1 The importance of ‘Wisdom Philosophy’ for the elevation of individual man as well as the humanity as a whole is expressed within Shia-tradition (in the school of Ahlul Bait) in the idea of Imam Mahdi as an epochal leitmotif.

2 However it should not be forgotten that the philosophy of religion in Otto’s theology was profoundly immersed in Christian theology based on Kantian-Friesian metaphysics. This could be traced both in his epistemology and religious psychology in relation to other religions such as Buddhism and Islam.  Using Jakob Fries's epistemological scheme of Wissen, Glaube, and Ahndung, "Understanding, Belief, and Aesthetic Sense," (to use Kent Richter's translation), Ruldolf Otto expands the meaning of Ahndung beyond the merely aesthetic by introducing the category of numinosity, which is the quality of sacred or holy objects, persons, or experiences in religion. Although Otto is often classified as a theoretician of mysticism, "numinosity" is not fundamentally a theory of mystical experiences, because every practitioner of any religion experiences certain things as sacred to that religion. The "sacred" and the "holy," and the "unclean" or "polluted," are categories that apply (non-metaphorically) to peculiarly religious objects in an entirely universal and cross-cultural manner.

Otto's greatest limitation is in fact the residual rationalism of Kant and Fries. This is expressed best by Otto himself, in the foreword to his famous The Idea of the Holy [Das Heilige, 1917]:

Before I ventured upon this field of inquiry I spent many years of study upon the rational aspect of that supreme Reality we call "God," and the results of my work are contained in my books, Naturalistische und religiöse Weltansicht (Eng. Tr. "Naturalism and Religion", London, 1907), and Die Kant-Friesische Religions-Philosophie [The Philosophy of Religion based on Kant and Fries, London, 1931]. And I feel that no one ought to concern himself with the "Numen ineffabile" who has not already devoted assiduous and serious study to the "Ratio aeterna".

What Otto inherited from Kant and Fries was the theory that reason itself unavoidably and necessarily produces the "Ideas" of God, freedom, and immorality. Otto therefore regarded religions as more developed, not just in the sense that they embodied refined moral conceptions, but in so far as they were associated with the concept of God and the retributions or rewards of an afterlife. Since religions like Buddhism did not have a God, and religions like Islâm did not have a sufficiently, for Otto, moralized God, they were developmentally inferior to Christianity.

Thus, ironically, while Otto is often dismissed as a mystic, the real barrier to the generalization of his system was the rationalistic theology of Kant and Fries. If reason is not regarded as naturally and necessarily productive of Christian theological concepts, then nothing prevents Otto from properly recognizing the common elements of all world religions. There is no doubt, indeed, that the Buddha, as the "Blessed One," is a supremely numinous person, whatever his ontological status with respect to ultimate reality. The tendency to personalize the object of religion can thus be acknowledged, without requiring the metaphysics of a Supreme Being. Similarly, the element of arbitrariness in the Will of God in Islâm is no more than a reflection of the polynomic independence of numinosity and morality. This has recently been nicely expressed by Jacques Barzun:

The truth that religion and morality are at odds with each other is rarely acknowledged, probably because the two desires are equally strong in the human breast, reflecting there the respective demands of society and of the self. [From Dawn to Decadence, 1500 to the Present, HarperCollins, 2000, p.55]

The Friesian would only correct this to say that the "respective demands" are, not "of society and of the self," but of reason and of Ahndung.

Otto's point cannot be appreciated until religion is understood as addressing more than what is right and wrong or good and beautiful. The final mysteries of life and reality cannot be answered by science, ethics, politics, or art; for none of them can even begin to address the issue of the meaning or purpose of the whole, or of the sufferings of an individual human life, which inevitably comes to a more or less arbitrary and unsatisfactory end. Nevertheless, most human beings have lived their lives and reached their ends with some sense of ultimate meaning, however irrational or inexplicable, whether through an overtly religious approach, philosophical resignation, or some obviously fraudulent religion substitute (Marxism, etc.). Otto's Friesian theory, only a footnote to philosophy and religion in the 20th century, nevertheless has offered the best chance for conceding to each its due for philosophy, science, religion, and the plurality of world religions.

Otto's falling out with Leonard Nelson, by whom he was introduced to Friesian theory, was due in part to Otto's greater political conservatism and to the rationalism that led Nelson to make vaguely positive statements about religion but not specifically positive statements about any actual religions. Even Otto's preference for Christianity did not prevent him from exhibiting great interest in all world religions. (See in this regard: http://www.friesian.com/otto.htm).

3 The questions of ‘Religious Guidance’ and ‘Spiritual leadership’ within Shia-tradition as expressed by Prophet Muhammad in the Hadith of ‘Thaqaleyn’ is of great relevance for the realization of Shariat as a Universal Tariqat, which would lead the collectivity to Haqiqat under the reign of Mahdi. This would be discussed in my upcoming essay on ‘Mahdi and Universal Shariat’. 

 

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 An Analysis of Discourse One in Book II of the Mathnawī

M. Alavi, SOAS, University of London, UK

 

This paper follows the general principles outlined in the preceding paper but applies them to the early part of Book II of the Mathnawī. Book II, like Book I, begins with a prose introduction, although in Book II it is in Persian and not in Arabic. The Introduction, again as in Book I, is followed by a proem, a poetic preface to the Book in 111 verses. There then come the following sections, identified by the headings which we believe Maulānā gave them, as given in Nicholson's careful translation:

The First Twelve Sections of Book II

Section 1     2­134, (23) How in the time of 'Umar, may God be well­pleased with him, a certain person imagined that what he saw was the full moon.

Section 2     36­140, (5) How a snake­catcher stole a snake from another snake catcher.

Section 3     41­155, (15) How the companion of Jesus, on whom be peace, entreated Jesus, on whom be peace, to give life to bones.

Section 4     56­193, (38) How the Sufi enjoined the servant to take care of his beast and how the servant said, "Lā ¦awl”

Section 5     194­202, (9) How the explanation of the (inner) meaning of the tale was stopped because of the hearer's desire to hear the superficial form of it.

Section 6     203­322, (120) How the people of the caravan supposed the Sufis beast was ill.

Section 7     323­375, (53) How the king found his falcon in the house of a decrepit old woman

Section 8     376­444, (68) How by Divine inspiration Shaykh Ahmad son of Khizruya, may God sanctify his revered spirit, bought halwa (sweetmeat) for his creditors.

Section 9     445­455, (11) How a certain person frightened an ascetic saying, " Weep little, lest you become blind”

Section 10   456­502, (47) Conclusion to the story of the coming to life of the bones at the prayer of Jesus, on whom be peace.

Section 11   503­513, (11) How a peasant stroked a lion in the dark­ because he thought that it was his ox.

Section 12   514­584, (71) How the Sufis sold the traveller's beast (to pay) for the (expenses of the) mystic dance.

 

These first twelve sections we identify as Discourse One. It is made easy for us: first, because it is the first discourse in the book, so we know where the discourse begins; second, because of the distinctiveness of the story of Jesus and the Bones. Since we discovered in Book I that Maulānā was organising his discourses by means of parallelism, and the two parts of Jesus and the Bones, sections three and ten, are clearly in parallel, then the discourse must have twelve sections. There are only two sections before section three, so there will only be two sections after section ten to complete the discourse. This is one example of how Maulānā's organising principle of parallelism can enable the discourses to be identified. Now let me show you the structure of this discourse as revealed by our analysis of the parallelism:

The Structure of Discourse One

 

Section 1     New moon; hair in eye; Iblīs beguiles; stay awake; robbers of rank and wealth

Section 2     Snake catcher's snake stolen; thief bitten, dies; owner glad God ignored him

Section 3     Jesus and the bones; fool wanted them revived; God says fools self­made

Section 4     Sufi entrusts his ass to the servant; the single mole of Divine Beauty

Section 5     Outer meaning not inner meaning interrupts the discourse

Section 6     Sufi's ass useless as servant ignored it; the Devil's agenda

Section 7     Falcon prefers Hell; says he has sinned; God's mercy depends on weeping

Section 8     Shaikh A¦mad, creditors and halwa seller; weeping; didn't see its meaning

Section 9     Weep little or be blind; eye must see Divine Beauty or it is no use; Jesus

Section 10   Jesus; bones; lion kills fool; the eye; lamentation; blind imitation

Section 11   Peasant stroked ox in dark; really a lion; blind imitation not direct seeing

Section 12   Sufi lost his ass through blind imitation; desire is hair in the eye; greed

 

Now I want to go through the sections to show why we arrived at this scheme. Although I know some people in the audience know virtually the whole Mathnawī by heart, it cannot be assumed that everybody does, therefore I have provided summaries of the sections so that we can examine the parallelisms together. I shall do this in pairs of sections, the pairs that are parallel, beginning with the first and the last sections.

 

Section 1, 112­134, (23) How in the time of 'Umar, may God be well­pleased with him, a certain person imagined that what he saw was the full moon. a] (8)

During Ramadan someone said to 'Umar: "Look at the new moon". 'Umar could not see it and said: "How is it I don't see it? It is a phantasy. Wet your eyebrow and then look." When the man did so the new moon disappeared. A crooked hair across his eye had made him see what he wanted to see. b] (8) If one crooked hair veiled the sky, what happens when all your parts are crooked? Straighten yourself with the righteous as standards but make sure the standards are true or else you will be lost. Renounce the unrighteous lest you upset the friend (of God) for they are his enemies. c] (7) The Devil calls you 'darling son' to beguile you, just as he once cheated an Adam. Be alert to his formidable tricks, for they stick in the throat like a straw for years. What is the straw? Love of wealth and rank. Wealth is a straw in your throat which blocks the Water of Life. If a robber steals wealth, a robber steals a robber.

 

Section 12, 514­584, (71) How the Sufis sold the traveller's beast (to pay) for the (expenses of the) mystic dance. a] (12)

A Sufi came to a monastery and watered his ass and tied it in the stable. He took every care but Divine Destiny cannot be avoided. The Sufis were desperately poor ­ such as a rich well­fed man like you cannot imagine ­ so they sold the ass to buy some food and candles. There was jubilation to be relieved of patience, fasting and begging and they set themselves to entertain their guest mistakenly thinking they had soul. b] (14) The traveller was tired and delighted with the attention and affection shown to him. They fed and then began the samā'. When this was over the musician struck up a chant which they all danced and clapped to until dawn: "The ass has gone, the ass has gone." The travelling Sufi joined in, in imitation, with the same enthusiasm. A hen dawn came they went their separate ways. c] (26) The Sufi took his baggage to the stable to load his ass and find a fellow traveller but his ass was not there. He demanded the return of the ass from the servant but the servant told him they had taken it from him by force. "But why didn't you come and tell me?" asked the Sufi. "I did," replied the servant, "but you were singing: “The ass has gone" with even more gusto than the others so I assumed not only that you knew but that being a man of God you were satisfied with this Divine judgement” “They were singing it with such delight I just joined in." said the Sufi, "Blind imitation of these rascals has brought me ruin. Their delight cast such a reflection that my heart was delighted by that reflection." d] (12) the reflection of goodly friends is necessary until you can make direct contact without reflection. The first reflection is imitation but when it becomes continual it turns into direct realisation so do not break with your friend until you have this realisation. To have a pure eye, ear and understanding, remove selfish desire since it was desire for food and delight that prevented the Sufi from understanding the situation. If a pair of scales had a desire for riches how could they give a true reading? Prophets do not ask for wages; they are brokers to both sides appointed by God who is the purchaser. No wage would be enough. e] (7) I now tell a story illustrative of the dangers of desire, which confuses those it affects, and dulls the spiritual eye and heart. Thought of wealth and power are as a hair in front of the eye, except for the saint who remains free since he who has a vision of God thinks nothing of this world. But that Sufi was no such saint and he was blinded by his desire. Dazed by greed a person could hear a hundred stories and still not hear a single point with his ear of greed. [end of summaries]

Just as the first section in Book I sets the problem not only for the first discourse, but, in a way, for the entire book, so does the first section, Section 1, in Book II. There are three major points it makes: first, that our desires cloud the eye and understanding so we do not see reality but rather what we want to see; second, that in order to be put straight and to see reality, we need people near us who are already straight and the friends of God, and we should avoid those who are not; third, if we don't associate with straight people, we become vulnerable to the wiles of Iblīs, one of which is to exploit our love of wealth and rank, māl­o­jāh.

Section 12 is in parallel with Section 1, which it completes and develops. The developmental parallelism could be stated as: "It is foolishness enough for an ordinary man to be blinded to reality by desire for what he wants to see, but how much worse is it for a Sufi in the khānqāh to be so blinded by desire for food and samā' that he loses his ass, the very means the sank has of travelling?" Section 12 concludes with the very same image of desire as the hair in the eye with which Section 1 begins and which is the first point made. The central part of Section 12 develops the second, central point of Section 1, the need to be close to the righteous, and to avoid the unrighteous, in order to see reality. This is precisely the point demonstrated by the Sufi blindly following the behaviour of the resident Sufis, without realising what a bunch of rascals they were, on account of his desire for food and samā'. It is not imitation, taqlīd that is at fault, as Maulānā makes clear, since that can be a necessary first step leading to ta¦qīq, realisation: it is first making sure for yourself who you are following that matters, and this the sālik did not do. The final point of Section 1, Iblīs, his wiles and the desire for money and status, is developed at the beginning of Section 12 with the impoverished residents of the khānqāh seizing the sālik’s ass and selling it to raise the money for their feast. In this way, Section 12 illustrates and develops each of the three salient points of Section 1, but chiasmically, that is, in reverse order. This is a very good illustration of Maulānā's use of parallelism, although it is perhaps more elaborate than is usual on account of it both being the first and last sections of a discourse, and the first discourse of the Book.

Turning now to Section 2 and Section 11, we have two sections which though short, are packed with meaning and implication. These two are now given in summary form:

 

Section 2, 136­140, (5) How a snake­catcher stole a snake from another snake catcher. a] (6)

A thief stole a snake from a snake­catcher, thinking stupidly it was an asset. He was bitten and died. Owner glad God had not heard his prayer to have it back; his loss turned out to be a gain. It is from kindness that God does not hear the prayers which might lead to loss and destruction.

 

Section 11, 503­513, (11) How a peasant stroked a lion in the dark because he thought that it was his ox. a] (5)

A peasant tied his ox in a stable; a lion ate the ox and took its place. The peasant went to see his ox at night and stroked it in the dark. The lion said: "If it were light, his bladder would burst and his heart turn to blood. He only strokes me this boldly because he thinks I am his ox." b] (6) God says: "Oh blind dupe, did not Sinai fall in pieces at My Name? If Mount U¦ud had known me blood would have gushed from the mountain." You have heard of "God" and religion from your parents and embraced them thoughtlessly. If you knew Him directly without blind imitation you would become immaterial. The following story is a deterrent to blind imitation. [end of summaries]

These two sections both share the same shape, an animal anecdote, followed by a reference to God. Section 2 is foreshadowed by the passage about Iblīs and his utilisation of human greed, especially for wealth and power, which concludes with the words: "If a robber steals wealth, a robber steals a robber". In Section 2 we have the robber, who is blinded by greed to the point of ablahī, stupidity, (deliberately punned with Iblīs), so that he counts a deadly snake an asset, to his cost. The owner, too, then realised that he also was unable to distinguish between a loss and a gain and is grateful God ignored his prayers. There is therefore an internal parallelism in Section 2 between the robber and the owner in terms of their inability to see reality. When Section 11 begins, it seems as if this too will be a case of a silly countryman being unable to distinguish his ox from a lion because of his habituation and the dark, underlined by the thoughts of the lion on the subject, but then Maulānā turns it strikingly. Putting words in God's mouth, he says: "If you think the peasant's situation is funny, it is, in fact, exactly parallel to your own, since you are habituated to the cosy image of God you have inherited from your parents, whereas if you realised the truth and saw directly, not through taqlīd, you would be shattered by God's Might and Majesty." There is, therefore, as in Section 2, a very powerful internal parallelism within Section 11. The parallelism between the two sections is also developmental and could be stated: It is bad enough that greed and stupidity blind us so we cannot see what is really an asset and what is really a liability, but how much worse is it that we have become so unthinkingly habituated to our cosy, comfortable, inherited image of God that we do not realise God is a Lion and not our familiar ox.

We come now, to Sections 3 and 10 which are most obviously parallel in that narratively Section 10 completes Section 3. Again these are given in summary form:

 

Section 3, 141­155, (15) How the companion of Jesus, on whom be peace, entreated Jesus, on whom be peace, to give life to the bones. a] (7)

A fool wanted Jesus to tell him the Name which would bring some bones he saw in a pit to life. Jesus said this was not for him because it needed a much purer breath than his. b] (8) The fool said if not he then would Jesus pronounce the Name over the bones. Jesus, despairing over the fool, asks God why the fool, who is dead inside, seeks to revive a dead corpse. God replies that those doomed to perdition seek their own perdition and the thistle within him was of his own sowing. Thistle­sowers are not found in the rose­garden for they turn a rose into a thistle, and a friend into a snake. The fool is an elixir producing poison and snakes; the opposite of the God­fearing man.

 

Section 10, 456­502, (47) Conclusion to the story of the coming to life of the bones at the prayer of Jesus, on whom be peace. a] (5)

Jesus pronounced the Name of God and the bones come to life. A lion jumps up, killed the fool and tore open the skull. Inside there was no brain; had there been, only the body would have been destroyed. b] (9) When Jesus asked why he had killed him so quickly, the lion replied that it was because the fool had troubled Jesus. Jesus then asked why he had not drunk the blood, and the lion replied it was not his allotted portion. Many are ordained to die with their desires unfulfilled when their allotted portion is finished. The lion killed the fool as a warning to others. Had he been allotted to drink blood he would not have been dead in the first place. c] (7) The fool's punishment was deserved since he found a stream of pure water and urinated in it like an ass instead of knowing its value and submerging his head in it. How did the fool when he met such a prophet not achieve fanā and ask for real life? Do not wish your nafs alive for it is a long­term enemy of the spirit. Curse the bones that hinder the search for the spirit. Why are you in love with bones if you are not a dog? d] (8) Your spiritual eye is blind; opinions may be wrong but that is better than this blindness. Oh eye, you weep for others; better you weep for yourself, since the eye brightens with weeping. Sit with those who lament, for you have more need to lament than they, since they only weep for what is passing while your blind imitation is a lock on your heart (which you must loosen with tears) and is destructive of every quality. e] (12) The blind imitator, though big, is just flesh, since he has no eye; he speaks fine words but has no contact with their meaning; everything passes through him but he does not partake. Like a professional mourner his lament is splendid but his motive only gain. There is a world of difference between a true knower whose words derive from experience and the blind imitator who has learnt old things by rote. The imitator "I" eventually meet his reckoning. f] (6) There is a great difference when "God" is said by a believer and by an infidel; the devout from the soul, the beggar for bread. If the beggar really saw the difference between the reality of God and his utterance of the name, he would lose his self­interest. For years he uttered God ­ like the ass carrying the Qur'ān to be fed straw ­ but had his heart known the reality of the word his body would have shattered. Even the sorcerer is more honest in his effective use of a demon's name than you who earn a living by means of the Name of God. [end of summaries]

The narrative parallelism between these two sections is self­evident and the meaning and teaching in this story is made quite explicit by Maulānā, so there is no need to repeat it. Here, I wish simply to make clear the chiasmic relationship between these two sections. Section 3 begins with the fool and ablahī, stupidity; Section 10 ends with the blind imitator and taqlīd, acquired and borrowed second­hand experience as opposed to direct contact with reality, which is a developed, higher form of stupidity within this parallel relationship. Then the first thing that is said by the fool is to ask for the name that will bring the dead to life in Section 3, and the last passage in Section 10 is about the Name of God. The fool thinks he has the capacity to repeat the name, just as the imitator does with the Name of God. Jesus then tells the fool he is not pure enough to use the name in Section 3 and in Section 10 there is much about the spiritual emptiness of the imitator. Then in Section 3 Jesus, who does not suffer fools gladly, asks why he wants to bring bones to life when he himself is spiritually dead and in Section 10 there is a discussion on the nafs and bones, and the need to lament about one's own state rather than another's. Finally, God explains at the end of Section 3 how a fool is self­made and how those doomed to perdition seek their own perdition and this in fact happens at the beginning of Section 10. There is thus a perfect thematic parallelism between the two sections but the sequence is in reverse order, it is chiasmic like a mirror image.

Section 4 brings the reader or hearer directly into the Sufi world of the khanqāh and the cultivation of the spiritual life. It is in parallel with Section 9. Both sections are given in summary:

 

Section 4, 156­193, (38) How the Sufi enjoined the servant to take care of his beast and how the servant said, “Lā ¦awl” a] (9)

A Sufi came to a convent and his ass he entrusted to the servant while he sat with his friends in meditation. A Sufi's presence is like a book, not of letters, but of a pure heart Scholars use letters, the Sufi uses foot­marks; he first follows the tracks of the musk­deer and then follows the musk­pod. He gives thanks to the foot­marks that gave him the way but when he follows the musk­pod it is a hundred times more worthy than the tracks. b] (25) The heart is the opening for a mystic to Reality. Pīrs see things you don't: to you, a wall, to them a door; to you a stone, to them a pearl etc. They were spirits in the sea of Divine Bounty and before existence they knew form and were privy to the decision to bring mankind into existence. Without mind or brain they were full of thought and they are free from past and future so that they see the wine in the grape, and December in July. They are free from number so that when two meet they are one and also six hundred thousand. The sun which is the spirit breaks up into rays in the windows which are bodies. Plurality is in the animal spirit; the human spirit is one essence. c] (4) Let me then describe a single mole of that beauty. The beauty of His state is inexpressible; the worlds both temporal and spiritual are but a reflection of that mole. When I speak about His beautiful mole my speech would burst my body; it is too much for me to contain.

 

Section 9, 445­455, (11) How a certain person frightened an ascetic saying, “Weep little, lest you become blind”. a] (12)

An ascetic replied to a man who warned that weeping could make him blind that there was only one issue, could the eye see Divine Beauty or not. If it sees the Light of God it will not matter if it is ruined for he has Union; if it doesn't the eye is worthless and will not be missed. Seek the Jesus of your spirit, but not for bones, like the fool. Do not ask from your Jesus the life of your body, nor your livelihood which will not fail anyway, but attend the Divine Court. This body is only the tent for your spirit, or an ark for Noah. [end of summaries]

After the first three grim sections on stupidity and their parallel sections on taqlīd, which form two parallel blocks, each of three sections, it appears that we come now to the spiritual life and the Sufi world of the khanqāh, where the Mathnawī would have been read aloud to the aspiring Sufis. Section 4 begins an anecdote about a Sufi, and then launches into an explanation of the Sufi first following the foot­marks of the spirit until he is then able to perceive the spiritual realities directly for himself. This is followed by a lengthy explanation about the nature of the Pīrs and their perceptions of unity. It is perfectly possible to take this as a straightforward description to encourage and inspire the aspiring Sufis, which it is, but, within the context of the anecdote as a whole, and particularly because Maulānā tells the reader or hearer to set aside his weariness (malāl) so he can tell him about Divine Beauty, there is a suggestion raised that this long exposition of theoretical high­flown spirituality has been made by Maulānā deliberately long­winded and verbose to the point of weariness. Section 9, in parallel with Section 4 comes straight to the point. It picks up first Divine Beauty, with which Section 4 ends, and then moves to the unity the Pīrs see, concluding that the only criterion for an eye is whether it sees this spiritual reality or not. The parallelism could be stated then: "It's one thing to hear about all these spiritual matters, but the real issue is whether or not you see them."

The next two sections are Sections 5 and section 8 whose summaries are given below:

 

Section 5, 194­202, (9) How the explanation of the (inner) meaning of the tale was stopped because of the hearer's desire to hear the superficial form of it. a] (9)

When will He allow me to tell what ought to be told ? What has interrupted me now is that the hearer's mind is elsewhere. He is thinking about the Sufi guest so I must return to his story. Do not however think the Sufi is just the outer form you see; how long will you be content with that? Listen then to the outer story, but separate the wheat from the chaff.

 

Section 8, 376­444, (68) How by Divine inspiration Shaykh Ahmad son of Khizruya, may God sanctity his revered spirit, bought halwa (sweetmeat) for his creditors. a] (12)

The Shaikh was always in debt, borrowing from the great and giving to the poor, and founding and running a monastery for Sufis; his life, wealth and monastery, an devoted to God who was settling his debts for him all around. The Prophet said there are two angels always praying in the market: "Oh God, give the prodigal a boon and the miserly a bane in return." This applies especially to those who give their life and soul to the Creator, like Ishmael, to whom God grants everlastingness in return. The debtor Shaikh spent his life like this, taking and giving like a steward so that he might be rewarded on the day of his death. b] (4) As death approached his creditors were gathered round, despairing and sour­faced, wondering, the Shaikh thought, whether God was good for four hundred gold dinars. c] (20) Outside there was a boy trying to sell halwa and the Shaikh sent his servant out to buy the whole tray to keep the creditors happy for a while. The servant promised half a dinar for the entire tray and the halwa was given to the creditors who ate it. Then the boy asked the Shaikh for the half dinar but the Shaikh said he was dying and in debt so how could he get it. The boy began weeping and moaning and cursing the Sufis and created a great clamour. "My master will kill me if I go back with nothing; will you let him do that?" said the boy. Then the creditors too turned on the Shaikh and said he had devoured their property and was carrying his sins off to eternity and now he added this further injustice. The Shaikh did not look at the boy who wept till afternoon prayers. d] (14) The Shaikh, unconcerned, retreated under the sheet, pleased with death and eternity. God smiled sweetly in his face so what does he care about the dirty looks of other? On a moonlight night what does the moon care about all the diverse things that are happening below, following their normal course? Although they could easily have paid the boy the spiritual influence of the Shaikh was such that the boy was not given anything. e] (19) At the time of afternoon prayers a servant of a generous supporter of the Shaikh brought in a tray and put it before the Shaikh who then uncovered it. On it were four hundred dinars and another half dinar separately wrapped. Immediately there was lamentation and cries of sorrow and the creditors were full of apology and regret for not having heard what had been said to them but answering from their own surmise. The Shaikh forgave them and explained he had asked God to show him the right way. Though the half dinar was small the payment depended on the boy's outcry. The sea of mercy is not aroused until the Halwa­seller weeps. The boy is the pupil of your eye; what you desire depends on tears of distress. If you wish for the robe of honour then that pupil should weep over your body. [end of summaries]

The parallelism between these two sections is straightforward. In Section 5 the reader is told that Maulānā had to interrupt his inner exposition because the hearer's mind was elsewhere, on what happened in the outer story, and in Section 8 the creditors were so outraged by the outer situation and their own and the boy's loss that they did not see the inner situation and what the Shaikh was really doing. The parallelism can be simply stated as: “We do not see the inner reality because our minds are pre­occupied with the outer form or situation.”

Finally we come to the central pair of sections, Section 6 and Section 7. Which even in the summary below are very long:

 

Section 6, 203­322, (120) How the people of the caravan supposed the Sufi’s beast was ill. a] (15)

When the Sufis' meditation was over, having concluded in ecstasy, they feasted and the Sufi called the servant and gave him a list of specific instructions about the feeding and care of his ass. The servant replied to each demand: Good gracious, you don't need to tell me this. b] (15) The servant went off, not to the stable but to join some similar rascals, ignoring the Sufi's requests. The Sufi lay down to sleep and began to have terrible dreams about his ass being very badly treated or falling into ditches. In his anxiety he could think of no reason why the servant should treat him thus but then he realised that Adam had done no harm to Iblīs, nor man to the snakes and scorpions that bit him. That was their nature. Then he would think it wrong to think evil of his brother. Then again he thought that it was only prudent to do so. c] (7) While the Sufi was in this state of anxiety the poor ass spent the night in torment from lack of attention, straw, water or food. d] (10) In the morning the servant saddled the ass and gave it a sharp jab to get it moving. The Sufi mounted but the ass kept falling over. They searched for a cause because the Sufi had said the ass was strong. When asked what the reason was the Sufi replied that the ass had eaten Lā ¦awl, Good gracious, during the night and was now prostrating himself by day. e] (12) Don't trust people because most are man­eaters. The hearts of all are the Devil's house; don't listen to the devilish. Whoever swallows the Devil's blandishments and imposture or the veneration and deceit of a false friend will fall over like that ass. Oh Adam, in the, serpent see Iblīs: He calls you his beloved that he might strip off your skin; he flatters you and wheedles that he may have your blood. Hunt your prey like a lion, alone; ignore the blandishments of stranger and kinsman. The regard of the base is like the servant; better nobody than him. f] (10) Your body is a stranger; do not live in a stranger's land nor do his work. Do not overfeed nor rub musk on your body like the hypocrite whose soul is foul but who uses the name of God, which is the musk. g] (4) Do not be bitter or malicious for both come from Hell and will take you there. h] (13) You are of the quality of your thoughts ­ if your thought is a rose you are a rose­garden etc. ­ and roughly similar types group together. But the types became mixed up when we were sent down and so the Prophets were sent to sort out one from another. The eye of the heart can tell the difference. i] (12) The goodly love the day, when their worth is seen, which is why God calls the Resurrection, 'Day'. Day is the illumined consciousness of the saints and night when that consciousness is not illumined by God. j] (21) Every expression from a prophet or saint is appropriate to him and the situation; in the wrong hands it ceases to be effective, like a hand and a tool which need to be a perfect match. God is One and needs no other nor a tool. In number is doubt, in One certainty. If you are the ball in His polo­field only spin from his polo­stick since the ball is only flawless when dancing from the strikes of His hand. Holy words do not stay in blind hearts but go to the Light whence they came while the Devil's words go to perverse hearts. Though you learn Wisdom by heart and write it down and spout it, it flees from you if you are unworthy to receive it, but if it sees ardour in your heart, knowledge will be docile as a bird in your hand.

 

Section 7, 323­375, (53) How the king found his falcon in the house of a decrepit old woman. a] (12)

A falcon fled from the King to the tent of an old woman. When she saw it she clipped it's wings, cut it's talons, tied it's feet and fed it straw, saying she would take good care of it since its previous keeper hadn't. Such is the affection of the fool; they are ever thus. In his search for the falcon the King finally came to the old woman's tent and, seeing it's state in the smoke and dirt, wept in lamentation. The King said: This is retribution for what you did and for not keeping faith with me and choosing Hell over Paradise regardless of the text "The people of Hell are not the equal of those of Paradise". This is proper reward for leaving the King who knows you and preferring an old hag's house. “The falcon by rubbing his wing against the King's hand was saying: "I have sinned." b] (7) If you only accept the good, Oh King, where should the sinner plead piteously? But through making the foul fair You invite sin­seeking. But you must not commit foulness for even our fair deeds are foul­looking to the King. You sin to regard your service as worthy. You were given to praise and pray but it made you proud. You thought you spoke intimately with God but many are thus separated from God. The King sits with you; know your place and feel more reverence. c] (8) The falcon said: "I am penitent, I am converted, I embrace Islam anew. With your help and with you with me, in spite of my condition, I can do wonders in your service." d] (15) Moses fought Pharaoh and his army with just a rod and every prophet that sought God's aid first fought the world alone and won, as did Noah. Ahmad's cycle was so amazingly merciful that Moses, who was shown it asked to be part of it. But God said that this was beyond Moses and He had shown it so that Moses might desire and seek and weep. It was because He was a hidden treasure of mercy, that He sent Ahmad to reveal it.. e] (7) Every Divine grace your soul seeks was first shown to you by God so that you should desire it. How many idols did Ahmad smash that we should cry: "M y Lord"? But for Ahmad we should still be worshipping idols, and he has freed your head from this so that the religious communities may be grateful. Give thanks for this deliverance so that he may free you from the idol within. He has delivered your head from idols, now you deliver your heart. You neglect to give thanks for the Religion because you inherited it for nothing from your father and he who inherits cannot know the value of wealth. f] (4) “When I make someone weep, My mercy is aroused for the weeper. If I do not wish to give, I do not awaken the desire, but when I do, I affect his heart with grief and then open it with joy. My mercy depends on that goodly weeping; when he weeps waves rise up from the sea of My mercy." [end of summaries]

Section 6, is long for a section, being 120 verses in all, and has a number of different themes. Some of these themes reflect the different relationships this section has to other sections in this twelve­fold structure. Narratively it completes the second block of three sections in that it completes the story barely started in section 4 and interrupted and discussed in Section 5. Having told the story, and drawn the conclusion that we cannot trust other people as most are devilish, it moves to a fairly full explanation of what might be termed Iblīs's agenda. In doing this here it elaborates and develops the end part of Section 1, thus completing through parallelism the first half of the discourse, that is, the first six sections as a block of six. As the last section in a block of six, it could well be in parallel relationship with the last section in the second block of six, that is Section 12, and it quite clearly is. Both are stories about Sufi travellers arriving at a khānqāh and what happened to their respective asses. The parallelism could be stated: "It is bad enough when a Sufi's ass becomes ill because the Sufi, trusting the outer form and words, did not realise the servant was a rascal (Section 6); how much worse then when a Sufi loses his ass altogether because, through desire and blind imitation, he did not realise the resident Sufis themselves were a bunch of rascals" (Section 12). All these three parallelisms, with Section I regarding Iblīs, with Section 3 and 4 regarding the story, and with Section 12, are, if you like, secondary to the primary parallelism, which is with Section 7.

Because Sections 6 and 7 are at the very centre of the structure, it would be expected that these two sections would contain the innermost message of the discourse, the central human dilemma applicable to all, but particularly to the Sufi aspirant, the sālik, in the khānqāh to whom much is directly addressed in these two sections. The parallelism could be stated as: "We trust and follow those we should not (the rascally servant, the body, Iblīs) in Section 6; we do not follow and trust those we should (the Qur'ān, Muhammad and the prophets, God) in Section 7. Section 7 answers the question why the Sufi and, by implication, all of us succumb to the wiles of Iblīs, with the striking picture of the falcon, the spirit of man, preferring Hell to Heaven. There is a clear parallelism between the sorry state of the Sufi's stricken ass in Section 6 and the state of the mutilated falcon in Section 7. The reason for their state is first, in Section 6, because the Sufi trusted the words of the servant, when he shouldn't have; second, because in Section 7 the falcon failed to heed the words from the Qur'ān LIX 20 "The people of the Fire and the people of the Garden (Paradise) are not equal." Section 6 has a lengthy explanation about words, about how every expression is a symbol of a state; and the state is as the hand and the expression the tool, and the two must match, because "Holy words do not abide in blind hearts but the Devil's words goes into crooked hearts as a crooked shoe on a crooked foot. Wisdom leaves you if you are unworthy to receive it." Section 7 illustrates this through the falcon ignoring the Qur'ānic text. Both sections make mention of the various prophets, but in Section 7, the prophets find their culmination in Muhammad to whom the reader and hearer is advised to be grateful. At this point we can illustrate again the structure of this Discourse:

 

Section 1          New moon; hair in eye; Iblīs beguiles; stay

awake; rank and wealth robbers

Section 2          Snake catcher's snake stolen; thief bitten,

dies; owner glad God ignored him

Section 3          Jesus and the bones; fool wanted them

revived; God says fools self­made

Section 4          Sufi entrusts his ass to the servant; the single

mole of Divine Beauty

Section 5          Outer meaning not inner meaning interrupts

the discourse

Section 6          Sufi's ass useless as servant ignored it; the

Devil's agenda

 

Section 7          Falcon prefers Hell; says he has sinned;

God's mercy depends on weeping

Section 8          Shaikh A¦mad, creditors and halwa seller;

weeping; didn't see its meaning

Section 9          Weep little or be blind; eye must see Divine

Beauty or it is no use; Jesus

Section 10        Jesus; bones; lion kills fool; the eye;

lamentation; blind imitation

Section 11        Peasant stroked ox in dark; really a lion;

blind imitation not direct seeing

Section 12        Sufi lost his ass through blind imitation;

desire is hair in the eye; greed

 

The diagram shows how the sections form four blocks of three sections each. The first block of three is united by the theme of stupidity, ablahī. The second block is united by the single narrative and the theme of taking the outer form and not the inner content. The third block is united by the theme of weeping. The fourth block is united by the theme of taqlīd, blind imitation.

Another way of looking at the diagram is to see it as two blocks of six sections, the first block of six sections in parallel with the second block of six sections, which in some way answers, illustrates, or develops the first. Section 12 provides a wonderfully comic yet at the same time tragic climax to the discourse. I wish now to look at the discourse as a whole, having regard to the three levels upon which, as Maulānā declares at the outset of the poem, the Mathnawī operates: the outer, literal level; the inner, symbolic, Sufi level; and the level of reality, ¦aqīqat. The last level does not form part of any interpretation since it is something that corms about spontaneously and spasmodically in the hearer or reader through the process of realisation, ta¦qīq, certainly as the outcome of engagement with the previous two levels, but not in any programmatic way. The first level, the outer, literal, level, considers these twelve sections consecutively, a string of vivid anecdotes with accompanying explanation, illustrative of the human comedy. It is the second, inner level, the bā§in, that relates to the Sufi traveller, the aspiring sālik who listened to these verses in the khānqāh. On this level the twelve sections of the Discourse are read synoptically as demonstrated in the analysis above, using the structuring and the parallelism to assist in understanding the distribution of emphasis and significance. The Discourse could properly be entitled: "How and why we do not see reality".

You have been very patient, not in the least like the hearers of the Mathnawī who interrupted the discourse because they wanted the outer form of the story. In fact, quite the reverse, you want the inner interpretation and I have spoken only of the structure, the form, and, even worse, I have no time to share with you the inner interpretation I have which runs to many pages. Instead, I wish to conclude by showing briefly how the discourse moves from the outer to the inner when read synoptically.

In this reading the sections are taken in parallel pairs moving from the outside to the inside. The outer pair, Sections 1 and 12, are concerned with desire and how it prevents the apprehension of reality, first, through only seeing what one wants to see, second, through only seeing what one has learnt to see and do by imitation, at second­hand. The second parallel pairing, Sections 2 and 11, are thematically related through mistaking the true value. In the first case the snake was mistaken for an asset instead of a deadly liability out of desire for wealth, and, in the second case, the lion, God, was mistaken for the comfortable, familiar ox because of taqlīd. The third parallel pairing, the story of Jesus and the bones, is about wanting the wrong thing, first, because the fool asked for the Name to use himself, something quite beyond his capacity, and then asked Jesus to use it himself, instead of realising he was inwardly dead and could ask the friend of God to bring him to life rather than a stranger, and also for choosing to make bones alive instead of the spirit. The fourth parallel pair, Sections 4 and 9, appear to be more hopeful in that they are both concerned with seeing reality, although in their contexts they are less so, since, in the first, the author suggests that the exposition of how Pīrs see reality could be boring and wearisome to some, and, in the second, the suggestion that weeping will damage the eye frightens the ascetic and there is also the warning that spiritual power should not be used for the body or one's livelihood. The fifth parallel pair, Sections 5 and 8, are concerned with the inherent tendency to see the outer form as real and not the inner reality, whether in seeking the outer story, in the first case, or, in the second, in the creditors not seeing the reality of Shaikh Ahmad's death­bed strategy. The final pair, Sections 6 and 7, are respectively concerned with what and whom one does trust but shouldn't, and what and whom one should trust but doesn't. In the first, the Sufi should not have trusted the words of the servant, nor the servant himself, because that is the way Iblīs works, but he should have trusted his dreams and vision; the sank should not trust those like the Sufi who are only Sufi in appearance and not in reality, nor the stranger, his own body and nafs, nor even holy words without the inner content and experience in those who use them, but he should be responsible for himself In the second, the falcon should have trusted the king, God or the Perfect N an, and not the old crone, the world. The sālik should trust God and the Shaikh, but there is an inherent disposition in the nafs to prefer Hell to Heaven, so the sālik separates himself from God through conceit, spiritual pride, and over familiarity with God, whereas he should be penitent like the falcon, know himself and be humble and sit with reverence, as well as feeling gratitude towards Muhammad and the religion, and seeking to become free of the idol in himself and delivering his heart from idolatry. This final pair of sections, at the heart of the Discourse, contain, as would be expected, the heart of the sālik’s problem, as well as its solution: whether to follow Iblīs to unreality, or the Perfect Man, his Shaikh, to reality, within his own heart.

Synoptically then the reading moves from the outer sections to the inner. The Discourse begins with desire preventing the seeing of reality; this leads, in turn, to mistaken valuations, which then leads to seeking the wrong things. It is possible to see reality, but there is an inherent tendency to accept the outer appearance and not the inner reality, which leads in turn to following what and whom should not be trusted, Iblīs and the nafs, and not following what and whom should be trusted, Muhammad and Almighty God. Discourse One is a fairly complete diagnosis of the aspiring Sufi's situation, together with an analysis of seeing and not seeing reality, with which it is intimately connected. With the synoptic reading in mind, to hear or read again the twelve sections sequentially, is greatly to enrich and make more vivid and memorable the cameos and anecdotes as they unfold, since they are now set within an overall structure of significance. The shape, meanings, and colour of each anecdote, now sharpened by its context of significance, enter the memory and understanding as taqlīd, ready to be recalled as life's circumstances dictate, no longer, it is hoped, as taqlīd but as ta¦qīq, realisation.

 

*********************

 The Structure of Book One of the Mathnawī as a Whole

 Seyed G.Safavi, SOAS, University of London, UK

 

The two previous papers have presented the general principles of parallelism and chiasmus, and have shown how Mawlānā used these two principles to organise his great work in such a way that if you read it linearly and sequentially you form an impression of randomness, and if you read it synoptically you find it is very tightly and beautifully structured. We have suggested that it was Mawlānā’s intention that it should be like this because it reflects precisely his view of the world, of reality, in which behind the chaotic randomness and multiplicity of appearance there lies a unity of meaning and purpose that is the very evidence of the Greatness of the Creator. Mawlānā hid the unity and Organisation of the Mathnawī in two ways: first, by using the two unexpected organising principles of parallelism and chiasmus; second, by giving no indication as to which sections to take together as a maqālah, a discourse. The previous paper has shown how Mawlānā uses parallelism and chiasmus to organise and integrate the sections within a discourse, this paper will show how he uses these same principles to organise and integrate the discourses in a book, here Book I.

The first thing we did with Book I was to identify the discourses and to work out the structures, both narrative and thematic, of each discourse. This took about 18 months to do. It is easier to do this with Book I than with the later books because the narrative elements, the story lines, are much more obvious as discourse markers than in the later Mathnawī. We found that there were twelve discourses or maqālāt and three independent sections that served as link sections between certain discourses. The structure of Book I that emerged we can show as a diagram:

 

The Structure of Book One

 

Discourse I                   The King and the Handmaiden [9]

Link                             The Greengrocer and the Parrot [1]

Discourse II                  The Jewish King who for Bigotry's sake used

to Slay Christians [24]

Discourse III                Another Jewish King who tried to destroy

the religion of Jesus [7]

Discourse IV                The Lion, the Beasts and the Hare [34]

 

 

Discourse V                 The Caliph 'Umar and the Ambassador of

Rum [8]

Discourse VI                The Merchant and the Parrot [12]

 

Link                             Explanation of the tradition: “Whatever God

Wills Cometh to Pass” [1]

Discourse VII   The Story of the Harper [12]

Link                             The Two Angels [1]

Discourse VIII The Caliph, the Arab of the Desert and his Wife [32]

Discourse IX                The Lion, the wolf and the Fox [6]

Discourse X                 Joseph and the Mirror [11]

Discourse XI                The Vision of Zayd [6]

Discourse XII               'Ali and the Infidel Knight [9]

 

I must say at once that it is our belief that if anyone in this room had undertaken this task, they would have found the same structure, that is, we have added nothing but disclosure. It is now possible to examine Book I as a whole. The formal structure is set out in the table above which shows the twelve discourses are arranged chiasmically and in parallel. This I shall examine in detail shortly. The first and twelfth discourses, you can see, have both nine sections, (shown by the numeral nine after the identifying name of the discourse) and the sixth and seventh discourses, separated by a highly significant link section at the very centre of the book, both have twelve sections. There is confirmatory symmetry in the patterning of the discourses which have odd and even numbers of sections, giving Odd, Even, Odd, Even, Even, Even, (turn) Even, Even, Even, Odd, Even, Odd. Further clear evidence of the emergent structure is given by the fact that Discourse Four, a Lion story, is in parallel with Discourse Nine, another Lion story, the combined total of their sections being 40. Discourse Five, a Caliph story, similarly, is in parallel with Discourse Eight, another Caliph story, and again the combined total of their sections is 40. W hen looked at as two halves of six discourses each, both halves show a link section between the first and the second discourses.

The formal structure shown in the diagram is confirmed and further elucidated by the thematic structure, which we come to now as we look briefly at the thematic parallelism between discourses. Particularly strong is the parallelism between Discourse One and Discourse Twelve. First, both share the same internal structure ABCDEDCBA, which places a specific emphasis on E. Section E is the fifth section in each discourse and if you examine them you will find these two sections are spiritually highly significant. Second, when the King greets the Divine Physician in Discourse One, he addresses him as 'the Chosen One, the Approved One' using the epithet Murta¤ā, which is a title applied to ‘Alī, which he then follows with words attributed to 'Ali. This permits a provisional identification of the Divine Physician as ‘Alī or the Perfect Man. This is confirmed in the parallel Discourse Twelve which is explicitly about ‘Alī as the Perfect Man. Third, narratively the parallelism between the two stories is that the first is about killing when it is the will of God, while the second is about not killing when it is not the will of God. Fourth, within Book One as a whole, which deals with the nafs, the first Discourse gives the beginning of the way, the sulūk, with the nafs failing in love with the world and having to be weaned off it by the Divine Physician and Love, and the last discourse is the completion of the way and perfect action illustrated in the total surrender and obedience to the Will of God exemplified by the ikhlā¥ of ‘Alī. There are many other parallelisms between these two discourses; both place emphasis on patience, ¥abr; the maiden's love of this world in the first discourse is in contrastive parallelism with ‘Alī’s love of the next world in the final discourse; the first discourse begins with things turning out worse than was hoped for when the maiden fell ill and the doctors failed to cure her because they did not say "If God wills", while the final discourse begins and continues with things turning out better than could be expected, especially for the Knight who spat in ‘Alī’s face, and ‘Alī’s future murderer, because of ‘Alī acting from ikhlā¥ and obedience to God's will; both discourses end with the contrastive parallelism of the rightness of killing in the first and the rightness of not killing in the second; both have at their centre in the fifth section a major passage, in the first discourse, on Love, human and divine, the Perfect Man and mention of Shams, in the second discourse on the need for humility and a great prayer to God for help without which nothing is possible. Between these two major passages comes the link section between Discourse Six and Discourse Seven on the tradition "Whatever God wills comes to pass" which is similarly majestic and magisterial in tone and style and completes the structural and thematic symmetry. There are so many parallelisms of various kinds between these two discourses that it is difficult to chose a single phrase to encapsulate them all but perhaps 'The Will of God and pure and impure love and action' comes closest.

The parallelism between Discourse Two and Discourse Eleven is equally complex but could be best expressed as that of 'vision'. The Jewish King is squint­eyed, a¦wal; he sees double and cannot see that Moses and Jesus are one. His vizier confuses the Christians by producing a multiplicity of conflicting doctrines and appointing twelve different successors so the Christians end up killing each other. This multiple vision is in contrastive parallelism with Discourse Eleven about the pure vision of Zayd. Zayd's asceticism and self­discipline has been rewarded with a vision of people's natures and fates as seen from the next world and he wishes to speak about it. The Prophet, Lord of both worlds, tells him not to speak since these are things that God wishes to remain hidden. It is important that it is Muhammad who instructs Zayd. In Discourse Two, Moses is the symbol of plurality and this world, Jesus of unity and the next world and Muhammad, whose name was a refuge for the Christians who survived the slaughter, the symbol of unity in diversity and diversity in unity and of both worlds. Discourse Two ends with the question: "If the name of Muhammad can save, what of the man?" Discourse Eleven answers this by showing at the beginning Muhammad as the Perfect Man. In the first discourse the Christians, as the travellers on the way, are shown as deceived and with distorted vision. In the second, the traveller is Zayd who has achieved a state worthy of pure vision but needs further instruction on what can be said from the Lord of the two worlds, Muhammad. Thus vision, Muhammad and living in both worlds constitute the main parallelism between these two discourses.

Between Discourse Three and Discourse Ten, the parallelism can be summed up as 'reflection back and return to one's origin'. In Discourse Three, The King sets up an idol of the nafs and if the Christians, the travellers on the way, don't bow down to it they are thrown into the fire. The Christians, following the child, all entered the fire and obtained fanā. The King's wickedness was reflected back to him by their state and actions and he was shamed. Finally the fire blazed up and killed him and his fellow Jews. These Jews were born of fire and returned to fire since everything returns to its own congener. Discourse Ten also deals with these two themes, the mirror being a central image, especially the mirror of the heart which needs to be cleaned by ascetic disciplines. The return to one's source in this discourse is the return to God with the mirror of the heart polished so that it reflects back God's Beauty.

Discourse Four and Discourse Nine are clearly narratively parallel in that they are both Lion stories but they are also thematically parallel in that they both deal with the self, the first with egoism and selfishness and the second with selflessness. In the first discourse the nafs wants control and kills itself at the end of the story. In the second story the nafs is killed at the beginning and the Lion acts to ensure the freedom of the animals.

Discourse Five and Discourse Eight are both Caliph stories and the theme that makes them parallel is that of faqr or spiritual poverty. In the first story the ambassador, who is by definition rich and a Christian, expects the Caliph 'Umar to have a palace and is surprised by his 'poverty'. The ambassador can be said to represent the traveller at the very beginning of the way when he first meets his Pīr, 'Umar. In Discourse Eight, the Arab himself is already a faqīr and the story shows the various stages on the way as he obtains harmony with his nafs, his wife. In addition, then, to poverty, the stories are made parallel with the further themes of the stages on the way and the importance of the Pīr. There is one further important parallelism between these two discourses, which is the development of the role of the Caliph. In Discourse Five he is the Pīr but in Discourse Eight he is God.

Discourse Six and Discourse Seven are parallel through the theme of voice, āwāz. In the first discourse, the parrot is in the cage because of his voice and he only becomes free when he makes himself as if dead. He starts the story in the cage and ends the story free. Discourse Seven starts at the universal level with the Voice and Breathings of God and the particular story of the Harper comes in the second half. He too has been led astray by his voice throughout his life and now he repents in his old age and God grants him riches and the transformation of his nafs. The two stories show a clear development from the voice of the parrot which keeps the parrot in the cage to the voice of God which sets the spirit free.

In our research, having identified each of the twelve discourses in Book One, and worked out the formal and thematic structure of each, we examined the parallelism between the chiasmically arranged discourses and arrived at the diagram above, which we viewed with wonder because of its beauty, its symmetry and its total integration. Then, in a blinding revelation, we realised that this structure, in fact, discloses the rationale of the whole book. We realised that the discourses were organised into three blocks, each of four discourses, and that each block dealt with one of the three aspects or states of the nafs. When we looked at the discourses sequentially, we saw that the first four discourses display the negative aspects of the nafs, the nafs­i ammārah, the nafs that incites to evil; the next four discourses show the situation changing as the nafs becomes the nafs­i lawwāmah, the nafs that blames itself, and the last four discourses show the positive and developed nafs, the nafs­i mu§ma'innah, the nafs that is at peace. The diagram shows the division into three blocks by putting an extra space between Discourse Four and Discourse Five, and another extra space between Discourse Eight and Discourse Nine. Let us see briefly how each block works, beginning with the first block consisting of Discourses One to Four.

In Discourse One, the nafs falling in love with the world is the starting point of the way and the problem is resolved only by Divine Intervention. Discourse Two shows how the nafs from its envy produces double vision and multiplicity which deceives and confuses the spiritual powers as symbolised by the Christians. Discourse Three presents the choice of worshipping the nafs or taking on the fire of asceticism which leads to fanā. It is the fire of lust which destroys the nafs worshipper. In the next discourse, Discourse Four, the lion is egoism which seeks to control the nafs but which destroys itself due to the Hare, who symbolises 'aql. In these four discourses, first the goldsmith, then the vizier, then the Jewish King and then the lion are all killed but, in fact, each has brought about his own destruction. Each of these four discourses display sequentially one or more aspects of the nafs­i ammārah: the failing in love with the world, the confusion caused by multiplicity and the double vision arising from envy, the worship of the self and anger, and, finally, egoism and pride.

Looking at the second block of four discourses, Discourse Five brings about the beginnings of a change due to the first meeting with a Pīr who explains about ¦āl and maqām and why the spirit is combined with matter. Discourse Six shows the merchant as the nafs­i lawwāmah, the nafs which blames itself, of whom it is said "God loves his agitation". Discourses Seven and Eight give further examples of this form of the nafs in the persons of the Harper and the Wife of the Arab. These last two discourses see the nafs­i lawwāmah moving to the next stage, the nafs­i mu§ma'innah. As with the first block of four discourses, this second block similarly shows four stages in the development of the second type of selfhood, the self which blames itself. The first shows the nafs in the form of the unbelieving ambassador who in the grip of the worldly assumptions of māl o jāh, wealth and rank, being awakened to spiritual things. The second shows the nafs in the form of the merchant regretting bitterly having killed the spirit through what he said and repeated. Then comes the turning point of the book with the Voice and Breathings of God permitting the repentant nafs in the form of the Harper to transform further, but only when it gives up lamentation. Finally, the entire process of transformation is exemplified in the Arab and his wife whose eventual harmony permits the nafs to move to its final state.

The final block of four discourses all have to do with the nafs­i mu§ma'innah, the self that believes and is at peace. They deal respectively with selflessness, polishing the heart to be a mirror for God, spiritual vision and ikhlā¥, pure action from the Will of God, sincerity. None of these states would be possible until the Cars had transformed into nafs­i mu§ma'innah, each is a sequential development of this final state of the self.

In Book I the subject then is the nafs, chosen almost certainly in homage to Farīduddīn 'A§§ār in whose Ilāhī­Nāmeh the first of the six sons symbolises the nafs. Everything in Book I is written from the point of view of the nafs. Even Love, for example, is treated in this book from the point of view of the nafs. In the opening 35 verses, before the discourses begin, Mawlānā says:

 

Hail, O Love that bringest us good gain ­ thou art the physician of all our ills,

The remedy of our pride and vainglory, our Plato and our Galen! [verses 23­24]

 

In Discourse One the physician arrives, needed to treat the nafs, symbolised by the sick handmaiden who has fallen in love with the world, symbolised by the goldsmith. You will all know the story well so we need not repeat it, but one identification of the physician must be Love itself, as well as all the other possible identifications. Mawlānā makes clear at the very outset that this Way is the Way of Love, not the way of asceticism, zuhd. Certainly, self­ restraint, ¥abr and self­discipline, riyāzat, are necessary, but in the treatment of the sick nafs, the Divine physician does not treat the handmaiden, the nafs, but poisons the goldsmith thereby reducing the attractiveness of the world for the nafs. The poison used, the commentators suggest, is 'irfān and Love, the sort of states that Mawlānā himself experienced with Shams of Tabriz, because there is something very autobiographical about this first discourse. In this book, whatever else he does elsewhere in the Mathnawī, Mawlānā shows Love as both the physician and the cure for our sick nafs.

As the previous papers have suggested, in this book, as in the whole of the Mathnawī, the sharī'at, the §arīqat and ¦aqīqat are best seen as levels of meaning, as organisation in depth, rather than as ordering in sequence and extension. The sharī'at level is the literal level, and the surface of the text is full of actual quotations, as well as many echoes and resonances, from the Qur'ān, to the point that in places it resembles the Qur'ān, as another panel of this conference will demonstrate. But the literal level is not just the sharī'at, it is also the sequential surface of the text, designed to appear random, anecdotal, characterised by plurality and great variety, sometimes pious sometimes comical, jumping from one subject to another, coming at the reader or hearer exactly as life and the world comes at us, successively and seemingly randomly.

Within this surface level there is the bā§in, inner, level, that of the §arīqat, and here it must be remembered that much of the Mathnawī is addressed directly to the aspiring Sufis in the khānqāh to whom it was read aloud. This inner level connects with the literal level in two ways. The first way is by means of symbolism, a well known practice in Persian Sufi works, and illustrated in the first discourse where the king is the rū¦; the handmaiden, the nafs; the goldsmith, the attractiveness of the world and so on. Mawlānā often himself tells the reader what is symbolised by what in the early parts of the Mathnawī. Symbolism, however, is multivalent and applies at as many levels of interpretation as there are levels of understanding in the reader. Rarely is there a single one to one correspondence, for that would be allegory not symbolism. The Divine Physician in Discourse One is Love, the Perfect Man, the Friend of God, the walī, ‘Alī, and Shams, all at the same time, not one to the exclusion of the others. That is why symbolism is so rich. The second way the inner level connects with the surface text is through the intricate and beautiful structures of meaning and significance which Mawlānā has hidden through the use of parallelism and chiasmus and which are revealed by a synoptic rather than a linear reading. We assign the structure and Organisation that our research has uncovered to the bā§in, inner, level of the §arīqat first, because it is hidden and requires much patience to uncover; second, because it is a unity and beautiful, which corresponds to Mawlānā's descriptions of the spiritual world; and third, because Book 1, at this level, takes the aspiring Sufi stage by stage from the nafs­i ammārah in love with the world, through all the transformations of the nafs until it reaches the nafs­i mu§ma'innah which has been transformed by ikhlā¥ to be totally obedient and true to the Will of God. It is possible to show both the sequential and the synoptic orders working together to provide this total picture of the sulūk, the Sufi path, together with the themes that connect the un­transformed situations represented in the first six discourses with the transformed situations in the last six discourses:

 

The Sequential and the Chiasmic Structure of Book One

 

 

Un­transformed		Transformed
nafs­i ammārah		^
|		^
Discourse I	Pure and impure love and action; Will of God; 'Alī	Discourse XII
|
Discourse 11	Vision; two worlds; Muhammad	Discourse XI
Discourse Ill	Reflection back; return to one's origin	Discourse X
Discourse IV	Lions; egoism and selflessness	Discourse IX
nafs­ilawwāmah		nafs­i mu§ma'innah
|		^
Discourse V	Caliphs; spiritual poverty; the Pīr	Discourse VIII
|		^
Discourse VI	Voice; imprisonment and freedom	Discourse VII
|		^
>>>>>>>>>>>	Link: “Whatever God Wills comes to pass”    >>>>>>>>>>	^

 

 

This diagram shows that the whole of Book I at the inner level is a complete course book for the aspiring Sufi. We would argue that, in order to exemplify formal, narrative, thematic and spiritual integration so beautifully within a single unified organising structure, while at the same time giving the appearance of randomness at the literal level, the whole book must have been planned very carefully before a single line was written. While this denies the view held by some of the extemporaneous nature of the production of the Mathnawī, we can be consoled by the fact that, in Mawlānā’s mind at least, creation is intelligent. Our research so far shows that in each of the first three books of the Mathnawī there are twelve discourses. The number twelve is important in Islamic cosmology for being foundational to the structure of the universe.

In conclusion there remains the level of ¦aqīqat. We believe that this level is not one we can find in the text, but what we can find when the text is in us. The text, as we have shown has two levels, the literal sequential verbal level of words and their meanings, and the inner level of contexts, symbols, parallels, significances, wholes, shapes and relationships. The verbal literal level is handled by the left hemisphere of the brain, the other level of shapes, relationships parallels, contexts etc. is handled by the right hemisphere of the brain. To read the Mathnawī again when one has fully understood the inner structures of significance and relatedness is to use both hemispheres together which can produce an enhanced state of consciousness. What enters us in that state can penetrate deeply and lead to transformations of understanding and outlook, not programmatically, but in its own time. This is realisation, ta¦qīq, which in English 'dawns', like the sun rising, but without the same temporal regularity. ta¦qīq, realisation, is clearly what Mawlānā wishes for each of us which is why he has written the Mathnawī in the way that he has. But he does not wish us only to know about reality from him, because that would be just taqlīd, second­hand imitation; he wishes us to be real, to experience reality directly, which is why in this the first book of the Mathnawī, at the bā§in, inner, Sufi level, he takes his readers and heaters systematically through all the states and transformations of the nafs, so that they may thereby be transformed.

Our research is not complete. We believe that there is a further higher Organisation of parallelism at the level of the six books as a whole, but it will be several years before we reach that. Meanwhile we are happy to share with you what we have stumbled across and hope it will be useful in your own work on the Mathnawī. We take no credit for what has been found; all the credit is due to Mawlānā, but even as I say this, I can hear Mawlānā saying: "Fool, haven't you understood one word I have written? In so far as I existed, I was only a secondary cause to the One Primary Cause, Almighty God, to whom be all praise and honour."

 

**************************

 

 Book Reviews

 

The Heart of Islamic Philosophy
The Quest for Self-Knowledge in the Teachings of Af¤al al-D¢n K¡sh¡n¢, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. xiii + 360, cloth, £45.

 William C. Chittick

 

Students of the Islamic intellectual heritage have become further indebted to William Chittick with the publication of The Heart of Islamic Philosophy. Not only is the work an invaluable resource for English speaking scholars, even those thoroughly conversant with the Persian in which the texts by B¡b¡ Af¤al were written will find the English translations a useful aid. However, it will seem to many that the book implicitly makes a very bold and controversial claim: that the heart of Islamic philosophy is to be found in a rather obscure Muslim philosopher rather than in any of its more celebrated figures. While it is unlikely that this book will convince champions of Avicenna or Mull¡ ¯adr¡ to switch allegiance to B¡b¡ Af¤al, Prof. Chittick’s work does demonstrate that B¡b¡ Af¤al has been undeservedly neglected. I am sure that many will be prompted to re-examine Islamic philosophy in the redoubled light of the contributions of B¡b¡ Af¤al and William Chittick, and will be richly rewarded for doing so. No doubt there was no intention to provoke childish quibbles about which philosopher better gets to the heart of things, for the heart manifests itself in many guises. Indeed, this is a point that B¡b¡ Af¤al himself underscores when speaking of the human heart or soul. Likewise, we should understand that Islamic philosophy or ¦ikmat has a non-manifest meaning that is its reality, its heart and soul; and all the works of the philosophers that we read with our eyes are the manifest subordinates, soldiers and army of this heart.[1]

The book consists of a preface and six chapters. Along with the notes and indices, it comes to three hundred sixty pages of rather small print. I would have preferred a bulkier book that was easier to read. The six chapters are divided into two parts of three chapters each, but part one, “Islamic Philosophy” is less than a hundred pages, and is really an extended introduction to part two, “The Writings of B¡b¡ Af¤al”, which contains translations of roughly half of his entire extant corpus. There are twenty-four pages of valuable notes that I wish were printed as footnotes instead of endnotes, and indices of ¡y¡t, ¦ad¢ths and sayings, and names and terms.

Chapter One tells us as much as is known about B¡b¡ Af¤al and places his work in the context of Persian philosophy of the late twelfth century (d. A.H. 610). Like other Muslim philosophers of that time and thereafter, B¡b¡ Af¤al was a rational mystic who sought God in immediate self-knowledge. Unlike the majority of other Muslim philosophers, he wrote most of his works in Persian. Prof. Chittick’s translations from the Persian, like his translations from Arabic, are marked by a flare for using fairly literal translations of key terms to highlight matters that are important to his interpretation of the texts. In this work he retreats a bit by using the more prosaic “quiddity” for “m¡hiyyah”, instead of “whatness”, as in his books on Ibn ‘Arab¢, but there are still such inventive terms as “foreverness” for “ham¢shag¢”, “godwariness” for “taqw¡”, “unneedingness” for “b¢niy¡z¢”, “without-selfness” for “b¢-khwud¢”, and others. Chittick uses this method with great skill, so that the reader is offered an interpretive translation that makes use of unusual turns of phrase and expressions without losing lucidity. The result is translation that the novice will be able to understand, though not without effort, and at which those with more experience in the field will marvel. The interpretations offered by Prof. Chittick are always well grounded in the major themes of his authors and aid the reader in coming to an appreciation of the depths of the Islamic worldview, whether through philosophy or mysticism. The chapter ends with a catalogue of the known writings of B¡b¡ Af¤al.

The second chapter is a brief (less than forty pages) introduction to Islamic philosophy. After a short discussion of whether Muslim philosophers are to be taken at their word, or whether their true beliefs were more heretical than they would dare to have uttered, the chapter breaks up under eight subheadings. The first, “Philosophical Issues in the Islamic Tradition,” designates a discussion of the situation of Islamic philosophy in Islamic religious thought, and the basic differences in approach characteristic of philosophers, Sufis and theologians to some key issues.

The section called “Quality and Quantity” is a protest against the scientism that pervades modern society and inhibits the understanding of non-modern cultures. The balefulness of scientism has been discussed extensively by anthropologists, sociologists, theologians and philosophers critical of positivism. Prof. Chittick’s thinking on the issue is largely influenced René Guénon. Guénon, like many of the others who rightly find fault with scientism, unfortunately exhibits a very superficial understanding of the philosophical issues pertaining to modern science. It is claimed that modern science concerns itself only with what can be quantified and all else is cast aside as irrelevant to science and knowledge of reality. This is little more than a caricature, but on behalf of Guénon, it must be admitted that it is one that advocates of modern science are as quick to sketch as critics of modern science and technology. The section ends with a few words in condemnation of the relativism that is so common in popular Western culture, which results from the belief that goals are the results of individual preferences rather than cosmic principles.

The next section, “Basic Qualities”, continues the previous discussion. In contrast to the quantifiable properties through which modern science would describe reality, Islamic philosophy focuses on qualities that are related to the divine names. Modern science is portrayed as concerning itself with the details of the quantitative properties of things while Islamic science sought the ultimate principles of reality. But it is misleading to portray modern science as oblivious to first principles, for even Newton’s major work was called The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Newton was primarily interested in finding basic constant principles underlying motion in space. The difference between Newton’s approach to this problem and that of Muslim philosophers was not that Newton was concerned with quantity while the Muslim philosophers balanced quantity with quality. Prof. Chittick continues his argument by pointing out that the key concepts of Islamic ethics are qualitative rather than quantitative. This is a bit facile. Aristotle emphasized the point that mathematical exactitude is not to be expected in ethics,[2] although he did use the mathematical idea of finding a mean when he described virtue,[3] and he referred to moral deliberation as rational calculation.[4] Precision is not found in ethics because ethics pertains to human deliberation, not because basic principles must be qualitative rather than quantitative. The Aristotelian lesson about the absence of precision in matters of morals has been repeated by modern ethicists no less than by the giants of Islamic philosophy. Moral realism is even defended by contemporary philosophers who otherwise are inclined toward naturalism, and the only modern moral thinkers who have seriously attempted to quantify moral thought have been the minority of those who have espoused utilitarianism or some variant thereof. Prof. Chittick seems to push the importance of the qualitative/quantitative distinction beyond what it can bear, although some oversimplification should be excused when one attempts to contrast such broad currents of thought as Islamic philosophy and modernity.

The section entitled “Ontology: Being and Finding” is a fascinating introduction to the relation between metaphysics and epistemology in B¡b¡ Af¤al and the Aristotelian legacy in Islamic philosophy. This is followed by a section on psychology. Some of the remarks in this section suggest certain affinities between Islamic philosophy and German idealism, and although Prof. Chittick explicitly warns against thinking of Islamic philosophy in terms of Kant or the idealists, it is easy to get confused about these issues. One of the valuable keys Prof. Chittick provides to help us through them is a reminder that non-modern culture does not make use of the objective/subjective distinction as we have come to know it. Nevertheless, the Muslim philosophers did recognize a difference between the external world and the mental world. Properties of things found in the external world are subdivided precisely according to how these properties are related to the external and internal worlds.[5]

The last three sections of the chapter pertain to the mutual reflections of Islamic cosmology and anthropology. In these sections Prof. Chittick shows us how cosmological discussions of creation and the return of all things to God relate to ideas about the road to human perfection. The chapter ends with a complaint about how Muslims have lost touch with their intellectual traditions of philosophy and ‘irf¡n, and tend to study modern medicine and engineering instead of these traditional sciences. As the readers of this Journal are well aware, interest in Islamic intellectual traditions is growing among Muslims and the quality of research being produced in these areas is improving; so, some cautious optimism in this regard may be justified.

Chapter Three, “Basic Philosophical Notions,” brings us closer to B¡b¡ Af¤al’s own philosophy by introducing some key ideas of Islamic philosophy along with translations of passages from al-Kind¢, Ibn S¢n¡, the Ikhw¡n al-¯af¡’ and the Arabic version of Plotinus ascribed to Aristotle. Many of the basic notions are fairly standard: philosophy, body and spirit, form and matter and substance and accident. There are also, however, some topics that are less commonly discussed in introductions to Islamic philosophy, such as levels of awareness and complementarities. Most interesting of all is the discussion of the plurality of worlds in Islamic philosophy, in which Prof. Chittick distinguishes worlds that are vertically related in a hierarchy from those that are at the same level. The basic division is between the sensory world and the spiritual world, this world and the other world, the temporal world and the eternal world. As usual, the author does not forget to help us along to see how these distinctions serve in the spiritual quest and the deepening of theoretical knowledge.

With chapter four, we begin part two of the book, “The Writings of B¡b¡ Af¤al”. Chapter four is devoted to an introduction to three important thinkers whose work is important in B¡b¡ Af¤al’s philosophy: Aristotle, Hermes and Ghaz¡l¢. Prof. Chittick introduces the reception of these thinkers in Islamic thought and provides translations from the works of B¡b¡ Af¤al pertinent to each of them. B¡b¡ Af¤al’s translations into Persian of Arabic texts attributed to Aristotle and Hermes provide an important insight into how Greek thought was understood by Muslim intellectuals. The section on Ghaz¡l¢ consists of B¡b¡ Af¤al’s epitome of the K¢miy¡-yi Sa‘¡dat.

Chapter five, “Writings on Practice”, contains hortative poetry, a couple prayers, all of his letters, and some essays that give advice to those who would seek wisdom and salvation. The poetry is tastefully interspersed with the prose. Together they provide an illuminating glimpse into Islamic high culture and letters, but the interest they arouse is far from merely historical or literary. Just perusing this chapter suffices to make it clear that B¡b¡ Af¤al was a true sage. Philosophy is no idle intellectual pastime here, but a love of the sort of wisdom that leaves the self transparent before God.

Chapter six is a meaty one hundred thirty-nine pages of essays, treatises and a few poems. Four treatises are translated in full: The Makings and Ornaments of Well-Provisioned Kings, The Book of the Everlasting, The Rungs of Perfection, and The Book of the Road’s End. It is here that we engage with B¡b¡ Af¤al as a philosopher. The longest of these is The Book of the Everlasting, and in order to give the prospective reader some idea of what lies in store, a summary of this work might be found useful.

The announced aim of The Book of the Everlasting is to stir the reader to recognize the end and origin of self. It is divided into four sections: (1) on the divisions of the sciences, (2) on recognizing the self and its path, (3) on recognizing the beginning, and (4) on recognizing the end.

B¡b¡ Af¤al divides the sciences into three: worldly, afterworldly and intermediary, pertaining to thought. It will be clearer to present the divisions in a tabular form.

 

1. Worldly sciences:

1.1. sciences of talking

1.1.1. general talking

1.1.1.1. use of the voice

1.1.1.2. pronunciation of letters

1.1.1.3. utterance of words

1.1.2. specific talking

1.1.2.1. knowledge of the root and provision of speech, which leads to the science of music

1.1.2.2. knowledge of the profit and benefit of speech, which leads to the science of logic, which is like a mediator between the worldly and afterworldly sciences

1.1.2.3. knowledge of the potency of speech and its guises, which leads to linguistics and grammar

1.2. sciences of doing

1.2.1. crafts pertaining to the movement of the limbs, e.g., carpentry, ironworking, goldsmithing

1.2.2. crafts in which the movement of the limbs is incidental, e.g., writing, alchemy, the science of devices

1.2.3. shar¢‘ah, including provisions for people to live together, such as politics, transactions, marriage, worship

1.2.4. the science of good breeding (farhang), by which good and bad character traits are recognized, the good acquired and the bad avoided

2. Sciences of Thought

2.1. definitions and demonstrations, associated with logic

2.2. arithmetic and the sciences of number

2.3. geometry, astronomy and cosmology, also astrology and the interpretation of dreams

2.4. sciences of nature and medicine

3. That-worldly knowledge

3.1. knowing “the horizons and the souls” to arrive at taw¦¢d

3.2. recognizing the self’s shelter after this life

 

Needless to say, this is an unusual division, by no means a blind imitation of the Aristotelian divisions, and at significant variance from the divisions given by al-F¡r¡b¢ and Ibn S¢n¡.[6]

The second section, “On Recognizing Self”, begins by attributing disagreements among different schools of thought to disagreements of language. B¡b¡ Af¤al then advises his readers that the most important sorts of knowledge for them to obtain are, first, about encountering God and reaching certainty about His oneness and, second, about the creation of the world and the human. God is encountered through hearing, seeing and knowing, and each of these can be general or specific. The human world is the key to understanding the signs of God in the horizons and in our souls, and through those signs one is led to the divine encounter. Once one recognizes the manifest and nonmanifest signs, they are to be erased so that knowledge and wisdom may arise, and it is understood that God is like nothing else.

Section three is about beginning. There are discussions of beginnings in space and time. Location and time are measured within this world, but the world itself in its totality is neither in space nor time. When one seeks the beginning of the world, one must give up the search for a temporal or spatial beginning. Furthermore, the entire world with all its levels of mineral, vegetative and animal, may be seen as the beginning of the human. The human soul, likewise, has its stages that culminate in reaching God through recognition and knowledge, when it is called the “holy spirit”. B¡b¡ Af¤al seems to commit a fallacy by arguing that since the human body and soul are alike in that both are substance, it follows that they are the same substance; but more important than the argument is the view articulated, and at the end of the treatise, B¡b¡ Af¤al himself notifies his readers that he has proceeded by way of reminder rather than argument and demonstration. Rather than a Cartesian dualism of body and soul, we find here that as long as body and soul are united, they constitute a single “I”.

This “I”, in both body and soul, is in a constant state of transformation. The end toward which the soul searches is a return to its origin in God. The soul has moved away from its origin as it became captive to the body. In order to find the path of its return, the soul requires knowledge and wisdom. Death is a transformation whose outcome is based on the knowledge gained while in the state of attachment to the body. Good works are seen as mere prerequisites for the knowledge and certainty that culminates in taw¦¢d.

The other essays and treatises include discussions of metaphysics, cosmology, anthropology, epistemology, ethics, politics and government, all informed by references to the Qur’¡n and a¦¡d¢th. No matter what topic is discussed, B¡b¡ Af¤al never loses sight of the goal of aiding the seeker on the path to God. No matter how abstruse the topic, B¡b¡ Af¤al never gives in to a dry intellectualism. The practical side of the quest for certainty displays itself most brilliantly in this edificatory role. Although B¡b¡ Af¤al wrote centuries ago, Muslims today should be careful not to make the mistake of thinking that his views are irrelevant to the contemporary world. For example, contemporary writers on hermeneutics often stress the importance of self-knowledge for understanding, and B¡b¡ Af¤al’s work suggests various ways in which this self-understanding can be explored and connected with the understanding of the natural, human and divine sciences.

No one with any interest in Islamic philosophy can afford to overlook this book, and English speaking Muslims with no particular interest in philosophy or ‘irf¡n will find that this work provides a rewarding way to reconnect with the Islamic intellectual tradition.

 

°¡jj Mu¦ammad Legenhausen

The Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, Qom, Iran

 

***

 

 

The Theology of R¡m¡nuja: Realism and Religion

London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002, pp. xiii + 185, cloth, £45.

 

C.J. Bartley

 

This is an important book on the theology of R¡m¡nuja and for the wider field of the history of Indian philosophy. Bartley begins with a general introduction to R¡m¡nuja, placing him in the context of the South Indian Sri Vai¥nava tradition and Ved¡nta philosophy. For R¡m¡nuja, devotion (bhakti) to a transcendent theistic reality is intellectual and contemplative rather than emotional and always constrained by a person’s social (i.e. caste) obligations. Bartley does an excellent job in showing how this intellectual devotionalism relates to debates that R¡m¡nuja inherits concerning the status of scripture, the nature of language, realist and non-realist metaphysics, and social and ritual obligation. For example, R¡m¡nuja agreed with the direct realism of the Kum¡rila M¢m¡ms¡ view of the sentence as a series of word-meanings, in opposition to the anti-realist Prabh¡kara M¢m¡ms¡ view that a word only means anything in the context of a sentence. For R¡m¡nuja, language has the capacity to signify a differentiated reality with words themselves being made up of a base and verbal or nominal suffixes, which means that words are made up to express a specific sense. This difference between words is due to the difference in the objects to which they refer (p. 32). This allows R¡m¡nuja to develop a realist, pluralist metaphysics in which language refers to a real self, a real world, and a real transcendent reality. But the relation between self, world, and God is not simple and the world must be seen as a mode of the divine, specifically the body of God. 

Through five chapters Bartley takes the reader through a fascinating account of the discourse in which R¡m¡nuja participated, discussing the ‘static’ conception of absolute reality by the Advaita Ved¡nta non-dualists and showing the opposition to this doctrine, not only by theistic realists such as R¡m¡nuja but also by other idealists such as the Kashmiri ¯aivas. Through taking the everyday sense of the individual as unreal, the non-dualist Advaita Ved¡ntins make a fundamental error for R¡m¡nuja, who maintained that selves are embodied agents and the real subject of predication (which links in to his realist understanding of language). Bartley explains how for R¡m¡nuja consciousness takes on the forms of its objects (a position not far removed from Aristotle one might add) and, in contrast to some other Indian philosophies, cannot be without an object. That is, consciousness is intentional while also being reflexive. Yet consciousness is not restricted to individual beings but is a property of the absolute (Brahman) who pervades the cosmos and dwells within the self as its Inner Ruler (antary¡min).  The being of God pervades the entire universe although is not exhausted by it for R¡m¡nuja and Bartley explains what he means by this and his arguments in contrast to other, contemporary theological positions. Chapters four and five offer detailed exegeses of two particularly important phrases from the vedic Scriptures that R¡m¡nuja comments upon, namely ‘that thou art’ and ‘the absolute is reality, consciousness, infinite.’ Here Bartley takes the opportunity to go into ved¡ntic hermeneutical theory in some technical detail, which deepens and enhances the exposition and analysis.

This book is clearly of interest to Indologists and one hopes that it might also attract the attention of comparative theologians as the issues and themes that R¡m¡nuja is addressing have some parallel in the history of Christian Theology (and probably Islamic and Jewish theologies too). The book is generally well presented and clearly laid out with a useful tentative, relative chronology at the beginning. I detected no typological errors other than that, rather frustratingly, note 52 of chapter 3 is missing in the notes. While not an introductory text, the book could be used to great effect with undergraduates who have some background in Indian philosophy. It is written in a clear style and every attempt is made to make the debates relevant by connecting them with philosophical positions in the Western world; an excellent contribution to R¡m¡nuja scholarship and the history of Indian philosophy.

 

 Gavin Flood, University of Stirling

 

 ********************

Moral Dilemmas and other topics in moral philosophy

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002, pp. 200, paper, £14.99

This is a collection of Philippa Foot’s essays on moral philosophy, and it has the characteristic clarity of her thought on a variety of moral topics. The volume is well-named, since it does include two essays on moral dilemmas, and on what Bernard Williams has called the paradox of such dilemmas. According to this paradox when we are in a dilemma we have to act poorly, whatever decision we make. This is an interpretation of such situations with which Foot is not in agreement, and she argues cogently that the doctrine of tragic choice is just misguided. When we ought to act in one way and that conflicts with someone else’s interests, the “wronged” party should recognize that he has no right to expect his interests on that occasion to be satisfied. So there is no real conflict between the two different actions, even though they cannot both be realized at the same time,

A good example of her methodology is to be found in the chapter on actions and omissions. Here she explores the idea that there is no difference between actually killing someone and allowing them to die. The absence of such a difference is often used to suggest that we are just as guilty of those who we could save but do not as are those people who directly kill them. Foot rejects this argument, maintaining that the difference is a real one. It is all a matter of agency, and this is connected to rights. We have rights to be treated in specific ways, and in general have greater rights to non-interference than otherwise. That is, we can only be interfered with if what we would otherwise do is a public danger, as, for example, when people are forced to be quarantined. We also have rights to goods and services, but these are less basic than the right to non-interference.

But take the famous case of coming across someone drowning and doing nothing to prevent it, and actually drowning someone. Foot claims these are entirely distinct, although the result is the same. We should of course rescue someone if we can, but even if we do not and could easily do so, this is not equivalent to killing him. We did not in her terms initiate the sequence of actions that resulted in the death, by contrast with the case where we actually drown the individual.

What is the significance of the distinction between the initiation of a fatal sequence and the refusal to save a life? Foot is quite right in thinking that we do make this distinction, and we make it all the time. But the question is not whether we make this distinction, we certainly do. The question is whether we are entitled to make this distinction, and here Foot has a more difficult task. She never manages to put her finger on precisely what the basis of the distinction is, and she returns to this issue again and again, as though never quite satisfied with how it is resolved.

The suggestion that omissions count as much as actions might be regarded as taking a more strenuous attitude to personal responsibility than is the norm. Is it for this reason to be ruled out as too demanding? What would rule it out? Foot suggests that it is ruled out just by what the relevant terms mean, and this characterizes her approach in the book as a whole. She picks out very carefully the connections between terms in moral language and argues plausibly that that language is closely connected to our notion of what it is to be human. But there are limitations on what examining a particular use of language will produce conceptually, it is based on a conservatism that rules out developments of moral ideas that otherwise might seem rather plausible, or at least worth running with for a bit.  It may well be that treating omissions like actions is to make a serious error. For example, it might lead to a form of morality that is unworkable because it makes too great demands on its practitioners. The end result could then be paralysis, a disinclination to act since each action could be contrasted with an omission that seemed equally important, or even more so. But that is not what Foot claims. For her we do not even have to raise this issue since before we get to it we should understand that the principle of agency rules out linking actions and omissions in this way. As an opponent of utilitarianism she certainly would not wish to base any theory on the results of a state of affairs!

While readers are likely to be captivated by the acuity and care with which the author writes, this is not an inconsequential objection to the approach that Foot employs. In her arguments with Williams this comes out quite nicely, in that he is prepared to make the meaning of his moral examples vary with the specific historical and cultural context in which they occur, and she objects that this often means that there is no neat resolution to an apparent moral dilemma. She is quite correct, but not in expecting such a resolution, which is only feasible if one thinks that the links between moral concepts and the notion of a human being are in some way timeless and constant. I am sure that readers will learn much from this book, as I did, but may remain unconvinced by some of the conclusions that Foot produces.

 Oliver Leaman, University of Kentucky

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 Revelation, Intellectual Intuition and Reason in the Philosophy of Mulla Sadra

An Analysis of al-Hikmah al-‘Arshiyyah, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, pp. ix + 229, paper, £18.99.

 Zailan Moris

 

Mull¡ ¯adr¡ deserves better. A barely revised doctoral dissertation supervised by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Moris’ monograph fails to demonstrate her central contention that there is a harmonisation and synthesis of revelation, reason and intuition in the thought of the Safavid thinker Mull¡ ¯adr¡ Sh¢r¡z¢ (d. 1641). She claims that her purpose is ‘not to undertake a philosophical analysis of the truth claims of revelation, discursive philosophy and gnosis respectively but to examine critically whether Mulla Sadra did in fact successfully synthesize the three truth claims in his philosophy’ (p. 5). This purpose of intent strikes this reviewer as being rather problematic if not contradictory. What does the author mean by a truth claim? How can one evaluate a synthesis without analysing the particular claims of these modes of inquiry? Does the method set out not seem like a rather apologetic attempt at vindicating an intellectual hero in the past? The vitality of the study of Islamic philosophy is contingent upon a critical engagement with its traditions, not merely a discursive rehearsal or taql¢d of views which Mull¡ ¯adr¡ himself would have disapproved.

Moris sets out to pursue her ‘synthesis’ by examine four key doctrines of Mull¡ ¯adr¡ as expressed in his epitome of philosophical theology, al-°ikma al-‘Arshiyyah (translated by James Morris as the Wisdom of the Throne, a work upon which Moris heavily relies). The four doctrines concern the ontology of existence (a¥¡lat wa tashk¢k al-wuj£d), the metaphysics of substance and its motion (al-¦arakah al-jawhariyyah), the epistemology of pure knowledge (specifically the Porphyrian doctrine of itti¦¡d al-‘¡qil wa’l-ma‘q£l), and the doctrine of the soul and its faculty of imagination (al-quwwah al-mutakhayyilah). Moris further problematizes her evaluation of the synthesis by proffering three criteria of judgement each of which would require explanation and qualification: the internal coherence of the synthesis, its conformity with ‘Islamic teachings’ (a rather vague standard), and the influence on later Islamic philosophers. Thus her suggestion is that the ‘success’ of the Sadrian synthesis depends not only upon an evaluation of its content but also in comparison to its Islamic context and its acceptance by later philosophers.

Chapters One and Two set out the epistemological background for the Sadrian synthesis. The ‘Islamic’ imperative to seek knowledge and ‘Islamic metaphysics’ are conflated with the doctrines of the school of Ibn ‘Arab¢ (d. 1240), the famous Andalusian Sufi. The comments on the madrasa system and the philosophical background to Mull¡ ¯adr¡ are far too brief and contentious. The author would have done better if she had examined the madrasa system of his time and the state of philosophical traditions and his reception of them. Such an inquiry is possible and would have been a contribution. Two observations are contentious. Moris repeats the exaggerated contention of her supervisor concerning the so-called Oriental Philosophy of Avicenna. Furthermore, the affirmation that al-Ghaz¡l¢’s critique of discursive philosophy led to a decline in the power of reason and a growing emphasis on intuition not only raises problems for her ‘synthesis’ but also seems like a capitulation to the old myth of al-Ghaz¡l¢ destroying philosophy and accords closely to the biases of ‘Abid al-Jabiri and other contemporary Arab thinkers for whom the ‘Eastern thinkers’ corrupted Islamic thought by their ‘mysticism and obscurantism’.

Chapter Three injects a short chapter on the life and works of Mull¡ ¯adr¡, a standard ‘biography and bibliography’ chapter often required in doctoral dissertations. However, in the book it does not play a particularly useful role. Moris merely repeats various platitudes already uttered by Nasr and others. The chapter is simple uncritical hagiography and does not represent any fresh research. The listing of works includes those widely regarded as spurious and yet Moris seems unaware of this.

The remaining three chapters tackle three overlapping questions: is there a synthesis, how is it achieved and was it successful? On the whole, Moris competently explains the main Sadrian doctrines and shows how they are interdependent. However, merely quoting Qur’anic verses and traditions as well as the works of Sufis does not demonstrate a ‘snythesis’. As for the question of how, Moris merely gives some good examples of argumentation in the work of Mull¡ ¯adr¡. It is quite clear that he had a holistic vision of his inquiry and indeed intertextual and mixed-generic features of his works attest to this. But that does not mean that his actual approach was coherently holistic. The evaluation of the ‘success’ of his synthesis is rather a matter of taste, and Moris gives a bland answer to a bland question.

The work is appended with a rather pointless afterword that reads like an abstract of a thesis. What is it doing there?

There are far too many typographical and stylistic errors to enumerate, which are unfortunately rather on par with the other publications of the Sufi Series. Why is there no transliteration? One mistake ought to be pointed out. The Asf¡r is not edited by the later Mu¦ammad Ri¤¡ Mu³affar; he only contributed an introduction to the text. The actual editors are Ri¤¡ Lu§f¢, Fat¦all¡h Umm¢d and Ibr¡h¢m Am¢n¢. It is also clear from the bibliography that the author has not undertaken any relevant reading and reconsideration since her doctorate was complete, which is a shame because some interesting works have appeared such as two books by Christian Jambet and a few articles by the reviewer and others which may have raised some interesting questions. There is a considerable body of material in this book that is worthy and useful. But the wrongheaded approach to a questionable purpose detracts from it and diverts attention. If Moris had rewritten her dissertation as an introduction to some key ideas in the thought of Mull¡ ¯adr¡, the resulting publication would have been far more welcome.

 

Sajjad Rizvi, University of Bristol         

 

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