Çeviri
Sufi Visionary of Ottoman Damascus ’Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, 1641-1731
Elizabeth Sirriyeh
SUFI VISIONARY OF
OTTOMAN DAMASCUS
¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi
(1641-1731) was the mcs^r distinguished Sufi visionary and scholar of Ottoman
Syria. Many contemporaries and later Sufis gained their knowledge of Sufism
from his writings. Many studied the works of the Andalusian mystic Ibn ¿Arabi,
the Egyptian poet Ibn al-Farid and other masters through his mystical
interpretations. Yet, despite Nabulusi’s importance for understanding Arab
Sufism in the Ottoman age, very little has been published on this significant
Sufi author. This pioneering book seeks to introduce the reader to Nabulusi’s
Sufi experience and work, set against the background of Islamic life and
thought in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Syria and Palestine.
The book opens with an exploration of Nabulusi’s
early life as scholar and Sufi saint in the making, earning enemies by his
support for Ibn ¿Arabi and more controversial medieval mystics. His debt to Ibn
¿Arabi is examined further in a study of one of Nabulusi’s books on Sufi
doctrine, written at the age of 33 years. In his forties Nabulusi underwent a
time of intense visions, especially during a seven-year period of retreat. This
time also saw the production of Nabulusi’s popular book of dream
interpretation. Following discussion of his personal visionary experience and
writing on dreams, further chapters deal with the journeys of his later middle
age in Syria, Palestine, Egypt and the Hijaz. These chapters emphasise the
mystical content of his travel writings, including his interest in the significance
of ecstatics’ visions and visits to holy tombs.
Elizabeth Sirriyeh is Senior
Lecturer in Islamic Studies in the School of Theology and Religious Studies,
University of Leeds. She is the author of Sufis and Anti-Sufis: The Defence,
Rethinking and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World (1999).
ROUTLEDGECURZON SUFI SERIES
Series Editor: Ian Richard Netton
Professor of Arabic Studies
University of Leeds
The RoutledgeCurzon Sufi
Series provides short introductions to a variety of facets of the subject, which
are accessible both to the general reader and the student and scholar in the
field. Each book will be either a synthesis of existing knowledge or a distinct
contribution to, and extension of, knowledge of the particular topic. The two
major underlying principles of the Series are sound scholarship and
readability.
poems
J.T.P. de Bruijn
AZIZ NASAFI
Lloyd Ridgeon
SUFIS AND ANTI-SUFIS
The defence, rethinking and rejection
of Sufism in the modern world
Elizabeth Sirriyeh
REVELATION, INTELLECTUAL
INTUITION AND REASON IN
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
MULLA SADRA
An analysis of the al-hikmah
al-¿arshiyyah
Zailan Moris
DIVINE LOVE IN
ISLAMIC MYSTICISM
The teachings of al-Ghazali
and al-Dabbagh
Binyamin Abramahov
STRIVING FOR DIVINE UNION
Spiritual exercises for
Suhrawardi Sufis
Qamar-ul Huda
A PSYCHOLOGY OF
EARLY SUFI SAMÂC
Listening and altered states
Kenneth S. Avery
MUSLIM SAINTS OF
SOUTH ASIA
The eleventh to fifteenth centuries
Anna Suvorova
SUFI VISIONARY OF
OTTOMAN DAMASCUS
¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi,
1641-1731
Elizabeth Sirriyeh
SUFI RITUAL
The parallel universe
Ian Richard Netton
SUFI VISIONARY
OF
OTTOMAN DAMASCUS
¿Abd al-Ghanî
al-Nabulusi,
1641-1731
Elizabeth Sirriyeh
IJ RoutledgeCurzon
ffl
a Taylor
& Francis Gr°up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
FOR HUSSEIN, ALA AND REEMA
First published 2005
by RoutledgeCurzon
2 Park Square, Milton
Park, Abingdon,
Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published
in the USA and Canada
by RoutledgeCurzon
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York, NY 10016
This edition published in
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“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis
or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
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© 2005 Elizabeth Sirriyeh
All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage
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from the publishers.
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ISBN 0-203-34137-6 Master
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(Print Edition)
1
The making of a
scholarly saint 1
The birth of a saint 1
A family of lawyers 3
A scholar in training 5
Encounters with Sufi books 7
Praising the Prophet 13
The journey to Istanbul and Qâdirï initiation 15
2 The spiritual son of Ibn ¿Arabi 18
In the steps of the Great Master 18
‘Lordly Revelation’ 21
Wahdat al-wujud and the problem of sin 22
Sound doctrine post-Ibn cArabï 28
Unbelief in this world and the afterlife 32
Faith and the sinful saint 35
3 The Naqshabandï recluse 39
cAbd al-Ghani, the
Naqshabandï 39
Mujaddidi connections 44
Divine love, platonic love, gay love? 47
The seven-year retreat 49
A voice from the unseen
world 53
4 Interpreter of true dreams 57
‘The two worlds are one’ 57
The dreaming of a saint 60
Messages from the ‘world of truth’ 63
Dreaming in symbols, predicting the future 67
The Perfuming of Humankind 71
An encyclopaedia of God’s signs 74
Dreams of mosques, shrines and holy cities 77
Dreams of prophets and caliphs, of scorpions and
spiders 80
5 Solitude in a crowd 84
‘Outwardly in the world’ 84
The pure gold of a Lebanese journey 86
Travels in a wild and sacred land 89
Turks, Jews and Christians 91
Events of 1693 94
The longest journey 96
Nâbulusi and the rulers 105
6 ‘A new kind of mystical travel-literature’ 108
Nâbulusi’s mystical rihlas 108
Sufi elements in earlier rihlas 109
Men of the tariqas 112
Encounters with ecstatics 114
Dreams of the righteous 117
Holy graves 121
Sufi saints of southern Palestine 123
At the tombs of Ibn ‘Arabi and Ibn al-Fârid 126
7 Last years in
Salihiyya, 1707-1731 129
Conclusion
‘The
illustrious mystic’ and ‘sultan of the learned’ 133
I am grateful to a number
of friends and colleagues at the University of Leeds for aiding and encouraging
me in this study: to Ian Netton as editor of this series for inviting me to
undertake the project and advising me along the way; to Nigel Biggar, Kim
Knott, Sean McLoughlin, Philip Mellor, Hugh Pyper and colleagues and graduate
students in the Senior Seminar of the School of Theology and Religious Studies,
with appreciation of their support and discussion of parts of the manuscript.
Finally, my special thanks go to my husband, Hussein, and my daughters, Ala
and Reema, for their constant enthusiasm and encouragement to me throughout my
work for this book.
Elizabeth Sirriyeh School
of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds
Shaykh ¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi
was arguably the most distinguished Arab Sufi of Ottoman Syria. His close
associates and many later Sufis regarded him as an extraordinary visionary, one
of the greatest of the gnostic saints, who had been guided through divine
unveiling to walk on the ‘path of God’ and be brought near to the Divine
Presence. Admiring contemporaries spoke of him as the qutb, the
spiritual ‘pole’ or ‘axis’ of his time at the head of the saintly hierarchy,
upon which the order of the universe depended. His name was linked with that
most famous of Arab Andalusian mystics, Muhyi ’l-din b. al-¿Arabi, widely known
simply as Ibn ¿Arabi (1165-1240), the Great Master (al-shaykh al-akbar).
In some circles he was even thought to be a reincarnation of Ibn ¿Arabi, as the
view spread that the Great Master had himself predicted that he would reappear
in Damascus and be named ¿Abd al-Ghani. Although Nabulusi may have stopped
short of such a direct identification, he did come to look upon Ibn ¿Arabi as
his spiritual father and accepted that he had inherited from him a very high
and distinctive status; according to Nabulusi’s grandson and biographer, he
affirmed that the Great Master had been the Seal of Muhammadan Sainthood in his
own age, but that there were seals later in time, of which he was one.1
What did Nabulusi intend if he did indeed speak of himself as the Muhammadan
Seal?
The idea of a seal of the
saints is known from an early Sufi treatise by al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. c.
910), whose theorising was studied by Ibn ¿Arabi when he came to develop his
own view on the subject.2 According to Tirmidhi, Prophet Muhammad
was the seal of the prophets because prophethood was perfected in him, not
because he was the last in the line of prophets. Similarly, he described the
seal of the saints as being so-called ‘because he has perfected his “friendship
with God”, that is, he has “sealed” it’.3 Tirmidhi apparently laid claim to
the title long before Ibn ¿Arabi’s more famous, and seemingly more extensive,
claims for himself in the role. For Ibn ¿Arabi, the Muhammadan Seal is ‘the
special Seal of the sainthood of the community which is visibly that of Muhammad’4
and is the ultimate source of all sainthood, including that of the prophets in
their capacity as God’s saints. Ibn ¿Arabi’s bold statements about himself as
seal are sometimes ambiguous and were to lead to much controversy because the
Great Master appeared to critics to be exalting himself to a rank above that of
the prophets. The first to denounce Ibn ¿Arabi, and especially the promotion of
the seal of sainthood, was the Syrian Shafi¿i jurist Ibn ¿Abd al-Salam al-Sulami
(d. 1262), who notes that Tirmidhi was followed by Ibn ¿Arabi ‘and several
misguided [Sufi] masters in Damascus’, and he declares:
Each of them
asserted that, in certain respects, he was superior to the Prophet.... All
these claims sprang from the desire for the leadership (riyasa), which
they thought belongs to the Seal of the Prophets. However, they made a grievous
mistake, for the Seal of the Prophets is far superior to any of them, and there
is ample evidence to prove this.5
Had Ibn ¿Abd al-Salam lived in the later
seventeenth rather than the thirteenth century, he would surely have condemned
Nabulusi along with other ‘misguided masters in Damascus’. He would not have
been alone in his opinion. While Shaykh ¿Abd al-Ghani, or at least some among
his followers, may well have believed that he was the highest perfected saint
of his time, not everyone in Syria agreed with this assessment. In a climate of
tension between Sufis and their opponents, Nabulusi felt compelled to defend
himself and champion Ibn ¿Arabi and other fellow Sufis, both of the past and
of his own day. Throughout his long life he was to inspire extreme veneration
and intense hostility. To anti-Sufis he was one of those responsible for
introducing corruption into the faith. They were to see him as the staunch
supporter of much that they attacked as false innovations; these ranged from
the lofty speculations of Ibn ¿Arabi’s cosmic vision to popular practices at
the graves of saints.
PREFACE
among the living and dead
saints of his native Syria, Egypt and the Hijaz. He wrote for both a scholarly
and Sufi élite, but also for a wider general public, among whom his book of
symbolic dream interpretation would be extensively consulted and retain its
popularity to the present. By his early fifties, he had already written 140
books and short tracts and by the time of his death at the age of 90 years, he
may have composed as many as 250 works. Nevertheless, despite his scholarly and
spiritual distinction, many of these are extant only in manuscript, while
others have been lost. The formidable task of making Nabulusî’s surviving
writings available in critical editions has proceeded slowly over the last 50
years, and it is likely to be many more years before a full corpus of his
extant work becomes available in Arabic. At present, very little has been translated
into English and European languages.
In view of the inaccessibility of much of his
work, ¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusî has attracted limited attention in academic
studies, in spite of his importance for the understanding of Arab Sufi thought
and religious life in the Ottoman period. Bearing in mind the lack of English
publications on Nabulusî, this book seeks to introduce the reader to his Sufi
life experience and a small selection of his writings. Nabulusî’s life is
reviewed against the backcloth of Ottoman Syria and Palestine in the late
seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries, but remembering that for Nabulusî the
inner life of the visionary is as real as the events of his outer life and
frequently more significant. Chapters discussing the various phases of his life
alternate with chapters dedicated to particular aspects of his work, reflecting
his concerns in that period. Thus a chapter on his early life and Sufi
development is followed by a chapter discussing an early work of Sufi doctrine;
a chapter on his middle years of intense visionary experience is followed by a
chapter regarding his interpretation of dreams; and a chapter on his later
middle age, which was marked by a series of travels to visit the righteous
living and dead, is followed by a chapter on mystical elements of his rihlas.
A breakdown of the chapters is given below.
Chapter 1, ‘The making of a scholarly saint’, considers Nabulusî’s
life and work to the age of 33 years. It pays attention to intellectual and
spiritual influences on Nabulusî from his family background and teachers and
from his studies of the medieval Sufi tradition, especially Ibn ¿Arabî, but
also the philosophical mystic Ibn Sab¿ín (d. c. 1269-71) and Sufi poet ¿Afîf
al-dîn al-Tilimsanî (d. 1291). After a brief examination of his poem in praise
of the Prophet and commentary on it, composed in 1664 in a state of mystical
SUFI VISIONARY OF OTTOMAN
DAMASCUS inspiration at the age of 23 years, it discusses his initiation into
the Qadiriyya.
Chapter 2, ‘The spiritual son of Ibn ¿Arabi’, studies Nabulusi’s book
on Sufi doctrine, al-Fath al-rabbani wa ’l-fayd al-rahmani, written in
1674 when Nabulusi was 33 years old and reflecting the strong influence of Ibn
¿Arabi. It observes how Nabulusi at times gave his own development to the Great
Shaykh’s ideas in ways that could antagonise critics of some Sufi thought or of
Sufism as a whole.
Chapter 3, ‘The Naqshabandi recluse’, discusses Nabulusi’s life and
work from about 1676 to 1687, focusing on his connections with the
Naqshabandiyya and a seven-year period of retreat, a time of dreams and
ecstatic states and of prolific writing.
Chapter 4, ‘Interpreter of true dreams’, explores Nabulusi’s views on
dreaming, and interpretation of his own and others’ dream experiences. It
looks in some detail at his famous guide to symbolic dreams, Tactir
al-anam fi tacbir al-manam, composed during the long retreat.
Chapter 5, ‘Solitude in a crowd’, deals with the period of return to
public life from 1687 to 1700, when Nabulusi set out to fulfil the eighth
Naqshabandi principle, mindful of his inward spiritual journey with God, even
when outwardly in the world. It discusses his physical journeys to Lebanon,
Jerusalem and Palestine, as well as his long journey of 388 days through his
homeland to Egypt and on to the Hijaz for the hajj. It also surveys
writings from that time, including his major work on Sufi doctrine, al-Wujud
al-haqq, completed in 1693.
Chapter 6, ‘ A new kind of mystical travel-literature’, examines Nabulusi’s
rihlas resulting from his extensive travels. It emphasises their
mystical content by concentrating on Nabulusi’s accounts of his encounters with
Sufis, especially ecstatics (majadhib), and his visits to Sufi tombs.
Attention is also paid to the significance of dreams in the Sufi rihla.
Chapter 7, ‘Last years in Salihiyya, 1707-1731’, offers a short review
of the end of Nabulusi’s life and final contributions to Sufi scholarship.
THE MAKING OF
A
SCHOLARLY SAINT
¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi
was marked out for sainthood even before his birth. His mother, Zaynab, a lady
of some social standing as the daughter of a leading merchant, played a crucial
role in connecting her son to the saintly tradition of Damascus. She was also
to be a key figure in his spiritual upbringing. During the late stages of her
pregnancy, her husband, Isma¿il al-Nabulusi, was away in Egypt studying with
some of its most prominent Sufis. These included Hasan al-Shurunbulali (d.
1658), who is noted as holding in high esteem the ecstatic mystics (majâdhib),
who were constantly overwhelmed by the divine presence in their lives.1 Isma¿il
and his wife appear to have shared this view, as Zaynab went during her
pregnancy to consult the custodian at the shrine of one of the most popularly
venerated Damascene saints, Yusuf al-Qamini (d. 1259).2
Qamini is variously described as an ecstatic (majdhüb),
seized with apparent madness by the force of sudden illumination, and
enraptured by God (muwallah), someone who through extreme love of God
experienced a permanent state of unveiling (kashf) so as to have direct
experiential knowledge of God. Through his mystical insights he was also said
to be aware of the innermost thoughts of his fellow human beings.3
He was noted as an antinomian Sufi for whom it was no longer relevant to follow
the dictates of the Sharfa because he had gone beyond all need for it.
Therefore, he did not observe the rules of ritual purity, but wore filthy
clothing, rarely washed and urinated in his long, sweeping robes. Qamini was
known to frequent the stoke-hole of the baths at the Nur al-din Hospital in Suq
al-Qamh and, otherwise, spent his time among the dung heaps. Nevertheless, it
was popularly believed that his outwardly polluted state was of no consequence
in the true saint, whose inner
state was pure. He was credited with many miracles, especially with the healing
of the sick. After his death, crowds of working-class Damascenes attended his
funeral and erected ‘a decorated tomb with a carved headstone, and a group of
them remained by the tomb reciting the Qur’an, thereby casting him in death in
the role of the founders of the great tomb-foundations’.4 However,
veneration of such a ‘people’s saint’ did not apparently remain confined to the
lower strata of society, since Isma¿il and Zaynab al- Nabulusi were from the
Arab élite of seventeenth-century Damascus. The shrine was actually maintained
by the Nabulusi family until the mid-twentieth century, when an apartment
building was constructed over it.5
The custodian
of the tomb, whom Zaynab visited to enquire about her unborn child, was also an
ecstatic, known simply as Shaykh Mahmud. He had a reputation for holiness and
miracles, and he allegedly knew before the birth that Zaynab would bear a son
and told her that she should call him ¿Abd al-Ghani.6 He predicted a
glorious future for the boy and is said to have given her a silver coin and a
lump of earth, which she was to feed to the baby after his birth.7
It is not clear whether the gifts show the state of Mahmud as a majdhub,
crazed to the eyes of the world, or whether they have some other significance. ¿Abd
al-Ghani al-Nabulusi was born on 18 March 1641. He recalls that his birth took
place on the second day after Mahmud’s death and that the saintly custodian
‘had entreated our mother before he died to bring us to his grave and to rub us
with the soil of his grave before it was built over’.8 This custom
of laying the new-born child on the earth is extremely ancient and known in a
wide variety of cultures.9 It is probable that the gift of earth as
food is connected in some way with this request. Here the aim is seemingly to
effect a two-way transmission of spiritual forces. In a sense the newly born
and the newly dead share a common situation: the one is at the beginning of
earthly life, the other is on the threshold of the afterlife and being born to
the new, real life with God. By placing the infant ¿Abd al-Ghani on the soil of
the grave and feeding him with earth from the holy man, his mother would ensure
that he derived blessing (baraka) from the dead shaykh; at the same time
she would enable her baby son to transmit his own baraka as a future
saint to assist Shaykh Mahmud in his life after death. This story, which Nabulusi
promotes, serves to confirm that he was recognised and destined from a foetus
to become more than a competent scholar. It witnesses his own conviction about
his superior spiritual status.
The family, originally from Hama in central
Syria, had settled in Jerusalem during the thirteenth century. The Banu Jama¿a
then split into two main branches. One line remained in Jerusalem and supplied
the preachers at the Aqsa Mosque; the other moved to Cairo when Badr al-din Muhammad
b. Jama¿a (d. 1333) was summoned there in 1291 by the new Mamluk sultan,
al-Ashraf Khalil. He was to be appointed to two of the most senior posts in the
religious hierarchy: chief judge (qâdï al-qudat) and head of the Sufi brotherhoods
(shaykh al-shuyukh). A man like Ibn Jama¿a was obviously far removed
from the popular tradition of the outwardly polluted, ‘enraptured’ men of God.
He believed in the intimate association between learning and purity, and
cautioned against the dangers of any contact with pollutants: ‘The learned man
should keep away from the basest professions, because they are despicable
according to both revelation and custom, such as the art of cupping, dyeing,
money changing and gold-smithing.’11 The list suggests the dangers
of both physical and moral pollution and the link between the two. When at a
later stage in his life Nabulusi faced allegations of not observing strict
ritual purity himself, he called attention to his impeccable learned and pure
ancestry, the great and good of the Banu Jama¿a.12
Badr al-din’s own direct
descendants from the line of great judges of Cairo and Damascus appear to have
died out by the fifteenth century. ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi was actually
himself descended from Badr al-din’s younger brother ¿Abd al-Rahman, who
remained in Jerusalem. However, not long after the Ottoman occupation of Syria
in 1516, one of the family members moved from Jerusalem to the Palestinian town
of Nablus and then up to Damascus, a city that attracted a number of Palestinians to settle
there in the sixteenth century. This branch of the Banu Jama¿a was to become
known as Nabulusi after the family’s short stay in Nablus. But it was ¿Abd al-
Ghani’s great-grandfather, Isma¿il al-Nabulusi (d. 1585), who was to establish
the Nabulusi family’s fortunes. True to the traditions of the old Banu Jama¿a,
he was distinguished as a Shafi¿i jurist, became Shafi¿i mufti of the
city and taught fiqh, both at the Umayyad Mosque and at four different madrasas.
These included the Darwishiyya Madrasa, specially endowed by Darwish Pasha,
governor of Damascus in the 1570s, for Isma¿il and his descendants to teach Shafi¿i
fiqh.1 He taught an international body of students, Turks and
Persians as well as Arabs, all of whose languages he spoke. Isma¿il succeeded
also in becoming a wealthy man, the leaseholder of various villages and farms,
and had connections at the highest level with the religious dignitaries of
Istanbul. Nabulusi was obviously very proud of his great-grandfather, writing
in laudatory tones about him when recalling a visit to the mausoleum built for
him by Darwish Pasha in the Damascus cemetery of Bab al-Saghir.15
By contrast, ¿Abd al-Ghani’s grandfather, also
named ¿Abd al- Ghani, seems to have been lacking in intellectual abilities and
his grandson dwells on his noble character rather than his scholarship:
Throughout his life Nabulusi
would experience tensions between his role as a religious scholar and his life
as an illuminated mystic and people’s saint. From his earliest years his father
set him to work learning and reciting the Qur’an and, when he had mastered the
whole of it by heart and so become a hâfiz at the age of five years, he
could be noted either as endowed with the brilliant mind of a future scholar or
as given the blessing of the sacred text as a future saint or, indeed, as
combining brilliance and blessing.
His father’s death might, in other circumstances,
have severely disrupted his course of learning and damaged a promising career,
but in this case it did not. There was sufficient wealth from both sides of the
family to support him in his studies and his mother, as he informs us, was
‘devoted and sympathetic’ towards him.19 He appears to have been
deeply attached to his mother and appreciated the loving support that she
provided. His fatherless state might even be seen to have marked him out as
special, given that the Prophet Muhammad had been an orphan. In middle age,
when Nabulusi came to write a book of dream interpretation, he noted that, if a
Between the
ages of 12 and 20 years, Nabulusi continued with his studies, fatherless, but
not totally without a fatherly figure in his life. He was fortunate in
receiving the kind attention of a senior Hanball scholar, ¿Abd al-Baqi al-Hanball
(d. 1660), who is said to have acted like a foster-father to him.21
The Hanbalis of Damascus were esteemed for their attention to scholarship on Hadith
and ¿Abd al-Baqi was instrumental in supervising the young ¿Abd al-Ghani’s
studies in the field, in which he was joined in classes by a number of Hanbali students.
He was to excel in the subject and become a respected traditionist (muhaddith),
his major extant work being an index to the Hadith transmitters whose
names appear in the six Sunni canonical collections with their rankings within
the seven classes of reliability.22 The close early association with
the Hanbali community was one which would endure throughout Nabulusi’s long
life and many young Hanbalis would be sent by their parents to study Hadith
with him.23 This friendship between the Damascene Hanbalis and the
most renowned Arab Sufi of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been
remarked upon as one indication that Syrian Hanbalism of this period was not
characterised by the stern hostility towards Sufism evident among the Wahhabi Hanbalis
of Arabia in the eighteenth century. Some Hanbalis are also known initiates of tariqas
in Damascus. In this period relations between Hanbalis and members of other madhhabs,
mostly Hanafis and Shafi¿is, also seem to have been cordial and not damaged by
the kind of juristic disputes recorded in medieval Syria.24 The Hanafi
Nabulusi’s study of Hadith with a Hanbali master was not exceptional,
as other prominent Hanafis did the same.
His study of fiqh,
however, had naturally to be conducted under Hanafi instruction, his first
significant master being Shaykh Ahmad al-Qala¿i al-Hanafi (d. 1658). It would
be an important area for him, in keeping with the family tradition. He could
not easily expect to achieve the senior Hanafi judgeship as qâdï al-qudât
of Damascus, since this was a post normally reserved for Turks. Nevertheless,
the muftis of the city were mainly from the Arab or Arabised population,
so to attain the rank of mufti would not have been an unreasonable aspiration,
sadly not to be realised until he was very old. Yet, even though his official
practice of the law would be limited, he was to be thoroughly prepared as a
youth and young man for future distinction as the author of numerous legal
treatises. These included theoretical discussions of legal principles as well
as contributions to debates on issues of the day, such as the permissibility of
smoking. Tobacco had been introduced into the Middle East early in the
seventeenth century, and its use became a subject of controversy among the ‘ulama’.
Campaigners against it succeeded in persuading the Ottoman authorities to ban
it. The 1630s bore witness to numerous executions for the offence of smoking
tobacco. Sufis were by no means the only offenders, but they were generally
perceived as over-tolerant towards tobacco, as well as towards wine, cannabis
and opium. After a period of less severe repression in the time of Nabulusi’s
youth, the prohibitionists gained strength once again from the 1660s. Nabulusi does
not seem to have risked smoking himself as a young man, although he did so in
later life. He was to write boldly in defence of the habit as legally
permissible and also to compose poetry in favour of smoking.25
The names of eighteen of his teachers were
recorded by his grandson, Kamal al-din al-Ghazzi (d. 1699), including his childhood
master Najm al-din al-Ghazzi (d. 1651), author of a major biographical
dictionary of notables of the tenth Islamic century (late fifteenth to late
sixteenth centuries CE).26 Kamal al-din remarks with admiration that
his grandfather ‘surpassed all his peers in speech and comprehension before he
reached the age of twenty’.27
Although Nabulusi gained
his scholarly knowledge and skills from his teachers, he was not convinced that
living human masters were necessarily the most important and true guides to
real knowledge. Books, he believed, taught him more and it was his encounters
with the writings of the medieval Sufi tradition that began to open the way for
him to mystical illumination. Essentially, his most esteemed teachers were the
dead Sufi masters from the world of spirits, and one means by which he sought
to receive their guidance and the power of their baraka was through
reading their books.
Biographers mention the names of three principal
authors in whose writings Nabulusi became particularly absorbed: Ibn ¿Arabi (d.
1240), Ibn Sab¿in (d. c. 1269-71) and ¿Afif al-din al-Tilimsani (d.
1291).28 Of the three, the Great Master Ibn ¿Arabi is the least surprising and, as noted in the Preface, ¿Abd
al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi considered himself to have a special relationship to him.29
In the sixteenth century Ibn ¿Arabi had effectively been adopted by the
Ottomans as an establishment saint and it had become relatively respectable to
study his work. Following his conquest of Syria, Sultan Selim I ordered the
construction in 1517-18 of the celebrated mausoleum over the tomb of Ibn ¿Arabi;
the Great Shaykh became valued as the protecting saint of the Ottoman dynasty.30
Selim’s son, Suleyman the Lawgiver (known to Europeans as ‘the Magnificent’),
prevented any efforts to disparage Ibn ¿Arabi as a heretic or unbeliever.
However, throughout much of the next century, the Great Master and his
followers received no official state protection and were exposed once again to
the verbal, and sometimes physical, assaults of their opponents. Most prominent
among the adversaries of Ibn ¿Arabi and his school were the radical preachers,
jurists and students of the Kadizadeli movement.31 The Kadizadelis
developed their virulently anti-Sufi campaigns in Istanbul and Anatolia under
the leadership of Kadizade Mehmed (d. 1635). Between about 1621 and 1685, they
enjoyed a period of fluctuating popularity in their efforts to counter what
they perceived as unacceptable and heretical Sufi excesses, and at times were
highly effective in influencing Ottoman sultans to act against Sufis and more
widely on a range of moral issues. They were vocal spokesmen in the
above-mentioned drive to eliminate tobacco, alcohol and drug use. Temporarily
weakened during the Grand Vizierate of Mehmed Koprülü from 1656 to 1661, they
were experiencing a revival and were active in Damascus just as Nabulusi was
embarking on a teaching career at the Umayyad Mosque.
As a young man in his twenties, he started giving
classes there on Hadith and also began teaching texts of Ibn ¿Arabi in
public and private study groups, defying the Kadizadeli lawyers and students
who denounced the Great Shaykh in Turkish as §eyh-i Ekfer, ‘the Worst
Shaykh’.32 The young scholar began to be specially noted for his
interpretation of Ibn ¿Arabi’s most famous book, Fusüs al-hikam (The Bezels
of Wisdom), fass (pl. fusüs) being the ‘bezel’ or ‘setting’ on a
ring holding a precious stone. The bezels, in this case, are the line of
twenty-seven prophets from Adam to Muhammad; each of them holds a gem, a
particular aspect of the Divine Wisdom. In the twenty-seven chapters of his
book, each dedicated to a particular prophet, Ibn ¿Arabi presents a synthesis
of the main themes to be found in his lifetime’s work, including the ‘oneness
of being’ (wahdat al-wujüd), the ‘perfect human being’ (al-insan
al-kamil), God’s infinite mercy, the non-eternity of punishment in Hell and
the final salvation of even the Pharaoh. As Claude Addas remarks, these themes
are all to be found also in Ibn ¿Arabi’s massive magnum opus, al-Futuhat
al-makkiyya (Meccan Revelations): ‘But in the one case they are given
expression and in a sense diluted over thousands of pages, where they
intermingle with a whole crowd of other notions; in the other they are
concentrated and expounded more systematically in a mere hundred pages or so.’33
Probably this very compression of the Great Master’s ideas also served to make
them more startling and led to the Fusus becoming the main target for
attacks on his thought.
Ibn ¿Arabi believed that he was not really ‘the
author of the Bezels’, sahib al-Fusus, as he was often titled, but
simply the one who inherited the work direct from the Prophet himself in a
vision which he experienced in December 1229 at Damascus. He, therefore, asked
God’s favour that:
Ibn ¿Arabi is said to
have forbidden his disciples to bind copies of the Fusus together with
any other books authored by him. Sufis widely held that it should be read with
a commentary and with a qualified spiritual interpreter. In seeking to acquaint
students with the Fusus, particularly when he was so young himself, Nabulusi
was undertaking an awesome task in any circumstances and one that demanded
courage in the face of those ready to charge him with heresy.
SUFI VISIONARY OF OTTOMAN DAMASCUS substance of
phenomena, that ‘in reality the whole exists in individual things and individual
things in the whole and so the whole joins with the individual things’.35
He was attacked as ittihadi, a preacher of unitive fusion with God.
Although the term ‘oneness of being’ (wahdat al-wujud) may hvve been
coined by another Andalusian author, ¿Abd al-Mun¿im al-Ghilyani (d. 1205), Ibn
Sab¿ín appears to have played a significant role in promoting its use, leading
to a long cycle of arguments and misunderstandings.36 Alexander
Knysh has demonstrated that the polemical writing of Qutb al-dîn al-Qastallani (d.
1287) attackrng monittic Sufi thought was actually directed primarily at Ibn
Sab¿in (his rival in Mecca for political influence with the governor); yet Qastallani
dragged Ibn ¿Arabi into the debate, forcing him ‘to play the role of a founding
father (along with a few others) of the monistic “heresy”’.37 Ibn ¿Arabi
was thus effectively tarnished by association with the more radically monist
Ibn Sab¿in.
In subsequent
medieval vilification of heretical monists, Ibn ¿Arabi would sometimes be distinguished
as closer to ‘orthodoxy’ than the ‘damnable’ Ibn Sab¿in. Even that most
strenuous of critics of philosophical Sufism, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), is ready
to concede of Ibn ¿Arabi that ‘of all the exponents of wahdat al-wujud he
is close to Islam, that many of his ideas are correct, that he distinguishes
between the Manifest (al-zahir) and the objecss of marnees- tation (mazahir)
and accepts the commands and prohibitions (of the shar) and other
principles as they are’.38 The distinguished historian and jurist
Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) was a^^o ready rn bis Muqaddima to recognise
differences between the followers of Ibn ¿Arabi, whom he classed as ‘People of
Theophany’ (ashab al-tajalli) (bcaau^ of their understanding of God’s
self-manifestations in all things)and Ibn Sab¿in and his school, the Sab¿iniyya,
whom he described as ‘People of Absolute Unity’ (ashab al-wahda al-mutlaqa),
the real monists.39 However, after his move from the Maghrib to
Egypt and holding the Maliki chief judgeship there, he showed himself no longer
prepared to differentiate between the two Sufi masters and their followers. In
a late fatwa he denounces Ibn ¿Arabi and Ibn Sab¿in together, declaring
that their ‘works reek of downright unbelief and reprehensible innovation’ and
he doubts ‘whether these people can at all be treated as members of this
[Muslim] community and counted among [the followers of] the Shari¿a’.40
In Ibn Khaldun’s opinion, their books ‘must be destroyed by fire or washed off
by water, until the traces of writing disappear completely’.41
Not only was Ibn Sab¿in
generally held to represent the most
Readers of a poem by his major disciple, ¿Ali al-Shushtari
(d. 1269), might have been further alarmed by the records of Ibn Sab¿in’s
spiritual ancestry, including the ecstatic martyr Hallaj (d. 922) and othess of
the more audacfous mysiics, Muslim phiioto- phers such as Ibn Sina (d. 1037)
and Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) ), evnn sVc Greek
philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and, at the source, Hermes
Trismegistus, the Greek title given to the Egyptian god Thoth.43
Hermes Trismegistus, ‘Thrice Greatest Hermes’, was mythically considered to
have imparted to human beings knowledge of healing, science, philosophy and
magical arts. His name was also attached to various Neoplatonic writings, the Corpus
Hermeticum, much of which seems to have been known in Arabic translation in
medieval Spain. Had inquirers turned to Ibn Sab¿in’s own best- known work Budd
al-carif (The Escape [or the Prerequisite] of the Gnostic), they
would have found him testifying to this debt to the traditions of late
antiquity, stating in his Introduction: ‘I petitioned God (astakhartu li
’llâh) to propagate [di^^ugh me] sIic
widdom (hikma) which Hermcs Tcismagistus (al-harâmisa) reegalcd
in the earliest times.’44 For Ibn Sab¿in, the figure of Hermes
Trismegistus, whom he also terms ‘our greatest impeccable teacher’ and ‘the
greatest sage’, appears to take precedence over Prophet Muhammad.
An interest in Hermetic wisdom teachings is
attested to in certain Jewish, Christian and Muslim circles in the medieval
Spanish environment in which Ibn Sab¿in grew up.45 Hence in their
original context his incorporation of Hermetism in his philosophical system would have been shocking to more orthodox
believers, but not so intellectually alien as to be extraordinary. However, so
negative was the perception built up about Ibn Sab¿in that most Muslim scholars
had been successfully scared off from reading his works after the thirteenth
century. The question then remains: why did ¿Abd al- Ghanî al-Nabulusi turn to
the writings of a ‘Muslim’ Hermetist with philosophical and Sufi leanings,
whose works had been denigrated and neglected for almost 400 years? The matter
is something of a mystery because it was extremely unusual for a Sufi scholar
of his age, and he has been noted as a remarkable exception for not only
studying Ibn Sab¿in’s books but also for hoping to acquire baraka through
them.46 The extent of his reading of these books is not clear, or
whether he discovered the author himself or was introduced to him by a teacher
or teachers, in which case it would suggest that there might have been some
continuing private study of such writings in seventeenth-century Damascus.
Perhaps Nabulusi was simply bolder than others in admitting his interest.
However, from the manner of his occasional citation and quotation of Ibn Sab¿in
later in life, it is probable that he either did not appreciate the differences
between him and Ibn ¿Arabi or did not wish to expose them in public.47
Generally, Nabulusi would struggle hard in defence of the Great
Master and of all those who might be described as upholding wahdat al-wujud,
even when their interpretations differed substantially. Thus he would also
make a personal effort to restore the battered reputation of the Sab¿iniyya,
writing against critics of Shushtari, the most prominent of the Sab¿ini disciples,
Radd al- muftari ‘an al-tacn fi ’l-Shushtari (Refutation of the
Slanderer, concerning the defaming ofShushtari)4 Finally, he
showed his deep admiration throughout his life for the third of the dead
mystics, ¿Afif al-din al-Tilimsani, from whose writings he claimed to receive
guidance and baraka, and whose poetry he quotes with respect. Tilimsani provides
a link between the Sab¿iniyya and the school of Ibn ¿Arabi, having connections
to both. He was also noted for his commentary on the Fusus. He was
loathed in his turn by many of the jurists. Ibn Taymiyya calls him ‘wicked’49
and another detractor scathingly refers to him as ‘pigs’ meat on a China
plate’,50 the China plate being his beautiful poetry. Ibn Khaldun
included him among the authors whose books should be burned or washed clean.
But for ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi he would remain ‘the one acquainted with
knowledge of the Divine’ and ‘interpreter of the presence of God’s truths’.51
The year 1664 was important for Nabulusi, a time
of new spiritual insight, but also a time of disappointment in worldly affairs.
He had practised poetry from an early age, but now his talent was flowering and
he was convinced that this was not purely the result of natural ability and
training. When he wrote a poem in praise of Prophet Muhammad, he declared that
he had composed it in a state of mystical inspiration. Sceptics, however,
simply thought that it was too good to be his own work, rejected his claims and
accused him of not being the true author. In order to put him to the test, they
demanded that he produce a commentary on it in the space of a month; he did
this within three weeks, thus confounding his critics.52 It is not
entirely surprising that critics should have queried the authorship of this
poem, Nasamât al-ashâr fî madh al-nabî al- mukhtâr (Evening Breezes in
Praise of the Chosen Prophet), because it is a piece of extraordinary
accomplishment and the commentary, Nafahât al-azhâr (Flower Fragrances)
mutt hvve amazed them even more.53 The poem is a badhiyya,
praising Prophet Muhammad by utilising a great range of ‘verbal tricks’ that
show the poet’s mastery of a branch of Arabic rhetoric described as bad?. This
type of ‘trick’ has been defined as ‘the kind of trope known in English as a
“scheme”, embodying not imagery so much as some artifice that exploits the
phonetic or graphic features of words’.54 Nabulusi’s poem follows
the pattern set by an Iraqi poet, Safiyy al- din al-Hilli (d. c. 1349),
but represents an extreme point in the elaborate use of tropes to adorn this
form of eulogy. The commentary is arguably even more technically impressive in
demonstrating Nabulusi’s extensive knowledge of 180 tropes, including as many
as 50 types of paronomasia (where words are used that differ in meaning but
with phonetic or graphic similarities); all are illustrated with quotations
from a variety of earlier poets.
In his investigation of late badî
literature, Pierre Cachia has observed
that the
literature heavily laden with verbal ornamentation and apparently holding such
ornamentation to be the distinguishing mark of artistic expression was in honor
among Arabic-speaking peoples not during a short passing phase but for at least
six centuries, from the thirteenth to the eighteenth, and it seemed to satisfy
generation after generation of men who were neither fools nor uncultured.55
In seeking the reasons for such appreciation of ‘sound effects’ in
the wordsmith’s craft, he focuses on the élitist nature of this kind of poetic
production, catering for poets and their readers who share common cultural
values with which they have been satisfied over hundreds of years. The
composition, reading and recitation of the badfiyya take place as ‘a
game’ within a framework of rules that all participants understand. They do not
expect the poet to break those rules and bring them something unfamiliar, which
invites them to reflect on and possibly question their established perception
of a topic.
Nabulusî’s Nasamat and Nafahat do
both assume the cultural homogeneity of a Muslim-educated élite, acquainted
with the Arabic literary heritage, but also with minds trained to a high degree
of dexterity in wordplay and able to make mental associations between words and
phrases in a way that may not be at all obvious to an outsider who does not
know how to play the game. Two examples of Nabulusî’s tropes may serve to
illustrate this point. The first is his use of a chronogram to provide the date
of the poem. He explains that this trope consists of a word or words whose
letters have numerical values attached to them, which add up to the year the
poet wants to specify. But he has to indicate first to the reader that he is
about to mention a date. Thus Nabulusî tells his readers the date of
composition of the Nasamat:
‘In Muhammad I take
pride.’56
It has a shell whose core
has been removed
And been replaced by an
abiding conscience.
The middle
letters of the word qishra, ‘shell’, are removed, leaving Q-A. The word
for ‘conscience’, damir, may also mean ‘pronoun’, and one such is
huwa, ‘he’, spelt HW. Replacing the core of the word for shell, they
produce QaHWA, ‘coffee’.58
On one level, Nabulusl’s poem and commentary are
intended for an audience appreciative of technical virtuosity with words, and
ready to interact with the poet to solve the riddles he has set them. There is
a mental challenge of a type that might draw a sympathetic response from
readers familiar with the twists and turns of a Times crossword puzzle. And
yet there is something else. The doubting, exotericist Kadizadelis might do all
the mental exercises and still not see it. The Nasamât and Nafahât
are more than just a testimony to Nabulusl’s literary and intellectual powers
and an invitation to play word games. For ¿Abd al-Ghani and his followers they
vindicate the genuine nature of his mystical knowledge and seem to support the
validity of the baraka transmitted to him by Ibn ¿Arabi, Ibn Sab¿in and
Tilimsani, and its aid to him on his path to a higher spiritual level.
Effectively, what occurred was to be understood by sympathisers as a kind of
saintly miracle (karâma), appropriate in one who was both scholar and
mystic, and which affirmed not only his own position, but also that of the
representatives of the Sufi tradition in whose footsteps he followed.
The journey to
Istanbul and Qadiri initiation
Shortly after the
controversy aroused by his poem on the Prophet, written in 1664, Nabulusi set
out for Istanbul, although he was not to stay long in the Ottoman capital.60
The reasons for undertaking the journey are not clarified and he left no
separate account of it, as he did of other later travels. It would be a natural
choice of destination for a young scholar interested in making the right
connections for worldly advancement. But the young Nabulusi does not seem
especially concerned with these matters and, if he was temporarily distracted by worldly
ambition, he would soon abandon these aspirations. In any case, he would have
been confronted there by a stronger presence of his enemies, the Kadizadelis,
than he had experienced in Damascus. Perhaps his rejection of any such quest
for official posts is reflected in a story told of his meeting in Istanbul with
an ecstatic (majdhüb), who told him: ‘There is nothing for you here. Go
back towards the qiblah.’61 The sense behind this statement
is that ¿Abd al-Ghani as a spiritual person should not be directing his face,
as if in prayer, towards Istanbul, the centre of state power worshipped by
those in search of earthly rewards. Instead, he should return to Damascus, thus
facing in the direction of Mecca and worshipping God alone. He took the advice
of the majdhüb.
What Nabulusi describes
is an usual initiation ceremony with the taking of an oath of obedience to the
shaykh accompanied by a handclasp and the awarding of a certificate admitting
him to the brotherhood. Transmitting the Sufi’s patched frock from master to
disciple was often replaced with the transmission of another garment, in this
case the distinctive piece of headgear, the taj. Shaykh ¿Abd al-Razzaq
was here effectively transferring the state that he was in to the young ¿Abd
al-Ghani with the aim of guiding him towards perfection. However, in Nabulusi’s
account there is also a strong sense of his belief that the shaykh recognised
that he was destined to achieve a high spiritual ranking. He is no
ordinary disciple but a saint in the making, as he had been even before his
birth.
In later writings Nabulusi
would mention the Qadiriyya as his mashrab, literally ‘drinking place’,
in acknowledgement of its being his first tarîqa. However, he does not
seem to have undergone any lengthy training period, since his stay in Hama appears
to have been quite brief. Barbara von Schlegell has remarked that he saw
himself as ‘beyond the need for a classical master-disciple relationship’.64
He appears to have felt little need for the spiritual guidance of a
living shaykh such as ¿Abd al-Razzaq, given his higher regard for dead masters
and their books and his own direct ‘tasting’ of divine illumination. Some years
after his initiation, Shaykh ¿Abd al-Razzaq passed through Damascus to join the
pilgrims’ caravan for Mecca. Nabulusi records somewhat perfunctorily the shaykh’s
first words on meeting him: ‘Love is nothing but God.’65 This
suggests a tenuous relationship at most between the two men. Although Nabulusi was
to style himself ‘the Qadiri’, it is likely that the title served to boost his
credentials in society rather than indicate a deep indebtedness to guidance in
the Qadiriyya.
THE SPIRITUAL SON
OF
IBN ¿ARABI
In the steps of
the Great Master
All is
encompassed in the Book of God And Ahmad’s Sunna is a commentary And
commentary on both the Futuhat, Brought by illumination from beside The
sanctuary to our Arab shaykh, Who poured on us right guidance and favour.1
However, he also believed
in communication through dreams and visions and that ‘guidance and favour’ were
imparted to him from beyond the grave by the spirit of Ibn ¿Arabi. This sense
of contact with the dead master would persist throughout Nabulusi’s life into
his old age. When he was 80 years old, he had a dream in which he saw himself
in his old house near the Umayyad Mosque. Ibn ¿Arabi was sitting in the
courtyard, eating breakfast in the company of Nabulusi’s mother, Zaynab. She
was present in the role of the Great Master’s wife, while ¿Abd al-Ghani was his
son along with several children, his dream brothers and sisters.2
The dream is symbolic of the close spiritual relationship between Ibn ¿Arabi and
¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi. Interestingly, Nabulusi’s father is absent from this
happy family scene, completely displaced, whereas his mother occupies a central
position due to her remarkable spiritual qualities and her direct
influence on the religiosity of his youth. NabulusI reflects on the place of
Ibn ¿Arabi in his life:
Startling as the imagery
may seem, it appears natural in its context, since the creation of kinship ties
through suckling has traditionally played an important role in Arab society and
been embedded in SharFa. The milk is apparently symbolic of the Great
Master’s mystically acquired knowledge being imparted to his spiritual son. It
is also reminiscent of the occasion on the Prophet’s night-journey to Jerusalem,
when he chose to drink the milk of divine wisdom and guidance.
Perhaps the most widely read commentary on the Fusüs in the
Arab world was written by the prolific Sufi author ¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi (d.
1143/1730); his care to define and explain practically every single word and
his often questionable interpretations suggest that already by his time the
general ability to read and understand the Fusüs in the Arab world had
severely declined.6
There is something to be
said for both judgements. In places Nabulusi demonstrates his comprehension of
Ibn ¿Arabi, but elsewhere he makes some ‘questionable interpretations’. But is
he simply incapable when he takes the second course or does he have some
purpose in disclosing meanings that may not have been intended by the Shaykh
al-Akbar?
Whatever may be the truth, Nabulusi is probably
more interesting when he does diverge from the master and, in doing so, he is
certainly not alone among late Sufi writers. One major effect of the divergence
is to attach ideas to a famous and authoritative name, that of Ibn ¿Arabi, and
so to gain credence for views that might otherwise have been rejected. Although
Nabulusi and other influential Sufis of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries may at times genuinely fail to understand Ibn ¿Arabi (and other
prominent medieval figures), the overall process goes beyond simple misrepresentation.
Negatively, it can, of course, be problematic in creating confusion about
medieval Sufi thought, and especially that of Ibn ¿Arabi. Positively, it can be
seen as a creative way of developing fresh opinion on a subject in a society
which holds tradition in high esteem, and is suspicious of individuals’
attempts to present any radically new views. Thus it could enable someone such
as ¿Abd al- Ghani al-Nabulusi to introduce his own thought and make it more
widely acceptable by portraying it as in agreement with that of major Sufis of
the past, above all his Great Master, and not merely as an expression of his
own, more readily disputed, opinion.
In an attempt to understand something of this
process, one of Nabulusi’s early works has been chosen for further examination.
This is al-Fath al-rabbânï wa ’l-fayd al-rahmam (Lordly Revelation and
Merciful Emanation), written as a guidebook for the spiritual development
of Sufis. He completed it in late 1674, which would place its composition about
10 years after his journey to Istanbul and joining the Qadiriyya and in the
same year as the birth of his son Isma¿il. The Fath appears to be
designed as a teaching book directed at disciples, but he himself regarded it
as significant, referring to it in other works. It seems to encapsulate the
state of his thinking in his early thirties on matters at the heart of becoming
a Sufi or the very
core of tasawwuf.
It is by no means his most advanced and sophisticated work of Sufi thought by
comparison with the mature production of his fifties. However, it is of
interest in showing his already deep debt to Ibn ¿Arabi at this period in his
life and also his extension of the Shaykh’s ideas in new and influential
directions.
Nabulusi’s debt to his
spiritual father is evident immediately in the customary encomium of praise for
God and His Prophet, which is in effect a succinct account of the creation
process in a post-Ibn ¿Arabian version, replete with its technical terminology.
The opening lines give something of its flavour, echoing the language and ideas
of the Fusüs in its opening chapter:
Nabulusi continues with
the familiar imagery of the created world as a mirror reflecting aspects of the
Divine.
Following the elaborate
encomium, he introduces himself to his readers as a Hanafi Qadiri of Damascus,
and, after some verses on his own ecstatic experience, he proceeds to spell out
his intention in writing the book. Nabulusi is addressing the Fath to
the spiritually minded so as to guide their hearts and he will speak of what
has been revealed to him through divine illumination. However, he assures his
readers that, in doing so, he will not violate the SharFa or state
anything that is not in conformity with it. Expressing his awareness that his
expressions may sometimes be open to misinterpretation, he admits that this is
because he is dealing with matters which cannot always be meaningfully
expressed in words, but can only be understood by the heart. He has divided
his book into seven chapters, ‘in the hope that the eighth may be the chapter
of “opening” (fath) to the paradise of guidance and closeness (to God)’.8
Although the seven chapters do not correspond in any obvious way to seven
stages of the ‘path’, their aim is to offer the Sufi aspirant the kind of
progressive knowledge of mystical interpretation of the faith that will enable
the achievement of the highest stations (maqâmât)
SUFI VISIONARY OF OTTOMAN DAMASCUS through the
seeker’s personal effort and prepare for the reception of spiritual states (ahwal)
through God’s grace.
The essential issues with which Nabulusi is
concerned are, first, true faith, how to understand it and how to achieve it,
and, second, the related problem of sin, its significance for the believer in
‘oneness of being’ (wahdat al-wujud) and its mcanirig in relation to
different categories of the faithful. Therefore, it is these central topics in
the Fath that have been selected for discussion here.
Wahdat al-wujud and the problem of sin
When a man
abandons major sin, loosens from his heart the bond of persistence and firmly
intends not to return to sin, at that moment true remorse comes to his heart.
He regrets what he has done and reproaches himself for the repugnant acts he
has committed. Then his repentance is complete, his striving is true, and he
exchanges the comradeship of the evil companions he previously kept for
isolation and for aversion to them.10
But for real repentance
it is not enough to be truly sorry. There must also be an attempt to set
matters right with any persons who have been wronged by evil actions. This is
assuming continuing consciousness of the sin committed. However, divisions of
opinion are reported as to whether the repentant sinner should indeed remember
the sins or forget them completely. According to the highly respected authority
of Junayd, it was more proper to forget everything associated with the former
state of impurity.
Although Nabulusl’s treatment of the same theme
contains elements already present in manuals of this type, it is also
strikingly different from them. They contain clear and relatively simple
ethical teachings put in the mouths of former masters and often also make
reference to the Qur’an and hadiths, interpreted, on the whole, in
accordance with their obvious meanings. NabulusI, by contrast, sets his concern
with sin and repentance within an elaborate theoretical framework, in which the
simple advocacy of practical piety is discarded in favour of convoluted
arguments claiming to expound the ultimate truths attainable by the spiritually
enlightened.
On this dimension he
seeks to understand the place of sin within the Ibn ¿Arabian scheme of oneness
of being (wahdat al-wujud) and address the problem of its origins in a
system where everything ultimately derives from God.12 He expounds
Ibn ‘Arabi’s ideas in a simplified form for his target audience, explaining the
nature of existence as comprising four degrees of descent from the highest to the lowest levels of
existence: the first degree is that of God’s essence; the second that of God’s
attributes, which is also the degree of the Prophet Muhammad; the third is that
of the attributes or actions, which is the degree of the believers; and the
fourth is that of the acted upon, the world, which is the degree of Satan.
‘These four are in reality one thing’, asserts NabulusI,13 but, as
this ‘one thing’ has descended in the creative process, various forms have
become manifest and its existences have multiplied; and yet, all four degrees
of existences are ‘the form of the Real (al-Haqq)’ or God. He continues:
He adds that every one of
God’s worlds has its own Adam and his sons, and that means, in effect, each
land has its own prophet. Here he is echoing the teachings he has inherited
regarding the ‘perfect human’ (al-insan al-kamil), who encompasses all
the degrees of existence. The idea had been given great importance by Ibn ¿Arabi,
who considered such a one to be ‘the total theophany of the divine names, the
whole of the universe in its oneness as seen by the divine essence’.15
It is a condition said to be fulfilled in the Prophet Muhammad as the Muhammadan
Reality (al-haqîqa al- muhammadiyya). The concept was later explored in
great theoretical detail, notably in the thought of ¿Abd al-Karim al-Jill (d. c.
1428), whose book al-Insan al-kamil (The Perfect Human) was among
the Sufi writings that made a deep impression on the young ¿Abd al-Ghani.16
However, NabulusI is here more concerned with establishing that prophets
generally encompass all these possibilities of existence so as to comprehend
the meaning of sin in relation to them.
Sin, according to him,
takes on its individualised form from the fourth degree of existence, the
degree of Satan. It is produced by the soul (nafs)paying attention to
this lower degree and so committing sin, something that occurs in time rather
than being eternally pre- existent.17 NabulusI does not consider the
prophets to be totally sinless, but believes their sins to be less than those
of ordinary
He does admit to having experienced some
confusion as regards the question of whether the prophets were ever disobedient
to God. Two bodies of opinion are noted. The first is that it is necessary to
believe from the Qur’an that prophets disobeyed God on occasion both before and
after their calls to prophethood and that whoever does not accept this is an
unbeliever. The second is that the prophets were never at any point in their
lives disobedient. NabulusI tells us that his response to this dilemma was to
pray to God for guidance and that, while he was praying, the solution came to
him in an inrush of inspiration (wÁrid). He thus arrives at a mystically
inspired rather than a logically reasoned answer to the problem.
God’s full reality, he claims, is actually
unknown to the prophets because their knowledge is only of His total
transcendence. The believers, in their turn, have only a limited knowledge and
cannot understand the reality of the prophets.
At this point NabulusI cautions
against excessive efforts at interpreting revelation and advises following the
way of the ancestors (al-salaf), remembering that it is really only God
and His prophets who know the full meaning of what appears ambiguous in the
divine message.
Having sought to establish
the place of sin in the order of existence and to identify it as presenting
different problems of understanding in relation to prophets, ordinary
believers and others, NabulusI then turns to the classification of sins
according to the Sharfa and the Haqiqa. With reference to the Sharfa,
he covers the familiar ground of early theological debates, especially those
concerning the status of the grievous sinner, but finally repeats the moderate
doctrine that it is possible for major sins, such as adultery or theft, to be
obliterated by repentance or performance of the hajj and that God will
only punish the grievous sinner in the afterlife, if he or she persists in
their state of sin until death.20
His treatment of repentance is inevitably closely
linked to his understanding of sin and, as with other topics, he discusses it
first with reference to the SharFa. He echoes the classic manuals of
Sufism in his assertions that the reality of repentance according to the SharFa
consists in turning away from sin with remorse and a resolve not to commit that
sin again. Like them, he is also realistic in his recognition that for most
people this will not mean that they never lapse, but that repeated efforts will
be necessary to break away from the sinful state.
Have you seen
how the sun, when it falls on coloured glass, appears in every piece of glass
with the colour of that piece?
So it is when
the spirit (al-rüh) bccomes attached to any body, it appears to have the
necessary characteristics of that body. So it appears in the body of man with
human characteristics, in animals with animal characteristics, in plants with
plant characteristics and similarly in minerals. And this is the nafs.23
While ordinary people repent with remorse at
their sinfulness, the elect repent of their repentance. NabulusI attempts to
clarify this by stating that
This rather tortuous
argument presents the act of repentance itself as a moral problem because it
implies that the repentant sinner is forgetful of God in His universally
creative role and, consequently, it can be a sin even to repent of sins. A few
years later NabulusI came to believe that he had himself joined the category of
the elect who are conscious that it is God who creates their repentance. He
recalls his own visionary conversation with God, when he repented for having
missed the afternoon prayer because he had spent the time replying to a man who
was questioning him about the faith. He quotes God as assuring him: ‘Know that
My granting you success in repentance from every sin you find in yourself is
the sign of My love for you.’26 NabulusI then asked what would
happen if he died while he was sinning and relates God’s words to him: ‘In that
case you will be one of those I forgive without repentance.’27
Whatever the difficult ethical implications of
such beliefs about an élite of sinners, for NabulusI the real concern in the Fath
is with the preservation of wahdat al-wujud and this is accomplished at
the level of the Haqiqa.. The state (htfl) of repcntacee,
cccording to Sharfa, is to escape God’s anger, but, according to the Haqiqa,
it is the
As for the
station (maqam) oí
repentance, according to the Sharfa, this is marked by the penitent’s
exchanging bad for good qualities through God’s grace, but, according to the
Haqiqa, the station involves becoming familiar with the degrees of
nearness to God. However, Nabulusi explains that the station of repentance is
only a beginning:
Sound doctrine
post-Ibn ¿Arabí
From here on, Nabulusi devotes
himself to expounding the reality of true faith in the spirit of Ibn ¿Arabi.
This often amounts to an apologetic, although the Great Master is only
occasionally mentioned as the source of his views. The third chapter of the Fath,
on ‘Sound doctrine’, supports belief in the oneness of being as the essential
true doctrine. Nabulusi presents his position in a lengthy creedal statement,
for which he claims the authority of his personal illumination, not of past
masters.
So listen with the ear of your heart to what is poured out upon
you from what is in the vessels of sound doctrine so that you may wash away
with that the filth of doubts and fancies and remove the impurities of
innovations (bidac), deviation and errors. ... My Lord has
caused me to witness through His might and power, not through my might and
power, that He is God and there is no god but He, an essence from pre-eternity
that does not resemble the essences and is totally unlike the essences of the
existents, whose being (wujüd) is its very essence with nothing added to
it. It is not one of the things nor is it in the category of substances or of
accidents, of knowledge or of fancies, of ideas or of understandings or of
fantasies, of lights or of darkness or of flashes of light, of powers or
capabilities. It is not above any of the things that we have mentioned or below
them, nor to the right of them or to the left of them, nor on all sides of
them, nor attached to or separated from them, nor within or without, nor does
it lack anything of what we have mentioned, nor is it far from or near to them.
It is not characterised by anything that occurs to the perfect and perfected
minds and souls, let alone imperfect minds and souls. ... The attributes of
this incomparable essence, also pre-eternal, are not its very self, nor are
they anything additional to it, and the whole world is necessary to them, but
not to the essence.31
Know that all
these attributes by which God has described Himself, whether in His Book (Qur’an)
or on the tongue of His Messenger (Hadith), have pre-eternal meanings,
existing in His exalted essence. Just as they are not the substance of the
essence, neither are they other than the essence. Similarly, every one of these
attributes is not the substance of the other attribute nor is it other than it.
So His essence has unity and oneness, it and its attributes not being constructed
with one form.
All the attributes are links between God and the world. The world
only emerged from nothingness into existence from that pre-eternal essence by
means of its being described by these attributes, which are also pre-eternal. God
made Himself known to us, as far as the Law is concerned, by translating those
pre-eternal meanings existent in His essence, which are the attributes, into
Arabic in His pre-eternal speech and on the tongue of His Messenger. With
regard to all those Arabic expressions, whose meanings (His attributes) are
rranslated for us, ultimate realii^i^ (haqâ’iq) are contained in those
meanings and not metaphors (majâzât)3
All this is not very
original, but it represents a painstaking effort to clarify the Great Master’s
ideas on ‘oneness of being’ in such a way that they appear in conformity with
the Law. There is also a concern to give due importance to the Qur’an and Hadith
in God’s informing humanity about Himself rather than laying major stress on
direct knowledge gained through mystical experience.
NabulusI is extremely conscious of the status of
Arabic as God’s own pre-eternal speech. Elsewhere he accepts the views of his
early teacher Najm al-dln al-GhazzI, biographical dictionary author, that the
knowledge of Arabic is the essential quality that marks the Arabs’ superiority
over other peoples, quoting his saying:
He cites a hadith
to the effect that Adam spoke Arabic in Paradise. After sinning, he spoke
Syriac until he repented and God restored his knowledge of Arabic.35
All Arabic words, he maintains, represent realities (haqâ’iq), when
they are used with reference to God.36
The vocabulary of
‘reality’ (haqiqa, pl. haqâ’iq) ss fantrntted with ‘metaphor’ (majâz,
pl. majâzât) occupies a prominent pkce m ¿Abd al-GhanI’s writing. Only
God has qualities that are ‘real’ (haqiqi), while those that appear in
the world are ‘metaphorical’ (majâzi). Thus the beauty of the world is a
metaphor for His Beauty. In the same way, it is only God’s Love that is real
and human love is metaphorical.37 In discussing the Arabic
expressions for God’s attributes in this context in the Fath, NabulusI takes
the example of power. As real power belongs to God, if the Arabic word al-qudra
is used with reference to humans, it can only refer to a limited metaphorical
power that God has created in them.
In a manner that is
commonly associated with later reformers, for example Muhammad ¿Abduh
(1849-1905) m Egypt, Nabulusi sees serious problems of misunderstanding
entering the Islamic community after the third hijrî century (ninth
century CE).38 This was the time when theological disputes and
innovations spread in the umma because of a failure to follow the pious
early Muslims (al-salaf al- sâlih) in their true understanding off hie
faith. Nabulusi is warm in his praise of early scholars who realised ‘their own
inability to know the meanings of God’s speech and the Sunna of His
Messenger in the way that God and His Messenger know the real meaning’.39
He singles out Ahmad b. Hanbal among their number, an indirect acknowledgement
of his Hanbali connections. Such people, he says, did not distort the Qur’an
and Sunna by interpreting their meanings according to their own ideas,
unlike latter-day ‘ulama’.
Nabulusi launches a particularly harsh attack on
those who believe in the possibility of God’s indwelling (hulul) in Elis
creation:
This very strong
statement of denunciation suggests that Nabulusi is answering his critics by
dissociating himself completely from two main heresies of belief in hulul
and ittihad, charges commonly made in the polemical literature against
Sufi excesses. Hallaj was the most famous figure associated by his enemies with
alleged claims to experience God’s indwelling in him and he appears in the
spiritual genealogy of Ibn Sab'in, himself accused of being ittihadi,
supporting belief in unitive fusion with God and a noted influence on Nabulusi.
These types of accusation were also levelled against Ibn ¿Arabi by some critics
in the later Islamic tradition, so that ‘accusations of hulul, ittihad and
other heresies contrasted to declarations of his “orthodoxy” and “sainthood”’.41
Nabulusi was all too aware of the accumulation of misconceptions and perceived
a need to respond to them.
Unbelief in this
world and the afterlife
‘He who has no knowledge of unbelief has no
knowledge of faith,’ asserts Nabulusi and he, therefore, discusses the topic at
some length, before turning to questions of belief.42 This
discussion is also very much part of his response to those jurists concerned
with the externals of the Law, men who used the weapons of fiqh to
charge Sufis such as himself with unbelief. Elsewhere he was to lament the sad
state of Islamic legal studies and practice, denouncing the fuqahâ’ of
his age as a scourge.43 It is probable that he has in mind the
problems they have created for Sufi scholars when, in the Fath, he
includes those who mock and insult ‘one of the “ulamâ” of the SharFa
and Haqïqa’ in the same category as the unbelievers who deny and insult
prophets and the uncorrupted texts of God’s revelations.44
However, despite his concern to uphold the
authority of Sufi masters, Nabulusi expresses the view that some of them may
themselves be liable to reproach for being too harsh on other Muslims. He
mentions in particular the prominent sixteenth-century Sufi shaykhs ¿Ali b.
Maymun and ¿Alwan al-Hamawi, his disciple and biographer.45 ¿Ali,
who came from Morocco to Syria, is recorded as having regarded the eastern
Islamic lands as far more corrupt than the Maghrib. He was well known for his
public attacks on the Damascene judges and jurists, especially the Shafi¿i chief
judge, whom he accused of neglecting a mosque that had been put in his trust.46
According to one author of the period, ‘It is generally agreed that ¿Ali attacked
Shaykh al-Islam Taqi al-din b. Qadi ¿Ajlun with words which are unbecoming in a
man of God (wall).’7
Nabulusi, for his part,
is usually lenient towards other Sunni Muslims, with the exception of those who
actively criticise him and his fellow Sufi scholars. His fiercest rebukes are
reserved for the Shi¿i sects of Syria, whom he judges to be unbelievers worse
than Christians because of their rejection of all prophets, laws, revelations
and the Last Day, and because of their belief in the transmigration of spirits.48
His information on them is by no means reliable. For example, he confuses the
Nusayris (also known as ¿Alawis) with the Druze, when he writes of ‘the Nusayris
who speak of God’s indwelling in al-Hakim bi-amr Allah’, that is, the Fatimid
Caliph al- Hakim (r. 996-1021), believed by the Druze to be an incarnation of
God.49
Ibn ¿Arabi’s argument
develops in a far more technical and abstruse way than that of Nabulusi, who
attempts to make the Great Master’s ideas more readily accessible to the
reader. However, what is evident from both is that belief in a personal God who
may be approached by His worshippers in the hope of obtaining mercy is replaced
by a belief in an impersonal and apparently mechanical process. Those who are
still veiled so that they do not perceive the Reality may continue to pray to
receive mercy. The spiritually elect, however, will realise that they have
already received mercy by being granted existence, for ‘His mercy has the
highest ontological status as existence-giver to all things, His wrath
included’.54
Where Nabulusi does seem to part company with Ibn
¿Arabi, and also with the majority of Muslim theologians, is over the question
of the vision of God (ru’yat Allah) after death. Sunnis have generally
agreed that God will be visible through perception only in the afterlife and
only to believers, not to infidels, on the authority of the Qur’anic aya:
‘No indeed, on that day they shall be veiled from their Lord.’ (Sura 83, v. 15)55
Ibn ¿Arabi follows the mainstream opinion that the inhabitants of Hell will
remain veiled from God even after their chastisement ends, arguing that, if
they were to see God after committing such sins, they would be overcome with
shame and shame is a form of chastisement that has ended.56 However,
it is not clear that he held rigidly to this position, since at one point in
the Futuhat there is the suggestion that these sinners may not be
permanently veiled.57
He follows up his remarks with an impassioned
defence of his master:
Do you really think that the Great Shaykh, Muhyi ’l-din b. al-¿Arabi
(may God sanctify his inner secret) says that the punishment of the unbelievers
will be abolished and cease? All he actually wishes to convey is what we have
mentioned. But there has been dispute about his meanings, differences of
opinion about his symbolic expressions and deviation from the sense that he
intended. Rumours have spread so that the ignorant man has thought that he intended to say that the
eternal punishment of the unbelievers will be abolished and he has concluded
from this that the definite texts (i.e. in the Qur’an) nrc being rejected.59
It looks very much as if
this line of attack on the ‘ignorant’ is designed to deflect accusations away
from himself, particularly as he immediately informs his readers that he had
thought to deal with the topic in a separate treatise, but was concerned that
he might be misunderstood. It is a matter for those who are ready to understand
ultimate truths, he explains, and are able to realise how they are in
conformity with the Qur’an and Sunna. He also finds it necessary to
stress that, if there is anything that someone does not understand, he would
wish that person to refer back to him for further explanation and to be assured
that he will not be saying anything contrary to the Qur’an and Sunna.
Such assurances seem all
the more necessary when Nabulusi embarks on his discussion of the various
levels of belief. He divides the topic into the accepted divisions of islam,
iman and ihsan (submission to God, faith and beneficence). As in the
previous chapters, he deals with the outer and inner aspects, the Sharfa
and Haqiqa, dividing and subdividing each one and explaining it so as to
conform to the ideas of Ibn ¿Arabi. Much of his exposition here is an abstract
summary of inherited Sufi positions without a high degree of originality. What
is more interesting is when he makes use of Ibn ¿Arabi’s authority to support
what is at times a highly controversial agenda of his own. This is markedly the
case in his comments on the faith of the spiritually elect. Is it possible to
be sinful and a wall Allah? If it is, canthis ‘sinful’ saint act as a
spiritual guide to others?
Nabulusi opens his
argument by examining the meaning of a paradoxical and puzzling prophetic hadith:
‘The adulterer does not commit adultery, when he commits adultery but is a
believer, and the thief does not steal, when he steals but is a believer.’60
Such a hadith, taken at face value, could be interpreted so as to negate
the Law with reference to two of the gravest offences and so, by extension, to
provide arguments for a wholly antinomian position. Nabulusi’s understanding of
it could be seen as leaning in that direction, although with qualifications.
Essentially, he regards this reputed statement of the Prophet as referring not
to the ordinary Muslim, but to one who is a believer (mu’min)
in the sense of having real and perfect faith (imán). Such a person is
one of the saints. He explains:
Such people, he argues,
are sure to repent and seek God’s forgiveness for their sins and, the more
sins they have, the more they will be repentant and so receive God’s love.
However, ordinary Muslims who fall into sin will become more forgetful of God
and even more veiled from Him. Although he concedes that they may sometimes
repent, this is not assured as it is in the case of the perfectly faithful who
are able to see the ugliness of their sin.
Nabulusi at this point seeks support from the
authority of Ibn ¿Arabi, quoting him at some length. After stressing the
importance of a disciple’s belief in his shaykh’s knowledge of the way to God
and ability to advise others, Ibn ¿Arabi tells the following story:
Ibn ¿Arabi concludes that
the student became spiritually successful, attaining a high state and station.
In essence, what Ibn ¿Arabi
is saying is open to different interpretations. He may be saying that Sufi
shaykhs have the normal failings of other human beings and are liable to sin,
but this does not prevent them from being good spiritual guides, or he may
be saying that the devoted seeker can attain his goal, even if his guide is far
from perfect. It could be read as cautionary advice against excessive
veneration of the shaykh and a reminder that the man of God is not sinless and
that the disciple’s achievement must depend on his own effort.
To recognise human failings and to counsel
against undue exaltation of the spiritual guide is one thing. It is something
entirely different to present those failings almost as if they are desirable in
the spiritually elect because they will lead to greater repentance. Such a
proposition could have very disturbing ethical implications and be seen as
opening the way to abuse, stifling criticism of wrongdoing, provided it is
those of perfect faith who are the wrongdoers. This does appear to be the crux
of Nabulusi’s concluding command:
It is, I believe, our scant knowledge of eighteenth-century Muslim
theological literature that prevents us from explaining why some Muslim
reformists vehemently opposed Ibn ¿Arabi’s teaching, viewing it as a
consummation of Sufi heresy, whereas others considered it quite germane to
their goals and,
moreover, were eager to incorporate its elements into their own reformist
platforms.65
He further remarks the
need for ‘a thorough analysis of the work of the seminal figures of the
eleventh/seventeenth century’.66 Among such figures Nabulusi would
surely be one of the most important, both through his writings and the growing
number of his students and network of scholarly and Sufi contacts, including
those in the Holy Cities of Arabia. Many understood Ibn ¿Arabi through the
medium of men such as Nabulusi, who certainly advocated his ideas, but not
without sometimes giving them a development of their own, which would not
necessarily have earned the Great Master’s approval. The same applies to the
adoption of ideas claiming a basis in the poetry of Ibn al-Farid (d. 1235),
another main target of Wahhabi attacks and also widely known through Nabulusi’s
interpretation. Certainly, Ibn ¿Abd al-Wahhab condemned both Ibn ¿Arabi and Ibn
al-Farid as unbelievers. Nevertheless, it is likely that he and other critics
were angered more by what they perceived as a threat to Islamic morality in
their own day from the ‘questionable interpretations’ of latter-day followers
of the ‘infidel mystics’, rather than by their original works. Among the few
contemporary Sufis whom Ibn ¿Abd al-Wahhab attacks by name is ‘a certain Ibn ¿Azzaz
from one of the oases in Najd, whom he suspected of having been a pupil of ¿Abd
al-Ghani, known as al-cArif bi’llah - most probably the
famous Damascene Naqshbandi ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi’.67 At this
point in time more study of the writings and debates of the period prior to the
great eighteenth-century revival is needed in the hope of gauging how widely Nabulusi’s
ideas were shared by other Sufis and how much and what kind of theological
opposition they aroused.
¿Abd al-Ghanî, the
Naqshabandî
Ottoman Damascus might be
a provincial Arab city, but its population, both permanent and transitory, was
markedly cosmopolitan. The increase in ethnic diversity between the sixteenth
and eighteenth centuries owed much to the growing importance of Damascus as an
assembly point for pilgrims gathering to join the annual caravan setting out
for the Meccan pilgrimage. Although it still could not compete in scale with
the caravan from Cairo, the Damascene hajj caravan assumed a vital
strategic role for Ottoman planners, comparable, as Karl Barbir notes, to ‘the
route to India in the minds of British imperial planners in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries’.1 The route through Syria provided the
essential link between Istanbul and the Holy Cities of Arabia. It was the route
of choice for members of the sultan’s family and senior Ottoman officials
travelling for hajj, and was also necessary to trading communications
in the region. Hence, the sultans expended considerable efforts on the
organisation of the caravan and protection of pilgrims. In the late seventeenth
century (from 1672 onwards), more Turkish officials, including some governors
of Damascus, were appointed to the post of ‘commander of the pilgrimage’ (amîr
al- hajj), and fewer local notables are recorded as holders of this prestigious
office.2
Thousands of pilgrims
passed through Damascus, although exact numbers are notoriously unreliable.
Estimates vary from about 15,000 to 40,000 in exceptional years.3 In
addition to those from elsewhere in Syria, especially Aleppo, there were many
Turks and eastern Europeans and a smaller number of Persians and central Asians
from beyond the Ottoman borders. While they would stay for differing periods of
time in the city, those from further afield would often seek to arrive well
ahead of the caravan’s expected departure; others would face delays in their
travels, reach Damascus too late and be forced to wait until the next year or
return home without performing the hajj. Some actually decided to settle
permanently, adding to the city’s cultural diversity but also leading to some
inter-racial tensions and, by the eighteenth century, strained Sunni-Shi¿i relations
when some of the Persian pilgrims married local Sunni women.4
In 1676, about two years after completing the Fath and 12
years after his initiation into the Qadiriyya, ¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi encountered
a central Asian traveller from Bukhara. This was the Naqshabandi Shaykh Abu Sa¿id
al-Balkhi, who had been to perform the hajj and visited Istanbul. He
initiated Nabulusi into the Naqshabandi brotherhood, taking from him the oath
of allegiance at the shrine of John the Baptist in the Umayyad Mosque.5
Abu Sa¿id invested him with the qalansâwa, a white cap, and presented
him with a treatise on the Naqshabandiyya by Taj al-din al-Rumi (d. 1640), Risâla
fi sunan al-Tâ’ifa al-Naqshabandiyya (Treatise on the Practices of the
Naqshabandi Order). He then asked his new disciple to write a commentary on
it, a task that Nabulusi soon completed.6 Taj al-din was a prominent
personality among the Indian Naqshabandis, his own shaykh being Muhammad Baqi bi
’llah Berang (d. 1603), the major propagator of the tariqa in India from
its base in Delhi. However, the brotherhood diverged into different branches
after his time. One offshoot was associated with Taj al-din, who moved to
settle in Mecca and played a role in familiarising Arabs with the
Naqshabandiyya through his teaching and writings, including the Risâla
and translations into Arabic of Naqshabandi texts, such as a collection of Sufi
biographies by the great poet Jami (d. 1492).7 It is an interesting
indication of the international ramifications of the Naqshabandiyya in the
late seventeenth century that a central Asian shaykh asks his Syrian disciple
to comment on the work of an Indian shaykh resident in the Hijaz. It is not
known whether Nabulusi was familiar with Taj al-din’s Risâla before his
encounter with Abu Sa¿id, but Taj al-din’s explanations of the basic principles
of the tariqa will have been foundational to his own practice. They
relate closely to the meditational customs of the Naqshabandis, particularly
the characteristic silent dhikr (dhikr khafi). Of the following eleven
principles, eight were established by ¿Abd al-Khaliq Ghijduwani (d. 1220) and a
further three by the eponymous early master of the brotherhood, Baha’ al-din
Naqshband (d. 1389) of Bukhara:8
1. Yad kard (remembrance, or ‘making mention’), both oral
and mental. Be always repeating the dhikr imparted to you so that you
may attain the beatific vision. Baha’ ad-dîn said: ‘The aim in dhikr is
that the heart be always aware of al- Haqq, for its practice banishes
inattention.’
2. Baz gasht (restraint). The dhakir, when engaging in
the heart-repetition of the ‘blessed phrase’ [shahada], should
intersperse it with such phrases as, ‘My God, Thou art my Goal and Thy
satisfaction is my aim’, to help keep one’s thoughts from straying. Other
masters say it means ‘return’, ‘repent’, that is, return to al-Haqq by
way of contrition (inkisar).
3. Nigah dasht (watchfulness) veer wandering, passing, thoughts
when repeating the ‘blessed phrase’.
4. Yad dasht (recollection), concentration upon the divine
presence in a condition of dhawq, foretaste, intuitive anticipation or
perceptiveness, not using external aids.
5. Hosh dar dam (awareness while breathing). The technique of
breath control. Said Baha’ ad-dîn: ‘The external basis of this tarîqa is
the breath.’ One must not exhale in forgetfulness or inhale in forgetfulness.
6. Safar dar watan (journeying in one’s homeland). This is an
interior journey, the movement from blameworthy to praiseworthy qualities.
Others refer to it as the vision or revelation of the hidden side of the shahada.
7. Nazar bar qadam (watching one’s steps). Let the salik (pilgrim)
ever be warrch fu1 during lis j ourney, wh arc ver the type of country through
which he is passing, that he does not let his gaze be distracted from the goal
of his journey.
8. Khalwat dar anjuman (solitude in a crowd). The journey of the salik,
though outwardly it is in the world, inwardly it is with God. ‘Leaders of the tarîqa
have said, “In this tarîqa association is in the crowd and dissociation
in the khalwa”? A common weekly practice was to perform dhikr in
the assembly.
9. Wuquf-i zamani (temporal pause). Keeping account of how one is
spending one’s time, whether rightly - and if so give thanks, or wrongly - and
if so asking for forgiveness, according to the ranking (of the deeds), for
‘verily the good deeds of the righteous are the iniquities of those who are
near (to God)’.
10. Wuquf-i cadadi (numerical pause).
Checking that the heart-dhikr has been repeated the requisite number of
times, taking into account one’s wandering thoughts.
11. Wuquf-i qalbi (heart pause). Forming a mental picture of one’s
heart with the name of God engraved thereon, to emphasise that the heart has no
consciousness or goal other than God.9
Among NabulusI’s spirit guides from outside the
Naqshabandiyya,
Ibn ¿ArabI has been noted as a vital influence, the spiritual father, whom Nabulusi describes as his
‘milk-father’, who suckles him and so, in some sense acts like a mother,
breast-feeding the spiritual son.12 This imagery would also have
been familiar to Nabulusi from Naqshabandi tradition, according to which the
shaykh’s nurture of the novice is likened to breast-feeding or to laying an egg.
Sayyid Amir Kulal, the living master of Baha’ al-din Naqshband is thus quoted
as saying: ‘I milked my breast for you.’13 Nabulusi also laid claim
to receiving guidance from a great shaykh of the Naqshabandis. Although he had
undergone an outer bodily initiation through Abu Sa¿id al-Balkhi, he seems to
have attached more importance to his inner initiation through the spirit of Khwaja
¿Ala’ al-din ¿Attar (d. 1400), a son-in-law and major disciple of Baha’ al-din
Naqshband.14 This ¿Attar also features in the spiritual ancestry of
Jami, linked to him by two intermediary shaykhs; and so a kind of bond is
formed between the two poets, Nabulusi and Jami, joined as spiritual heirs of
the same great masters, although separated historically by 200 years. The
effect of this initiation is also to bring Nabulusi much closer to the great
masters of the tariqa and to show him replicating the mystical life of
Baha’ al-din. By doing so, he would be likely to gain a more elevated status
within the Naqshabandiyya than could be attained as a mere novice of a minor
seventeenth-century shaykh. Yet, if such worldly considerations are set to one
side, presumably Nabulusi would see himself as in need of a higher source of
guidance than that represented by the average living shaykh, since he would
pass so rapidly beyond the insight available from an ordinary master, being
himself no ordinary disciple.
Nabulusi fits into the category of Muslim mystics
who allege that they have been guided without physical access to a visible
instructor; they are generally described as Uwaysis and so-called after Uways
al-Qarani. Uways was supposedly a contemporary of Prophet Muhammad, but
possibly a legendary figure, who was said to have engaged in telepathic
communication with the Prophet.15 While Uwaysi practices could be
accommodated at times within a powerful and organised brotherhood such as the
Naqshabandiyya, not all tañqa shaykhs were comfortable with the idea and
would generally caution a disciple against the dangers of visiting the tombs in
the hope of direction from a dead saint. Julian Baldick has remarked on the
Uwaysi tradition as having been ‘a marginal one, with a certain dubious
appeal’, but sees some advantage in it, since ‘by calling oneself an Uwaysi one
can avoid the unpredictable and often severe demands of the living elders
available’.16 This might indeed be the case for those
dervishes lacking in genuine spiritual commitment, for whom a master’s training
might prove too rigorous. However, the great mystical ‘friends of God’ are clearly
in a class apart from the everyday dervishes.
In addition to
communication with the spirits of the saintly dead, Nabulusi believed that he
was guided by the Prophet in dreams and visions, and was also directly
instructed by God.17 The closest model for him in this respect among
Naqshabandis near to his time is the famous Indian mujaddid, renewer of
his age, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624). Sirhindi also believed that he came to
be divinely guided after a period of training under a Naqshabandi master. The
implication is that both men understand their experience as being brought near
to God so as to share in the Prophet’s experience as His disciples, but that
they also remain in a servant-master relationship to the Prophet. For Sirhindi,
this is describable as his being a servant invited to eat at the same table as
his lord.18
During his lifetime, Sirhindi’s mystical letters
provoked a number of critiques by ‘ulama’, protesting against the mujaddid^s
unorthodox ideas. It is not clear how far these ideas were familiar to Nabulusi
in the 1670s and 1680s, although he is recorded at a later date as the author
of a commentary on Sirhindi’s letters.19 By the eighteenth century
the image of Ahmad Sirhindi had changed from that of a controversial mystic to
that of a staunch defender of Sunnism, and his new branch of the tarîqa,
the Naqshabandiyya- Mujaddidiyya, had acquired a similarly sober and
respectable image.20 The Mujaddidis had also become successful to
the point that by the late eighteenth century their branch was ‘virtually synonymous
with the order as a whole throughout south Asia, the Ottoman lands and most of
central Asia’.21 When ¿Abd al-Ghani al- Nabulusi joined the order, this
was obviously not yet the case, and he does not seem to have considered
becoming a Mujaddidi, in spite of friendly contacts with the branch. His
personal faith and practice do not appear to include anything much that would
be recognisable as distinctive of the tarîqa in its modern (largely
Mujaddidi) form as described by Hamid Algar:
The leading characteristics of the Naqshbandiyah are strict
adherence to the sharfah, a sobriety in devotional practice that results
in the shunning of music and dance and a preference for silent dhikr, and a
frequent (although by no means consistent) tendency to political involvement.22
All this appears
singularly uncharacteristic of Nabulusi. Despite his qualifications as a jurist
and his protestations at times that he will say nothing contrary to the Sharfa,
his attitude to the practice and enforcement of the letter of the Law, its
external aspect, is at best ambiguous. He is a devout Hanafi scholar and
respected author of treatises on fiqh, but shows his sympathies with such
as the reputedly antinomian poet ¿Afif al-din al-Tilimsani, noted as an early
source of spiritual inspiration to him, and has high regard for enraptured
‘friends of God’ who flout the exoteric ordinances. His own practice is also
questionable with regard to observance of Sharfa at times in his life,
especially in the 1680s, not long after his joining the Naqshabandiyya. Far
from ‘shunning’ music and dance and only approving silent dhikr, he
wrote in 1677 (shortly after his initiation) on the legitimacy of musical
instruments in the Sufi audition (sama}2"' and, not long
after, defended the whirling dance of the Mawlawis (Mevlevis).24 He
also accepted invitations to attend the vocal dhikr of other tariqas
on a number of occasions after becoming a Naqshabandi.
While many masters in the tariqa insisted
on exclusive practice of silent dhikr, others did not, and the
seventeenth century is a time marked by disputes between advocates of the
different forms of dhikr. In Medina the prominent Naqshabandi teacher
Ibrahim al- Kurani (d. 1690) has been noted for Ins ‘partiaiity to the loud (jahri)
dhikr, combined with music (sama)'.1' He had a
considerable international following, including some from as far away as
Indonesia, for whom he was the ‘most popular’ of the Naqshabandi masters in the
Holy Cities.26 The Kurani family also had links with Nabulusi.
Debates among Naqshabandi factions spread outwards from Arabia, even to China,
as travellers returned home and took with them the views of their shaykhs on
silent and vocal dhikr. Consequently, Nabulusi’s writing on the subject
may perhaps be seen as a contribution to these debates taking place within the
Naqshabandiyya of his period, as well as with critics and would-be reformers
outside it. Finally, any ‘tendency to political involvement’ appears minimal in
Nabulusi’s case. Other features frequently associated with reform-minded
Naqshabandis, such as opposition to many popular practices connected with saint
cults, have no place in Nabulusi’s agenda and, instead, he ardently defends
visits to the tombs of the righteous and all manner of rituals involved in the process of visitation (ziyara).
On this issue he appears to have little in common with the likes of Muhammad Hayyâ
al-Sindî (d. 1750), the Indian Naqshabandl teacher in Medina of the vigorously
antiSufi Ibn ¿Abd al-Wahhab.27
Is the fact that NabulusI was not a Mujaddidl sufficient
explanation for his strong advocacy of views and a lifestyle so contrary to
what might normally be expected in a Naqshabandl shaykh? It probably does
explain a great deal, but perhaps not everything. NabulusI enjoyed a warm
relationship of friendship and mutual respect with Murad b. ¿All al-BukharI (d.
1720), a disciple of Sirhindl’s son, Muhammad Ma¿sum, and a key figure in the
spread of the Mujaddidiyya in the Ottoman Empire.28 Born in
Samarqand, Murad travelled to India where he was initiated into the brotherhood,
then after journeys in Persia, Iraq, Egypt and Arabia, took up residence in
Damascus in 1670. He was a man of Nabulusl’s own age and working to promote
Naqshabandism in Damascus at the time when ¿Abd al-GhanI developed an interest
in it. In 1681 he moved to Istanbul for a period of about five years and
acquired a Mujaddidl following, including the Shaykh al-Islam Fayd Allah EfendI.
With support from a high level for his mission, he returned to Damascus and
established two madrasas in the 1690s, the Muradiyya and the Naqshbandiyya
al-Barraniyya. He was also the recipient of a malikane estate from the
sultan, providing the foundation for the Muradl family’s wealth.29
Late in his life Murad went back to Istanbul where he died in 1720. A tekke
near his tomb was to become a significant base from which the MujaddidI branch
of the NaqshabandIs would be promoted across Anatolia and into the Balkans. Murad’s
son, Muhammad al-MuradI (d. 1755), also enjoyed the favour of the Ottoman
authorities in his promotion of the Naqshabandiyya. He was honoured by being
called upon to undertake the hajj in the sultan’s name and became the qadi
of Medina.30 He was also a student of ¿Abd al-GhanI al- NabulusI.
Given that the MuradIs
were MujaddidIs and NabulusI was not, were there serious differences between
them? NabulusI was clearly not an activist reformer in the style of many later
NaqshabandI shaykhs, but were the MuradIs? It seems unlikely that Murad and his
son would have maintained their association with NabulusI if their own faith
and practice were so sharply contradictory to his. When the Mujaddidiyya was
becoming established in Istanbul during the eighteenth century, and even into
the early nineteenth century, several shaykhs of the tariqa are also
noted as belonging to the Mawlawiyya
and teaching the great mystical poem of central importance to the order, the Mathnawî
(Mesnevi) of Jllâl al-dîn Rumi (d. 1273).31 Hence, they were
evidently not seeking the suppression of vocal dhikr, music and dance.
Some did, however, develop links with Ottoman bureaucrats with an interest in
political and social reform, fulfilling the expectation that Naqshabandi-
Mujaddidi shaykhs are enjoined ‘to try to seek influence with rulers as a part
of their mission’.32 Nevertheless, the stricter reform tendencies
to insist on reviving the Prophet’s Sunna, uprooting unacceptable
innovations (bida¿) and enforcing the Sharfa are more marked from
the 1820s; they are especially associated with the activities of Shaykh Khâlid
Shahrazuri (d. 1827) and the rismg influence <ff liis own Mujaddidi branch,
the Khâlidiyya.33
It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that the
early Murâdis did not differ substantially from Nâbulusi in their perception of
what constituted the right belief and behaviour for a Naqshabandi shaykh. The
major difference between them is that, whereas Nâbulusi is primarily an
ecstatic mystic leading selected souls on the path of God and acquiring renown
as a great scholar and a people’s saint, the Murâdis are primarily organisers
with wealth, powerful connections and a mission to expand the Naqshabandiyya in
the Ottoman Empire.
Divine love,
platonic love, gay love?
By his late thirties ¿Abd
al-Ghani al-Nâbulusi was distancing himself increasingly from contacts with
worldly society, seemingly in despair at the corruption of his day in Damascus.
At the same time he was becoming an ever more controversial figure, apparently
censured by his enemies, particularly his Kâdïzâdelï critics, on account of his
eccentric behaviour and audacious self-expression. Among his many offences in
their eyes was his advocacy of the practice of nazar, gazing upon and
contemplating beauty in beardless youths. The process, both praised and decried
among Muslim mystics, was based on the belief from the ninth century onwards
that the spiritual seeker would be brought through God’s grace to seeing the
reality (haqiqa) c>f Divine Beauty and Love lay the pure, non-sexual
experience of the earthly beauty and love of human beings.34 It is
only God in whom qualities are considered to be real; the seeker hopes for a
deepening realisation of this and a growing understanding that all worldly
manifestations of beauty and love are but a metaphor (majâz) for Hís
Beauty and Iowe. IMeta-phorical human love is viewed as a
bridge or ladder leading to the Divine Beloved. In the words of Jami:
For the true lover of
God, only His Reality would be visible.
Critics, however, pointed to abuses. Hujwiri (d. c.
1071) considered the practice of nazar to be forbidden ‘and anyone who
declares this to be allowable is an unbeliever’.36 In his opinion,
it was a deplorable legacy of the believers in hulül, the possibility of
God’s incarnation in a human being. Other critics observed a moral danger for
Sufis looking on the beauty of young boys: the risk of their being drawn into
homosexual acts. Nabulusi stood accused by his enemies of homosexuality and
support for gay love. Barbara von Schlegell has doubted whether there was ever
any sound basis for these charges and notes his own comments to the effect that
both homosexuality and anal sex with women are to be classed as unbelief (kufr).37
While this may be a fair reflection of Nabulusi’s sincerely held views, there
are problems with placing absolute reliance on his remarks in this context as
evidence of his private views on the subject. He gives a public statement of
his position in al-Hadiqa al-nadiyya (The Perfumed Garden), his
commentary on a work highly revered by the Kadizadelis, al- Tariqa
al-Muhammadiyya (The Way of Muhammad) by Me hmed Birgili (d. 1573), a
leading critic of alleged Sufi aberrations.38 Nabulusi’s Hadiqa,
therefore, represented a significant part of his defence of Sufis in his
confrontation with the Kadizadelis and his open condemnation of homosexuality
would be expected in response to their attacks.
This is a bold and shattering disclosure on his
part, although it is unlikely that he made these proclamations known outside a
very close circle of confidants. It is improbable that they were ever intended
for a wider audience. What he was writing was a strictly personal diary style
of record with dates of each ‘intimate conversation’, including this one, his
own witness to a totally monistic vision of existence. The ecstatic statements
situate Nabulusi at the extremely audacious, intoxicated end of the Sufi spectrum.
He exclaims in shathiyyât (‘theopathic utterances’) his onarwhelming
consciousness of absolute tawhid, that God alone truly is and that this
knowledge, gained through the direct ‘tasting’ of the mystic, pervades him to
the very depth of his being.42 The terse, paradoxical expressions
are in the category of Abu Yazid al-Bistami’s ‘Glory be to Me! How great is My
Majesty!’ and Hallaj’s ‘I am the Truth’ among famous early words of ecstasy.
And yet they seem more contrived and carry the weight of the Sufi intellectual
heritage, and in these respects bear comparison with the extravagant speech of
other mystics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Ahmad
Sirhindi and Shah Wall Allah of Delhi (d. 1762). As Carl Ernst remarks,
recalling the ‘rhetoric of transcendental hyperbole’ that characterises the two
masters, they ‘describe themselves as having reached stations that make the
achievements of Bayazid and Ibn ¿Arabi seem insignificant - the currency of
spiritual states has become devalued’.43 Such is the case with Nabulusi.
Perhaps his least contentious statement here is that he has reached the highest
state of subsistence (haqâ’) in God. Cttierr ttascrnenes, such as Io^is claim of God’s saying to him, ‘I
am unrestricted Being and you are My restricted form,’ and his saying, ‘He
revealed His Essence (dhât) and my essence to me and I heard but one
voice talking’, are far more controversial. While Ibn ¿Arabi maintained that he
had had a vision of God’s Essence ‘in the shape of the word hü, “He”,
luminous between the arms of the letter h O’, Nabulusi’s vision appears to go
well beyond that of his spiritual father.44 Nabulusi’s account, if publicly exposed,
would certainly have laid him open to accusations that he believed not only in
the possibility of hulul or ittihad, God’s indwelling or unitive
fusion with a created being, but of his own participation in it. Both beliefs
had been severely denounced by him in the Fath, apparently in an effort
to clarify his own position and to separate himself from any suspected support
for what he himself described as heresies.45 Even without divulging
his mystical experience publicly, he was a target of suspicion and, although he
was not always so cautious, he knew enough not to speak publicly of his
experience.
A characteristic portrait of him at this time is
provided by the biographical dictionary writer Muhammad Khalil al-Muradi:
SUFI VISIONARY OF OTTOMAN
DAMASCUS directed or inspired, it seems unrealistic to suppose that he was in a
continual state of mystical rapture while he composed the following works: al-Hadiqa
al-nadiyya, his commentary on Birgili’s Tariqa al- Muhammadiyya; a
major verse commentary on the inner meanings of the Qur’an, running to some
5,000 lines; a detailed word-for- word commentary on Ibn ¿Arabi’s Fusüs; Tactir
al-anam fi tacbir al- manOm (The Perfuming of Humankind in the
Interpretation of Dreams), his popular guide to dream interpretation; also
treatises on the legality of smoking, the validity of Mawlawi ritual, the need
for seclusion from corrupt society and the practice of gazing on the beauty of
youth.
By 1685 Nabulusi appeared
increasingly under strain after five years in retreat. His first marriage ended
with his divorce of Musliha. Since the birth of Ismael she had borne him no
children for over 10 years and this may have been a critical factor in the
breakdown of their relationship. Due to the customary reticence of a Muslim
household, no information is forthcoming, but other factors may well have been
the intensity of Nabulusi’s absorption in his visionary and intellectual life,
his possible preference for male company even if the charges of homosexuality
were unfounded, and the inevitable strains of social isolation and persecution.
However, he does not seem to have had serious problems with Musliha’s family,
since he was later to marry Musliha’s sister ¿Alma, who would become the mother
of a son (Muhammad Mas¿ud who died at the age of eight years) and his ^wo
daughters, Tahira and Zaynab, the latter named after his beloved mother and
noted for her saintly miracles of healing.
On 10 October 1685 (12 Dhu’l-Qa¿da
1096) ¿Abd al-Ghani al- Nabulusi heard a voice which he believed to come from
the unseen world, a voice of divine inspiration. The voice brought him the
words with which to respond to his enemies, explaining the beauty of true love
of the beloved and exposing their corruption. The resulting book was completed
in January 1686 and Nabulusi gave it two titles: for the exotericists (ahl
al-zâhir) he caUed it Ghayat al- matlub fî mahabbat al-mahbub (The
Desired Goal in Love of the Beloved), while for the esotericists (ahl
al-batin) he used the title Makhraj al-muttaqî wa-manhaj al-murtaqî (The
Way Out of the Pious and Method of the Spiritually Advanced)4
Yet, although Nabulusi’s authorship is clearly established and the work is
written in his characteristic eloquent style, Yusuf al-Nabahani (d. 1932),
among later Sufi authors, is too shocked to recognise this.49 Nabahani
is an ardent admirer of Nabulusi as the greatest saintly mystic of the last 300
years, and cannot accept that he would compose this frank apology for nazar,
gazing on the beautiful male beloved. On no sound basis he concludes that Nabulusi
cannot be the author and the book has either been falsely attributed to him or
interpolated.
Nabulusi seeks to define
the true nature of love (mahabba), explaining its various stages and
declaring his conviction that love cannot be divided into divine and creaturely
love; all love is one.50 He affirms the legality of looking upon
beautiful faces, both male and female, if this is practised without lust. If
lust is present, the
SUFI VISIONARY OF OTTOMAN
DAMASCUS practice is forbidden. Sadly, he laments that this is not generally
understood in his day:
We have seen
many people confuse love with animal lust so that they claim that they love the
beloved and that they have tasted love and know it, when their love is mere
lust. In the same way they love food and drink in the sense that they are
greedy for it, but, because of the extent of their ignorance and their hearts
being filled with stupidity, they cannot distinguish between love and lust. So
you see one of them spending his life in ignorance, depravity, error and sin
and thinking that he loves the beloved, although he only wants to commit gross
indecency with him or to have some other personal contact such as embracing,
kissing or touching.
Nabulusi makes some severe criticisms of jurists,
both past and present, on the grounds that they have been exceptionally harsh
in judging certain behaviour to be haram, for example the consumption
of coffee and tobacco; this has even led to the killing of innocent people.52
He aims to demonstrate that their condemnation of nazar is due to their
ignorance and misunderstanding of the Prophet’s Sunna. He devotes a
lengthy chapter to showing what he considers to be the authentic Islamic basis
for the practice in the early community, drawing on Hadith and
biographies of Companions and Followers.53 He is particularly
concerned with arguing his case against the cautions of the classic manuals of
Sufi instruction, notably Qushayri’s Risala, about association with
novices (suhbat al-ahdath). He follows this with a highly controversial
chapter examining the Prophet’s pure love for the young Zayd b. Haritha, his
one time adopted son, and Zayd’s son Usama.54 There is also a
reminder here of racial perceptions and prejudices of the period. Usama is
being claimed as a model of beautiful youth and traditionally he had been
described as black. Nabulusi finds this problematic
and so denies Usama’s
blackness (sawâd) because it would rob him of beauiy according io Arab
opinion of ihe time; instead, he asseris ihaiihe colour intended io describe Usama
is brownness (sumra), so ihai ihe young beloved of ihe Prophet takes on
ihe olive-brown colouring of an Arabian youth, more acceptable io his and his
readers’ sensibilities.
Before concluding with a chapter of examples of
ascetics and mystics whom he cites as practising nazar (including Ibn ¿Arabi,
Ibn al-Farid and Rumi), Nabulusi returns to attack his accusers in Damascus. In
this autobiographical extract he recounts the distress that led him to retreat
and his deep unhappiness with the prevailing social trends:
When Nabulusi wrote of
the importance of his recording what he had heard from ‘the voice of the unseen
world’, he was still careful to restrict
the readership of this work. He gave it a title for exotericists, but,
nevertheless, told his disciples that they should not read it with the
uninitiated.57 It is by no means certain that all of them were aware
of the book’s contents or agreed uncritically with their master, if they were
aware. One of the most important of Nabulusi’s disciples was Mustafa b. Kamal
al-dîn al-Bakrî (d. 1749), a leading figure in the eighteenth-century
Khalwatiyya, a prolific writer and someone who has been considered significant
as a reformer of Sufism, despite some queries as to whether he should be viewed
as a neo-Sufi reformer.58 Despite his attachment to Nabulusi, Bernd
Radtke observes that he and his son objected to the ‘immoral practice of
consorting with beardless youths (murd)’,59 although it is
not clear whether he condemned it totally as a practice or was critical of the
immorality of the age as affecting Sufi behaviour, a complaint that is also
made by Nabulusi.
Despite his many troubles, Nabulusi was nearing
the end of his seven years of voluntary confinement. In 1687 he finally emerged
from retreat, his fame having spread and therefore attracting new disciples and
students; he was also the author of a substantial body of books, treatises and
poems, and the object of growing veneration as a popular saint. The opponents
did not vanish overnight, or indeed for many years, but he was stronger now and
able to mount a formidable defence.
INTERPRETER OF
TRUE DREAMS
Nabulusi’s disciples
confirm from their own dream experience that they and their master attached
great importance to the dreaming process. Mustafa al-Bakri, the distinguished
Khalwati disciple, was among those who flocked to study with Nabulusi,
travelling from Egypt to Damascus to join him for periods of up to four years
at a time between 1688 and 1709.1 Bakri’s experience was not
confined to everyday waking encounters, but also shows the importance attached
to dreaming in Sufi guidance. Bakri relates that on one occasion he dreamt of Nabulusi
giving him an ijâza in both the Qadiriyya and Naqshabandiyya. The next
day he visited Nabulusi in his house and asked him to provide the ijâza
in writing. However, the shaykh exploded with anger, exclaiming, ‘I gave you
permission. I gave you permission. The two worlds are one.’2 One
further testimony is that of Husayn al-Baytamani, a disciple of his later
years, who recorded various dreams relating to ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi,
including one in which Nabulusi ordered him to die and to come to life again
afterwards, a common theme in accounts of murshid-murid (guide-disciple)
relationships. But then the master approached him and he recalls:
The dream events are seen as more significant in
spiritual terms because it is in sleep that the pure spirits are present and
more capable of receiving glimpses of the world of truth. For Nabulusi that
truth is encountered on the ‘path of God’ to which he leads his disciples and
which takes precedence over initiations, even dream initiations, into the Qadiri
and Naqshabandi tariqas. Baytamani’s dream is a further confirmation
that Nabulusi’s concerns are not those of a typical tariqa shaykh, but
that he views himself as having a primary mission of seeking God and helping
others to seek God, but not necessarily through an organised tariqa.
Dreaming then becomes a powerful vehicle for guidance.
Nabulusi’s disciples did not always dream of him
as assuming his own identity in their visions. On at least three occasions
during his early period in retreat, 1681-83, the Prophet was seen in dreams of
some of these disciples as having the physical shape of ¿Abd al- Ghani al-Nabulusi.4
This was not, however, an isolated phenomenon in Sufi circles, since cases are
recorded of the Prophet allegedly appearing in the bodily form of other
potential saints. One of the more surprising instances is noted in late
nineteenth-century Syria by Rashid Rida (d. 1935), a Naqshabandi in his youth
but later known for his devastating critiques of much Sufi practice in his day.
Near the end of his life he recorded his anxiety as a young man when people
began to look at him for signs indicating that he was one of God’s friends.
Included among these signs were acquaintances’ dreams of the Prophet in Rida’s
shape.5 But how could such dreams be explained without contradicting
famous hadiths to the effect that the Prophet appearing in a person’s
dream is truly seen by the dreamer? Medieval writers overcame the problem by
explaining that in the dream Muhammad is actually the symbol of the Prophet and
that this symbol could take other forms.6 The north African Sufi Muhammad
al-Zawawi (d. c. 1477) was one of those who expressed the opinion that a
different form did not necessarily signal a different identity. He supported
this view with examples from the Prophet’s lifetime: of the angel Gabriel
taking the form of one of the Prophet’s Companions, Dihya al-Kalbî, and even of
a male camel.7 However, examples of this type seem designed merely
to demonstrate the technical possibility of assuming various forms, since they
do not appear to have any obvious connection with enhancing the spiritual
status of either Dihya or the camel! Nevertheless, visions of the Prophet in
the form of a revered master do have such a function and the disciples’ dreams
of Nabulusi all confer a high status on him. They serve to give him the
credentials to guide others, whether his disciples or a wider public, through
the interpretation of dreams.
Dreams traditionally
played an important part in the spiritual training of novices, although some
brotherhoods were particularly associated with the practice of dream
interpretation. The Khalwatiyya, Mustafa al-Bakri’s tarîqa, is one that
is especially known for emphasising guidance through dreams.8 The
normal expectation would be that the disciple would relate his dream to the
shaykh, as Bakri and Baytamani described theirs to Nabulusi, and that the
shaykh would then be able to gauge their level of spiritual progress and advise
on action to be taken. Parallel to this pattern of dream analysis was the
analysis of a disciple’s thoughts. In Syria this was advocated from the early
sixteenth century by Shaykh ¿Ali b. Maymun, a noted target of Nabulusi’s
criticisms for his harshness in pursuit of Islamic reform. He founded a tarîqa
sometimes referred to as the Khawatiriyya, its name being derived from khawatir,
‘thoughts’.9 However, thought interpretation was also subject to
imitation by the untrained. A Sufi cobbler is recorded as taking his followers
to Ibn ¿Arabi’s tomb
The way in which
interpretation of thoughts operates in tandem with dream interpretation points
to their being two branches of the same process: divine gifts of guidance are
being received by the waking mind in the form of thoughts, and by the sleeping
mind in the form of dreams. The message reaching the dreamer or thinker is likely to
relate to the disciple’s spiritual state in the present or to how past actions
have affected it, although it may also have relevance for the future. The
disciple is intended to learn from the diagnosis how to draw nearer to God by
righteous behaviour and avoidance of sin. The Sufi dreamer differs from the
ordinary member of the public, who consults a paid dream interpreter to predict
whether he will become rich or powerful, or marry or have children, or achieve
other mundane desires.
In Nabulusi’s case, he
both appears as the guide within disciples’ dreams and interprets the dreams
that they relate to him. He also, at times, finds benefit in informing them
about his own dreams and explaining them; sometimes he may even acquaint a
wider readership with this visionary experience. While the avowed aim is to
guide the seeker, the dream narratives and their interpretation give assurance
about Nabulusi’s deep perception of the Unseen, thus boosting his position as
an advanced mystic brought near to God. As he developed certainty in his own
mind that he had become ‘opened’ to the Divine, he believed that as one of
‘God’s friends’ he received God’s guidance, either directly or through the
Prophet or holy dead, to enable him to realise the significance of his dreams,
and did not need other living human interpreters to assist him. The period in
retreat is particularly remarkable as a time of ‘opening’, but dreams whose
interpretation he hinted at, or more plainly disclosed, are in evidence
throughout his life.
Several years before the retreat when he was
writing the Fath, Nabulusi was already showing a concern to defend the
validity of the dream visions experienced by those whom he classes as ‘perfect
believers’. Their faith, he claimed, remained pure during their sleep and
neither sleep nor death could veil the true saint from God:
As for the states of sleep and death, the perfect believer remains
a believer in both states. His faith may actually be pure in sleep and freed
from the demands of his humanity, so that he returns to his original nature
that God bestowed on him. Therefore, sleeping visions are parts of prophecy
because pure spirituality is contained in them. ... So how does faith diminish
in sleep, when dreams contain a part of prophecy? ... And how does it diminish
in death, when the believer does not see his Lord until he dies? Sleep and death both
perfect faith and do not detract from it.11
Nabulusi portrays his decision to travel to
Jerusalem and the holy land of Palestine as a blessed event, but he does not at
this time presume that he has a status as a perfected believer. He has his
doubts about the morality of his dream behaviour and shows his anxiety in case
he is guilty of implementing a bad innovation that will be followed by the
arrogant rich. He is conscious of his responsibility as an exemplar and guide.
His concern also serves as a warning to disciples and other readers that they
must also guard against arrogance. Nabulusi fails to understand the dream
immediately in a way that might have been expected of him as a saint.
Initially he fears that his dream does not come from God, but from within
himself and is a product of his own imagination. The meaning only becomes
plain to him when the dream is fulfilled four days later, and even then he does
not spell out the interpretation for his readers. Instead, he leaves it for the
spiritually minded to work out from the subsequent events. The two
magnificently clothed young men are revealed as poor ecstatics (majâdhib),
who are clothed magnificently in the spirit despite their material poverty. Nabulusi
is uplifted by their presence, not physically, but spiritually. In a symbolic
dream of this type it is possible for the Muslim dream interpreter to read the
dream image as standing for its opposite in certain circumstances: for example,
weeping may be interpreted as joy. In Nabulusi’s dream the richly dressed are
poor, but at another level of understanding they are also rich in spiritual
terms.
The vision is described as a waqia or psychic
episode that takes place in ‘the world of dreams’. However, not all waqfat
form the substance of dreams. As Ibn ¿Arabi explains: ‘Some people see them in
a state of sleep, some in a state of annihilation (fana) and others in
the state of wakefulness.’15 But, although Nabulusi is explicit here
about this xvaqi a occurring as a dream, other accounts by him and other
authors are not always clear as to whether a vision has been witnessed in this
way or whether it has occurred during wakefulness, or in the condition between
sleeping and waking. This is despite a range of technical vocabulary seeking to
clarify different types of visionary experience.16 Among the
commonest terms, manam definitely signifies sleep and hence dreaming,
while ru’ya (from the Arabic root r-a-y) has the primary association
with seeing and so may have the meaning of something seen in sleep, a dream,
but can also refer to other visions. Both dreams and mystical waqfat are
said to occur when one is absent to the world of the senses; both are
contrasted with mukashafa, the state of unveiling in which the mystic is
‘present’ in the sensory world and where no deception would be thought
possible.17
Psychic incidents from
late in ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi’s life operate as definite indicators of high
spiritual rank. The dream of Ibn ¿Arabi as spiritual father in December 1721
(discussed in Chapter 2) affirmed his position as successor to the Great
Master. Some years later, near the end of hss life, Nabulusi claimed to have
had two waqfat, which appear to be dreams of a supreme achievement. In
October 1728, he saw himself in Mecca looking upon the Ka¿ba in a state of
ruin, its walls rased to the ground. He rebuilt it with his own hand in a
mysterious way, starting near the Black Stone. In the second dream, in April
1730, just under a year before his death, he saw people looking for the key to
the Ka¿ba and a woman standing in front of a house; she gave the key to him and
he kept it in his belt.18 The first dream, in particular, displays a
characteristic reformer’s distress at the decay of the Islamic community, but
also a high degree of confidence that he has solved its problems.
Messages from the
‘world of truth’
These two dreams from Nabulusi’s last years
scarcely require the skill of a perceptive dream interpreter. The images of the
ruined Ka¿ba and the search for its key are obvious in their connotations. Many
of the dreams recorded in Islamic literature contain a similarly thin cloak of
symbolism or relay clear messages, where there can be little room for
speculation because of the literal nature of the information. The traditional
pattern for the completely literal dream is one in which a person appears to
the dreamer and delivers a message. The dream may be of someone who is still
alive, not uncommonly a saintly ‘perfect believer’ or Sufi guiding shaykh, as
in the case of some of Nabulusi’s disciples’ dreams. Frequently the dream
vision is of someone who has died, either in the recent or distant past, and
who may or may not have been personally known to the dreamer; sometimes the
vision is of a prophet or of a deceased saint, shaykh, relative, teacher or
friend. Dreams of the dead were widely considered to be of special value, since
the deceased dwells in the ‘world of truth’ (dar al-haqq), and so can be
the bearer of truth to the world of the living.19 While a single
message-bearer is the most frequent, a really momentous message may even be
carried by a whole company of distinguished dead, such as the Prophet Muhammad
accompanied by groups of Companions, Rightly- Guided Caliphs and perhaps also
earlier prophets and major saints. Dreams of this type, containing explicit
messages, may serve a variety of purposes: for example, they often function as
a vehicle for the deceased to give information about life after death and how
he and others have fared, thus enhancing or damaging their reputa- tions.20
Otherwise, they may also provide particular guidance for an
These message dreams have an ancient history in the Near East,
where the dreamers receiving divine communications in this way were usually of
royal or priestly status, especially significant males.22 In the
Islamic tradition any Muslim may be the recipient of a literal and true dream
message and what matters is the person’s piety rather than his/her position in
society. The righteousness of the dreamer serves as the most reliable guarantee
of the truth being conveyed in the dream.23 As John Lamoreaux
remarks: ‘It matters not whether one is a North African shoemaker, an Afghani
holy warrior, or a menstruating woman.’24 Yet there were attempts by
some medieval Muslim writers to distinguish those who were the most likely to
be among the righteous dreamers. The eminent philosopher Ibn Sina (d. 1037)
echoes the ancient Near Eastern view that the true dream is ‘the special
preserve of kings and sages’.25 On the other hand, Sijistani, the
author of a tenth-century dream manual, offers his own ranking of the
righteous, placing religious scholars highest among the Muslims as ‘the most
truthful’ and rating free men above slaves, men above women, veiled women above
the unveiled, the rich above the poor and old people above the young.26
Burini’s dream is of a
common type among literal message dreams. The deceased, here the former
teacher, offers advice from his knowledge in the ‘world of truth’ of what has
and has not benefited him and what will benefit his living student and, by
extension, others in the community. In telling about Isma¿il al-Nabulusi’s
fate, Burini shows that it is a good one because he is presiding over a
reception and thus appears to have an honoured position. From his own testimony
he has gained this position from his piety in reciting the Qur’an and
performing prayer, acts with which Nabulusi could feel justifiably pleased and
which he could be happy to have recounted. However, it is less obvious that he
would be happy with Shaykh Isma¿il’s dream denunciation of poetry as being of
no religious benefit, when in life he had been noted as a poet himself and ¿Abd
al-Ghani, of course, remained an accomplished poet and admirer of poetry
throughout his life. It seems surprising and unlikely that he would be entirely
satisfied with a dream communication that could be used to support the arguments
of critics of poetry, including religious poetry. Among the most vociferous of
such critics in the century after Nabulusi’s death were the Arabian Wahhabi reformers,
among whom ¿Abd Allah, son of Muhammad b. ¿Abd al-Wahhab, expressed his concern
that Muslims of his day were moved to tears by Sufi poetry, while remaining
unmoved by recital of the Qur’an.30 Burini’s point is, presumably,
that, although Isma¿il al-Nabulusi had been a poet and saw value in poetry
while alive, after death he received true knowledge on the subject and this led
him to reject his former beliefs. Therefore, it is the teaching of the dream,
critical of poetry, that is being promoted as containing a more enlightened
message, superseding any teaching from his lifetime. The dream does appear to
advance the pious reputation of the Nabulusis, but is otherwise hardly
supportive of ¿Abd al- Ghani’s usual opinions on poetry.
In certain cases, literal dream messages may be
utilised as a means of trying to settle scholarly disputes, notably over Qur’anic
readings, Hadith and their transmission, as well as juristic and
theological issues.31 Nabulusi has been recognised as contributing
to the discussion about the validity of hadiths transmitted in dreams.
His general position was to endorse the view that any such hadith must
be in conformity with the Sharha and could not introduce innovations
into the faith. Subject to this caveat, he was prepared to recognise the
permissibility of granting ijâzas in dreams for hadiths that
support similar canonical hadiths. The issue was of special importance
when the Prophet himself delivered the instructions directly to the dreamer,
rather than the new hadith being recounted by an intermediary. In a
treatise devoted to the subject, Nabulusi records a dream where the Prophet
gave orders to a man to break the Ramadan fast; the dream vision of the Prophet
is accepted as authentic, but not the legality of acting on it and breaking the
fast.32 Elsewhere, during travels down the Syrian coast in 1693, Nabulusi
recalled a dream experience related to him by the Shafi¿i mufti of
Sidon. The mufti told him how three years previously the Prophet had
appeared to him in a dream and told him, ‘Live as you wish, for you will die.
Love whom you wish, for you will depart. Do as you wish, for you will be
rewarded.’33 Nabulusi confirms that he has heard the hadith
somewhere else, but does not specify where or recommend any particular action
in regard to it. It is quite a problematic example, since it could be seen as
lending itself to an antinomian interpretation. Although it would be unlikely
to pose special difficulties for the dreamer in this
instance, as a jurist responsible for upholding the SharPa, such a
dream could have subversive potential for undermining the law if it were
actively followed. Presumably the dream is being related here as an example of
divine favour to the mufti as dreamer and is not functioning to authenticate
the hadîth for the community.34
Dreaming in
symbols, predicting the future
The dreams so far discussed share with much Islamic oneiric literature
a concern with moral guidance and instruction, with gaining knowledge from
beyond the mundane, sensory world about the fate of the deceased, with
perceiving God’s blessings on human beings and with enabling them to recognise
the saints in their midst. Although Nabulusi’s dream of his departure for
Jerusalem contains a predictive element, it seems more significant as a sign of
divine favour and for deepening his spiritual insight than for simply
foretelling that the journey will take place. Yet, many dreams were considered
to have the primary purpose of relating the future of the dreamer or of others,
and these dreams can properly be considered the subject matter of
oneirocriticism (or oneiromancy as it may alternatively be termed), the
business of divination through dreams.35 The messages of such
predictive dreams were seldom presented literally, but the professional
oneirocritic or oneiromancer would be expected to decipher a series of symbolic
images in order to disclose the true meaning contained in them. To aid in this
task, dream manuals were compiled, giving lists of common symbols and their
possible meanings in a range of different circumstances. It was during the time
of his long retreat, after five years of seclusion and visionary experience,
that ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi compiled an oneirocritical treatise of this
type, Tacfír al-anâm fî tacbtr al-manâm (The Perfuming
of Humankind through the Interpretation of Dreams), finished in 1685. The Tacfír
was to become Nabulusi’s most popular work. Its wide circulation in manuscript
was superseded by a far wider circulation in print after its first publication
in Cairo in 1858. Valerie Hoffman remarks that the ‘rich literature on dream
interpretation in Islam perhaps reached its apogee’36 in Nabulusi’s
work and John Lamoreaux affirms that it is ‘one of the truly classic dream
manuals’ and is one of two works that by the second half of the nineteenth
century ‘had become the primary representatives of the Muslim tradition of
dream interpretation’.37 The work attracted Western scholarly attention
from early in the twentieth century.38
Nabulusi’s famous book of dreams was the fruit of
a long tradition of Arab and Islamic dream interpretation (tacbir).
Commenting on medieval Arab lexicographers’ views on the meaning of tcfbir, Lamoreaux
notes some of their less likely explanations before concluding:
Prophet Muhammad was
similarly credited with inspired knowledge of the real meaning of dreams,
including his own, as, for example, on the eve of the battle of Uhud (March
625), fought on and in the vicinity of the hill of Uhud outside Medina and
viewed at best as an indecisive encounter between the Muslims and their Meccan
opponents, at worst as a defeat for the burgeoning Islamic community. The
Prophet told his companions his dream: he saw himself wearing a strong
breast-plate, but his sword was cracked. There were cows being slaughtered and
a ram that he was driving in front of him. He interpreted his dream to mean
that the strong breast-plate was Medina and the cracked sword a sign that he
would be wounded in battle; the cows represented the Muslim martyrs about to
die at Uhud and the ram was the leader of the Muslim army, the Prophet’s uncle Hamza,
who was to be the most famous martyr of this battle.42
Muslim dream interpreters clearly felt the need
to boost their credentials by promoting themselves as the heirs of exemplary
prophetic oneirocritics. Nevertheless, a considerable body of oneirocritics,
at least from the early eleventh century up to Nabulusi himself, show a
reliance on their pre-Islamic, non-prophetic precursors for their analysis of
dream symbols. Geert van Gelder has noted typical aspects of their approach to
the task:
Sometimes a symbol may offer the interpreter an
opportunity to combine these devices, as when Nabulusi treats the dream image
of a crown (tâj) as a metaphorical representation of ‘knowledge’ and
‘the Qur’an’ and also a metonym for a ‘king’.44 Some of these
‘favorite tools’ have a long history in divination from dreams in ancient Egypt
and Mesopotamia. Notably, the attempt to provide etymological explanations,
however improbably contrived, is to be seen in the Assyrian Dream-Book
from the great library of Assurbanipal. For example, in a section on eating various
types of bird, it is related of the dreamer: ‘If he eats a raven: income will
come [in].’45 The words ‘raven’ (aribu) and ‘mcome’ (irbu)
are given a pseudo-imguistic relationship in an effort to justify the
predicted outcome of an unlikely dream. However, income being acquired or lost
is a common
distress and his
crime/punishment [will be heavy(?)].’46 Nabulusi, following other
Muslim interpreters, not infrequently discusses such changes of shape and their
significance. The way in which the interpretation is structured is also
similar in the two traditions. The usual pattern is a protasis, for example ‘If
a man wears such-and-such,’ followed by the apodosis, ‘Such-and-such will
happen.’ This basic structure and method appear to undergo remarkably little
change through to Nabulusi’s compilation in the 1680s, although direct links to
the ancient tradition remain elusive.
More tangible is the debt to the Greek tradition
and especially to the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus of Daldis from the
second century CE, the only Greek dream manual from this period still extant in
full. An adapted Arabic version of it became available in the ninth century and
is usually attributed to the Nestorian Christian physician Hunayn b. Ishaq (d.
877).47 The translator saw fit to alter the text in places where
Artemidorus’s polytheistic beliefs would have caused offence to monotheist
readers, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish. Thus references to the gods of
the Greek pantheon are transmuted into mentions of Allah or of His angels, and
pagan sacrificial rituals are changed into Muslim ones, such as those of ‘Id
al-Adha.4S However, the diagnosis by Artemidorus of many dream
images proved non-problematic and could be incorporated freely into the Arabic
dream-books with more or less acknowledgement. Where particular explanations
were not pillaged intact, Muslim oneirocritics used Artemidorus’s method of
seeking out supposed similarities between symbols seen in the dream and
whatever they might be thought to signify. An example of Artemidorus’s
reasoning is as follows: ‘Bugs are symbols of cares and anxieties. For bugs,
like anxieties, also keep people awake at night.’49 This type of use
of analogy, along with puns and other forms of wordplay, was readily extended
by Arab writers to fit new Islamic symbols. They would have presented few
difficulties for Nabulusi, himself a skilled
rhetorician; and perhaps
he would have seen in them a further incentive to take an interest in
traditional oneirocritical writings in addition to his obvious concern to help
others understand the significance of any divine communications through
dreams.
The Muslim interpreters varied in their readiness
to accept the contribution of Artemidorus and other non-Muslim sources. At one
end of the spectrum of views, the eleventh-century Maliki jurist Qayrawani claimed
reliance on the traditional material of the early Islamic community and
professed to ignore the ancient pagan heritage.50 At the other
extreme end, the philosopher Ibn Sina openly expressed his preference for Greek
interpretation and his use of the Oneirocritica, although he added some
material culled from the opinions of the Arabs.51 Nabulusi follows
the middle path, set by those interpreters who draw on both Muslim and non-Muslim
authorities without clearly privileging Arabic Islamic sources over others. The
major influence on him in adopting this approach is the famous manual composed
by Dinawari for Caliph al-Qadir bi’llah (r. 991-1031), a massive compilation
completed in 1008 and listed in the Tacfír as one of Nabulusi’s
sources.52 Dinawari admitted drawing on ancient Near Eastern and
Indian material, as well as on Artemidorus and on Christian and Jewish
authorities in addition to Muslim views. However, Nabulusi was not alone among
later writers in recording his debt to Dinawari, while remaining vague about,
and apparently uninterested in, the origins of much of the older author’s
information. He is more inclined to refer to views of ‘the ancients’ or ‘the
unbelievers’ rather than to specific writings.53 Yet his awareness
of an infidel source of knowledge that he relays does not appear to trouble him
unduly and, for the most part, he makes no distinction between Islamic and
non-Islamic dream interpretation.
There is very
little originality in Nabulusi’s The Perfuming of Humankind nor does he
claim any. It is perhaps ironic that his best- known book contains so little of
himself, but actually represents the latest contribution to a conservative
tradition. The Islamic oneirocritical treatises conform to a standard pattern
and it would not really have been feasible for Nabulusi to be accepted as an
authority within the genre, had he departed from the conventional content of
such works. Yet he does nothing to satisfy us as to his deeper motivation in
authoring for popular use a book that depends on old non-Sufi, and even
non-Islamic, methods of interpretation. It remains something of a mystery as to
why he should do so at a time when he is so convinced of being ‘opened’ to the
Divine in his own dreams and visions, and thus able to have his own mystical
insights to guide him to diagnose others’ experiences. Why should he then wish
to cull second-hand information to pass on for the wider public to consult?
Perhaps he is conscious that he can only give direct help to a limited number
of initiates, but feels some commitment to assist the general reader in making
sense of dreams without access to a spiritual guide. Presumably he does not see
too serious an incompatibility between a mystical means of divination and
inherited wisdom. In any case, his personal standing as a visionary, and indeed
a people’s saint, is likely to have gained respect for his much- consulted
compilation.
In substance the Tcftir differs hardly at
all from earlier dream manuals, but there is an obvious difference in organisation.
In older works the lists of dream symbols would commonly be grouped together in
a descending hierarchical order, typically God, then His prophets, angels,
early Muslims and symbols associated with Islam such as Qur’anic suras
and Pillars, various humans, animals, plants, inanimate beings and natural
phenomena. However, NabulusI realised that this was not the most convenient,
user-friendly form for reference and proposed instead an encyclopaedia-style
arrangement. He explains:
In the introductory
section to the Tactir, NabulusI follows his predecessors in
expounding dream theory, presenting a typology of dreams and underlining
general principles to be adhered to in order to enable the interpreter and the dreamer to
achieve a successful analysis. In discussing the predisposition of dreamers to
certain kinds of dreams, he repeats the ideas of Galen (without referring to
him by name) regarding the influence of the four humours on the dreaming
process. If black bile were predominant in the dreamer’s constitution, Nabulusi
observes that he would then see misfortunes, blackness and horrors in the
dream; if yellow bile, he would see fire, lights and blood; if phlegm, he would
see whiteness, waters, rivers and waves; and, if blood, he would see drink,
winds and stringed and wind instruments.56 Absorbing a combination
of Greek and Islamic rationale for the causes of dreams, Nabulusi notes various
other explanations of dream types. For example, useless and indecipherable
dreams are identified predictably as originating from Satan; he relates a hadith
in which a man told the Prophet of a dream in which his head was cut off and he
was following it, the devilish stuff of nightmares. Other dreams are diagnosed
as reflecting normal human needs, as when the hungry man dreams of eating.
Still others are the product of worries and desires or have natural
physiological causes, such as the wet dreams of adolescence. Dreams may also be
produced by outside intervention in the dreamer’s life and can be the work of
sorcerers.57 All these varieties are not the concern of the
oneirocritic, although they might conceivably be relevant to physicians or to
spiritual guides. Neither are literal ‘true dreams’ of relevance here, but
only those that contain symbolic truth.
How can one know that a
dream is indeed true? Nabulusi notes certain signs of truth and gives examples
of categories of humans and other creatures that are to be believed, if they
speak in a dream: a dead family member, an infant (who does not know how to
lie), animals and birds, but not liars such as astrologers and soothsayers. He also
cautions against making assumptions based on an apparent meaning, since the
real meaning could actually be the opposite. Weeping might indicate joy and
laughter could be a sign of misery.
The body of the text, with its lists of dream
symbols in alphabetical order, reveals a number of factors to be taken into
consideration in interpreting. Not only are the images affected by the identity
of the dreamer, his or her age, gender, character, social status, state of
health or wealth, but they are also affected by his or her actions and the
actions of persons and other beings represented in the dream. Further effects
on the interpretation will come from visions of the time and place of the dream
events and any other variable characteristics, such as the quantity; for
example, if the dream symbol is snow, the meaning may be determined by whether
it is a light scattering or deep snowdrifts.
While all these factors may influence the reading
of the dream, there are certain common meanings that recur. These include predictions
about good fortune or calamities, power or humiliation, wealth or poverty,
health or illness, fertility or barrenness, faith or unbelief, attacks of
enemies or friendship and love, and receiving mercy or punishment. Frequent
actors are God, rulers, relatives, friends and enemies. It can be seen from the
repertoire of symbols and their meanings that the resulting interpretations are
designed to address the usual human concerns and in this they have much in
common with the popular astrologers, whom Nabulusi condemns as liars. Although
symbolism could be used in a way suited to the spiritually elect, it can, and
generally does, meet the needs of the ‘veiled’ masses.
An encyclopaedia
of God’s signs
Nabulusi’s
encyclopaedia of God’s signs is certainly easy to use, but the new arrangement
may affect the reader’s perception of the dream symbols. In the earlier dream
manuals the hierarchical listing preserves the sense of special significance
attached to dreams of God, holy persons and symbols of Islam. This sense is
lost when the reader looks up the desired item in an alphabetical list and
finds, for example, that ‘Allah’ is immediately followed by ‘the fat tail of a
ewe’ (alyat al-shat) and ‘Muhammad’ by ‘a camel-borne litter’ (muhmal).
The effect could be to make a routine practice out of consulting a ‘key to
dreams’ where the images of God and His prophets become devalued, placed next
to trivial and mundane objects. On the other hand, it is possible for the
reader to discover that even the
everyday dream of a sheep’s tail can be a prediction of ‘abundant grace’ or
‘beneficial knowledge’.59 The traditional process of searching for
underlying similarities enables the interpreter to make a connection between
the valued fatty meat and God’s blessings in the form of grace or knowledge.
However, a dream of God may not in every instance be a positive sign of Divine
favour, but may indicate the very opposite or relate to ordinary worldly
matters. The dreamer who flees from God is not only the worshipper who will
abandon prayer, but ‘if he has a father, he will be disrespectful to him, and,
if he is a slave, he will run away and escape from his master’.60 By
an allegorical reading, the relationship between God and the human being is
understood to refer to earthly human relationships where God represents the
father or master figure.
There are a number of factors that determine
whether the vision of God, or sometimes hearing His voice with or without a
vision, can be interpreted as an augury of good. Included among these factors
is the state of the dreamer’s heart. Nabulusi asserts near the beginning of the
entry on ‘Allah’:
He later remarks:
These remarks
endorse the view that it is possible for the sincere believer to experience a
true dream of God, actualised with His attributes of might and splendour and
without trace of anthropomorphism, and that this dream may contain
valid visual, aural and tangible elements. It thus supports the authenticity
and blessed nature of the dreams of many of those brought near to God. An
example illustrative of several auspicious features in a vision of God is
recounted by Ruzbihan Baqlî (d. 1209), celebrated Persian Sufi of Shiraz:
Ruzbihan further relates
that God spoke to him, saying that this was how his death would be. The
oneirocritic would note as positive that the mystic both saw and heard God, the
form in which God was manifested, God’s action in taking him by the hand, and
the presence of prophets, angels and saints. However, in keeping with the
genre of oneirocritical writing, NabulusI mentions no records of his personal
experiences. Had he wished, he could surely have provided numerous examples,
including his own visions from this period in his life, but they are
deliberately not disclosed to those unprepared to comprehend them.
A veil separating the
dreamer from God may or may not have negative implications. NabulusI notes that
it may be a sign of innovation (bidca) and error and indeed
an lU omen that the ilt^camcr will commit grave sins. Yet later in the entry
inconsistent statements appear to have been inserted to the effect that it is a
sign of the soundness of the dreamer’s faith if he hears God speak to him only
from behind a veil and does not see Him. If he sees God, there is a fault in
his religious belief, a view presumably reflecting the Sunni dogma that God will
be seen only in the afterlife. NabulusI appears to have pieced these comments
into the interpretation here, drawing directly from older works that are not
necessarily in line with his own opinions.64 He also borrows the
concept of symbols being reciprocal so that if, for example, the dreamer sees
that God is displeased with him, this informs him of his parents’ displeasure,
but, if he sees that his parents are displeased, this actually signifies God’s
displeasure. Similarly, he adopts the idea that a dreamer may see an action or
situation portending certain consequences or he may see the consequences;
therefore, he writes: ‘Whoever sees that God is angry with him, will fall from
a high position and, if he were to see that he fell from a wall or sky or mountain,
that would show God’s anger with him.’65
Dreams of mosques,
shrines and holy cities
Images of certain kinds
of places or of specific places may be of great consequence in a dream.
However, their exact significance may depend on a number of variables. Thus Nabulusi
writes of a dream image of God being seen in a place:
Dreaming of places is often symbolic of persons
associated with them. Therefore, to dream of a mosque is often to dream of ‘ulamâ’
and their actions or of matters related to the dreamer’s dealings with
them.68 To dream of specific mosques, such as the Aqsa Mosque in
Jerusalem or the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, may indicate travel to them or it
may represent ‘ulamâ’ or rulers in their vicinity.69 In the
same way, a dream of a shrine (qubba) may signify iss saintly occupant
and it may even be a sign that the dreamer is marked out for sainthood.70
This entry is one of very few in the Tactir in which NabulusI
relates his interpretation of an actual dream where he acted as a consultant
interpreter. Even so, he does not disclose the identities of his clients, but
simply records:
NabulusI does not tell us whether the second part
of his prediction came true. Was there a family dispute after the câlim’s
death? If so, what was it about? Perhaps it concerned inheritance or succession
to a teaching post or appointment to an official role in a tarîqa branch.
Whatever may have been the case, NabulusI does not seem interested in the
details, but only in demonstrating his own powers as an interpreter of dreams.
Even though he was spending much of his time in seclusion at his house during
this period, he was not totally isolated from contact with the community and
may have had insider information. However, he wished to present himself as
someone who had miraculous insight rather than knowledge acquired by
conventional means.
To dream of large and
inhabited places, especially cities, is generally considered a positive sign
in the Arabic oneirocritical tradition, whereas to dream of places in ruins and
of villages is usually negative. Geert van Gelder remarks that ‘in the case of
the town in general the oneirocritics seem to agree: it stands, first of all,
for protection and safety. Very often this notion is accompanied by others such
as civilization, learning and authority; or those who possess these things:
scholars and rulers.’72 Again, there is this link between places and
persons: dreaming of entering a ruined city may point to a dearth of ‘ulamâ’
or the death or injustice of the ruler, while a thriving city is one with many scholars.73
In his relatively long entry on the city (madîna), Nabulusi also lists
the meaning of visions of particular cities and regions, not all of them
appearing in earlier oneirocritics’ lists.74 A number augur well:
for example, to dream of being in Nabulusi’s home town of Damascus is a sign
that God will bestow His blessing and grace on the dreamer.75
However, a few are more ambiguous or even negative. In some cases deduction by
false etymology may provide an explanation for an interpretation, but in other
cases Nabulusi may simply be expressing popular views or his own feelings about
particular places. When he writes that one who dreams of Mount Hermon, the
Jordan and Lake Tiberias can expect to travel or perhaps to be humiliated, he
may be giving voice to contemporary fears because these areas of southern Syria
and northern Palestine were wild and quite dangerous for travellers in his day.76
Obvious religious hostility is apparent in interpreting a dream of Christian
Europe as indicating blindness of heart and pleasure-seeking.77
Dislike of Shi¿ism, perhaps mixed with racial prejudice, seems to be present in
the pronouncement that to dream of being in Persia indicates slander and
insolence.78 The tensions in Damascus between the local Sunni
population and Persian pilgrims joining the hajj caravan have already
been noted.79
The expectation might then be that dreams of the
Holy Cities of Arabia are likely to be propitious. Nabulusi devotes a separate
short entry to Medina and interprets the image entirely in positive terms as a
sign of the dreamer repenting and being forgiven, obtaining mercy, being freed
from care and enjoying a good life.80 However, a dream of Mecca
yields a greater variety of interpretations. While they are generally
beneficial to the dreamer, they are not always indicative of a good spiritual
state. This is because the interpretation may also depend on the dreamer’s
character. A vision of Mecca in ruins may be a sign of guilt, showing the
dreamer’s neglect of prayer.81 Despite the connection of the city
with the hajj, dreaming of Mecca is read only as a sign that the dreamer
will become a pilgrim, if he actually sees that he is on the road to Mecca. The
oneirocritic can predict quite different outcomes by making links between Mecca
and various events in the formative period of Islamic history, and he sometimes
employs allegory to extend the reading to secular matters. Thus, if the dreamer
is a slave, the vision may mean that he will be freed ‘because God - may He be
exalted - will release him from his oppressors’; the interpreter here finds a
connection between Mecca and the oppression of the Prophet’s followers,
including slaves, before the emigration to Medina, and also
associates the Holy City and liberation with the coming of Islam. In addition,
there may be other non-religious connotations of seeing Mecca in the dream,
such as gaining a high position from the sultan, God standing in the place of
the ruler and his house in the place of the palace.
Dreams of prophets
and caliphs, of scorpions and spiders
A rich variety of dream symbols do in fact
indicate people, while dreams of people may indicate themselves or something
entirely different. They are often subjected to allegorical interpretation so
that a dream of a teacher actually represents a sultan, while a teacher of
young boys may stand for a prince or even a hunter and seller of sparrows.82
Dreams of persons by occupation are common in Islamic dream manuals and Nabulusi
follows the line of his predecessors in his discussion of them, including the
dream interpreter, whose image is understood as a sign connected with solving
problems and acquiring knowledge.83 There are also dreams of people
that are viewed as relating to the dreamer’s own material or moral condition. Nabulusi
remarks that, when someone dreams of a person he does not know in a state of
wakefulness, this can be God’s way of giving the dreamer an insight into
himself and informing him as to whether his actions are good or bad.84
The dream in this case serves as a means of ethical guidance.
In analysing dreams of
particular prophets and caliphs, the oneirocritic is concerned to identify
their special qualities and relate these and their life events to the dreamer’s
life and character. With regard to the early caliphs, the interpretation
has a conventional Sunni slant. Caliphs Abu Bakr and ¿Umar are held up as ideal
models, dreams of them being largely positive signs and evidence of a good
spiritual state; the image of Abu Bakr is understood as a sign of following the
truth, while that of ¿Umar is taken to mean success and achievement in the
world combined with service to religion and an ascetic lifestyle.86
The visions of Caliphs ¿Uthman and ¿All may also have a beneficent aspect, the
symbol of ¿Uthman indicating a devotion to learning and total forsaking of this
world, and a dream of ¿All pointing to similar qualities in the dreamer and
possible victory over enemies.87 However, they can also be a
reminder of corruption and strife entering the Islamic community. With reference
to ¿Uthman, the following note of caution is sounded:
Similarly, the vision of ¿All
could also be an ill omen, especially if it involved a metamorphosis:
People may also be
represented in the Tcffír and earlier dreambooks by a wide array of
other creatures. Animals, birds and insects may be symbols of a person of a
certain social standing, religion, ethnic origin, occupation or character.
Sometimes the same symbol may stand for very different categories of people:
for example, a bull or ox (thawr) may be a tribal leader or a workman,
whlle a donkey may be a slave, a boy or a wife.90 The interpreter is
looking for characteristics that his community will perceive as shared between
the creature and the person symbolised. It is not difficult to see such
SUFI VISIONARY OF OTTOMAN
DAMASCUS connections being made between a scorpion and a slanderer or enemy who
is a relative, nor does it take much imagination to trace the link between a
spider and a weaver, or even ‘an accursed woman who flees from her husband’s
bed!’91 But the view that ‘almost anything can mean nearly
everything’ appears to be confirmed by Nabulusi’s statement that ‘if he (the
dreamer) sees the spider faliing from the roof, it is a sign of heavy rain’.92
Yet Nabulusi, from the evidence of his behaviour and other writings,
does not emerge as an obviously narrow-minded womanhater, racist, snob and
bigot. He maintains good relations with Christians in his homeland,
corresponding warmly in later life with the Patriarch of Antioch and enjoying
the company of monks at Bethlehem during his travels in Palestine.94
His tolerant attitude regarding the treatment of Jews and Christians is plain,
for example in his treatise on their religious status (1692) and as early as
the Fath (1674).95 When he expresses hostility, it is on
political rather than religious grounds, notably in criticisms of Serbian
Christians as a threat to the Ottoman Islamic state.96 As for racial
prejudices, Nabulusi is obviously proud to be Arab, but, where he displays
anger towards any other race, it is usually towards certain Turks associated
with the anti-Sufi Kadizadelis. It is not towards Turks in general, a number
being included among his disciples and friends.97 Moreover,
class-conscious snobbery is deplorable in his eyes, shown in his high esteem of
the poor ecstatics and concern with a pure spiritual state rather than worldly
social status. Finally, there seems no strong reason to accuse ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi
of misogyny, even if it were to be admitted that he spent more time in the
company of like-minded men than of women and was probably content with this
arrangement. It would hardly be unusual in the Damascene society of his day,
however enemies might interpret it. The sources are naturally reticent, but Nabulusi’s
high regard for his mother is acknowledged, as well as his loving fatherly
relationship with his daughters. The one event that could have affected his
outlook at the time of
writing the Tcffír was his divorce from his first wife in the year of its
completion.
However, it remains unlikely that Nabulusi seriously
adopted a number of the views inherited by him from a thoroughly conservative
tradition. More probably he feels obligated to pass on, without personal
judgements, a body of oneirocritical knowledge accumulated over the centuries.
The Perfuming of Humankind is a remarkable, and still popular,
guidebook to the interpretation of dreams, but in it the individual self of ¿Abd
al-Ghani al-Nabulusi has been suppressed to the point of virtual annihilation.
Shortly before his
emergence from the long retreat in his house, ¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi wrote a
letter to a friend in Istanbul. He told him that he had now decided to abandon
exoteric learning and devote himself entirely to the pursuit of esoteric
knowledge.1 This might not be obvious from all of his subsequent writings.
Bakri Aladdin has observed that some 25 works composed in the seven years
following the end of his retreat show continuity with his previous production
rather than a dramatic change.2 It is, however, quite understandable
that a man of Nabulusi’s scholarly standing, in his late forties, cannot simply
shake off years of scholarly practice, however enthusiastic his resolve to
listen to the voice of the unseen world. Consequently, his scholarship
continues to underpin his writing and does not allow him to focus solely on
mystical insights. Nevertheless, the letter serves as a declaration of the
increasing value he places on mystical approaches to knowledge as against
exoteric study; it need not be taken too literally as a matter of intent.
At this point Nabulusi was
prepared to re-enter the world without the prop of a confined, secluded space
to isolate him from distractions and help him to concentrate on Divine
realities. When, in 1687, he resumed a public life, he advanced to a new level
of spirituality in which he sought to put into effect the eighth Naqshabandi principle,
aiming to achieve ‘solitude in a crowd’ (khalwat dar anjuman). From this
time onwards he would hope to be constantly mindful of the seeker’s spiritual
journey and remember that, ‘though outwardly it is in the world, inwardly it is
with God’.3 This period would demand of him even greater self-discipline
and devotion to maintain a God-conscious state in the face of exposure to the
veneration of disciples and believers in his saintly powers, as well as the
open attacks of his enemies.
Between 1687 and 1689 Nabulusi continued this
more open lifestyle in Damascus, teaching and leading others on the path to
God. Then, in the late summer of 1689, he embarked on the first of a series of
journeys that he undertook intermittently over a period of about 11 years,
ending in 1700. All these journeys involved travel within his Syrian homeland,
but also, on his longest journey, in Egypt and the Hijaz to the Holy Cities of
Arabia. This chapter examines Nabulusi’s life and work during this period,
while Chapter 6 explores some Sufi elements of interest in the accounts
that he left of his travels, contained in four rihlas.
It is tempting to detect a certain numerological
significance in the pattern of Nabulusi’s life, at least from around the age of
40 years. From this point, critical mundane and spiritual events appear to be
connected in seven-year periods into relative old age, although this is only
approximate and there may be a slight overlap at times between the periods. A
pattern seems to emerge more clearly when viewed in terms of the Islamic
calendar years. The apparent first cycle begins with the seven-year solitary
retreat from 1091 to 1098 AH. The second cycle may then run from the end of
retreat until Nabulusi’s departure from Damascus on 1 Muharram 1105 (2
September 1693), intending to perform the hajj. It marks the beginning
of a period of ‘solitude in a crowd’, in which Nabulusi expands his public role
and reaches an intellectual and spiritual pinnacle with his composition of Kitab
al-wujud al- haqq (The Book of Real Existence), his mature exposition of wahdat
al-wujud, countering the critics of Ibn ¿Arabi; he completed the work a few
months before embarking on pilgrimage. A third cycle may be perceived as
beginning with the longest journey and running until 1112 AH, when Nabulusi undertook
his last journey in September-October 1700. He then returned to his house near
the Umayyad Mosque for a further seven-year period until, facing another time
of crisis, he retired in 1119 AH (1707) to iive in the vicinity of his beloved
spiritual father, Ibn ¿Arabi, in the Damascene quarter of Salihiyya.
There does not seem to be
any evidence of Nabulusi actually viewing his own life in this way, although it
does appear to fall quite naturally into such divisions. However, it also does
not seem fortuitous that he confined himself to his house for seven years,
given the mystical importance of the number seven.4 Indeed, this
looks quite as deliberate a choice of timing as the decision to begin retreat
on 27 Ramadan when nearing the age of 40 years. Added to Nabulusi’s interest in
cryptic number and letter symbolism, it would not be
SUFI VISIONARY OF OTTOMAN
DAMASCUS strange if he tried to read special significance into the timing of
other occurrences in his life, or to see himself as guided by God to undertake
activities at the most propitious times.
It is notable that Nabulusi’s return to public
life occurs shortly before the beginning of a new Islamic century in 1100 AH (26
October 1688-14 October 1689). At such a time expectations of a renewer of the
faith, a mujaddid, would naturally run high, as people looked for the
one who would bring back the straying community to a true implementation of
God’s will as contained in the Qur’an and Sunna. Nabulusi’s comments on
the corruption of Muslim society in Damascus in the last years of the century,
his retreat and intensifying study of the Qur’an and Hadith all look
like activities of preparation for the role of renewal (tajdid).5
As a Naqshabandi shaykh, he also has the example of Ahmad Sirhindi as a
recognised famous mujaddid of the preceding century, whom he respects,
though not adhering to the Mujaddidi branch of the order himself. While Nabulusi
is a conservative and, in the eyes of some, a reactionary who is out of tune
with the spirit of neo-Sufi reform, he does believe in his role to renew a
corrupted faith.6 His dreams near the end of his life, notably one
of his rebuilding the Ka¿ba, confirm his ultimate conviction of success in this
task.7 Among contemporary scholars, Bakri Aladdin notes that Nabulusi
‘mérite d’être qualifié de mugaddid1 for his role in
defending and spreading Ibn ¿Arabi’s doctrine.8
The pure gold of a
Lebanese journey
Before dawn on 15 Dhu
’l-Qa¿da 1100 AH (at the end of August 1689), Nabulusi set out on a 15-day
journey that would take him through the villages of the Anti-Lebanon mountains,
across the plain of the Biqa¿ to the town of Ba¿labakk. His return was by a
circuitous route with a detour via holy sites in Mount Lebanon. He was
accompanied by a party of friends and disciples, including his major disciple
Muhammad al-Dikdikji (d. 1718), who also acted as a scribe for him and attended
him on all his travels.9 The avowed aim of the journey was to visit
the shrines of prophets and saints, seeking spiritual reward, and also to visit
friends among the ‘ulamâ’ of Ba¿labakk and meet with fellow Sufis along
the way. But his travels began in Damascus with pilgrimages to the holy dead with
whom he was most closely associated: the shrine of John the Baptist at the
Umayyad Mosque, site of his teaching; the tomb of his spiritual father Ibn ¿Arabi
in Salihiyya; and the tombs of Shaykhs Yusuf
al-Qamînî and Mahmud,
linked with the miraculous events of his birth and recognition as a future
saint.
NabulusI recorded this journey in a short rihla,
which he entitled Hullat al-dhahab al-ibrizfi rihlat Baclabakk wa
’l-Biqac al-cazlz (The Dress of Pure Gold on the Journey
to Baclabakk and the Noble Biqac).w The
first part of the title may be explained by Nabulusl’s comparison of the Biqa¿ Valley
to pure gold and its water to silver.11 NabulusI imagines the plain
to be clothed in a golden dress, not only because of its natural beauty, but
also because the land is blessed by God with the spiritual power (baraka)
emanating from and persisting in its holy persons, both living and dead. NabulusI
inherited the full range of medieval Muslim beliefs in the extraordinary force
of baraka that could be transmitted from its possessors to other persons
and objects through the correct performance of ritual devotions.12
He could acquire baraka from its living bearers by direct physical
encounters and dream encounters with them, and from the dead through contact
with persons or objects connected to them. At their tombs the blessing could be
gained by touching, kissing, rubbing against, circumambulating and sleeping at
the grave, taking away earth and a variety of practices specific to particular
holy sites. On this journey NabulusI sought for baraka in some wild and
isolated places and belies the notion that this spiritual force was essentially
contained in the Islamic city. While cities might comprise the larger share of
sacred spaces and persons, they did not have a monopoly of either. NabulusI was
hardly a pioneer in his quest for the sacred in a rural setting, but was
following a well-worn tradition.13
taught this necessary care by the example of some worthy English
gentlemen of our factory, who visiting this place in the year 1689, in their
return from Jerusalem, and suspecting no mischief, were basely intrigu’d by the
people there, and
forced to redeem their lives at a great sum of money.15
Nabulusi declares his purpose on entering Ba¿labakk
to be ‘the completion of pilgrimage to its well-known shrines’.16
However, he actually devotes most of his time and attention to a tour and
description of ‘the remarkable fortress of Ba¿labakk’, that is the great Roman
temple complex.17 He was fascinated by ‘these monuments of the
ancients’,18 making detailed notes of the current state of the
temples of Bacchus and Jupiter, although with no idea whatsoever of the
original function of the buildings or the identity of their builders.19
Nabulusi readily accepted local folk beliefs as explanation for the great
architectural works of past civilisations. He remarked:
Like other Muslim
scholars of his age, Nabulusi did not have much real interest in acquiring
knowledge of non-Islamic cultures and tried to fit the pre-Islamic past into a
traditional Islamic world-view. In this respect he presents a marked contrast
with European Christian visitors to Ba¿labakk in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, given their clear interest in pre-Christian Classical
culture.
After a brief two-day stay, Nabulusi departed
from Ba¿labakk and took a further week to arrive back safely at Damascus via
his scenic and shrine-strewn route. During his short period of absence from
home, his second wife, ¿Alma, had given birth to his second son, Muhammad Mas¿ud.
He had learnt of the birth in a letter from his brother Yusuf, received on the
eighth day of the journey, when he was on his way back and making a pilgrimage
visit to a reputed grave of Prophet Ilyas (also identified with the Jewish
Prophet Elijah and his Islamic counterpart al-Khadir).21 Ilyas/Elijah/al-Khadir
was the most widely venerated of holy figures in geographical Syria, with
numerous shrines.22 Nabulusi was overjoyed at the news and composed
a poem in praise of the Prophet and expressing his happiness with his new son.23
He included a chronogram in the poem, concealing his son’s birth date in an
elaborate wordplay. He decided to give his son the second name of Mas¿ud after
one of his relatives, whom he describes as ‘one of the righteous’ and who came
to join him at this point. But, however happy he was to see his baby son on his
return to Damascus, Nabulusi was not long distracted from
recording his travel experience. About a month later, on 21 October 1689, he
completed work on Hullat al-dhahab.24
Travels in a wild
and sacred land
The difficulties began almost immediately, as, on
the second night of the journey, Nabulusi and his companions spent a restless
and uncomfortable night in a khan at the village of Sa¿sa¿. He
complained of the fleas, comparing their assault to that of wolves leaping on
the Bedouins’ sheep and remarked that the fleas enjoyed a better meal than they
did.27 He was also miserable with cold, as they made their way
through the Golan to Qunaytra, seeing the high peak of Mount Hermon (Jabal
al-Shaykh) covered in snow.28 The route offered little comfortable
shelter before the town of Nablus. On occasion he recorded sleeping ‘under the
blue sky of our tent’.29 Although impressed by the natural beauty of the
scenery, he was also aware of the dangers of travel in the northern Palestinian
countryside. On reaching ¿Uyun al-Tujjar on the sixth day of his journey, he
remarked: ‘We heard news that the shaykh of that village had been killed
because he had many enemies and few supporters.’30 He witnessed the
further effects of this insecurity: ‘When we passed by, the door of the mosque
was locked due to the feuding that had taken place there.’31 The
mosque had been looted. Nabulusi himself, surrounded by a party of about 20
riders, was still not exempt from attacks. Near to Jinin he was warned by an
ecstatic of a plot to kidnap him and his companions and seize their horses.
However, the man behind the plot had reckoned without the power of the saint
because, according to Nabulusi, the robber was punished when that night his
horse fell in a pit; no-one could pull it out and it was left to die.32
From Nabulusi’s perspective, this was no simple accident or counter-attack by
his companions or people from the village. It was a miraculous punishment for
one who had attempted to harm a ‘friend of God’. He was evidently happy to
arrive at Nablus on the tenth day and be received in friendship by the local ‘ulama’
and notables of the town. He stayed there for three days before travelling on
the safer stretch of his route to Jerusalem.
Despite the wildness of rural Palestine, Nabulusi
was in no doubt that the whole land was sacred and, especially in the most
isolated and inhospitable places, he encountered holy ecstatics.33
The land was also blessed in his eyes by the great number of its holy dead and
hardly a day passed without his visiting the tomb of a saint, prophet or figure
from the ancient sacred history of the region or the early days of Islamic
conquest. He was naturally very conscious of the special holy status of
Jerusalem, the main object of his journey and the place where he spent the
longest time. He stayed at the Sultaniyya Madrasa in the city, built by the
Mamluk Sultan al- Ashraf Qa’it Bay (r. 1468-96) near the Gate of the Chain in
the western wall of the Haram. Nabulusi spent most of his time in religious
and literary discussions with the ‘ulamÀ and praying at the numerous
famous pilgrimage sites in and around the city.34 He occupied
himself in making detailed notes of the holy places so that the resulting rihla,
the Hadra, became best known for its store of information on these
sites, particularly at the Haram al-Sharif, the Mount of Olives and the
principal Muslim cemeteries.35 It included some places of pilgrimage
visited by both Muslims and Christians, such as the footprint of Jesus at the
Place of Ascension and the reputed tomb of Mary at Gethsemane. From Jerusalem,
Nabulusi and his party also made a day’s excursion to see
the tombs of the Prophets Abraham, Isaac and Jacob at Hebron, sites venerated
in common with Jews and Christians.36
In his visits to the holy places of Jerusalem and
Palestine, Nabulusi was following an itinerary that had undergone a long
process of extension since the early eighth century when Muslim pilgrimage to
the sacred Palestinian land and its holiest city burgeoned. During this early
period the pilgrims’ focus was largely on the Haram al-Sharif and a few nearby
sites.37 While belief in the sanctity of Jerusalem received official
encouragement from the Umayyad state, some of the most enthusiastic promoters
of the ‘virtues of Jerusalem’ (fadâ’il al- quds) were the aseetics of
the period.38 The city became a popular goal of mystics, who came as
pilgrims and sometimes chose to reside there.39 Ibn ¿Arabi provides
a prime example of such a mystical pilgrim. In 1202 he travelled from Egypt to
Palestine before continuing from there for the hajj; he first meditated
at Abraham’s tomb at Hebron, then spent time in Jerusalem, praying in the Aqsa Mosque.
After a stay in Mecca, he returned to Jerusalem with sporadic residence in the
city between 1204 and 1206. Claude Addas asks why Ibn ¿Arabi chose to make a
detour via Palestine instead of proceeding for hajj directly from Cairo
to the Hijaz. She concludes that his motivation was primarily spiritual.40
Nabulusi will inevitably have been conscious of the example set by his spiritual
father. It was not unusual for pilgrims to do like Ibn ¿Arabi, sanctifying
themselves first at Jerusalem before continuing to Mecca or visiting it on
their return from hajj. In 1690 Jerusalem was a sufficient goal for Nabulusi,
but, on his second visit there in 1693, it would also be en route for
Mecca.
For the next three and a
half years ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi was resident in Damascus, from the late
spring of 1690 until the late summer of 1693. However, he was all too conscious
of events in the wider world threatening the security of the Ottoman state and
was particularly concerned at the instability of its territories in eastern
Europe. Nabulusi was a loyal subject of the sultan, despite his hostility
towards certain anti-Sufi Turks. In 1691 he wrote to the Grand Vizier Mustafa Koprülü,
expressing his anxieties and asking him to follow a stricter policy towards the
Christians of Serbia. He counselled Koprülü that he would ‘find victory only
through this religion’, i.e. Islam.41 The vizier had managed to
recapture Belgrade, but, whether or not he listened toNabulusi’s
advice, was less fortunate when he took tough action in Hungary. He was killed
on 19 August 1691 at the battle of Szalankemen near Carlowitz.
Nabulusi’s
anger with eastern European Christians was not reflected in his dealings with
Christians generally or his personal views. As early as 1674, when composing
the Fath, his liberal attitude towards both Christians and Jews was
already in evidence.42 In a short treatise written in 1692 in
response to a Turkish critic, Nabulusi appears once again remarkably liberal
and tolerant of People of the Book.43 His polemical intention is
shown in the title of the work: Kitâb al-qawl al-sadîd fî jawaz khulf al-wacîd
wa ’l-radd calâ ’l-Rümi ’l-jahil al-canîd [The pertinent
discourse concerning the possibility that God will not carry out his threats
(to punish the infidels with Hell fire) against the ignorant and stubborn
Turk].44 Nabulusi was incensed by this Turk’s accusations of
unbelief against both himself and Ibn ¿Arabi on the basis of Nabulusi’s
comments on a passage of the Futühat. ¿Abd al-Ghani launched his own
forceful attack on his accuser as ‘a man of the boors of the deserts and the
unlucky ones of the steppe, who is keen on charging the Arab and the son of the
Arab with unbelief’.45 The Arab is, of course, himself and the ‘son
of the Arab’ Ibn ¿Arabi. While Nabulusi is proud to be Arab, his argument here
supporting Arab superiority should probably be read in the context of his
venting his wrath against his Turkish opponent rather than as a considered,
coldblooded statement of his convictions. Michael Winter, who originally drew
attention to the treatise, describes it as ‘an attack against an anonymous
Turk’,46 but Barbara von Schlegell has identified the offender as Mahmud
b. Shaykh ¿Ali.47 Apparently this critic of Ibn ¿Arabi and his
school had managed to infiltrate Nabulusi’s private lessons, craftily posing as
an admirer of the Great Shaykh. ¿Abd al- Ghani must have been disturbed by the
seriousness of the charge of infidelity and, therefore, felt the need for a
firm rebuttal for his own sake as well as on behalf of his master.
The main topic under
dispute concerned whether and how the Jews and Christians gained happiness (sacada)
lay paying the polltax (jizya). Ibn ¿Arabi had asserted that they did
and Nabulusi supported his opinion. The Turkish critic understood happiness as
referring to happiness only in the afterlife and declared that this opinion was
in conflict with God’s threat to punish unbelievers in Hell.48 Nabulusi
argued that the Turk was ignorant of the nuances of the word for ‘happiness’, sacada,
which should be understood to refer to happiness also in this earthly life and
not exclusively after death in the blissful state in heaven.49
He interpreted Ibn ¿Arabi as saying that the Jews and Christians enjoy
happiness on earth because they enjoy the protection of the Islamic state in
return for their payment of jizya, as is their legal right.50
Had Nabulusi stopped there and confined his defence to an argument for earthly,
not heavenly, happiness for the People of the Book, his position would hardly
have been problematic. However, he did further believe that Jews and Christians
might experience this happiness in heaven as well as on earth:
In making such claims, Nabulusi was putting
himself in the front line of a dangerous controversy. He courted even more
potential criticism by introducing the element of race into the debate. With
reference to God’s threat to punish unbelievers, he accepted the established
view that God is not to be judged by human standards of justice and that He is
not bound to punish anyone; Nabulusi considered the Turk guilty of adhering to
a Mu¿tazilite position in assuming that God must carry out his threat.52
But then he went on to present his belief that God will act in accordance with
Arab (not Turkish!) ideals of honour. The honourable Arab wlll lee considered
generous if he abstains from fulfilling a threat and, as God represents perfect
generosity, it is inconceivable that He would act any less generously. By the
same token, Nabulusi expected that God would keep His promise to reward the
believers, since Arabs would consider it reprehensible to break a promise to do
good.53 Nabulusi’s vision in this treatise is of God as primarily
very merciful and forgiving, magnanimous to enemies and trustworthy to friends,
the perfection of all virtues esteemed by the Arabs. There is an ethical
problem here in Nabulusi’s seeking to impose Arab standards of behaviour on
God. There is also a logical inconsistency in his argument, since he has
already insisted that ‘human criteria do not apply to God. He may kill people
and destroy cultivated fields and cattle and this would not be called
injustice.’54 Essentially,
Nabulusi finds it just as
difficult as his Turkish opponent to adhere strictly to Sunni doctrine and
accept God’s absolute power to act without any kind of requirement to meet
human expectations of justice. For the Turk, God has to punish, while for Nabulusi,
he has to be generous because Arabs are generous.
On 21 March 1693 Nabulusi completed al-Wujud
al-Haqq, described by its editor and commentator, Bakri Aladdin, as
‘l’oeuvre fondamentale d’al-Nabulusi traitant de la doctrine de la wahdat
al- wugûd,.ss However, while it contains metaphysical
reflections on the subject, intended for a more advanced readership than the Fath
of 20 years earlier, Aladdin observes that it is much less well structured.56
The 47 chapters range from one page to 30 pages, with numerous repetitions and
apparent late additions to the text. Nabulusi devoted a large part of the work
to the doctrine of Ibn ¿Arabi and his school regarding oneness of being with
extensive citation of mystical authors. But he was also anxious not just to
inform, but to defend, the Great Shaykh and to rebut the attacks of hostile
theologians. Although some of the arguments against Ibn ¿Arabi originated with
the great Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), he was not the main object of
Nabulusi’s ire and Aladdin has reflected that subsequent theological attacks
were ‘plus menaçants’ for Ibn ¿Arabi’s doctrine.57 There is also the
possibility that Nabulusi’s friendship with Hanbali scholars of Damascus made
him less disposed to target their esteemed master. The need to avoid alienating
allies could be an important factor in selecting works that might safely be criticised.
Among Ibn ¿Arabi’s
opponents, Nabulusi chose Sa¿d al-din al- Taftazani (d. 1390) as the principal
author whose writings were to be refuted, dedicating his longest chapter (32
pages) to critiquing Taftazani’s ontology.58 Taftazani had spent
some time in Damascus and engaged in the polemical debates taking place in the
city, a century after the Great Shaykh’s death. However, he was primarily
associated with the eastern Islamic lands, relying on the patronage of the
Chaghatayid Mongol rulers in central Asia and subsequently active in Samarqand
at the court of the great military conqueror Timur (d. 1405). In addition to
having a fiercesome reputation as a warlord, Timur also took an interest in
promoting learning and stimulating theological debate. While Taftazani was
distinguished as a theologian with philosophical tendencies, Alexander Knysh
has remarked on
his superficiality in attacking Ibn ¿Arabi’s ‘polemical image, which had been
molded by several generations of Muslim controversialists’, rather than making
his critique as a result of detailed study of the master’s writings.59
Even when he was supposedly seeking ‘to refute the Fusüs, a close
textual analysis of this work shows that textual evidence plays a relatively
minor role in his polemic’.60 He borrowed from his teacher, ‘Adud
al-din al-’Iji (d. 1355), the allegation that Ibn ¿Arabi fantasised under the
influence of hashish and was thus deluded into believing that he composed the Fusüs
on the orders of the Prophet. From previous critics, including Ibn Taymiyya,
Taftazani took key points, such as the claim that Ibn ¿Arabi and his school
considered even the most despicable things in this world to be God and supposed
their own subjective mystical experience of unity with the Divine to be ‘a
mirror reflection of the actual state of affairs in the empirical universe’.61
In launching his counter-attack on Taftazani, Nabulusi
chose passages for critical analysis from the author’s major theological work, Sharh
al-maqasid (The Commentary on Meanings).61 However, he also made
reference to another polemical work, Fadihat al-mulhidin wa nasihat
al-muwahhidln (The Humiliation of the Heretics and Admonition of the
Unitarians) written by one of Taftazani’s students, ¿Ala¿ al-din al-Bukhari
(d. 1437).63 This Bukhari grew up in Bukhara and later travelled
extensively to India, Arabia, Egypt and Syria. After involving himself in
debates in Cairo between supporters and opponents of Ibn ¿Arabi, he moved to
Damascus where he composed the Fadtha and also proceeded to attack Ibn
Taymiyya, to the anger of the city’s Hanbalis. The Fadtha was sometimes
attributed erroneously to Taftazani and Nabulusi did not identify it as the
work of his student, either because he was unaware of the true authorship or
chose to aim his criticisms at the master, on whom Bukhari was heavily
dependent.64 In any case, he could hope to gain some popular
sympathy for his cause in Damascus by focusing the attack on authors without a
strong following in the city.
About two or three months after Nabulusi’s
completion of work on al-Wujüd al-Haqq, in June 1693, a plague struck
Damascus. It claimed as one of its victims ¿Abd al-Ghani’s elderly mother,
Zaynab. On the occasion of visiting her grave, he recalled the events
surrounding her death:
Nabkî from the
village of Nabk, came that day alone and on foot from Nabk and entered our
house.65 He was dishevelled and
dusty, one of those enraptured with God (muwallahun), and the signs of
righteousness were evident in him. We were busy washing our mother and
preparing her for burial. He told us that a voice had said to him, ‘Go to
Damascus and bring baraka to this great funeral.’ This was when the
plague that was ravaging Damascus was setting its seal on her. He knew nothing
of that, but his ecstatic state drove him to us. Then he learned about her
death. Before that he had been slightly hesitant about coming to Damascus. He
passed that day in our company. We carried her to the Umayyad Mosque and prayed
for her there. Afterwards the man accompanied us until we buried her in the
mausoleum of Bab al-Saghir in her grave. Then when we had finished the burial,
he stood, invoked God’s blessings on us and gave us righteous counsel. Then he
travelled the same day to the village of Nabk and the plague was lifted after
that, praise be to God, just as that man had told us.66
¿Abd al-Ghani’s
high regard for his mother is evident in his preparations for what was to be a
‘great’ funeral, with prayers at the Umayyad Mosque and burial in an honoured
position in the Bab al- Saghir cemetery near to the first Umayyad Caliph Mu¿awiya
and to Shaykh Nasr al-Maqdisi (d. 1096), a Shafi¿i jurist noted for ‘his pious
devotion, true asceticism, piety, learning and good works’.67 Zaynab was also marked out as a holy woman in the eyes of her son,
since she attracted divine intervention to lift the plague and bring blessing
to the city of Damascus, when the enraptured Shaykh ¿Ali was ‘sent’ by God’s
inspiration to her funeral.
Two months
after his mother’s death Nabulusi left Damascus on what was to be the longest
journey of his life. It was the beginning of a new Islamic year on 1 Muharram
1105 (2 September 1693) and may, as noted earlier, mark the beginning of a new
cycle in which he attained the apogee of his time of ‘solitude in a crowd’. He
was to be away from home for a total of 388 days, traversing much of the
countryside and remote areas of his native Syria, as well as its principal
towns, before proceeding from Gaza into Egypt and on to the Hijaz and its holy cities. He wrote on the
experience in his fullest rihla, which he entitled al-Haqîqa wa
’l-majaz fîrihlat bilad al-sham wa misr wa ’l-hijaz (Reality and Metaphor in
the Journey through Syria, Egypt and the Hijaz)6 The title bears witness
to Nabulusl’s preoccupation with the spiritual quest as he contrasts God’s
Reality, al-Haqîqa, with the existence of the physical world through
which he travels and whose beauty can only be a metaphor for the Divine Beauty.69 For NabulusI,
his only real travelling companion was God and it was only He whom he
encountered in all his meetings with the righteous on the way.
Why did NabulusI choose
this time for his departure from Damascus? The long journey may have been a
welcome escape from troubles at home owing to his confrontation of critics and
the death of his mother. He had completed the 40-day period of mourning and,
with the end of summer, the weather would have become more tolerable for
travelling. However, he did not mention any such considerations, but stressed
the religious motivation appropriate to his saintly status. He recalled that a
Sufi friend had visited his house and shown him some lines of verse that had
inspired the custodian of the tomb of ¿Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha¿ranI (d. 1565), the
distinguished Egyptian mystic, to embark on the hajj.70 He took this
as a sign that it was his destiny to undertake the pilgrimage. Had this been
his only aim in making his journey, the timing of his decision would not have
been ideal. The hajj of 1104 had just passed and NabulusI would have had
to wait many months before the departure of the main hajj caravan of
1105. However, as always on his journeys, he was determined to visit as many
holy persons as possible, whether living or dead.
Having almost a year to travel from Damascus to
Mecca, instead of following the hajj route southwards, NabulusI and his
party travelled north on the road to Hims and Hama. Passing through both Muslim
and Christian villages of the Anti-Lebanon, he appears to have found no welcome
among the Christians of central Syria. He expressed his relief on leaving the
village of Ma¿arra and its monastery of Sldnaya, declaring, with his typical
love of wordplay, on his arrival at the Muslim village of al- Muhibiyya, that
he had exchanged ‘disgrace’ (macarra) for ‘gifts’ (mawÁhib).71 In the Syriac-speaking village of Ma¿lula he
visited the cave of Mar Taqla, a site visited by both Christians and Muslims
for its curative waters.72 The cave was associated with Thecla, a woman
saint who was said to have lived for 30 years there, healing the sick in a
miraculous way. However, NabulusI seems to have been
characteristically unaware of such Christian legend and commented only on the
water’s benefits in ridding babies of wind. Further along the way to Hims he
received a very unfavourable reception at Qara, originally a Christian village
but with a mixed Muslim and Christian population in Nabulusl’s day, where he
complained of the miserliness of the inhabitants and even found it hard to buy
food. He remarked with sarcasm that ‘the doors of its houses are very small,
smaller than the windows lest a guest enter by them’.73 Nevertheless, he will have been well aware that
low doors were quite common as a security measure to prevent forced entry in
lawless areas of seventeenthcentury Syria and Palestine. When he moved up
beyond Hims on the road to Hama, he wrote of the dangers on account of Beduin
attacks on travellers; but he survived encounters with Beduin unscathed and
they appeared somewhat fearful of his party rather than vice versa.
By contrast with the problems NabulusI experienced
in the central Syrian countryside, he met with a warm reception in the towns of
Hims and Hama, attending gatherings of ‘ulama’ and Sufis and visiting
many holy tombs. The visitation of tombs was a normal part of his daily routine
in both town and country, as it was on his other journeys, and he would seek
out the baraka of the holy dead in the most inaccessible places,
although even his adventurous spirit had its limits. For example, he recalled
how he was told of an alleged tomb of the Prophet Seth, son of Noah (Shayth b.
Nuh) at the summit of a high mountain near the castle of Qadmus. He had heard
of miraculous cures of the sick at the shrine and that ‘a lion goes there once
a year and visits it’.74 In this NusayrI (¿Alawl) aeea this curious story
may be a way of suggesting an indirect authentication of the site by ¿All b. Abl
Talib, the ‘lion of God’. NabulusI recited the Fâtiha from a distance,
but did not take the trouble to climb the mountain. He remained unconvinced
that this was the true burial place of the Prophet, referring to a better-known
tomb near Ba¿labakk that he had visited four years earlier.75 On that occasion he had noted doubts about the
authenticity of some prophets’ graves, the one certain grave being that of
Prophet Muhammad at Medina. Yet what mattered was the sincere intention of the
pilgrim in the case of a disputed location of a tomb.76
Very few travellers took
the route followed by NabulusI and his company from Hama through the NusayrI mountainous
region to the coast. The famous Moroccan globetrotter Ibn Battuta had described
the castles of Masyaf, Qadmus and Marqab in 1355, but such descriptions were
rare. Nabulusi found the castles and the villages they sheltered mostly in
ruins. He identified the inhabitants mistakenly as ‘Ismahlls, people of heresy
and error’.77 The brief comment is in keeping with his usual
scorn for the Shi¿i sectarian minorities and a lack of interest in distinguishing
between them.
Proceeding towards the coast, Nabulusi’s company
arrived at the tobacco-growing area around Jabala, where he remarked on the
necessity of smoking because of the cold weather there.78 This seems to have been his first experiment with
the practice, although he had made previous contributions to debate about its
permissibility. During the time of his long retreat he had declared that he was
not a smoker, but defended the use of tobacco as allowable within the Sharfa.79
By the 1690s the intensity of opposition to smoking appears to have declined in
the Ottoman Empire after the harsh repression and executions of offenders,
including many Sufis, in the 1630s and 1660s. Apart from its tobacco, the other
main attraction of Jabala for Nabulusi was an alleged tomb of the famous, semilegendary
Ibrahim b. Adham (d. c. 790), claimed as one of the earliest Sufi
ascetics. Supposedly a prince of Balkh, formerly a centre of Buddhism in
Afghanistan, he was said to have renounced the princely life for one of
spiritual poverty, his life story mirroring that of the Buddha. It is not clear
how he had come to be linked to Syria, but pilgrimage to the unlikely burial
site had become popular in Mamluk times and Nabulusi noted Sufis of the Adhami brotherhood
tending to the shrine.80
From Jabala Nabulusi’s route took him southwards
down the coastal plain via Latakya. Here he was lavishly entertained by the
governor and found himself an honoured guest at a circumcision feast outside
the town.81 He continued via Tripoli, Beirut, Sidon and Tyre and so
into Palestine. As on his earlier journey in 1690, he undertook a potentially
dangerous excursion through the wilds of the northern Palestinian countryside
to Jerusalem. The few European travellers who ventured to the holy city by
that route recorded the lawlessness and risks of pillaging by Beduin. Aware of
these risks from personal experience of the way from Damascus to Nablus, ¿Abd
al-Ghani carried with him a written warning from the governor of Sidon to
respect him and his party or face severe punishment. While claiming that he
did not have problems himself, he hints that he was not well received by the
Christian population of Nazareth and also witnessed some cases of civil
disturbance in the villages on the way between Nazareth and Nablus.82
However, even in the most dangerous and desolate parts of the country, he once
SUFI VISIONARY OF OTTOMAN DAMASCUS again had
positive encounters with holy ecstatics and sought the baraka of the
holy dead.
As at the time of his
previous journey in Palestine, Nabulusi found travel from Nablus to Jerusalem
and its vicinity much safer than in the north of the country. He recorded the
same warm reception that he had enjoyed from the religious notables of Nablus
on his earlier visit there in 1690. He appeared glad to attend a dhikr of
the Shadhiliyya, although he had no formal association with the order and his
relationship with the Nabulsi Shadhilis seems more courteous and sociable than
spiritual in nature.83 His other contacts in the town included a
shaykh who claimed descent from the famous early ecstatic Abu Yazid al-Bistami (d.
c. 875) and the chief reciter for the Prophet’s mawlid, who asked
Nabulusi to compose his own mawlid poem for the occasion.84
In Jerusalem he stayed at
the Madrasa al-Qadiriyya in the southwest corner of the Haram, a building
dating from the fifteenth century. He passed much of the time in visits to the
main pilgrimage sites, described in more detail in the Hadra, gave
lectures on Hadith, held discussions with ‘ulamif, attended dhikr
with members of his own Qadiri tariqa and even composed a treatise on
the relative eminence of the prophets.85 At Friday prayer in the Aqsa
Mosque Nabulusi listened to a khutba delivered by his relative Muhammad
b. Jama¿a on the traditional topic of the importance of pilgrimage to the three
mosques of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. He followed this with a visit to the
graves of his Banu Jama¿a ancestors.86 However, perhaps the high
point of his stay in the city was the night of the Prophet’s birthday at al-Aqsa,
which he recalled with some enthusiasm:
imams of the mihrâbs
and minbars, men of high and low status, even women wearing anklets
gathered together in a corner of the mosque accompanied by small boys and
girls. [Sayyid ¿Abd al-Samad] began the noble mawlid surrounded by a
company of mu’adhdhins chanting with lovely voices. Then they
distributed among all those present a variety of sweets, candied nuts and fine
perfumes; and they brought rosewater and sticks of incense.87
On this second visit to Jerusalem, NabulusI made
the city his base from which to explore the surrounding country, with the
constant purpose of seeing the sacred places. In addition to Hebron, described
on his earlier journey, the tour included Jesus’ birthplace at Bethlehem, where
monks from the Franciscan monastery entertained NabulusI hospitably, playing
music on the urghul (a wind instrument with twin pipes), a sound that he
compared to the singing of blackbirds and nightingales.88 It is not
clear how many monks were living at the monastery at this time. Early in the
century the Scottish traveller William Lithgow had mentioned only six.89 NabulusI
was evidently happy to socialise with the Bethlehem monks and again later with
Armenian monks at Jaffa on his way from Jerusalem to Egypt, when he spoke of
attaining ‘the most perfect purity and joy’.90 It is notable that he
welcomed the company of those Christians who were well disposed towards him and
did not regard association with them as undermining his own spiritual state,
but freely admitted the ‘purity’ experienced in their presence.
When NabulusI finally
left Jerusalem, he set out southwards heading for Gaza. His route took him via
the town of Ramla, but included along the way visits to many holy tombs in the
villages and remote parts of the countryside. Gaza in the late seventeenth
century was one of the most prosperous places in Palestine, its governing
family having curbed Beduin raids and embarked on an ambitious programme of
construction of mosques and other religious build- ings.91 NabulusI was
received in the town by a number of its senior ‘ulam^, including the qâdi
and Hanafl muftî, and spent time in the usual religious and literary
discussions, pilgrimages to graves and meetings with local Sufis at their zawiyas
and at gatherings for dhikr. He also listened to many stories of
miracles connected with saints of the area and retold them for his readers, in
addition to some extraordinary accounts of visions, including camel caravans in
the sky and storm clouds turning into trees. Interpretations are not supplied.
However enjoyable his stay, NabulusI was unavoidably detained by the necessity of waiting for his son
Ismael to join him in Gaza. He describes Isma¿Il as a grown man, but an
inexperienced traveller, unused to mixing with people.92 He had
journeyed with the caravan from Damascus to Jerusalem, but found that his
father was no longer in the city and the qadi had to send his valet to
accompany him to Gaza. There is a hint of annoyance in NabulusI’s comments on
the ensuing delay. It also seems that he had planned to travel in an
independent group to the Holy Cities of the Hijaz by the post road from Gaza.
It was only after consulting a Beduin shaykh that he was persuaded it would be
easier for him to go to Egypt where the shaykh assured him that ‘the Egyptian amir
al-hajj has all the shaykhs of the Beduin with him and he will send you as
you wish’.93 Perhaps NabulusI had counted on his reputation for sanctity
to give him a greater measure of protection among the Beduin.
NabulusI passed
via the town of al-¿ArIsh through Sinai until he reached a point where he
learnt that Beduin were blocking the road and he was forced to wait for an
Egyptian military escort. For this part of the journey he joined a caravan
travelling from Damascus after soldiers managed to disperse the Beduin force.94
Outside Cairo he was met by Shaykh Zayn al-¿AbidIn al-BakrI, representative of
one of the most prominent and wealthy Sufi families of Ottoman Egypt, with high
status in the religious establishment and charged with overseeing the Prophet’s
mawlid.95 NabulusI was to stay in considerable luxury at the
BakrIs’ palace by the Azbakiyya Pond for about two and a half months, attending
religious scholarly gatherings for discussion with ‘ulama’ of al-Azhar
and visiting the zawiyas of the KhalwatI, BektashI and MawlawI brotherhoods,
in addition to the Bakriyya.96 He also performed pilgrimage to
numerous holy tombs, including those of famous Sufis such as Ibn al-Farid (d.
1235), al-ShushtarI (d. 1269) and ShaTanI (d. 1565), and he toured the great
cemetery of al-Qarafa.97 Before leaving the city, he consulted AmIr IbrahIm
Bey, commander of the Egyptian pilgrimage, on his plans to travel outside the hajj
period by the land route to the Hijaz with only a small party. He was given
assurances of protection by Beduin shaykhs.98 The amir
assigned three Arab tribesmen and five camels to conduct him on the road; he
also had his own two horses.99
After the comforts of
Cairo and the constant company of fellow ‘ulamÀ and Sufis, NabulusI had
to adjust to the physical hardships of travel and the solitude of a desert
journey with only a few companions. He could no longer rely on the group of
‘brothers’ who had accompanied him through his homeland and some, it seems, as far as Egypt. No explanation is given
as to why none wished to proceed with him to Mecca, but suddenly he was no
longer cultivating ‘solitude in a crowd’, but solitude without the crowd.
Perhaps they did not want to take the risks. Nabulusi notes: ‘There were eight
of us: myself, my son, my servant, three others (Muhammad and the twins As¿ad
and ¿Abd al-Latif) add three Beduin, but one returned and two (Hasan and Najm)
stayed with us.’100 There is a stark sense of isolation in Nabulusi’s
uncharacteristically plain language. The little group parted from the scholars
of Cairo who had come out to see them on the way, including a son of Hasan
al-Shurunbulali, ¿Abd al-Ghani’s father’s old teacher at the time of his birth.
They set out with their camels and horses eastwards to Suez and then across the
central Sinai peninsula to the head of the Gulf of ¿Aqaba. This part of the
route was especially difficult terrain, and they were forced to camp throughout
their journey. However, Nabulusi was delighted to wake one morning and discover
that his fine white mare had given birth to a foal.101 Keeping close
to the Red Sea coast, he camped near the fort of Muwaylih, from where he sent a
letter to his friend al-Bakri, entrusting it to two of the Beduin, who headed
back to Egypt at this point.102 It seems remarkable that so small a
caravan arrived in safety at Medina, having encountered no problems whatsoever
from the Beduin along their way at a time when even the great hajj caravans
needed heavy protection. It is possible that Nabulusi’s saintly status did
actually offer security against attack, at least as much as any Beduin shaykhs’
guarantees of safe passage.
Nabulusi stayed for around four months in the
Holy Cities. In addition to performing the hajj and visiting the
Prophet’s grave at Medina, he spent most of his time in meetings with ‘ulama’,
some of them with notable Sufi credentials. Unfortunately, some of the most
outstanding Sufi figures had recently died. Ibrahim al-Kurani was one such
distinguished scholar, a Kurd who had spent much of his life in Medina and was
a well-known advocate of Ibn ¿Arabi’s doctrine of oneness of being (wahdat
al-wujud). He was also renowned as a Naqshabandi shaykh.103 He
had died in 1690, some four years earlier, but Nabulusi celebrated his mawlid
during his visit and was welcomed by his son, Abu Tahir Muhammad. Abu Tahir was
the spiritual guide of the great Indian reformer Shah Wali Allah of Delhi
during his stay in Mecca and Medina in 1731-32.104 Ilyas, another
son of Ibrahim al-Kurani, was also one of Nabulusi’s students.105 Nabulusi
was further honoured in Medina with a poem of praise from the khatib of
the Prophet’s Mosque, Ahmad, son of
Ibrahim al-Khiyari, whom he describes as ‘our
late friend’106 and who is known as the author of a rihla
with some mystical content on his journey to Istanbul in 1669-71.107
Nabulusi had probably become acquainted with Ibrahim al-Khiyari when Khiyari passed
through Damascus on his travels and recorded his ecstatic experience, ‘a state
of spiritual rapture’, that overwhelmed him at the tomb of Ibn ¿Arabi.108
Nabulusi, on leaving the
Sufi scholars of Medina and proceeding to Mecca, inspected the library of
another prominent and recently deceased Kurdish Sufi, Shaykh Muhammad
al-Barzanji (d. 1691), who, like Kurani and himself, was a staunch defender of
Ibn ¿Arabi. Like Nabulusi, Barzanji had suffered from attacks for this reason,
in his case from a Yemeni critic of the Great Shaykh, Salih al-Maqbali (d.
1699).109 In Mecca Nabulusi also granted ijâzas in Hadith
as well as one that he describes as being in ‘all our own writings’ that he
granted to a former student of Kurani.110
Barbara von Schlegell is
inclined to downplay the intellectual importance of these Medinese and Meccan
connections, seeing Nabulusi’s ijâzas as those of a ‘tourist’ rather
than an indication of a serious influence on the scholars of the Holy Cities
prior to the great eighteenth-century period of revival and reform.111
Nabulusi’s four- month visit was relatively short compared, for example, to the
14month stay of Shah Wali Allah. However, it appears that he had already
established links with certain key individuals and families, in addition to
having a saintly and intellectual reputation. Consequently, although his visit
may have been touristic in some respects, his relations with the Sufi ‘ula-mÁ
of Mecca and Medina and his influence among them were presumably more
substantial than in the case of a less renowned visitor. If there was something
he shared with these residents of the Hijaz, it was a common conviction of the
truth contained in Ibn ¿Arabi’s metaphysical thought and, in some cases, a
devotion to the Naqshabandiyya. He evidently enjoyed the company of like-minded
scholarly Sufis, especially following a long period in which he had been
engaged in defence of these same views in Damascus. No doubt, he appreciated
the moral support, intellectual stimulation and spiritual sustenance available
to him in the Holy Cities, and reciprocated by offering the same to all those
who came into contact with him. It may be concluded that he did have some
significant impact on Sufi circles in the Hijaz. However, this impact was not
due solely to his visit, but was also owing to a long prior exposure to his
writings, personal teachings and spiritual guidance through scholarly friends,
students and disciples travelling to Damascus.
While he was in Mecca, Nabulusi
was joined for the pilgrimage by his brother Yusuf, who had come from Damascus
with the main hajj caravan.112 The family party returned home
together with the Syrian pilgrims. Sadly, Yusuf was taken ill on the way and
died.113
In 1621 a certain Mar¿i al-Karmi, a Palestinian calim
living in Egypt, wrote a glowing panegyric of the Ottoman dynasty. After
heaping praise on their virtues and achievements, far surpassing those of
earlier Muslim rulers, he recorded with some satisfaction: ‘[The Ottomans] curb
the belligerent Christians. ... And drive away the unsuccessful Franks to the
extremity of the lands of Islam.’114 By the 1690s it was clear that
this was no longer the case. The position of the Ottomans in eastern Europe had
weakened and, when ¿Abd al- Ghani al-Nabulusi wrote his own panegyric of the
sultans on return from his long journey in 1694, he was not unaware of their
troubles.115 Since 1684 the Ottoman Empire had faced a holy
League formed of European Catholic states (Austria, Venice, Poland, Tuscany and
Malta), in addition to Russia under Czar Peter the Great, all determined to
wrest away territory from the Islamic state. In this they succeeded
dramatically: the Austrians captured Buda in 1686, driving the Turks from Hungary,
while 10 years later the Russians advanced to take Azov on the shores of the
Black Sea. The scale of Ottoman defeat was unprecedented. Faced with this
desperate state of affairs, the Shaykh al-Islam Fadl Allah wrote to Nabulusi in
April 1698, appealing for him as a ‘friend of God’ to pray for the Muslims. Nabulusi
promised that he would indeed pray the special qunut prayer, to be said
in times of disaster, in all the five prayers.116 The correspondence with the Shaykh al-Islam
testifies to Nabulusi’s saintly standing at this time, indicating that he was
someone to be supplicated by the highest religious authority in the Ottoman
state. It is interesting also that one reaction in the wake of Muslim military
loss was to turn to the protective intercessionary offices of a wall Allah.
A few months later, on 26 January 1699, the Ottomans signed the Treaty of
Carlowitz, by which they ceded to the Habsburgs most of Hungary and parts of
Transylvania, Slovenia and Croatia, to the Poles part of Podolia and the
Ukraine, and to the Venetians Morea and some land in Dalmatia. In a separate
agreement they acknowledged the Russian conquest of Azov.
However, while Nabulusi was
no doubt distressed by the catastrophe facing the Islamic state, the mid- to
late 1690s was also a time of some
concern nearer to home in Damascus. The local Damascene janissary force,
accustomed to defending the interests of the population of Damascus, were
seriously weakened following a purge in 1691, including executions of some of
their more prominent members by the governor of the city on the sultan’s
orders.117 This was a blow to many Damascenes, who felt
unprotected against government rapacity supported by the imperial janissaries.
When local ‘ulamif attempted to speak up against the governor’s
perceived injustice, they were exiled in 1695-6, also on the sultan’s orders,
to nearby Qal¿at al-Qastal, Tripoli on the Syrian coast and Cyprus.118 Their number included the khatib of the
Umayyad Mosque and the naqib al-ashraf, head of the sharif
descendants of the Prophet through the line of Fatima and ¿All.119 It is not clear whether NabulusI had any active
involvement in these matters, although his normal sympathies were with his
fellow Damascene ‘ulama1 and the ordinary people of Damascus.
On a more personal note, he suffered a family tragedy in 1697 on the death of
his eight-year-old son, Muhammad Mas¿ud, whose birth during his first Lebanese
journey had brought him so much joy.
Yet, by the time NabulusI
recorded his last journey of about six weeks in September-October 1700, he made
no mention of imperial, regional or family problems, but wrote only of
happiness in his travels to Tripoli. His final rihla, al-Tuhfa
al-nabulusiyya fi ’l-rihla al-tarabulusiyya (Nabulusi’s Gem on the Journey to
Tripoli) did not attract as much attention as his earlier rihlas and
might be considered a more pedestrian work, scarcely meriting the extravagant
title.120 Although, as
on other occasions, NabulusI noted his aim to visit his spiritual brethren and
the holy dead, he also remarked that he had been invited by certain governors.
These invitations set the tone for the journey. Far more than in previous
travels, NabulusI spent time in the company of the ruling authorities,
attending receptions at the palaces of governors and riding out with them on
excursions into the countryside. Crossing the Lebanon to the coast at Sidon,
he stayed at the palace there for a week, before travelling North via Beirut to
Tripoli, where he remained for a further two weeks, being entertained by its
governor, Arslan Muhammad Pasha, before returning over the mountains to Ba¿labakk
and across the Biqa¿ Valley and the Anti-Lebanon to Damascus. Certainly he also
met many iulamâ,, disciples whom he terms ‘our
spiritual sons’ and other Sufis, such as a NaqshabandI shaykh at Tripoli, but,
by his own reports, his conversations focused on discussions of Hadith,
points of law or poetic technicalities rather than Sufi doctrine. He
visited some holy graves, but without dwelling much on the experience.
Routinely, he described mosques, zawiyas and public baths in the towns,
and listed books in notables’ collections, including a few Sufi works such as
commentaries on Qushayrî’s Risala and the Diwan of Ibn al-Farid.
All in all, the expedition seems to have confirmed Nabulusl’s status as a
distinguished visiting scholar and revered regional saint. The impassioned
mystic appeared to have been co-opted into the Ottoman establishment.
‘A NEW KIND OF MYSTICAL
TRAVEL-LITERATURE’
Sir Hamilton Gibb
describes ¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi as ‘the outstanding figure in the Arabic
literature of the Ottoman period’ and notes, in addition to his achievements as
a poet and author of Sufi treatises, that he was ‘the originator of a new kind
of mystical travel-literature in rhyming prose’.1 Even if not all of his rihlas
have a consistently mystical character, Nabulusi remains the best-known
exponent of Arabic travel writing in which Sufi interests feature
predominantly. After a brief consideration of earlier concerns with Sufism in
the genre, this chapter examines in more detail aspects of Nabulusi’s rihlas
that can be seen to mark them out as ‘mystical travel-literature’. A primary
aim for Nabulusi in all his travels was to seek contact with living Sufis and with
the dead at their tombs. His connections with Sufi ‘ulama1 on
his journeys have already been noted and his accounts of tarîqas are
given further consideration here. However, some of his more interesting
meetings were with uneducated recluses and ecstatics in the wilds of the Syrian
and Palestinian countryside, and these encounters are explored with special
reference to the two earliest rihlas, Hullat al-dhahab and the Hadra,
which are characterised by a more distinctively mystical tone than the later
works. Pilgrimages to Sufi graves and shrines are more extensively covered in
the longest rihla, the Haqîqa, so this is the principal source
for Nabulusi’s treatment of the topic. For him, as for many other Sufis of his
age, tomb visits became an integral part of the religious life and hardly a day
passed out of the 388 days of the long journey without his recounting one or
more excursions to holy graves.
Sufi elements in
earlier rihlas
The rihla underwent considerable changes
between the time of its first great master, Ibn Jubayr of Valencia (d. 1217),
and the time of Nabulusi’s remodelling of the form. The narrative of the
Andalusian traveller was clearly focused on the performance of the hajj
and description of conditions in the lands of the Arab East. Ibn Jubayr has
been much praised for the way in which he accomplished his aim of providing an
exact and detailed account of the places along his route and especially the
Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. Such was his achievement that his work became
recognised as a model and a source to consult and even to plagiarise.2 He does not seem to have lacked all interest in
Sufism, but it was a minor facet of the overall scene that absorbed him. While
he wrote with some awe of the Sufis of Damascus that they were ‘the kings in
this land’,3 he was not one of them. He recorded tombs of the
righteous in the city with meticulous care,4 but his attitude was essentially different from
that of Nabulusi. Ibn Jubayr was, after all, a pious Maliki jurist, not a
mystical ‘friend of God’.
Ibn Battuta (d. 1368-9 or 1377), the most
renowned of medieval Muslim travellers, showed a much greater interest in the
Sufis of his day and appears to have been a sporadic devotee of Sufism himself,
as Ross E. Dunn observes:
By the time he left Tangier, he was so deeply influenced by Sufi
ideas, especially belief in personal baraka and the value of ascetic
devotionalism, that his traveling career turned out to be, in a sense, a grand
world tour of the lodges and tombs of famous Sufi mystics and saints. He was
never, to be sure, a committed Sufi disciple. He remained throughout his life a
‘lay’ Sufi, attending mystical gatherings, seeking the blessing and wisdom of
spiritual luminaries, and retreating on occasion into brief periods of ascetic
contemplation. But he never gave up the worldly life.5
Ibn Battuta was initiated into different
brotherhoods, notably the Rifa¿iyya during a stay in Jerusalem and
Suhrawardiyya in Isfahan.6 However, it
is questionable how deeply meaningful these affiliations were for the
traveller.7 Nevertheless,
there were times when he displayed a greater level of commitment, as when he
spent some five months in a life of severe asceticism under the direction of a
Sufi shaykh in India, Kamal al-din ¿Abd Allah al-Ghari.8 Ibn Battuta was
obviously the amateur Sufi, dabbling in the spiritual life, by
contrast with Nabulusi, professional Sufi shaykh, scholar and saint. Yet the
Moroccan’s multi-faceted rihla contains accounts of Sufis and their
miracles, zawiyas and tombs that may be seen as forerunners of a growing
obsession with visits to the righteous, an obsession that eventually gives rise
to a distinctive sub-genre of the rihla.
Looking in at Sufism from
the outside edge, Ibn Battuta did not have the perception of the mystic. His
treatment of Sufis quite commonly took the form of tales of the miraculous,
related with varying degrees of credulity.9 Sometimes he
did express doubts, but it is not always possible to tell exactly how credulous
he was in accepting a story at face value. On occasion he may simply have
enjoyed telling an extraordinary tale to divert his readers. For example, when
he told of a holy man of Shiraz being thrown to a pack of ferocious dogs who
refused to harm him, it is not clear whether Ibn Battuta was just narrating an
amazing story or believing it to be a miracle.10 In this case,
did he also see a didactic purpose in the miracle account, reading the dogs as
representing the base self tamed by the saint through his spiritual jihad?
If he did have any such understanding, did he by any chance expect his readers
to share it? Nabulusi, in his turn, would tell strange tales and not always
interpret them, but it was clear that he saw miracles all around him.
Dunn has described Ibn Battuta
as a ‘literate frontiersman’, a man of modest learning travelling to the
fringes of the umma in pursuit of career opportunities that might
otherwise have been beyond his ability to attain.11 He was thus to serve for six years as a judge in
Delhi and even as a chief judge for some time in the Maldive Islands. However,
Dunn regards him not simply as an adventurous individual, but as one
representative of a wave of international migration of moderately qualified ‘ulama’,
settling permanently or temporarily in the further Islamic communities of Asia
and Africa in the later medieval period. They may have been indifferent
scholars for the most part, but they had a role to play in building Islamic
institutions and culture beyond the heartlands of the faith. Yet, after the
fifteenth century, this outward movement of literate Muslims to the frontiers
gradually came to an end.
The Arab ‘ulama’
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whatever their capabilities or lack
of them, had little incentive to venture to remote regions that did not offer
them much in terms of career development that was not available to them closer
to home. Not that all such movement ceased, but the further areas were supplying more of their own scholars to meet
their needs and sometimes exporting them to the Holy Cities of Arabia. Sufis
continued to travel in different directions, bearing the messages of their
respective tariqas, both from and to the Arab lands. Nevertheless, the
Arab authors who contributed rihlas in this period generally produced
commonplace records of journeys for hajj or pilgrimage visits in their
own or neighbouring Arab countries. It was not unusual to recount travels of a
strictly local character, for example those of three Damascene ‘ulama’
who wrote of crossing Syria from Damascus to the coast at Tripoli some 60 to 100
years before Nabulusi was to make a similar journey; these were Hasan al-Burini
in 1599-1600, Ramadan al-¿Utayfi in 1634 and Yahya b. al-Mahasin in 1638-9.12 The earliest of these travellers, Burini, has
been noted as a student and biographer of Nabulusi’s great-grandfather,
mentioned previously with reference to his dream of Isma¿il al-Nabulusi, a man
of dubious reputation, but the author of a useful commentary on the language of
Ibn al-Farid’s Diwan.1 In 1693, on observing the great aqueduct built by
Godfrey de Bouillon outside Tripoli, Nabulusi quoted from Burini’s description
of it in his longest rihla.14
For Arabs travelling to non-Arab lands Istanbul
was the most frequent destination that found its way into their rihlas.
It was a natural magnet for religious scholars with any ambition to advance
their careers in the Ottoman Islamic state and, therefore, a more obvious goal
at this time than outlying parts of the umma. As noted earlier, the
young ¿Abd al-Ghani had visited the capital in 1664, but left no rihla
recalling the experience. Ibrahim al- Khiyari, his older contemporary and
friend, khatib at the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, has also been recorded
as embarking on the journey to Istanbul in 1669, stopping at Damascus on his
way up from the Hijaz and leaving a full description of his experience.15 His return journey took him back by way of
Palestine and Egypt to Medina, making a detour similar to that of Nabulusi more
than 20 years later. Khiyari may be seen as anticipating Nabulusi’s development
of the mystical rihla, since he is also very much concerned with
recollecting the spiritual effects on himself of visiting shrines and meeting
like-minded ‘ulama1 and Sufis. He is one of the better
examples of the new Sufi- inspired trend in Arabic travel-literature of the
Ottoman period, but he is not alone.16 Consequently, Gibb’s description of Nabulusi as
the ‘originator’ of the mystical rihla should probably be modified to
recognise his significant role in its development rather than invention of a
totally new phenomenon.
Given that, during the
course of his travels, ¿Abd al-Ghanî al- Nabulusi met so many Sufis of all
kinds, from sons of the distinguished scholar Ibrahim al-Kurani to illiterate
ecstatics, it may seem surprising that he wrote so little of their tariqas,
where indeed they belonged to any. On most occasions in the rihlas he is
content with a brief mention of attendance at the dhikr of a particular
brotherhood, for example the Shadhiliyya in Nablus,17 or a short
visit to a zawiya such as that of the Bektashiyya in Cairo.18 Rarely does he write at
length of an individual whose tariqa is identified or describe further
matters relating to a tariqa. The impression gained from the rihlas
confirms Nabulusi’s limited concern with the Sufi institutions of his day, as
he is more involved in his own personal journey on the ‘path of God’ than in a
spiritual life controlled by any organisation. Similarly, although he has
friends, like the Egyptian Shaykh al- Bakri, who are organisation men, he shows
more evident interest in others who have taken a personalised path like his
own.
Although the Naqshabandiyya became officially his
main tarîqa, he does not discuss the prominent Naqshabandis whom he met
in the Hijaz, such as Abu Tahir Muhammad, in terms of their Naqshabandism and tariqa-based
activities. The Qadiriyya, as the first brotherhood into which he was initiated
at Hama in 1664, receives a little more attention in the Haqiqa, but
this is mostly because he returns to Hama after 30 years and displays a special
enthusiasm for his old links with the distinguished Qadiri family of the Kaylanis,
descended from the great saint ¿Abd al-Qadir al- Jilani.19 The Kaylanis dominated the religious hierarchy
of the town, holding the principal offices, and had acquired considerable
wealth.20 Nabulusi stayed with Yasin Efendi, naqib
al-ashraf, at the Kaylanis’ palace overlooking the Orontes River and its
waterwheels. He also met and joined in the dhikr at the Qadiri zawiya
with Shaykh ¿Ali al- Kaylani, the current shaykh al-sajjada (head of the
brotherhood), experiencing an ecstatic state at that time. As well as
remembering his initiation and recalling the visit to the grave of his old
shaykh, ¿Abd al-Razzaq, he also presents a spiritual genealogy (silsila)
of the Qadiriyya down to himself.21
Occasionally Nabulusi accords a brief mention to
Sufis of minor tariqas, such as those of the Adhamiyya, whom he saw at
the alleged tomb of Ibrahim b. Adham at Jabala.22 The sixteenth-century Egyptian Sufi Sha¿rani had
been critical of this order as guilty of corruption and failure to follow the Sha.ria..1"’ Another minor tariqa that Sha¿rani was
prone to rebuke for unorthodox practice was the Mutawi¿iyya, possibly a branch of the Badawiyya (or Ahmadiyya),
famous or notorious for its popular mawlid at the shrine of Ahmad
al-Badawi (d. 1276) at Tanta. Sharf a-minded Sufis frequently attacked
the Badawi festival for its unIslamic nature and for giving rise to licentious
behaviour.24 Nabulusi does not concern himself with the Badawis in
Egypt, but he does remark briefly, on seeing a dhikr of the Mutawi¿iyya
at a mosque in Gaza, that he ‘saw the faqîrs calling the name of God
Most High in powerful states of ecstasy’.25 Michael Winter has
observed that, to judge by a mid-eighteenth-century fatwa against them,
‘they were regarded as very unorthodox, guilty of total ignorance of Islam, of
hatred of the jurists (who could have guided them toward the right behaviour)
and of pederasty and fornication’.26 However, it is noticeable
that, whatever he may have thought of the practices of certain tarîqas
or individual Sufis, Nabulusi is not condemnatory of them in the manner of some
jurists, including those who were also Sufis, such as ShaTani.
As for Sufis whom Nabulusi
encountered from other major tarîqas, it is those of the Mawlawiyya and
Khalwatiyya that attract a certain degree of his attention. In the Haqiqa
he recalls visits to attend the samÁ of the famous ‘whirling dervishes’
at the Mawlawi lodge in Cairo27 and especially in Tripoli, where he
was deeply impressed by the beauty of the zawiya’s location, calling it
‘a paradise for the eyes’.28 However, while he appears to be full
of approval for the Mawlawi brethren, his comments are confined to vague
praises in both his extravagant flowery prose and in poetry, when he exclaims
at the sight of the zawiya:
In the late seventeenth century it was not
particularly unusual for a Naqshabandi shaykh to show enthusiasm for the
teachings of Rumi’s Mathnawî and the Mawlawiyya.30 Nabulusi knew
Persian and had apparently been interested in Rumi’s work even as a young man,
when he claimed to have absorbed Rumi’s spiritual nature.31 Two
hundred years later the young reformer Rashid Rida (d. 1935), also initiated as a
Naqshabandî, would react with horror at the Mawlawí samÁ of their
Tripoli zâwiya, denouncing its ‘forbidden acts, which one has no right
either to look at or to pass over in silence, for to do so is to accept them’.32
But by then the Naqshabandîs and Mawlawîs had drifted further apart and Rida would
ultimately reject both.
In Nabulusi’s time the Khalwatiyya was the other
main tariqa whose members he sometimes noted in his rihlas. In
Cairo he recorded his visit to a Khalwatl mosque and zâwiya and to
graves of their shaykhs, as well as his attendance at their dhikr at the
Mosque of Hussein.33 In Nabulusl’s day the Khalwatls in Egypt were
predominantly Turks, although in the eighteenth century they were to widen
their membership through the mission (dacwa) efforts of his
disciple, Mustafa b. Kamal al-din al-Bakri. They became a brotherhood
especially favoured by the Azhar ‘ulamâ’ and regarded as highly Sharfa-conscious.34
At the Syrian coastal town of Latakya he also noted his meeting with a Khalwati
shaykh who was reputedly 115 years old.35
However, Nabulusi’s fullest report of an
encounter with a member of the Khalwatiyya is one that he relates in his
shortest rihla, Hullat al-dhahab. He identifies this Khalwati as Shaykh
Ahmad, the custodian of al-Dilla Mosque, situated on a mountainside in the
Anti-Lebanon and said to contain a grave with the body of Prophet Yahya (John
the Baptist).36 Nabulusi recognised Shaykh Ahmad as one marked by
the signs of righteousness, an indication of this being that he had foreseen
their arrival at his village. The talk turned to miracles, including a virgin
birth comparable to that of Mary giving birth to Jesus.37 However,
the Khalwati also spoke at length of the uselessness of miracles and sainthood,
when unsupported by knowledge and practice of the Sharfa. To illustrate
his point, he told of a local man who had been a friend of his father. His
holiness was such that he was able to fly miraculously between the mountains,
but he was ignorant of true Islamic worship. The result of this ignorance was
that the devil was able to tempt him and he became a sinner.38 The
story serves to underline a Khalwati concern with Sharfa penetrating
even this wild mountainous area beyond the normal reach of ‘ulamâ’
orthodoxy.
Although ¿Abd
al-Ghani al-Nabulusi was himself a jurist, his life appears to be spent in
fairly equal proportions in the company of those who are
profoundly conscious of Sharha and those for whom its normal obligations
are suspended, due to their being ecstatic mystics (majâdhib) suddenly
‘drawn’ to God lyy an overpowering experience of unveiling (kashf).39
He was frequently in the company of majâdhib in Damascus, but also met
with a number during his travels. They appear quite frequently in the rihlas,
as, for example, in the Haqiqa when Nabulusi recalls a majdhub in
Cairo who knew through his own mystical insight what ¿Abd al-Ghani had undergone
on the ‘path of unveiling’.40 He also foretold that he would perform
the hajj that year in safety, echoing the same prediction made earlier
on the route by a Turkish majdhub at Tripoli.41 A cynic might
have thought that no special gifts were needed to know that Nabulusi was
proceeding for hajj and to announce a successful outcome, but Nabulusi does
not question the genuine foreknowledge of the ecstatics.
The Hadra, in particular, contains some fascinating
accounts of majâdhib whom Nabulusi encountered in the countryside of
northern Palestine, and a few of the same individuals also make an appearance
in the Haqiqa about three years later. Jinin and its surrounding
villages seem remarkable for these ecstatic personalities. On 2 April 1690, the
ninth day of his journey, Nabulusi relates how numbers of ecstatics came out to
greet him on his entry into Jinin.42 Some were from the settled
population, others wandering from place to place. According to ¿Abd al-Ghani,
they knew in their hearts of his coming without learning of his visit by any
other means. This type of intuitive knowledge, including knowledge of others’
thoughts, is commonly noted as a characteristic of those whose rational
judgement was swept away by the experience of divine illumination.43
It was not unusual for them to dress and behave in a bizarre fashion, as in the
case of a certain majdhub from one of the villages near Nablus, who
marched around the markets carrying a gun and a sword.44 It is not
clear whether he is the same as a Shaykh Salih, whom Nabulusi describes in the Haqiqa
as dressed in rags, beating a drum and bearing arms.45 Others
exchanged rags for a state of total nudity, marking a complete lack of concern
with the material world of appearances so that all longing for possessions and
sensual desires disappeared and the majdhub regained the innocence of
life in Eden.46
Most of the ecstatics
described were single males, but occasionally married men and a few females
are mentioned. One interesting case is when Nabulusi writes of his meeting a
whole family of majâdhib from the Transjordanian district of ¿Ajlun.
They consisted of Shaykh Muhammad
b. Humud, his brothers, male cousins (sons of his paternal uncle) ndd iüs wffe.47
The presence of all these ecstatics in one family does also raise the question
of whether they can fit the classic designation of the majdhub, whose
mind is involuntarily seized by a powerful unveiling such that rational
judgement is suspended for a long period. NabulusI in some instances describes
a majdhub as also muwallah, voluntarily seeking unveiling and
driven into insanity by a passionate love of God. In one case he remarks that a
certain Shaykh Hasan al-FalujI from the vicinity of Gaza was a majdhub,
a muwallah and also a ‘lord of states’ (rabb al- ahwal) gffted
with supernatural powers.48 It is probable that, where a family are
all majadhib, the term is being used rather casually and their condition
may not be entirely involuntary.
Another person whom NabulusI describes both as majdhub
and one of the ‘masters of states’ (ashâb al-ahwal)4 is the
black ecstatic Shaykh Za’id, who was living in a large cave with fifteen
recesses that he had dug out for himself in woodland near the village of Ya¿bad.
NabulusI narrates in some detail his visit to him in the Hadra and
mentions a second visit in the Haqiqa. He remarks that Za’id had been a
slave to one of the people in the village and had been working as a shepherd
when he was seized by the sudden, overwhelming divine illumination of jadhb,
rendering him a majdhub. Consequently, his owner freed him and he came
to live in the cave where ¿Abd al-GhanI saw him sitting naked on the ground,
crushing coffee beans with a wooden mortar.50 Noting that people
visited Za’id in order to obtain baraka and consult him about their
affairs, NabulusI confirms his regard for the ecstatic’s mystical insight by
saying that he asked about the state of his brethren and companions proceeding
to Jerusalem. Za’id told him that they were in a state of grace due to their
being with him and foresaw a positive outcome to their journey.51
Thus these comments not only assert Za’id’s knowledge of the spiritual state
of others and foreknowledge of their immediate future, but also serve to
promote the idea of NabulusI’s own personal sanctity. He reports a further
instance of Za’id’s psychic qualities on his return visit when the majdhub
knew by his special insight that NabulusI’s servant was holding the horses
outside the cave and asked for him by name to come in and drink his coffee.52
miraculously into good
coffee.53 Such amazing power was in his hands that, if he wanted
firewood, he would uproot a great tree with only a small stick, break it with
his hand and carry it back to the cave.54 It is apparent from Nabulusi’s
accounts that he accepts the majdhub as being in an extraordinary state
from God.
Although Nabulusi does
not relate a large number of dreams in his rihlas, they do play a part
of some consequence in his accounts of meetings with the righteous and majâdhib.
Three dreams are selected for discussion here. Two are literal dreams described
in the Hadra and one is a relatively rare account of a symbolic dream
told in the shortest rihla, Hullat al-dhahab. Despite the fact that the
dreams differ in character, all three have underlying features and aims in
common. They are the dreams of enraptured mystics, who meet Nabulusi during his
travels through wild parts of the countryside in northern Palestine and
Lebanon, and who recognise the importance of the experience. The dreams
disclose some deeper truths than are available in everyday waking life, while
accepting that ‘the two worlds are one’. They reveal that those with knowledge
of the unseen world (al-ghayb), ‘friends of God’ and ecstatics, may have
special awareness of one another. Above all, the ultimate point of the dreams
is to indicate ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi’s superior sainthood.
Nabulusi tells of the
first literal dream, when he remembers the majdhub Shaykh Hasan al-Faluji,
who was among the ecstatics at Jinin. This man had travelled from his home
village of Faluja in the south of Palestine right up to the north through
difficult and dangerous country in order to greet Nabulusi. He had made the journey because he had had a dream, in which he
had been commanded to travel by a company of saints, including Shaykh Arslan
al-Dimashqî (d. c. 1145-55) and Shaykh ¿AlI b. ¿Ulaym (d. c. 1081).
Both are of national rather than international significance. Shaykh Arslan’s
mausoleum outside the city walls of Damascus near Bab Tuma was a well-known
place of pilgrimage (ziyâra) and lie was popularly credited with
miracles, even regarded as a kind of patron saint for Damascus.56
Thirteen years before the Palestinian journey, in 1677, NabulusI had written a
commentary on Arslan’s epistle on tawhid,57 so there was
already a connection between them. ¿All b. ¿Ulaym’s tomb was a pilgrimage site
in the majdhub’s home area on the southern Palestinian coast near to
Jaffa.58 NabulusI was to visit it on his long journey in 1693.
However, the two saints also had links with each other. Shaykh Arslan’s own
shaykh was described in the sixteenth-century pilgrimage guide of Ibn al-HawranI
as ‘a companion to Shaykh YasIn, who was a companion to ¿Uqayla, who was a
companion to ¿All b. ¿Alim’59 and so back to the famous early Sufi
Sari al-SaqatI (d. c. 867). Thus the saints who are named in the dream
are expected to know each other and also to know NabulusI and the majdhub,
Hasan al-Faluji.
According to NabulusI, they told FalujI:
Once the connections
between persons have been established, the dream itself requires minimal
interpretation, but clearly demonstrates the high regard of the region’s
saints for ¿Abd al-GhanI al- NabulusI.
The second literal dream
is recounted on the occasion of NabulusI’s entry into the village of Ya¿bad on
4 April 1690, just before his visit to Za’id’s cave.61 In this case,
NabulusI mentions his reception by one of his former students in Damascus, Isma¿Il
al- Ya¿badl. Ismael introduced him to his father, Shaykh Muslih al-
Ya¿badl, who then related a dream. Shaykh Muslih’s wife had been ill, so the
night before Nabulusl’s arrival in the village he slept next to her and his two
daughters in order to look after her. However, it crossed his mind that a
stranger seeing them all together might have the wrong impression about his
behaviour. He fell asleep and dreamt of NabulusI, his son’s old teacher,
although he had never met him. Far from reproving him, NabulusI joked with him
about the situation and Shaykh Muslih introduced him to his wife and daughters.
At first sight the dream account reads as a
rather crude, humorous story. It appears very different from the first dream of
saintly recognition. Yet, on closer examination, there are certain
similarities in the way that the dreams function. Shaykh Muslih’s dream also
confirms the high saintly status of NabulusI. He appears in his student’s
father’s dream because he is the spiritual teacher who knows the truth about
the thoughts of others and the reality of a situation. Even though he has never
met Shaykh Muslih, he understands at long distance his anxieties and
embarrassment and the most delicate intimate details of his family life. He can
enter his dreaming and actually joke about a sensitive matter because of his
exceptional mystical insight, and his joking is acceptable (like the majdhub’s
nudity) hccausc of his absolutely pure state. ~^le- saint can, therefore,
behave in a dream in a way that would be reprehensible in the ordinary person.
The readers of the Hadra will be expected to appreciate this and
acknowledge Nabulusl’s sanctity, although they may also be allowed to laugh.
The third dream, recalled by NabulusI in Hullat
al-dhahab, is a rare instance in the rihlas of a symbolic dream. At
the village of ZabadanI, on the third day of his journey from Damascus towards
the Biqa¿ Valley in 1689, he met with an itinerant dervish, who briefly joined
his company. NabulusI describes how this man’s dream experience had led to his
life of wandering:
He told us
that one time he was ill in the Grotto of the Forty on Mount Qasyun, when there
appeared to him in a dream a company of naked holy men. They stripped him of
the clothes that he was wearing and ordered him to go out at once and set out
on his travels. This dream was repeated three times, so it was a sign of his
meeting with us in the best of states.62
The dream has several interesting features to it.
First, its conditions suggest its affinity with ancient Near Eastern
incubation, in which the devotee would sleep in a sanctuary in the hope of
receiving dream revelation as to a right course of action. The usage continued
into the Islamic period in the form of istikhâra, a process of seeking
to choose by submitting to God’s guidance in sleep, ‘entrusting God with the
choice between two or more possible options, either through piety and
submission to His will, or else through inability to decide oneself, on account
of not knowing which choice is the most advantageous one’.63 Despite
the opposition of many religious lawyers to the practice of sleeping in
mosques and other holy places, it is known to have been popularly maintained
and several sites in the Damascus area were associated with this type of
incubation.64 Although Toufiq Fahd does not see istikhâra as
having a therapeutic function, unlike the ancient Greek concept, it is possible
that there is such an element in this case, since the man told Nabulusi that he
was sick at the time of his sleeping in the grotto.65 The nature of
his illness is not revealed, but it appears to have left him afterwards. It may
also be implied that it was a spiritual sickness. Another characteristic
ancient feature is the confirmatory nature of the dream’s three-fold
repetition.
The Grotto of the Forty on Mount Qasyun is also
identifiable as the Grotto of Blood (Maghârat al-Dam), the legendary
site of Cain’s killing of Abel. According to Ibn al-Hawrani, it was a place of
supplication (duca’), where prayers were answered and to
which the people of Damascus resorted when faced with troubles such as drought
or an oppressive ruler.66 He notes that ‘it is reported from some
that the Substitutes meet on momentous nights in the place of fulfilling
supplication and pray there and make requests of God the Exalted and supplicate
Him’.67 The Substitutes (abdâl) were ‘the Forty’, the company
of saints who also gave their name to this grotto and who were known as
‘substitutes’ because each time one died, another would be substituted to take
his place on earth.68 A number of other pilgrimage sites,
particularly grottoes, were linked to the Forty Substitutes, including three
visited by Nabulusi in his travels: at Marqab in northern Syria, Nazareth and
Hebron in Palestine.69 Presumably the dream company of naked holy
men were understood to be the spirits of the Forty, although their number is
not specified.
Clothing, or rather its removal
and lack of it, is of central symbolic importance to the dream. The topic
receives its fair share of attention in N abulusi’s Tactir,
including separate entries on articles of clothing, such as a long discussion
of ‘robe’ (thawb).70 Both the material worn and the colour
are considered significant, wool naturally being the sign of ‘an ascetic and of
calling people to asceticism in this life’, while green is a positive sign of
faith. Cleanliness of clothing is also symbolic of purity, while dirty clothing
reveals the presence of sin. Washing a robe or putting one on are indicative of
changes in the dreamer’s condition, but taking off clothes receives only the
brief comment: ‘Taking off dirty clothing in sleep means the ending of
sorrows.’71 It would seem applicable to the present case, since the
company of holy men, who were clearly divested of the clothing of sin, ended
the dreamer’s connection with the sorrows and sickness of worldly life by
removing his clothes and urging him to embark upon the Way. The dream events
echo older Sufi tales illustrating the need to abandon all ties to this world,
to keep nothing of the old life, not even a robe. The dream is reminiscent,
for example, of a tale told by the Persian poet Farîd al-dîn ¿Attar (d. 1220)
of an Arab who rraeclldd to Persia and whose clothes were stolen from him by a
band of dervishes, who then forced him out to wander naked through the world.
The essential message is the same:
Risk all, and
as a naked beggar roam
If you would hear that
‘Enter’ call you home.72
Finally, NabulusI relates the man’s dream to
himself. Although, as he informs us, the dervish had been travelling for 20
years since the time of his repeated visions, ¿Abd al-GhanI al-NabulusI still
manages to interpret them as a sign that would culminate in the man’s meeting
with this great saint of the age, himself.
Encounters with the
righteous dead were at least as important to NabulusI as encounters with the
living. Writing in the Haqiqa of his longest journey, he notes that a
major concern in his rihla is to provide descriptions of some of the
prophets as well as ‘biographies of God’s friends and the righteous, who
honoured us by their presence at the time of our pilgrimage to them, whose
sweet odours perfumed us and whose lights illuminated us’.73 NabulusI
visited a vast number of holy tombs in his travels, in many cases recording
simply the location and that he recited the Fatiha and supplicated God.
On other occasions he provides more detail, sometimes more
SUFI VISIONARY OF OTTOMAN
DAMASCUS description of the site, short biographical information, notes of
miracles or of some aspect of his personal experience as a visitor to the alleged
tomb of the prophet or saint. Quite often he expresses his feelings in poetry,
recalling his sense of awe and of the blessedness of the holy person’s burial
place.
As a saintly Sufi pilgrim himself, ¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi
was prepared for communication with the holy dead at their tombs, that they
would indeed honour him with their presence. When he writes of their sweet
odours and lights, he means it literally and recollects experiences shared with
many other pilgrims. The aroma of sanctity may be a scent of musk or of
flowers, such as jasmine and roses. Its presence at a grave was taken to
indicate that the one buried there was truly a pure soul. Jewish and Christian
pilgrims held similar views on the odour of holiness.74 Nabulusi’s
claims to be illuminated by the lights of the holy dead also reflect widely
reported experiences. For example, more than a hundred years earlier Ibn al- Hawrani
noted of the Prophet Noah’s reputed grave at Kark near Ba¿labakk: ‘I saw the
brilliant lights (anwar) rising from the tomb (darih).’75
Medieval Jewish writers reported comparable sights, as in a thirteenth-century
account of a visit to a tomb of Ezra the Priest in an Iraqi village: ‘there
goes up from his grave on certain nights an illumination that dispels the thick
darkness’.76
By Nabulusi’s time the interest of Sufis in performing local
pilgrimages (ziyarat) to holy tombs was at a peak m Ottoman Arab lands,
supported by official patronage of shrines. According to the fifteenth-century
historian Maqrizi, the promotion of the practice of ziyarat in Egypt
dates back to the early thirteenth century. Christopher Taylor has observed
that, if this is correct, ‘it would correspond exactly with the link between tariqa
Sufism and the mass followings the brotherhoods began to attract in the same
period’.77 He would consequently see encouragement of the visitation
of graves as playing an important part in building a broad popular base for the
tariqas in Egypt and also in other Islamic lands.78 In the
great cemeteries of Cairo, especially al-Qarafa, the ziyara became an
organised group activity with guides to escort pilgrim parties and guidebooks
to provide information on the graves and their occupants, and to prescribe
proper etiquette for approaching the saints.79 While in Syria the
cult of saints and ziyara did not develop the large- scale organisation
of Egypt, it did give rise to its own literature of pilgrimage guides. Notable
among these was the well-known work of ¿Ali al-Harawi (d. 1215), a compendium
of information on holy sites in various Islamic countries, including Harawi’s
native Syria.80
Nabulusi obviously owes a debt to such guides for
pilgrims. At times he quotes from them in his descriptions of tombs, including
information on alternative burial sites where the authenticity of a grave’s
attribution is open to question. Similarly, he cites and quotes from the late
medieval fadâ’ïl literature on the ‘merits’ of cities such as Jerusalem,
and also makes use of general and local histories, geographical and
biographical works. Parts of the Haqiqa, in particular, may read very
much like a pilgrimage guide, when Nabulusi produces lists of graves in famous
cemeteries, such as al-Qarafa in Cairo. However, there is usually a more
personal engagement, a clearer sense of his spiritual participation in the
visitation of a holy grave. This is especially in evidence when he performs ziyâra
to an individual, and sometimes isolated, sanctuary away from the great city
cemeteries, or when he visits the tomb of a ‘friend of God’ to whom he feels
some special attachment.
Sufi saints of
southern Palestine
The tomb of ¿Ali b. ¿Ulaym
at Arsuf on the coast of southern Palestine was both an isolated sanctuary and
the burial place of a saint with whom Nabulusi already had some connection. The
saint’s spirit had supposedly visited him at Jinin three years before Nabulusi decided
to return the visit by performing ziyâra to his grave during the long
journey of 1693. His account of the ziyâra is of particular interest, as
it combines information on ¿Ali b. ¿Ulaym and his shrine with the personal
responses of Nabulusi and his companions to the experience of the pilgrimage.
On leaving the town of Ramla on the eightieth day
of his travels, Nabulusi mentions his intention to visit the saint and gives
some background on Shaykh ¿Ali and the esteem in which he was held.82 He
quotes at some length from a history of Palestine composed by ¿Abd al-Rahman
al-¿Ulaymi (d. 1521).83 After remarking on ¿Ali b. ¿Ulaym’s noble
descent from Caliph ¿Umar b. al-Khattab, ¿Ulaymi recorded that it was indeed a
miracle that even European Christians believed in his holiness. He adds: ‘I have
been informed that, when the Franks are at sea and approaching his grave, they
bare their heads and bow towards him.’84 Neither ¿Ulaymi nor Nabulusi
consider any other explanation for the Christians baring their
heads while facing east, presumably praying in the direction of Jerusalem. For
the Muslim authors, they must be honouring the Sufi saint and it is an
indication of Shaykh ¿All’s holiness that even the unbelievers recognise his
virtues. Nabulusî further quotes ¿Ulaymí on the high regard of the great Mamluk
Sultan al-Zahir Baybars (r. 1260-77) for the saint, who had died almost 200
years earlier. Baybars, on his way to conquer this part of Palestine, had
visited the shrine and supplicated God at the grave to give victory to his
Muslim army. This was taken as another sign of ¿All b. ¿Ulaym’s important position
as a saint. A further indication of this was the large number of pilgrims
attending the annual summer festival at the shrine and making endowments (awqaf).
Finally, Nabulusî relays ¿Ulayml’s description of the extensive restoration of
the sanctuary in the late fifteenth century.85 This included
replacing a wooden with a marble cover for the grave and building a tower on
the west side nearest the sea, equipped with weaponry to fight the European
Christians.
Given this background,
the reader of the Haqiqa is prepared for the account of Nabulusî’s own ziyara.
He was accompanied by notables from Ramla, including a descendant of the saint,
Shaykh Abu ’l-Huda, in addition to the party travelling with him to Gaza and
Egypt. He describes the sanctuary as lying far from any habitation in
unpopulated country near the seashore.86 There was a spacious
courtyard surrounded by walls and a gate that was locked when no visitors were
expected. It had to be unlocked for Nabulusî and his party. Nabulusî’s
description of the shrine is simple, but his account is characterised by a
strong sense of being in the presence of holiness. When the gate was opened,
lights shone out from the grave in broad daylight. At other sites this might
only be perceived to happen at night,87 so the illumination of the
grave by day testified to the great sanctity of ¿All b. ¿Ulaym. The mihrab
at the marble building appeared to be full of revealed and hidden mysteries,
while ‘fragrant breezes’, the odour of sanctity, bore witness to the pure soul
that had been accepted by God.
If further evidence were
needed of the true sainthood of ¿Alî b. ¿Ulaym, it was demonstrated by the
answering of Nabulusî’s prayers. His son Isma¿íl had travelled with him as far
as Sidon, but left him there to return to Damascus at his mother’s request. At
Shaykh ¿Alî’s grave Nabulusî supplicated God to move his son to rejoin him on
the journey and accompany him on the hajj. He recalls that the answer
was immediate. Isma¿íl left Damascus that very day and a few days later joined
his father at Gaza. Nabulusî adds that other prayers were
answered because he supplicated God at the grave, but he never prayed for ¿Ali b.
¿Ulaym to intercede as a more ordinary pilgrim might have done.
A son of ¿Ali b. ¿Ulaym
and two of his grandsons were also buried in southern Palestine at sites
revered as holy and objects of ziyâra.90 Nabulusi also writes
of the lights illuminating these graves. He notes of ¿Ali’s grandson, Shaykh
‘Ijlin, that his grave by the sea was open to the sky with no building over it.
Once again Nabulusi appears as the honoured guest of the saint, since during
his ziyâra a boy brings him a basket of sweet figs and another brings a bunch of double
narcissus. He describes the figs as ‘the banquet of Shaykh ‘Ijlin’.91
It is yet another case of mutual recognition among Sufi saints.
At the tombs of
Ibn ¿Arabi and Ibn al-Farid
In all his rihlas
except for the last, Nabulusi records at the beginning that he performed ziyârât
to the holy graves of the Damascene cemeteries and to his spiritual father,
Ibn ¿Arabi. In Hullat al-dhahab and the Hadra this receives a
brief mention.92 In the Haqîqa Nabulusi writes at greater
length of his visit to the tomb of his beloved Great Shaykh at Salihiyya.93
Even if he had had no special connection to the famous scholarly saint, the
mausoleum was such an important place of pilgrimage at this time that it would
have been odd for him to write of visits to the righteous dead and not perform
the ziyâra or record it.
In Nabulusi’s day Ibn ¿Arabi’s
tomb was visited by many Turkish, as well as Arab, pilgrims since Sultan Selim
I had rescued the site from a long period of neglect. The sultan, after his
conquest of Syria in 1516, arranged for the urgent construction of a new
mausoleum and mosque to promote the position of Ibn ¿Arabi as an effective
patron saint of the Ottoman dynasty. On 5 February 1518 he rode in person to
inaugurate the prestigious new buildings at Salihiyya.94 But why
was the sultan so concerned to associate himself and the Ottoman state with
the great Sufi master? Ryad Atlagh has posited that Selim sought legitimacy for
Ottoman rule by the annexation of important religious symbols: the caliphate,
the earth’s sacred centre at Mecca and the Seal of the Saints represented by
Ibn ¿Arabi.95 Barbara von Schlegell also notes the usefulness to the
Ottomans of having Ibn ¿Arabi on their side in the struggle with the Safavid Shi¿i
Shahs of Persia and concludes:
‘A NEW KIND OF MYSTICAL
TRAVEL-LITERATURE’ sainthood, the sultan certainly appeared to be in a great
hurry to assert his claims to the Great Shaykh’s protection of his Islamic
state.
¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi
notes briefly in the Haqiqa his own visit to the tomb and refers the
reader to a short treatise that he wrote in 1678 on the proper Sufi etiquette
to be followed in the ziyâra. He had entitled it al-Sirr al-mukhtabi
fî darih Ibn al-c Arabi (The Hidden Secret Concerning the Tomb of Ibn
al-Arabi).97 Nabulusi explains that there are two different
approaches to the grave and the choice of approach is significant as an
indication of the spiritual state of the pilgrim. He writes that the most
blessed way to enter is via a garden ‘crossed by a stream of propitious water’.98
The garden represents the Haqiqa, the ultimate truth, and the
visitor who takes this way to the shrine finds the tomb in an elevated position
and knows the superiority of the saint. He will then
However, the visitor who
goes first to the mosque that represents the Sharha, and then descends
to perform the ziyâra, will see the tomb below him and wrongly act as
though he is superior to the saint.
Nabulusi presents a brief
biography of Ibn ¿Arabi in the Haqiqa account, lists some of his own
writings on the Shaykh and produces a poem for the occasion.101 He
also records the experience of one of his friends who, on the following night,
dreamt of Ibn ¿Arabi and heard the Great Shaykh recite new verses of his own
composition. The dreamer committed them to memory, wrote them down and passed
them on to Nabulusi.102 It seems that he accepted their authenticity
as a true message from the world of truth.
Another major Sufi shrine
that made a deep impression on
Apart from the tombs of Ibn ¿Arabi and Ibn al-Farid,
Nabulusi visited many other Sufi tombs and alleged tombs, some of which were
unlikely burial sites. An example of a falsely attributed grave to which he
performed ziyâra is that of Abu Yazid al-Bistami (d. 874) at Rastan on
the way to Hama.106 The better-known grave is at Bistam in northern
Iran. Although Nabulusi is aware of the Bistam site, it is characteristic of
him that he does not rely wholly on historical evidence in ascertaining
authenticity, but is also guided in his judgement by his own mystical
experience. Thus he writes of Abu Yazid’s supposed grave at Rastan that ‘over
him and his grave there is splendour and awe, asserting his presence there’.107
Ultimately, although Nabulusi’s rihlas are not always infused with
mysticism, he gives such importance to mystical experience and knowledge that
it seems fair to consider his travel accounts as predominantly mystical rihlas.
LAST YEARS IN SALIHIYYA,
1707-1731
The years of Nabulusi’s old age coincided with a time of tensions
and factional disputes in Damascus, by which he was personally affected. It was
a period when the Ottoman authorities were intent on bringing the city and its
province under greater central control and, while much was achieved in this
direction by the energies of the new governors, it was not without its human
costs.1 In 1706 Suleyman Pasha, a governor with an already fearsome
reputation in the Hijaz and Egypt, was appointed to Damascus.2
During his brief tenure of office for under a year he managed to alienate many
Damascenes by his harsh measures in forcing the closure of the suqs and
alleged extortionate demands of money. The protests of local ‘ulama’ on
behalf of the people led to a number of them being exiled to Sidon.3
At this time Nabulusi was driven out of his inherited teaching post at the Darwishiyya
Madrasa, endowed by a former governor for his great-grandfather Isma¿il and his
descendants.4 The loss of this post appears to be related to Nabulusi’s
readiness to act as a spokesman for the Damascenes.5
Amidst the general
unrest, the Nabulusis’ old family house near the Umayyad Mosque had become
increasingly unsafe, being situated in the Perfume-Sellers’ Suq at the heart
of the disturbances in the city centre. In 1707 an incident took place there
that had a further negative impact on Nabulusi’s life. A band of the imperial
janissary troops attacked one of the Damascene sayyids in the street
outside his house and killed the man. Nabulusi protested and joined in
hand-to-hand combat in which he was blinded in one eye.6 This
misfortune, in addition to his being forced from the Darwishiyya, triggered his
decision to move with his family to the more peaceful environment of Salihiyya
on the outskirts of the city, where he would also have the spiritual comfort of
closeness to the tomb of Ibn ¿Arabi. He first built a simple house by the
graves of the popular ecstatic saint Yusuf al-Qamînî and his custodian Shaykh
Mahmud, who had predicted ¿Abd al-Ghani’s great future before his birth.
Shortly afterwards he moved to a new home built in an orchard area known as al-¿Ajamiyya.7
The community of Salihiyya
had been founded in the twelfth century on the slopes of Mount Qasyun by Hanball
families migrating from the region of Nablus.8 Since then, the
district had built up a strong reputation for the personal piety of its ‘ulamâ’
families as well as having a considerable Sufi presence. It was also a healthy
and attractive location. On a visit to Damascus almost 50 years earlier, in
1660, a French traveller, Chevalier Laurent d’Arvieux, had remarked how many
upper-class Damascenes had houses in Salihiyya ‘as much for the view as for the
gardens which adjoin them’.9
Nabulusi was in his
mid-sixties at the time of the move, but remained active in teaching, spiritual
guidance and writing into his late old age. He continued to teach Sufi works,
especially those of Ibn ¿Arabi, in his private study circles, but also boldly
insisted on giving public readings of the Great Shaykh’s Futuhât, despite
the criticisms of anti-Sufi elements in the city.10 At the age of 90
years he had reached the middle of his third presentation of the Futuhât
to the people of Damascus. During the early time in Salihiyya, the
distinguished Khalwati, Shaykh Mustafa b. Kamal al-din al-Bakri, was among his
close disciples, studying with him there until 1709. Until 1718 another
constant companion was Muhammad al-Dikdikji, a major early disciple and copyist
of many of Nabulusi’s works, noted for his fine voice in reading aloud in the
study circles. A third main disciple in this period was Husayn al-Baytamani,
who died in 1715 after 15 years of devoted service to the shaykh. He is
representative of the less-educated followers of Nabulusi, whose spiritual
leadership appealed across classes.11
In 1710 Nabulusi completed
work on his widely read commentary on Ibn al-Farid’s poetry, understood within
the complex theosophical framework of Ibn ¿Arabi’s thought.12 Julian
Baldick notes that it might ‘at first sight’ be supposed to resemble a
fifteenth-century commentary ‘in which earlier poetic talent is submerged in a
flood of theorizing’.13 However, on closer examination:
LAST YEARS IN SALIHIYYA,
1707-1731
So a number of verses are
explained with reference to the shaykh- murid relationship and tariqa-based
activities.
For the next
20 years ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi retained his commitment to expound and
defend Ibn ¿Arabi’s views and present his own interpretation of wahdat
al-wujud. In December 1712 he did so even for a Christian correspondent,
Athanasius Dabbas, the Patriarch of Antioch for two periods of tenure from 1686
to 1689 and from 1720 to 1724.15 Nabulusi addresses the ex-patriarch
at the time of his letter with respect for a fellow traveller on the ‘path of
God’, regardless of his religion in this world. In his customary extravagant
language, Nabulusi writes of him as one of his ‘brothers in spiritual practice,
whose noble souls and subtle essences have become moons in the sky of
theology’.16 However, some of the anti-Sufi Muslims in Damascus were
less receptive than the Christian ‘brother’. A year later, in 1713, he wrote in
pained tones of the hostility that he encountered from some Turkish opponents,
whom he describes as ‘oafish Turkish students’ and complains: ‘They object to
Sufi dhikr with raised voices and to rising and moving in a state of
ecstasy at dhikr.’17 But, whatever the problems presented by his
enemies, Nabulusi continued to write commentaries and Sufi poetry, and
assembled his Diwan al-haqa’iq (Diwan of Truths) in the last years of
his life.18 He also enjoyed widespread popular support from the
Damascenes as their ‘people’s saint’ and defender against bribery and
corruption in official circles, and against injustice and oppression. When he
was over 80 years old, in 1722-3, he finally became Hanafi mufti of the
city by public demand, but was ousted soon afterwards through the intrigues of
a jealous rival.19
Nabulusi died at the age of 90 years in 1731
after a short illness.20 When he was prepared for burial on the day
after his death, the ritual washing and dressing of the body was carried out by
a Hanbali friend. According to one glowing obituary by the eighteenthcentury
chronicler Ibn Jum¿a, there had died
the qutb
of this time, the marvel of his epoch, the illustrious mystic, the imam
of the faith, the sultan of the learned, the great scholar, the seal of the mujtahids,
my lord and master, Shaykh ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi - may God sanctify his
soul and help us to benefit from his coming.21
All business in the city
stopped on the day he died and huge crowds gathered in Salihiyya to mourn his passing.
He was buried in a mausoleum that he had had constructed in 1714 close to that
of his spiritual father, Ibn ¿Arabi, the Great Shaykh, whom he so loved.
CONCLUSION
‘The illustrious mystic’ and ‘sultan
of
the learned’
Ibn Jum¿a, in his
obituary of Nabulusi, assigns to him three titles that refer plainly to his
saintly distinction, and the chronicler appears to give these precedence over
three other titles that relate to Nabulusi’s scholarly achievement. Making
allowance for the flowery Arabic of the age, how well might these descriptions
fit ¿Abd al- Ghani al-Nabulusi? It is proposed to look first at those that
designate him as a Sufi saint and then consider his status as a Sufi scholar.
The third title by which
Ibn Jum¿a designates Nabulusi’s sainthood is ‘imam of the faith’. ¿Abd
al-Ghani shared with his many disciples the conviction that he was to play a
leading role in guiding dedicated seekers on the ‘path of God’, but he was also
conscious, at least at times in his life, of playing a wider role in guiding
the ‘umma’ towards true faith. At the end of his life this is indicated
in his dreams of 1728 and 1730, in which he rebuilds the Ka¿ba and keeps its
key. He showed a deep concern with the corruption that he perceived to be
polluting Arab Muslim society in his day. He believed passionately that he must
struggle to purify Islam and defend the vision of its true representatives, the
sincere Sufis. Consequently, it seems fair to regard Nabulusi as a Sufi
reformer able to lead by example as a ‘friend of God’, perhaps then deserving
the title of ‘imam of the faith’. However, among modern scholars he has
not generally been thought to be a reformer. This is apparently because he does
not exactly fit the profile of a Sharfa- conscious activist, a so-called
‘neo-Sufi’ social reformer. He does not seem to share much in common with the
new-style reforming figures of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
such as Shah Wali Allah of Delhi (d. 1762) in India, Usuman dan Fodio (d. 1817)
in Wett Africa or even the aamous Kurdish Naqshabandi, Shaykh Khalid al-Shahrazuri
(d. 1827), who himself came to live in Damascus and married a niece of one of Nabulusi’s
grandsons. Barbara von Schlegell observes that it is only in his dedication to Hadith
that he bears any similarity to a neo-Sufi and that he has ‘no influence on
neo-Sufi reform.’2 Julian Baldick remarks that he is ‘a thoroughly
backward-looking figure’ and cites in support of this view his writings of a
defensive character ‘in justification of the Whirling Dervishes, of the dancing
and music of the Sufis in general, of their use of tobacco, of “gazing at
beardless boys”,’ and so on.3 While Nabulusi may indeed
be a thoroughgoing traditionalist, he cares passionately that all these Sufi
activities should be practised with a pure heart and be free of
the decadence and corruption of the age. He also sees it as his duty to protect
the interests of the Muslims and to seek justice for the oppressed. Hence,
while Nabulusi’s reforming efforts may be rather different in character from
those of slightly later Sufi reformers, nevertheless they may justify a
perception of him as a saintly Sufi champion of reform.
There seems little doubt that ¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi
represented the apex of Arab Islamic scholarly production in the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries. Ibn Jum¿a’s designation of him as ‘the great
scholar’ and ‘sultan of the learned’ is hard to dispute, since he stands head
and shoulders above most of his contemporaries in the Arab lands. The third
title, ‘seal of the muftahidsf is perhaps the most exaggerated claim. It
would appear to be far too presumptuous to suggest that ijtihad reached
perfection with him, although it serves as a reminder that Nabulusi was also a
competent Hanafi jurist and respected as such in his day. However, it is the
breadth and depth of his Sufi scholarship, informed by his devotion to the
study of the medieval intellectual tradition and nurtured by his visionary
inspiration and cultivated literary talent, that makes his work particularly
distinctive and remains his most enduring legacy.
Nabulusi’s work as a
commentator on Sufi texts, notably of Ibn ¿Arabi, Ibn al-Farid and ¿Abd al-Karim
al-Jili, would be remarkably influential among Arabs of his day and succeeding
generations. For many of them, their acquaintance with the great masters of
the past would be made to a considerable extent through the mystical
interpretations of Nabulusi. While beyond the scope of the present study and
having been the subject of limited investigation so far, further examination
of these commentaries is likely to be of value in uncovering some of the
understandings of previous Sufi thought circulating from Nabulusi’s time
through to the later Ottoman period. Study of Nabulusi’s exposition of Sufi
doctrine, exemplified in books such as the Fath and al-Wujud al-Haqq
and in shorter writings such as the fatwa for the ex-Patriarch of
Antioch, shows a mind heavily influenced by Ibn ¿Arabi’s ideas and someone
presenting himself as the protector of the Great Shaykh’s good name. However,
it is not always clear to what extent Nabulusi may at times have either
misunderstood Ibn ‘Arabi or wished to take a deliberately somewhat different
line on certain key issues, and yet to present his views as being in conformity
with those of his spiritual father in order for them to gain greater credence
in a conservative society. For example, Nabulusi’s thought on wahdat
al-wujud may also be affected to some degree by the absolute monism of
Ibn Sab¿in and his school, whose work he studied from his youth, but of whom
his contemporaries remained deeply suspicious and whom he mentions by name only
occasionally in later life, for example in al-Wujud al-Haqqd It would thus be of value to investigate further
the sources and nature of influence on Sufi theoretical thought, as well as any
new directions taken, in the under-explored Arabic Islamic writings of the late
seventeenth to late eighteenth centuries. Hopefully, this would also shed light
on the climate of critical reaction against Sufism, most forcefully represented
by the Arabian Wahhabis, in the years after Nabulusi’s death.
However, Nabulusi’s writing was not only
significant for the development of Sufi theory in the Ottoman period. He has
also been observed to be an accomplished Sufi poet, developing an extraordinary
and ingenious verbal dexterity from an early age. This is observed from his
1664 poem of praise for the Prophet, together with its commentary, and
continued in the many poems of his Diwan al-haqa’iq and in poetry
contained in prose works of literature, such as his mystical rihlas.
Although his ornate style and love of wordplay may have limited appeal to
modern taste, it is of special interest both to gain an appreciation of the
literary tastes of educated Sufis in the pre-modern period and for Nabulusi’s
use of poems to give expression to mystical insights. Elsewhere, he would also
write in his elaborate prose of his personal experience of unveiling and
reaching the heights of a Sufi visionary, especially during the years of his
retreat. Other prose works, such as Ghayat al-matlub (on gazing on
beautiful youths), have attracted particular attention for his expression of
strongly held and controversial views on the Sufi practices of his day.
¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi
was obviously himself a member of a cultural Sufi élite, but his writing is not
only important for increased understanding of that élite and its Sufi
preoccupations. The rihlas, for example, are also of considerable
interest for the information they offer on the Sufi life of uneducated
ecstatics and popular beliefs and practices relating to the cult of saints in
the Ottoman Arab lands, particularly in Syria, Palestine and Egypt. In common
with other Sufis, Nabulusi acknowledged a spiritual élite that cut across
boundaries of wealth, class and education. Yet part of his work also reflects
his concern to give something back as a ‘people’s saint’, ‘imam of the
faith’, to those who may be outside this élite. This is apparent from some of
his juristic scholarship and contributions to Hadith studies. It is
especially evident in his compilation of Tcffír al-anam, his book of
symbolic dream interpretation, to which he intends ‘everyone to have access’5 at a time when he is experiencing his personal
‘opening’ to the truth of his own dreams and visions.
¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi remained, to his death
and beyond, a complex and controversial figure, inspiring love and hatred,
suspicion and admiration among Muslims of his own and succeeding generations.
In life he was to suffer accusations of unbelief and immorality and to feel
compelled to defend his own reputation, and that of his beloved Ibn ¿Arabi and
other Sufi masters, against vicious attacks. Yet he was revered by many
disciples and students, and welcomed with respect by governors, ‘ulama’,
local notables and ecstatics wherever he travelled in Syria and Palestine,
Egypt and the Hijaz. He was venerated as a saint by many ordinary people as
well as by high religious dignitaries of the Ottoman state. In death he was to
be a target of anti-Sufi criticism as one who undermined true faith through his
interpretations of the ‘infidel mystics’ and propagation of their doctrines,
and who encouraged the extreme veneration of Sufi shaykhs, tomb pilgrimages and
many reprehensible innovations. To later Muslim modernisers he stood as the
epitome of the conservative reactionary, supporting irrational beliefs in
guidance through dreams, communication with the dead, saintly miracles and so
on, a thought world that they hoped to see swept away in the course of the march
to progress. For those who believed in the validity of Sufi mystical experience,
he was the greatest Sufi visionary of the Arabs from the seventeenth century
onwards, ‘the illustrious mystic’ and ‘sultan of the learned’.
Preface
See
Chodkiewicz (1993), 136 and 144, n. 41 onNabulusî’s claim according to his
grandson, Muhammad Kamal al-dîn al-Ghazzî.
On Tirmidhî’s
concept of sainthood, see Radtke and O’Kane (1996), especially the translation
of Sîrat al-Awliya’, 38-211; for discussion of this work, see Radtke,
‘The concept of Wilaya in early Sufism,’ in Lewisohn (1999), 48396.
Ibid.,493.
Ibn ¿Arabî quoted in Chodkiewicz (1993), 120.
Ibn ¿Abd al-Salam quoted in Knysh (1999), 72.
Chapter 1
See Perlmann (1986),
407-10.
On Yusuf
al-Qamînî and other marginal holy men, see Chamberlain (1994), 130-3 and
Bosworth (1976), 1: 121-2 on Qamînî and 111-15 on this religious underclass.
Geoffroy
(1995), 331, n. 157. See ibid. on various categories of ecstatic mystics, also
Dols (1992), 366-422.
Chamberlain
(1994), 132.
Ibid., 132, n. 157.
Muradî (1968),
3: 31.
von Schlegell (1997), 34.
Nabulusî (1986). The date
of birth given by Muradî (1968), 3: 31 is 5 Dhu ’l- Hijja, 1050 AH.
See Eliade (1958), 247-50
on the practice of laying babies on the earth, its widespread distribution and
significance.
Nabulusî (1974), 321. For
a fuller discussion of the Banu Jama¿a and Nabulusîs see Sirriyeh (2001).
Ibn Jama¿a trans. and
quoted in Chamberlain (1994), 127 and see further 125-50 on the association
between purity and learning.
Nabulusî (1974), 321.
This commentary on a treatise by Mehmed Birgili (d. 1573), a critic of Sufi
innovations, was completed by Nabulusî in 1683. Chodkiewicz (1999), 108.
Ghazzî (1945—58;reprint1979), 3:130-5 for the
biographical notice on ¿Abd al-Ghanî’s great-grandfather Isma¿d.
Nabulusî (1986), 7-13.
Ibid., 11.
Leder (1997).
Nabulusî (1986), 7.
Ibid., 14.
Nabulusî (1997), 394.
Voll (1972), 287.
Nabulusî (1998).
Voll (1972), 287.
On disputes
between Hanballs and both Hanafis and Shafi'is in medieval Damascus, see
Chamberlain (1994), 167-74.
On the Ottoman
smoking debate and Nabulusi’s contribution to it, see Berger (2001).
See n. 14.
Kamal al-din al-Ghazzi quoted
in Munajjid and Wild (1979), 9.
Ghazzi cited in ibid.;
Muradi (1968), 3: 31.
See further Chapter 2 on this
relationship. For a general introduction to Ibn 'Arabi’s thought, see
Hirtenstein (1999).
Atlagh (1997),
on the construction of the mausoleum and the sixteenth-century saintly status
of Ibn 'Arabi.
On the Kadizadeli
movement, see Zilfi (1988). Two unpublished theses on the subject are: Oztürk
(1981) and Çavuçoglu (1990).
Zilfi (1988), 136-7.
Addas (1993), 278.
Ibn al-'Arabi
(1980), 45-6.
Ibn Sab'in, my
translation from German trans. of Kattoura (1977), 58.
See Aladdin (1995), 70.
Knysh (1999), 44.
Ibn Taymiyya trans. and
quoted in Ansari (1984), 148.
Addas (1993),
249. See Knysh (1999), 167-99, for a fuller critical examination of views on
Islamic mysticism and monistic philosophy in the Muslim West, including those
of Ibn Khaldun (184-97).
Ibn Khaldun trans. and
quoted in ibid., 191-2.
Ibid., 192.
Cornell
(1997): 46-9 on the question of whether Ibn Sab'in committed suicide and the
implications in the Islamic and Meccan context.
Ibid., 54-5.
Ibid., 54.
Ibid., 58.
Geoffroy (1995), 471, n.
394.
See e.g. Nabulusi
(1995a), 251 where he mentions Ibn Sab'in as if he is belonging to the school
of Ibn 'Arabi.
See Maribel
Fierro, ‘al-Shushtari’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, ix, 513.
Shushtari’s poetry has been studied by Abou-Bakr (1987), including discussion
of Nabulusi’s comments on it.
On Ibn Taymiyya and
Tilimsani, see Nwyia (1978).
Ansari (1984), 149 and
Addas (1993), 258.
Nabulusi (1986), 21.
Muradi (1968), 3: 31.
For a
linguistic and literary discussion of Nabulusi’s Nasamat and Nafahat,
see Cachia (1988); see Cachia (1998) for summarised and systematised Arabic
text and English translation of the Nafahat.
Cachia (1998), 1.
Cachia (1988), 219.
Trans. in
Cachia (1998), 42 and Arabic text at No. 63; see also Nabulusi’s and Cachia’s
comments on chronograms, ibid., 42-3 and No. 63.
The
consonantal values in Bi Muhammadin atasharrafu are as follows: ba’ 3; mim
40; ha’ 8; mim40; dal 4; alif 1; ta’ 400; shin 300; ra’ 200; fa’ 80 = 1076.
Italics for
‘conscience’ are mine. Trans. in Cachia (1998), 81; see also Nabulusi’s and
Cachia’s comments on cryptograms, ibid., 80-2 and No. 116 and compare comments
on two similar tropes (riddles and charades), 78-80 and Nos 114-15. Cachia
(1988), 221, unravels another complex cryptogram by Nabulusi where the solution
is the Prophet’s name ‘Mustafa’, reached by replacement and reordering of
letters and words as well as addition and subtraction of letters assigned
numerical values.
Zilfi (1988), 149.
Nabulusi
(1986), 49, mentioned as his journey to ‘al-Rum’, whereas Muradi (1968), 3: 32
writes of dar al-khilafa, ‘the seat of the caliphate’.
von Schlegell
(1997), 43-4.
See Douwes (2000),
70-5, on the Kaylani family of mystics and ‘ulama’. The Kaylanis moved
from Baghdad to settle in Hama from the fourteenth century. Nabulusi (1986),
49.
von Schlegell (1997),
161.
Nabulusi (1986), 49.
Munajjid and Wild (1979),
11.
Chapter 2
Nabulusi
(2001), 134.
See von
Schlegell (1997), 221 on this dream of 15 December 1721. Ibid.
A later tract
of this type from 1692 is discussed by Winter (1988).
See Aladdin’s
(1995) ciritiaal Arabic edition and French commentary on Nabulusi’s important
work on wahdat al-wujüd from 1693, Kitab al-wujüd al- haqq wa khitab
al-shuhüd al-sidq.
Chittick (1997), 53-4.
Nabulusi
(1960), 44.
Ibid., 47.
See Qushayri
(1990), 1-11.
Ibid., 5.
Nabulusi (1960), 49.
Ibid., 51-4
for Nabulusi’s views on the degrees of existence and the place of sin within
the system of wahdat al-wujüd.
Ibid., 51.
Ibid., 52.
Schimmel (1975), 272.
Jili (1949,
1983). For a still valuable introduction to Jili’s doctrine of al-insan
al-kamil, see Nicholson (1967), 77-142. Within a few months of writing the Fath,
Nabulusi was to complete, in late March-April 1675, the only known commentary
on Jili’s long Sufi poem, al-Nâdirâtal-cAyniyya. Itwas
entitled al- Macarif al-ghaybiyya fîsharh al-cayniyya
al-jlliyya and remained in manuscript until recently edited by Yusuf Zaydan.
See Jili (1999).
Nabulusi (1960), 52-3.
Ibid., 54-5.
Ibid., 57.
Ibid., 62-5. Nabulusi notes the early debates in Islam as to
whether the grievous sinner is or is not a believer and briefly records the
views of the Khawarij that such a person is an unbeliever, of the Mu¿tazila
that s/he is in the intermediate position between belief and unbelief, of al-Hasan
al-Basri (d. 728)that s/he is a hypocrite, and of the Sunn is that the
persistent sinner is sinful (fasiq) but not an unbeiiever or
hypocrite. On these debates, see e.g. Watt (1973).
Ibid., 66.
Ibid., 70.
Ibid., 71. Compact Ibn
al-¿Aeabí (1980), 124-5.
Nabulusî (I960), 72.
Ibid., 73.
Feom ¿Abd
al-Ghanî al-Nabulusî, Munajat al-haktm, teans. and quoted in eon
Schlegell (1997), 70.
Ibid.
Nabulusî (1960), 76.
Ibid., 79.
Ibid., 87,
wheee Nabulusî eefees to his al-Radd al-mattn, weitten two yeaes
peeeiously in defence of Ibn ¿Aeabî.
Ibid., 94-5.
The question
of the identity of Nabulusî’s accusees and enemies and his confeontation with
them in the late 1670s-80s is discussed in Chaptee 3.
Ibid., 95.
Nabulusî teans.
and quoted in Wintee (1988), 95 and see 94-7 foe fuethee discussion of Nabulusî’s
eiews on the supeeioeity of the Aeabs.
Ibid., 94.
Nabulusî (1960), 96.
Baldick
(1989), 68, points to the peoblems caused by some Westeen weitees’
misteanslation of haqïqï as ‘saceed’ and majazt as ‘peofane’,
especially in the context of the poetey of loee wheee they make a false
endeaeoue to distinguish between saceed and peofane loee.
On ¿Abduh’s
identification of peoblems foe the umma aeising feom failuee to follow
the eaely geneeations of Muslims (al-salaf), see e.g. Houeani (1962),
149-51; and Sieeiyeh (1999), 94-8.
Nabulusî (1960), 103.
Ibid., 107.
Knysh (1993),
320; see, fuethee, Knysh (1999) foe an in-depth study of the building of Ibn ¿Aeabî’s
posthumous image.
Nabulusî (1960),
117.
See Geoffeoy
(1995), 398 foe Nabulusî’s ceiticisms of the fuqaha’ and 380-5 on the
jueists peonouncing eaeious Sufis to be unbelieeees.
Nabulusî
(1960), 127. Nabulusî thus counts the opponents of Sufi scholaes among those
who aee guilty of takdhtb (counting false God’s teuth).
Geoffeoy
(1995), 398, n. 199. ¿Alwan al-Hamawî is also known as ¿Alî b. ¿Atiyya. See
Wintee (1977), 281-308 on both these Sufi shaykhs. Wintee desceibes al-Hamawî as
‘the most peominent Sufi weitee of the fiest half of the sixteenth centuey’ and
his weitings as ‘one of the peincipal soueces foe the tenets of the Sufi
moeement founded by ¿Alî ibn Maymun’ (281).
Ibid., 302-4 on these
shaykhs’ quaeeels with the ‘ulama’.
Ibn Tulun
trans. and quoted in ibid., 304, n.115.
Nabulusî (1960), 131.
Ibid., 130.
Ibid., 84.
See Chittick (1988), 77-80 on the limited natuee of chastisement
in Hell and the functioning of God’s attribute of Meecy in eelation to His
Weath (ghadab) and the way in which they affect the human in this life
and in the next woeld; also Nettler (1978), 219-29 for an analysis of
the transformation of the traditional concept of God’s Mercy.
Nabulusi (1960), 122.
Ibn al-'Arabi (1980),
223.
Nettler (1978), 224.
Early
theologians, such as the Mu'tazila, most of the Murji’a and Zaydi Shi'a, Khawarij
and all but the earliest Twelver Shi'a rejected the possibility of God being
visible in the afterlife through perception, although they accepted the concept
of a vision ‘through the heart’. See D. Gimaret, art. ‘Ru’yat Allah’ in Encyclopaedia
of Islam, New Edition, viii, 649.
See Chittick
(1988), 79-80 on Ibn 'Arabi’s understanding of ru’yat Allah, citing Futûhat
(Beirut, n.d.), 3: 119.5 for this opinion.
Ibid., 80, n.
62, citing Futûhat, 3: 435.32.
Nabulusi (1960), 123.
Ibid.
Ibid., 168.
Ibid., 169.
Ibid., 170,
quoting Ibn 'Arabi, al-Muhkam al-marbût fima yalzim ahl tariq Allah min
al-shurût.
Ibid., 171.
Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab
(1928a).
Knysh (1995):
47. The author principally discussed in this article was one of the most
significant Sufi contemporaries of Nabulusi and a son of his was one of Nabulusi’s
students.
Ibid.
Peskes (1999), 149.
Chapter 3
Barbir (1980),
109. On Ottoman organization of the hajj in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, see Faroqhi (1994), and on the hajj from Damascus
in the eighteenth century (with some reference to the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries), see Barbir (1980), 108-77 and Rafeq (1966), 52-76.
Rafeq (1966), 55-8.
Ibid., 61.
Ibid., 60.
Muradi (1968),
3: 31 and Munajjid and Wild (1979), 11-12 on Nabulusi’s initiation.
Nabulusi’s
commentary, Miftah al-maciyya sharh al-risala al-Naqshabandiyya, was
to be one of the most widely circulated of Naqshabandi Arabic texts, reaching as
far as Indonesia.
On Jami’s
collection of 600 biographies, Nafahat al-uns wa hadarat al-quds, see
Mojaddedi (2001), 151-76 and 207-10. He notes (152) a number of editions of the
Nafahat, the first annotated edition being that of Mahmud Abedi (Tehran,
1992), as well as Arabic and Turkish translations.
On Baha’ al-din
and the early Naqshabandi tradition, see H. Algar, art. ‘Nakshband’ in Encyclopaedia
of Islam, New Edition, vii, 933^ [reprinted in Knysh (2000), 218-21].
Translated with some
adaptation and quoted in Trimingham (1971), 203-4.
Nabulusi’s Naqshabandi silsila
through Abu Sa'id is recorded in Nabulusi (1986), 46. On KhwajaAhrar, see
studies by Gross, e.g. Gross (1990), 109-22; and Gross (1999), 159-71. Also on
the early period of the Naqshabandi tradition, see Paul (1998).
H. Algar, art.
‘Nakshband’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, vii, 933 [reprinted
in Knysh (2000), 218-21].
Chapter 2, 19.
Ter Haar (1999), 319.
Nabulusi
(1986), 44-6, where Nabulusi records his inner (batin'} initiation and
gives his silsila back from his fourteenth-century shaykh.
See Hussaini
(1967). For a fuller study of the Uwaysi tradition, see Baldick (1993).
Ibid., 7.
Chapter 2, 27 and
further discussion in this chapter, 49-51 on conversations with God.
Friedmann
(1971), 27-8.
Muradi (1968),
3: 35 mentions thiscommentaryunderthe title Natljatal-Culûm wa
naslhat culamâ’ al-rusüm fl sharh maqalat al-Sirhindl al-maclüm,
but it seems to be a late work, as Nabulusi does not include it in the list he
provides of his own writings in Nabulusi (1986), 91-4, from 1693.
See Friedmann (1971), on
the evolution of this image.
H. Algar, art.
‘Naqshbandiyah’ in OxfordEncyclopedia ofthe Modern Islamic World, 3:
226.
Ibid.
Nabulusi
(1981).
Nabulusi wrote
in defence of Mawlawi ritual in a treatise from the 1680s entitled al-cUqüd
al-lu’lu’iyya fltarlq al-Mawlawiyya.
van Bruinessen
(1990), 155.
Ibid., 156.
See Voll
(1975) on Nqqshabandi contacts with the founder of the Arabian Wahhabi revivalist
movement.
H. A. R. Gibb,
art. ‘al-Muradi’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, vii, 602, and
Abu-Manneh (1982), 17.
On the Muradis’
property and waqfs benefiting the Naqshabandiyya in Damascus, see van
Leeuwen (1999), 130-4.
Ibid., 131.
Hamid Algar,
art. ‘Nakshbandiyya, 2. In Turkey’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam, New
Edition, vii, 936 and Knysh (2000), 226; Abu-Manneh (1982), 18-19. Ibid., 20.
Ibid., 1-17
and 23-36 on Shaykh Khalid and the Khalidiyya; also Hourani (1981a).
On the concept
of nazar and the literature of mystical love, see Schimmel (1975),
289-94.
Trans. Reynold
A. Nicholson, quoted in ibid., 292.
Trans. and quoted in
ibid., 290.
von Schlegell (1997),
73-5 and citing Nabulusi (1974), 2: 328-9.
Birgili wrote al-Tarlqa
al-Muhammadiyya in Arabic in 1572 shortly before his death. Nabulusi completed
his commentary on it in 1683. Birgili’s other popular treatise, known either as
Vasiyetname or Ilmihal or Risale was written in Turkish in
1562-3.
von Schlegell (1997), 67.
Ibid., 69-72 where von
Schlegell discusses some of these reports by Nabulusi of visionary
conversations with God, recorded in his Munajat al-hakim, ms. Berlin We
1631.
Trans. in ibid., 71.
On shathiyyat, see
Ernst (1985).
Ernst (1997), 119.
Schimmel (1975), 270 on
Ibn ¿Arabî’s vision.
Nabulusî
(1960), 107.
von Schlegell (1997),
64-5.
Muradî (1968), 3: 32.
The work
remained in manuscript until 1995, when it was edited with an introduction (in
Italian) by Pagani; see Nabulusî (1995b).
Ibid., Introduction, IV-V with Italian trans. of
Nabahanî’s comments.
Ibid., 18-22.
Ibid., 23.
Ibid., 34.
Ibid., 42-92 and
Introduction, IX-XI for Pagani’s discussion.
Ibid., 95-103
on Zayd b. Haritha and 103-17 on Usama b. Zayd. See also Introduction, XI-XIII.
Ibid., 130.
Ibid.
Ibid., Introduction, IV.
See e.g. de Jong (1987).
Radtke (1996),
341. Radtke (331) notes that Bakrî may have authored as many as 220 works, but
very few have been studied.
Chapter 4
von Schlegell (1997),
55-8 on Bakrî as a disciple of Nabulusî.
Bakrî trans. and quoted
in ibid., 187.
Baytamanî trans. and
quoted in ibid., 62.
Ibid., 183-4.
Rida (1934),
158-9. On Rida in Syria, see Sirriyeh (2000b); and on Rida’s critiques of
Sufism, Sirriyeh (1999), 98-102 and 110, and Hourani (1981b).
Kinberg
(1993), 285 and n.16on the dream appearance of the Prophet and the question of
‘whether the Prophet must be seen in his known form, or may be seen in any
other form’; and Katz (1996), 212-13.
Ibid., 213, n. 24.
Ibid., 214. See Fahd
(1966), 303-7 on Sufi guidance through dreams.
See Chapter 2, 32 and ns.
45-7 and Winter (1977).
Ibid., 294.
Nabulusî
(1960), 185-6.
See Fahd
(1966), 305-6 on conflicting Sufi opinions on the harm and benefit of sleep to the
believer.
This journey
will be discussed in Chapter 5, along with others undertaken between 1688 and
1700, after Nabulusî’s emergence from retreat.
Nabulusî (1990), 40.
Ibn ¿Arabî trans.
and quoted in Chittick (1989), 404, n. 24.
See e.g.
Hermansen (1997), 27-31 on theories of visions in Islam, identifying some of
the different forms and ways of understanding visionary experience. Katz
(1996), 213-15 on waqfat and mukashafa, based on a
fourteenth-century Persian manual by ‘Izz al-din Kashani.
Aladdin (1995),
Introduction, 12.
See Kinberg (1993), 288.
See e.g.
Kinberg (1999), 79-99 on literal message dreams that served to support or
undermine the reputations of hadlth-transmitters.
See Kinberg (1994).
On message
dreams in the ancientNear East, see Oppenheim (1956). Oppenheim (p. 197)
remarks on Hittite texss as exceptional in the Near lE^tt in recording women’s
experience of message dreams.
Kinberg (1993), 291.
Lamoreaux (2002), 83.
Ibid. On Ibn Sina’s dream
manual, see ibid., 69-76.
Ibid.
Nabulusi
(1986), 11-13 for the biographical notice of ¿Abd al-Ghani’s greatgrandfather,
Isma¿il. See further Chapter 1, 4 and
Sirriyeh (2001), 59-60. Burini’s commentary is contained with an abridged
version of Nabulusi’s mystical commentary, Kashf al-sirr al-ghamid, in
Ibn al-Farid (1901).
Nabulusi
(1986), 13.
von Schlegell
(1997), 31.
Ibn ¿Abd al-Wahhab, ¿Abd
Allah b. Muhammad (1928). Further on Shaykh ¿Abd Allah’s views see Sirriyeh
(1999), 3-4.
On scholarly usage of
literal dreams, see especially the work of Kinberg, e.g. (in addition to work
already noted) (1985), 47-79; (1991), 223-38.
Katz (1996), 220 and von Schlegell
(1997), 184-5 note Nabulusi’s discussion in his treatise Rawd al-anam fl bay
an al-ijaza fi ’l-manam completed in Ramadan, 1106/1694.
Nabulusi (1986), 89. The muftl
was Shaykh Ridwan b. al-Hajj Yusuf al- Sabbagh al-Misri al-Dimyati.
In this respect, it is
unlike some of the dreams recorded by Kinberg, ‘Dreams as a means to evaluate Hadith,’
where dreams function to confirm or reject a transmitter’s reliability and
hence the reliability of the hadlth in question.
See Lamoreaux (2002),
88-90 for a helpful classification of types of Islamic dream literature.
Hoffman
(1997), 47.
Lamoreaux (2002), 103.
The other text is Abu ¿Ali al-Dari, Muntakhab al- kalam fl tafslr al-ahlam,
falsely attributed to Ibn Sirin (d. 728), popularly credited with being the founding
figure of Islamic oneirocriticism. Dari is a much earlier writer in this genre
than Nabulusi, being thought to have lived between about 1009 and 1237.
See Schwarz
(1913).
Lamoreaux
(2002), 86 and see 204, ns. 18, 19.
On ancient Near Eastern
symbolic dreams and their interpreters, see Oppenheim (1956), 206-25 and, on
Greek dream interpretation, Cox Miller (1994).
This meaning
of ahadlth is mentioned by Fahd (1966), 272.
Ibn Hisham (1936) for an
account of this deeam. See Fahd (1966k 282-3 for discussion and 273-85
generally on the Prophet’s interpretation of his own dreams.
van Gelder
(1999), 509.
Nabulusi
(1997), 67.
Oppenheim
(1956), 272.
Ibid., 257.
For a
discussion of this attribution, see Fahd (1974).
On this adaptation of
religious references, see Lamoreaux (2002), 48-51. Artemidorus (1975), 161.
Lamoreaux (2002), 15-43
on the formative period of Islamic dream interpretation and 51-9 on Qayrawani (eleventh
century), who advocated following the early Arab Islamic tradition.
Ibid., 69-76.
Dinawari (1997). See Nabulusi
(1997), Conclusion, for the list of Nabulusi’s sources, also prominent among
them being Dari, on whom see n. 37.
e.g. Nabulusi
(1997), 8.
Ibid., 7.
See Fahd (1966), 338-9
for details of the manuscripts. Ibn Ghannam’s name is also given as Abu Tahir
... Ibn Ghanim al-Maqdisi al-Hanbali in the Conclusion of Nabulusi (1997),
author of al-Muclam (or al-Mucallam) cala
hurûf al- mucjam. He is noted by Fahd as also being the first to
write a versified handbook ¿Arûs al-bustan fi ’l-nisa’ wa ’l-acda’
wa ’l-insan on selected dream symbols (women, parts of the body and man). Nabulusi
also followed his example in composing a long oneirocritical poem, Nafahat
al-cabir fi ’l-tacbir, published as Tafstr
al-ahlam al-musamma al-cAbtr fi ’l-tacbir (Nabulusi,
1991). Nabulusi (1997), 8. See Maróth (1996), 233 on Arabic adoption of Galen’s
theory of the effects of temperament on dreams.
Nabulusi
(1997), 8-10 on types of dreams.
Ibid., 10-11.
Ibid., 31.
Ibid., 60.
Ibid., 29.
Ibid., 30.
Ruzbihan Baqli, The
Unveiling of Secrets, trans. and quoted in Ernst (1994), 86.
Nabulusi’s source here is
probably Dari (1994), 29, where the wording is identical. Compare Chapter 2, 34 and n.
56 for Nabulusi’s views on the vision of God in the afterlife.
Nabulusi
(1997), 31 taken from Dari, Muntakhab (Ibn Sirin, Tafstr), 29.
Nabulusi
(1997), 31.
Ibid.
Ibid., 508-9, entry on masjid.
See also ibid., 92-3 for the entry on jami al- balad.
Ibid., 509.
Ibid., 426,
entry on qubba.
Ibid.
van Gelder (1999), 510
where he also provides a translation of part of Nabulusi’s entry on madtna,
noting a section derived from Artemidorus. Nabulusi (1997), 500 and, for a
translation, van Gelder (1999), 510.
Nabulusi
(1997), 500-2.
Ibid., 501.
Ibid. See e.g. Cohen
(1973), 144-78 on these districts that were administered as part of the
province of Damascus, but suffered from serious problems of lawlessness.
Nabulusi
(1997), 501.
Ibid.
See Chapter 3, 40.
Ibid., 500,
entry on madinat al-nabi.
Ibid., 524.
Ibid., 520.
Ibid., 518-19. For a
comparative study of dreams of occupations in earlier manuals, see Lamoreaux
(2002), 99-102 and, on the occupations according to Dînawarî, Fahd (1965).
NabulusÎ
(1997), 34.
Ibid., 27 on the
Prophet’s Companions. On prophets in NabulusÎ (1997), see Sirriyeh (2000a),
122-6.
NabulusÎ (1997), 16,
entry on Abu Bakr al-Siddîq and 389 on 'Umar b. al- Khattab.
Ibid., 371, entry on 'Uthman
b. 'Affan and 387 on 'Alî b. Abî Talib.
Ibid., 371.
Ibid., 387.
Ibid., 89 and
141.
Ibid., 385 and
392.
Ibid.
Ibid., 408.
On Nabulusî’s
correspondence with the Patriarch, see Aladdin (1987-88) and, on his visit to
Bethlehem, NabulusÎ (1986), 125.
See Chapter 2, 32-3.
von Schlegell (1997),
96-7 on NabulusÎ’s letter to Grand Vizier Mustafa Koprülü, in which he
expresses concern about the threat posed by the Serbs. See Kellner-Heinkele
(1990).
Chapter 5
Aladdin
(1995), Introduction, 34.
Ibid., 34 and
n. 10.
Trimingham
(1971), 203 and see Chapter 3, 40-1.
See Schimmel
(1994), 76-83 on Islamic numerology.
Aladdin, (1995),
Introduction, 34 on this increased study of the Qur’an and Hadith.
See e.g. Baldick (1989),
134-6 for a view ofNabulusÎ as a reactionary and von Schlegell (1997), 19 on
the differences between NabulusÎ and Neo-Sufis, especially Hadith
scholars in Medina.
See Chapter 4, 63.
Aladdin (1995),
Introduction, 76. He further remarks (76, n. 50) on a late recognition of NabulusÎ
as a mujaddid by a copyist of one of his works on HanafÎ fiqh, Y.
Al-Biqa'Î (d. 1900).
On DikdikjÎ as a disciple
ofNabulusÎ, see von Schlegell (1997), 58-9 and Busse (1968), 88-9.
The work is also known as
al-Rihla al-Sughra. For the text of Hullat al-dhahab, see Salah al-dÎn
al-Munajjid’s edition in Munajjid and Wild (1979), 55-144, and for discussion,
29^-43. On NabulusÎ’s various travels in Lebanon, see Busse (1968), 71-114,
including comments on scholars and libraries, buildings and holy graves.
Munajjid and
Wild (1979), 56.
For a comparative study
of baraka and its appropriation by Muslims and Jews in the context of
medieval Syria, see Meri (1999a).
See ibid., 59-61 on
Islamic sacred topography, arguing for the importance of rural as well as urban
sites of pilgrimage.
Munajjid and Wild (1979),
76.
Maundrell (1963), 181.
Munajjid and Wild (1979),
76.
Ibid., 81.
Ibid.
Ibid., 81-7 for Nabulusi’s
description of the temples. See Busse (1968), 78-9 and 104-5 on this account
and two descriptions by European travellers, one by the Frenchman de Monconys,
who visited Ba¿labakk in 1647 (de Monconys, 1665) and one by Wood, who made his
visit in 1751 (Wood, 1757).
Munajjid and
Wild (1979), 82.
Ibid., 98.
See Meri
(1999b).
Munajjid and
Wild (1979), 98.
Ibid., 126.
Nabulusi (1990),
40 and see Chapter 4, 61-2 for discussion of this dream.
The work is also known as
al-Rihla al-wusta. The first Western description of the rihla was
by Gildemeister (1882). See also Sirriyyah (1979) for an earlier account of
this rihla and part of Nabulusi (1986) on Palestine.
Nabulusi (1990),
47.
Ibid., 48-50.
Ibid., 55.
Ibid., 57.
Ibid., 58.
Ibid., 67-8.
On the development of
belief in the sacredness of the whole of Syria (bilad al- Sham),
including Palestine, from the seventh to eleventh centuries, see Cobb (2002).
For still valuable
translations of medieval Arabic accounts of Islamic sites in Jerusalem (and
Palestine) before Nabulusi, see Le Strange (1890). For more recent discussion
of medieval Islamic Jerusalem, see e.g. Elad (1999) and Grabar (1996).
The section of Hadra
on the Haram al-Sharif was edited by R. Graf and lithographed at Saalfeld in
1918. Some of Nabulusi’s descriptions were translated into French (along with
other Arabic sources on Palestine)by Marmardji (1951). See also Elad (1999) for
comments on Nabulusi’s notes on the Haram in his day.
See Sirriyyah (1979),
64-6 on sites visited by Nabulusi in Jerusalem and Hebron in 1690 and 1693.
Apart from the Haram,
Elad (1999), 62-3 mentions the pilgrims’ itinerary as including ‘the Place of
Prayer of David (Mihrab Dawud), the Spring of Silwan, the Valley of Gehenna
(mainly the Church of Mary) and the Mount of Olives’. On the eighth century
origins of fada’il al-quds traditions, see Cobb (2002), 3840 and Elad
(1999), 63-8.
Goitein (1966).
Addas (1993),
197-8.
von Schlegell
(1997), 96-7.
Nabulusi
(1960), 84 and see Chapter 2, 32-3.
See Winter
(1988), 92-103 for discussion of this work. Winter (93) notes that the UCLA
manuscript was completed in draft by 8 September and the final copy by 17
December 1692. It was copied from Nabulusi’s autograph.
Trans. ibid., 94.
Ibid.
Ibid., 92.
von Schlegell
(1997), 101, noting that the name is provided in a different manuscript of the Qawl.
Winter (1988), 93.
Ibid., 97.
Ibid., 98-9.
Trans. in ibid., 99.
Ibid., 100-1.
Ibid., 102.
Ibid., 100.
Aladdin
(1995), Introduction, 15. For the Arabic text, see ibid., 5-291 (Arabic
numbers) with accompanying French introduction, 9-83.
Ibid., Introduction, 53.
Ibid., 15.
See Knysh
(1999), 141-65 for details of Taftazani’s life and refutation of Ibn ¿Arabi’s
metaphysics.
Ibid., 162.
Ibid.
Ibid., 149.
Taftazani
(1989). For Nabulusi’s comments, see al-Wugüd al-Haqq (Arabic text),
Chapter 22 and Aladdin’s (1995) Introduction, 45-52.
See Knysh (1999), 204-9 on ¿Ala’ al-din al-Bukhari, not to be
confused with his contemporary of the same name and also known as ¿Ala’ al-din ¿Attar
(d. 1400), a major disciple of Baha’ al-din Naqshband (d. 1389) and an admirer
of Ibn ¿Arabi, as well as being the shaykh whose spirit gave Nabulusi his inner
initiation into the Naqshabandiyya (see Chapter
3, 43).
Aladdin (1995),
Introduction, 16-17, 31.
Nabulusi visited
the village of Nabk on the road between Damascus and Hims later in the same
year. See Nabulusi (1986), 28-9.
Ibid., 14.
Ibn al-Hawrani (d. 1596)
trans. in Meri (2001), 39.
This work (Nabulusi,
1986) was fistt printed in Damascus in 1811-2, but manuscripts were already
known to European scholarship from descriptions by von Kremer (1850, 1851) and
Flügel (1862).
See Chapter 2, 30 and
142, n. 37 on haqlqa and majaz.
Nabulusi
(1986), 5. For a study of Sha¿rani, see Winter (1982).
Nabulusi
(1986), 26.
Ibid., 26-7 and Sirriya
(1979), 113-14.
Nabulusi
(1986), 29.
Nabulusi
(1986), 55.
See Munajjid
and Wild (1979), 67-70; Busse (1968), 101 on the mosque there, rebuilt by Muhammad
Pasha, Grand Vizier of Sultan Ibrahim (r. 1640-48). Munajjid and Wild (1979),
68-9.
Nabulusi
(1986), 55.
Ibid., 59.
See Berger
(2001) on Nabulusi’s writing on the issue of smoking according to Sharfa,
and von Schlegell (1997), 89-90.
Nabulusi
(1986), 57-8, where Nabulusi also gives a short biography of Ibn Adham, and
Sirriya (1979), 118.
Nabulusi (1986), 59-62 on
the stay at Latakya.
Ibid., 97-110
on northern Palestine and see Sirriyyah (1979), 58-60.
Nabulusi
(1986), 108.
Ibid., 106.
Safwat
al-asfiya’ fí bayan al-tafdil bayn al-anbiya’, composed by Nabulusi at
the request of one of the distinguished ‘ulama’ family of the ¿Alamis,
Shaykh Mustafa al-¿Alami. See Nabulusi (1986), 134.
Ibid. and see Sirriyeh
(2001).
Nabulusi
(1986), 133.
Ibid., 125.
Lithgow (1906), 246. On
Lithgow’s travels, see further Bosworth (1975).
Nabulusi
(1986), 147.
See D.
Sourdel, art. ‘Ghazza’ in Encyclopaedia ofïslam, New Edition, ii, 10567.
Nabulusi (1986), 165.
Ibid., 156.
Ibid., 177.
On the Bakri family in Ottoman
Egypt, see Winter (1992), 142-4 and 275.
Ibid., 136-7 and 138-42
on these brotherhoods.
On al-Qarafa, see Taylor
(1999), especially 15-61.
Nabulusi
(1986), 273.
Ibid., 292.
Ibid., 296.
Ibid., 306.
Ibid., 308.
See Chapter 3, 45 and
Knysh (1995), 39-47.
Like Nabulusi,
Shah Wali Allah had been initiated into both the Qadiriyya and Naqshabandiyya
(and also into the Chishtiyya), but Abu Tahir initiated him into four further tariqas:
the Shadhiliyya, Shattariyya, Suhrawardiyya and Kubrawiyya. For a brief account
of Shah Wali Allah’s Sufi reformism, see Sirriyeh (1999), 5-8. For a detailed
study of his work, see Baljon (1986). Munajjid and Wild (1979), 21.
Nabulusi
(1986), 410.
On Khiyari’s travels, see
Sirriyeh (1985), 86. For the rihla, see Khiyari (1969).
Ibid., 135.
Knysh (1995),
46. On Maqbali’s criticisms of Ibn ¿Arabi and his followers, see Madelung
(1999), 144.
Nabulusi
(1986), 429-30. Kurani’s student was Shaykh Musa b. Ibrahim al- Basri. Nabulusi
mentions giving an ijaza to Shaykh Muhammad Amin known as ‘al-Yatim’
(the Orphan), who recited for him hadiths from the canonical collections
of Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Da’ud, al-Nasa’i, al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja, as well as
from Malik, al-Muwatta’ and the Musnad collections of Ibn Hanbal
and al-Shafi¿i.
von Schlegell (1997), 19.
Nabulusi
(1986), 436.
Ibid., 489.
Mar¿i al-Karmi trans. in
Winter (1979), 140. Winter discusses the treatise, Qala’id al-‘iqyan fl
fadâ’il Àl cUthman, on the basis of manuscripts in Vienna and
Paris.
115
¿Abd al-Ghanî al-Nabulusi, al-Abyât
al-nürâniyya fl mulük al-dawla al- Uthmaniyya, ms. Asad 6742. Cited in von
Schlegell (1997), 96.
119
On the office of naqlb al-ashraf in late
seventeenth to eighteenth century Damascus, see ibid., 50-2. This naqlb
was from the Hamza family, but the ¿Ajlani and Kaylani families also provided
office-holders, some of them Hanafis and some Shafi¿is.
120 Nabulusi (1971) and Busse
(1968).
Chapter 6
1
H. A. R. Gibb,
art. ‘ ¿Arabiyya’ in Encyclopaedia ofIslam, New Edition, i, 596.
2
On the use of Ibn
Jubayr’s work, see Ch. Pellat, art. ‘Ibn Djubayr’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam,
New Edition, iii, 755 and for more detail on its use in Ibn Battuta’s rihla,
see Mattock (1981). For further discussion of Ibn Jubayr’s rihla, see
e.g. Netton (1996), 95-102 and 127-53.
4
Ibid., 246-54
for IbnJubayr’s account ofholygraves and shrines in Damascus.
6
Ibn Battuta
(1958-71), I, 126 on Jerusalem and II, 47-8 on Isfahan.
7
Trimingham (1971), 227
notes that such ‘initiation did not make a Sufi’ and certainly not in the case
of Ibn Battuta.
8
Ibn Battuta
(1958-71), III, 445-6.
10 Ibn Battuta (1958-71), III, 59-60, and see Netton (1996), 105.
12
No manuscripts are known
to survive of Burini’s al-Manazil al-unsiyya fi’l-rihla al-tarabulusiyya.
For ¿Utayfi’s Rihla min Dimashq al-Sham ila Tarabulus al- Sham, see
Munajjid and Wild (1979), 1-25 in Stefan Wild’s edition. For Ibn Maha sin’s al-Manazil
al-mahasiniyya fi’l-rihla al-tarabulusiyya, see the edition by Muhammad ¿Adnan
al-Bakhit (Ibn Mahasin, 1981).
13
See Chapter 4, 64-6 and
von Schlegell (1997), 31-2.
16
Abu Salim al-Ayyashi, a
Moroccan Berber, who made the hajj in 1653-4, is another notable case of
an Arab author of a rihla in which the same Sufi concerns are dominant.
See Sirriyeh (1985), 86.
18
Ibid., 204. See Winter
(1992), 136 and 274, n. 31 on the Bektashi zawiya at Qasr al-¿Ayni near
the Nile. The Bektashiyya remained confined to the Turkish population and did
not expand in Egypt outside Cairo.
19
Nabulusi (1986), 47-53 on
Nabulusi’s stay with the Qadiris of Hama.
22
Ibid., 57-8 and Chapter 5, 99.
On the
Badawiyya inNabulusi’s time, see Winter (1992), 134-5; on the modern Tanta festival
and other Egyptian mawlids, see e.g. Hoffman (1995).
Nabulusi (1986), 154.
Winter (1992), 135.
Nabulusi (1986),
209 and see Winter (1992), 136-7, who also notes the Turkish traveller Evliya
Çelebi as another seventeenth-century visitor to the tekke.
Nabulusi (1986), 70.
Ibid.
Abu-Manneh (1982), 18-19.
von Schlegell (1997),
197-8.
Rida (1934),
171-2; trans. and quoted in Hourani (1962), 225. On Rida’s Sufi experience and
later rejection of it, see Hourani (1981b), 90-102; Sirriyeh (1999), 107-11 and
(2000b).
Nabulusi (1986), 245-6
and 264.
Winter (1992), 138-42.
Ibid., 60.
Munajjid and Wild (1979),
63.
Ibid., 63-4.
Ibid., 64.
See Dols
(1992), 366-422 for discussion of the forms and nature of this mystical madness
and possible Christian antecedents.
Nabulusi (1986), 215.
Ibid., 67.
Nabulusi (1990), 61.
See Dols (1992), 405.
Nabulusi (1990), 87.
Nabulusi (1986), 102.
Dols (1992), 407 and 412.
Nabulusi (1990), 63.
See Geoffroy (1995),
335-42 on arbab al-ahwal.
Ashab (sg. sahib)
al-ahwal is an alternative name for the arbab (sg. rabb) al-
ahwal. See ibid., 335 and n. 1. Nabulusi (1986), 102.
Nabulusi (1990), 66-7.
Ibid., 67.
Nabulusi (1986), 102.
Nabulusi (1990), 67.
Ibid.
Ibid., 69.
See Meri (2001), 50-1;
Atlagh (1997), 15.
Nabulusi
(1969), 70-180.
See Canaan (1927),
215-16.
Meri (2001),
50. ¿Alim appears to be an alternative form of the name, but Nabulusi specifies
the diminutive form ¿Ulaym.
Nabulusi (1990), 62.
Ibid., 65.
Munajjid and Wild (1979),
66.
T. Fahd, art. ‘Istikhara’
in Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, iv, 259-60.
See Fahd
(1966), 366-7 on these sites. He also notes the practice continuing in North
Africa, particularly in Morocco where ‘people go and sleep in the
SUFI VISIONARY
OF OTTOMAN DAMASCUS grottoes, the refuge of the spirits, or beside ancient
tombs or, what is more usual today, in the sanctuary of a marabout’ (‘Istikhara’,
260).
Fahd (1966),
367 where he stresses the continuation of the ancient Near Eastern function of
the practice, ‘à obtenir des directives divines relatives à la bonne conduite
de la vie quotidienne ou au succès dans les affaires exceptionelles’, rather
than the Greek therapeutic tradition.
Meri (2001),
54-7 on Mount Qasyun, especially the Grotto of Blood or the Forty.
Ibid., 57.
See H. J.
Kissling, art. ‘Abdal’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, i, 94-5;
on the significance of the number forty, including the forty abdal, see
Schimmel (1994), 81-2.
Nabulusî (1986),
57, 101 and 121. The site at Marqab is also mentioned in the seventeenth
century by Çelebi (1896/7-1938), 9: 399. On shrines of the Forty in Palestine,
see Canaan (1927), 290 f.
Nabulusî (1997), 87-9.
Ibid., 89. Burning
clothing signifies the same.
¿Attar (1984), 177.
Nabulusî (1986), 4.
Meri (1999a), 57-8;
Rothkrug (1981); Evans (2002).
Meri (2001), 73.
Harizi (1973),
quoted in Meri (1999a), 53. See ibid., 52-5 on Jewish and Muslim pilgrims and
the phenomena of tomb lights.
Taylor (1999), 63.
Ibid., 14.
Ibid., 70-77 on the
etiquette to be observed in ziyara.
Harawî (1953,
1957). On the ziyarat of Damascus, see Sourdel-Thomine (1952-4).
Ibn al-Hawranî
(1981), trans. Meri (2001), 19-78; ¿Adawî(1956); Yasîn al- Biqa¿í, al-Nubdha
al-latifa fi ’l-mazarat al-sharifa, manuscripts in Leipzig, Manchester and
Berlin.
Nabulusî (1986), 143.
¿Ulaymî
(1973).
¿Ulaymî quoted in Nabulusî
(1986), 143.
Ibid.
Ibid., 145.
See Meri
(1999a), 55 on holy graves at a village near Aleppo, where a visitor could see
lights by night at a distance, but nothing on drawing closer.
Nabulusî (1986), 140.
Ibid., 145.
Nabulusî (1986),
150 on the grave of Shaykh Ibrahîm Abu Arqub, ¿All b. ¿Ulaym’s son, at the
village of Hamama, 156 on Shaykh Ridwan, Abu Arqub’s son and 162 on his brother
Shaykh ‘Ijlîn.
Ibid.
Munajjid and Wild (1979),
58 and Nabulusî (1990), 43 on ziyara to Ibn ¿Arabî.
Nabulusî (1986), 16.
Atlagh (1997), 12.
Ibid., 15-16.
von Schlegell (1997),
265.
See Fenton (1997). The
Arabic text is still in manuscript.
Ibid., 34.
Ibid., 39.
Ibid.
Nabulusi (1986), 16-17.
Ibid., 17.
Nabulusi (1986), 196-7
and 279-80. For a translation and discussion of
Nabulusi’s ziyara,
see Homerin (1994), 79-83.
Trans. ibid., 81; Nabulusi
(1986), 280.
Homerin (1994), 81.
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Ibid. On Nabulusi’s
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Chapter 7
See Barbir (1980),
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Ibid., 50.
Rafeq (1966), 34-5.
Darwish Pasha,
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of the people.
Kamal al-din
al-Ghazzi quoted in Munajjid and Wild (1979), 17.
Ibid., 18.
On the foundation of Salihiyya
and the Hanbalis, see Leder (1997) and Talmon
Heller (1994).
Arvieux (1735), 2: 458.
von Schlegell (1997),
48-51.
Ibid., 45-64 and see also
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Ibn al-Farid (1901),
2: 234 where Nabulusi states that he completed the work on 29 Rabi¿ al-Awwal 1123.
Baldick (1989), 135.
Ibid.
Aladdin (1987-88), 8.
Ibid., 22
(Arabic)and 9 (Aladdin’s French trans..) For the Arabic text of the fatwa,
see ibid., 22-8 and, for Aladdin’s discussion, 9-17.
¿Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi,
Jamc al-asrâr fl manc al-ashrâr ‘an al-tacn
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The Dlwan
was first published in 1853 and most recently in Beirut in 2001.
Sirriyeh (2001), 63.
Ibid., 64.
On Sunday 24 Sha¿ban
1143.
Ibn Jum¿a (1952), 242. On
Ibn Jum¿a’s chronicle, see Rafeq (1966), 324-5.
Conclusion
Yusuf al-Nabahani quoted
in von Schlegell (1997), 1.
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In this index the Arabic definite article (al-)
lias been omitted at the beginning of an entry.
¿Abd Allah b. Muhammad b.
¿Abd al-Wahhab see Ibn ¿Abd al- Wahhab, ¿Abd Allah b. Muhammad
Abu Tahir Muhammad 103, 112, 151n104
¿Adawi, Qadi Mahmud 123
Ahmadiyya see Badawiyya
Ahrar, Khwaja ¿Ubayd
Allah 42, 144n10
¿Ajlun 115
¿Alami, Shaykh Mustafa 151n85
¿Alawís see Nusayris
¿Ali b. ¿Ulaym 118, 123-5, 133, 153n59
angels 70, 76; see also Gabriel
anti-Sufi(s) x, 37, 91, 131; see also
Kadízadelis, Wahhabis
¿Arish 102
¿Arraba 117
Arslan Muhammad Pasha 106
Arsuf 123
Artemidorus of Daldis 70-1, 147n72
Arvieux, Chevalier
Laurent d’ 130
ashab al-ahwal 116, 153n49; see
also rabb al-ahwal
Ashraf Khalíl, Sultan 3
Ashraf Qa’it Bay, Sultan 90
¿Attar, Farid al-din 121
¿Attar, Khwaja ¿Ala’
al-dín 43, 150n63
Ayyashí, Abu Salim 152n16
Badawí, Ahmad 113
Badawiyya 113, 153n24 badf 13-15
Bakriyya 102
Bakrí, Mustafa b. Kamal
al-dín 56, 57, 59, 91
Bakrí, Zayn al-¿Abidín 102, 103, 112
Ba¿labakk 86, 87-8, 106, 149n19
Balkhi, Abu Sa¿id 40, 42, 143n10
Banu Jama¿a 3-4, 139n10; graves of 100
baqa'’ 50
Baqli, Ruzbihan 76
baraka 2, 87, 109, 116, 149n12; of
Barzanji, Muhammad 104
Baybars, Sultan al-Zahir 124
Baytamani, Husayn 57-8, 130 Beduin 98, 99, 101, 102, 103
Bektashiyya 152n18
Berang, Muhammad Baqi bi ’llah 40 Bethlehem 82, 101
BiqaT, Yasin 123
Birgili, Mehmed 48, 139n12, 144n38
Bistam 128
Bistami, Abu Yazid 128
Bukhari, ¿Ala’ al-din 95, 150n63
Bukhari, Murad b. ¿Ali 46
Burini, Hasan 64-6, 111, 146n27
Cairo 3, 102, 113, 114, 115, 128; cemeteries of 122
Charkhi, Ya¿qub 42
Christian(s) 82, 87, 91, 105, 122, 123; Nabulusi on 32-3, 82, 92-3, 97-8, 99, 101, 131
Damascus 9, 85, 88, 89, 111, 120, 129; hajj 39-40; Hanbalis of 6, 94, 130; in dreams 78;
Naqshabandism in 46; plague in 95-6
Dari, Abu ¿Ali 146n37,
147n52 and n64
Darwish Pasha 4, 155n4
Darwishiyya Madrasa 4, 129 dhikr 45, 47, 58, 101, 118;
Mutawi¿i 113; Naqshabandi 40, 42, 45; Qadiri 100, 112;
Dilla Mosque, Anti-Lebanon 114
Dimashqi, Arslan 118
Dinawari 71
dream-book(s): Arabic 67, 69, 71, 72; Assyrian 69-70; Greek 70; Nabulusi’s 52, 57, 67, 71-83, 136-7
dreams 57-83, 117-21; dead in 63, 64-6; Hadlth in 66-7,
146n20 and n34; literal (or message) 63-7, 117-19,
146n20, n22 and n31;
Nabulusi’s 18, 44, 60-3, 89, 134; Nabulusi’s disciples’ 57-8; Pharaoh’s 68; the Prophet’s 68-9, 146n42; symbolic 67-83, 119-21, 146n40; terminology of 62, 146n17; types of 72-3, 146n35; see
also visions
Druze 32
ecstatic(s) 1-2, 16, 62, 90, 112, 114-18, 136, 137, 139n3; see
also majdhub/majadhtb
Egypt 1, 3, 46, 57, 97, 111, 129; Nabulusi’s
travels in 85, 96, 102-3,137
Elijah 88; see also Ilyas,
Prophet Evliya Çelebi 153n27
Fadl Allah, Shaykh al-Islam 105
Faluja 117
Fayd Allah Efendi, Shaykh
al-Islam 46
Gabriel 59; see also angels Galen 73, 147n56
Ghari, Kamal al-din b.
¿Abd Allah 109
Ghazzi, Muhammad Kamal
al-din 7, Preface 139n1
Ghazzi, Najm al-din 7, 30 Ghijduwani, ¿Abd
al-Khaliq 40, 42 Ghilyani, ¿Abd al-Mun¿im 10 God: afterlife
vision of 34, 75, 76, 143n55 and n56,
147n64; and creation 21, 24, 27, 31; attributes of 24, 25, 29-30, 34; Beauty of 30, 34, 47-8; essence of 29-30, 50; Fath on 21, 23-4, 25, 27-31, 33-4; human love of 1, 47-8, 53-4, 116; in dreams 74-7; Love of 17, 30, 36, 47-8, 49; Mercy of 33, 75, 142n51; Nabulusi’s
visions of 27, 49-51, 144-5n40;
Splendour of 34, 75; travelling to 28; Wrath of 33, 142n51
Golan 89
Hadith: in dreams 66-7, 134, 146n20, n32 and
n34; Nabulusí and 6, 35-6, 66-7, 86, 104, 106, 134, 136, 139n22, 148n6,
151n110
hajj 25, 97; Damascene 39-40, 143n1; of Ibn
¿Arabí 91; of Ibn Jubayr 109; of Nabulusí xii, 85, 97, 103, 115, 125
Hakim, Caliph 32
Hamawí, ¿Alwan 32, 142n45 Hanafí, Ahmad
al-Qala¿í 6 Hanafí(s) 5, 6, 45, 131, 135, 140n24, 152n19
Hanbalí, ¿Abd al-Baqí 6
Hanbalí(s) 6, 31, 94, 95, 130, 131, 140n24, 155n8
haqiqa 23, 25, 28, 30, 47, 97, 127 haqiqi 30, 142n37
Harawí, ¿Alí 122
Harizí, Judah 154n76
Hermes Trismegistus 11
Hillí, Safiyy al-dín 13
Hims 98
homosexuality 48
Hujwírí 48 hulül 31, 48, 77 Hunayn b. Ishaq 70
Ibn ¿Abd al-Wahhab, ¿Abd
Allah b. Muhammad 66
Ibn ¿Abd al-Wahhab,
Muhammad 37, 38, 46, 144n27
Ibn Abí al-Dunya 64
Ibn ¿Arabí ix-x, 7-9, 10, 15, 55; as Nabulusí’s
spiritual father ix, 18-19; Nabulusí’s interpretation of 19-21, 23-4, 28, 33-7, 38, 92-3, 94-5, 135, 142n30; on visions 62; tomb of 59, 86-7, 104, 126-7, 129, 140n30; travels
of 91
Ibn ¿Azzaz 38
Ibn Battuta 98, 109-10, 152n2 and n7
Ibn al-Farid, ¿Umar 38, 55, 64, 65, 107, 130-1, 155n12; tomb of 102, 128
Ibn Ghannam 72, 147n55
Ibn Hanbal, Ahmad 31
Ibn al-Hawraní 120, 123, 154n81
Ibn Jama¿a, ¿Abd al-Rahman 3
Ibn Jama¿a, Badr al-dín
Muhammad 3, 139n11
Ibn Jama¿a, Muhammad 100
Ibn Jum¿a 131, 133, 134, 135, 155n21
Ibn Khaldun 10
Ibn Mahasin, Yahya 111, 152n12
Ibn Maymun, ¿Alí see cAlí b.
Maymun
Ibn Rushd 11
Ibn Sab¿ín xi, 7, 9-12, 15, 31, 136, 140n42 and n47,
156n4
Ibn Sína 11; on dreams 64, 71, 146n25
Ibn Sírín 146n37
Ibn Taymiyya 10, 12, 94, 95, 140n49
Ibn ¿Ulaym, ¿Alí see ¿Alí b. ¿Ulaym
Ibrahím b. Adham 99, 112, 151n80
Ibrahím Bey (amir
of the Egyptian hajj) 102
Ibrahím Pasha (governor
of Damascus) 51
¿Ijí, ¿Adud al-dín 95
Ilyas, Prophet 88; see also Elijah, Khadir
Isma¿ílís 99
Istanbul 8, 15-16, 46, 84, 104, 141n60
istikhara 120, 153-4n64,
154n65
Jabal al-Shaykh see
Mount Hermon
Jerusalem 3, 149n34 and n37;
Nabulusi’s journeys to 89, 90-1, 149n36
Jesus, Prophet 6; birthplace 101
Jews: as pilgrims 91,122; Nabulusi on 32-3, 82, 91, 92-3, 122
Jili, ¿Abd al-Karim 24, 33, 135, 141n16
Joseph, Prophet 68
Junayd 23
Kadizadeli(s) 8, 15, 48, 82, 128, 140n31
Karmi, Mar¿i 105, 151-2n114 kashf 1, 29, 115
Kaylani, ¿Abd
al-Razzaq 16-17, 112
Kaylani, ¿Ali 112
Khadir 88
Khawatiriyya 59
Khiyari, Ahmad 103
Koprülü, Mehmed 8
Koprülü Mustafa 91, 148n96
Kulal, Sayyid Amir 43
Kurani, Ilyas 103
Latakya 99
Lithgow, William 101
Ma¿arra 97
Mahmud b. Shaykh ¿Ali 92 Mahmud, Shaykh 2, 87, 130 majaz 30, 47, 97
majazi 30, 142n37 majdbüb/majadbib 1, 2, 49,
Malik al-Muzaffar 11
Maqbali, Salih 104, 151n109
Maqdisi, Nasr 96
Marqab 98, 120, 154n69 Mar Taqla cave 97-8
Masyaf 98
Maundrell, Henry 87
Mawlawi(s) 45, 52, 113-14 Mawlawiyya 46, 113-14 mawlid(s) 100-1, 103, 113, 153n24
Mecca 11, 63, 79-80, 104-5, 109; see also
Ka¿ba
Medina 79, 103-4, 109 Mehmed, Kadizade 8
miracle(s) 2, 4, 15, 53, 110, 118, 123, 125
Mount Qasyun 119, 120, 130, 154n66
Mu¿awiya, Caliph 96 Muhammad Pasha 87 Muhammad, Prophet ix, 13-15, 58-9, 66, 68-9, 73, 145n6; mawlid
of 100-1;
tomb of 103
Muhammadan Reality 24 Muhibiyya 97
mujaddid 44, 86, 148n8 Muradi, Muhammad 46 Muradi, Muhammad
Khalil 51 Muradis 46, 47, 144n29 Murjan, Shaykh 117 Mutawi¿iyya 113 muwallah(un) 1, 96, 116 Muwaylih 103
Nabahanii, Yusuf 53, 134 Nabk 96, 150n65 Nabki, ¿Ali 95-6
Nabulusi, ¿Abd al-Ghani:
birth of 1-2; death of 131-2; dreambook of 67-83; dreams and
visions of 18, 27, 49-50, 60-3; early life and
studies of 5-12; early writings of 13-15, 21-37; family of 3-5; journeys of 15-16, 86-91, 96-105, 106-7; mystical riblas
of 108, 111-28; Naqshabandism of 40, 42-7; old age of 129-31; Qadiri initiation
of 16-17; retreat of 49-56
Nabulusi’s family: ¿Abd al-Ghani (grandfather) 4-5, 65; ¿Alma (second wife) 53, 88; Isma¿íl (father) 1, 2, 5; Isma¿il (greatgrandfather)
4, 64-5, 129, 139n14; Isma¿il
(son) 17, 101-2;Muhammad
Mas¿ud (son) 53, 88, 106; Musliha (first
wife) 17, 53; Tahira (daughter) 53; Yusuf (brother) 88, 105;
Zaynab (daughter) 53; Zaynab (mother) 1, 2, 18-19, 95-6 Naqshabandiyya xii, 40-7, 57, 104, 112, 143-4ns6-10, 144n27 and n29
Naqshband, Baha’ al-dîn 40-1, 42, 43
nazar 47-8, 53, 55, 144n34 Nazareth 99, 120 Noah, Prophet 122 Nusayri(s) 32, 98
Palestine 79, 111, 136; Nabulusi’s
travels in 89-91, 99-102, 123-6, 137
Patriarch of Antioch 82, 131 Persians 39-40, 82 prophets 8, 25, 63, 68, 76, 80
Qadir bi ’llah, Caliph 71 Qadiriyya 16-17, 112 Qadmus 98
Qamïnï, Yusuf 1-2, 87, 130, 139n2
Qara 98
Qarafa cemetery 102, 122, 123 Qaranî, Uways 43
Qastallani, Qutb al-din 10 Qayrawani 71, 147n50 Qunaytra 89
Qushayrî 22-3, 54, 107 qutb ix, 133, 134
rabb al-ahwal 116; see also
ashab al-ahwal
Rastan 128
repentance 22-3, 25, 26, 27-8, 37 retreat 49-56, 84, 85, 99, 133 Rida, Rashid 58, 113-14, 145n5
Rifa¿iyya 109
rihla(s): of Ibn
Battuta 109-10, 152n2; of Ibn Jubayr 109; of Khiyari 158; of Nabulusi xii, 87, 89, 90, 97, 106-7, 108, 111-28, 136, 148n10, 149n26,
150n68; of sixteenthseventeenth centuries 110-11, 152n12 and n16
Rumi, Jalal al-din 46-7, 55, 113 Rumi, Taj al-din
40, 42
Sabbagh, Shaykh Ridwan b.
al- Hajj Yusuf 146n33
saint(s) 1, 2, 76, 77, 110, 122; and sin 35-7; Ibn ¿Arabi as 126-7; Nabulusi as ix-x, 2,
17, 60-3,
119, 133-4; of Palestine 123-6; see also
seal of the saints
Sa¿sa¿ 89
seal of the saints ix-x, 126, 133
Seth, Prophet 98
Shafi¿i(s) x, 3, 4, 5, 6
140n24, 152n119
Shahrazuri, Shaykh Khalid 47, 134 Sha¿rani, ¿Abd
al-Wahhab 112, 113
Khalwatis and 114; Nabulusi and 21, 45, 52, 134-5
shathiyyat 50
Shurunbulali, Hasan 1; son of 103 Shushtari, ¿All 11, 12, 102, 140n48
Sidnaya monastery 97 Sidon 5, 66, 99, 129
Sijistani 64
sin 22-8, 35-7; in dreams 121 Sindi, Muhammad Hayya 46 Sirhindi, Ahmad 44, 86 smoking 7, 52, 99, 140n25, 151n79
Sulami, Ibn ¿Abd al-Salam x Süleyman Pasha 129
Süleyman, Sultan 8
Thoth see Hermes Trismegistus
Tilimsani, ¿Afif al-dîn xi, 7, 9, 12, 15
Timur 94
¿Umar b. al-Khattab,
Caliph 28, 81, 123
Umayyad Mosque 4, 5, 78, 86, 96;
Nabulusi’s house near 18, 49, 85, 129
¿Utayfî, Ramadan 111
¿Uyun al-Tujjar 90
vision(s) 9, 27, 34, 49-50, 58, 60-2, 75-6, 77, 101; see also dreams, God
wahdat
al-wujud 8, 9-10, 22, 23, 27, 94, 103, 135-6
Wahhabi(s) 37, 38
Ya¿bad 118
Ya¿badi, Isma¿il 119
Ya¿badi, Muslih 119
Zabadani 119
Ziyara/ziyarat 45, 122-3, 125, 126, 127, 128
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