Sufism and Islamic Asceticism

As with many religious traditions, Islam has always had two main strands: the strand that emphasised a god-given moral law to be followed without question out of fear of God and a strand that sought a deeper understanding of, communion with and true love of God and thus an understanding of the deeper meaning of "His" laws. Islamic ascetic traditions also had direct precursors in the Middle East before the Islamic Era. In fact, Muhammad himself was practicing a form of ascetic practice in an isolated cave when he received his first revelation. Tasawwuf is the term for Sufism in Arabic. Muhammad and some of his closest companions also continued to practice asceticism. They were called the Ahl al-Suffa. Such practices also remained common among devout Christians in Syria, Palestine and Egypt.

The ascetic practices began to be supplemented with mystical ideas from the 8^th to the 9^th Centuries. Centres of mysticism developed in Kufa, Basra, Khurasan, Baghdad, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt under the influence of location and individual ideologists.

Al-Hasan al-Basri (d. 728) was possibly the first ideologist of mystical Sufism. His ideas revolved around great and necessary fear of Allah. In that sense he was only beginning to depart from the first strand that I mentioned above.

Ibrahim Ibn Adham (d. 777) lived in Khurasan in eastern Iran and later Syria. He abandoned a former life of luxury in Khurasan to journey to Syria practising asceticism. Shaqiq of Balkh (d. 801), also of eastern Iran, was possibly the first to develop the notion of certain attitudes denoting particular mystical ‘states’ that later 'caught on' in Sufi ideology. The first attitude he articulated was one of “trust in God” or “tawakkul”.

Rabi’a of Basra’s (d. 801) focus was on love of God. She was the first noted female Sufi and still inspires today with her concise poetry and aphorisms concerning that love as she experienced it.

Al-Harith Ibn Asad al-Muhasibi (d. 857) moved from Basra to Baghdad to found the Baghdad School whose focus tended to be on spiritual accountability and self examination and understanding, hence his nickname related to examination or investigation (al-Muhasibi).

Al-Ghazali (d. 1111), the extremely multi-talented 11^th and 12^th Century religious and secular scholar, later recognised al-Muhasibi’s contribution in what he called the “science of hearts”. There was room in Sufism, he considered, for all of (scientific) introspection, theology and Qur’anic and Hadith study. He further articulated attitudes (such as repentance, pious fear of God, love, resolution and fear with hope) that would be held to produce particular mystical ‘states’ and ‘stations’ in later Sufism.

Al-Junayd’s (d. 910) focus was on knowledge of God. He was initially a Baghdadi follower of Muhasibi who developed a school of ‘sober’ Sufis (as opposed to the "intoxicated" Sufis (see below)). He continued to follow the idea of Sufism as an intellectual and sober quest for understanding of God. This he saw as a process of returning to God and "life" from a state of absence of God and "death".

Abu Yazid al-Bistami (d. c. 875) led the "intoxicated" Sufis who believed that the mystic was actually able to become one with God (rather than merely subsist in Him/Her/It as soberly proposed by the other school). Al-Hallaj (d. 922) took this to such an extreme that he was executed at the indirect instigation of Islamic jurists, who saw him as mad and a blasphemer (which he probably was). He proposed that the mystic could achieve this oneness without erecting all the ‘pillars’ of Islam (he (or she) could perform a ‘spiritual’ hajj, for instance, in his (or her) own home without having to outwardly perform a hajj). For a time, the teachings of this "intoxicated" school led to a decline in the prestige of Sufism. Al-Hallaj was essentially executed for saying that he was God (so he essentially suffered the fate of Jesus).

Finally, after over a century, the many-talented al-Ghazali managed to reinstate Sufism as legitimate in Islam. He was reacting to excessive formalism and intellectualism in Islamic rules. He sought to actually experience God’s presence and finally settled on Sufism after rejecting theology, philosophy and Esoteric Isma’ili teaching methods (in all of which he apparently excelled). He was able to integrate his practice into a scheme permitted by Islamic theology and laws. His form of Sufism was directed towards a fullness of worship of God and fellowship with others. He fully articulated the way of Sufism including its stations and states also discussed by al-Qushayri (d. 1074) and others in the 11^th Century.

The main stations were held to be repentance, abstinence, renunciation, wariness or pious awe of God, meekness (tawadu’), humility (khushu’), sincerity, constancy and courtesy. Others included earnest spiritual striving, solitude and withdrawal, silence, hope, sorrow and fear. The last "station", which may also be the first of the "states" is satisfaction or acceptance. Later states include servanthood to God, desire for God or seeking of God and finally love and spiritual yearning.

Major Sufi poets after this rebirth include Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), the Egyptian, Omar Ibn al-Farid (d. 1235), the Iranian (and writing in Persian), Farid al-Din Attar (d. 1220), and from Anatolia the famous Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273) (also writing in Persian).

Ibn ‘Arabi was also a great Sufi master. He was born in Murcia in Islamic Spain and was also educated in Cordova. In Sufism, he was first instructed by masters including two women. He also travelled to Tunisia, Mecca, Jerusalem, Damascus (where he died and his tomb there is still venerated) and Aleppo in Syria and Konya and Malatya in Anatolia. He wrote extensively on Sufism and his main idea was that man could receive insight direct from God with the aid of a Sufi master as guide. For him, the guided part which was a “journey towards God” would be followed by the “journey in God” of the successful Sufi who had learned to love the divine wisdom.

After the early asceticism was thus modified and as a more popularist form of Sufism thus developed and until the late 19th Century, most Muslims in the Middle East were affiliated with at least one of the many Sufi "Schools" (usually as "lay" members).

First, the system of Education that arose

Islam came to an East that had already made sophisticated use of learning and in which the skill of thinking was already highly valued (especially in the cause of the maintenance of cities and empires). The first civilised cities and the very idea of writing had arisen in the Middle East before any Europeans including the illiterate ancestors of the Classical Greeks had left their metaphorical caves. Hellenic and Hellenistic civilisation later contributed to this Eastern learning-curve before even the ancestors of the Romans had emerged from the mists of obscurity in the metaphorical steppes. Beside the advantages of city civilisation, the comparative wealth of empires permitted yet further opportunities for the leisure that enable the pursuit of learning (and also a further demand for it by rulers). This was the experience of the East immediately before the advent of Islam and in the very region over which Islamic rulers were now to rule.

Once 'Islam' came to rule over its own grand Empire, learning on a massive new scale was actually the result. Let's examine how it happened. Completely new cities such as Kufa, Basra, Fustat (which later became Cairo) and Baghdad and old cities such as Jerusalem and Damascus (and many more new and old cities besides) soon produced and/or extended their own thriving learning cultures. There really was a dramatic blossoming essentially because of the economics of building such a vast new and different Empire. The annual pilgrimage to Mecca and extensive regional trade networks importantly also gave legitimate opportunities for scholars from distant regions to relate their findings to each other directly. The Arabic language was soon also the language in which many books were written and into which many works were translated from many languagese over a vast Empire, as I've discussed, also given added impetus by the recent transmission to the Middle East of an invention known as paper. The Qur’an was a written work in virtually its current form from early in its human history that was a vital catalyst to study. Its new idea, Islam, required stout defence and its language too required a field of study so that this new idea could be brought to the world. So the impetus for the vast blossoming involved grand secular and also grand religious motivations.

Three sciences began to be widely studied in this vast milieu. Religious sciences were necessary to understand Islam most fully. The science of Arabic grammar served a similar purpose for as Allah had chosen the language, its full comprehension was necessary in order to understand Islam. Not all new Muslims spoke or understood Arabic and so this science was vitally important for their understanding of their new religion. Finally, the Arabs had access to the science of the Ancients, the learning of the Greeks and the Indians were especially studied in as much detail as possible. The Arabians now ruled Greek-speaking peoples and had novel access to and interest in all of the learning of the Near East and India.

In the Hadith, Muhammad specifically recommends seeking knowledge as far away as in China and the Qur’an recommended (in the first revelation of all) that Muhammad, who was traditionally illiterate, “read”, or at least "recite". In the same revelation, the pen is equated with knowledge and the Qur’an often enjoins reasoning. The so-called “People of the Book” (especially the Jews and Christians) were also the essential forebears of Islam and Islam naturally followed suit in valuing the book.

Arabic humanities were also important aspects of the new civilisation of the Arab-Islamic world. Being literate and especially the seeking of knowledge (talab al-‘ilm) and rational thought thus came to be seen as religious duties. Muhammad and the first Caliphs and their governments put this into practice.

Schools were needed to transmit this knowledge as required and scholars also were valued for their learning. Students studied with scholars and memorised the written work or oral teaching of often the same scholar in order to be qualified to teach that work or oral 'teaching' to others.

The Arabic script itself was early found to require reform in order to achieve more clarity and the language itself required expansion to become more than the mainly oral, poetic language it had formerly been.

Other languages of learning also continued to exist within the new Islamic world, of course, but Arabic was seen as necessary in order to follow Islam fully.

The first education in literacy, numeracy and reading the Qur’an was in the traditional “kuttab” or “maktab” school for children. Senior students would attend further lessons at a “majlis” school and a halaqa (circle of learning) possibly at the local mosque or a teacher’s home. Teaching hospitals provided specialised regular medical training in their medical schools from the early 9^th century. Major centres for the study of philosophy in the Hellenistic style existed at Alexandria, Antioch, Harran and Baghdad. Christian churches and monasteries continued to be centres for Christian learning in Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iraq (usually in Arabic from around the 9^th Century) and major Jewish centres of learning continued to exist in Iraq and Egypt. Observatories also performed a specialised teaching role for astronomers. Arabic came to replace Syriac and Greek (generally) as the local language of learning from the early 9^th Century.

The teaching of the Islamic religion and law beyond the basic level discussed above came to be the function of a school called a madrasa in the major cities from the late 10^th Century. The madrasa thus pre-dated but was remarkably similar to the mediaeval Christian university in the West (e.g. Bologna, Paris and Oxford were founded between the late 11^th Century and the 12^th Century). The madrasa would often be near or later form part of a major mosque and was associated initially with hostels at which travellers were able to stay. Thus a promising student from a country area or less important regional town or city would be able to combine lodgings with advanced teaching more suited to (generally) his aptitude in a major city. Besides religious subjects that included especially jurisprudence and theology, the madrasa typically offered courses in logic, grammar, rhetoric, history and poetry.

A preponderance of these institutions occurred especially in Iran and Iraq but the madrasas associated with al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo also came to be especially highly regarded from the Mamluk period. Madrasas were generally endowed in perpetuity in a special kind of trust that developed as a kind of religious 'tax dodge' called a waqf by wealthy individuals or by the government itself. A waqf might be purely philanthropic or be designed to guarantee a future family income by assigning paid roles to descendents and family members in perpetuity. It might also directly pay the fees of some teachers at the madrasa and/or provide basic bread and board for students (and additional financial aid for especially needy students as required). Large madrasas would typically contain their own mosques and/or prayer halls and accommodation for students and staff. They might train students in one of the schools of jurisprudence or occasionally all four of the major Sunni schools might be taught in the one madrasa. Memorisation of a major text with demonstrated understanding via discussion was the general method of learning and assessment. The equivalent to the modern Western degree offered was the licence to teach (Ijazat at-Tadris). It was the certification of competence to teach specific matter by a suitably qualified senior scholar.

Once qualified, a scholar could legitimately teach and thus earn an income as a scholar. Suitably qualified scholars, many of whom already came from reasonably well-to-do backgrounds, also became available as advisors for government and wealthy individuals who valued their specialised skills.

Beyond the madrasa, it was possible to receive advanced training in specialised areas of learning privately in palaces and the homes of wealthy patrons and teachers.

Training in Sufi practices (I discuss Sufism further (and the schools of jurisprudence) in later posts) was also offered in what came to be centres for Sufi learning.

Also, libraries were often formed from private collections in scholars’ homes for the purposes of making important works available for interested students. Works and ideas might be studied, taught, read, discussed and copied by advanced scholars in these libraries (more or less formally). Many mosque, palace and madrasa libraries were available to the public or to specialised groups for research. Books were also available for sale, scholarly discussion and copying in bookshops.

The next posts will go into more detail about what was taught, why and what discoveries were made.

Nilotic Sudan

This region, south of Egypt and watered by the Nile to the south of the Aswan cataract and the Nile’s tributaries, is also divided ethnically into northern Hamitic and southern Negroid regions. The northern region was called Nubia. The percentage Hamitic/Kushitic in both regions also tends to fall, the farther from the Nile and its tributaries one travels. Further south was the Nilote and Negro zone. Apologies for the use of Negro if it offends anyone (I do not intend it to be in any way offensive).

Before Islam, Nubia was a Christian kingdom. It was conquered by Arabs from Egypt in the 7^th Century. The southern kingdom held out for a treaty in 651 CE and began a trading relationship with the Muslim Egyptian Arabs. Around 1250 CE, the Mamluks finally conquered the southern region. The capital of Nubia, Dongala, declined as Nubia became an Arabic state.

The conversion of the population was not extensive until the 14^th to 16^th Centuries and Arabic was still not spoken widely. The southern Christian ‘Alawa State was replaced by the Muslim Funj State by the 16^th Century. The Arab vassals settled their whole tribes in this region and their indigenous fellow countrymen and women spoke Arabic earlier than the northern populations. The slave trade continued there.

Islamic lawyers and mystics were the two major sources of conversions to Islam in Sudan. The Sufis were especially influential early on. While in West Africa the Sufi mystic was called a marabout, in East Africa including in Sudan the term used was fakir (incidentally, a lawyer was and is called a faqih in Arabic). The Sufi orders were well established from around the 12^th Century.

These two styles of Islam, the styles of the mainly Maliki faqih and the, often Qadiri (from the 14^th Century) fakir, became blended in East Africa including in the Sudan.

Briefly, the Ottoman ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, also lorded over Sudan in the 19th Century for a time. This was supported militarily by the British general, Gordon, until the mahdiyya movement (led by a radical Sufi who rather apocalyptically called himself the Mahdi, the Mahdi being the much prophesied Muslim end-times figure) brought about Sudanese independence.

Today, virtually all in both the North and South of Sudan speak Arabic, look alike and are Muslim. The only cause of the fighting there appears to be tribal and ethnic identity. There are now three major relevant ethno-tribal identities: Arab, Kushitic/Hamitic and African.

West Africa

Muslim traders from Mauritania and Morocco soon reached the Western Sahara and penetrated further south to places like Ghana, Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast collectively referred to in Arabic as Sudan (black) regions. Note that Sudan as used here also includes modern day Sudan and really the whole belt of settlement to the south of the Sahara that abutted the Arab/Berber Islamic world of the time. Trade between North and West Africa in fact predates the advent of Islam in Africa. Gold, salt, slaves and ivory were among the traded items.

The ivory trade was formally disapproved of in Islam but as an extravagance rather than out of animal welfare considerations. The renowned Saharan Tuareg with the traditional headgear were associated especially with the salt trade.

The part of the basin of the Niger River bordering the southern Sahara (and known in Arabic as the Sahal (beach/coast)) was influenced by Muslims from at least the 10^th Century. Bakri from 11^th Century Spain was an Arab historian of this area as was the 12^th Century Tunisian (and Norman Italian) Arab, Idrisi (a descendent of the founder of the Idrisid dynasty). From them we know that Muslim merchants were allowed by the local king of what is now (roughly) Ghana to build and worship at a mosque there. We also learn from them that a pattern of conversion of first elites, who learned Islam from learned merchants and sometimes Sufi mystics, and then their subordinates developed in the local West African societies.

The Almoravids were especially evangelical in both North and West Africa in the 11^th and 12^th Centuries. Both Berbers and Arabs were involved. There arose (as a result of the pattern of conversion) two types of Islam that the West Africans learned, the sophisticated version taught by the merchants and the simple version taught by the Sufis. The zeal was apparently infectious and attempts were made by West African rulers to convert other West Africans and their rulers to Islam often by force. This was occasionally a mere pretext for conquest, however, notably the late 13^th Century ‘jihads’ of the rulers of Mali.

As with the Maghreb, the hajj was enthusiastically attended and participation conferred great prestige on the hajji when back home in West Africa.

Mutual visits also forged significant links between West Africa and the rest of the Islamic world. Nevertheless, Ibn Battuta noted in the 14^th Century that Islam was still predominantly practiced then by the elites.

We know from the work of a Muslim historian in Niger that the locals preferred to add Islam to local customs rather than replace the old customs completely. He notes the absence of the early influence of the Muslim jurisprudents as a problem for the 'proper' local development of Islam (as he saw it) and sees that as having produced the reformist (and jihadist) movements of the 19^th Century, which sought to introduce the stricter form of Islam lacking in West Africa. Another view is that early West African Islam benefited from lacking the strictures of the legalism which developed elsewhere.

The "new religion" of Islam

Islam (arguably) began with a prophet, Muhammad, and has one major prophet (Muhammad). It holds that he (Muhammad) was favoured by the one true God (called Allah meaning simply 'the God'), who created the world and who was also preached about by and 'spoke to' Moses and Jesus (among others), with the words (and other signs such as 'mystical letters') that became known as the Qur’an (or Koran, especially in the old days). These words and signs are seen as the unaltered and unalterable works of God. As a result, while Islam respects other Holy Books, it sees the Qur’an as the most Holy Book. It also holds that Muhammad’s own words and actions (and omissions) are inspired by this God (as he was so honoured by the one true God as a sufficiently worthy and serious man) and therefore deserve to be taken especially seriously by Muslims. As a result, early Muslims collected examples from his life for the purpose of providing examples for good Muslims. The accepted versions are now called the true Hadith. The validity of many Hadith are widely and hotly disputed.

Islam was a reform of worship but also of social relations. It was a religion that taught a new respect for the rights of women and children as well as new concern for the poor. It taught that all Muslims were equal which also meant that clan allegiance was relatively subordinated to allegiance to the entire Muslim community.

And it taught that justice should no longer be a question of “might makes right” and random clan revenge and it provided a model state with powers of law enforcement directed personally against the actual perpetrator of crimes.

Islam now also has traditions of theological speculation and of mystical, spiritual exercises in order to in some way commune with Allah (Sufi traditions).

The Sufi emphasis on the relationship between one man (or woman) and God is clearly only part of the story of a religion. Islamic theological thinkers thus began to think about a man’s (or woman’s) relationship with the material world and other people. This is a political question. They started by developing two things: a new calendar (used in devotions) and a new legal philosophy (or jurisprudence).

Out of legal philosophy and theology sprung religious requirements, a legal system (or legal systems) of thought and ultimately legal requirements. These ideas about ways of behaving (and ways of requiring behaviour) came to solidify into a material culture or cultures that were therefore inspired by Islam.

Thus Islam has a reach that we can see today is religious, spiritual, intellectual, political, legal, social, environmental, economic, artistic and cultural but it is a religion.

Islamic daily practice from early on thus basically required three things: five prayers properly performed; some sex-based segregation and roles; and Islamic belief (all as determined by the thinkers of Islam).

The main beliefs were that there was one God only (called Allah), that he had sent prophets (including Moses and Jesus), that the Bible was also to be admired (as two Holy Books) and that He made humanity in order to have a relationship with it.

Islamic belief thus determined, required toleration of other ways of thinking and being. However, although quite democratic in spirit, Islam could also be used to justify things like toleration of dictatorship and despotism (provided it permitted Islam to be practiced).

Toleration of non-Muslims and adoption of scientific and technological thought-paradigms were perhaps naturally Islamic because early Islamic thinkers valued two things in particular: toleration and knowledge. This assessment of early Islam may surprise many in the West today and perhaps many modern Muslims. However, toleration was a specific feature of the early centuries of Islam actually not experienced as completely in the ‘Christian’ West at the time. This was not absolute, however.

There were also requirements to (if possible) complete one hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), to give to the less advantaged according to one's earnings and to perform the Ramadan fast and abstention from sex during the day time for the entire (lunar) month of Ramadan.

Belief was thus the foundation stone for the community which would meet together in prayer, in providing for the poor and needy, strangers, debtors and travellers (by means of a kind of voluntary flat income tax of around 2.5%), in fasting together (and then eating together) and in congregating together on pilgrimage.

Many of these kinds of habits will be recognised by Christians to have Christian equivalents. For instance, for some Christians Lent may still represent a period of fasting similar to the Ramadan fast. The requirement to tithe is similar to the zakat ‘voluntary tax’. Prayer is, of course, a common Christian practice and pilgrimages have also been a significant part of Christian history. So I will consider in later posts where the differences lie but also the similarities.