Essays on islam
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"Once and again my soul did me implore To teach her, if I might, the inspired lore I bade her learn the Alif well by heart; who knows that letter well need learn no more." The letter Alif, the first letter of the alphabet, is used in the numerical notation called abjad to represent the number one, and so "to know the Alif" is a figurative expression meaning to know God as the One, the sole existent Being. It is a common expression amongst Sufi poets. Thus Hafiz says:— "My loved one's Alif form stamps all my thought, Save that, what letter has my master taught?" 1 Many of the verses in the Ruba'iyat are now attributed to other poets. The result of a critical investigation is that "while it is certain that 'Umar Khayyam wrote many quatrains, it is hardly possible, save in a few exceptional cases, to assert positively that he wrote any particular one of those ascribed to him." Browne, Literary History of Persia, vol. ii, pp. 256-7. 142 THE FAITH OF ISLAM That is, he who knows the God as One knows all — he needs no other teaching. "The search for that 'single Alif' was a great spur to inquiry. It struck the imagination as a kind of vista which narrowed, the further one advanced, by the progressive elimination of all unimportant accidents from the vast and complex phenomenon which had to be investigated, until at the far end the inquirer was brought to the philosopher's stone, the single Alif, the narrow portal which gave admission to the temple of universal knowledge." A belief in the Unity is supposed to cover a multitude of sins:—
Nor sweeps from off his soul sin's noisome weeds; Nevertheless he humbly hopes for grace, Seeing that One as two he ne'er misreads." It is possible that 'Umar Khayyam is here speaking satirically. Anyhow, it is good Sufi doctrine. The doctrine of the tauhid is the central dogma of Islam. In ordinary language it means "there is no god but God," but in the mystical language of the Sufis it means "there is no Being — no real existence — but God." Everything else but God is phenomenal and non-existent. Thus "One as two he ne'er misreads," means that he looks on all else but God as illusion. The final goal of all Sufi aspirations is absorption in God, and this 'Umar seems to teach in:— "O Soul! when on the Loved one's sweets to feed You lose your self, yet find your Self indeed; And when you drink of His entrancing cup, You hasten your escape from quick and dead." "To die to self, to live eternally in God," is the mystic doctrine round which the Sufi system professedly gathers, though it is not so much life in God, as fana, or extinction, which leads the Murid (disciple) on stage after stage in the mystic journey until the end is reached, and the phenomenal "Not-being" is lost for THE RUBA'IYAT OF 'UMAR KHAYYAM 143 ever in the Eternal " Being." This belief in the illusion of phenomena is described by 'Umar thus:— "The drop wept for his severance from the sea, But the sea smiled, for, 'I am all,' said he, 'And naught exists outside my unity, My one point circling apes plurality.'" The "one point" is the "Being." It is not easy to get much sense out of the last line as it stands here, but some light is thrown upon it by a somewhat similar statement in the Gulshan-i-Raz: — "Go! whirl round one spark of fire, And from its quick motion you will see a circle." The circle is not real, it is phenomenal, and thus the "point circling apes plurality;" and, after all, the sole existence is the "one point." The Sufi does not trouble himself much with creeds and confessions. He has little faith in systems of religion. If what he deems "The Truth" is known, he cares very little about an objective revelation or an ecclesiastical system. If earth and all it contains are an illusion, so also, he considers, heaven and hell may be. Such notions may be needed for those weaker souls who in Jewish synagogue or Christian cloister or Muslim mosque need an outward law as a restraint and a guide, but for the Illuminated all these things are worthless:— "In synagogue and cloister, mosque and school, Hell's terrors and heaven's lures men's bosoms rule; But they who pierce the secrets of the 'Truth,' Sow not such empty chaff their hearts to fool." Even fate has no objective existence:— "Pen, tablet, heaven, and hell I looked to see Above the skies from all eternity; At last the Master sage instructed me 'Pen, tablet, heaven, and hell are all in thee.'" Thus far 'Umar is Sufiistic, but yet he is not a Sufi. There is a certain calm in the life of the Sufi to which 'Umar never attains. He is full of despair, in spite of the rollicking mood in which many verses 144 THE FAITH OF ISLAM are written. Life is not worth having, not worth living:— "I never would have come, had I been asked; I would as lief not go, if I were asked; And, to he short, I would annihilate All coming, being, going, were I asked." 'Umar was, in reality, a fatalist. His training as a youth in the orthodox school under Imam Muaffiq would naturally produce this result. Neither his scientific studies, nor the lighter ones of literature, seem to have led him to a brighter view of the universe: — "The 'tablet' all our fortune doth contain, Writ by the 'pen' that heeds not bliss nor bane; 'Twas writ at first whatever was to be, To grieve or strive is labour all in vain. "We are but chessmen, who to move are fain Just as the great Chess-player doth ordain; He moves us on life's chess-hoard too and fro, And then in Death's box shuts us up again." 1 So he gives it all up. It is useless to contend against irresistible decrees. It is useless to grieve over it, so "O heart! this world is but a fleeting show, Why let its empty griefs distress thee so? Bear up and face thy fate; the eternal pen Will not unwrite his roll for thee, I trow." "O Soul, so soon to leave this soil below, And pass the dread mysterious curtain through, Be of good cheer, and joy you while you may, You wot not whence you come, nor whither go." The result is that all sense of personal responsibility to a Personal God is lost. Good and evil are matters of indifference to the fatalist. The restraint of a moral law is taken away. The man simply follows his own desires, and casts the blame of the result on God. "Khayyam, why weep you that your life is bad? What boots it thus to mourn? Rather he glad; He that sins not, no title makes to grace; Sin entails grace, then prithee why so sad?" 1 Most of these verses from the Ruba'iyat of 'Umar Khayyam are taken, with permission, from an excellent translation by Whinfield (Trübner's Oriental Series). THE RUBA'IYAT OF 'UMAR KHAYYAM 145 A recent Muslim commentator on the Ruba'iyat explains this last line by quoting, as a well-known saying, the words "Mustahaqq-i-karamat gunahgaran and" — Sinners are those who have a right to favour." To eat, drink, and be merry is 'Umar's real creed. Any aspirations he may at one time have had after higher and better things are destroyed. The constant teaching of the Ruba'iyat is — indulge the senses and let the future go, or, as 'Umar puts it, "nor cash in hand for promised credit sell." A revel with boon companions is the true joy:— "We make the wine jar's lip our place of prayer, And drink in lessons of true manhood there, And pass our lives to taverns, if perchance The time mis-spent in mosques we may repair. "In Paradise are Houris, as you know, And fountains that with wine and honey flow If these be lawful in the world above, What harm to love the like down here below? "Come fill the cup, and in the fire of spring Your winter garment of repentance fling; The bird of time has but a little way To flutter — and the bird is on the wing." Those who look upon 'Umar as a Sufi, refer to his constant reference to wine and say he uses it in the mystical sense; others hold that his praises of wine are simply to show the stress he lays on mortal gladness and to cast into the shade the inevitable end which though feared should now be disregarded. He glorifies the present and the real, in order to deaden the anticipation of the future and the unseen. To those who held out future joys in Paradise for orthodox belief and right conduct here, the answer is ready to the effect that cash payments are better than credit accounts:— "They preach how sweet these Houri brides will be, But look you, so is wine sweet, taste and see; Hold fast this cash, and let the credit be, And shun the din of empty drums with me," 146 THE FAITH OF ISLAM
Who toil at Being and Nonentity, Parching your brains like dry and shrivelled grapes, Be wise in time, and drink grape-juice like me!" To the Sufi he says:— "The The joyous souls who quaff potations deep, And Saints whom the mosque sad vigils keep, Are lost at sea alike, and find no shore; One only wakes, all others are asleep." To the Mulla, for whom he has no mercy, he says:— "Mulla! give heed, if thou true Muslim be, Quit saintly show and feigned austerity, And quaff the wine that blessed 'Ali pours, And sport with Houris 'neath this shady tree." "A Mulla spied a harlot, and quoth he, You seem a slave to drink and lechery.' And she made answer, 'What I seem I am, But, Mulla, are you all you seem to be?'" There is a verse in the Qur'an which says, " Kill them wherever ye shall find them" (xii. 187). 'Umar makes a curious use of this verse, and by it refutes and confounds the Mullas who objected to his use of wine:— From right and left grave Mullas came and stood, Saying, 'Renounce this wine, this foe of good;' But if wine be my foe, as they declare, I swear by Allah I must drink his blood." The Mullas held out hopes to all the faithful of Houris in Paradise. 'Umar, on his principle of "ready cash," cannot see that what is morally right there can be morally wrong here. The satire is perfect in THE RUBA'IYAT OF 'UMAR KHAYYAM 147 "All a long summer's day her Khayyam lies On this green sward, gazing on Houris' eyes, Yet Mullas say he is a graceless dog, who never gives a thought to Paradise. "In Paradise are Houris, as you know, And fountains that with wine and honey flow; If these be lawful in the world above, What harm to love the like down here below?" No doubt he heard these men speak much of God's mercy, a sentiment too often, then as now, a cloak for evil-doing. 'Umar, whatever his views on the subject as an abstract question may have been, was far too honest a man to treat it, in the way he heard it, as more than a mere shibboleth:— "O thou who hast done ill, and ill alone, Think not to find forgiveness at the throne; Hope not for mercy, for good left undone Cannot be done, nor evil done undone." It is thus no wonder that, seeing unreality all around, in the mysticism of the Sufi as in the formalism of the orthodox, and with no true gospel placed before him, he should get utterly weary of the world:— "Ah! would there were a place of rest from pain, Which we poor pilgrims might at last attain, And, after many thousand wintry years, Renew our youth like flowers and bloom again." 'Umar Khayyam was a strange compound. He often utters nobler sentiments than those we have yet quoted from his poem. His better nature comes out in the earnest longing for a true, a perfect guide:— "Open the door of Truth, O Usher purest! And guide the way, O thou of guides the surest! Directors born of men shall not direct me; Their counsel comes to nought, but Thou endurest." Cynical though he was, he retains kindly feeling for others. A noble sentiment is contained in "Whate'er thou doest, never grieve thy brother, Nor raise a fume of wrath his peace to smother. Dost thou desire to taste eternal bliss? Vex thine own heart, but never vex another." 148 THE FAITH OF ISLAM
'Tis prayer that church-bells waft upon the air; Ka'ba and temple, rosary and cross, All are but divers tongues of world-wide prayer. "Hearts with the light of love illumined well, Whether in mosque or synagogue they dwell, Have their names written in the book of love, Unvexed by hopes of heaven or fears of hell." Still, in spite of an occasional glimpse of a better nature, of more hopeful qualities, the student of the Ruba'iyat will come to see that 'Umar Khayyam was a saddened man, that he had no hope in the future or in God. What bitter words are these with which the poem concludes: — "Khayyam of burning heart, perchance to burn In hell, and feed its balefires in thy turn, Presume not to teach Allah clemency, For who art thou to teach, or He to learn?" Is it any wonder that, in spite of his better nature, he should become cold and heartless, that he should be callous and careless? "Quoth fish to duck: ' 'Twould be a sad affair Should this brook ever leave his channel bare.' To whom the duck: 'When I am dead and roasted, The ocean may run dry for aught I care.' " 'Umar Khayyam has with justice been compared to Lucretius. Both were materialists, both believed not in a future life. "Lucretius built a system for himself in his poem . . . it has a professed practical aim — to explain the world's self-acting machine to the polytheist, and to disabuse him of all spiritual ideas." 'Umar Khayyam builds up no system, he only shows forth his own doubts and difficulties; "he loves to balance antitheses of belief, and settle himself in the equipoise of the sceptic." THE BABIS 149 The fact that there is no hereafter gives Lucretius no pain, but 'Umar, who, if only his reason could let him, would believe, records his utter despair in words of passionate bitterness. He is not glad that there is no help anywhere. And though he calls for the wine-cup, and listens to the voice within the tavern cry:— Awake, my little ones, and fill the cup Before Life's liquor in its cup be dry," yet he also looks back to the time when he consorted with those who professed to know, and could say:— "With them the seed of wisdom did I sow, And with my own hand laboured it to grow." The modern sect of the Babis is closely connected with the teaching of the Shi'ahs on the Imam, his position and functions, and with the mystical modes of thought of the Sufis. It is not strictly correct to call them a Muslim sect, for they practically discard the Qur'an and supersede Muhammad. But the close connection of Babiism with Muhammadan dogmas, its present-day importance and the devotion of its followers claim for it more than a passing notice. No non-Christian sect in modern days has suffered such persecution and survived. The movement is one which illustrates the mystical tendency of Persian thought, the fanaticism of the Mullas, and the barbarity of the rulers; but all the efforts of the Muslim Church and State have hitherto failed to suppress Babiism, or to lessen the veneration in which the Bab is held by all who accept his teaching. Abu'l-Qasim (al-Mahdi), the twelfth Imam disappeared in the year 329 A.H., but for a period of sixty-nine years he is said to have held intercourse with his followers through a successive number of men, who were called the Doors or mediums of communication. Abu'l-Hasan, the last of these Doors, refused to appoint a successor, saying that "God hath a purpose which 150 THE FAITH OF ISLAM
Shaikh Ahmad (1753-1826 A.D.), the founder of the Shaikhi sect, was a devout ascetic and a man of independent thought. He had a profound belief in 'Ali., and was devoted to the memory of the Imams, whom he looked upon as creative forces, arguing from the text, "God the best of creators" (xxiii. 14), that, if He be the best, He cannot be the only one. The special point of his teaching was that "God is immanent in the universe which proceeds from Him, and that all the elect of God, all the Imams, and all just persons are personifications of the divine attributes."1 Shaikh Ahmad was succeeded by a man who soon commanded much respect and influence. His name was Haji Syed Kazim. He died in the year 1843 A.D., and left no successor. After fastings, vigils, and prayers for guidance, the Shaikhis began to consider what was to be done in the matter of a spiritual director. Mulla Husain proceeded to Shiraz, and there met with Mirza 'Ali Muhammad, who produced before him the signs of his call to his divine mission. For several days Mulla Husain pondered over these matters, and, after a long and severe struggle, became convinced that he had found in the young and ardent enthusiast before him the "True One," to whose advent Haji Syed Kazim had pointed. "He wrote to his friends at Karbala that neither he himself nor any other of them was worthy of the high dignity of Murshid (or leader), and that that "Illuminated One" to whom their late master had referred was alone worthy. I have found him at Shiraz, and he is worthy to be the Murshid." 2
THE BABIS 151 As the connection between the Babis and the Shaikhis is thus so close, we must now see what was the special dogma of the latter sect. The orthodox Shi'ah creed consists of five articles, which are called the pillars or supports of the Faith (arkan-i-din). They are belief (1) in the unity of God (tauhid), (2) in the justice of God ('adl), (3) in prophetship (nabuwat), (4) in the imamate (imamat), (5) in the resurrection (ma'ad). The Shaikhis set aside the articles two and five, as already implied in the belief in God and the prophets. To take the place of the rejected articles and to bring the number up to four, they added a new one which they called the Fourth Support or Pillar (ruknu'r-rabi'). The meaning of this is that there must always be amongst believers one perfect man, who can be the channel of grace (wasitatu'l-faid) between the absent Imam and his people. The term "fourth support" is primarily applied to the dogma that the concealed Imam must always have on earth some one who possesses his entire confidence, to whom he gives special spiritual instruction, and who is thus qualified to convey to the believers the wishes and wisdom of their invisible head. The term has, however, come to be applied to the person who fulfils this office. At first the Bab claimed to be this "fourth support," and so to occupy the place held by the "doors," who were the earlier intermediaries between the Imam and his followers. Thus it is that Babiism is connected with the very central doctrine of the Shi'ahs, though in many other ways it has so far departed from accepted Muhammadan ideas as to form a new sect altogether. Mirza 'Ali Muhammad, the Bab, was born at Shiraz on the 9th of October 1820. When quite young he lost his father. For a time the youth assisted his uncle in mercantile pursuits, but as his mind was more inclined to religious meditation and speculative 152 THE FAITH OF ISLAM
The Babi historian 1 says of this work, that "in it he addressed himself to that person unseen, from whom he received help and grace, sought for aid in the arrangement of his preliminaries, and craved the sacrifice of life in the way of love. Amongst others is this sentence: "O residue of God,2 I am wholly sacrificed to Thee; I am content with curses in Thy love, and God the Supreme sufficeth as an eternal protection." 1 Maqalah-i-Shakhsi Saiyah, p. 4. 2 The expression residue (or remnant) of God —Baqiyat Ullah — is a very peculiar one. It is connected with a curious belief of the Shi'ahs, viz., that God allowed some part or fraction of Himself in some way or other to be connected with the Imam. As soon then as Mirza 'Ali Muhammad was raised by his followers to the dignity of the Bab, or as soon as the idea became present to his own mind, he could address the Imam as the Baqiyat Ullah, and set forth his complete devotion to him. His followers then gave him the titles of the servant of Baqiyat Ullah, the mystery of Baqiyat Ullah, the friend of Baqiyat Ullah. Gradually as, during his imprisonment, he became more and more invisible to his followers, and when he became credited with the power of working miracles and more or less a mythical being, he was no longer called the servant, or the mystery, or the friend of Baqiyat Ullah, but himself was esteemed to be the Baqiyat Ullah — the true Imam so long looked for. Mirza Kazim Beg says that under the term "mystery" they understood one who shared the secrets of the Imam. "The name Sirr-Ullah, Mystery of God, was given to 'Ali, as to one who knew the secrets of divine revelation; and so, in its new application, the title Sirr-i-Baqiyat Ullah, now a name of the Bab, would mean the one who knew all that was in the mind of the concealed Imam, who himself was the remnant (or residue) of God." (Journal Asiatique, 1866, vol. viii, p. 486.) THE BAB 153 The Bab also wrote a commentary on other parts of the Qur'an and some prayers. These writings he called "inspired pages" (asha'ifu'l-ilhamiyah) and "word of conscience" (kalamu'l-fitra); but he made no claim to the kind of inspiration called wahi, that is, the revelation brought by an angel or in some mechanical way. He believed his meditations to be divinely inspired, but the inspiration was subjective. Thus it came to pass that on the 23rd of May 1844, when he was about twenty-four years of age, Mirza 'Ali Muhammad more definitely formulated his views and announced himself as a duly authorised teacher and guide. He then assumed the name of the Bab. He said, "Whosoever wishes to approach the Lord his God and to know the true way that leads to Him ought to do it through me." Of this period of his career Mirza Kazim Beg says: "The number of his adherents increased day by day, and when they demanded that he, like the ancient prophets, should give them a sign in proof of his mission, he relied on this, that he could write a thousand inspired lines in one day. By his peculiarities and by his austere life, even when still at Karbala, he was called the "Illuminated." When the inhabitants of Shiraz returned from Karbala they used to say, "Have you heard of our Syed 'Ali Muhammad? He is no longer as we are; he has become famous and has merited the name of the 'Chosen of God.' All people, small and great, flock around him." He also adds that dreamers and mystics, and evil-disposed persons from self-interest joined him. No doubt some did so from mixed motives. Another writer divides the Bab's first adherents into several classes. Firstly, rigorous and pious Muhammadans, who really believed that the signs of the twelfth Imam were fulfilled in him; secondly, all those who desired reform in Persia, and thought that Babiism would conduce to that end; thirdly, the mystics, who considered Babiism to be Yüklə 1,67 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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