Mystics and Saints of Islam Part 10

Continuing, he a.s.sumes a peculiar theory of light, which betrays a really Persian origin. One special light he designates by the old Persian word "Isfahbad." The G.o.dhead Itself he calls the "light of lights." In other places he borrows from Neo-Platonism. He a.s.sumes a region in the heavenly spheres where the ideal prototypes of existing things are found. The saints and devout ascetics, according to him, have the power to call those ideal prototypes into real existence, and these can produce at their wish, food, figures or melodies, etc.

Suhrawardy's optimistic way of conceiving the world is peculiar for a Moslem. While Islam regards the world as a vale of tears, and earthly life as a time of temptation, he finds the evil in this world much less than the good. The following sentences of his work are noteworthy: "Know that souls in whom the heavenly illuminations are lasting, reduce the material world to obedience. Their supplication is heard in the Upper World, and fate has already decreed that the supplication of such a person for such an object should be heard. The light which streams from the highest world is the Elixir of power and knowledge and the world obeys it. In the purified souls is reproduced a reflex of G.o.d's light, and a creative ray is focussed in them. The 'evil eye' is only a light-power, which influences objects and injures them." Soon after Suhrawardy had been put to death, nearly the whole of his books were committed to the flames by order to the Caliph Nasir.

[54] From Von Kremer.

CHAPTER XIV

JALALUDDIN RUMI

Jalaluddin Rumi has been called by Professor Ethe (in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_) "the greatest pantheistic writer of all ages." However that may be, he is certainly the greatest mystical poet of Persia, though not so well known in Europe as Saadi, Hafiz and Omar Khayyam. Saadi, Jalaluddin's contemporary, seems to have been conscious of this, for when asked by the Prince of Shiraz to send him the finest poem which had been published in Persia, he sent an ode from Jalaluddin's "Diwan."

Jalaluddin ("the glory of religion") was born at Balkh, in Central Asia (1207 AD), where his father, Behauddin, was a professor of theology under the Sultan Khwarezm Shah. His discourses were largely attended by great and small, but for some reason he seems to have excited the Sultan's displeasure. He therefore left Balkh with the whole of his family and dependants, taking an oath not to return thither while the Sultan was on the throne. Behauddin's way led him to Nishapur, where he met the Sheikh Fariddudin Attar, who, pointing to Jalaluddin, said, "Take care! This son of yours will light a great flame in the world."

Attar also presented the boy with his _Asrarnama_, or "book of secrets." In every town which they visited the chief men came to see Behauddin and listened to his teaching. Behauddin and his son made the pilgrimage to Mecca, after which the former settled at Konia (Iconium), in Asia Minor ("Roum"), whence the poet received the t.i.tle "Rumi." Here Behauddin obtained as great a reputation as he had done at Balkh, and on his death Jalaluddin succeeded him as "Sheikh," or spiritual instructor.

He soon grew tired of the ordinary round of Mohammedan learning and gave himself up to mysticism. This tendency of his received an additional impulse from the arrival in Iconium of an extraordinary man, the fakir Shams-i-Tabriz, a disciple of the celebrated Sheikh Ruknuddin.

One day Ruknuddin, when conversing with Shams-i-Tabriz, had said to him, "In the land of Roum is a Sufi who glows with divine love; thou must go thither and fan this glow to a clear flame." Shams-i-Tabriz immediately went to Iconium. On his arrival he met Jalaluddin riding on a mule in the midst of a throng of disciples who were escorting him from the lecture hall to his house. He at once intuitively recognised that here was the object of his search and his longing. He therefore went straight up to him and asked, "What is the aim of all the teaching that you give, and all the religious exercises which you practise?" "The aim of my teaching," answered Jalaluddin, "is the regulation of conduct as prescribed by the traditions and the moral and religious law." "All this," answered Shams-i-Tabriz, "is mere skimming the surface." "But what then is under the surface?" asked Jalaluddin. "Only complete union of the knower with the known is knowledge," answered Shams-i-Tabriz and quoted the following verse of Hakim Sanai:--

Only when knowledge frees thee from thyself, Is such knowledge better than ignorance.

These words made a most powerful impression on Jalaluddin, so that he plied Shams-i-Tabriz with questions and resorted with him to lonely desert places for uninterrupted converse. This led to a neglect of teaching on his part, and his pupils and adherents persecuted and ridiculed Shams-i-Tabriz, calling him "a bare-footed and bare-headed fakir, who has come hither to lead the pattern of believers astray."

Their treatment caused Shams-i-Tabriz to flee to his native city without telling Jalaluddin. The latter, however, overcome by love and longing, went after him, found him and persuaded him to return.

Shams-i-Tabriz did so, and for some time longer they lived in friendly intercourse together; but Jalaluddin's disciples again began to persecute the former, who departed to Syria, where he remained two years. During this interval, in order to soften the pain of separation, Jalaluddin inst.i.tuted mystical dances, which he ordered to be accompanied by the flute. This was the beginning of the celebrated order of Mevlevis, or dancing dervishes, which has now existed for over six hundred years, successively presided over by descendants of Jalaluddin.

Their gyrations are intended to symbolise the wheelings of the planets round their central sun and the attraction of the creature to the Creator. They exist in large numbers in Turkey, and to this day the coronation of the Sultan of Turkey is not considered complete till he is girded with a sword by the head dervish of the Mevlevi order.

Shams-i-Tabriz subsequently returned to Konia and perished there in a tumult, the details of which are not known. To commemorate his friend Jalaluddin composed his "Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz," putting the latter's name in place of his own as the author. It is a collection of spirited odes setting forth the doctrines of Sufistic Pantheism. The following lines on pilgrimage to the Kaaba afford a good instance of the way in which the Sufi poets endeavour to spiritualise the rites of Islam:--

Beats there a heart within that breast of thine, Then compa.s.s reverently its sacred shrine: For the essential Kaaba is the heart, And no proud pile of perishable art.

When G.o.d ordained the pilgrim rite, that sign Was meant to lead thy thoughts to things divine; A thousand times _he_ treads that round in vain Who gives one human heart a needless pain.

Leave wealth behind; bring G.o.d thy heart, Whose light Will guide thy footsteps through the gloomiest night G.o.d spurns the riches of a thousand coffers, And says, 'The saint is he his heart who offers;

Nor gold nor silver seek I, but above All gifts the heart, and buy it with My love: Yea! one sad, contrite heart which men despise More than My throne and fixed decree I prize'; The meanest heart that ever man has spurned Is a clear gla.s.s where G.o.d may be discerned.

The following ode, translated by the late Professor Falconer, is frankly pantheistic:--

I was, ere a name had been named upon earth, Ere one trace yet existed of aught that has birth: When the locks of the Loved One streamed forth for a sign And Being was none, save the Presence Divine.

Named and name were alike emanations from Me, Ere aught that was 'I' yet existed, or 'We'; Ere the veil of the flesh for Messiah was wrought, To the G.o.dhead I bowed in prostration of thought; I measured intently, I pondered with heed (But, ah, fruitless my labour!) the Cross and its Creed: To the paG.o.d I rushed and the Magian's shrine, But my eye caught no glimpse of a glory divine; The reins of research to the Kaaba I bent, Whither hopefully thronging the old and young went; Candahar and Herat searched I wistfully through, Nor above nor beneath came the Loved One to view.

I toiled to the summit, wild, pathless and lone, Of the globe-girding Kaf,[55] but the Anka[56] had flown!

The seventh earth I traversed, the seventh heaven explored, But in neither discerned I the court of the Lord.

I questioned the Pen and the Tablet of Fate, But they whispered not where He pavilions His state; My vision I strained, but my G.o.d-scanning eye No trace that to G.o.dhead belongs could descry.

My glance I bent inward: within my own breast Lo, the vainly sought elsewhere! the G.o.dhead confessed!

Jalaluddin's chief work, the Masnavi, containing upwards of 26,000 couplets, was undertaken at the instance of one of his disciples and intimates, Husam-ud-din, who had often urged him to put his teaching into a written form. One day when Husam-ud-din pressed the subject upon him, Jalaluddin drew from his turban a paper containing the opening couplets of the Masnavi, which are thus translated by Mr. Whinfield:--

Hearken to the reed flute, how it discourses, When complaining of the pains of separation:-- 'Ever since they tore me from my ozier-bed, My plaintive notes have moved men and women to tears.

I burst my breast, striving to give vent to sighs, And to express the pangs of my yearning for my home.

He who abides far away from his home Is ever longing for the day he shall return; My wailing is heard in every throng, In concert with them that rejoice and them that weep.'

The reed flute is one of the princ.i.p.al instruments in the melancholy music which accompanies the dancing of the Mevlevi dervishes. It is a picture of the Sufi or enlightened man, whose life is, or ought to be, one long lament over his separation from the G.o.dhead, for which he yearns till his purified spirit is re-absorbed into the Supreme Unity.

We are here reminded of the words of Novalis, "Philosophy is, properly speaking, home sickness; the wish to be everywhere at home."

Briefly speaking, the subject of the Masnavi may be said to be the love of the soul for G.o.d as its Origin, to Whom it longs to return, not the submission of the ordinary pious Moslem to the iron despotism of Allah.

This thesis is ill.u.s.trated with an extraordinary wealth of imagery and apologue throughout the six books composing the work. The following fable ill.u.s.trates the familiar Sufi doctrine that all religions are the same to G.o.d, Who only regards the heart:--

Moses, to his horror, heard one summer day A benighted shepherd blasphemously pray: 'Lord!' he said, 'I would I knew Thee, where Thou art, That for Thee I might perform a servant's part; Comb Thy hair and dust Thy shoes and sweep Thy room, Bring Thee every morning milk and honeycomb.'

Moses cried: 'Blasphemer! curb thy blatant speech!

Whom art thou addressing? Lord of all and each, Allah the Almighty? Thinkest thou He doth need Thine officious folly? Wilt all bounds exceed?

Miscreant, have a care, lest thunderbolts should break On our heads and others perish for thy sake.

Without eyes He seeth, without ears He hears, Hath no son nor partner through the endless years, s.p.a.ce cannot contain Him, time He is above, All the limits that He knows are Light and Love.'

Put to shame, the shepherd, his poor garment rent, Went away disheartened, all his ardour spent.

Then spake G.o.d to Moses: 'Why hast thou from Me Driven away My servant, who goes heavily?

Not for severance it was, but union, I commissioned thee to preach, O hasty one!

Hatefullest of all things is to Me divorce, And the worst of all ways is the way of force.

I made not creation, Self to aggrandize, But that creatures might with Me communion prize.

What though childish tongues trip? 'Tis the heart I see, If it really loves Me in sincerity.

Blood-stains of the martyrs no ablution need, Some mistakes are better than a cautious creed, Once _within_ the Kaaba,[57] wheresoe'er men turn, Is it much to Him Who spirits doth discern?

Love's religion comprehends each creed and sect, Love flies straight to G.o.d, and outsoars intellect.

If the gem be real, what matters the device?

Love in seas of sorrow finds the pearl of price.'

A similar lesson is taught by the apologue of the "Elephant in the Dark":--

During the reign of an Eastern sovereign, he remarked that the learned men of his time differed widely in their estimate of the Deity, each ascribing to Him different characteristics. So he had an elephant brought in secret to his capital and placed in a dark chamber; then, inviting those learned men, he told them that he was in possession of an animal which none of them had ever seen.

He requested them to accompany him to the chamber, and, on entering it, said that the animal was before them, and asked if they could see it. Being answered in the negative, he begged them to approach and feel it, which they did, each touching it in a different part. After returning to the light, he asked them what they thought the animal was really like. One declared that it was a huge column, another that it was a rough hide, a third that it was of ivory, a fourth that it had huge flaps of some coa.r.s.e substance; but not one could correctly state what the animal was.

They returned to the chamber, and when the light was let in, those learned men beheld for the first time the object of their curiosity, and learned that, whilst each was correct in what he had said, all differed widely from the truth.

Though a pantheist, Jalaluddin lays great stress on the fact of man's sinfulness and frailty and on the personality of the Devil, as in the following lines:--

Many a net the Devil spreads, weaving snare on snare, We, like foolish birds, are caught captive unaware; From one net no sooner free, straightway in another We are tangled, fresh defeats aspirations smother; Till upon the ground we lie, helpless as a stone, We, who might have gained the sky, we, who might have flown.

When we seek to house our grain, pile a goodly store, Pride, a hidden mouse, is there nibbling evermore; Till upon the harvest day, lo, no golden heap, But a mildewed ma.s.s of chaff maggots overcreep.

Many a brilliant spark is born where the hammers ply, But a lurking thief is there; prompt, with finger sly, Spark on spark he puts them out, sparks which might have soared Perish underneath his touch. Help us then, O Lord!

What with gin and trap and snare, pitfall and device, How shall we poor sinners reach Thy fair paradise?

Again, in contradiction to logical pantheism Jalaluddin lays stress on man's free-will and responsibility, as in the following ill.u.s.tration:--

On the frontier set, the warden of a fort, Far from his monarch and his monarch's court, Holds the fort, let foemen bl.u.s.ter as they may, Nor for fear or favour will his trust betray; Far from his monarch, on the empire's edge, He, with his master, keeps unbroken pledge; Surely then his lord his worth will higher own, Than their prompt obedience who surround his throne; In the Master's absence a little work done well Weighs more than a great one when his eyes compel; _Now_ is the time to show who faith and trust will keep, Once probation over, faith and trust are cheap.

However much individual Sufis may have fallen into Antinomianism and acted as if there was no essential difference between good and evil, the great Sufi teachers have always enjoined self-mortification, quoting the saying, "Die before you die." This dying is divided by them into three kinds: "black death" (suffering oppression from others), "red death"

(mortifying the flesh), and "white death" (suffering hunger). Jalaluddin ill.u.s.trates this by the following parable:--