devolved on the Christian clergy. I refer to the voluntary subordination established between the master Sheikh and the murid or novice aspiring to be admitted into the congregation. Ghazali advised the manifestation of conscience (p. 119). The Bektashis go much further, and are alleged even to make confession to their superiors and to receive from them absolution for their faults.

The Sufi candidate must conduct himself towards his master perinde ac cadaver, or, as the Sufi writings say, ‘like the corpse in the hands of the washer’. It is impressed on him that ‘obedience is the first religious observance’. The Sheikh can therefore order him to omit certain practices of external religion, if the welfare of his soul demands it. This is the one and only feeble trace of spiritual authority that is to

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No one was more alive than Ghazali to the lack of understanding and to the spiritual inadequacy of these titular guides of Islam. But in his respect for the Shari'a, and his conviction of the need to combat the illuminism and pantheism which, since Bistami, lay in wait for the adherents of Sufism, he tried to establish his ethical mysticism, a kind of via media. Ijma‘ gave to this attempt an approval limited by the absten­tion of the whole body of Hanbalites. Practising what he preached, Ghazali adopted the retired life of the Sufis. He remained faithful to external practices, but strove to exalt them by the spirit, ‘to pierce the outer shell in order to reach the hidden kernel’. ‘It is the heart’, he asserts, borrowing the language of the Sufis, ‘which approaches Allah, not the fleshly heart but a spiritual gift, thanks to which we can grasp the divine mysteries which escape the bodily senses.’

The foundation of these large fraternities goes back to our twelfth century when collective hermitages also grew more numerous. In the nineteenth century, principally in Africa, the fraternities displayed great external activity. The manifestations of this activity, hostile to the progress of European colonization, have helped Islamic propaganda in the dark Continent. The fraternities have all tried to increase the number of their adherents and to create a sort of third order by the admission of affiliated members. These are the brothers or ‘Ikhwan’ (vulgarly Khuan). They are subject to the guidance of the Sheikh or muqaddam, and receive their

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Each one of these fraternities has forged an isnad of admission, a chain, silsila of mysterious links of evidence by means of which they claim to trace their spiritual genealogy back to the Companions of the Prophet. In these we find the names of the earliest, or what are reputed the earliest, ascetics of primitive Islam: Abu'd-Darda and even Abu Dharr. The Shi‘a has transformed that fierce Sahabi Beduin into an ascetic as a reward for his hostility to the Omayyads. The Sufis have also taken possession of the most popular saint in Iraq, Hasan al-Basri (728). In the history of Sufism the name of Al-Khidr occupies a place apart. He is a mysterious personage who shows many of the combined traits of Elias in the Bible and of St. George. The Qoran (18, 64–81) presents him as superior to the prophets since he became the guide charged with directing Moses. Many Sufis, Bistami, Ibn al-'Arabi, etc., claim to have been in direct com­munication with him. These dispense with all artificial isnad, and derive their mystical initiation from Al-Khidr, without intermediary.

THE ‘DHIKR’. The fraternities possess their zawia, called also ‘ribat, khanqa, tekke’, etc. They are not so much monasteries as meeting-places, consecrated to the performance of liturgical exercises in common. These collective exercises are usually known by the name of dhikr, literally ‘mention’. The dhikr con­sisted at first of a recital in chorus of Qoranic passages followed by a recollection or meditation on the texts that had just been heard. Before long these meetings degenerated, following the course of the fraternities. The promoters sought to develop the purely emotional side, to appeal to the feelings to the detriment of the

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Ghazali must likewise have drawn inspiration from these passages in his reflections on the divers modes of prayer. One of these methods of mental prayer is nothing more than the pronunciation, incessantly repeated, of the name of God. Alone in his cell, with veiled head, the contemplative Sufi sets himself to utter without intermission the word Allah, concentrat­ing thereon his whole attention. He must persevere in this repetition until tongue and lips can move no more and there subsists nothing but the impression of the word in the depths of the heart. Let him not stop here but renew his exercise until this sensory image fades from the heart and there remains the immaterial idea of the divine name so vivid that the spirit can no more depart from it.

The members of the fraternities also replace the name of Allah in their dhikr by the pronoun ‘hu’, Him, in which, always according to the Qoran (3, 1), they include the most complete abstraction of the concept of the Divinity. To this mysterious mono-syllable Ibn al-'Arabi has devoted a special monograph. Those present must concentrate their attention and regulate their inhalations and exhalations on the vocables uttered during the dhikr.

The principal theme consists in the intensive repe­tition, taken up in chorus by the whole congregation

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of hu, ha, hi, or Allahu, Allaha, Allahi. One dhikr, attributed to the celebrated mystic Hallaj, is thus, described by Sanusi, the founder of the fraternity of Senussis. It consists in the repetition of the name of Allah, ‘by suppressing the initial syllable al and by adding to the final h the three vowels, a towards the right, i towards the left and o towards the heart’. The ceremony of the dhikr has preserved of the early meetings of ‘recollection’ the psalmody of invocations in the language of the Qoran and of passages from the Qoran.

Sometimes to these is added the recitation of mysti­cal poems in which the divine love is celebrated with a profusion of images and of realistic comparisons, borrowed from the language of profane love. There is nothing in this promiscuity to shock the spirituality of a Ghazali. He concedes that the Qoran does not meet every circumstance nor all the diversity of moral situations and that familiarity with the sacred text ends by blunting the sensibility of the congregation. The effect of lyrical poetry, above all when music is added to heighten its impression, seems to him very different. Each fraternity possesses its special formulæ of dhikr, its litanies of names and divine attri­butes, its collections of Qoranic or mystico-lyrical texts. Their recitation modulated in cadence should be accompanied by inclination of the body and exercises of the limbs designed, like the whole programme of dhikr, to promote ecstatic phenomena.

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When we consider the exhibitions organized by the howling and whirling dervishes, with the aid of stimu­lants and narcotics, we cannot but share the disgust of enlightened Muslims for the dhikr of the Rifa'is and

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The ‘Isawis, commonly called Aissauas. These hyster­ical exhibitions are, in the absence of an authorized direction and a strong moral discipline, the inevitable end of the mystic movement in the bosom of Islam.

INTERNAL ORGANIZATION. Admission into a tariqa is preceded by a period of trial or noviciate, called irada; whence the name murid given to the Sufi aspirant. The initiation of the candidate is effected by the bestowal of the khirqa, as well as of the isnad of admission (v. p. 131) by which the frater­nity claims contact with the great saints of Islam. Received from the hands of the Sheikh, or director, the khirqa or habit of the fraternity represents the poverty and detachment from the world which the candidate is supposed to profess. Certain fraternities bestow the khirqa on women also, a practice violently opposed by the Hanbalite, Ibn al-Jauzi. Celibacy is exceptional, unless it be among the Bektashis, who favour it. The married members—sometimes even polygamous—live with their families. The famous mystic Ibn al-'Arabi had long passed his sixtieth year when he contracted, at Damascus, a new union with a girl of eighteen. The same Ibn al-'Arabi, as a youth, received lessons from two Andalusian women mystics. For two years he lived as disciple and usher in a reed hut with Fatima, an ecstatic who died at the age of ninety-five.

As a general rule, an individual should belong only to one tariqa. But since the institution of a third order, affiliation to more than one fraternity has passed as meritorious among the tertiaries. The founder of the Senussis had received initiation into several fraternities. The diffusion among Muslims of a kind of rosary first mentioned by Abu Nuwas (circa 808–813) is probably due to Sufi influence.

Prior to the twelfth century every Sheikh trained

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directly by his teaching and mode of life the disciples (khuddam) who congregated around him. Between master and disciples there existed only a bond of obedience, essentially temporary and strictly personal. The transmission of the habit or khirqa which later symbolized the engagement contracted with a particular brotherhood was unknown. This liberty of mystic education ceases with the appearance of the first ‘tariqa’. These fraternities retain the name of their founders to whom they are attached by a kind of spiritual filiation and by the assumption of the habit. I shall enumerate the most important ones.

PRINCIPAL FRATERNITIES. (I) The ‘Qadiris', founded by ‘Abdalqadir al-Gilani (†1166). These are scattered throughout the whole Muslim world. Their founder, a very popular saint, belonged to the Han­balite school whose hostility to Sufism has been noted. (2) The ‘Rifa'is’, founded by Ahmad ar-Rifa'i (†1175). (3) The ‘Maulawis’, commonly known as ‘whirling Dervishes’. Their centre is at Qunia (Anatolia), round the tomb of their founder, the celebrated mystic poet, Jalaladdin ar-Rumi (†1273). (4) The ‘Shadhilis’, founded by Ali al-Shadhili (†1256); a fraternity mainly African, with numerous sub-orders bearing special names: Madanis, etc. The convulsionary ‘Isawis or ‘Isawa seceded in the fifteenth century from the main body of the Shadhilis. (5) The ‘Badawis’, so called after Ahmad al-Badawi (†1274), are an Egyptian fraternity whose centre is at Tanta (Lower Egypt). (6) The ‘Naqshibandis', founded by Baha ad-din Naqshiband (1389). (7) In India the ‘Shattaris’ (so called after Shattar (†1415) are to be found. (8) The ‘Bektashis’ seem to represent a sect rather than a mystic order.

Before the sixteenth century, they served as Imams to the militia of the Janissaries, who protected them

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As a general rule the headship of these fraternities is transmitted by heredity, or at least in such a way as to remain in the family of the founder. This thirst for supremacy, and also the greediness of the quarrels which spring up over the revenues of the order, agree very ill with the fundamental principles of Sufism.

THEIR PRESENT POSITION. The cohesion between the zawias and the members of a single order, scattered throughout the divers States, has always left much to be desired. The attempts to bring them under a kind of Grand-Master have encouraged scissions. Every government has been mistrustful of a powerfully centralized authority independent of official control. In Egypt, the Mamluks not only kept a watch on the doctrines of the Sufis (p. 128); they also took sureties against their intervention in politics. The Ottoman Empire did not display any greater degree of confidence in them. The tariqa have really flourished only

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In Albania, the number of Bektashis and of their affiliated members is considerable. Observation shows the same to be true in Morocco where, in spite of undeniable signs of dwindling, the Khuans are still very powerful. Certain estimates give the proportion of initiates and affiliated members at a tenth of the total population. One branch, separated from the Khalwatis, circa 1770, that of the Rahmanis of Kabylia, numbered about thirty years ago 150,000 members, distributed among 170 zawias. The Tijanis of ‘Ain Madi (Algeria), regarded as Francophiles, numbered at the same date 25,000 adherents and 32 zawias.

Everywhere else the fraternities are declining. We have already seen the attitude adopted towards them by the Hanbalites, the Wahhabis and Kharijites. No less hostility is shown by the Shi‘a sects of all shades: Zaidites, Isma'ilis, Imamites, etc. This enmity arises from the Shi‘a dogma of the infallible Imam, the exclusive guide of the believers and the sole medium of all illuminative and sanctifying grace, whereas the Sufis claim to enter into direct communion with the Divinity.

The decline of mysticism is chiefly accentuated in those Muslim countries which are open to Western influences. The progressive centres with orthodox tendencies, or Salafiyya, as they call themselves, are no less hostile to it than are the followers of modernist principles who look upon the Sufis as vulgar charlatans. In these regions, semi-political secret societies tend to take the place of the old fraternities. Like the Bek­tashis in Albania, they have everywhere taken up and exacerbated the claims of local nationalism. This was the case in Syria on the eve of the world war, and it was the lodges of Union and Progress which prepared

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the Young Turk movement and the advent of Kemalism. Freemasonry has profoundly penetrated the upper classes of Muslim society. The Turkish Republic of Anatolia has decreed the official suppression of all Sufi fraternities and organizations.

VII

THE SECTS OF ISLAM
THEIR NUMBER. Muhammad said, ‘My people will be divided into seventy-three sects, of which only one will be saved.’ The early Muslim heresiologists, ‘Abdalqahir al-Baghdadi and Shahrastani, to quote no others, were at very great pains to make up, in their enumeration of the sects sprung from Islam, the traditional number of seventy-two. They thought they could fall back on the opinions and systems lauded in the philosophico-theological schools, Mu'tazilites, Qadarites, Murjites, and others, and by means of this arithmetic had no difficulty in counting twenty Mu'tazilite and ten Murjite sects. It was sufficient for them to detail the divers solutions that these Islamic logicians claim to have furnished to the problems of Qoranic theodicy: the eternal apple of discord between the Islamic schoolmen, the question of their divine essence and attributes (v. p. 57), then that of the substance and the accidents in relation to the creative action of Allah; the question of free-will and predestination; the nature and definition of faith, the anthropomorphisms of the Qoran, etc.

This method has allowed them to place among the heresiarchs Al-Jahiz, a witty sceptic (circa 868), author of brilliant paradoxes, and later, the mystic, Hallaj (v. p. 123). We will not follow them into these subtle distinctions, nor will we discuss sects which are now

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It is not, as in the Christian Church, doctrinal dis­cussions, but political disagreements which have given birth to the schisms and heresies of Islam.

After Muhammad, to whom should the leadership of the new community fall? The Qoranic text fur­nishes no reply to this question; if the Prophet con­sidered the problem, he died without having attempted to solve it. His son-in-law, ‘Ali, claimed the succes­sion; but on three several occasions, the choice of the Muslim community, or of the group of electors supposed to represent it, negatived ‘Ali's claims by setting aside his candidature. Nevertheless, it was stipulated that the Caliphate should be reserved to the Prophet's tribe, Quraish, and this definite rule recorded by the Shari'a and the great collection of the hadith merely made into law the practice followed during the first centuries of the Hijra, as is shown in the history of the Omayyad and ‘Abbasid Caliphs. The Kharijites, literally dissenters, very early rose up in armed opposi­tion to the prerogative conferred on the Quraishites. They form the oldest Islamic sect.

THE KHARIJITES proclaimed that leadership could not become the exclusive property of a particular family or tribe, that the Prophet's successor should be chosen by the votes of the Believers from among the worthiest, not excepting negroes. These repre­sentatives of the equality-loving instincts of the ancient and modern Beduins recognized none the less the legiti­macy of the first two Caliphs. For the rest, the

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Kharijites differ from the Sunnis or orthodox only in details, in the prescriptions of the Shari'a and the observance of a more primitive ritual. Preceding in point of time the discussions raised by the learned schools, they did not come w holly under the influence of the Mu'tazilites. They refuse to admit that the Qoran is uncreated, and will not reserve for non-Muslims the eternal torments of hell. As regards Muslims, faith and the intercession of the Prophet are not sufficient to save them without good works. They prohibit the cult of the saints, local pilgrimages and Sufi fraternities. The revolts of these democratic Muslims troubled the first three centuries of the Hijra and caused the shedding of rivers of blood.

To-day they are commonly called ‘Ibadites’ (or ‘Abadites', a more prevalent pronunciation), after Ibn Ibad, chief of the least extremist of the numerous sub-sects into which they are divided. Certain of them desire to exclude from the Qoran the curses uttered against Abu Lahab (