THE MYRTLE IN A MUSLIM WOMAN’S DREAM AND ITS LATE ANTIQUE ECHOES
Journal of Semitic Studies LXI/2 Autumn 2016 doi:
10.1093/jss/fgw025
©
The author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of
Manchester. All rights reserved.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE
HOLY MAN
IN EARLY ISLAMIC
MYSTICISM:
THE MYRTLE IN A MUSLIM
WOMAN’S DREAM
AND ITS LATE ANTIQUE ECHOES[1]
Sara Sviri
HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF
JERUSALEM
This paper brings together an account of an
early Muslim woman’s dream with texts relating to the ‘holy man’ and the spiritual
hierarchy in early Islam. Both dream account and the holy men texts were
authored by the dreamer’s husband, the third/ ninth century mystic al-Hakim
al-Tirmidhi, in whose oeuvre the holy man, al-wali, the ‘friend
of God’, occupies a central position. His writings had a significant impact on
the teachings on wilaya in Islamic mysticism early and late. The dream
and the texts reveal a historical and religious setting in which the God-Man
communication was seen as bequeathed from the prophets to the ‘friends of
God’, the awliya. Al-Tirmidhi’s writings offer an early vision of a
non-sectarian ideology of the awliya’, which allowed for people with
specific qualities to be heralded as carriers of divine inspiration and
authority. The veneration of the holy men in early Islam, be they the awliya’
or Shi'ite Imams reflects the beliefs, traditions and images which pervaded the
religious scene in Late Antiquity prior to the rise of Islam. In Judaism,
Christianity,
Manichaeism and
other Gnostic schools such as Mandaeism, notions and depictions of the ‘holy
men’ were widespread and pervasive. Similar notions and depictions in early
Islam are neither sheer borrowings nor an entirely independent and original
development. They continue and confirm spiritual trends and patterns which had
persisted for centuries in the rich religious and cultural sphere, while
forging a distinctive theological environment and formulating an indigenous
religious vocabulary.
Transaction
of ideas and cultural patterns from one denominational group to another is
sometimes referred to by the term ‘influence’. Tracing literary and cultural
influences of one corpus upon another has been founded in academia on a
scrupulous philological and historical methodology. This methodology has been
passed on from teachers to students mostly as an oral didactic tradition that
has to be adhered to. What it teaches is mainly this: establishing cultural or
literary transactions between groups or individuals has to be argued from the
platform of a proficiency in the languages involved, skills in comparative
philology, a familiarity with the literary corpora extant at particular times
and places, and an acquaintance with the historical contexts which afforded
such transactions. These parameters conceptually revolve around a binary
imagery of an influencing agent/corpus vis-à-vis a recipient, the one/the
corpus under influence. Often enough, not only are the borrowings and
indebtedness of the recipient brought to bear, but also his awareness of these,
be this transparent or opaque, assertive or defensive. Influence and reception
call for a degree of awareness and choice on the part of the potential
recipient or, in contrast, an act of shunning and rejection. In the study of
early Islam, a case in point is the disparate views within it as regards the
question of influences from Jewish or Christian sources. An example can be
adduced from a well-known enquiry into the different interpretations given by
Muslim authors to an early hadïth: ‘haddithu 'an banï israïla walâ haraja
(Transmit in the name of the Children of Israel for there is no blame in it).[2]
Whatever interpretation is brought to bear by way of supporting or rejecting
the implication of this tradition, its bearers show awareness of the cultural
issue of a potential influence.
But transactions of cultural patterns from old into new
historical spheres occur also less conspicuously, in ways that preclude open
partisan discourse, but suggest that the process may also work in undercurrent
permeation, either by osmosis or by inertial continuity. Indeed,
cultural processes that took place in early Islam show that the highly
developed and rich traditions of Late Antiquity, be they Christian, Jewish,
Gnostic, Pagan, Zoroastrian or even Indian — traditions which had been active
and present for centuries in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Iran and
elsewhere — could not and did not disappear overnight with the Muslim conquests
and settlement; rather, Muslims in these areas, be they converts or inborn,
either adopted cultural models of these ancient traditions or, simply, carried
them on. An Islamic clean break from all cultural and religious patterns which
had preceded is hard to conceive.
In describing occurrences deriving from osmotic or inertial
cultural continuities, the use of ‘influence’ is hardly suitable; what is at
play here is better designated as ‘echoes’, ‘traces’, or ‘residues’.[3]
Whereas ‘influence’ usually denotes borrowings or adaptations from a well-
defined source or corpus, the terms ‘residues’ or ‘echoes’ allude to cultural
patterns which had been widely diffused among a variety of religious
communities, so much so that a common pool, like a cultural lingua franca, had
been at work, disabling scholarship from conclusively associating such
patterns with one or another of their possible sources of origin.
Thus, literary evidence shows and sound deliberation accepts
that ideas, concepts and images prevalent in cultures which had become
subservient and overpowered are retained by individuals and communities long
after their time-marked downfall, and that these ideas, concepts and images
take a long time to peter out and disappear altogether. Absorbed into the new
culture, they may take on new forms and expressions commensurate with the
values of their new denominational milieu, and rather than disappear, they
subsist and surface up wherever they find an outlet. Such an outlet may be
found in areas which lie outside of the consensual mainstream
denominational tenets, for example, in rare ego-documents
such as autobiographies, correspondences and diaries.
Such private materials can be found in writings from the formative
period of Islamic mysticism; writings dated to the mid second/ eighth up to the
late third/ninth centuries, which predate the consolidation of what became
known as Sufism (tasawwuf) and the emergence of the classical Sufi
compilations. In academic research, the exploration of pre-Islamic echoes in
mystical literature has been hesitant and tentative. Early pre-compilation
mystical literature and the residues of pre-Islamic themes to which it
testifies, is still an almost uncharted field. The study of the stage during
which nascent Islam was absorbing and assimilating rather than transmitting,
may be tangential to current trends of viewing Islam as a self-contained
religious and cultural entity. Nevertheless, an attempt to search for the
cultural and religious developments which contributed to the makeup of Islamic
spirituality in its formative period cannot be fruitful without following the
traces of pre-Islamic themes and without attentiveness to their long lasting
‘echoes’ in Islamic literature. In tracing such residues in early Islam my aim
is to argue for the continuous presence of late antique motifs in the Islamic
sphere. The following enquiry can be viewed as a case in point for such an
argument. In closer resolution, its aim is to expose some of the pre- Islamic
cultural strata which have contributed to the build-up of the notions of ‘holy
men’ and ‘spiritual hierarchy’ in early Islam and especially within its
mystical tradition. My enquiry revolves around the recurring image of the
myrtle in various sources. Its starting point is a dream of an unnamed but
identifiable ninth-century Muslim woman from Transoxania in which the myrtle
has an important symbolic (and perhaps also ritualistic) function.
The paper is divided into five sections: the dream; the
myrtle as symbol for the righteous (i.e. the ‘holy man’); the ubiquitous idea
that the world cannot exist without the righteous; notions of the inner
hierarchy within the realm of the righteous; and conclusions, in which the
focus is on the centrality of the figure of the holy man in late antique
traditions.
The
story of this unnamed woman, whom I shall address as Umm 'Abd Allah, takes
place in the middle of the third/ninth century at
the
town of Tirmidh[4]
[5]
in Central Asia. Umm 'Abd Allah is a fictitious name but not a fictitious
character; I have borrowed her kunya (nickname) from her husband’s. Abu
'Abd Allah Muhammad ibn 'Alt al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, a prolific author who laid
down the typology of ‘sainthood’ (wilaya) at this early period of
Islamic mysticism, left a short autobiographical account, the first of its kind
in the history of Islamic literature.[6] Not only is it the first
extant text in the autobiographical genre in Arabic, it is also unique as a
document that describes at first hand mystical experiences and dreams. The
dreams and experiences which he recorded had been experienced and dreamed by
himself as well as by his wife, whose name he does not disclose in spite of the
loving manner in which he relates to her. Abu 'Abd Allah’s small and highly
personal journal allows us to observe two rather unusual literary phenomena:
first, the interlacing of oral with written materials; and, second, the
occasional inclusion of Persian within the Arabic text. In the recording of the
wife’s dreams and experiences, as well as in the general style of this
autobiographical text, the written reports retain the features of a free
flowing oral discourse between husband and wife. Moreover, it is probable that
their conversations were conducted in Persian, the family’s daily spoken
language. This is clearly reflected in the words, phrases and sentences spoken
by the wife in Persian and scattered by the husband within his Arabic text. It
has already been observed that this is a rare example
of a
third/ninth-century use of Persian in a written form.[7] These features emphasize the
immediate and barely edited — and thus authentic — character of the text at
hand.
In one of the dreams that Umm 'Abd Allah dreams and that
Abu 'Abd Allah records the central image is of a figure — evidently an angelic
messenger — holding two kinds of plants: in his left hand he holds sweet basil
branches (rayahtn), which, at the time of the dream, seem to be
withered; in his right hand he holds green myrtle twigs (as akhdar ratty.
The dream figure conveys to the dreamer a message in which the two kinds of
plants, especially the myrtle, function as key symbols. Umm 'Abd Allah, on her
part, delivers the dream to her husband, as it is clear to her, and eventually
to him too, that the message is directed especially to him and that it is part
of the spiritual training to which divine wisdom has ordained him.[8]
This is not the first scholarly exposure of this dream and
its unique autobiographical source.[9]
In previous exposures, however (including my own),[10] the pre-Islamic traces
scattered in it, which I hope to bring out in the following section, have not
been highlighted.[11]
First, here is the dream; for the sake of a smooth reading of the dream
narrative I have placed most of the comparative material in the footnotes:
I saw a big
pool (hawd) in a place unknown to me. The water in the pool was as pure
as spring water. On the surface of the pool bunches of grapes appeared, white
grapes. I and my two sisters were sitting by the pool. We were picking up
grapes from these bunches and eating them while our legs were dangling upon the
surface of the water; not immersed, only touching the water.
I said to my
youngest sister: ‘Here we are, as you see, eating from these grapes — but who
has given them to us?’ And lo, a man came towards us, curly-haired, on his head
a white turban, his hair loose behind the turban, wearing white clothes.11
He said to me:
‘Who is the owner of a pool such as this and of grapes such as these?’12
He then took me
by the hand, raised me and said to me at a distance from my sisters: ‘Tell
Muhammad ibn 'All to read the verse, “We shall set up just scales (al-mawdzm)
on the day of resurrection...” to its end.13 On these scales neither
flour nor bread will be weighed but the speech of this will be weighed’ — and
he pointed to his tongue; ‘and it will be weighed with these and these’ — and
he pointed to his hands and legs. ‘You do not know that excess of speech is as
intoxicating as the drinking of wine?’14
I said, ‘Would you,
please, tell me who you are?’
He said: ‘I am
one of the angels; we roam the earth and our abode is in Jerusalem’.15
11
White clothes and a white turban are worn by Zoroastrian
priests in various ritualistic ceremonies, see e.g. J.W. Boyd and R.G.
Williams, ‘The Art of Ritual in a Comparative Context’, in M. Stausberg (ed.), Zoroastrian
Rituals in Context (Leiden 2004), 137 note 2; Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians:
Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London 1979), 67, 167. For the
turban worn by Zoroastrian laymen and priests in sacrificial rituals, mentioned
by Greek historians, see A. de Jong, Traditions of the Magi: Zoroastrianism
in Greek and Latin Literature (Leiden 1997), 113—15. For the Mandaean white
dress and turban, see below, p. 479. For a more general view of Zoroastrian
presence in early Islam, see M. Zakeri (ed. and trans.), Persian Wisdom in
Arabic Garb. ’Alt b. Ubayda al-Rayhant (d. 219/834) and his Jawahir al-kilam
wa-faraid al-hikam, vol. 1 (Leiden 2007) with thanks to Shaul Shaked.
12
This rhetorical question alludes, no doubt, to the
eschatological pool and to the luscious depiction of Paradise in Muslim
tradition, see e.g. Q. 76: 12—21; 88: 10—16 etc.; for the ‘pool’, as well as
the scales (mîzân), in what follows, both of which allude to the
eschatological scenes on the day of the resurrection of the dead, see A.J.
Wensinck, ‘Hawd’, EI2,
vol. 3, 286; A. El-Zein, ‘Water of Paradise’, in Encyclopaedia of the
Qur’an, vol. 5, 466; see also J.I. Smith, ‘Eschatology’, in Encyclopaedia
of the Qur’an, vol. 2, 44.
13
Q. 21:47; the verse continues thus: ‘.so that no man shall
in the least be wronged’; for the eschatological allusion of the scales, see
the previous note.
14
Interdictions against excess of speech can be found in many
Sufi manuals see e.g. al-Qushayri, al-Risala al-Qushayriyya (Cairo
1367/1948), Bab al-samt (chapter on Silence), 57f; for the practice of
watching over speech in al-Tirmidhi’s works, see e.g. A.J. Arberry and Abdel
Qader (eds), Kitab al-Riyada (Cairo 1366/1947), 45ff.
15
The text reads nanzilu bayta l-maqdisi, which can
also be understood as ‘we descend on Temple Mount’; for angels residing in, or
descending on, the Temple Mount/Jerusalem, see Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali al-'Ulaymi,
al-Uns al-jaltl bi-ta’rikh al-quds wa’l-khatil (Amman 1999), vol. 1,
360: ‘kulla laylatin yanzilu sabuna alfi
16
Then I saw in his right
hand [a bunch] of young green myrtle [twigs] (as akhdar rath)1
and in his other hand17 two branches of sweet basil (rayahln).1
While he was talking to me he was holding them in his hands.
Then he said:
‘We roam the earth and we call on the worshippers (al-’ubbad).19 We place these
herbs on the hearts of the worshippers so
malakin mina 'l-sama’i ila masjidi bayti l-maqdisi...’. According to some Islamic traditions,
al-Khadir and Ilyas stay in Jerusalem during the month of Ramadan — see e.g.
Ibn 'Asakir, Tarlkh madlnat dimashq (Beirut 1995), vol. 16, 428; Ahmad
b. Hanbal is said to have seen al-Khadir and Ilyas in Jerusalem, see Ibn Hajar
al-'Asqalani, al-Isaba fl tamylz al-sahaba (Cairo 1971), vol. 2, 334. A
tradition reported in the name of 'Ali says: ‘The abode of al-Khadir is
Jerusalem’ (maskanu al-Khadiri baytu ’l-maqdisi), see 'Ali b. Burhan
al-Din al-Halabi, al-Slra al-halabiyya, n.d., vol. 3, 133. Curiously,
the angel’s introduction in the dream is similar to the introduction of the
angelic figure in Ibn Sina’s Risalat Hayy ibn Yaqzan: ‘Then he said to
me, “As to my country, it is Jerusalem (amma baladl fa-madlnatu bayti
’l-maqdisi). My profession is to be forever journeying, to travel about the
world (amma hirfatl fal-siyahatu fl aqtari ’l-’awalimí) so that I may
know all its conditions.”’ see Ibn Sina, Risalat Hayy ibn Yaqzan, ed.
A. Amin (Cairo 1952), 45, ll. 10—12. The idioms ‘we roam the earth’ and ‘my
profession is to travel about the world’ — in both cases using the Arabic root s-y-h
— is reminiscent of the biblical idiom ‘they are the eyes of God who roam the
entire land’ (Zech. 4:10 using the Hebrew verbal root s-w-t, as does Job
1:7) and ‘Go, walk about the land’ (Zech. 6:5—7 — using the Hebrew verbal root h-l-k).
The relevance of the visions of Zechariah for our discussion will be
elaborated in what follows (see below, pp. 481-5). In Job 1:7, Satan, one of
God’s messengers (or sons), when asked by God where he was coming from,
answers: ‘from roaming the earth’ (mi-sût ba-ares). The most poignant
biblical reference is to 2 Chron. 16:9 - ‘For the eyes of the Lord roam through
the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is sincere with Him’ — as,
just as in the dream, it combines the motif of ‘God’s eyes’ with that of
strengthening the hearts of the sincere worshippers (I am grateful to Prof.
Sarah Japhet for pointing this out to me). The topic of God’s roaming
messengers, or God’s ‘eyes’ watching over specific earthly zones and reporting
to God of their news — a topic with rich comparative connotations — is too wide
for the bounds of this paper, but the Mandaean association is noteworthy. See
below, p. 478; see also below note 19.
17
For the ritualistic act of holding the myrtle in the right
hand, see below, pp. 476-7.
18
‘His other hand’ is a euphemism common in Islamic parlance
for the left hand.
19
Interestingly, rayhan itself may mean myrtle and may
thus be synonymous with as, see Ibn Manzür, Lisan al-'arab
(Beirut 1956), vol. 6, 19: ‘wa’l-asu darbun mina l-rayahlni’; also 'Abd
al-Qadir al-Baghdadi, Khizanat al-adab (Cairo 1881), vol. 2, 362: ‘wa’l-asu...
huwa l-rayhanu’. In our dream text, however, rayhan is contextually
contrasted with the myrtle and hence signifies seasonal herbs rather than the
evergreen myrtle.
20
The function of the figure in the dream is to be viewed
against a cultural background associated with roaming messengers occasionally
depicted as God’s eyes
21 that by them they may carry out acts of worship. And these myrtle
twigs we place upon the hearts of the eminently just ones (al-siddïqün) and
the ones who possess certitude (al-müqinün) so that by them they may
know what sincerity is (sidq).20 These herbs in summer look
like this, but the myrtle never changes, neither in summer nor in winter.21
Tell Muhammad ibn 'All: Don’t you wish that these two will be yours?’ and
he pointed to the myrtle and to the herbs. Then he said: ‘God can lift the
piety (taqwa) of the god-fearing to such a degree that they need not be
fearful. Yet He commanded them to be fearful so that they may know it.. .’22
on earth (see also above, note 15). The expression 'uyün
Allah, God’s eyes, usually denoting human beings who are appointed as God’s
watchful eyes on earth and as God’s special messengers, appears in Islam in
various sources, either with references to prophets (see Ibn 'Ata”s commentary
to Q. 54:14 in Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, Tafsïr al-sulamï wa-huwa haqaiq
al-tafsïr (Beirut 2001), vol. 2, 290), or with reference to 'Ali, God’s awliya’
or the twelve Shi'ite Imams (see e.g. Ibn Manzür, Lisan al-'arab, vol.
13, 309; Ibn Shahrashub, Manaqib al Abï Talib, ed. Yusuf al-Buqa'i
(Tehran? AH
1421), vol. 3, 316; see above note
15 and especially the references to Zech. 4:10 and 2 Chron. 16:9; for a
reference to angels, see Mahmud b. 'Abd Allah al-Âlüsî, Rüh al-ma’ânïfï
tafsïr al-quran al-’azïm wa’l -sab’ al-mathanï (Beirut n.d.), vol. 27, 83.
22
The distinction between ‘worshippers’ ( ’ubbad) in
general and eminently just ones (siddïqün) in particular is a central
theme in al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi’s work; it lies at the foundation of the binary
typology he sees in wilaya, the spiritual hierarchy (sometimes
translated as ‘sainthood’). He develops his teaching on wilaya particularly
in his Sïratal-awliya’, where he distinguishes between two categories of
awliya’: those who belong in the first category he variously names al-sadiqün
(see e.g. 4 §8) and awliya’haqq Allah (e.g. 2 §3; 33 §47; 65 §89). Their
spiritual rank is founded on efforts, but these are always appropriated and
hampered by the lower-self (nafs). Those who belong to the second
category are variously named al-kiram (e.g 17 §35), al-muhaddathün
(e.g 66 §89; 68 §91), al-siddïqün (69 §92; 119 §148) and awliya’
allah (e.g. 2 §3; 33 §48, 72, §93). Their spiritual rank, which stems from
God’s grace (minna) and choice (istifa’), is higher than that of
the former category. Sincerity (sidq) is required of both categories,
but in itself is insufficient for reaching the uppermost ranks of wilaya,
see e.g. 34 §50; 44 §§63-4; 94-5 §121. For al-müqinün, those who possess
certitude (yaqïn), a quality higher than sidq, see e.g. 122 §150.
For further discussion on the binary typology of the spiritual hierarchy in
al-Tirmidhi’s works, see below, pp. 487-8.
23
For the symbolic meaning of the myrtle’s evergreenness, see
below, p. 475; cf. J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck (eds), Bereschit Rabba
(Jerusalem 1965), vol. 2, 692, ch. 63, §§9-10, a Midrash on Gen. 25:27; English
translation H. Freedman and M. Simon, in Midrash Rabbah: Genesis (London
1961), vol. 2, 565, where Jacob is likened to the fragrant myrtle and Esau to a
thorn-bush.
24
The question whether, at the stage of wilaya, fear
is removed from the awliya’ as they gain a sense of security (amn),
is invoked in Sïrat al-awliya’. See e.g. 62-3 §87.
25
Then he plucked
some of the myrtle [twigs] from the bunch which he was holding and handed them to
me^
He said: ‘Take
this, and as for these that I hold in my hands, I myself shall take them to
him. This is between the two of you; both of you are together at the same
place...’ Then he said, ‘May God bestow on you, O sisters, a garden (rawda)
— not because of your fasts and prayers but because of the goodness of your
hearts and because you love the good and do not wish evil.’[12]
I said to him,
‘Why don’t you say this in front of my sisters?’ He said, ‘They are not like
you and they are not your equal.’ Then he said, ‘Peace be with you’ and went
away. I woke up.
One
can approach this captivating dream from different angles. As we read it, it
becomes obvious that it contains eschatological images which could have been
dwelled on at length in the pursuit of pre- Islamic materials and sources.
Indeed, that pre-Islamic eschatological traditions, especially Zoroastrian,
nourished early Islam is a subject widely studied and discussed and references
to some of the pertinent studies are not irrelevant for the concern of this
paper.[13]
From a literary perspective, these eschatological allusions — the pool, the
pure water, the white grapes, the scales, the white-haired white-clad figure —
help to create the other-worldly tenor of the dream narrative. But my concern
is neither with eschatology as such nor with literary tropes, but with the
comparative dimension of two aspects of the
dream:
first, the iconic significance of the myrtle and, second, the teaching
concerning the spiritual hierarchy of the awliya, the Friends of God,
the holy men of Islam.
A
comparative study of the function and significance of myrtle in the literature
of Antiquity and Late Antiquity yields a wealth of information. The peoples of
Antiquity and the religious groups of Late Antiquity held the myrtle in great
esteem and ascribed to it therapeutic, ritualistic and magical qualities.25
As, the Arabic word for myrtle which our author uses, is a loanword from
Aramaic. In Aramaic
25
The following are selected instances adduced in support of
this comparative observation; many similar instances could be brought to bear,
but exceeding the limits of this selection might have overcrowded my
comparative data more than is plausibly comfortable and more than is relevant
for the pursuit of my main topic: In Pliny’s Naturalis Historia the
myrtle (Lat. myrtus) is mentioned as a tree with remarkable powers for prophecy
and augury; it is associated with Venus and hence used in wedding banquets; it is
an ingredient in many medicinal and aromatic prescriptions; wreaths of myrtle
are worn sometimes by triumphant army leaders (instead of the more customary
laurel) and in many other instances, see Pliny the Elder, Natural History: A
Selection, trans. J.F. Healey (London 1991), 203, 302 et passim; for Latin
and Greek material concerning the myrtle, see C. Connors, ‘Scent and
Sensibility in Plautus’ Casina , The Classical Quarterly, N.S. 47
(1997), 305-9. Much of the Hellenistic material concerning the medicinal uses
of the myrtle has been absorbed into Syriac documents. A Syriac medical text,
for example, enumerates scores of instances in which myrtle, or myrtle oil,
has been used in recipes for various medications. See E.A. Wallis Budge (trans.
and annot.), Syrian Anatomy, Pathology and Therapeutics or The Book of
Medicine (Oxford 1913), 2 vols. (for many medicinal concoctions based on
myrtle, see vol. II, Index, 774); according to Wallis Budge, this text is
probably a translation into Syriac from the Greek made by a Nestorian physician
in the early centuries of the Common Era. In a Coptic treatise on exorcism, the
exorcist is instructed to ‘wear a crown of roses, have a twig of myrtle in
[his] hand, and rock salt in [his] mouth’. See F. Rossi apud E.R. Goodenough, Jewish
Symbols in the Greco-Roman World, Bollingen Series 37 (New York 1953-68),
vol. 4, 174. For myrtle in early Jewish medicinal and cosmetic prescriptions,
see F. Rosner (trans. and ed.), Julius Preuss’ Biblical and Talmudic
Medicine (New York 1978) 305 (citing BT Git. 68b) and 372 (citing BT Shab.
9). In a well-known passage from the Hekhalot Rabbati, when R. Nehunya
ben ha-Qannah remains in a mystical trance, R. Ishma'el inserts ‘a bough of
myrtle full of oil.’ into a ‘piece of very fine woollen cloth.’ which had been
laid ‘beside a woman who. had not yet become pure..’ This piece of cloth
suffused with myrtle-oil is placed ‘upon the knees of R. Nehunya’ in an
extremely cautious operation designed to bring the sage down unharmed. See G.
Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition
(New York 1965), 11.
26 dialects, asa, myrtle,26 is apparently a
loanword from the Akkadian asum.27 Asum and asa,
according to some, seem to share the root ’-s-y with words denoting
healing, medicine, physician, etc.28 Bearing in mind the therapeutic
qualities of the myrtle, these two distinct lexemes could have been easily
associated semantically. Akkadian sources attest to the use of the myrtle as an
aromatic, as an ingredient in perfume for ritual offerings and in medical as
well as magical use since the dawn of civilization.29Arabic, too,
has assimilated this cultural loanword and the medical knowledge associated
with it, probably via Aramaic.30 Some classical Arabic dictionaries
show awareness
27
See e.g. BT R. ha-Sh. 23a, in a list of plants in both
Aramaic and Hebrew: hadas, asa.
28
See D. Testen, ‘Semitic Terms for “MYRTLE”: A Study in
Covert Cognates’, JNES 57 (1998), 281; also M. Levey, Early Arabic
Pharmacology: An Introduction based on Ancient and Medieval Sources (Leiden
1973), 64.
29
Asû,
according to The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, means ‘physician’, and asûtu
denotes ‘medical practice, medical treatment, and medical lore’. See vol. A/2,
344, 351 respectively; for Syriac, see e.g. J. Payne Smith (Margoliouth), A
Compendious Syriac Dictionary, (Oxford 1903) 22b s.v. -s- '; also
M. Sokoloff, A Syriac Lexicon (Piscataway, NJ 2009) 72a s.v. '-s-y.
Note, however Widengren’s reservation of the connection of asa with
words denoting healing. See G. Widengren, ‘Review of Drower’s Water into
Wine London 1956’, JSS 2 (1957), 417-22; cf. Testen’s above
mentioned article, which suggests a different etymology, according to which as
and hadas may derive from a common origin; thus, in some Yemeni Arabic
dialects (both ancient and modern), myrtle is known as hadas or adas.
30
For the use of myrtle in ancient Mesopotamia as an ingredient
for perfume in ritual offerings, see the Standard Babylonian Epic of
Gilgamesh (XI, 160[!]) apud The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (Chicago
1968), vol. A/2, 342ff; A. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (Oxford
2003), vol. 1, 712-13. The collection of plants placed by Ota-napisti in the
ritual fire after the Deluge — reed, cedar, and myrtle — is similar to the
ingredients in a concoction prepared for magic rituals as inscribed on an
Aramaic magic bowl from Mesopotamia — see J. Naveh and Sh. Shaked, Amulets
and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem and
Leiden 1985): bowl 13, 200 (12), 202 (17), 212 (15) and note the reference to
PT Suk. III; cf. also E.M. Yamauchi, Mandaic Incantation Texts (New
Haven 1967), 204 (text 15, 5).
31
In some Arabic-speaking areas myrtle is known also as rayhan
or as marsin (from the Greek myrsiné) - see F. Rosner (ed. and
trans.), Moses Maimonides’ Glossary of Drug Names (Philadelphia 1979),
11; cf. W. Schmucker, Diepflanzliche und mineralische Materia Medica in
Firdaus al-Hikma des Tabari (Bonn 1969), 61, no. 19: as (= Abu
al-Hasan ‘All ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, Firdaus al-Hikma, 382.4). For
the plethora of therapeutic uses of the myrtle in Islamic medicine, see the
many occurrences of as, dihn al-as (myrtle oil), habb al-as
(myrtle seed), ma’ al-as (myrtle water) in Ibn Sina, al-Qanm fl
al-tibb (Beirut 1987), vol. IV (the index) 89 (s.v. as). See also M.
Levey, op. cit., 6, 64, and 76. This material should be viewed vis-à-vis the
Syriac Book of Medicine mentioned above, see note 25.
32
of
the foreign origin of this word, yet approve of its employment in eloquent
poetry. These dictionaries (which, incidentally, derive as from the root
’-w-s) mention its sweet scent and its evergreenness.[14]
In Umm 'Abd Allah’s dream the myrtle’s evergreenness is presented as an
essential symbolic feature. Indeed, it represents an abiding vitality which
belongs to a special type of human beings, those who are divinely endowed, the
holy men. Such a presentation of the myrtle can be found in testimonies from
various religious and cultural sources. For example, the evergreen myrtle comes
up in an intricate alchemical treatise ascribed to Jabir ibn Hayyan, an
enigmatic personality supposedly of the second/eighth-century, under whose
name a huge alchemical corpus in Arabic is in existence.[15] The treatise in question is
titled Kitab al-Zi’baq al-gharbï, The Occidental Mercury. Its style is
vague and couched with enigmas (or perhaps with errors of scribes and
redactors?). But the role of the myrtle in an alchemical distillation process
comes through clearly enough. The myrtle’s evergreenness, which is unaffected
by temporal changes of cold or warm, symbolizes, esoterically, the ever-present
purifying and transformative element sought after by alchemists and
philosophers.[16]
What is of particular interest is the author’s stipulation that his description
should not be taken at face value; the secret meaning of the evergreen myrtle
should be explored along with the code names that it had been
given
protectively by legendary sages associated with the alchemical art: ‘the golden
ladders’ (salalim al-dhahab) by Maria the Egyptian and ‘the green bird’ (al-ta’ir
al-akhdar) by Socrates [!].34 Another
example comes from a rather late Judaic Midrash, Panîm dhêrîm, dated
either to the early (eighth century) or the late (twelfth-thirteenth century)
Middle Ages. We find in it the following statement: ‘As the myrtle withers
neither in summer nor in winter, so also the righteous withers neither in this
world nor in the world-to-come’.[17]
[18]
Now, symbolic meanings are often conveyed in formal,
ritualistic acts. The dream we are studying evokes such acts: sitting at a
source of fresh pure water, the meeting with an unknown messenger at the source
of the water, the white clothes and headgear the messenger is wearing, and in
particular his holding of the two kinds of plants in his hands. It is worth
repeating here the phrasing of the dreamer:
Then I saw in
his right hand [a bunch] of young green myrtle [twigs] (as akhdar ratb)
and in his other hand two branches of sweet basil (rayahln). While he
was talking to me he was holding them in his hands.
That the
myrtle should be held in the right hand is ritualistically significant. In
Judaism, one of the central rituals of the feast of Tabernacle includes
holding up the ‘four species’ — i.e. citron, myrtle, palm and willow.[19]
According to tradition, every day during the celebration of the feast the
‘four species’ are held and raised up: in the right hand one should hold,
bundled together in a very specific way, the myrtle twigs, the palm branch and
the willow twigs, and in the left hand the citron on its own.[20]
According to Midrash Têhillîm, another medieval Midrashic compilation,
the reason for this ritual is to be sought in Ps. 17:11: ‘Thou wilt show me
the path of life: in thy
presence
is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore’. Since the triple bundle which includes the
myrtle symbolizes the endless pleasures at God’s right hand, it is in
this hand that it should ritually be held.[21] Interesting in this context
is a Talmudic anecdote, which, in a somewhat idiosyncratic ritual, connects the
myrtle with Shabbat and possibly with the efficacious aspect of holding up the
myrtle: on the eve of Shabbat, R. Shimon bar-Yohai and his son saw an old man
running. He was holding two bunches of myrtle twigs in his hands. When they
asked him what these were for, he answered: ‘One is for “Remember!” (zakôr
- Exod. 20:8), the other for “Observe!”’ (sdmôr - Deut. 5:12).[22]
Another ritualistic example comes from a time and milieu
closer to the dreamer at the core of our inquiry: it is in the context of
traditions concerning Muhammad ibn Nusayr, the third/ninth-cen- tury eponymous
founder of the Nusayriyya (one of the extremist, ghulat, sects that
branched off from the Shi'a). In the Nusayri tradition, Ibn Nusayr is
considered the bab (literally, the Gate, the title of the Imam’s
mouthpiece who acts as intermediary between the Imam and his followers) of the
eleventh Shi'i Imam, Hasan al-'Askari (d. 260/874). It is related that when a
delegation of Persian horsemen paid a visit to the Imam, ‘they found him
dressed all in green, surrounded by green mats and pillows, and next to him Ibn
Nusayr, also clad in green and holding a branch of myrtle (as) in his
hand’.[23]
Although the tradition does not specify in which hand the myrtle was
held, it is obvious that it was the right hand, since the left hand is
considered ill-omened and foreboding and is at best referred to,
euphemistically, as ‘the other hand’ as in the dream narrative we are
discussing (see above). The image of an Imam accompanied by his bab (in
the Nusayri tradition both figures were believed to be divinely inspired and
endowed with super-human qualities; furthermore, the Imam was considered as
God incarnate), the latter holding myrtle in his hand and both seated in the
centre of a formal audition
in which a delegation of horsemen present themselves to
offer their loyalty and submission to both, such an image is reminiscent of
pre- Islamic Near-Eastern traditions with similar iconic and ritualistic
connotations. The most striking similarity is with the Mandaean tradition.
In spite of well-known difficulties in charting the history
and in dating the origin of the Mandaean tradition with any precision, the
following statement made by one of the leading experts seems to be generally
accepted: ‘Modern investigations ... have shown that the [Mandaean] liturgical
and poetic writings must have existed already in the third century ce’.[24] Also agreed upon is the association of the
Mandaean religion with late antique Gnosticism. This, for one thing, is
reflected in the (Aramaic) word manda', gnosis (knowledge), from which
their designation derives. In fact, the Mandaean religion of today is said to
be the only living remnant of the Gnostic religions of Late Antiquity.[25]
Some of the ritual images in the dream we are contemplating can be found also
in the Mandaean tradition and are central to it: water and the purification
ritual of baptism in water (masbuta); the presence and help of divine
messengers ( 'uthr/a);[26]
the right hand significance, for example in the ‘right hand clasping’
ceremony (qushta);4 the white dress and
turban worn by priests and laity (rastà); and, lastly, the evergreen,
fresh and fine-smelling myrtle. In the Mandaean liturgy the myrtle appears to
be much more than yet another ingredient in triumphal wreaths, in therapeutic
recipes or in magical formulae. Myrtle is a cardinal ritualistic object endowed
with sanctity and symbolism. Here, for example, are some lines from a hymn
which is recited during one of the main Mandaean ceremonies, the Zidqa
brlkha (‘the blessed offering’), at which the high priest distributes
myrtle twigs to the participants and they in turn insert them into their
turbans:[27]
[28]
In the Name of the Great Life![29]
Myrtle, Myrtle! The King[30]
took it,
The King was surrounded by
the perfumed myrtle
And he blessed Hibil-Ziwa[31]
and said to him:
Blessed are thou, our
father Hibil-Ziwa
Like the myrtle that is in
thy right hand.[32]
And may thy root flourish
Like the root of the fresh
myrtle
And thou shalt have glory
and honour
Like the Water of Life.[33]
Many
more passages of this ilk could be cited to impress upon us the centrality of
the myrtle in the Mandaean rites. Lady E.S. Drower, an early twentieth-century
anthropologist, is probably the first modern scholar to have assiduously
observed, collected and recorded the rites and liturgy of the modern Mandaeans,
whom she had met in the marshes of south Iraq and Iran. In her works Drower has
given vivid descriptions of the myrtle wreath (klila) which is present
in many acts of worship and of other ceremonies and hymns in which the myrtle
plays an important religious role.51 Of particular interest is the drab-
sha/drafsha, the ritual banner present at almost every Mandaean ceremony,
into which fresh myrtle sprigs are woven.52 As is clear from the
liturgy, including the hymn cited above, the sacral objects involved in these
ceremonies are believed to represent their spiritual counterparts in the Realm
of Light and Life.53 This brings to mind the symbolic connotations
of the evergreen myrtle in the alchemical art adopted by Jabir ibn Hayyan and
others in early Islam, connotations that were kept concealed from lay people
but were considered attainable, fathomed and acted upon by an elect few.54
life as, for example, in Nawadir al-usul, ch. 284,
41 Off, is noteworthy; see, for example, ibid., 412: ‘The otherworldly life
inheres in everything in him; everything in him is alive from head to toe; each
hair and each nail is alive by his life — that is, if they [!] have drunk the water
of life in the gate of paradise’ (wa-hayatu l-akhirati fi kulli shay’in
minhu, fa-kullu shay’in minhu hayyun min qarnihi ila qadamihi, kullu sha’ratin
wa-kullu zifrin hayyun bi-hayatihi, wa-dhalika idha sharibu maa ’l-hayati
bi-babi ’l-jannatí).
51
Of special interest are the references to the myrtle in
E.S. Drower’s, The Secret Adam; see, for example, 87, note 2: ‘The
omission of myrtle and the myrtle wreath is a sin, which... needs purification
by baptism... and soon’; see also eadem, The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran,
206: ‘.[the] drinking of fresh juice and water is combined throughout with
myrtle rites and the formal “smelling the perfume of the myrtle”, hereby
intensifying. the implied symbolism of evergreen immortality and of the
resurrection forces of spring, germination, and growth.’; for more on the
myrtle wreath, see below note 54.
52
See e.g. The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, 108ff, 115
et passim; also eadem, The Secret Adam, 61ff.; see also K. Rudolph,
‘Interaction with the Iranian Religion’, Encyclopaedia Iranica.
53
See Rudolph, Mandaeism, 6f. It is worth noting that
in the last decades the study of Mandaeism has been flourishing in several
academic centres. Here I shall confine myself to mentioning two conferences
held by the ARAM Society for Syro- Mesopotamian Studies: the 13th international conference, The Mandaeans,
held at Harvard University. See the proceedings in ARAM 11/2 (1999) then
in July 2013 in Oxford. Following this last conference, a Society for Mandaean
Studies has been established. See e.g. <http://cfis.columbia.edu/event/society-mandaean-studies>.
54
An intriguing, hard to overlook parallel to ancient rituals
connected with the myrtle appears in a passage of The Acts of Thomas,
ch. 5, which reads as follows:
55
Myrtle as a Symbol of the Holy Man
In
our pursuit of myrtle imagery in the context of ‘holiness,’ we arrive at a
biblical passage whose similarity to Umm 'Abd Allah’s dream is nothing but
striking. The passage in question is the first night vision of the prophet
Zechariah, seen in the second year of the reign of Darius. Several images in
the night vision seem relevant for our discussion, but what is of particular
relevance are the rabbinic commentaries thereof. Zech. 1:8-11 reads as
follows:
I saw by night,
and behold, a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle
trees that were in the bottom; and behind him there were red horses,
speckled, and white. Then said I, O, my Lord, what are these? And the angel
that talked with me said unto me, I will show thee what these be. And the man
that stood among the myrtle trees answered and said, These are they whom
the Lord hath sent to walk to and fro through the earth. And they
answered the angel of the Lord that stood among the myrtle trees and
said, We have walked to and fro through the earth, and behold, all the
earth sitteth still and is at rest.
Two
chords in this night vision reverberate in Umm 'Abd Allah’s dream: first, the
myrtle (in the biblical Hebrew hadassim, ‘myrtle’ in the plural, with no
apparent suggestion of ‘trees’ as in the English translation; note, however,
the Aramaic translation, below, p. 483) and, second, the expression to walk
to and fro through the earth, an expression which marks the horses’
function and identity in the vision. The nexus of these two images in both
vision and dream is striking; it allows us to characterize both the ‘horses’
and the figure in the dream as belonging to a category of messengers whose
business is to walk about (or roam), investigate, and then act upon their
finds: in the vision this entails reporting to a superior being and in the
dream signalling out the elect from ordinary worshippers, this too, no doubt,
by divine order (see above). When we add to this nexus the puzzled questions with
which both the prophet Zechariah (‘what are these?’) and Umm 'Abd Allah (‘would
you, please, tell me who you are?’) address their well-informed interlocutors,
we can identify here a literary topos in a very particular context. The context
in both narratives is an event which brings together the transcendent and the
‘The apostle anointed the top of his head and smeared a
little upon his nostrils... and the wreath that was brought to him woven of
myrtle and other flowers [in the Syriac: klîlâ d-asa], he took and set
it on his head, and took a branch of calamus and held it in his hand’, English
translation from the Greek with reference to the Syriac texts, M.R. James, The
Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford 1924).
worldly
realms by means of messengers. These events are visually constructed as
meetings between an innocent observer and an allknowing interlocutor. In both
meetings the myrtle plays a pivotal though enigmatic role which begs
interpretation. In Umm 'Abd Allah’s dream the interpretation is given to her by
the angelic figure: ‘And these myrtle twigs we place upon the hearts of the
eminently just ones (al-siddiqun) and the ones who possess certitude (al-muqinun)
so that by them they may know what sincerity (sidq) is’. For the
interpretation of the myrtle in Zechariah’s vision we have to look for
illumination outside of the biblical text. We find it, for example, in the
Babylonian Talmud San. 93a, in the context of a discussion concerning the
ranks of the righteous (saddîqîm').[34]
The Talmudic discussion starts with the statement, ‘The righteous are greater
than the ministering angels’,[35]
which is supported by an allusion to Hananiah, Misha’el and 'Azariah, the three
righteous youths who were thrown into the furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar but
came out unscathed (Dan. 3:24-6). When God remembers His righteous, the sages
suggest, He is appeased and puts off His plan to destroy the whole world.[36]
The Rabbinic discussion that follows, with the righteous in mind, sparks off R.
Yohanan, a third-century Palestinian Amora (Talmudic scholar),[37]
to engage in a lengthy discourse, in which he offers a commentary on
Zechariah’s vision: ‘A man riding upon a red horse’ he interprets as ‘the Holy
one blessed be He’, and ‘He stood among the myrtle trees that were in the deep’
— these, he says, are ‘the righteous that were in Babylon’, namely, Hananiah,
Misha’el and 'Azariah, thanks to whom the world still exists; for, he adds
emphatically, ‘the myrtle refers to nothing but the righteous’ (wê- ’ên
hadassîm ’ella saddîqîm). This Rabbinic tradition according to which the
myrtle represents the righteous is witnessed by the fourth-fifth-century Church
Father St Jerome who, in his commentary to Zechariah,
which
is assumed to reflect the Aramaic Targum, writes: ‘The Hebrews... wish the
myrtles to be understood as the prophets and holy ones who were dwelling in the
midst of the captive people and were in the deep.’.[38] [39] Indeed, the ‘addendum’ (tosefta)
to the Aramaic Targum of Zech. 1:8 has this in brackets: ‘I had a vision during
the night. Behold, I saw a man mounted on a red horse, and he was stationed
among the myrtle trees of Babylon <among the righteous who were in the
Diaspora in Babylon>.6
In the same vein, the Talmudic lore connects this imagery
of the myrtle (hadas) also with Esther, whose Hebrew name Hadassah
derives from hadas. This is brought to bear by R. Yohanan in the passage
referred to above (from San. 93a), when he illustrates his exegesis of
Zechariah’s vision with a reference to the Book of Esth. 2:7: ‘And he brought
up Hadassah, that is, Esther.’ R. Yohanan’s elliptic reference to
Esther-Hadassah in the context of the myrtle as the righteous is clarified by
BT Meg. 13:1: ‘R. Meir says: Her name is Esther, so why is she called Hadassah?
[She is thus called] after the righteous who were named hadassîm
(myrtle), as it is said [in Zech. 1:8]: “And He stood among the hadassîm”
.[40]
In the Rabbinic lore, Zechariah’s prophetic night vision of
a man standing among the myrtle [trees] is thus understood as an image of God
standing among His righteous. Visually, this image is evocative of the ‘King’
standing among his messengers ('uthria) in the Man- daean ceremony and
the hymn cited above, where, as will be remembered, the ‘King’ distributes to
the lofty assembly fresh myrtle. It can also be associated with the Nusayri
image cited above describing the Imam sitting with his bab among his
loyal followers. That the ‘righteous’ stands (or sits) in the company of
divine messengers, or angels, should also be borne in mind, especially when in
the biblical vision the prophet’s interlocutor is identified as ‘the angel (or
messenger) of God’ (mal’ak Âdônay) and when we remember that in the
Talmudic exegesis, ‘the righteous’ come up in discussing saddîqîm versus
‘angels.’ Culturally and historically, then, Biblical,
Rabbinic, and Islamic, and to some extent also Christian references, supported
by the Mandaean material, imply a clear and continuous association of the
myrtle with the ‘righteous’ — this distinguished category of human beings
which, from a comparative perspective, we may name also ‘holy men’ or ‘saints’
as a wide-spread late antique cultural feature.
The crisscrossing net of traditions from pre-Islamic Late
Antiquity in which myrtle is celebrated and in whose cults myrtle is central is
indeed wide. But my intention is focused not on the phenomenon of myrtle at
large but on myrtle as a symbol of the ‘holy man’ within pre-Islamic
traditions.
Before we continue, a point from the perspective of
‘influence’ should be reiterated: clearly, it would be difficult to pin down
one corpus as the prime source of influence for the myrtle symbolism and
function. As regards early Islam in particular, it would be difficult, if not
impossible, to suggest from where the woman’s dream images sprang forth: were
they echoes of Zoroastrian, Mandaean or perhaps Jewish traditions? At the same
time, I am not inclined to regard this symbolism as simply ‘archetypal.’ It
seems so deeply embedded in the Near-Eastern traditions of Antiquity and Late
Antiquity that its presence has without doubt subsisted well into the Islamic
period, surfacing into the consciousness, or the unconscious, of a
third/ninth- century woman from a region that for many centuries had been known
as a place where, culturally and religiously, a variety of traditions and
systems converged. That this woman should be the visionary wife of the sage
who, during the formative period of Islamic mysticism, laid down a special
typology of ‘the holy man’ (wall), and that this typology should lie at
the foundation of the teaching of wilaya in Islamic mysticism at large,
make this inquiry significant from comparative and historical perspectives
rather than from phenomenological or archetypal perspectives alone. In other words,
what surfaced into the dreamer’s consciousness were not simply images from the
so-called ‘collective unconscious’, to use the terminology of analytical
psychology, but rather images which have been implanted there through
multi-layered (conscious or unconscious) cultural contacts over a long period
of time. By this observation I do not mean to reduce the numinous quality of
the dream. It is my understanding that, on the personal level, this and the
rest of the dreams in al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi’s autobiography were understood by
both himself and his wife as ‘teaching dreams’, messages delivered by a
transcendent messenger from a divine sphere, perhaps in lieu of a living,
flesh and
blood teacher that Abu 'Abd Allah never had.[41]
It was clear to both husband and wife that the purpose of these messages was to
announce that they were among the chosen ones, the elect, those included in the
category of awliya allah.
The World Cannot Exist Without the Righteous
The
Talmudic commentary identifying Zechariah’s myrtle [trees] with the righteous (saddîqîm)
sprang from R. Yohanan’s recall of the three righteous youths who were in the
furnace in Babylon under the protection of God and God’s angel. But the Amora’s
interpretative association went further: the ‘man’ in the night vision, he
says, represents God, and the ‘red horse’ upon which He was riding represents
God’s wish to turn the whole world to blood. Then, when God encounters His
three righteous youths, He is appeased and changes His mind; consequently, the
world is not destroyed. The doctrine, according to which the subsistence of the
world hangs upon the presence of the righteous in it is well-known in Rabbinic
lore and prevalent in numerous discussions scattered in the Talmud and in the
Midrashic literature.[42]
In BT Yoma 38b, for example, several sayings concerning the categorical
unceasing presence of the saddîqîm in each and every generation are
attributed to the same Amora mentioned above, R. Yohanan.[43] In the course of Yoma 38b,
it is R. Yohanan who articulates the following well-known saying: ‘The world
exists even for the sake of one righteous, as it is said’ [Prov. 10:25]: ‘And
the saddîq is the foundation of the world’.[44] In times of calamity,
when
God in His wrath wishes to punish the iniquities of the evildoers by
destroying the world, the presence of the righteous is indispensable. The
prototype and model for this virtuous and life-preserving righteous is
Abraham, who, in arguing with God against God’s decision to destroy the sinning
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:13), succeeded in laying down a binding
protective precedent that hinges on the ubiquitous presence of a number of men
representing the loftiest human exempla. Hence the Talmudic dictum: ‘The world
cannot exist with less than thirty righteous [who are] like Abraham our
Father...’66
The principle that maintains a necessary and binding
correlation between the well-being of the world and the presence of a number of
holy men in it, anchored in late antique Rabbinic Judaism, is widespread also
in early Islamic sources. One of the earliest collections of traditions
concerning the holy men in Islam is Kitab al-Awliya (The Book of the
Friends of God) by Abu Bakr ibn Abi al-Dunya (d. 281/894),67 a
prolific author and court educator from Baghdad and a near-contemporary of
al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi. He cites the following tradition with a chain of
transmission (isnad) that ends with Ka'b al-Ahbar, a
first/seventh-century Jewish convert to Islam.68 It says: ‘After
Noah’s generation (lit.: people), there never came upon the earth a generation
without there being in it fourteen [men] thanks to whom [Divine] punishment is
lifted’.69 Noah is only one
(Jerusalem 1982), 118 ff. (in Hebrew); English translation
A. Schwartz, S. Nakache and P Peli, ‘The Messiah of the Zohar’, in Y. Liebes, Studies
in the Zohar (Albany 1993), 12 ff.
66
See PT 'A.Z., 9a, section II: 1 (English translation J.
Neusner in The Talmud of the Land of Israel: A Preliminary Translation and
Explanation [Chicago 1982], vol. 33, 53); also Bereschit Rabba vol.
1: 330 (ch. 35, 2) and vol. 2: 501-2 (ch. 49, 3; English translation in Midrash
Rabbah: Genesis, vol. 1: 283, 423); cf. Cant. Rabba 7, 8 (English
translation M. Simon in Midrash Rabbah: Song of Songs [London and New
York 1983], vol. 9: 294-5); BT Suk. 45b, San. 97b (English
translation I. Epstein in The Babylonian Talmud [London 1938], vol. 8:
209-10 and vol. 24: 659-60).
67
On him see A. Dietrich, EI2 s.v.
68
See on him M. Schmitz, EI2 s.v.
69
See Ibn Abi al-Dunya, Kitab al-Awliya’ (Beirut
1413/1993) 28, no. 61: ‘ma ata 'alâ ’l-ardi qawmun ba'da qawmi Nühin illa
wa-fîhâ arba’ata ‘ashara yudfa’u bihimu ’l-'adhabu . The adjacent tradition
in Kitab al-Awliya’ (no. 62), reported in the name of Ibn 'Abbas, one of
the most eminent companions of the Prophet Muhammad, argues that the required
number is five, not fourteen. Al-Suyuti, a ninth/fifteenth-century author (d.
911/1505), brings the following variant: ‘After Noah the earth has never been
devoid of seven [men] due to whom God defends the people of the earth’. See ‘al-Khabar
al-dall 'ala wujüd al-qutb wa’l-awtad
70
representative
of the line of righteous thanks to whom divine wrath is warded off. In the
Islamic lore, the analogy with Abraham is crucial and is found in many early
traditions concerning the holy men. Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, in his voluminous
compendium Nawadir al-usul, dedicated a chapter to the description of
the abdal, a fixed- number category of godly men who make up an unbroken
succession by which the world is preserved against destruction.70 He
cites the following prophetic tradition: ‘The abdal are thirty men whose
hearts are in the mould of Abraham’s heart. When one man dies, God substitutes
him with another’.71
The analogy between the Judaic and the Islamic traditions
concerning the holy men has been dealt with in (at least) two scholarly works,
in which much comparative material has been assembled.72 It would be
superfluous to repeat what has already been brought to bear. Al-Hakim
al-Tirmidhi’s concepts on wilaya, too, have been previously elaborated
in scholarly literature.73 Therefore, rather than sum up well-known
ideas in this regard, I wish to return to Umm 'Abd Allah’s dream in order to flesh
out the distinction made by the messenger, and symbolized by the two kinds of
plants he is holding, between two categories of religious personalities: the
worshippers (al- Ubbad) on the one hand and the awliya on the
other (see above,
wa’l-nujaba wa’l-abdal in al-Hawi lil-fatawi (Beirut 1403/1983) vol. 2,
241-55, 246. The numbers of the indispensable holy men varies, but the notion
that the peace and well-being of the world is maintained thanks to this or that
number is persistent in both the Judaic and the Islamic traditions.
71
Abdal, or budala’,
is one of the oldest terms to be found in Islamic literature which carries the
connotations of ‘holy men’. See J. Chabbi, ‘Abdal’, Encyclopaedia Iranica,
vol. 1, 173-4.
72
See Nawadir al-usul, ch. 51, 69: al-abdalu
thalathuna rajulan qulubuhum 'ala qalbi Ibrahîma, idha mata l-rajulu abdala
’llahu makanahu akhara.
73
See R. Mach, Der Zaddik in Talmud und Midrasch
(Leiden 1957); also P.B. Fenton, ‘La Hiérarchie des saints dans la mystique
juive et dans la mystique islamique’, in M. Hallamish (ed.), Alei Shefer.
Studies in the Literature of Jewish Thought Presented to Rabbi Dr. Alexander
Safran (Ramat-Gan 1990), 49-73; also idem, ‘The Hierarchy of Saints in
Jewish and Islamic Mysticism’, Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society
10 (1991), 12-34; see also H. Schwarzbaum, ‘The Thirty-six Righteous in Jewish
Folklore’, in E. Yassif (ed.), Roots and Landscapes: Studies in Folklore
(Beer Sheva 1993), 84-95 (in Hebrew).
74
See B. Radtke, ‘The Concept of Wilaya in Early
Sufism’, in L. Lewisohn (ed.), Classical Persian Sufism: from its Origins to
Rumi (London and New York 1993), 483-96 (= The Heritage of Sufism,
Volume I: Classical Persian Sufism from Its Origins to Rumi (700-1300),
(Oxford 1999); M. Chodkiewicz, Seal of the Saints: Prophethood and
Sainthood in the Doctrine of Ibn 'Arabi (Cambridge 1993), esp. ch. 2, 26-46
et passim.
75
p.
482). When the dream image and its purport are placed alongside al-Hakim
al-Tirmidhi’s teaching at large, it transpires that his understanding of wilaya
reflects an analogous binary typology while also taking it further: the binary
message conveyed in the dream expands in al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi’s works to refer
not only to the worshippers vis-à-vis the ‘friends’, but to maintain that
within wilaya itself there inheres a deeper binary distinction between
those named siddïqün, those who truly attain the rank of awliya’Allah,
and those named sadiqun, the just ones, who attain only the lower ranks
of wilayad4 What constitutes the one type and what the other?
The follow up of this question brings out some radical streaks in al-Tirmidhi’s
understanding of the man-God relationship inherent in wilaya and in
human nature at large. Also, as in the case of the previously surveyed myrtle
image, al-Tirmidhi’s teaching of wilaya retains further echoes of late
antique traditions. The traditions in question, to which I can point only in brief,
are associated with (apocryphal?) Christian sources and notions and thus widen
the outlook of the pre-Islamic materials which form the background for
al-Tirmidhi’s understanding of the ‘friends of God’ and, in the wake of
prophecy, the special position they hold for the Muslim community and for the
world at large.
Who are the ‘Free and Noble’ (al-ahrâr
al-kiram)?
In
the context of the inner binary typology of the Friends of God, there is, then,
one last comparative point that I wish to bring out. In Sïrat al-awliya’,
although by no means a systematic work, al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi presents a
consistent binary typology of the ‘friends of God’ according to which the two
types are distinguished not only in their behaviour and characteristics, but
also in the locations divinely allotted to them on the cosmic map of wilayad5
Al-Tirmidhi’s cosmic-hierarchical distinction is expressed by two spatial
denominations: ‘the place of the free and noble’ (mahall al-ahrâr al-kiram)
vis-à-vis ‘the place of the just ones’ (mahall al-sadiqïn), the
first being definitively higher and nearer to God than the latter. Fundamental
to this distinction is the characterization of the sadiqün as those
among the awliya who rely on voluntary efforts and strenuous ascetical
activities. Al-Tirmidhi names the principle that motivates them
78
sidq, sincerity, veracity. Pietistic literature tends
to esteem sincerity and voluntary efforts as meritorious, commendable features
required of the faithful. But in his radical, nonconformist vision of human
anthropology and psychology, al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi reevaluates ‘good deeds’ (a'mal
al-birr) and pious efforts as activities, good in themselves but more often
than not attached to the self (al-nafs). Thus, among those who seek to
become God’s friends and attain a lofty place in His nearness, he maintains, only
a few are clean of selfregard. Such quality pertains to the inner sphere of
the ‘friends’, to an inner circle into which only a few chosen ones, the truly
saintly, are allowed access. The distinction which sets the awliya apart
is contingent, firstly, upon primordial divine choice; and then, for the walls
position in the divine scheme to be finally attained, he must be taken through
an educational-experiential process supervised by God’s spiritual helpers.[45]
[46]
What exposes the walls nature most of all is his avoidance of falsehood
and pretence, even to the smallest extent. Human nature, according to
al-Tirmidhi, makes this a near impossible endeavour; effortful activities
based on sincerity (sidq), either in fulfilling the normative religious
duties or the supererogatory practices, are always bound up with the wilful
self (naf); and wilful, effortful acts always end in false pretence (iddi'a’).
Ascetical means by which one struggles against any worldly or egotistic
inclinations tend, in the last resort, to strengthen the will and the self. The
so-called just man (al-sadiq) who walks the path of efforts (mujahada,
jihad al-nafs), sooner or later, despite his piety, arrives at an impasse.
Realizing that without efforts he cannot proceed but that by efforts he
remains chained to the nafs, he becomes ‘constrained’ (mudtarr). Constraint
signals a dead-end for the will (irada). At this point, if he is
sincerely intent on relinquishing his reliance on self and efforts, he falls
into a state of helplessness and need (faqr, iftiqar, idtirar). His call
out to God from this state can be nothing but sincere, without affectations.
When his sincere call (da'wa khalisa) is answered, his heart is flown in
a twinkle of the eye from ‘the place of the sadiqun (mahall al-sadiqln)
to ‘the place of the free and noble’ (mahall al-ahrar al-kiram)7
True wilaya, concludes al-Tirmidhi, is not only contingent upon a
primordial divine choice, it is also an act of renunciation,
not
necessarily of the world and its assets, but of the reliance on the personal
ability to achieve it. Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi finds scriptural proof for his
challenging attitude by juxtaposing two Quranic verses: ‘make a true effort for
God’ (22:78) and ‘those who make an effort for Us, we shall surely guide them to
Our paths’ (29:69). Logically, the two verses seem causally connected: if you
strive, then God will guide you. But al-Tirmidhi’s understanding is dictated by
a linguistic sensibility, which construes the verbal form la-nahdiyannahum,
‘We shall surely guide them’, as intrinsically associated, through the root h-d-y,
with the word hadiyya, gift.[47] To him, the two verses
confirm the typology according to which the effort-making awliya’, the sadiqun,
are not on a par with the siddïqun, those who are given divine guidance
as a gift and grace.[48]
The latter are variously designated. One of their designations is majdhubun,
those who are ‘drawn- up’ to God’s nearness through God’s will, not through
their own.[49]
They are also named siddïqun, awliya Allah and ahrar kiram,
free and noble.
What does the designation ‘free and noble’ and the
expression ‘the place of the free and noble’ mean?[50]Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi
provides a clue to these questions in another of his major opera, the Nawadir
al-usul, a large compendium of ‘rare’ (or ‘precious’) traditions. In
chapter 67 he cites a prophetic tradition: ‘God created Adam from a handful of
soil which He took from the whole earth. Human beings emerge, therefore,
according to the state of the soil. This is whence the even-tempered and the
rough, the wicked and the well-disposed
[characters]
ensue’.[51]
Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi comments on this tradition: ‘Good soil produces
even-tempered and noble souls with no dryness (kazaza), aridity (yubusa)
or dishevelment (shuutha) in them; they are free and noble; their
mothers bore them [free] from the yoke and desires of the self (min
riqqi l-nufusi wa-shahawatiha). As for the others, their soil was rugged (kanati
’l-huzunatu fi turbatihim), and from this [kind of soil], dryness,
dishevelment and hardness ensued; their mothers bore them slaves; the
yoke and desires of their selves dominate them’.[52] Evidently, al-Tirmidhi’s
approach is nothing if not extremely deterministic: human character and destiny
are predetermined and built into the very fabric (we would say DNA) of one’s
nature at the onset of creation and birth. Such an approach draws intriguing
ethno-theological and ethical conclusions, which I shall not address in the
context of this paper. From a comparative perspective, however, I shall make
the following observations: the expression ‘free and noble’ in al-Hakim
al-Tirmidhi’s works, as well as in a few other Muslim sources, almost always
occurs in the context of a sermon attributed to Jesus ('Isa ibn Maryam).[53]
[54]
Thus, in a sermon adduced in ch. 67 of the Nawadir, from which we have
been citing, Jesus admonishes the Children of Israel saying: ‘[You are] neither
fearful slaves nor free noblemen’ (la 'abîd atqiya wa-la ahrar kuramd'). ‘What
he means’, explains al-Tirmidhi, is this: ‘You are neither as slaves fabid)
who struggle with their selves and are fearful of God (yujahiduna anfusahum
wa-yattaquna ’llaha); nor are you as freemen (min al-ahrar) who were
liberated from the yoke of the self and travel to God as noblemen, without
swerving and with no hesitation (fa-saru ila ’llahi ta'dld sayra ’l-kirdmi
bi-la ta'rîjin wa-la taraddudtnY 8 To paraphrase, this is how
al-Tirmidhi seems to understand Jesus’s admonition: O Children of Israel, you
belong neither to the one nor to the other of the two types of the ‘friends of
God’. Via this
exhortation
al-Tirmidhi takes the binary typology of the awliya back to Jesus. Such
a typology may, indeed, reflect the Pauline distinction between the ‘sons of
the free woman’ and the ‘sons of the slave woman’ (see Paul’s Epistle to the
Galatians 4:21-31). This association may be supported by the fact that the
very same chapter of the Nawadir (ch. 67) deals, primarily, with the
superiority of the Arabs, banu ismaïl, over the Israelites, banu
israïl. This reads like a polemical retort; for in his epistle, Paul
proclaims the superiority of the Children of Israel, those who follow Jesus,
over the Ishmaelite: those who follow Jesus he identifies as the descendants of
Sarah, the free woman, while the Ishmaelite are the descendants of Hagar, the
slave woman.
The issue of ethno-spiritual and religious superiority in
its wider, complex polemical context, especially in view of late-antique Christian
(or Judaeo-Christian) ideologies, merits further exploration.[55]
Within the limits of this paper, however, suffice it to say that whatever
the pre-Islamic background for this polemic, for al-Tirmidhi the designation
‘free and noble’, with its distinct Christian echoes, lies at the heart of a
teaching which upholds a universalistic deterministic typology, marking apart
human beings, societies, ethnic groups and religions at large and, among them,
in particular, the holy men.
In
this paper I have linked two seemingly dissimilar kinds of material: a personal
account of a dream together with programmatic texts presenting key concepts
regarding the holy man and the spiritual hierarchy in early Islam. This linkage
was facilitated by the fact that both kinds of material were authored by the
third/ninth century mystic al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, in whose oeuvre the
holy men or, more appropriately, the ‘friends of God’, occupy a central
position. Moreover, his writings in this regard had a significant impact on the
teachings
on wilaya
in Islamic mysticism at large. The dream, unlike the programmatic texts, is
presented in a direct and straightforward style and does not offer any analysis
or interpretation. Yet it is a ‘text’, and as such susceptible to all that
readers do with texts, i.e. interpret them, comment on them, break them down,
and compare them with other texts. Texts reflect their environment, not only in
historical and sociological terms but also in conceptual and doctrinal terms.
In early Islam, with prophecy coming to an end in the wake of the Prophet
Muhammad, one of the most urgent settings was the need to formulate and
legitimize a strategy for the continuation of the God-man relationship and
communication. Both the dream and the programmatic texts around it reveal a
historical and religious setting in which this continuity was delegated to the
‘friends of God’, the awliya. This reflects the position, adopted
sweepingly by Sufism, according to which the true successors of the Prophet,
alluded to in the maxim inna warathata ’l-anbiyai ’l-'ulamau (the
successors of the prophets are the religious scholars), are identified as the awliya’.
From this perspective, the 'ulama are those endowed with divine
knowledge, those who possess an inspired ‘knowledge of God’, al-'ilm
bi-’llah. This position adds an important perspective to the copiously
studied topic of debates in early Islam around the question of post-prophetic
succession and authority. It points to a teaching according to which, beyond
political power-struggles between religious scholars and community leaders,
another option was also upheld: the supreme authority of the spiritual
hierarchy of holy men; an authority which, for some, possessed an overriding
and divinely inspired power. But the veneration of the holy men in early Islam,
be they the awliya’ or the Shi'ite Imams, was not an isolated
intra-Islamic phenomenon. It reflects the beliefs, traditions, and images which
pervaded the religious scene in Late Antiquity prior to the rise of Islam. In
Judaism, Christianity, Manichaeism and other Gnostic schools such as Man-
daeism, the notion of men (and sometimes women), distinguished from other
believers by virtue of special qualities granted by divine grace and election
was widespread and pervasive. In The Making of Late Antiquity Peter
Brown describes Late Antiquity as an era that saw ‘the rise of a body of men
led by self-styled “friends of God”, who claimed to have found dominance over
the “earthly” forces of their world through a special relation to heaven’.[56]
These friends of God, according to Peter Brown, constituted ‘a group made
separate
from
and far superior to, their fellow men by reason of a special intimacy with the
divine’.[57]
In Islam, the post-Prophetic vacuum which motivated the construction of
distinctive theological doctrines, when combined with the pervasive elevation
of the Man of God throughout Late Antiquity, marks the phenomenon of the
spiritual hierarchy as a ubiquitous and continuous presence from the dawn of
mankind and from very early Islamic history. This is well attested to in both
Shi'ism and Sufism. Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi’s distinction between the, to him
erroneous, Shi'ite doctrine of the holy man as contingent on genealogy (nasab)
and kinship (ahl al-bayt) and between, to him the true, affiliation (nasab,
nisba) which is based not on blood but on a special spiritual relationship
with God, still awaits scholarly attention.[58] In this respect
al-Tirmidhi’s writings offer a rare and fairly early outlook of the struggle,
especially against the background of Imamate theology, for the formation of a
non-sectarian ideology of the awliya’, an inclusive ideology which
allowed for people with the appropriate qualities to be heralded as carriers of
divine inspiration and authority, regardless of their genealogical affiliations.
From the perspective of such a worldview of the spiritual
hierarchy, there is clearly a need to introduce comparative aspects into the
study of Islamic mysticism, and in particular to the study of its formative
period. Notions and depictions of the ‘holy men’ in early Islam are not sheer
direct borrowings from other traditions; but neither can they be described as
an entirely independent and original development of Islamic spirituality.
Rather, they continue and confirm spiritual trends and patterns which had
persisted for centuries in the rich religious and cultural sphere of Late
Antiquity while, at the same time, forging a distinctive theological
environment and formulating an indigenous religious vocabulary and syntax. To
this syntax belongs the binary structure which pervades al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi’s
writings. According to this binarity, ordinary worshippers (al- 'ubbad)
are distinguished from the ‘eminently just ones’ (al-siddïqün); in the
dream under discussion, this is symbolized by withering basil for the one type
versus evergreen myrtle for the other. At the same time, as in many of
al-Tirmidhi’s works, the siddïqun, those at the higher ranks
of wilaya,
are distinguished also from the ‘just ones’ (al-sôdiqün), thus
suggesting an additional inner hierarchical structure, also typologically
binary. In fact, the binary syntax goes beyond the realm of the holy man: Sufi
culture and vocabulary are immersed in it.[59] The formation of a binary
vocabulary and outlook in the formative period of Islamic mysticism and within
the demands of a firm monotheistic creed is yet another central theme with
comparative overtones to which al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi is one of the most prolific
contributors.
Address
for correspondence: sara.sviri@gmail.com
[1] The material for this paper has been collected
and assimilated for a very long time. I first encountered the image of the
myrtle at its heart while working on my PhD dissertation on al-Hakim
al-Tirmidhi under the supervision of Prof. Shaul Shaked: it is to Shaul Shaked
that my deepest gratitude goes, for input included in this paper and much
beyond. During the years in which this paper has been a workin-progress I benefited
from comments of friends and colleagues. I would like to thank specifically
those to whom I have shown various drafts: Ella Almagor, Meir Bar-Asher,
Brouria Bitton-Ashkeloni, Sarah Japhet, Menachem Kister, Ze’ev Maghen, Guy
Stroumsa and Sarah Stroumsa. I have not always followed each and every piece of
advice given me — the responsibility for all shortcomings, therefore, is my
own. Finally, special thanks go to two young scholars with whom I have been
working closely as supervisor: to Michael Ebstein for his constant wise
assistance and to Guy Ron-Gilboa, especially for spotting the lacunae in my
acquaintance with ancient Mesopotamian sources; both helped in widening and
corroborating comparative and philological aspects of this paper.
[2] See
M.J. Kister, Haddithu ’an banï israïla wa-lâ haraja: a Study of an Early
Tradition’, IOS 2 (1972), 215-39.
[3] For
critical observations concerning scholarly approaches to the question of
relationships which exist, or do not exist, between similar materials within
two (or more) literary corpora, a relationship that is variably named
influence, borrowing, intertextuality etc., see Z. Maghen, ‘Intertwined
Triangles: Remarks on the Relationship between Two Prophetic Scandals’, JSAI
33 (2007), 17—92, especially the lengthy note 6, pp. 19—20.
[4] Today this town is
known as Termez; it is situated on the northern bank of the Oxus River, on the
border of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
[5] Some scholars and
linguists, modern as well as traditionalist, prefer the form walaya. For
a lengthy discussion of various points concerning the use of either of these
terms, see V.J. Cornell, Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan
Sufism (Austin, TX 1998), xvii-xxi.
[6] There exist two
editions of this text: (1) M.Kh. Masud, ‘Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi’s Buduww Shan
, Islamic Studies 4 (1965), 315-44 and (2) O. Yahya (ed.), Bad’ shan, printed
with Yahya’s edition of al-Tirmidhi’s Khatm al-awliya (Beirut 1965),
14-32. B. Radtke and J. O’Kane included an annotated translation of Bad’shan
in their The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic Mysticism (Richmond
1996), 14-36. Radtke published also a German translation of the text together
with a facsimile of the Waliyuddin MS in his article ‘Tirmidiana Minora’, Oriens
34 (1994), 242-98. For the autobiographical genre in Arabic literature, see
D.F. Reynolds (ed.), Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic
Literary Tradition (Berkeley 2001); for al-Tirmidhi’s autobiography, see M.
Cooperson (trans.) ibid., 119-31; cf. D.F. Reynolds, ‘Symbolic Narratives of
Self: Dreams in Medieval Arabic Autobiographies’, in P.F. Kennedy (ed.), On
Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature (Wiesbaden 2005), 261-86,
esp. 270-2.
[7] See Radtke and
O’Kane, ‘Introduction’, in The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic
Mysticism, 10.
[8] For the function of
the series of dreams as teaching dreams, see S. Sviri, ‘Dreaming Analyzed and
Recorded’, in D. Shulman and G.G. Stroumsa (eds), Dream Cultures:
Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming (New York 1999),
252—73, especially 262, 265, 268; see below, p. 485.
[9] See Radtke and
O’Kane, The Concept of Sainthood, 24—6; see also Sh. Shaked, ‘Visions in
the Iranian Cultural Orbit’, Paper for the conference ‘The World in Antiquity’
held in Moscow in memory of Gregory Bongard-Levin, 23—6 September, 2009 —
forthcoming. I am grateful to Prof. Shaked for forwarding to me a draft version
of his paper before publication.
[10] See note 7.
[11] Shaked’s paper (see
note 8) deals with the overall comparative aspect of ‘visions’ in late antique
cultures and contributes to my general observations in this respect; it does
not, however, analyse the specific dream images.
[12] The elevation of the
goodness of the heart over and above excessive acts of worship is a recurring
theme in al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi’s works and will become relevant in the
discussion concerning the spiritual hierarchy below. Here are a couple of
references: in Slrat al-awliya’ 132 §60, ll. 2—3, al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi
records the following prophetic tradition (hadlth nabawi): ‘The holy men
(budala} of my people did not enter Paradise due to excessive fasting
and praying; they entered it thanks to the goodness of their hearts (lit.
chests — sudür) and to the generosity of their souls’; for budala’or
abdal, see below, note 70. In his Nawadir al-usül (Istanbul
1294/1877), ch. 21, 31-2, he records a well-known tradition concerning the
superiority of Abu Bakr: ‘Abu Bakr did not have superiority [over the other
caliphs?] due to his excessive fasting and praying; he had superiority over
them because of something that was in his heart’. Cf. Ibn Abi al-Dunya, Kitab
al-Awliya’ (Beirut 1993), 12 §8; 27 §57; 28 §58. Many more parallels can be
adduced.
[13] For studies on
Zoroastrian eschatological presence in Islam, see e.g. E. Yarshater, ‘The
Persian Presence in the Islamic World’, in R.G. Havannisian and G. Sabagh
(eds), The Persian Presence in the Islamic World (Cambridge and New York
1998), 44; Yarashter relies heavily on Sh. Shaked, From Zoroastrian Iran to
Islam, Variorum Collected Studies, in particular (for eschatology) 144; see
also S. Shahid, The Last Trumpet: A Comparative Study in Christian-Islamic
Eschatology (Longwood 2005).
[14] See Ibn Manzür, Lisan
al-'arab (Beirut 1375/1956), vol. 6, 19; also al-Murtada al-Zabidi, Taj
al-'arus (Kuwait 1395/1975), vol. 15, 425f and the sources cited there.
These two dictionaries often rely on the third/ninth-century lexicographer Abu
Hanifa al-Dinawari (d. 282/895). See his Kitab al-Nabat, ed. B. Lewin
(Uppsala and Wiesbaden 1953) 25f. For asa [!] in the canonical Hadith
collections, see A.J. Wensinck, Concordance, vol. I, 132.
[15] For the most
up-to-date synthesis of the extant information and speculations about Jabir and
alchemy in early Islam, see Pierre Lory, Alchimie et mystique en terre
d’islam (Lagrasse 1989), 9-27 and the exhaustive bibliography in the
endnotes.
[16] For
the Arabic text, see Jabir ibn Hayyan, ‘Le Livre du Mercure oriental,
occidental, et du feu de la pierre’ in M. Berthelot, La Chimie au Moyen âge
(Paris 1893), vol. III (L’Alchimie Arabe), 190, 15f.:
^àJI ^Sl J* ... _~—J il^JL>- ùj^j J (?_j3^j) j^^j ^Sl ^s^ij :>j&a...
yl^JI (?) Ay_¿^ ôt-^j i
_*jj| f-J/J^ Ajjl* A—-^ ^AJI ^S! y. ^l^jl ..^U¿ ^Sj ..Aci^j
ôj-^
fj /Jj Jjùh •••A AjL^J Aj Ic^ , ¿1 J^j f"*3 J^J
^l—^^JI ^. ^U! ôG^J ^.^^Ni
A> y,.Ç ^_ ùLjSI
A/>ÙA £. (!) J>j a^J ^Jj ÔJ-* JÿU UT
. . . ’j^
For the French translation, see ibid., 212-16 and
especially 214f. Cf. P. Kraus, Jabir ibn Hayyan, contribution à l’histoire
des idées scientifiques dans l’Islam (Cairo 1942), vol. II, 9, 13.
[17] On Maria, variably
known as the Jewess or the Egyptian, see F. Sezgin, GAS, vol. IV: Alchimie-Chemie,
Botanik-Agrikultur bis ca. 430H(Leiden 1996), 70-3. For the ‘green bird’,
cf. another dream of al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi’s wife, see Radtke and O’Kane, ‘The
Autobiography of al-Tirmidhi’ in The Concept of Sainthood, 26-7.
[18] See Midrash Panîm
âhèrîm in S. Buber (ed.), Sammlung Agadischer Commentare zum Buche
Ester (Vilna 1886), 63 (version II, parasha 2: 79-82); also L. Gin- zberg, The
Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia 1968), vol. IV, 383-4.
[19] See Lev. 23:40; BT
Suk. 12a, 32b-33a, 45a.
[20] For holding the
three plants bundle (named collectively lûlab) in the right hand, see BT
Suk. 37b: ‘And Rabba said: the lûlab (i.e. the palm branch bundle) one
holds in the right hand and the citron in the left’ — I thank Dr Melila Eshed-
Hellner for this reference; see also Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilëkôt lûlâb,
ch. 7 §6 (English translation S. Gandz and H. Klein, The Code of Maimonides
[New Haven 1961], Book III, 397).
[21] See Midrash Têhillîm, ed. S. Buber (Jerusalem 1966), 128-9 (Psalm
17).
[22] See BT Shab. 33b.
Prof. Yehudah Liebes, to whom I am indebted for this reference, has suggested
that this anecdote may allude to the efficacious qualities which the myrtle
supposedly possesses. For the use of myrtle in magical recipes, see above note
30.
[23] See M.M. Bar-Asher
and A. Kofsky, ‘Dogma and Ritual in Kitab al-ma'arif by the Nusayri
theologian Abu Sa'id Maymun b. Al-Qasim al-Tabarani (d. 426/1034-5)’, Arabica
52 (2005), 55. For the myrtle in Nusayri ceremonies, see ibid., note no. 72 and
note the sources cited there and the reference to the Man- daeans. I am grateful
to Prof. Bar-Asher for this reference.
[24] See e.g. K.
Rudolph, ‘The Relevance of Mandaean Literature for the Study of Near Eastern
Religions’, ARAM 16 (2004), 2; see also idem, Mandaeism, 3ff.;
also J. Bergman et al. (eds), Gnostica - Mandaica - Litúrgica: Opera eius
ipsius selecta & collecta septuagenario Erico Segelberg oblata (Uppsala
1990), 119ff.; also J.J. Buckley, The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern
People (Oxford 2002); also C.G. Haberl, ‘Mandaeism in Antiquity and the
Antiquity of Mandaeism’, Religion Compass, 6/5 (2012), 262-76.
[25] For the Mandaeans in
the modern period, see E.S. Drower, The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran: Their
Cults, Customs, Magic, Legends, and Folklore2 (Piscataway, NJ 2002); on the persecution of the
Mandaean minority in Iraq and Iran today, follow the website of the Society for
Persecuted Peoples (Gesellschaft fur bedrohte Volker): www.gfbv.de;
note also TheMandaean (Al-Mandaiyya, a current magazine published by
The Mandaean Association UK) with thanks to Dr Sabah Malallah, chief editor of
this publication.
[26] For the divine
messengers, or light beings named 'uthria (sing. ’uthra), who
arrive from the realm of the Great Life (about which see below, note 46) and
are personified in rituals by the priests, see Drower, The Mandaeans of Iraq
and Iran, 94: ‘uthria and malkia... are semi-divinities who
carry the will of the Great Life’, and see also Index, 433; note in particular
prayers nos. 107 and 118 in The Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans
(translated by E.S. Drower, Leiden 1959): ‘In the Name of the Great Life! My
good messenger of light who travelleth to the house of its friends, come,
direct my speech and open my mouth in praise that I may praise the Great Life
wholly’.
[27] For the significance
of the right hand in Mandaeism, see E.S. Drower, The Secret Adam: A Study of
Nasoraean Gnosis (Oxford 1960) 6, 13, 19; also The Canonical
Prayerbook, 61 and note p. 309, hymn 383.
[28] See E.S. Drower, The
Haran Gawaita and the Baptism of Hibil-Ziwa (Vatican 1953), 62, note 1;
also eadem, The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, 140-2, 205-9; The
Canonical Prayerbook, 240ff.
[29] ‘The Great Life’ (hiia
rbia) refers to the Lord of the heavenly realm of light which the Mandaeans
worship; for the intriguing expression al-hayat al-’uzma, the greatest
life, used uniquely (?) by al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, see Nawadir al-usül,
425 (ch. 290): fa’l-hayatu ’l-’uzma hiya hayatu 'l-hayyi ’lLadhîlayamütu —
‘the greatest life is the life of the Living one who will not die’.
[30] King, malka,
is a Mandaean title for a light-being and can also refer to the priest who
performs the ritual. See, e.g., K. Rudolph, Mandaeism (Leiden 1978), 2;
Drower, The Secret Adam, 56 and 101 note 3; see also above, note 43. The
image of the ‘king’ standing among his ‘men’ in a ritualistic assembly at which
the myrtle bears a distinctive role is strikingly reminiscent of the Nusayri
description cited above, as well as of the biblical image from the prophetic
visions of Zechariah (Zech. 1:8) which will follow. See above, p. 477.
[31] Hibil Ziwa,
literally Abel of Light, one of the Adamite ‘light messengers’; on him see e.g.
K. Rudolph, ‘The Mandaean Religion’, Encyclopaedia Iranica; also H.
Jonas, The Gnostic Religion (Boston 1958), 74, 99, 121.
[32] For the
significance of the right hand, see above, pp. 476-7.
[33] Although in Arabic
literature in general and in al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi’s writings in particular the
idiom ‘water of life’, ma’al-hayat, is much more prevalent than al-hayat
al-’uzma = the greatest life (see note 46), its association with the
heavenly
[34] The linguistic and
semantic affinity of the Talmudic saddîqîm and the Islamic siddîqün
is obvious. For further discussion, see below, p. 485.
[35] For the idea that
certain human beings (i.e. prophets and righteous) are superior to angels, see
e.g. al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, Kitab Adab al-nafs, eds Arberry and Abdel
Qader (Cairo 1366/1947), 92: ‘Then [God] created Adam, Peace be on him, and
made him his choicest (istafahu) and most excellent of His creation (badî’
fitratihi) and He made the angels prostrate before him (wa-asjada lahu
malâ’ikatahu)’.
[36] This, obviously, is
connected with the tradition of a (fixed) number of righteous who must be
present in every generation for the world to subsist. For a comparative
discussion, see below, pp. 485-7.
[37] On R. Yohanan b.
Nappaha, one of the most eminent third-century Palestinian Sages (d. 279), see
A. Hyman, Toldoth Tannaim veAmoraim (Jerusalem 1964), vol. II, 653-72
(in Hebrew).
[38] See R. Hayward,
‘Saint Jerome and the Aramaic Targumim’, JSS 32 (1987), 105—23, and, in
particular, 107ff.
[39] See Targum
Jonathan to Zechariah in A. Sperber (ed.), The Bible in Aramaic, 4 vols.
(Leiden 1959-73), vol. 3, 477; see also R. Kasher, Targumic Toseftot to the
Prophets (Jerusalem 1996), 213, 280 (in Hebrew/Aramaic).
[40] See the Aramaic
Targum to Esth. 2:7 in A. Sperber (ed.), The Bible in Aramaic, vol.
IVa: The Hagiographa. Transition from Translation to Midrash (Leiden
1968), 184-5; also Midrash Têhillîm, ed. Buber, Psalm 22 §3, 181:
‘Esther was named Hadassah ... due to her righteousness’; also Midrash Panîm
Âhêrîm, ed. Buber, version II, parasha 2: 79-82, p. 63.
[41] For a fuller elaboration,
see S. Sviri, ‘Dreaming Analyzed and Recorded’; see also above, p. 468.
[42] For a thematic
survey, see E.E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, (Jerusalem
1975) 487ff. and note Urbach’s assessment that this concept ‘became the accepted
view of the Palestinian Amoraim in the second half of the fourth century’
(489—90). For a discussion on myrtle as symbol of the righteous, see R. Mach, Der
Zaddik in Talmud undMidrasch (Leiden 1957) 103-4, note 8.
[43] R. Yohanan said: ‘A
righteous does not pass away from this world before a righteous like he is
created’; also: ‘The Blessed Be He saw that the righteous are but few, so He
planted them [!] in every generation’. One wonders whether, when choosing the
verb ‘plant’ (sêtâlân), R. Yohanan has in mind the image of the myrtle
upon which he has elaborated in the passage from San. 93a. See above, p. 482.
[44] For an in-depth
analysis of concepts and sources associated with this saying and verse, see Y.
Liebes, ‘Ha-masîah sel ha-Zohar’, in The Messianic Idea in Jewish Thought,
Publications of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities: a Study Conference
in Honour of the Eightieth Birthday of Gershom Scholem, December 1977
[45] See e.g. Slrat
al-awliyâ’, 94 §121; 97 §125; 99—100 §128 (= Radtke and O’Kane, The
Concept of Sainthood, 170, 173, 175-6).
[46] See Slrat
al-awliyâ’ 16 §32: fa-lamma ujibat li-hadha i-mudtarri da’watuhu tlra
bi-qalbihi min mahalli ’l-ôdiqma f tarfati ’aynin ila mahalli l-ahrari
l-kirami; for the sadiqun as distinguished from the siddîqün,
see above, note 20.
[47] For a fuller, more
complex, analysis of the semantics of the root h-d-y, see Sïrat
al-awliya, 16 §31.
[48] For the distinction
al-Tirmidhi makes in this respect between bayt al-'izza (the House of
Power), the place reached by the sadiqun, and al-baytal-mamur
(the Inhabited House), the place reached by the siddïqun (also referred
to as ahrar kiram), a distinction laden with cosmological and
theological allusions, see Sïrat al-awliya’, 17—18 §35; cf. S. Sviri,
‘Questions and Answers: A Literary Dialogue between al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (9th century) and Ibn al-'Arabi (12-13* centuries)’,
in Y. Friedman and E. Kohlberg (eds), Festschrift for Shaul Shaked
(Jerusalem 2016).
[49] See e.g. Sïrat al-awliya, 103 §132: the holy man who is drawn-up [by
God] (al-walï al-majdhub) needs a certain span of
time in his being drawn, in the same way that the effortful walï needs
it in his sincerity (sidq); except that the latter’s purification (tasfiya)
depends on his own efforts, whereas the purification of the drawn-up walï,
God takes charge of it with His lights (yatawallaha ’llahu bi-anwarihi).’
[50] See Sïrat
al-awliyâ’, ed. B. Radtke, 16—17.
[51] See Nawadir
al-usul, ch. 67, 96: inna ’llaha tadlâ khalaqa adama min qabdatin
qabadaha min jami’i ’l-ardi fa-ja’a banu adama ’ala qadri 'l-ardi... wa-min
dhalika ’l-sahlu wa’l-haznu wa’l-khabîthu wa’l-tayyibu. It is worth noting
that ch. 67 is one of the longest and most challenging chapters in the Nawadir
(pp. 95-107). It hinges on far-reaching ethno-theological concepts based on the
binary principle which lies at the heart of al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi’s worldview.
[52] See op. cit.; for a
description of the ‘drawn-up wall (al-wall al-majdhub)’ as being from
‘good soil’ (tayyib al-turba), see Sirat al-awliyâ’, 104 §133.
[53] See e.g. Abu Nu'aym
al-Isfahani, Hilyatal-awliya’wa-tabaqatal-asfiya’(Beirut 1418/1997),
vol. 6, 304 (No. 8714); also Abu Bakr al-Bayhaqi, Kitab al-Zuhd al-kablr
(Beirut 1996), 167.
[54] See Nawadir
al-usul, ch. 67, 96.
[55] For
the polemical context suggested here, note the references made by S. Pines to
passages from the fourth century pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones VIII,
53, 2, in which a distinction is made between Ishmael, born to Abraham
illegitimately from Hagar when Abraham was still in a state of ignorance, and
Isaac, born from Sarah, the legitimate wife, after Abraham had attained God’s
knowledge. Another relevant passage referred to by Pines is the Historia
Ecclesiastica by Sozomenus, a fifth century Christian church historian from
Palestine. Pines argues for Judaeo- Christian reflections in these sources. See
S. Pines, ‘Jahiliyya and ‘Ilm’, JSAI 13 (1990), 175-94, at 182ff and
185, note 26. For this reference I am indebted to Dr Michael Ebstein.
[56] See
P. Brown, The Making ofLate Antiquity (Cambridge MA 1978 and 1993), 56.
[57] Ibid.
[58] See
e.g. Sïrat al-awliya 44 §64: ‘Then, when God took to Him His Prophet,
God’s blessings be on him, He placed in his community forty righteous people (sayyara
fï ummatihi arba’ïna siddïqan) due to whom the earth subsists (bihim
taqümu ’l-ardu); these are the people of his household and family (fa-hum
ahlu baytihi wa-alihí)’; also Nawadir al-usül, chs 50-1, 68ff and
ch. 222, 263ff.
[59] See S. Sviri, ‘Between Fear and Hope. On the Coincidence of
Opposites in Islamic Mysticism’, JSAI 9 (1987), 316-49.
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