Muslim Saints and Mystics

Episodes from the Tadhkirat al-Auliya' (Memorial of the Saints)

Farid al-Din Attar, A J Arberry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135030018
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This is a major work of Islamic mysticism by the great thirteenth-century Persian poet, Farid al-Din Attar. Translated by A J Arberry, Attar's work and thought is set in perspective in a substantial introduction.

Abu Yazid al-Bestami

Abu Yazid Ṭaifur ibn Tsā ibn Sorushān al-Besṭami was born in Besṭām in north-eastern Persia, the grandson of a Zoroastrian; there he died in 261 (874) or 264 (877), and his mausoleum still stands. The founder of the ecstatic (“drunken”) school of Sufism, he is famous for the boldness of his expression of the mystic’s complete absorption into the Godhead. In particular his description of a journey into Heaven (in imitation of the Prophet Mohammad’s “ascension”), greatly elaborated by later writers, exercised a powerful influence on the imagination of all who came after him.

Bibliography

L. Massignon, Essai, pp. 243–56.

H. Ritter in Encyclopaedia of Islam (new edition), I, 162–63.

A. J. Arberry, Revelation and Reason in Islam (London, 1957), pp. 90–103.

R. C. Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysticism (London, i960), pp. 93–134, 198–218.

al-Solami, op. cit. pp. 67–74.

al-Sahlaji, Keta al-Nur (ed. A. Badawi, Cairo, 1949).

Abu No’aim, op. cit., X, 33–40.

al-Qoshairi, op. cit., p. 16.

Hojwiri, op. cit., pp. 106–08, 184–88.

Ibn Khallekān, op. cit., II, no. 289.

al-Yāfe’i, op. cit., I, 481.

Jāmi, op. cit., pp. 56–57.

Notes on Anecdotes

“Abu Yazid-e Bestami: Birth”: T.A. I, 135–38. For these and other details of this biography Attar relied heavily on al-Sahlaji. “Be Thankful to Me” is Koran, XXXI, 13. The story of the teacher who spat is told in al-Qoshairi, p. 16. “Verily I Am God …” is Koran, XXI, 25. “Deaf, Dumb, Blind” is Koran, II, 166.

“The Ascension of Abu Yazid”: T.A. I, 172–76. For an analysis, see R. C. Zaehner, op. cit., pp. 198–218. Other accounts are given in al-Sarrāj, Ketāb al-Loma? (ed. R. A. Nicholson, London, 1914), pp. 382, 384, 387; al-Sahlaji, pp. 138–41; Abu No’aim, X, 351; Hojwiri, p. 327; R. A. Nicholson, An Early Arabic Version of the Mi’raj of Abu Yazid al-Bisṭāmi in lslamica II (1926), 402–15. See also Attar, Asrār-nāma (Teheran, 1959), p. 92.

“Abu Yazid and Yahya-e Mo‘adh”: T.A., I, 143–44. See Abu Noc aim, X, 40; al-Qoshairi, pp. 171–72. This exchange is retold in the Elābi-nāma, p. 232 (trans, pp. 343–44).

“Abu Yazid and his Disciple”: T.A., I, 146–47.

“Anecdotes of Abu Yazid”: T.A. I, 139–58. For the “blacksmith” simile see al-Qoshairi, p. 56. “One night Abu Yazid climbed”: see al-Qoshairi, p. 16. The story of Abu Yazid and the dog is retold in the Moṣibat-nāma, pp. 314–15. The death-scene is retold in the Elāhi-nāma, pp. 296–97 (trans, pp. 428–29).

Abu Yazid-e Bestami: birth and early years

The grandfather of Abu Yazid-e Bestami was a Zoroastrian; his father was one of the leading citizens of Bestam. Abu Yazid’s extraordinary career began from the time he was in his mother’s womb.

“Every time I put a doubtful morsel in my mouth,” his mother would say, “you stirred in my womb and would not keep still until I had put it out of my mouth.”

This statement is confirmed by words spoken by Abu Yazid himself.

“What is best for a man on this path?” he was asked.

“Congenital felicity,” he replied.

“And if that is missing?”

“A strong body.”

“And if that is lacking?”

“An attentive ear.”

“And without that?”

”A knowing heart.”

“And without that?”

“A seeing eye.”

“And without that?”

“Sudden death.”

In due course his mother sent him to school. He learned the Koran, and one day his master was explaining the meaning of the verse in the Sura of Loqman, Be thankful to Me, and to thy parents. These words moved the heart of Abu Yazid.

“Sir,” he said, laying down his tablet, “please give me permission to go home and say something to my mother.”

The master gave him leave, and Abu Yazid went home.

“Why, Taifur,” cried his mother, “why have you come home? Did they give you a present, or is it some special occasion?”

“No,” Abu Yazid replied. “I reached the verse where God commands me to serve Him and you. I cannot be manager in two houses at once. This verse stung me to the quick. Either you ask for me from God, so that I may be yours entirely, or apprentice me to God, so that I may dwell wholly with Him.”

“My son, I resign you to God, and exempt you from your duty to me,” said his mother. “Go and be God’s.”

“The task I supposed to be the hindmost of all tasks proved to be the foremost,” Abu Yazid later recalled. “That was to please my mother. In pleasing my mother, I attained all that I sought in my many acts of self-discipline and service. It fell out as follows. One night my mother asked me for water. I went to fetch her some, but there was none in the jug. I fetched the pitcher, but none was in it either. So I went down to the river and filled the pitcher with water. When I returned to the house, my mother had fallen asleep.

“The night was cold. I kept the jug in my hand. When my mother awoke from sleep she drank some water and blessed me. Then she noticed that the jug was frozen to my hand. ‘Why did you not lay the jug aside?’ she exclaimed. ‘I was afraid that you might wake when I was not present,’ I answered. ‘Keep the door half-open,’ my mother then said.

“I watched till near daybreak to make sure if the door was properly half-open or not, and that I should not have disregarded her command. At the hour of dawn, that which I had sought so many times entered by the door.”

After his mother resigned him to God, Abu Yazid left Bestam and for thirty years wandered from land to land, disciplining himself with continuous vigil and hunger. He attended one hundred and thirteen spiritual preceptors and derived benefit from them all. Amongst them was one called Sadiq. He was sitting at his feet when the master suddenly said, “Abu Yazid, fetch me that book from the window.”

“The window? Which window?” asked Abu Yazid.

“Why,” said the master, “you have been coming here all this time, and you have not seen the window?”

“No,” replied Abu Yazid. “What have I to do with the window? When I am before you, I close my eyes to everything else. I have not come to stare about.”

“Since that is so,” said the teacher, “go back to Bestam. Your work is completed.”

It was hinted to Abu Yazid that in a certain place a great teacher was to be found. He came from afar to see him. As he approached, he saw the reputed teacher spit in the direction of Mecca. He at once retraced his steps.

“If he had achieved anything at all in the way,” he remarked, “he would never have been guilty of transgressing the Law.”

In this connection it is stated that his house was forty paces from the mosque, and he never spat on the road out of respect for the mosque.

It took Abu Yazid a full twelve years to reach the Kaaba. This was because at every oratory he passed he would throw down his prayer rug and perform two rak’as.

“This is not the portico of an earthly king,” he would say, “that one may run thither all at once.”

So at last he came to the Kaaba, but that year he did not go to Medina.

“It would not be seemly to make that an appendage of this visitation,” he explained. “I will put on pilgrim robes for Medina separately.”

Next year he returned once more, donning the pilgrim garb separately at the beginning of the desert. In one town he passed through on the way a great throng became his followers, and as he left a crowd went in his wake.

“Who are those men?” he demanded, looking back.

“They wish to keep you company,” came the answer.

“Lord God!” Abu Yazid cried, “I beg of Thee, veil not Thy creatures from Thee through me!”

Then, desiring to expel the love of him from their hearts and to remove the obstacle of himself from their path, having performed the dawn prayer he looked at them and said, “Verily I am God; there is no god but I; therefore serve Me”

“The man has become mad!” they cried. And they left him and departed.

Abu Yazid went on his way. He found on the road a skull on which was written, Deaf, dumb, blind—they do not understand.

Picking up the skull with a cry, he kissed it.

“This seems to be the head,” he murmured, “of a Sufi annihilated in God—he has no ear to hear the eternal voice, no eye to behold the eternal beauty, no tongue to praise God’s greatness, no reason to understand so much as a mote of the true knowledge of God. This verse is about him.”

Once Abu Yazid was going along the road with a camel on which he had slung his provisions and saddle.

“Poor little camel, what a heavy load it is carrying,” someone cried. “It is really cruel.”

Abu Yazid, having heard him say these words over and over, at last replied.

“Young man, it is not the little camel that lifts the load.”

The man looked to see if the load was actually on the camel’s back. He observed that it was a full span above its back, and that the camel did not feel any weight at all.

“Glory be to God, a wondrous deed!” the man exclaimed.

“If I conceal from you the true facts about myself, you thrust out the tongue of reproach,” said Abu Yazid. “If I disclose them to you, you cannot bear the facts. What is one to do with you?”

After Abu Yazid had visited Medina, the order came to him to return to care for his mother. He accordingly set out for Bestam, accompanied by a throng. The news ran through the city, and the people of Bestam came out to welcome him a good way from the town. Abu Yazid was likely to be so preoccupied with their attentions that he would be detained from God. As they approached him, he drew a loaf out of his sleeve. Now it was Ramazan; yet he stood and ate the loaf. As soon as the people of Bestam saw this, they turned away from him.

“Did you not see?” Abu Yazid addressed his companions. “I obeyed an ordinance of the sacred Law, and all the people rejected me.”

He waited patiently until nightfall. At midnight he entered Bestam and, coming to his mother’s house, he stood a while listening. He heard sounds of his mother performing her ablutions and praying.

“Lord God, care well for our exile. Incline the hearts of the shaikhs towards him, and vouchsafe him to do all things well.”

Abu Yazid wept when he heard these words. Then he knocked on the door.

“Who is there?” cried his mother.

“Your exile,” he replied.

Weeping, his mother opened the door. Her sight was dimmed.

“Taifur,” she addressed her son, “do you know what has dimmed my sight? It is because I have wept so much being parted from you, and my back is bent double from the load of grief I have endured.”

The Ascension of Abu Yazid

Abu Yazid related as follows.

I gazed upon God with the eye of certainty after that He had advanced me to the degree of independence from all creatures, and illumined me with His light, revealing to me the wonders of His secrets and manifesting to me the grandeur of His He-ness.

Then from God I gazed upon myself, and considered well the secrets and attributes of my self. My light was darkness beside the light of God; my grandeur shrank to very meanness beside God’s grandeur; my glory beside God’s glory became but vainglory. There all was purity, here all was foulness.

When I looked again, I saw my being by God’s light. I realized that my glory was of His grandeur and glory. Whatsoever I did, I was able to do through His omnipotence. Whatever the eye of my physical body perceived, it perceived through Him. I gazed with the eye of justice and reality; all my worship proceeded from God, not from me, and I had supposed that it was I who worshipped Him.

I said, “Lord God,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• HASAN OF BASRA
• MALEK IBN DINAR
• HABIB AL-AJAMI
• RABE‘A AL-ADAWIYA
• AL-FOZAIL IBN IYAZ
• EBRAHIM IBN ADHAM
• BESHR IBN AL-HARETH
• DHO ’L-NUN AL-MESRI
• ABU YAZID AL-BESTAMI
• ABD ALLAH IBN AL-MOBARAK
• SOFYAN AL-THAURI
• SHAQIQ OF BALKH
• DAWUD AL-TA’I
• AL-MOHASEBI
• AHMAD IBN HARB
• HATEM AL-ASAMM
• SAHL IBN ABD ALLAH AL-TOSTARI
• MA‘RUF AL-KARKHI
• SARI AL-SAQATI
• AHMAD IBN KHAZRUYA
• YAHYA IBN MO‘ADH
• SHAH IBN SHOJA‘
• YUSOF IBN AL-HOSAIN
• ABU HAFS AL-HADDAD
• ABO ’L-QASEM AL-JONAID
• AMR IBN ‘OTHMAN
• ABU SA‘ID AL-KHARRAZ
• ABU ’L-HOSAIN AL-NURI
• ABU OTHMAN AL-HIRI
• IBN ATA
• SOMNUN
• AL-TERMEDHI
• KHAIR AL-NASSAJ
• ABU BAKR AL-KATTANI
• IBN KHAFIF
• AL-HALLAJ
• EBRAHIM AL-KHAUWAS
• AL-SHEBLI
• Bibliography